Letters 1 part 15/17

How is it that we do not believe Christ, how do we not follow him, how do we not long for the life, how do we not desire his wealth that cannot be plundered, his incorruptible wealth, and the ageless glory of dwelling together with him?

How is it that, clinging to perishable things, we suppose we shall be saved — we who do not love Christ more than the things that are seen, nor hope to be with him after death?

But they are more devoid of perception than wood and stones.

But, O my Christ, deliver me from the unreason of these, and teach me to love you, the life of all the faithful.

For to you, together with the Father and your Divine Spirit, belong glory and praise, honor and worship, now and always, as to a king, unto the ages of ages — the Maker of all things, God and Master. Amen.

On theology; and that it is not permitted for one who has not been transformed by participation in the Holy Spirit, and has not become, by adoption, God in knowledge, to teach men divine things.

In speaking of labor, I meant the longing for the Savior; and this longing is the working of the Spirit — or rather, it is his substantial presence, seen hypostatically within me as an inward light; and this light is incomparable, wholly ineffable.

Who will separate me from sensible things — from which I have once for all been set free, and from which I have hidden myself, having become one outside the world?

For that which is without essence is called, and is, nothing; but the divine and uncreated superessential nature — as surpassing the essence of all created things — is called superessential, yet it is nevertheless essential and hypostatic, beyond all essence, and, in relation to created hypostasis, is understood as altogether incomparable, for it is wholly uncircumscribed in nature. How could you call that which cannot be circumscribed a hypostasis?

But that which has no hypostasis is nothing — how then could it be shared by me?

But if you disbelieve, I will produce Paul as your witness, confirming to you that both are true; for when he says that he has Christ speaking within him, and that he himself utters words by the All-Holy Spirit, he says that the divine is both shareable and circumscribed, being present with him without circumscription and incomprehensibly.

But when he speaks of the one who dwells in unapproachable light, and testifies that he has never been seen by any man, then he reveals what is uncircumscribed and incomprehensible; for that which no man has ever seen — how could anyone either have shared in it, or touched it at all?

You will surely say to me: by no means — unless you were being contentious.

But when again he says to you, "God, who of old declared that light should shine out of darkness," who has shone within me — what other God does this set before you to understand, tell me, if not that same one who dwells in unbearable light, and whom no man has ever yet in any way seen?

If, then, God, having become man, as you believe, deified man — me, who was assumed — I, having become god by adoption, behold him who is God by nature: that one whom no man has ever been able to see, and who cannot at all be beheld.

they themselves dwell in him who is altogether unapproachable.

This is true faith, this is the work of God, this is the seal of Christians, this is divine participation, this is the sharing and the divine pledge, this is life, this is the kingdom, this is the garment, the tunic of the Lord, which those who are baptized put on by faith — not, I tell you, in ignorance, nor in want of perception, but through faith, in conscious perception and knowledge.

So that you may not say, "I believe I have put on Christ" — I do not say, "Believe this"; but rather, have, beyond all doubt, the work of faith, the confirmation of faith, the seal of faith, and the perfection of faith, from having put on Christ — who shines forth in conscious perception and knowledge, flashing with the glory of divinity, and in most radiant light transforming you wholly, while you yourself remain unaltered, twofold from both: god by adoption, yet by nature wholly man.

When you have wholly become such as this, as I have told you, then come and stand together with us, O my brother, upon the mountain of divine knowledge and divine contemplation, and together we shall hear the paternal voice — alas — telling how far we fall short of the divine worth, and how far we are from eternal life.

As far as heaven is distant from the subterranean places of the earth, and from those unhappily held fast there of old, so far — or even farther — do all of us truly stand from the worth of God and from divine contemplation, even though we say, paradoxically, that we dwell together with him, and that we have within ourselves him who dwells in unapproachable light, abiding and dwelling in us wholly; and yet, sitting in the subterranean places, we wish to philosophize about the things above the earth, the things in heaven, indeed the things higher than the heavens, as though we knew them precisely, and to recount them to all, and to be called men of knowledge, exact theologians and initiates of the unspeakable — which is altogether a proof of the want of perception.

to claim to see all the things there and to teach others — is this not to be devoid of perception, and indeed more so than that?

For just as a blind man, quarreling with those who see and saying, "The coin is bronze, the seal belongs to someone else, and the letters upon it declare such-and-such" — is truly a paradox and a marvel to those who hear him, and who see the coin to be pure resounding gold, and the seal to be the true seal of the king, showing forth his unfalsified image, and the inscription declaring his very name — so also we, suffering this very thing, do not think that we are suffering anything at all, nor are we ashamed before anyone — not even before the saints themselves and the angels who look down from above upon our affairs — but the word of the Lord is fulfilled in us, which says, "Seeing they do not see," and again, "Hearing," they rather stop up the ears of the soul, and by no means hear the words of the Spirit; for they hear with bodily, fleshly ears, but have spiritual ears and hearts that are covered, and are wholly unable to hear God.

