Greek original · 179 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:2918–1:3096 (3280 verses in all)
And that it is impossible for the works of virtue to be confirmed in any other way than through the sojourning of the Spirit, without whom no one is directed toward virtue, nor is able to benefit others or to receive the thoughts of others.
Just as a lamp, then—even though it be filled with oil, or with tow, or hold some other easily kindled material—before it partakes of fire and is kindled, is wholly in darkness, so also the soul, even though in appearance it be adorned with all the virtues, yet if it has not partaken of the fire—that is, if it has not received a share of the divine essence and light—is still quenched and darkened, and its works are unsure.
He, therefore, who still has the lamp of his soul in such a state—plainly without partaking of the divine fire—has all the more need of a guide, and of a lamp that both shines and discerns his actions, and, through confession, sympathizes with him in his faults, and sets right the things done crookedly by him at every hour.
For just as it is not possible for one who walks by night not to stumble, so it is not possible for one who does not yet behold the divine light not to fall, as Christ says:
Just as, then, one who walks in darkness is in no way helped even if he holds many beautiful but extinguished torches—for he sees neither himself nor anyone else by means of these—so neither is the one who seems, if it be possible, to have all the virtues within himself, yet does not have within himself the light of the Holy Spirit, able to see his own actions well, nor is he fully assured whether they are unto the good pleasure of God.
But neither is he able to guide others or to teach the will of God, nor is he worthy to receive the thoughts of others, even if he should become a patriarch among men, until he acquires the light shining within himself.
Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; and he who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. If, then, that man does not know where he is going, how shall he show the way to others?
See how the Master Himself likewise speaks to us, His servants, concerning you, saying: 'Look, lest you deceive yourself; and while you imagine that there is light in you, it is not light but darkness.'
Take heed, brethren, lest, thinking that you are in God and imagining that you have fellowship with Him, you be found outside of Him and separated from Him, because you do not yet behold His light.
'If therefore your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it shall be wholly bright, as when the lamp enlightens you with its lightning-flash.'
But what shall I say to those who love to be renowned, and to be set up as priests and high priests and abbots, and who wish to take upon themselves the thoughts of others, and who claim to be worthy of undertaking the office of binding and loosing?
When I see that they understand none of the necessary and divine matters, and neither teach these things to others nor lead them into the light of knowledge, what else is it than what Christ says to the Pharisees and the lawyers:
'But when He comes, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He shall bear witness of Me, and shall guide you into all the truth.' Do you see how through the Spirit—or rather, in the Spirit—the Father and the Son are known inseparably?
'If you love Me, you will keep My commandments, and I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth.' And a little later:
But if you should say that the one is approachable and the other unapproachable, the approachable will be consumed by the unapproachable, and the key could never have strength to open, unless it too be unapproachable and of the same nature; rather it will be burnt up by the door, or the door by the house, and perhaps it will become impassable to all.
But take heed, lest, hearing these things, and taking the images from perceptible houses and doors together, some bodily form be stamped beforehand upon your mind, and your soul fall into doubt and blasphemy.
But if, in a manner befitting God and rightly, insofar as you are able, you reason within yourselves according to the word and law of contemplation, you will find all things interpreted correctly.
But if you are not able so to understand these things in a manner befitting God, receive them by faith alone, and do not wish to inquire curiously into them at all.
For the Holy Spirit is called a key, because through Him and in Him our mind is first illumined, and, being purified, we are enlightened with the light of knowledge, and are baptized from above and regenerated, and are named children of God, even as Paul says:
If therefore the Lord is the Spirit, and the Father is in Him and He is in us, and likewise again we are in Him, and He is with God the Father, and God is in Him—
If therefore anything is named of the One, this is by nature also contemplated in the rest—apart, that is, from Father and Son and Holy Spirit, that is to say, apart from begetting and being begotten and proceeding;
For through these the three Persons are made known, and in this it is not possible to set the Son before the Father, nor the Holy Spirit before the Son, but rather to say them thus together:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, no interruption of even the most minute interval of time or moment occurring among them, but together with the Father the Son also is begotten and the Spirit proceeds;
'By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established'—this we know to be declared concerning the Son; 'and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power'—this too we take to concern the Holy Spirit.
