A brief time, therefore, is given for coming to know, or rather for testing, the senses, and perhaps the first beginnings of more tender youth; and straightway he is called back, lest he totter longer upon slippery ground and the inner traces of the soul be drowned in a certain divided flood of this body and of the world. But when he has either been tested, or has stood upon unstable and uncertain and moist soil, he is called back by his mother, patience or perseverance, who says: 'I will send for you and summon you thence,' that even there, on the slippery ground, you may find the safe harbor of wisdom, which will not let you toss as in a shipwreck, and that, having returned, you may know how to persevere in the worship of God, and may be in the assembly of the nations, signifying by his faith that the Church of the nations is to be gathered.
Instructed therefore by these disciplines of patience and perseverance, Jacob, having advanced, acquired for himself a union from wisdom, a partner of his purpose, rich with the dowry of prudence, with whom he might run through the times of his life without any offense. With the treasure of wisdom thus added, he established for himself a flock of varied sheep—but a rational flock, shining with the diversity of very many virtues. Whence he cut off also the boasting of his flesh, which the numbing of his thigh signifies, the sacred interpretation of the mystery being preserved.
By these virtues, therefore, as by certain steps, his mind ascended into heaven, and came to know the secrets of God, and was confirmed and filled, so that Laban, searching his house, found nothing empty in it, nothing void, no idols, no figure of vanity. For there was with him not an image but truth, not a figure of sloth but a solid form of righteousness and an intelligible expression of living virtue. And so Laban searched through his spiritual house and found no need; for it was full, not of figures, but of substantial works. But he could have found the foundations and the summits of the virtues, had he not brought with him the blindness of heart and the darkness of a treacherous mind.
And so, suffused with that blindness of wickedness, the Sodomites could by no means find the door of holy Lot's mind. For whence could an impious mind see either the going-out or the coming-in of a holy man? The Lord himself also says in the Gospel: 'For the prince of this world has come, and in me he has found nothing.' How could he find nothing in him in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwelt, and dwelt bodily, from whom power went out and healed all? How could he find nothing in the solidity of virtue, in the richness of wisdom, of understanding, of righteousness? You yourself said, O Lord: 'I am full'; you yourself said: 'Put your hand into my side, and be not unbelieving, but believing.' He who did not believe put in his hand and found you Lord and God.
Not empty, therefore, but blind and void is that prince of this world, who knows not how to discern anything but his own, knows not how to find anything but his own, knows not how to recognize the things that are Christ's. Or, if it be as very many have it, 'he found in me nothing,' that is: he will not find in me malice, because malice is nothing; he will not find one dead, because he is not dead. But how shall he find a dead thing in him who quickens the dead, and calls the things that are not as though they were? 'He will not find,' he says, 'sin in me,' who have taken away the sin of the world. For how has he nothing who has all things, and—what is more—has all things that the Father has, as he himself says: 'All things that the Father has are mine'?
Let us flee, therefore, from hence, where there is nothing, where all that is thought to be magnificent is empty, where even he who thinks himself to be something is nothing and is altogether not. 'I saw,' it says, 'the impious one exalted on high and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon, and I passed by, and behold, he was not.' And do you pass by, like David; pass by, like a good servant, that it may be said to you: 'Pass over, recline.' Pass by, like Moses, that you may see the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and may see a great sight. This is the great sight. But if you wish to see, loose the sandal from your feet, loose every bond of iniquity, loose the bonds of the world, leave behind the sandal, which is earthly. Therefore Jesus sent forth the apostles without sandal, without gold and silver, without money, lest they should carry earthly things with them.
For he who seeks the good is praised not for his sandal, but for the swiftness and beauty of his feet, as the Scripture says: 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach peace, of those who preach good things!' Loose, therefore, the sandal from your feet, that they may be beautiful for preaching the gospel. He said 'loose,' not 'bind.' Loose, that you may pass over and find that the impious one whom you admired upon earth is nothing and can do nothing. Pass over, therefore, that is, flee from the lands where there is malice, where there is avarice. Therefore David says to you: 'Turn away from evil and do good.' To turn away is surely to flee; but evil is upon the earth, good is in heaven. Whence he also added: 'Seek peace and pursue it'; peace is in heaven. And so, coming from heaven, he said: 'Peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you.'
