Greek original · 110 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:1316–1:1425 (3280 verses in all)
And wicked is he who has received the seed of the wicked sower in his heart and bears as fruit the thorns and thistles of sin for the devil — the tinder of the eternal fire — which are envy, hatred, remembrance of wrongs, jealousy, contentiousness, self-conceit, vainglory, pride, guile, meddlesomeness, slander, and whatever loathsome passion is accomplished through the flesh according to pleasure and defiles the man within us, according to the word of the Lord.
But may it never come to pass, brothers, that we ever bear such tares as fruit, having received through slothfulness the seed of the evil one in our hearts.
But may it come to pass that we bear fruit for Christ thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold — those things cultivated in us through the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, longsuffering, faith, gentleness, self-control — and that we be nourished with the bread of knowledge and grow in the virtues and attain unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, to whom befits all glory unto the ages.
And that one ought not to keep and embrace the profit of fasting diligently only in the first and single week of the fasts, but it is necessary for the diligent to maintain equal and the same diligence in all the weeks of the fasts.
But since I knew that all the most Christian people — I mean of monks and laity — receive the good of fasting each of us of the faithful with fervent eagerness in the holy and first week of the fasts, and everyone lays the yoke of it willingly upon his own neck, and there is no one, not even of those who have utterly despaired of their own salvation and live in fearlessness and contempt of God, who thrusts away the law of fasting during that week and does not rather, along with all, insofar as it lies in himself, exercise self-control — today, then, I come to speak a few brief things for the sake of the present season to you.
For since, as has been said, all the faithful pass through the past first week of the fasts with struggle, but when this has passed and the Sabbath has arrived — since also the church of God has by tradition obtained to keep a feast, that of the holy great-martyr Theodore, or rather to say, the paradoxical salvation that came from God through him to His most faithful people; and likewise on the Sunday all making the commemoration of the orthodox faith, we sing thanksgiving hymns to our all-good God — the wicked one, ever envying good things, secretly stealing in upon each of the faithful and invisibly binding him with slothfulness and negligence, persuades him contemptuously to cast off from himself the saving yoke of fasting and to run back to his former habit; for this reason today I remind and entreat your love together with your fatherhood not to obey the malevolent one at all, nor to be drawn away by the wicked habit of insatiable gluttony, nor to turn back to the former and long-standing fulfillment of wicked desires, but, as we have honored this first and second week of the fasts, so also to honor in order the rest together.
Yes, my fathers and brothers, let us do good to ourselves by acting thus, and let us not consent now to lose what we then gathered, but let us rather be diligent to add and to increase; nor let us wish now wickedly to tear down what we formerly built up well.
For this physician of our souls is wont: in the one to restrain the burnings and movements of the flesh, in another to calm the irascible part, in another to drive away sleep, in one to rouse up eagerness, in another to purify the mind thoroughly and to restore it free from wicked thoughts, in another to tame the untamed tongue and, as it were with a certain bridle, the fear of God, to hold it in check and not to allow it at all to utter idle or corrupt words;
in another it covers over unseen and stays the eyes that wander aloft, and does not allow them to be borne curiously here and there, but prepares each to look upon himself and teaches him to remember his own sins and shortcomings.
Fasting little by little thins out and drives away the spiritual gloom and the veil of sin that lies upon the soul, just as the sun disperses the mist.
Fasting, taking vigilance as its fellow-worker, having entered in, softens the hardness of the heart and, instead of the former surfeiting, prepares fountains of compunction to gush forth — which may we too each be diligent to have come to be in us, I entreat, brothers.
For when this has come to pass easily with God, we shall break through the whole sea of the passions, and, having passed through the waves of the temptations of the one who bitterly tyrannizes over us, we shall be anchored in the harbor of dispassion.
But these things, my brothers, are not possible to come about in one day, nor in one week, but in much time and toil and labor, according to the proportion of each one's purpose and resolve, and further also according to the measure of faith and of the contempt for things seen and thought; and not only so, but also according to the fervor of unceasing repentance and of the ever-flowing work in the hidden treasury of the soul itself — whether more quickly or more slowly, they are accomplished by God's gift and grace; but without fasting none of these nor any of the other virtues has ever been able to be accomplished by anyone.
But when you remove this foundation and lay down in its place gluttony of the belly and unseemly desires, then, like sand, these things are washed away by evil thoughts and by the river of the passions, and they overturn the whole edifice of the virtues.
