Letters 1 part 10/17

While it is thus shining, if envy should intrude, or the passion of resentment, or the desire for vainglory, or some other longing for a pleasure or a passion, and should overturn the lamp — that is, my soul's resolve — or should lap up the oil, I mean that of the virtues; or should otherwise devour with evil thoughts my mind, which, as I said, is the wick and holds within itself the divine light shining greatly; or should cast it entirely away from within, in the oil, that is, in the pondering of its own virtuous deeds, and, falling thereby into conceit, should be blinded — and if my lamp, from these causes or perhaps from something else, should happen to be extinguished, tell me, where would the fire then be, or what would become of it? Does it remain in the lamp, or is it separated from the lamp?

The fire always desires and wishes to seize hold of matter, but it lies entirely with us to prepare this matter beforehand, and to offer ourselves readily as lamps furnished with oil and adorned with every kind of virtue, and rightly to put forward the mind as the wick, so that it may touch the fire and gradually be kindled, and so remain together with those who have acquired it.

For otherwise — let no one be deceived — it is not seen, not grasped, not contained at all.

For it is, as I said, outside all created things, yet it becomes graspable ungraspably by the ineffable union, and likewise circumscribed in an uncircumscribed manner.

Do not seek these things at all by words, nor by conceptions, but ask to receive the fire, which teaches and shows clearly to those who have acquired it all these things, and things more mystical than these, ineffably.

It sets ablaze and illumines and — how, I am unable to say — the two become one: the soul with the Creator, and in the soul the Creator alone, wholly with her alone, he who holds all creation together in his own palm.

Do not doubt: this one, wholly, together with the Father and the Spirit, is contained within a single soul, and encompasses the whole soul within himself.

For I told you that the light unbearable and inaccessible even to angels holds the soul within itself, and again dwells within the soul, yet does not burn her at all.

How then, being wholly compelled to speak, will he keep silent?

For he sees himself in Hades — I speak by the shining of the light; for none of those seated there otherwise recognizes himself before the divine light shines, but they remain in ignorance of the darkness, the corruption, and the death in which they are held fast.

Yet where it shines — that soul, I mean — she sees, and understands that she was wholly in the most terrible darkness and in the most secure prison of the deepest ignorance.

Then she sees where she lies, where she is imprisoned: the whole place mire, filled with unclean, venomous reptiles; and herself bound and tightly constrained with fetters, hands and feet together, squalid and filthy, wounded all over by the bites of the reptiles, and bearing her own swollen flesh together with a multitude of worms.

Seeing these things, how will he not shudder, how will he not weep, how will he not cry out and repent fervently and beg to be delivered from the most terrible fetters?

Truly everyone who sees these things will groan and mourn, and will wish to follow Christ, who has caused the light to shine forth.

He who has shone forth touches with his hands my fetters and my wounds; and wherever the hand touches, or draws near with a finger, the fetters are at once loosed, the worms are put to death, the wounds fall away, and together with them fall away the filth and the small stain upon my flesh; and a scarring-over comes about all at once, so complete that no scar at all is to be seen in that place, but he makes the place flash forth instead, resembling the divine hand itself.

Seeing this accomplished in part of my body, how shall I not long for my whole body to be so, and beseech to be delivered from my ills, and likewise to obtain the health and the glory of which I have spoken?

And when I have been delivered from the fetters, he gives me a divine hand, he raises me up from the mire, he embraces me wholly, he falls upon my neck. Woe is me, how shall I bear these things?

But when I am utterly unstrung and have lost all my strength — alas for me, how shall I inscribe these things?

He lifts me upon his shoulders. O love! O goodness!

And he leads me out of Hades, out of that place and that darkness, and brings me into another — whether world or air, I am wholly unable to say.

This I know: that light both carries me and holds me fast, and leads me into a great light, the great divine wonder of which not even the angels, I think, are at all able to express or tell to one another.

Incorruptible and eternal things — all of them strange to what is here.

