On the blindness of the man who, neglecting the spirit, serves the body. O you frenzied madness! O you blind pit, the human will, which hides what you have received, and do not render back what is given! In vain are you appeased, who are fed thanklessly; in vain do you devour, who thus demand as fitting the reckoning of your voracity. O outstretched, impatient leech, fierce when sated, fawning when fasting, greedy, shameless, devouring, what have you of right? what of honor? Nothing. You who, frustrated, seek again, who, blamed, repeat, who adorn shameful things, why do you not consider yourself? O wretched humanity, putrid within, full of gall, humor, fluid, blood, phlegm; but outwardly a washed skin, yet never cleansed;
for you are ever stained and polluted from the inmost mire of uncleanness: though you are washed daily, you are daily defiled. O blackened skin! In vain are you washed, you who are unclean by nature. O inverted blindness! What you wash, what you adorn, is by nature corruption; but what you violate and pollute is by nature brightness. Why do you defile clean things and wash unclean ones, you who corrupt the soul and adorn the body? Do you love yourself enough, or do you not know yourself enough? For if you know yourself, why do you love the foul and unclean dwellings of phlegm and dung? If you see uncleanness on your garment, if you shudder at phlegm and turn your gaze away, do you not flee, do you not detest yourself in your garments as an unclean dunghill, and a stinking, putrid wallowing-place?
Do you not see what your pipe-like skin nourishes through its openings? I am ashamed to mention what one is not ashamed to love. Why do we not shudder at horrid things? Why do we not detest shameful things? Why do we not flee from foul things? Is it not because we have no taste, and because we are not clean? Therefore the unclean man seeks unclean things, and the base man base things, and the dishonorable man dishonorable things; and because we are blind, we are dishonorable, and for that reason we shrink from nothing shameful. For if we are not blind, why do we not despise our own first uncleanness? Why do we not contemn either our own shame or our own baseness? Do not shameful things seem to you not to be honorable?
things which need frequent lamentations and varied adornments, and ungrateful are not satisfied with their own expenditures, and when satisfied do not help for the future, and the will, once gratified, does not satisfy the present, nor does it repel the future. In vain therefore does he labor who feeds such things, and sows into the wind who serves this vain will, where the service spent profits nothing. Let these things therefore go hungry, which are so ungrateful, so troublesome, that they seem always to hunger. Those who feed these things deceive themselves. O dishonorable servitude, by which the flesh is served! O hard! O inexorable! O fierce, though domestic, domination! which is daily paid and daily exacted; under a day it goes and comes; sated it departs, hungry it returns.
Woe to those who are fed here, where hunger holds sway, nor is conquered by riches, and while these things are paid, others are demanded. Render the first, and you are compelled to pay the second; feed the gullet, and you will be required to pay lust. With Susanna therefore one must cry out: I am straitened on every side (Dan. 13:22). And with Paul one must wail and say: Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death (Rom. 7:24)? If you pay what is necessary, you are compelled to render what is not necessary. If then, wretched man, you fear to render the second, refuse the first if you can; if not, render sparingly, pay grudgingly; pay nothing except unwillingly; give nothing gladly. But you cannot; I see, what is worse and graver, that you love your exactors. And your enemy is your friend.
What I should say, I know not; what I should advise, I am ignorant. One thing I will say which I know: he who is fed here, is sated here, takes pleasure here, laughs here, is made drunk here, plays here, shall there hunger, there thirst, there mourn, there lament, there howl, as the Lord said: Woe to those who laugh, for they shall mourn; and: Woe to you who are filled, for you shall hunger (Luke 6:25). For two times follow one another, and there are two lives, and two ages: one life brief, and the other long; and he who hungers in the one, shall be fed in the other; but he who here devours, is sated, is consoled in the one; in the other he shall hunger and thirst, according to that of Isaiah: Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, those who serve me shall eat and drink;
but you shall hunger and thirst (Isa. 65:13). And after a little: Behold, those who serve me shall exult in gladness; but you, because of your heart's sorrow, shall cry out, and from the contrition of your spirit shall howl (Ibid., 14). Since these things therefore are so, riches must be spared, and the brief pleasure must by no means be served, lest we be fed unto hunger, lest perchance we be sated unto famine, and drink unto thirst: for we see that either here or there one of two things must be experienced. Wherefore if we are sated, if we drink, O wretched we! let us eat here in part, not in whole, what is necessary, not what is pleasant; let us eat with the poor man, let us drink with the poor man, let us share with the poor man, that even so we may be worthy to share there with the poor man,
where those shall be satisfied who here for Christ's sake hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matt. 5:6). For whose is the kingdom of heaven (Ibid., 3), if not the poor's, who are humble in spirit, and poor in riches for Christ's sake? to whom be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.