For they are wholly unable, of themselves, to lift the veil of arrogance and of want of perception, for they themselves have placed this upon themselves by their own will, and they wish their eyes and ears to be covered, and for this reason they imagine that they both see and hear.

But if someone should say to them, "Hear me, children, and take away the veil from your heart," at these very words they grow savage, because he did not call them "fathers" but addressed them as "children"; and from these words they acquire hatred toward him all the more, and are unable to perceive the passion present in them — or rather, the passions that darken the mind and the understanding and separate from God those who have already been overtaken — who, by their own will, have become slaves of self-conceit and pride, and, having been taken captive, always fulfill their own will.

These, having abandoned the laws of God, are a law unto themselves, and serve not God but themselves — O what boldness! — seeking their own glory instead of the glory of God, and hastening to establish it by every deed and every means.

(…) but they are not willing to suffer these things, as he suffered, and they refuse to become sharers of the glory of God, by refusing to suffer as he suffered; and they desire, alas, honor from men instead, and willingly choose separation from God.

But, O my Christ, redeem those who have set their trust in you from foul vainglory and pride, and make us sharers of your sufferings and of your glory, and grant that we be inseparable from you, both now and unto the ages of ages to come.

A discourse addressed to God, being the words of the father; and how this divine father, illumined by the Holy Spirit, conversed with God and was by him initiated into things divine and human.

(…) Behold, O Christ, my affliction; behold my despondency; behold also my poverty.

Why do you separate yourself from me, my God, you who never wish to be separated from those who love you?

Reveal yourself, as you said, and manifest yourself to me.

For I know you to be true; I have come to know that you are without falsehood, and that you love those who love you, and converse with them as friends — not in shadow, nor in mere appearance, nor as one mind converses with another mind, but as being the Word from the beginning, hypostatic life, begotten of the Father, united with him, and his companion in speech ineffably.

In this way, those whom you yourself beget by your Holy Spirit and show forth as your sons — or rather, as your brothers and sons of God your Father — with these too you converse, and, seeing them, are seen by them in turn.

Show, then, your compassion; show your love for mankind and your mercy, O Savior. — Of which creatures, then?

Of the material and the immaterial; for the things you see are material, while the angels are immaterial.

Between these, then, I tell you, is the living being man, who is twofold: immaterial among material things, and material among immaterial things.

I have granted him to see me, and by this to be established in dignity above the angels.

See, understand what I have told you: man, being twofold, beheld with his sensible eyes my creatures, and with the eyes of the intellect beheld the face of me, his Creator; he contemplated my glory, and conversed with me hour by hour.

But when he transgressed my commandment and ate from the tree, he was blinded and came to be in the darkness of death, as I have said — which is called 'to be hidden'; for this is what he then foolishly supposed.

For where could he have hidden from me, or in what place, tell me?

But you now think worse, more foolishly than he, supposing that I hide myself, unwilling to be seen by you at all.

For if I did not wish to be seen, why did I even appear in the flesh?

Do not be ignorant of my deeds, nor of my dispensations. Adam, having first been blinded, when reproved and taught by me, was unwilling to repent, but was found wholly unhumbled; rather he said, 'The woman sinned, whom you gave me' — as if declaring me the cause of the sin.

and no one confessed at all to having sinned.

For this reason he was cast out from the delight of paradise, and remained among sensible things alone with the irrational animals, having become irrational instead of rational, and material, being separated from the immaterial.

A strange marvel: like a body, the soul, having been blinded and not beholding God, became without eyes.

The body, if it be blinded, is still moved by the soul; but the soul, having been blinded, what motion will it find?

None at all — rather it will die a death forever, which is what, as I said, the first-formed suffered through folly; and they descended into Hades and were brought down into corruption. Taking pity on them, I came down from above; being in every way invisible, I partook of thickness and flesh and took up a soul; being God, I, the Word, became flesh without change.

And having taken beginning from flesh, I was seen by all as a man.

Why then did I consent to do this at all?

Because it was for this very purpose, as I have said, that I created Adam — that he might behold me.

and not to disregard those blinded by the deceit of the serpent — those whom I created with my own hands.

But I became like men in all things, perceptible to the perceptible, and I willingly united myself to them.

You see how great a desire I have to be seen by men, that I even willed to become man and to be seen.