Therefore, since evils must be fled and shunned, and evils are upon the earth, and upon the earth are iniquities, let us flee earthly things, lest iniquities lay hold of us. These laid hold even of holy David, as he himself testifies, saying: 'My iniquities have laid hold of me, and I could not see' (Ps. 39:13); for by the smoke of iniquity the eye of the soul is blinded, so that it cannot see the things that are bright. So, too, Laban could not see the good things of Jacob, and the prince of this world could not see the glory of Christ. But perhaps you may say: Why then was Jacob sent to Laban, if Laban is blameworthy? If we consider the name, in Latin he is called 'white' (candidus). Therefore Jacob is bidden to go forth to more splendid things. But because Laban was carnal, we understand the splendid things of this life rather than those better ones.
As though not yet perfect, he first goes to him in whose light he might for a season exult. But Laban had sons worse than himself, that is, a name more tolerable than his deeds. And therefore by his mother's counsel, by the divine oracle, and by the will of Jacob himself, a lover of discipline, Laban is forsaken and abandoned. But Rachel hid the holy images, that is, the Church or prudence; for the Church knows nothing of the empty notions and vain figures of idols, but knows the true substance of the Trinity. In short, she abolished the shadow and made manifest the splendor of glory. Let us therefore leave the shadow, we who seek the sun; let us abandon the smoke, we who follow the light. Smoke is iniquity, for as smoke is to the eyes, so is iniquity to those who practice it. The shadow is life;
for this life of ours upon the earth is a shadow, as Job said. And what is here but temptations? All our time is spent in anxiety, all our life in troubles. 'In the midst of snares you shall walk,' it says. And another complained that in the way wherein he walked, snares were stretched out for him, yet hidden. Lest he be caught and fall, he wished to flee like a sparrow, but the snare was not yet broken. 'Flight has perished from me,' he says. He had wings made heavy by that dark water in the clouds of the air, and perhaps he could not fly. In short, he sought to receive those wings, that he might fly away and find rest, as it is written: 'Who will give me wings like a dove, that I may fly and be at rest?' For where there is flight, there is rest. And so elsewhere he says:
'If you sleep in the midst of the lots, you shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver' (Ps. 68:13). But perhaps you may say: How then does he here say that flight has perished from him, when above he had said: 'If I take my wings before the dawn'? Is this not a contradiction? By no means. For the struggles of the just are many. Does an athlete wrestle but once? How often, after many crowns, is he overcome in another contest! How often does one who has frequently conquered sometimes waver and hang in uncertainty! And often it happens that the strong contends with the strong and greater struggles arise, where there are greater proofs of his powers. Therefore David, when he sought flight to escape the adversary, did not find his own wings.
He wavered in a doubtful struggle; for indeed, when he has his wings in his power, the title of the psalm is 'unto the end' (in finem), that is, unto the perfection and consummation of victory. So, as a victor, he says: 'Lord, you have proved me and known me. You have known my sitting down and my rising up.' Rightly did he have the power of flying who had received the wings of resurrection; but here he is still in the cave, that is, in the flesh, in a certain den of this body, contending with king Saul, the son of hardness, and with the power of that intelligible prince who is not seen but understood. Whence the title of the psalm is 'of understanding,' which David, set in the flesh, nevertheless brought to a conclusion, and merited to conclude by his prayer.
In short, he began with the voice of prayer. Add to this that the former psalm is said to be spoken in the person of the Savior, this latter one in the person of David, who did not have victory in his own power but hoped for it from Christ. And yet he too, after he had stretched out his hands to God as it were the wings of his soul, and had taken refuge in the Lord and begged for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, by which he might know the way by which he could ascend, saw the heavens bowed down, that Christ might descend, and prayed that He would lift him up with His hand. Or perhaps for this reason he no longer sought his own wings, because, having become more perfect, he desired the hand of Christ.
Whoever therefore wishes to be lifted up by the hand of Christ, let him first fly away himself, let him have his own wings — he who flees the world has wings — and if he does not have his own (lest perhaps He alone have His own, who has the power of flying), if, I say, he does not have his own, let him receive them from Him who has them. Whoever therefore flees the world flies. 'Behold,' it says, 'I have gone far off in fleeing, and have abode in the wilderness' (Ps. 55:7). David therefore flew away like a night-raven in its dwelling, like a solitary sparrow upon the housetop. But if you refer it to Christ, He flew away in the suffering of His body, that under the shadow of His wings He might protect the peoples of the nations; He flew away in His divinity, He remained in His body and dwelt in the wilderness, that the children of the desolate might be more than of her who had a husband.
