五十篇屬靈講道 第 1 章 第 18/19 段

But as he examined himself and pondered these things, his mind was found wandering among those very affairs from which he had openly withdrawn, having hated them.

And just as a certain woman, rich in the world and having much money and a splendid house, lacks protection, and many come to harm her and lay waste her dwellings, and she, unable to bear the outrage, goes about seeking a man of power, capable and educated in all things, and when, after much striving, she obtains such a husband, she rejoices over him and has him as a strong wall; in the same way the soul, after the transgression, long afflicted by the opposing power and fallen into great desolation, and left a widow, solitary, bereft of the heavenly husband because of the transgression of the commandment, and become a plaything to all the opposing powers;

for they drove her out of her own senses, having stunned her away from the heavenly understanding, so that she does not see the things done to her by them, but thinks that she was made thus from the beginning.

Then, having learned by hearing of her aloneness and desolation, and groaning before the lovingkindness of God, she found life and salvation.

Why? Because she went up to her kindred.

For there is no other such kinship and profit except that of the soul toward God and of God toward it.

For God made various kinds of birds;

some to nestle in the earth, and from thence to have their sustenance and rest;

to nestle, and from thence to have their life.

He also created two worlds;

the one above, for the ministering spirits, and He appointed that they should have their dwelling there;

the other below, for men, under this air.

He made also heaven and earth, sun and moon, waters, fruit-bearing trees, kinds of every sort of living creature;

but in none of them does God find His rest.

All creation is held under His sway, and yet He set no throne among them nor established fellowship, but was well-pleased in man alone, having fellowship with him and finding His rest.

You see here the kinship of God toward man and of man toward God.

The intelligent and prudent soul, then, having gone about all created things, found no rest for itself except only in the Lord, and the Lord was well-pleased in nothing except only in man.

If you spread your eyes toward the sun, you find its orb in heaven, but the light and the rays inclining toward earth, and all the power of the light and its brightness borne toward earth.

So too the Lord sits at the right hand of the Father, above all rule and authority, but has His eye fixed upon the hearts of men on earth, that He may bring up those who await His help to where He Himself is;

Where I am, there shall my servant also be; and again Paul says that He raised us up together and made us sit together at His right hand in the heavenly places.

But the irrational animals are much more sensible than we, for each of them is united to its own nature;

the wild to the wild, and the sheep to its own kind.

And do you not return to your heavenly kinship, which is the Lord, but rather give yourself over and consent with your thoughts to the thoughts of wickedness, becoming a helper of sin, and warring with it against yourself, and so making yourself food for the enemy, just as a bird seized by an eagle is devoured, or a sheep by a wolf, or as a child in ignorance stretches out his hand toward a serpent and, bitten by it, is killed?

For the parables, as it were, have faces directed toward the spiritual work.

And just as a rich virgin betrothed to a man, whatever gifts she may receive before the union, whether ornaments or clothing or precious vessels, does not rest content in these until the time of the marriage comes and she attains the union; so too the soul, joined as a bride to the heavenly Bridegroom, receives a pledge from the Spirit, whether gifts of healings or of knowledge or of revelation, but does not rest content in those, until it attains the perfect union, that is, love, which, being unchangeable and unfailing, makes those who long for it free from passion and unshakeable.

Or just as an infant wrapped in pearls and precious garments, when it is hungry, counts as nothing the things it wears, but despises them, and has all its care set on the breast of the nurse, how it may get the milk; the same I would have you reckon also concerning the spiritual gifts of God, to whom be glory unto the ages.

The Word of God is God, and the word of the world is world.

And there is a great difference and gulf between the word of God and the word of the world, and between the children of God and the children of the world;

for every offspring resembles its own parents.

If, then, the offspring of the Spirit should wish to give itself over to the word of the world and the affairs of earth and the glory of this age, it is put to death and perishes, being unable to find the true rest of life.

For its rest is there, whence also it was born.

Bound with earthly bonds; likewise also he who is held fast by a carnal disposition;

that is, a man being of the world, if he wishes to hear the word of God, is choked and becomes as one without reason.