Learn these things, then, I beg you, you who are surnamed children of God, and you who seem to be Christians, you who teach others words in vain, and you who imagine that you rule—yet who are falsely priests and monks!
And first of all seek to learn these things by deed and by suffering; and further, desire also at some time to behold them, and through experience to become godlike.
But be not eager only for the outward garb and the appearance, and thereupon lay claim to the apostolic dignities, lest you hear this rebuke—you who, before the knowledge of the mysteries of God, imperfectly rush to govern others.
and to build the house of the knowledge of the mysteries of God, and to be illumined by the divine light, and to see God with a cleansed eye of the heart, insofar as this is possible for us who are but men; and thence to be initiated into the more perfect mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; and thus, from this knowledge which is given from above by the Father of lights, to come to the word of teaching and to teach our neighbors what is the good and perfect and well-pleasing will of God; and through our teaching to present to God a peculiar people—to Him who through His Holy Spirit has appointed us teachers of His Church—that we may not be cast out of the bridal chamber of Christ like despisers stripped of the wedding garment, but rather, like prudent stewards who have well administered the matters of the word of teaching among our fellow servants, and before that the matters of our own life, may enter into it unhindered, in the splendor of a holy life and heavenly knowledge, filled with light and with the Holy Spirit, and may reign together with Christ, inheriting with Him the things of the kingdom of God the Father in the Holy Spirit—the ever-living and immortal fountain and life—to whom belongs all glory, honor, and worship, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.
for it must be made public and shown to all, and the benefactions of God must be gratefully proclaimed for the profit of the hearers, even though some be displeased.
If, then, you have been thus disposed toward what has been said, may Christ be merciful to you; but I entreat your love, that no one persist in such a judgment.
For we have not written these things for the sake of display—may God, who has had mercy on us and led us into these things, not permit that!—but, mindful of the gifts of God, which from the beginning of our life until the present He has wrought with us who are unworthy, giving thanks we hymn Him as a compassionate Master and our benefactor Lord, and gratefully lay before you all the talent bestowed on us by Him.
For how could we possibly keep silent about the sheer magnitude of His benefactions, or, like unmindful and wicked servants, ungratefully bury the talent given to us?
Since, then, we cannot do this, we proclaim His mercy, we confess His grace, we show to all His goodness toward us, and we exhort you also, through the teaching of the word, to strive to partake of and enjoy His gifts—those which we too, the unworthy, through His ineffable goodness have enjoyed.
For in this we do you no wrong, nor have we wronged you, but we long to impart of what we have received to our fellow servants, who are you yourselves—the people of Christ, the holy flock, counted worthy to be called and to be heard as a royal priesthood.
'Run in haste, you too, that you may receive'—pointing with his finger and showing them the one who had handed him the coin; and if they disbelieve, he even bares it on his palm and shows the coin itself, that they, believing, may make eager use of it and quickly reach that merciful man. So too do I, the lowly one, poor and stripped of any good and a servant of the holiness of you all: having received an experience of God's love for mankind and of His compassion, having drawn near to Him through repentance and, through the mediation of holy Symeon, my father and your father, having received the grace—I who am unworthy of all grace—I cannot bear to keep it hidden alone in the bosom of my soul, but I tell to all of you, my brothers and my fathers, the gifts of God and what manner of thing the talent is that has been given me; as far as it rests with me, I make it plain to you, and through the word I bare it as upon a palm, and I speak not as in a corner and in secret, but crying out with a great voice:
For if a man gives an obol to some poor person, and then that person makes it known to others so that he might give to them also, the man grows angry and hardens himself all the more against giving; but God is not so—rather He does the very opposite.
For if He gives to someone a spiritual gift—that is, a talent—and that person does not proclaim it to all and make it public, saying, 'Come to the Master who gives freely and turns none away empty,' but rather, having received it, hides it by burying it, then God is all the more angered against the one who received it, as being grudging and unwilling that his own brothers should receive as he himself received.
