...when we see those who were pleasing to God amid rank and wealth, when in a word we behold from among all men those who accomplished every virtue in this life and lived their lives in repentance and tears for the fear of the Lord, standing in the joy and radiance of the righteous?
For when we consider that we forsook fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and the whole world in order to save our souls—some even wives and children, others besides these both wealth and honors and all the other delights that life holds—and that having withdrawn we became poor, and having been tonsured we became monks for the sake of the kingdom of heaven; yet through a little sloth and wickedness and through our evil desires we have ranked ourselves together with worldly men and fornicators and adulterers and those who lived dissolutely according to the world—what fear and trembling and shame shall then cover us!
For when I, who renounced all with all my soul, am about to stand together with worldly men—men, let us say, who now have children and are entangled in public affairs, or serve in the army—and to receive the same punishment as they, and these men turning and seeing me shall say to me:
For this is the true withdrawal from the world and from the things in the world: after fleeing the world, to hate and to abhor the things that belong to it.
1:788
() Τίδέὁκόσμοςκαίτίτάἐντῷκόσμῳεἰσίν;
那麼,世界是甚麼,世上的事物又是甚麼呢?
But what is the world, and what are the things in the world?
If, therefore, having forsaken the whole world and fled from it and become naked, we have not guarded ourselves in these matters, what profit shall we have from our withdrawal alone?
for everywhere, as men, we cannot live alone; everywhere we need the necessities for the sustenance of the body; everywhere there are women and children and wine and every kind of fruit;
If we have the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of our thoughts, how shall we be able, in the midst of them, to abstain from sin altogether and not be wounded at all by its sting?
This is what many of the saints of old and of the present, I well know, have guarded and do guard, living in the midst of the affairs and cares and anxieties of life, yet passing their lives in perfect holiness—as Paul testifies concerning these and such as these, saying:
'that those who have wives should be as though they had none, and those who buy as though they possessed nothing, and those who use the world as not making full use of it.'
1:806
Ἔξεστινοὖνκαίτάλοιπάἐξτούτωνκαταμαθεῖν·
既是如此,也就能從這些例子明白其餘的道理:
It is possible, then, to learn the rest also from these examples:
namely, for the one who is provoked not to grow angry; for the one who is being contended against by no means to assent in his heart to the words spoken; for the one who avenges himself to be as one dead to the world in the disposition of his soul; for the one who has once become such to seek and be eager not even to spare his own body.
And by these words He shows us that it is not only the one who commits the sin himself who is separated from God and becomes His enemy, but also the one who loves it and who desires anything, that is, one who is disposed in his heart in attachment toward some earthly thing—for this is the friendship of the world;
so that it is plainly demonstrated that even if someone is stripped bare of all things and does not commit any sin whatsoever in deed, yet merely loves and cherishes it, being disposed as it were in attachment toward it, he is an enemy of God, as John also says:
'You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind and with all your strength and with all your soul'; so that whoever is disposed in desire or in attachment toward some other thing is outside this commandment.
But we, the wretched and miserable ones, having forsaken the great and glorious and lofty things of the world and having come to the monastery, love—some, glittering cloaks; others, fine gold-threaded garments; others, straps and scapulars; others, sandals and shoes; others, sweet foods and drinks; others still, chisels and needles and knives, or things even cheaper than these—through which we fall away from the love of Christ the King over all and become His enemies, and we do not perceive it, O brothers!
Wherefore we too are likely, if we do not first repent and each of us banish from our soul every evil and wicked desire and strife and jealousy and pride, to be condemned into the eternal fire together with tax collectors and sinners and the rich who lived in dissoluteness.