For having become accustomed to the deceits of wickedness, whenever they hear about God, they are disgusted in mind, as though crowded about by a distasteful conversation.

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him; and the prophet says:

The word of God became to them as vomit.

You see that it is not possible to live elsewhere, except according to the word in which each one was born.

And this must be understood in yet another way as well.

If the carnal man should give himself over to come to a change, he first dies thence and becomes fruitless from that former life in wickedness.

And just as if someone is held by sickness or fever, even though the body is cast upon the bed, able to accomplish none of the works of earth, yet the mind is not at ease but is distracted and anxious about work, and seeks out the physician, sending his friends to him; in the same way also the soul, having become weak in the passions through the transgression of the commandment and grown feeble, when it comes to the Lord and believes, attains His help, and having renounced the former most evil life, even though it lies in the old weakness, unable in truth to accomplish the works of life, yet nevertheless it has and is able to be anxious about life with effort, to entreat the Lord, to seek the true physician.

And it is not as some say, being led astray by evil teachings, that man died once for all and is wholly unable to accomplish any good thing.

For even the infant, though it can accomplish nothing or is unable to come to its mother on its own feet, yet it rolls about and cries and weeps, seeking its mother, and at this the mother is moved with compassion and rejoices that the babe seeks her with effort and crying, even though the infant is unable to come to her.

Yet because of the child's great seeking, the mother herself goes to it, taken captive by her love for the babe, and takes it up and warms it and nourishes it with much affection.

This the loving God also does for the soul that comes to Him and longs after Him.

But much more does He Himself, moved by an inward love and by His own kindness, cleave to its understanding and become with it one spirit, according to the apostolic word.

For when the soul cleaves to the Lord, and the Lord, having mercy and loving, comes to it and cleaves to it, and the understanding thereafter abides unceasingly in the grace of the Lord, the soul and the Lord become one spirit and one blend and one mind.

And its body is cast upon the earth, while its understanding wholly and entirely has its citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem, ascending even to the third heaven and cleaving to the Lord and ministering to Him there.

And He Himself, seated on the throne of majesty on high in the heavenly city, is wholly with it in its body.

For He has set its image above in the heavenly city of the holy Jerusalem, and has set His own image of the ineffable light of His Deity in its body.

He ministers to it in the city of the body, and it ministers to Him in the heavenly city.

It has inherited Him in the heavens, and He has inherited it on earth;

for the Lord becomes the inheritance of the soul, and the soul becomes the inheritance of the Lord.

For if the understanding and mind of sinners in darkness can be so far from the body and travel afar and is able to go off to more distant homelands in the turn of an hour, and often, while the body is cast upon the earth, the understanding is in another homeland with his beloved man or woman, and there beholds itself as though dwelling;

if, then, the soul of the sinner is so light and well-winged that his mind is not hindered by far-off places, how much more the soul whose veil of darkness has been lifted by the power of the Holy Spirit, and whose spiritual eyes have been enlightened through the heavenly light, and which has been perfectly redeemed from the passions of dishonor and made pure through grace, ministers to the Lord wholly in heaven in spirit and wholly in the body ministers to Him.

And it is so enlarged in mind that it is everywhere, and, wherever and whenever it wishes, ministers to Christ.

That you may be strong to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.

Behold the ineffable mysteries of a soul, from which the Lord takes away the darkness lying upon it and reveals it and is revealed to it.

How He enlarges and stretches the thoughts of its mind into the breadths and lengths and depths and heights of all visible and invisible creation.

A great and divine and truly wondrous work, then, is the soul.

For in creating it God made it such that He did not put wickedness into its nature, but made it according to the image of the virtues of the Spirit.

He set in it laws of virtues, discernment, knowledge, prudence, faith, love and the other virtues, according to the image of the Spirit.

For even now in knowledge and prudence and love and faith the Lord is found and made manifest to it.

He set in it understanding, thoughts, will, the mind as governor, enthroned in it also much other subtlety, made it agile, well-winged, untiring, granted it to come and go in a moment and to minister to Him in its thoughts wherever the Spirit wills, and in a word He created it such as to become a bride and a partner of His own, so that He might be mingled with it and be one spirit with it, as he says:

He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit.