He made me untouchable, impalpable — O wonder! — and likewise invisible, joined to things invisible.

Having thus made me such as this, the Creator brought me into a sensible tabernacle — a bodily one, indeed — and enclosed me within it and secured me there; and, having brought me down again into the sensible and visible world, he appointed me, who had been delivered from darkness, to live and to dwell together with those in darkness, and to be shut in with those — I mean those in the mire; or rather, to teach them, and to lead them to recognition of the wounds that beset them and the fetters by which they are held.

Being then left alone — in that former darkness, I mean — I was not content with those things which, as I said, he had heaped upon me: ineffable good things, having wholly renewed me, wholly made me immortal, wholly deified me, and made me Christ.

But the deprivation of him produced in me forgetfulness of all these good things I have mentioned, and I seemed to have been deprived of them.

I wept, I mourned exceedingly, seeing nothing at all any longer from without.

For I sought after that one, that one whom I longed for, whom I loved, by whose beauty of loveliness I was wounded, I was set aflame, I was burning, I was wholly ablaze.

While I was thus passing my days, and thus weeping, at once melting away and terribly scourged, and crying out in anguish, he heard my cry, and, looking down from an inconceivable height and seeing me, had mercy on me, and again deemed me worthy to behold — as far as is possible for a human being — him who is invisible to all.

Seeing him, I was utterly astonished — I who was shut up in a house and enclosed in a jar, and in the midst of darkness — between heaven and earth, I tell you.

I call it darkness in the sensible sense, since sensible things heavily cover over all men and their minds — minds mingled with, and existing amid, sensible things.

Yet, being amid these things, I saw him who pre-exists and, as I said, is now also outside all things intellectually, and I marveled, I was astonished, I was afraid, and I rejoiced.

Or of what kind he is, whom I behold; or how I behold him; or what I behold — yet, beholding what I saw, and lamenting that I am unable to know the manner of it, nor at all to conceive it, nor in any way to understand how he whom I behold, how he beholds me — I saw him again suddenly become wholly present within the house and the jar, united ineffably, joined inexpressibly and mingled with me without confusion, as fire with iron, and light with glass; and he made me as fire and showed me as light, and I became that very thing which before this I had beheld and contemplated from afar; and I do not know how to describe to you the paradox of the manner — for I was not able to know, nor even now do I know at all, how he entered, how he was united.

But having been united, how shall I tell you who it is that has been united to me, and to whom I too have been united?

I shudder and fear lest, if I tell you, you, disbelieving, should fall through ignorance into blasphemy and destroy your soul, my brother.

Yet, having become one — I and that one to whom I have been united — what shall I call myself?

God, twofold in nature yet one in hypostasis, has made me twofold.

I am man by nature, but God by grace.

See what grace I speak of: union with him, perceptibly and noetically, essentially and spiritually!

For, having been purified by repentance and by the streams of tears, partaking, as of God, of a body that has been deified, I too become God by the ineffable union.

The soul, then, and the body — let me say this again out of overflowing joy — are one in the two essences; these, then, being the one that is two, having partaken of Christ and drunk of his blood, and having been united, in both essences and natures alike, to my God, become God by participation, and are called by the same name as that one of whom they have partaken essentially.

The coal, then, is called fire, and the black iron, once set aglow, is seen as fire.

If, then, it is seen to be such, it would also be called such: it is seen as fire, it would be called fire.

But seek with your whole heart, and you shall receive a pearl, or a drop, or, as it were, a grain of mustard seed, a divine spark, a seed.

How will you seek what I am telling you?

Listen, and act with diligence, and you will find it quickly. Take, if you will, a clear image: that of flint and iron. For in these too the nature of fire certainly resides, yet it is not seen at all.

Yet, when struck together repeatedly, they send forth sparks of fire, and these are at first seen by all, but they are nevertheless not kindled unless they also take hold of matter.

But when a single small spark among these is joined to that matter, it kindles it fully, little by little, and raises the flame on high, and lights up the house, and drives out the darkness, and grants all who are in the house the power to see.