Therefore, that this may not happen to us also, let us stand with great joy upon the firm foundation of fasting; let us stand well, my brethren; let us stand of our own free will.
For he who is forced against his will to climb up onto the rock of fasting, being dragged down from there entirely by desire toward secret eating, casts himself down; and while he thinks he is devouring the food, he himself, as it seems, becomes the devouring of the evil one.
For it is a divine law, and the devil, like an executioner, takes hold of those who dare to transgress it and scourges them—if not at once, nor on the spot, since God is long-suffering toward us and awaits our repentance—yet nevertheless we shall by no means escape his hands, either here or in the age to come, if we persist impenitently in sin; for so having received our condemnation together with him, we shall be condemned by the righteous judgment of God to be chastised immortally both by him and together with him.
For just as the monastery then seemed to me to be uninhabited by men and inhabited by angels alone, because I heard from you no worldly word at all, but only the doxology sent up by you to God, which is also the work of angels—
Do not, then, desire to be separated from that fellowship with them through much talking and idle speech, nor by disorderly voices or immoderate shouting cause them to depart from you and the demons to draw near to you as before; but let each attend to himself and diligently perform his handiwork and his service, as one serving God and not men.
For just as at the material table we urge and exhort our neighbors to eat, and those whom we love more than the rest we press to partake, so likewise at this soul-nourishing table we are bound to be attentive and to urge our neighbors, lest we be condemned as not loving one another and lose our standing as disciples of Christ.
For the surfeit of those foods is often wont to corrupt and harm both soul and body, whereas the things spoken here by the saints both illumine the mind and sanctify the soul, and through it impart sanctification to the body itself as well, and render it healthier and more vigorous.
Let him place these in his heart and keep them securely, since the words of God are words of life, and he who has them within himself and guards them has eternal life.
For often, when you have sat at a sumptuous table, I do not think that any of you was ever so slothful as to doze off entirely and not only take what sufficed, but even eagerly to take away with him what was for the morrow and depart, being ready to share it with certain friends or with the poor.
But where words of life are set forth, which render those nourished by them immortal, tell me, is it permitted to anyone to sleep and be slothful, or to nod off and snore like a living corpse?
so also he who hears the divine reading and does not with ineffable pleasure and immaterial longing feast his soul immaterially upon the immaterial and divine oracles, and does not fill all his senses spiritually from their sweetness, is weak in faith and utterly without taste of the spiritual gifts, evidently wasting away with hunger and thirst in the midst of many good things.
For just as a corpse bathed in water perceives nothing, so also this man, though drenched by the living and divine streams of the word, does not perceive it.
As many, then, as have the word of life within yourselves, as many as have attained to be nourished by this bread of the word, as many as are not dead but have come alive from the dead and have tasted the true life and have obtained a heart of compassion toward your neighbors from the compassionate God—do not cease to rouse and exhort and admonish your neighbors and all men, if it be possible; but as your own members, or rather as members of Christ and as sons of God, be eager to train, rebuke, and reprove them, not that you may grieve them, but that you may free them from a Father's anger and displeasure; not that you may harm them, but that you may benefit them in the greatest things, preparing them to fulfill the will of their God and Father.
If you do thus, and if each of you thus rouses his own brother to a stirring up of love and good works, then quickly shall we all be lifted up to the height of the virtues, and be shown forth as fulfillers of the commandments of God, and with one accord attain the kingdom of heaven, in Christ Himself our God, to whom belongs all glory unto the ages of ages.
Brethren and fathers, I indeed, always ailing both in soul and in body from a faulty and slothful will and disposition, wished to keep silent and to attend only to my own affairs, until the things of the worse part were vanquished within me and subjected to the better reason, and I should altogether enjoy the peace of the spirit, freed from the vexation of the earthy and earthly mind, and enter into the harbor of our blessed repose.
But since I have been chosen by you as head of your holy body, it is necessary for me to exhort your love, since the salvation of your brotherhood consoles me; for even while I am ailing in soul, you are preserved by the prayers of my father and your father.
Therefore, though scarcely able even to open my mouth, I have with difficulty had strength at least to write this discourse and to remind your brotherhood beforehand, entreating your love with much supplication, that as true servants of Christ and lovers of the brethren, you would pray for my wretchedness, so that I too may be saved together with you, and, walking the way of the commandments of God, may dwell together with you, my beloved brethren.