How then did you say that I hide myself from you and am not seen?

In truth I shine, but you do not see.

Attend to the mystery: Adam beheld the glory of my divinity and lived; but having transgressed he was blinded and immediately died, unwilling to change his mind, nor saying, 'I have sinned against you.'

For this reason, then, he was justly condemned to return to the earth from which he was taken; and afterward this was indeed given as a sentence, and was reckoned by all as an inescapable punishment.

But it is not a punishment — rather it is a benefaction.

For I did not permit the corruptible to remain joined with the incorruptible.

For it was worse than being dissolved to be bound forever, and for evil to be immortal in both.

Do I speak to you of the separation of the soul?

There are, then, two deaths: that of the body and that of the soul.

He who has died in soul, tell me, and carries about a corruptible body joined to it, gradually aging and dissolving and flowing away — if the soul were not to be released from it and separated, but were bound to it forever, how would not this life be worse than every other punishment in Hades?

Consider for me those held fast by the sacred disease — how their flesh is corrupted and consumed, how they are without hands, without feet, without eyes and lips and nostrils and ears, how they are utterly immobile, how, speechless and deaf, with voices unutterable, they call upon God to be released from this flesh.

For if it were allotted to them to exist thus forever, to say it again, would not living be worse than dying?

Thus, then, the punishment became a benefaction — or rather, it is not a punishment but a divine dispensation.

Death is a release from all the evils of life, and for those who have lived well it is the harbinger of unceasing joy and eternal delight and light that knows no evening.

I have manifested myself and the Father to the world, and I have poured out richly my all-holy Spirit upon all flesh indeed, and I have revealed my name to all men, and by my works I have shown, and now show, that I am creator and maker — all that needed to be done, amen.

That God has given to each of men, fittingly and for what is profitable, the gift through the Holy Spirit to work — not as the man himself wishes, but as it has been foreordained by him — so that the midst of his church might not be empty.

What could a work know apart from its maker?

For the knowledge which it received will surely be required of it, its practice and its working, justly and fittingly. For the hoe, the sickle, the knife and the saw, the axe, the rod, the spear, the sword and the bow, the arrow, and all the other tools of life — each possesses its own function, but not received from itself, but rather entirely from us.

For the craftsman skillfully fashions each tool to work toward whatever he wishes.

Therefore it is not possible to reap the crops with a hoe, nor to do carpentry with a sickle, nor to build with a knife, nor to dig with a saw, nor to sew with an axe, nor to cut wood with a rod; it is not lawful to saw with a spear, nor to sling with a sword, nor to cut with a bow — but each must be used fittingly for its own purpose.

But if you use these not for what they were made, but otherwise, your life and every action of yours is altogether ruined.

Understand it thus, then, that God has also made us, so that each believer should work in works in life — appointing some to teach, and others altogether to learn; some to rule over the many, and others to submit to them; and to some he has given wisdom, to others knowledge and reason, to others to prophesy, to others to speak in tongues, to others to work wonders, and to others to perform mighty works; he has shown others to be leaders.

These are spiritual gifts; but let us speak also of other gifts of the Creator, which he has given to men, to each according to his worth: one he has made strong in body, another rather comely, another more melodious in voice than others — in short, he has granted to each of men the gift and advantage befitting him, as God alone knows, the Creator of all things, so that ineffably each might work usefully in life.

For this reason each is well-suited not to whatever craft he himself desires, but to that for which he was created, and he is fittingly and properly disposed toward it. And you would see the sailor skillfully crossing the expanses of the sea, and taking more delight in it than the man mounted upon a proud horse; and the farmer cutting the furrows of the earth with the plough, and considering the yoke of the oxen working together with him much better than a royal four-horse chariot — wherefore he too rejoices, delighting in his good hopes.

The power to work he received from God, and he will work; but otherwise a man will not be able in life to accomplish anything at all, or even to will it from the outset.

For behold, I say to you again what I said before: just as it is never possible for any of the tools mentioned to move itself toward action or to perform anything without the hand of a man who takes it up and by it constructs something, so too a man cannot, without the divine hand, either conceive or do anything good.

For behold, the Craftsman, the Word, fashioned me as he himself willed, and set me in the world.

How then, tell me, shall I be able to think, or to do, or to work anything at all, without the divine power?

He who granted me a mind, such as he indeed willed, he himself also gives me to think whatever he knows to be profitable, and grants me the power to work whatever he wills.