To whom be glory unto the ages of ages.

HOMILY concerning things of old, 47.

The glory of Moses, which he had on his face, was a type of the true glory.

For in the way that there the Jews could not gaze upon the face of Moses, so now Christians receive that glory of the light in their souls, and the darkness, unable to bear the radiance of the light, is blinded and put to flight.

Those of old, that they were the people of God, were shown by circumcision;

but here the peculiar people of God receives the sign of circumcision within, in his heart;

for a heavenly knife cuts away the superfluity of the mind, that is, the unclean foreskin of sin.

Among them baptism sanctified the flesh, but among us it is a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire;

for this John proclaimed:

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

There was an inner and an outer tabernacle;

and into the first the priests went in continually, performing the services, but into the second only the high priest once a year, with blood, the Holy Spirit signifying by this that the way of the holy places had not yet been made manifest.

But here those who are counted worthy enter into the tabernacle not made with hands, where Christ entered as forerunner on our behalf.

It is written in the law that the priest should take two doves and sacrifice the one, and sprinkle the living one with the blood of that other, and let it go free to fly.

And what was done was a type and shadow of the truth.

For Christ too was sacrificed, and His blood, sprinkling us, made us grow wings;

for He gave us wings of the Holy Spirit, to fly unhindered into the air of the Deity.

To those of old a law was given written on tablets of stone, but to us spiritual laws inscribed on tablets of fleshy hearts;

giving my laws in their hearts, and upon their minds I will write them.

And those things were all done away with and temporary, but now all are fulfilled in truth in the inner man.

These things were written for our admonition.

For to Abraham God foretold what was to come, that your seed shall be a sojourner in a land not its own, and they shall ill-treat and enslave it four hundred years.

This fulfilled the figure of the shadow.

For the people became sojourners and were enslaved by the Egyptians and ill-treated with mortar and brickmaking;

for Pharaoh set over them taskmasters and slave-drivers, that they should do his works under compulsion, and when the sons of Israel groaned because of the works toward God, then He visited them through Moses.

And having smitten the Egyptians with many plagues in the month of flowers, when the most sweet spring first appears and the gloom of winter passes away, He led them out of Egypt.

And God said to Moses to take an unblemished lamb and slay it, and to anoint its blood upon the doors and the doorposts, that the destroyer of the firstborn of the Egyptians might not touch them;

for the angel that was sent saw the sign of the blood from afar and kept away, but went in to the houses not marked and slew every firstborn.

Moreover He commanded that leaven be done away with from every house, and bade them eat the lamb that was slain with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and to eat it with their loins girded and their sandals on their feet and their staves in their hands;

and so with all haste He bids them eat the passover of the Lord toward evening, and not to break a bone of the lamb.

And He brought them out with silver and gold, having commanded each to borrow from his Egyptian neighbor vessels of gold and silver.

And they went out of Egypt while the Egyptians were burying their firstborn.

And for the one there was joy at the deliverance from the squalid bondage, but for the other mourning and lamentation at the loss of their children.

This is the night in which God promised to redeem us.

And all these things are a mystery of the soul redeemed at the coming of Christ.

For Israel is interpreted: a mind seeing God.

It is set free, then, from the bondage of darkness, from the Egyptian spirits.

For since in the disobedience man died a dread death of the soul and received curse upon curse (the earth shall bring forth thistles and thorns for you, and again:

you shall till the earth and it shall not yield to give you its fruits), there sprang up and grew in the earth of his heart thorns and thistles, the enemies took away his glory through deceit and clothed him with shame, his light was taken away and he was clothed with darkness, they slew his soul and dispersed and divided his thoughts and dragged his mind down from the height, and Israel became a man enslaved to the true Pharaoh.

And he set over him the taskmasters and slave-drivers, the spirits of wickedness, compelling him willingly and unwillingly to do his evil works and to fulfill the tale of mortar and brickmaking;

and these, having separated him from the heavenly mind, brought him down to material and earthly and miry works, evil deeds and words and devices and vain reasonings.

For having fallen from its own height, the soul found a man-hating kingdom and bitter rulers compelling it to build for them the cities of sins of wickedness.

