Letters (CSEL) 1 part 46/85

'Remember, you who are far from the Lord, and let Jerusalem come up upon your heart.' Perhaps, hearing these things, the love of the ecclesiastical congregation may steal upon them, and they may remember the fraternal joy in common and the hymns which they used to sing to the Lord together with the rest, and may exchange the coldness of hatreds for the warmth of love, and understand us to be physicians, not enemies, most indulgent fathers, not swelling with hostile pride. For it cannot be that we, who wish those to be saved, should desire them to perish, and that for them the ecclesiastical rod should not be turned into a staff, if only, leaving error, they be willing to follow the truth and to lay aside the rashness of wanton boys.

But if they reject it and, despising ecclesiastical discipline, lift up their horn against its rules, and, spurning salutary counsels, cast them behind their back, let them hear the Lord threatening: 'The man who acts in pride, so as not to hear the priest who stands to minister in the name of the Lord your God, or the judge, whoever he shall be in those days, that man shall die, and you shall take away the evil from Israel; and all the people hearing shall fear, and shall not act impiously any more.'

But lest, occupied about the healing of the wounded, we become forgetful of ourselves and neglect our own concerns, and, according to what is written, 'preaching to others, we ourselves be found reprobate,' we admonish those who stand to take care lest, while they stretch out a hand to those lying down, they themselves fall, and, keeping ecclesiastical discipline, to dread the future judgment. Therefore, celebrating the Lord's Pasch, let us be purified by the holy words of the Scriptures, and, looking to the trophies of the Savior, let us take away from our midst all the stumbling-blocks by which the course of our life is retarded.

Shunning avarice as a most wicked usurer, let us slay the desire of vainglory as an insatiable beast, and let us with anxious mind avoid the smooth and slippery snake of fornication. If ever a more prosperous breeze of affairs succeeds for us, let us temper the swelling of the mind with humility and meekness; if adverse winds blow, taking courage let us raise up the fallen spirit, and let us ourselves be the accusers of our own sin, and let us know that we have this as the beginning of salvation. For it is impossible to become worthy of the Lord's solemnity, unless we correct ourselves and, by continual meditation of virtues, recover the liberty of the soul, which has been oppressed by vices.

Wherefore, placed in the contest and in the sweat and labor of present things, preparing for ourselves the future glory of the heavenly solemnity, before we stand before the tribunal of Christ let us correct our past sins by penitence, let us redeem future joys by present weeping, and with the sting of conscience, in the manner of bees, let us drive away the harmful drones of sins, reserving the hives full of wax and honey. Let us cure the diverse wounds of vices, and let us by frequent admonitions repress the rapines of the rich, by which especially this kind of men is captured.

And thus we shall be able to take up the journey of the imminent fasts, beginning Lent from the thirtieth day of the month Mechir, and the week of the saving Pasch on the fifth day of the month Pharmuthi, and, ending the fasts according to the evangelical traditions on the evening of the Sabbath, the tenth day of Pharmuthi, and, the Lord's Day at once dawning, let us celebrate the feast on the eleventh day of the same month, joining also the seven remaining weeks of holy Pentecost, that with those who confess the one divinity of the Trinity we may receive the rewards in heaven, in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom and with whom to God the Father be glory and dominion, with the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the brethren who are with me greet you.

And this we write of necessity, that you may know that in place of the holy and blessed bishops who have fallen asleep in the Lord there have been ordained: in Limnodos, in place of Heron, Mnaseas; in Erythrum, in place of Sabbatius, Paul; in Omboi, in place of Silvanus, Verses. To these therefore write, and receive from them peaceful letters according to the ecclesiastical custom. XCIX. TO THEOPHILUS. To the most blessed pope Theophilus the bishop, Jerome. From the time when I received the letters of your beatitude with the paschal book joined to them, up to the present day I have been so agitated, both by the grief of mourning and by anxiety and by various rumors here and there about the state of the Church, that I could scarcely turn your volume into Latin.

For you know very well, according to the old maxim, that eloquence is not gloomy—above all, if to a sickness of the mind there be added a sickness of the body. And this very letter, burning with fever and lying abed now for the fifth day, I have dictated in excessive haste, briefly indicating to your Blessedness that I have undergone great labor in translating it, so that I might render all the sentiments with equal gracefulness and that the Latin speech might in some measure answer to the Greek eloquence. In the opening sections you play the philosopher and treat matters generally, and while you instruct all, you slay one alone; but in the rest—which is the most difficult of all—you join the philosopher to rhetorical eloquence, and unite for us both Demosthenes and Plato.