I beseech you, then, and I entreat you in Christ Jesus, to take heed to yourselves, and let each one think so as to be sober-minded, and not to think more highly than he ought to think; and not to look upon my negligent and distracted life, but to follow in the footsteps of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom also we owe the rendering of our account, as to a righteous and unerring Judge.
Grant me this boast: that I alone, cast down into the pit of hell through my negligence, cried out mightily and snatched you from the snare; and if I owe much to lament my own slothfulness, yet I am content even merely to see you soaring on high and above the nets of the devil.
Keep, therefore, without omission all the commandments of God, beloved, that you may be saved like a gazelle from the nets and like a bird from the snare.
in not being puffed up, in not exalting oneself, nor being jealous of one's brother but being zealous for the good; in not boasting, not murmuring, not jesting, nor laughing, nor going to law about any matter small or great whatsoever; in short, in not sating oneself—not only with foods and dainties, but, if possible, not even with water—and especially in these present days of the fast, in which he who repents diligently and with labor receives from on high, according to the divine Scripture, the remission of the sins of his whole life;
and not only this, but through the sojourning of the Spirit He also lavishly and generously bestows upon the soul an outpouring of light, so that thereby it becomes full of mercy and of good fruits.
Let us therefore make use of this love, I beg, in this third week of the fast as well, fathers and brethren, and in the weeks after it, adding warmth upon warmth and zeal upon zeal day by day, until we attain to the Lord's Day of Pascha, made resplendent both in our souls and in our bodies.
For behold, as you see, that by God's help we have passed through this course of the second week of the fast also, with good courage and with fervent eagerness.
For I testify concerning you that you have fallen short of none of the good things of the fast, but have kept all-night psalmody with all attentiveness, and have kept and are keeping self-control vigorously, being content with the vegetables and pulse set before you.
And I know some among you who, even of the meager foods of the table, sit here in your midst with a contrite spirit and a humble mind, abstaining, counting themselves unworthy of partaking of them.
Besides this, attending to yourselves and to your handiwork, you have remained unassuming in silence, wholly filled in soul with compunction and tears, with prayers, supplication, and spiritual labor from the continual genuflections; and you have been changed with the good change, having acquired a most ascetic and comely countenance.
Now, then, since we are about henceforth to strip for the contest of the fast, let us strive, I beseech you, to keep also in this sacred week the law of the most excellent fast, and to set the same contest as in the weeks that have preceded; for we have great need of watchfulness, great need of diligence, lest we too, like worldly men, spend out our days.
but for us, my brethren, there is fear, and the greatest of fears, lest we too, like these men, should so suppose, and converse thus with one another, and be shown to be deniers of our profession.
For not to us alone, who flee the world and have been crucified to it and wholly dedicated to God, has the present season been given as a law of self-control, but the whole span of our present life; wherein we are also inescapably bound to practice self-control.
And how are we not bound to do this at all times—we who have covenanted to hunger and thirst and be naked and to suffer all things and to bear them with joy—and especially now, in the season of the contests of the Forty Days?
For if seeking and being anxious about bread and wine and clothing makes us like the heathen, to whom will the aforesaid things make us equal, being more shameful and more sinful than these?
"Do not be anxious for your soul, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, or what you shall put on; but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."
"If He delays to give, and I have nothing to eat, what shall I do?"—"The birds of heaven," He said, "behold, how they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them"; and He adds, saying:
If, then, you believe in Christ and confess Him to be without falsehood, when you are hungry or thirsty and have nothing to eat or drink, and you seek bread or wine or some food from the cellarer, and he does not supply it to you, being perhaps hindered by his duties, call to mind and remember the words of the Lord, and say to yourself:
"I am indeed hungry and thirsty, but in patient waiting I will wait for the Lord, and He Himself will act according to my weakness and will not forsake me."
And do likewise also in all the other temptations that befall you, and you shall be marveled at, and both in the present life and in that which is to come you shall be ranked among the holy martyrs.
How many of our brethren in Christ often long, as they lie in some corner, even for cold water itself, and perhaps give thanks to God and, in no way disgruntled, speak no blasphemy; whereas we, by the grace of God, through His rich gifts, have all the need of the body in full measure, and have even a surplus.
but when one has even much, and yet over the deprivation of some little thing stirs up quarrels and fights, and moreover utters blasphemous words, of what pardon shall such a one be worthy?