For this reason, therefore, I cannot endure to keep silent about the things I have seen, and the wonders of God that I have come to know by deed and by experience, but I solemnly testify beforehand to all the rest as before God, saying with a great voice:
Run, all of you, before the door of repentance is closed to you by death; run, that you may lay hold before your departure; make haste, that you may receive; knock, that before your end the Master may open to you the gates of paradise and manifest Himself to you; be zealous to possess consciously the kingdom of heaven within you, and do not depart hence empty of it—and above all you who imagine that you possess it within yourselves without perceiving it, while possessing nothing on account of your self-conceit.
He who has not beheld the Son abiding in him through the Spirit together with the Father—how shall he be with them in the age to come, even as the Lord said:
'Neither for these only do I ask, but also for all who believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, even as You, Father, are in me and I in You, that they also may be one in us.'
'And the glory which You have given me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one—I in them and You in me—that they may be perfected into one, and that the world may know that You have sent me and have loved them even as You have loved me.'
Thus does the love of God move me toward you, my fathers and brothers, to reveal the ineffable goodness and love of God toward us, on account of which He thus and in such great measure, without grudging, glorifies those who have set their hope on Him.
But if, even as He says, the Father knows the Son and the Son knows the Father, and as God is present with God the Father, and the Father likewise is present with the Son—as when He says:
'Even as You, Father, are in me and I in You, so may they also be in me and I in them'—this altogether signifies the equality of their union with one another.
Yet the Son's union with the Father is natural and coeternal, whereas our union with the Son is by adoption and by grace; nevertheless we are all united to God in one and the same reality and are inseparable, as He again says:
Hear these things, therefore, you who think yourselves to be spiritual, and believe Him who speaks; and as for me who tell you in the word of grace of the gifts which those receive from God who run to Him with fervent faith and keep His commandments—me who minister to the Spirit that sounds forth from above—acquit me of every blame.
But if we, being of no account and unworthy, are far from all holiness and from the holy men of God, yet we cannot deny the gift given to us by God; rather, as debtors of His grace, we minister to you the oracles of God and uncover the talent which was given to us, and the gift bestowed through prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the high priest who perfected us into the priesthood—even as this same chief of the apostles enjoins upon us, for he says:
And just as he who disbelieves the one who speaks through the Spirit sins against the Spirit that speaks and blasphemes, so again he who is bereft of the grace of the Spirit from above, if he dares to say, 'I speak in the Holy Spirit,' like Simon the Magus and those who are of like mind with him, shall be a stranger to God and His adversary.
Do not, then, wish to become fighters against God and His adversaries, brothers, but come, worship and fall down with us, and do not rise up from that place until you receive the gift of God, as we too, the unworthy, received it by His grace.
For if we were saying that we indeed have received grace as a free gift from the Father of lights, from whom is every perfect gift, but that we are unwilling for you to receive it, we should justly be hated both by God and by you yourselves;
but now, when we set forth the truth from the divine Scripture and from experience of it itself, and point out to you the royal road, in what do we wrong you?
But if, reckoning me nameless and obscure and least, you do not deign to be taught by me, know and learn that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and the weak things and the things cast aside, to shame the glorious and strong.
'These things are truly great and beyond nature, for they are words of God, as has been said.' 'And how is it,' he says, 'that none of the great fathers ever declared so openly concerning himself, or spoke such words concerning himself as you speak?' You have deceived yourself, O man.
Rather, the apostles and the fathers have spoken things that accord with my words and even surpass them; but the trustworthiness of the speakers makes what they say readily acceptable and credible, whereas our worthlessness makes even things acknowledged by all appear to you as false and abominable.
But also the saying, 'You seek a proof of Christ speaking in me,' and, 'I think that I too have the Spirit of God,' and, 'For we did not receive a spirit of slavery again unto fear, but a Spirit of adoption, in whom we cry:
If, then, you say that even one who wills is unable, where shall we place the saying, 'But as many as received Him, to them He gave authority to become children of God,' and, 'If you will, you are gods and all of you sons of the Most High,' and, 'Be holy, for I am holy'?
For if in the days of Elijah God had seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, how much more now, when He has poured out His Holy Spirit richly upon us!