But first it cries and groans, and then receives the beginning of redemption, and it too in the month of new flowers, being redeemed at the time of spring, when the earth of the soul can bring forth the good and flowering branches of righteousness, the bitter winters of the ignorance of darkness and of the great maiming from shameful deeds and sins having passed.

And then He bids that all old leaven be done away with from each house, the deeds and thoughts of the old man that is being corrupted, and that evil reasonings and filthy imaginings be cast away, as far as possible.

The lamb must be slain and sacrificed and its blood anointed upon the doors.

For Christ, the true and good and unblemished lamb, was slain, and His blood anointed upon the doorposts of the heart, that the blood of Christ poured out upon the cross might be to the soul for life and redemption, but to the Egyptian demons for mourning and death.

For truly it is mourning to them, but joy and exultation to the soul is the blood of the unblemished lamb.

Then after the anointing He bids them eat the lamb toward evening, and the unleavened bread with bitter herbs, with their girdles girded and their sandals bound on and holding their staves in their hands.

For unless the soul first becomes prepared on every side through good works, as far as is in it, it is not given to it to eat of the lamb.

And though the lamb be sweet and the unleavened bread good, yet the bitter herbs are bitter and harsh;

for with much affliction and bitterness the soul eats of the lamb and of the good unleavened bread, the sin that dwells with it afflicting it.

And toward evening, He says, you shall eat it.

And the hour toward evening is midway between light and darkness.

So too the soul, being at this redemption, becomes midway between light and darkness, the power of God standing by and not allowing the darkness to come upon the soul and swallow it up.

And in the way that Moses said:

This is the night of the promise of God, so too Christ, when the book was given to Him in the synagogue, as it is written, proclaimed an acceptable year of the Lord and a day of redemption.

There a night of recompense, here a day of redemption.

And fittingly so, for all those things were a type and shadow of the truth, and, being mystically prefigured, they sketched out the true salvation of the soul shut up in darkness and secretly fettered in the lowest pit and enclosed by gates of bronze, unable without the redemption of Christ to be set free.

He brings out, then, the soul from Egypt and from the bondage in it, while its firstborn are slain in the exodus;

for now already some part of the power of the true Pharaoh falls.

Mourning seizes the Egyptians;

for they groan, grieving over the salvation of the captive.

He bids them borrow vessels of gold and silver from the Egyptians, and having taken them to go out;

for the soul, going out of the darkness, takes back the silver and gold vessels, that is, its own good thoughts, refined seven times over, in which God is served and finds His rest;

for the demons that had been its neighbors had scattered and seized and dispersed its thoughts.

Blessed is the soul that has been redeemed from the darkness, and woe to the soul that does not cry out and groan to Him who is able to deliver it from those grievous and bitter slave-drivers.

The sons of Israel set out, having kept the passover;

the soul advances, having received the life of the Holy Spirit and having tasted of the lamb and been anointed with its blood and eaten the true bread, the living Word.

A pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud went before them;

the Holy Spirit, guarding, upholds these, warming and guiding the soul in [spiritual] perception.

he took courage to pursue, [bent on] destruction;

for with haste he yoked his chariots and with all his people hastened against them to slay them.

But when he was about to come up with them, a cloud stood in the midst, to the one hindering and casting darkness, to the other giving light and guarding.

And that I may not lengthen the discourse by unrolling the whole history, take for me in all of it the parable applied to spiritual things.

For when first the soul flees the Egyptians, the power of God draws near and helps, guiding it toward the truth.

But the spiritual Pharaoh, the king of the darkness of sin, learning that the soul is departing from him and fleeing his kingdom, having taken the thoughts long held captive (for these are his possessions), supposed and hoped, the dread one, that it would again return to him.

But learning that the soul is fleeing his tyranny altogether, and that already some part of his power has been destroyed through the slaying of the firstborn and the theft of the thoughts, he ran more shamelessly after it, fearing lest, the soul having utterly escaped, no one be found to fulfill his will and work.

He pursues it, then, through afflictions and temptations and invisible wars.