Let us therefore follow that body, that we too may rise again; for where the body is, there also are the eagles. He who cannot fly like an eagle, let him flit like a sparrow; he who cannot fly to heaven, let him fly to the mountains, let him first flee the valleys, which are quickly corrupted by moisture, and let him pass over to the mountains. Lot, the nephew of Abraham, passed over to Mount Zoar and was saved; but she who could not ascend, sinking back through womanly affection, lost her salvation. 'Draw near to the eternal mountains,' the Lord says through the prophet Micah; 'arise, depart from this place, for here is no rest for you because of uncleanness. You are corrupted with corruption, you have suffered persecution.' And the Lord says:
'Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains' (Matt. 24:16), where is Mount Zion and the city of peace, Jerusalem, built not of earthly but of living stones, and ten thousand of angels, the Church of the firstborn, the spirits of the perfect, the God of the just, who in His own blood has spoken better than Abel. For Abel cried out for vengeance, this one for pardon; the former accused his brother's sin, this one took away the sin of the world; the former betrayed the crime, this one covered it, according to that which is written: 'Blessed are they whose sins are covered.' But let him who flees flee swiftly, lest he be caught; let him swiftly plunder this world, as the Hebrew plundered Egypt. Let her who is in travail bring forth.
Lest, with the womb of the mind burdened and weighed down by iniquities, she be unable to flee; and let her flee not as one carrying a suckling, but as one unencumbered; not bearing an infant, but presenting one perfect in Christ. Let her flee not as one keeping holiday on the Sabbath, but as a laborer at his task; not as one barren in the cold, but as one rich in the harvest. For this reason it was said: 'Pray that your flight be not in winter or on the Sabbath.' Flight therefore is fruitful of virtues, not barren of merits.
This flight knows no chill of fear, no trembling of death, no shrinking of anxiety, no idleness of dissolution, no holidays of wantonness, no torpor of sloth; but it requires for the heavenly life a tireless traveler, a strenuous competitor for the kingdom above, a wealthy husbandman who gathers in his fruits and in gathering seizes them as plunder. For what else is asked of you, O man, but that you fear God, seek Him, walk after Him, and lay hold of His ways? 'Wherein,' it says, 'shall I lay hold of the Lord? Shall I lay hold of Him in burnt offerings?' Not by ten thousand goats, not by thousands of rams, not by the fruits of impiety is the Lord reconciled and sins redeemed, but in a good life is the grace of the Lord laid hold of.
'It has been declared to you, O man,' it says, 'what is good. Or what does the Lord require of you, other than that you do justice and love mercy and be ready to walk with your Lord?' (Micah 6:8). The Gospel therefore says to you: 'Arise, let us go hence.' The Law says to you: 'You shall walk after the Lord your God.' You have learned how you may flee from here: why do you delay? The Gospel says to you again: 'Brood of vipers, who has shown you to flee from the wrath to come?' And He says this to those who were coming to the baptism of repentance. Therefore repentance is a good flight; the grace of God is a good flight, in which is the taking up of the one who flees; the wilderness is a good flight, to which Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist fled.
Elijah fled from the woman Jezebel, that is, from the outpouring of vanity, and fled to Mount Horeb, which signifies 'drying up,' that in it the carnal flux of vanity might be dried up and he might know God more fully. For he was at the torrent Cherith, which means 'knowledge,' where he might drink in the overflowing abundance of divine knowledge, thus fleeing the world so that he sought not even the food of this body except what the ministering birds brought him — although his food for the most part was not earthly. In short, for forty days he walked in the strength of the food he had received. Surely so great a prophet was not fleeing a woman, but this world; nor did he fear death, he who had offered himself to the One who sought his life, and who said to the Lord:
'Take my soul' (1 Kings 19:4), enduring weariness of this life, not from covetousness, but he was fleeing the worldly enticement, the contagion of a defiled manner of life, and the sacrileges of an impious and prevaricating nation. Solomon too, under the figure of that woman, sets forth the corruption of this world and teaches that the harlot's arts are to be shunned. This is the strange and adulterous woman, from whom he exhorts you to keep yourself, and not to incline your heart to the ways of the world, but to place it in the hand of the Lord, in whose hand is the heart of the king. For he who rules himself — which is worth more than to command others — has his heart in the hand of God, and God turns it whithersoever He wills. No wonder if He turns it to good, He who is of perfect goodness.