If, then, I should do these things, he will surely give more, and will grant me, in his love for mankind, to think more perfect things; but if I should despise even the few things entrusted to me, I shall justly and truly suffer deprivation from God who gave them, and shall become inoperative, a useless tool — as one who was unwilling to work the commandments of the Creator, but gave himself over to sloth and negligence; and for this reason I have been cast out of the hands of the Master, and, having practiced disobedience and insubordination toward him, I have been expelled from paradise indeed, having become far from God and from the holy hands.

Finding me lying there, then, and wholly given over to idleness with respect to good things, the all-wicked serpent deceitfully abused me for all manner of dishonorable works, in which I was seen delighting and rejoicing — things for which I ought rather to have grieved and lamented and wept, because, wretched as I am, I had willingly departed from that for which I was created to work, and had of my own accord given myself over to all things contrary to nature, having fallen most miserably into the profane hands of the enemy, by whom I was altogether held fast and moved, and, unable to resist him, wretched as I was — for how could I have resisted, being dead?

and I, wretched one, deceitfully led astray, became a proven tool for wicked work; for holding me by the hand and dragging me forcibly, he defiled me with dung-carriers, and cast me into all manner of mire and bitter stenches, and made me take delight in these — oh, what insensibility!

Toward robberies, toward envies, toward unjust deaths, toward reviling, toward wrath, toward every kind of wickedness — to tell you in sum — he found me working; or rather, he himself made use of me, though I was unwilling.

For from the time I willingly cast myself away from the hand of God and his saints, and the terrible, soul-destroying ruler seized me and held me fast in his hand, though I was unwilling, I no longer had the power not to do his works, but I worked in accordance with all his desires.

For the sword does not know how to contradict the one who wields it, but wherever the wielder wishes, he uses it there.

God, then, who made me, looking down from above and seeing me held fast in the tyrant's hand, took pity on me; he snatched me away from that hand, and again brought me into the divine paradise, into his vineyard, and delivered me into the hands of holy husbandmen, to work divine things, to labor at the virtues, to keep the commandments, and not to move outside the hand of the saints — lest the worker of evil, finding me again living outside the holy hand, should seize me and once more compel me to do his works.

The good and compassionate husbandmen, then, took me, and taking up my whole will into their own hands, immediately permitted me to work in humility and repentance, and to mourn unceasingly.

or rather, divine husbandmen, guiding others toward truly good actions, toward works of salvation.

Having believed and acted, and having given myself wholly, according to his command, into the hands of God's husbandmen and servants, I have found all things come to pass in me without deviation, and I have marveled, and I cry out to all, exclaiming and exhorting with a loud voice and saying — for I cannot bear to bury these things in silence — 'Run, all you who perceive yourselves to be outside the hands of God and his saints.'

Hasten, and cleave to them inseparably in faith, with fervent love and with your whole resolve; cast away all your own thinking and will, and give your souls into their hands, as lifeless tools, doing nothing, being moved in nothing, working in nothing at all apart from them.

Let their thinking become yours, and likewise let their holy will, being the will of God, be fulfilled by you; and thus, having traveled a short and wholly unhindered road, you will become friends of God most high, and you will be shown to be, in a few days, heirs of the kingdom of heaven and of ineffable good things.

we shall be, now and always and unto all the ages of ages, amen.

That for those who have kept the holy baptism pure, the Holy Spirit remains; but from those who have defiled it, it departs.

You know me, O Christ, to be a worker of every transgression, and indeed a vessel of all manner of evils; which I too know full well, and I am filled with shame, and the anguish of confusion and affliction holds me fast, and unbearable pain grips my heart. But your light, shining upon me mysteriously from your face, has driven away my thoughts, has wiped away the pain, and has brought in joy in its place for my humble soul.

I wish, then, to be afflicted, Christ, and affliction does not cling to me; and I am afflicted, lest through this very affliction I should rather perish and be deprived of the joy that is to come.

But of this joy, O Master, never deprive me — neither now, nor in the age to come, my King.

For the vision of your face is joy; for you are not, my God, only every good in yourself, but you also grant every good to those who see you — you fill those whom you see, with participation and communion — and this not only in the age to come. Alas for those who say this!

but even now, in the body, you behold those who are worthy of you — that is, those who have purified themselves through repentance — and you grant to them clearly to see you, by no means in a mere image or a mental fancy, nor even in bare memory, as some in turn suppose, but in the reality of a divine matter and an awesome work, for the fulfillment, truly, of the divine dispensation; for then you, O God, effect the union of those who were separated, being the salvation of all sinners.

And you have set as the boundary of this the grace of the Spirit, which we received first in baptism; for you said that the grace consists not in the water alone, but rather in the Spirit, through the invocation of the Trinity.