Therefore, calling to mind the profit of the past days of the fast, how you passed through them with such diligence and fervour, so also, I beg you, be diligent to pass through the whole of the holy Forty Days in the same way, considering your good manner of life, what reverence, what humility, and moreover what silence and what diligence each of you maintained both in the order of the divine assembly and in your handiwork.
Yes, I entreat you, do not forget the passion-slaying fast and the purifying self-control, and do not grow slack in doing these same things, brethren; but even if it should often happen that there is a change of food, and you should from some source receive refreshment, remain unshaken in resolve and unchanged in disposition. Rather, when you have eaten more than your usual fare, be diligent to labour all the more in the work of God, lest the refreshment become for you, instead of thanksgiving and gain, the occasion of no small negligence and loss.
Hold to this fast apart from the food of fish, and conduct yourselves in the fear of God, not abandoning your services and your handiwork, nor wandering here and there, and being distracted, and giving yourselves over to the demon of listlessness (acedia).
But if any one of you, passing by, should find another of the brethren standing or sitting, let him, diligently passing, make a prostration; and perhaps the idle one too will come to an awareness of himself, and he also, put to shame of his own accord, will set about his work; and thus, each of you acting so, you will escape the condemnation of idleness and idle talk.
Do you not hear what that blessed Zosimas says—he who recounted the life of Saint Mary of Egypt—concerning those holy men in the monastery to which he too had come at that time by the providence of God, how, going out of the monastery, they spent the whole of the Forty Days in the desert, never joining one with another; but if one of them was ever met by another, he would turn aside and flee, and they could not bear even to draw near to one another?
So too, on returning to the monastery, no one, as he says, ever asked another what he had seen or what he had done in the desert; but like certain strangers and sojourners, and men of foreign tongue in speech, so did they all live and so did they conduct their citizenship.
And they did this, as I suppose, for no other reason at all than that, keeping the whole matter with strict exactness, they might not utter an idle word from their mouth.
If, then, for so many years and so many days those men did this, not conversing at all with one another, what shall we suffer—we who do not guard ourselves from encounters and idle talk even for these few days?
And what shall we do, my good brethren, if, while we are in such a state, the Judge of all and God should suddenly appear—He who will demand from us an account even for an idle word in the day of judgement?
If, then, we shall not master the habit of the tongue—which is easy and light for us—how shall we ever be strong enough to become self-controlled with respect to those grievous and great passions, which have great strength together with nature itself, and, so to speak, with desire and pleasure?
Let there be, then, a beginning for us from this day onward, brethren; and let us run with all the strength we have, that, like certain golden-winged eagles, swift, we may lay hold of the Pascha of the Lord, where Christ our God has entered as our forerunner, having cast behind us all the passions that tyrannise over us.
And let us, if it seems good, ourselves establish a law by common counsel in the midst of ourselves: namely, that—apart from Saturday and Sunday—if two are found given over to idleness and standing about in unprofitable encounters, they shall have nothing at all to partake of on that day, except only dry bread with salt and cold water at the hour of the midday meal, standing, that is, and eating at the lower part of the table.
And holding this as an inviolable law, you will keep yourselves blameless from idle talk and jesting; you will serve God—on whose account you set a door to your lips and likewise a guard over your mouths; you will greatly comfort me, your unworthy father, in this; you will fill my humble soul with gladness; and you will profit your own souls in no small measure, teaching yourselves a good pattern and a wondrous custom for the sake of the love of God.
Therefore I entreat your love, my holy fathers and servants of God: do not disregard my words—the words of your unworthy father—nor let my sayings appear as idle nonsense before you.
For even if I am weak and full of ten thousand sins, yet look and consider carefully that I have counselled you nothing beyond the commandments of God and the divine Scriptures.
Make, then, a good beginning, and give me a little eagerness, that, strengthened by your holy prayers, I may lift up my head and rub my face and wash my eyes, and be roused from the deep sleep of negligence; and that, in return for the good things you do for me, your worthless servant—though not worthily, yet at least according to my ability—I may repay you with good words, out of those which the grace of God gives, in the opening of my unclean mouth, for your love.
Yes, my brethren, I beseech you, do not overlook my petition; but just as, from one half-dead and utterly speechless, you have granted me to speak before your honourable persons, so also grant me your will, that, through the cutting off of it, you may live the life of the martyrs and prize-winners of Christ, and I from this day may add yet more and more to laying down for you my whole soul together with my body unto a voluntary death—which indeed I pray may become for me a provision for the journey to the life there, as I depart in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.