Oh, how much is said against luxury, with what praises is self-restraint exalted! And out of the innermost disciplines of wisdom the course of day and night, the reckoning of the moon and sun, and the nature of this world are described; and this very disputation you refer back to the authority of the Scriptures, lest in a Paschal book you should seem to have borrowed anything from secular springs. What more shall I say? I am afraid to praise you, lest I incur the charge of flattery. It is an excellent book, both among the philosophers and in pleading the case undertaken without partiality toward persons. Wherefore, I beseech you, pardon my slowness; for I have been so worn out by the falling asleep of holy and venerable Paula that, apart from the translation of this book, I have written nothing else of divine work up to the present.

For we have suddenly lost, as you yourself know, that comfort which—as the Lord is witness of our conscience—we speak of not as looking to our own needs, but as the refreshment of the saints, whom she so anxiously served. Your holy and venerable daughter Eustochium, who receives no consolation for the absence of her mother, together with the whole brotherhood, salutes you humbly. The books which you announced you had lately written, send to us either to be read or to be translated. C. THE PASCHAL LETTER OF THEOPHILUS, BISHOP OF THE CITY OF ALEXANDRIA, TO THE BISHOPS OF ALL EGYPT. Now also the living Wisdom of God summons us to celebrate the holy Pasch, desiring all to be partakers of it.

Wherefore, hastening toward it, let us run at full pace, and warring with fastings and self-restraint and every affliction of the body against the industry of the virtues, let us reduce our pleasures to nothing, propped up by the Savior's help; and, simply confessing our sins to God, who is able to heal, let us dread the true judgment of conscience, so that, crying out with David and saying, 'The sins of my youth and my ignorances remember not; according to Thy mercy be mindful of me,' we may by the terror of the eternal fire consume our growing vices, whose end is to do such things no more, and whose beginning of salvation is the forgetting of things past.

For just as the beginning of the good way is to do what is right, so the beginning of ceasing from sins is to check their onset, while they are either bridled by reason or, through fear, do not come to the precipice. And when the remembrance of the law is in the soul, they at once flee, and, ceasing to advance further, yield ground to the camp of the triumphant virtues; and little by little, drawing back their foot in penitence and shunning the judgment of the wise, they are dissolved like smoke into nothing. Evils are healed with difficulty when they are not crushed at once, as soon as they have begun to grow; their eradication is easy when those who lately sinned are converted through penitence to prudence and have found the end of sinning to be the gain of repenting.

For we cannot crush the incitements of vices unless we begin to practice the virtues, nor will the old ones cease before they are shut out by the works of the new. And just as, if with firm mind we resist the pleasures that come upon us, past sins are blotted out, so, if the forgetting of things past be persevering, future faults will not be able to grow further. For the workers of evils, as though bringing under their dominion those who can forbid and do not forbid, rage with utter madness toward sinning, and, drawing silence into consent, strive to accomplish in deed whatever the desire of the mind has suggested. License in present vices breeds future vices, and, if you neglect the former, it is the fountain and seedbed of those to come.

Since this is so, those who can forbid sinners and, out of shrinking from labor and out of idle silence, dissemble and suffer evils to grow, will most rightly be judged partakers of those who are the authors of the crimes, and will pay the penalties of their negligence, since they preferred an irrational leisure to the sweat of those who avenge, choosing a blameworthy repose rather than the severity that cuts down vices. For if we withdraw from vices, they will utterly perish, and their deceitful sweetness will be dried up, and all the onsets of pleasure will grow numb with a certain languor, so to speak, when our mind has become the lodging of virtue. The remembrance of the law does not allow sins to be begotten nor suffer them to grow;

and when it has pondered the tribunal to come and the fearful day of judgment, it will forbid the beginning as well as the middle and the end of sin, and will dry up its bitter waves and swelling whirlpools down to the very source and springs. Virtue, accompanied by the law, crushes the seeds of vices and raises the soul from lowly things to the heights; on the contrary, vices, unless they are restrained, wax proud and thrust down to the infernal regions those who obey them; and when once they have possessed souls, they oppress them with the enticements of pleasures and do not allow them, according to the state of the human body, to look upward on high and erect, but, like beasts, they bow them down to earthly things. Of whom the Psalmist testifies, saying: 'They have called their lands by their own names.' Let someone here say:

'If vices have such strength and by their flattering persuasion trip up so very many, what ought they to do who, perceiving that they sin, desire to change their sins for virtues, and out of love of better things despise the worse?' Hear Moses speaking to one who talks in this manner: 'Hast thou sinned? Cease'—by an end of sinning overthrowing former things, and amending vices by the most effective medicine, namely, the cessation of vices.