Since, then, we are baptized as infants without conscious perception, we receive the grace as ones who are imperfect and imperfectly, receiving only the release from the first transgression; and it is for this reason alone, as I suppose, that you, O Master, have ordained this divine washing to be performed, so that those being baptized enter within the vineyard, being redeemed from darkness and from Hades, and are set wholly free from death and corruption — the vineyard is understood by me to be, and indeed is, paradise, from which we fell, and to which we have been called back again — and just as Adam then was before sin, so also all become who are baptized with knowledge, except for those who receive, without conscious perception, no noetic perception of grace — that which the Spirit, coming in energy, produces.

Likewise, all of us, like Adam, have received also to work the commandments and to keep them in the same way — being a spiritual and divine law in the spirit, yet accomplished bodily, in bodily practice.

For man, being twofold, has need of a twofold law; for whichever of the two he should neglect, he falls short of the other as well.

For the soul alone has not the strength to perform good works; and the body acting apart from divine knowledge is reckoned as an ox laboring, or a beast of burden.

Those, then, who in your vineyard — or rather in paradise — have been called back through your baptism, entering all at once wholly sinless, or indeed sanctified, became like Adam the first; but then, having neglected so great a salvation and so great an ineffable providence of yours, O Christ, and having done deeds worse than Adam's, and having despised together also your love for mankind, not accounting the washing of baptism in the Holy Spirit to be the work of an awesome dispensation...

"the pure one, the holy one — would he condescend to it even in the least?"

"Far from it!" said God. "May it never be so with me, child!"

For you know that you too were baptized, but you were defiled and sinned as a child, and went astray as a fool; and you know how much you wept, how much you were broken, and how you renounced the whole world; and having with difficulty been moved by the prayers of Symeon your father, from the beginning I deemed you worthy of a voice to the mind alone, in noetic conscious perception, then also of a ray, () and after this I appeared to you as a radiance, in loving-kindness.

Then I became a small cloud in the likeness of fire, seated above upon your head, and I granted you only a contemplation of its form; and in your astonishment I gave tears together with much compunction, burning the density of your flesh, the darkness of your head, so that there even arose from it a smell as of flesh burnt in fire, as you know.

But I, God, who know all things, know the faith and the humility toward your father, and the utter renunciation of your own will, which is reckoned to me as a testimony, and truly is one.

For whoever has no will of his own altogether dies, but is found in my will, and truly lives.

Scarcely, then, with you thus disposed, and with him daily constraining by his tears me who am good by nature, did I begin to appear to you more often, as you know — gradually purifying your soul through repentance and burning up the stored fuel of the passions, not fleshly, not material, but immaterial thorns like clouds, a thick gloom, mist and darkness — as you were made lean by fasting and by the labors of vigil, of prayer, of every hardship, and were washed ceaselessly with warm tears in prayer, in food, and still more in drink; and scarcely did I fashion you into a capacious vessel — not merely capacious, but purified — able to remain unconsumed in the midst of fire. Take heed!

This, then, is the case: if you do not serve me by all your deeds, but let in even a small thought into your heart, or displeasure toward someone whether justified or not, and further an assault of a word or of an evil notion — if you do not repent of these fervently with tears and banish them from yourself through repentance — know that it is not the nature [of my Spirit] to remain amid any evil contemplation of the heart at all. For it is a Divine Spirit, present together with me and with the Father, being consubstantial with me; and it secretly and suddenly flies away, as the sun sets, and having hidden itself, in the twinkling of an eye, it is no longer seen.

How then will it exist in a soul not at all purified, that has never come to a conscious awareness of repentance?

Or how could a soul, full of the thorns of the passions and of sin, endure the nature of unbearable fire? How could it contain an essence wholly uncontainable? How, being darkness, could it be mingled with the unapproachable light, and not be obliterated by its presence?

It is not, child; this is by no means possible at all!

For I am separate from all created things; yet since I, the Creator of all, became a creature, I was like men only in flesh, having assumed a soul and likewise a mind as they have.

For I did not at that time make all men gods at once; rather, I myself became man. But through faith, through the keeping of my commandments, and also through baptism, in the divine partaking of my awesome mysteries, I grant life to all.

In saying 'life,' I meant my Divine Spirit. But let them know this — as Paul said: () those who have my Spirit in their hearts have it shining and crying out toward my Father, and through them it says to me, 'O Abba, my Father!'

For they have become children of God, and knowing me with boldness, they see and call me father; and it says, most truly, to each of those who now have it within themselves: 'O children, do not be afraid!'

Behold, I, as you see, exist within you and am present with you, and I free you once and for all from corruption and death, and I show you whose children you are; behold, I have made you friends! Rejoice in the Lord!