Tell me then: before being struck repeatedly, how will they send forth sparks?

But without a spark, how will matter be kindled of itself?

Before it is kindled, how will it give light? How will it drive out the darkness? How will it grant you the power to see?

By no means, you would surely tell me, could that ever come to pass.

So then, be eager to do likewise, and you shall receive — what am I telling you, that you shall receive?

a pearl of great price, and a grain of mustard seed.

Listen attentively, child: let soul and body be to you as stone and iron, and let the mind, as sovereign ruler of the passions, dwell unceasingly on virtuous deeds and thoughts pleasing to God; and holding the body as stone and the soul as iron with intelligible hands, let it draw and lead them toward these deeds by force; for indeed the kingdom of heaven is taken by force.

The soul, then, dwelling on these and such things, and being continually occupied with them, causes your mind at first to receive flashes of light, but they are quickly extinguished, since it has not yet been refined, so that it also catches fire only briefly.

And it leads up to heaven and unites the soul with the divine light.

Before you do what I have told you, tell me, how will you be purified?

And before you are purified, how will your mind receive the divine flashes?

And tell me, how, and from whence else, will the divine fire fall into your heart and be kindled, and set it ablaze, and inflame it, and unite it, and join it, and make the created inseparable from the Creator?

"Never at all," you will say to me, "can this be possible for anyone who has been born or is going to be born."

For if you are united to the light, it will teach you all things, and reveal all things, and show you all that it is profitable for you to learn.

For otherwise it is impossible for you to learn those things by reason alone; to our Lord be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.

On theology, and that the divine nature is unsearchable and altogether incomprehensible to human beings.

Lord our God, Father, Son, and Spirit, you are formless in shape, yet altogether beautiful in appearance; by your inconceivable beauty you dim every other sight, fair beyond vision, for you surpass all things.

Since you named yourself God, the one who truly is, this we call essence, this we call hypostasis; for that which does not truly exist, having no essence, is without hypostasis, and for this reason we boldly call you possessed of essence, we call you possessed of hypostasis — you whom no one has ever seen, the God in three hypostases, the one beginning without beginning.

For otherwise how should we dare to call you "essence," or to glorify three divided hypostases in you?

What sort of union at all shall anyone conceive, if the Father is in you and you are together in your Father, and from him your Holy Spirit proceeds, and you yourself, O Lord, are your own Spirit, while the Spirit is called Lord and my God, and your Father both is and is called Spirit?

No one, whether of angels or of men, has ever seen you; no one has beheld these things, no one has known the manner of them.

How could one speak, how could one utter, how could one dare to declare separation or union or confusion or mixture or even blending — how call the One "three," or how the three "one"?

For this reason, then, Master, every believer of yours believes on the basis of what you have said, and praises your might on the basis of what you have taught, since all that concerns you is altogether incomprehensible, unknown, and unutterable to those created by you.

For your existence is indeed incomprehensible, because you are by nature uncreated, and likewise you have begotten; and how shall a created being understand the manner of your existence, or of the begetting of your Son, God and Word, or of the procession of your divine Spirit, so as to know your union and perceive your distinction and precisely learn the form of your essence?

No one has ever yet seen any of these things of yours which I have mentioned.

For it is not possible for another to become God by nature, so as to have the power to search out the essence of your nature, its form and shape, and likewise its hypostasis; rather, you alone are in yourself — alone you are God, a Trinity, alone knowing yourself, your Son, and the Spirit, and known only by them as beings of one nature with you.

And these things, in a riddle, are granted to be seen only by those who, with purified mind, seek you from the soul. But as for you — what you are, of what sort you are in essence — or how you have begotten once for all and yet beget unceasingly, and are not separated from the one begotten of you, but he is wholly in you, wholly filling all things with deity, while you the Father remain wholly in the Son himself; and you have the divine Spirit proceeding from you, knowing all things and filling all things, being God according to essence, and not separated from you, for indeed he too springs forth from you —

You are the fountain of good things, and your Son is every good thing, distributing them through the Spirit to all worthily, compassionately, and lovingly, to angels and to men.