Shun the enticements of an alluring evil life and the flattering pleasures of the body as though they were harmful poisons, and do not walk along the slippery and soft path of delights, for by fastings and self-restraint the solemn feast is laid hold of; and only with difficulty, by toiling and sweating, can we change evils into good and crush the resisting pleasures. And few there are who, having trodden vices underfoot, hold to the pathway of truth, since wickedness uses innumerable arts of harming and cannot be conquered unless we are upheld from above by the help of Wisdom, who cries out to us and says: 'Fear not, for I am with thee.' The destruction of evil is to do evil no more; the root of vices is to despise the ordinances of the law. As negligence begets sins, so watchful care gives birth to virtues.

The law kept drives away disgrace; neglected, it brings forth penalties; and by as much as, if it be despised, it imitates the truculence of a severe judge, by so much, if it be observed, it displays the gentleness of a most merciful father. Therefore the cessation of sin is the beginning of virtue, and the medicine of past, present, and future vices is the untiring meditation upon the law, which, when it has gained the security of its possessor, is free from all disturbances. For Wisdom works good in us, after we have offered her the pure heart of our heart as a dwelling place and have turned our thoughts into works.

Nor is it doubtful that in either direction—whether of doing good or of not doing it—we have free power, and that, when depraved things are crushed, right things are born, and then the choir of the virtues sings in harmony together, when there shall have been in our souls a solitude of vices.

For just as self-restraint, holding the chief place in our bodies, forbids infirmities to arise, and neither weakens nor kills those who love it, but restores past languors to their former health, and, expelling what is contrary to nature, calls back those things which are agreeable to nature, so that by an even temperament the ordered course of this life may be preserved—so the soul, keeping the commands of the laws, insofar as human nature can receive it, is separated from the contagion of evils, and, anxious on every side and looking around itself, permits nothing to enter into itself that is contrary to noble thoughts; but rather, turned into a temple of God, filled with heavenly gifts,

it enjoys the solemn feast unceasingly, having for its riches the observance of the law, which raises up the fallen, and, punishing some, corrects others, and ever cries aloud: 'Shall not he who has fallen rise again, or shall not he who is turned away return?' It bestows the hope of salvation upon the penitent, while it admonishes, that it may profit; rebukes, that it may amend; and, instilling shame for former sins, causes them to pursue better things, which they cannot desire unless they have first condemned the wounds of their conscience.

But since the law hastens to recall by its excellent counsels to better things those who neglect it and are plunged in error, as though it were a rule for depraved works, and does not suffer those who obey it to be without reward nor to be pressed by eternal straits—let all of us who celebrate the holy Pasch, by self-restraint and fastings, make the giver of the law our friend; and, the prophet promising to those who celebrate the Pasch, 'Thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a diadem of the kingdom in the hand of thy God,' let us seek the rich banquet of the virtues, adorning ourselves with the knowledge of the Scriptures as with festal garments.

Let us prepare holy kisses, while the angels rejoice with us in heaven, putting to flight all negligence and breaking off delay, so that with eager step we may go with the disciples to the Savior, and say to Him: 'Where wilt Thou that we prepare for Thee the Pasch?' And, set in the upper room of the heavens and keeping the mystical Pasch, we may be able to sing: 'How beloved are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!' For there we shall find the choirs of angels, and, keeping the feast with them, we shall have them as companions of the mysteries of God, and shall exult with unspeakable joy, learning with them the sacraments of Wisdom—where there is no deception of fraud, where he who has not the wedding garment is forbidden to enter the banquet, although in the present age he may boast himself to be just.