Here it is tested, here it is tempted, here is shown its love toward Him who brings it out of Egypt;

for it is delivered up to be tested and tempted in every way.

For it sees the power of the enemy wishing to come upon it and put it to death, yet unable to prevail;

for the Lord stands midway between it and the Egyptian spirits.

And it sees also before it a sea of bitterness and affliction or despair, and is unable to advance backward, seeing the enemies ready, nor to go forward;

for the dread of death and grievous and manifold afflictions encompassing it make it behold death.

The soul, then, despairs of itself, having in itself the sentence of death, because of the swarm of the wicked ones that have surrounded it.

And when God sees the soul fallen into the dread of death and the enemy ready to swallow it up, then, then indeed He gives a little help, being long-suffering toward the soul and testing it, whether it stands in faith, whether it has love toward Him.

For God so appointed the way that leads to life to be with affliction and straitness and much testing and most bitter temptations, that thence the soul might at length come to the true land of the glory of the children of God.

When, then, the soul despairs and renounces itself because of the overwhelming affliction and the death before its eyes, at that very moment, with a mighty hand and a high arm, through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, He shatters the power of darkness and the soul passes through, having escaped the fearful places and crossed over the sea of darkness and of the all-devouring fire.

These are the mysteries of the soul, truly coming to pass in a person who is striving to come to the promise of life and is being redeemed from the kingdom of death and receiving a pledge from God and partaking of the Holy Spirit.

Then the soul, delivered from its enemies and having passed through the bitter sea by the power of God, and seeing the foes perishing before its eyes, to whom it was formerly enslaved, exults with joy unspeakable and full of glory, being comforted by God and resting in the Lord.

Then the spirit which it received sings a new song to God by means of the timbrel, that is, the body, and by the rational strings and most subtle thoughts of the lyre, that is, the soul, and by the plectrum of divine grace, and sends up praises to the life-giving Christ.

For as the breath passing through the flute speaks, so through the holy and Spirit-bearing men the Holy Spirit hymns and sings and prays to God with a pure heart.

—from the bondage of Pharaoh, having established for it a throne of its own, a house and a temple and a pure bride, and having brought it into the kingdom of eternal life while it is yet in this world.

Under the Law, irrational animals were offered in sacrifice, and unless they were slain, the offerings were not acceptable.

So now, unless sin is slain, the offering before God is neither acceptable nor true.

The people came to Marah, where there was a spring gushing forth bitter water, useless for drinking.

God therefore commanded a piece of wood to be broken off and cast into the bitter water; and when the wood was thus thrown in, the water was sweetened, and being changed from its bitterness it became useful and drinkable for the people of God.

In the same way the soul also has been made bitter, having taken in the venom of the serpent and become like its bitter nature, and so become sinful.

Therefore God casts the tree of life into that very bitter spring of the heart, and it is sweetened, being changed from its bitterness and mingled with the Spirit of Christ; and having thus become serviceable, it goes forth to the ministry of its Master.

For it becomes a spirit that bears flesh.

Glory to Him who changes our bitterness into the sweetness and goodness of the Spirit!

Woe to him into whose heart the tree of life has not been cast, for he remains in bitterness unto the end; for not having received the tree of life,

he is unable to acquire any good change.

The rod of Moses bore two figures.

To the enemies it came as a serpent, biting and destroying; but to the Israelites it was a staff on which they leaned.

So also the true wood of the cross, which is Christ, is death to the enemies, the spirits of wickedness, but to our souls it is a staff and a sure support and life, on which they find rest.

For the things of old were types and shadows of these true realities.

For the old worship is a shadow and image of the present worship.

And the circumcision, the tabernacle, the ark, the jar, the manna, the priesthood, the incense, the washings—in short, all that came to pass in Israel and in the Law of Moses or among the prophets—were for the sake of this soul, which was made according to the image of God yet fell under the yoke of bondage and under the kingdom of the darkness of bitterness.

For with this soul God willed to have fellowship, and this He betrothed to Himself as the bride of the King; He cleanses it from its filth, and washing it makes it bright from its blackness and shamefulness, gives it life out of its deadness, heals it from its brokenness, and brings it peace by reconciling its enmity.