No angel has ever seen you, nor has any man ever known your existence, for indeed you are uncreated.

You brought forth all things; can anyone know you — how your divine Spirit proceeds from you, and how you never at all beget again, having once and for all begotten, nor, in springing forth the Spirit, have you undergone any emptying or diminishment?

For you remain super-full, lacking nothing beyond all things, wholly present in the whole world, both the visible and the intelligible, and again outside these, receiving no addition and no deficiency at all, and you are wholly unmoved, remaining thus forever.

In your energies, then, you are ever-moving; for you, O Father, possess an unceasing work; and your Son also works the salvation of all, and provides for, and perfects, and sustains, and nourishes, gives life, and generates life in the Holy Spirit.

For whatever things the Son sees the Father doing, these he likewise also accomplishes, just as he said.

Thus, being both unmoved and, in a certain way, ever-moving, you neither move nor stand still, nor again do you sit; but ever sitting, you are wholly ever standing; and standing again, you are wholly ever moving, never being displaced; for where indeed would you go?

Filling the all, as has been said, yet being beyond the all, to what other place or region could you move?

And how shall we say that you sit, or upon what throne — you who hold heaven in your hand, and the earth also, and all things under the earth, gripping them by your power?

What throne could contain you, or what dwelling; or how, or where, is it founded, or upon what foundations, and upon what pillars is it upheld — who at all could conceive it?

Woe to men, and to every created nature, that dares to search into such things concerning God before it has been illumined, before it has been enlightened, before it has beheld the divine realities and become a beholder of the mysteries of Christ — which not even Paul, having beheld them, was able at all to declare, nor Elijah before him, nor Moses the great; but he was deemed worthy only to learn the commandments and will of God, both to learn them himself and to declare them to others.

But concerning God himself he was deemed worthy to hear, learn, or be taught nothing more, except that the One who Is, is God of all and Creator, the Maker and Sustainer of all things brought forth.

But we, most wretched, shut up in darkness and altogether being darkness through the enjoyment of pleasures, ignorant of ourselves — where and how we are held fast — buried in passions, blind and dead — we search into the One who truly is without beginning, uncreated, God alone, immortal, invisible to all, and speak as though we knew precisely concerning God, we who are actually separated from God.

For if indeed they were united to him, seeing what they saw, they would never dare to speak concerning him, since all that concerns him is ineffable and incomprehensible; and not only what concerns him, but even the greater part of his works remain unknown to all.

For who could even explain how, from the beginning, he formed me — with what hands he, who is altogether bodiless, took the dust; how he, having no mouth as we do, breathed into me; and how it then became for me an immortal soul?

And tell me, from clay, how came bones, how sinews, how flesh, how veins for me, how skin, how hair, how eyes, how ears, how lips, how tongue, how the vocal organs, and the hardness of teeth — all of which, by the breath, clearly produce articulate speech?

And from dry and moist, hot and cold matter, did he make me a living being by the mixture of opposites?

How then is the mind bound to the flesh, and how is the flesh commingled with the immaterial mind — without mixture, without confusion, without commingling — and how do mind and soul present to the people the inward word, and remain likewise undivided, unaltered, unconfused in every way?

Knowing, then, brothers, that these things concerning ourselves are inexplicable and incomprehensible to all, how do we not shudder to search into the One who made us such as we are out of what did not exist, or to conceive or speak of things that are beyond reason, beyond our own mind?

Since you are, then, creatures, fear the Creator, and search out only his commandments, and be diligent to keep them with all your strength, if you wish also to become heirs of life.

But if you despise his commands and disregard his will, as he has said, and disobey him even in one single word, then neither glory, nor rank, nor worldly riches, nor even the foolish knowledge of secular learning, nor eloquence of composition, nor the arrangement of fine words, nor any other of the things or possessions on earth, will afford you any profit whatsoever at that time when my God shall judge all things and all people.