Therefore, brothers, let us be diligent to display every virtue, and to abhor from our soul every vice and every passion, and to hate every thing, small or great, that brings danger to our souls;
let us look at our brothers and fathers standing at the right hand of God and condemning us—the superiors, I mean, of each monastery condemning those in the same monasteries who were pleasing to the Lord; those in the ministries condemning those who shone like luminaries in the same ministries; those in obedience and manual labor condemning those who excelled in like works and in the same lowly or more esteemed services, being crowned together with the holy martyrs; those who defiled their youth condemning those who bridled their youth; those who fell through sloth in the fullness of their age condemning those who endured from youth to old age in the warfare of the flesh and preserved their own chastity; those who in old age and until the end do the things of senseless children condemning those who were tonsured in old age and, through the fear of God, cut off in a short time every evil habit they had acquired from youth; those who laugh condemning those who now weep; those who indulge and eat before the appointed hour condemning those who are not sated even at the time of the meal; those who play condemning those who are in continual gloom and pallor from the memory of that fearful day and of their own sins; those who came from wealth and glory to the monastic life and yet were unwilling to be humbled even a little, condemning those who came from utmost poverty and lived their lives with us, yet through their humility are more glorious than many of those standing at the right hand with them—kings, I mean, and patriarchs—being truly adorned with their humility.
1:832
Ἆραοὖν, ἀδελφοίμουἀγαπητοί, ἔγνωτετίεἶπον;
那麼,我親愛的弟兄們,你們明白我所說的話了麼?
Have you then, my beloved brothers, understood what I said?
1:833
Ἆραοἴδατεὁποίααἰσχύνητότεἡμῖνἔσται;
你們知道那時我們將要蒙受何等的羞愧麼?
Do you know what kind of shame shall then be ours?
So then, even among us ourselves it shall be thus on that fearful day, and many of our brothers shall be found standing at the right hand of God in glory, while many shall be condemned by them from the left.
And how not so, when two who renounced the world at the same time, of the same craft—stonemasons, say, or carpenters—both young and pure from every bodily sin and both from poor families, the one becomes by his own choice a worker of every virtue, while the other becomes a worker of every vice and wickedness?
1:837
Ἤοὐχίτοῦτοκαθἑκάστηνὁρῶμενγινόμενονμέσονἡμῶν;
難道我們不是天天在我們中間看見這事發生麼?
Or do we not see this happening every day in our midst?
And we see the one of these two humble, docile, obedient, associating with us as a slave of God and not of men, and ministering with all faith to the brothers, having a humble and contrite mind, and thus reasoning within himself and saying—this we have learned from his daily confession and from those who often questioned him, to whom he thus answered:
And now that I have come here, how shall I be negligent of the work and eat the bread of the monastery for nothing, and be required to account for it on the day of judgment?'
But since I have come to serve God, I will strive to labor even beyond measure for my own bread, so far as I am able, and I will submit myself to the superior and to all my brethren, even unto death, without murmuring, as though to Christ Himself, in nothing whatsoever disobeying them; whereas the vainglorious man is unruly and disobedient, and reasons with himself in a manner altogether contrary to this, saying:
And thus I will pretend to weep, I will cry aloud, I will feign a giving-way of the knees, I will make excuse of being dizzy, I will say my head is troubled by bile; and for this very reason I shall be able, under a plausible pretext forsooth, to eat even from early morning. I will begin to utter curses and blasphemies, and against everything commanded me I will both dispute and murmur at once.
For instance, if they command me to tend the mules, I will make excuse that I do not know how to serve them, and I will leave the beasts uncared-for and unattended, together with all their coverings;
and they will either leave me be, being compelled, or they will give me another for my assistance; and while he performs all the necessary duties, I, doing but a little something, take my rest.
I, fathers, have never once seen how bread is made; and so, going off, I will make their bread into mud, and they, unable to bear eating such a thing, will no longer force me into that kind of service.
And if they appoint him to serve in the kitchen, he does not know how to humble himself before his superior and to make a prostration, but says to him arrogantly:
but if he sees the firmness of the abbot, he goes off at last—not for God's sake, but out of fear of the discipline and the scourges—and as he goes, murmuring, he says within himself:
1:858
Τέλειακαίκαλάἔχουσιφαγεῖνἐξὧνμαγειρεύσωἐγώ!
他們可要從我所烹煮的,吃上一頓「完美佳餚」了!
A fine and excellent meal they shall have to eat, from what I cook!
If I do not make them rise from the table still fasting, or vomit up whatever they may have eaten, then I am not myself! And in just such a manner the wretched man does everything with great madness.