All there are of an aging and advanced and full age, and none there, according to the prophet, will be found of immature wisdom: 'For the youth,' he says, 'shall be a hundred years old,' by greatness of number showing the perfection of instruction. Wherefore, holy brethren and partakers of the heavenly calling, let us hear the Savior crying through the prophet: 'I will come to gather all nations, and they shall come and shall see My glory, and I will send upon them the sign of the world.' Let us hasten to the solemn feast and say: 'But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ.' He will give, I say, He will give joy to those who labor, and, blessing those who fast, He will speak:

'They shall be to the house of Judah for joy and gladness and for good solemn feasts; and be ye glad: love ye truth and peace.' For the solemn feast is not for all, but for the house of Judah, that is, for the Church of Christ. Therefore, since according to the Psalmist 'it is time for the Lord to act,' and Paul writes: 'The night is far spent, and the day is at hand;'

'Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk honestly, as in the day, not in revellings and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its lusts.' It is right that all, purged by the fear of the Lord, should redeem the worthy solemnity with self-restraint and fastings, should preserve chastity, and should rouse the sleeping mind with watchful faith, and imitate most wise Daniel, of whom it is written: 'There is a man in thy kingdom in whom is the spirit of God, and in the days of thy father watchfulness and wisdom were found in him.'

For those who take care of themselves, that they may advance to better things, having the law as a most valiant leader, obey its commands and overthrow the sins that come against them, illuminating the festivity of the Pasch by the splendor of their works; and, out of the security of conscience heedless of the darts of disturbances, they anticipate victory in hope. But those who are imitators of these men, before they enter the battle, by their desire for virtue seize the palm of triumphs; and, beholding with the mind, with unveiled face, the crown which the conquerors of slippery pleasure possess in the heavenly places, they cry out and say: 'The Lord God is my strength, and He will set my feet unto completion; setting me upon the high places, that I may conquer in His song.'

Nor let us think, dearest brethren, that the contest is perpetual, and on that account grow weary; but let us know that the end of this is the crown of righteousness, which no age of the ages shall corrupt. The stadium of this life and of the contest is temporal; but those who have run with unstumbling step and have come to the goal of the rewards will find new mansions, showing forth their victory with songs. And so, since the grace of the Lord promises us triumphs over the most wicked demons, let us duly celebrate the fasts, that we may also be duly partakers of the solemn feast. Let us by no means, on the days of Lent, as luxurious rich men are wont, sigh after the cup of wine, nor, when set for the fray and in the battle where labor and sweat are needful, take delight in the eating of flesh.

For gluttony and drunkenness and the other enticements of this life drain the most opulent treasure of souls, and, by their admixture, choke the most fruitful sowing of knowledge and doctrine. Wherefore the Lord and Savior, exhorting His disciples to the rigor of self-restraint, spoke: 'Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly; for as a snare shall it come upon all that sit upon the face of all the earth. Arise, let us go hence'—those whom, on account of their negligence of themselves, penalties will forthwith follow.

But those who keep the precepts of the laws know not wine in their fastings, reject the eating of flesh, and by the fear of God restrain insatiable greed. Wherefore to the self-restrained the Scripture daily cries aloud: 'They shall not drink wine and strong drink'; and, on the contrary, the Jews on account of their fault hear: 'Ye gave the holy prophets wine to drink, and commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not.'

They cannot receive correction who are caught by the delight of luxury, nor can they love fastings who do not restrain the greed of the belly by reason and counsel—they who by sloth and by a swiftly perishing pleasure defame the pursuit of virtue, not blushing to drink wine secretly and, with greedy throats shunning witnesses, to quaff honeyed wine in their chambers, so that the hunger and fastings which they ought to have sought of their own accord, they exchange, in the time of fastings, for luxury and drunkenness—not knowing that, even if they escape the notice of men and, behind closed walls, feed on flesh, and tear fatted birds with unclean hands during the days of Lent and as the Pasch draws near, while with sad countenance they profess fasts abroad, the Lord will rebuke men of this sort and will say:

'These commit great iniquities, that they may depart from My holy things.' It becomes not those who fast, in the time of the contest and the battle, to feed on flesh—the Scripture admonishing: 'Ye shall afflict your souls'—nor to seek out with anxious labor Phasian birds and chattering fowl, and to cram their fatness into a gaping gullet, nor to hunt for costly cooks who, with manifold sauce and with flesh changed by pounding and with the diverse savor of dishes, may soothe the raging of the belly amid smoking dishes, and, with the reek of it, may flatter the fury of the throat—when, to the injury of self-restraint, wines of diverse savor and color are sought.

The history of holy Daniel and the concordant virtue of the three children teach us to seek after and to honor fastings—who, to compress a long discourse into a brief epitome, with their liberty changed into servitude, when as captives they might have longed for delicacies, despised the Babylonian feasts and preferred simple food to the royal table. For King Nebuchadnezzar had commanded the chief of the eunuchs to bring into the palace, from the sons of the captivity of Israel and of the royal seed, boys in whom there was no blemish, fair of body and apt for learning wisdom, that they might be in the king's hall and might learn the letters and language of the Chaldeans, and might live on the remnants of his table and thence drink the wine that was received.