But the word of the Master that was disregarded by us will then stand before the face of each one, and will condemn each one who did not keep it.

For it is not an idle word, but the living word of the living God, who abides unto the ages of ages.

So then, the judgment will be as I have said, and at the same time — woe is me — the commandment will meet us face to face, convicting whoever is faithless or, indeed, faithful, obedient or disobedient to the words of the Master, whether attended to diligently or neglected; and thus the unjust will be separated from the just, the disobedient from those who altogether obeyed Christ, those who now love the world from those who love God, the merciless from the compassionate together, and the unmerciful from the merciful; and all will stand stripped of the wealth and honor and authority which they enjoyed in the world, and will condemn themselves — woe is me!

— for they did not obey me, the loving Master!

by their works, condemned now and unto the ages.

For the glorious ones of the earth, and those made haughty by wealth, wander astray around the shadow of visible things, while those who have despised present things come to be in unerring participation of the divine Spirit.

Master, seeing myself reviled by the faithful as one who is a deceiver and already himself deceived, because I say that, by your love for mankind and through the prayers of my father, I have received the Holy Spirit — have mercy, and grant me word, knowledge, and wisdom, so that all who oppose me may know that your divine Spirit speaks within me.

Grant me to speak as you have said; grant to me also, as you have promised, words which none of them shall be able to gainsay or resist, O Savior; for you are the giver of all good things.

But do not allow, O God, all those who now believe in you to be led astray into the ruinous error of disbelieving that you, even now, illumine all, shining upon them with the divine rays of your deity.

For you are abundant in compassion, while we are abundant in sins; you dwell in unapproachable light, while we are all darkness; you are outside creation, while we are within creation.

Or rather, some are in the world as dead, even before death and before their departure, held fast in the lowest Hades.

These, then, are truly the ones of whom Scripture speaks: the glorious, the rich, the haughty toward all, those who suppose themselves to be something at all on account of such things, being unable to perceive their own shame; for even though they possess in themselves the wisdom of the world, and glory as a garment, having built with deluded minds vain conceit as though it were a tent — clothing themselves with the one and dwelling within the other — they sit as at the very bottom, in the lowest Hades, and know not God, know not the world, nor any of the Creator's works that are in the world.

For who shall know the Creator before he beholds creation by reason, as befits a rational being, and by the mind noetically, and surveys it noetically through a noetic conscious perception?

He who beholds spiritually, being mystically illumined through the divine Spirit, and at the same time being guided, might dimly, in some manner, ascend to the knowledge of the Maker.

For thus, being purified, he will be deemed worthy to receive clearer knowledge, as all Scripture says.

But those in the grip of passion, as I said, wearing arrogance as a garment, and clothed with conceit as with glory, take delight and laugh at others and play among shadows in the manner of puppies.

If you should throw a nut, and it rattles as it rolls, they leap upon it, snatch at it, gape wide-mouthed at it, and roll about with it, and together they frisk about; and if someone drags the cord of a little whip before their feet, they twist about and fall down and stretch their feet into the air, and to all who watch, they become a cause of laughter at their own tumbling.

So too these men, without perceiving it, give delight to the demons by their own deeds and manners likewise. Tell me, then, in answer to my question — as you now are — how will such men recount the mysteries of God to others?

And how will they even be illumined at all by the light of knowledge and impart it to others, or bring forth right judgment in true discernment and act justly, they who are clothed in darkness as with a garment, without conscious perception in their perception, dead in the midst of life?

— of the true and wonderful things, which the mouth of the Lord spoke beforehand and now speaks to all.

Unless you cast away glory, unless you throw off riches, unless you strip yourselves entirely of vain conceit, unless you become the last of all in your deeds and in your very thoughts — or rather, unless in your inmost intentions you consider yourselves to be the last of all — you will not obtain streams of tears, nor purification of the flesh, nor will you behold how these things are wrought.