And so the brethren's cooking, and likewise their pulse, he smokes and scorches, throwing everything unwashed and uncleaned into the pots; and he casts salt into them beyond measure, turning them into brine; and their broth he leaves lukewarm, so that they, being disgusted, may be so upset as to vomit up the food;
And while he acts thus in all things, only in those services and tasks is he found leaping forward and hastening where he knows he has a way to steal something or purloin it;
but when he is charged with such matters, he rises as though from the dead and as though from Hades, and straightway his face grows radiant and his eyes become full of joy.
for from no other source, but simply from his not murmuring or putting it off a little—as had been his custom to do in all his services—he is found out.
When death comes and snatches away both of them, and on that fearful day he—that wicked one, I mean—standing naked and put to shame on the left hand, looking up shall behold on the right the one who was once tonsured with him and ate and drank with him, his equal in age, his fellow in craft, the whole of him existing in great glory like Christ Himself—what then will he be able at all to say or utter?
So then each one of us sinners shall be condemned by each of the saints, just as the unbelievers by the believers, and those who have sinned but not repented shall be condemned by those who have perhaps sinned more but repented fervently.
Therefore I exhort and beseech you all, that if you are aware of yourselves doing anything wicked and sinning and wounding and destroying your own souls, then from now on set yourselves right, and let each of you show forth a repentance worthy of his sins, and by every means strive to stand on the right hand of our Savior and God.
And as many of you as are conscious of falling into some small faults, cast them away from yourselves with all the more swiftness, lest for the sake of these small things you too should be set on the left hand, as all Scripture testifies and declares; and do not regard and reckon these as things of no account and small, but as great.
For he who willingly falls in small things, while abstaining from great sins, shall be all the more condemned, because, having mastered the greater, he was overcome by the lesser.
For one single passion suffices for our destruction, as I said above and brought forward the holy Apostles themselves—I mean John and James—to you as a testimony.
The man, brethren, who is in combat against ten men, or even twelve, when he joins battle with them—if he at once, at the first assault, routs all their foremost and bravest, and wounds and lays them low, but afterward, seeing that one or two of these, the more wretched or weaker, have been left behind and are coming upon him from afar with fear and flattery, does not hasten to overpower them and, pinning back their arms, bind them, or slay them—will he not be terribly destroyed by them?
For if, out of pride and boastfulness, he throws away his weapons and, reclining and lying down, falls asleep in contempt of them, has he not willingly delivered himself into servitude to those wretched men?
Will not the two, or even one of them, coming upon him and binding him, hold him as his captive under terms, and carry him off as a slave, or, having slain him with the sword, make him a laughingstock to all men?
For by no means will he be so praiseworthy for his struggle and victory against the stronger, as he will be blameworthy and abominable and cast out—so to speak, a slave or a corpse—on account of the defeat that befell him from that one.
And if we secretly take pieces of bread and eat them, or lay hold of something from somewhere else, and that too without the blessing of our superior, who could call us free of sin?
And if we willingly absent ourselves from the assemblies, apart from great infirmity or some necessary need; and if, while guarding the fruits, we do not restrain ourselves from them—for indeed what else was it that cast Adam out of Paradise and delivered him to death?
1:889
τίκερδανοῦμενἐκτῆςτῶνεἰρημένωνἀποφυγῆς;
我們躲避了上述那些事,又能得著甚麼呢?
what shall we gain from avoiding the aforesaid things?
For neither, if one who has a wound over his whole body, then being healed by many remedies save for a little of the wound, can be called whole, if he still bears a small hole of a wound the size of a needle—but he who has even effaced the very welts of the wound, if possible, that man will rightly be called whole by all.
Let us therefore not reckon these things small, but hearing that others were punished on account of them and severely condemned, let us with all our might flee the harm that comes from them.
And let no one, beloved, persist any longer in any of these things or in any other passion, but from now on, having abstained, let him repent and make a beginning, and let him not desist from confessing his own defeat, until the enemy who instills it in him, being put to shame, ceases to make war upon him.
Let not envy lord it over us, nor anger or wrath and clamor, from which foul speech and insults are wont to be born; let not vainglory and pride and self-conceit take hold of us and drag us down into the depth of Hades; but banishing all these far from ourselves, let us acquire the virtues in their stead.
Since the aforesaid passions are so many and all but numberless, who can search out all these and abstain from all of them, so that no one may be lorded over by any of them?