And so there are chosen from the tribe of Judah Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, harmonious both in race and in faith, whose nobility a harsh servitude had altered. Of these Daniel, as the Scripture testifies, 'purposed in his heart that he would not be defiled from the king's table.' The three children also, joined no less by religion than by kinship, take up the man's counsel and approve his wisdom, and, at the same time entreating the chief of the eunuchs, by the aid of God's clemency obtain what they desire, and in the land of captivity preserve the nobility of their race. For the man in charge, fearing lest the more cheerful countenance of the other boys should consign him to capital punishment, they mollify by reason and counsel, speaking with these words:

'Try thy servants ten days, and let there be given us of the seeds, and we will eat and drink water; and let our countenances appear in thy sight, and the countenances of the boys who eat of the king's table; and as thou shalt see, so shalt thou deal with thy servants.' For they trusted that the desire of virtue, sustained by the clemency of God, would preserve their bodies fair and strong, and that faith would conquer all deformity, and that no leanness would change the brightness of their beauty. These things, dearest brethren, we have rehearsed for this reason: that, knowing the words of the apostle Paul preaching concerning the virtues of the saints, in which he says:

'Considering the outcome of whose manner of life, imitate their faith,' we may persuade those who in the time of fastings take delight in the eating of flesh to imitate the self-restraint of the saints, who could be overcome by no force to lay aside the rigor of virtue, so as, fearing the empire of the Babylonians, to display in themselves a captive pleasure; but they remained free and by reason overcame the desires of the belly, and vanquished the luxury that titillates the throat, and left us examples of their fortitude—dwelling in Babylon in body,

but in mind and faith abiding with the angels in the heavenly Jerusalem, so that they might teach every subsequent age that in the time of fastings one must abstain from wine and flesh, that the seeds of the earth must be sought, that water must be drunk—companions which chastity employs. Why should I recall the illustrious victories of the Maccabees? Who, that they might not feed on unlawful flesh and touch common food, offered their bodies to tortures, and are proclaimed in the churches of Christ throughout the whole world with praises—stronger than their punishments, more ardent than the fires by which they were burned. In them were conquered all the devices of cruelty, and whatever the wrath of the persecutor had invented, the fortitude of the sufferers overcame.

Amid their punishments, mindful more of their father's law than of their pains—their vitals were torn, their limbs flowed away in decay and gore, and yet their resolve remained unmoved; free was their mind, and it despised present evils by the hope of things to come. The torturers grew weary, and faith grew not weary; their bones were broken, and by the whirling wheel the whole framework of sinews and joints was dissolved, and immensely the fires breathing death rose up; the pans of boiling oil were full, and with incredible terror they resounded for the frying of the bodies of the saints—and yet, amid all these things, walking in paradise in their minds, they felt not what they suffered, but what they longed to see.

For the mind, walled about with the fear of God, overcomes the flames, spurns the various pains of torments; and when once it has given itself over to virtue, whatever adversity befalls, it treads down and despises—such as was Paul, writing: 'In all these things we overcome, through Him who loved us.' For what the frailty of the flesh cannot endure, its natural weakness being overcome, the mind conquers by faith conversing with God. Therefore, those who imitate fastings—that is, the angelic manner of life—on earth, and are mindful of that saying:

'The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and joy and peace and gladness,' by self-restraint, with brief and small labor, procure for themselves great and eternal rewards, and receive far more than they offer, and the glory of the time to come mitigates their present straits, because in this stadium there will be at last an end of the contest for those who fight for virtue. But those who enter the fight against vices and have dedicated their souls to the disciplines of wisdom, and, as far as the human condition allows, aspire to the knowledge of things to come, beholding the kingdoms of the heavens through a glass and an image by sense and by faith, shall obtain the eternal rewards, to be shut off by no end of the ages.

Day and night succeed one another at fixed intervals of hours, and, gradually decreasing, they receive back what they lose, and what they have received, they render; meeting at the same measure twice in the year, they abide not in the same state, but by the shortness and length of the hours they mark off the moments, so as to make the diversity of the seasons useful to the world. For the day, in its order and cycle, borrows from the times of the night, and again the night receives back what it had lavished; and while by turns they both give and receive, and by a certain revolution recover, gradually increasing, what little by little they had lost, decreasing by degrees, they interpret the wisdom of God the Creator. And from this alternation of intervals either the monthly circuit of the moon