So then, mourn for yourselves; so then, repent; so then, pour out warm tears every day, that you may wash clean the noetic eyes of the heart, that you may behold the light that has shone in the world — the light which, shining, cries out and proclaims: "I was, am, and shall be the light of the world, and I wish to be beheld."

For to this end have I come bodily into the world, having become one who is twofold, and having remained so likewise: that those who faithfully worship me as visible God, and keep my commandments, may be invisibly illumined, and, being noetically initiated into the glory of my dread deity, together with the flesh that was assumed, and beholding mystically the twofoldness of the natures, may then hymn me unhesitatingly as one God.

For otherwise it is not possible rightly to know my economy and my condescension, and to shudder and worship as God the one who became in the form of man and remained God ineffably: the one being two, undivided in hypostasis, though not in nature. I am, then, one God, and also perfect man, wholly complete, entire — flesh, soul, mind, and word; wholly man and God in two essences, likewise twofold in natures, twofold in energies, and twofold also in wills, in one hypostasis — God together with man, one of the Trinity.

...shall be of my Father unto the ages of ages. Amen.

On theology; and that those who have preserved the image of God trample underfoot the evil powers of the ruler of darkness, while others, whose life is given over to passion, are held fast and ruled by him.

Light is the Father, light is the Son, light is the Holy Spirit.

For the three are one light, one, not divided, but united in three persons without confusion.

For God is wholly undivided in nature, and in essence truly above every essence; he is not divided in power, nor in form, nor in glory, nor in appearance, for he is beheld wholly as simple light.

In these the persons are one, the three hypostases are one; for the three are in the one, or rather the three are one; the three are one power, the three are one glory, the three are indeed one nature, essence, and godhead.

They also are the one light that illuminates the world—not this visible world, God forbid; for the visible world has neither known him nor is able to know him, nor have the friends of the world; for whoever loves the world happens to be an enemy of God. But the man whom he himself made according to his image and likeness, this we call "world," because he is adorned with virtues, and rules over earthly things, just as that One has authority over the universe; and this being according to the image reigns over the passions and subjects the demons, the fashioners of wickedness, and tramples the dragon, the ancient one, the great one, like a worthless sparrow. And how?

This ruler, having fallen through privation of the light, immediately became in darkness, and he is together with all who fell from heaven with him, in the darkness, and he reigns in it, the darkness—I mean over all the demons and men held fast in it.

He is wounded, subdued, led captive and bound, and pierced daily by the arrows of pleasures.

Even if he seems to resist, even if he seems not to fall, yet with much sweat, labor, toil, and hardship he always has irreconcilable war with him.

But every soul that beholds the divine light, from which that one has fallen, despises him, and, being illumined by the unapproachable light itself, tramples the ruler of darkness like leaves fallen to the ground from a lofty tree.

For in darkness he has power and authority, but in the light he becomes altogether a dead corpse.

But when you hear "light," take heed what sort of light I am speaking to you of; do not suppose that I am speaking of the light of the sun!

For indeed you see, in the light of this [sun], many men who have sinned as I have, being terribly scourged, falling down and foaming at the mouth in the middle of the day, and suffering invisibly from evil spirits; and though the sun is shining, no further benefit comes from this to those given over to demons.

Therefore I do not speak to you of the light of the perceptible sun, nor of the day, God forbid, nor of lamplight at all, nor of the many stars, nor the light of the moon, nor am I indicating to you at all that the radiance of any other visible light has such an operation.

All, therefore, who see only sensible things, are blind in the noetic eyes of the heart.

The noetic eyes of the noetic heart, then, ought indeed to be illumined by noetic light.

For if he who has the pupils of the body extinguished is wholly in darkness, not knowing where he is, how much more will he who has the eye of the soul blind be darkened, and be almost dead in body and in action, and dead also in spirit?

Understand, then, precisely what sort of light I am speaking of to you!