He who ever ponders his own sins and continually foresees the judgment to come, and repents and weeps fervently—this man rises above all things at once and utterly conquers, being lifted up by repentance, so that not even one single one of the aforesaid things can reach and lay hold of his soul as it soars aloft in the air.
But if our mind, being winged by repentance and tears and by the spiritual humility that comes to birth from these, is not raised up to the height of dispassion, we shall not be able to become free of all the aforesaid things, but shall not cease to be pricked, now by this passion, now by another, and to be devoured as by wild beasts; and after death, having on this account fallen from the kingdom of heaven, we shall again be eternally punished by these same things.
Therefore I exhort you all, my spiritual fathers and brethren—and I shall never cease exhorting your love—that each one not neglect his own salvation, but by every means strive to be lifted a little above the earth.
For if this marvel comes to pass that astounds you—I mean, to be suspended from the earth into the air—you will no longer wish at all to come down to the earth and stand upon it;
for if the mind is set free from wicked thoughts and passions, and through it we behold the freedom which Christ our God has bestowed upon us, we shall no longer consent to come down to the former servitude of sin and of the carnal mind, but according to the voice of the Lord we shall not cease to watch and to pray, until we pass over to that blessedness yonder and attain the promised good things, by the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belongs all glory unto the ages of ages.
Brethren and fathers, since certain men, thinking great things of themselves, as they ought not, deem themselves equal in practice and knowledge and perfection to the ancient God-bearing fathers of old, and to that same Spirit by which those men lived and were moved—commending themselves from words alone and apart from works, being led astray by a spirit of self-conceit—I thought it good to speak to them thus briefly, in simplicity and plainness of speech, as to a single person, both for the sake of God who spoke, saying:
For those who wrote the lives of the saints made plain their bodily practices—their poverty, their fasting, their vigil, their self-control, their patient endurance, and the rest in order, lest by enumerating everything we should prolong our discourse—but their spiritual working they made plain only a little and as in a mirror by means of such things, so that those who display the labors and the faith of those men from their works might, by those very works, become participants in knowledge and communion of their spiritual gifts as well, while the rest might not even be deemed worthy to hear about such things.
But since we have been brought down into so great a pit of folly that, even apart from the works which those men wrought, we suppose that we too have the same grace as they, come, let us exercise our discourse concerning them, and, having received full assurance from the attested facts, let us for the time being strive to walk in the footsteps of those men, even if we cannot reach them.
For if he had not returned to those adversaries, but had remained in the world, and if he had not persevered to the end, giving himself over unto death by his eagerness and his resolve, he would not have been counted worthy of the greatly-longed-for vision of his Master, nor would he have heard that sweet voice of His.
For having died, as has been said, by his resolve for Christ's sake, he lay as one dead, until He came who gives life to the dead, and raised him up out of Hades—I mean out of the darkness of the soul—and led him forth into the wonderful light of His countenance.
If, then, we are unwilling thus to renounce the world, and do not resolve to persevere and to endure like him, how shall we be counted worthy to see God in the Holy Spirit as he did, and to be filled with exultation?
1:923
Ἀλλάγάρκαίπρόςἕτερον, εἰδοκεῖ, τόνλόγονἰθύνωμεν
然而,若你看為合宜,讓我們把話題轉向另一個例子。
But come, if it seems good, let us direct our discourse to yet another example.
Did he not leave the palace and the emperors, his silk-clad servants and all his wealth, and come alone as a poor and destitute man to the monastery—he who once was so eager to remain hidden, fleeing glory and human praise, that he might be glorified by God?
1:926
Τίοὖνἄρατούτοιςμόνοιςἔμεινενἀρκεσθείς;
那麼,他難道就以這些事為滿足而止步了嗎?
Did he then remain content with these things alone?
For when a loaf had been thrown to him by the superior, and it had fallen upon the ground, he himself went on all fours, and lifting the bread not with his hand but with his mouth, like a dog, so did he eat it.
And sitting in his cell, he not only worked, but also spent on his own needs far less than his handiwork brought in, drinking water that smelled like mire.
For this reason, while working and praying continually, he wept and was drenched with his own tears; and moreover from evening he would stand praying until morning, and to the end he persevered in poverty and lowliness.