Let us therefore be in the hand of God, that we may seek the good, that good which is incorruptible and unchangeable, of which the prophet Amos says: 'Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord God Almighty shall be with you, as you have said: We have hated evils and loved good things.' Where therefore the good God is, there are the good things which David desired to see and believed that he would see, as he himself says: 'I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.' For those are the good things which abide forever, which cannot be corrupted by any change of time or age. Among those good things is he who has sought God and found Him. For where the heart of man is, there also is his treasure; for the Lord is not wont to deny a good gift to those who pray for it.
Therefore, since the Lord is good and is especially good to those who wait for Him, let us cleave to Him, let us be with Him with all our soul, with all our heart, with all our strength, that we may be in His light and may see His glory and enjoy the grace of the supernal delight. Let us therefore raise our minds to that good, and be in it, and live in it, and cleave to it — that good which is above every mind and every consideration, and enjoys perpetual peace and tranquility; for peace is above every mind and above every sense. This is the good which penetrates all things, and in it we all live and from it we all depend; but it itself has nothing above it, but is divine; for no one is good but God alone. What therefore is good is divine, and what is divine is good.
And therefore it is said: 'When you open your hand, all things shall be filled with goodness'; for through the goodness of God all things are deservedly bestowed upon us as good, things with which nothing of evil is mingled. These good things the Scripture promises to the faithful, saying: 'You shall eat the good things of the earth.' Let us therefore be like that good One, that we may obtain the things which are good — the good which is without iniquity and without guile and without harshness, with grace, with piety, with sincerity and benevolence, charity, justice. And so goodness, like a fruitful mother, embraces all the virtues. There is therefore no small reason why we ought to flee from here, that we may pass from evils to good things, from uncertain things to faithful and truth-filled things, from death to life. The Lord Himself also, by saying:
'I have set before you good and evil, life and death,' He showed that the good is life, but eternal life. For if this life is subject to the world and to its malignity, surely that life is good which is not corrupted nor changed, which is debased by no vice, which is acquired by virtue. Let us therefore flee the malice of this world, in which the very days, it says, are evil; and let us flee tirelessly. And so Isaiah cries out: 'Strengthen the slack hands and the feeble knees' — that is, strengthen not the knees of the body, but of the soul — that the step of the mind may be lifted up straight to the heights of heaven, that its course may be more steadfast, its life more mature, its grace more full, its prudence more circumspect.
For this is to flee: to know whither you are tending, to lift yourself up from the world, to lift yourself up from the body, lest again anyone vainly exalt himself, and with the puffed-up mind of his flesh they hold not the Head, and lest it be said of them: 'They fled, and saw not.' But this is to flee from here: to die to the elements of this world, to hide one's life in God, to shun corruptions, not to be defiled by lusts, to be ignorant of the things of this world — this world which lays upon us divers sorrows, empties us when it has filled us, and fills us when it has emptied us. And all these things are empty and void, in which there is no solid fruit. The rich man died and has nothing, because he is not rich toward God, and is therefore foolish; for wisdom is the worship of God, and to abstain from evils is discipline.
Who therefore would not flee the place of malice, the workshop of wickedness, which knows not how to perish? In short, not idly was the sign set upon Cain, lest anyone should kill him, that it might be signified that malice is not extinguished nor taken away from the earth. Cain feared lest he be killed, because he knew not how to flee. For malice is increased and heaped up by its very practice, and is without measure, without end, deciding all things by guile and fraud — malice which is betrayed by its own deeds and by the blood of those it slays, as Cain too was betrayed. And so malice dwells upon the earth and wanders here below; and therefore we pray that the will of God be done on earth as it is in heaven, that here too there may be innocence.
And so malice, since it has no place there above, here goes about, here rages and pours itself out, neither submerged in that worldwide flood, nor burned up in the Sodomite fire. In short, more grievously did it afterward sprout up in its seedbeds, even to the point of laying parricidal and sacrilegious hands upon the Author of salvation of all. The Law condemns the deed, but does not take away malice. The Lord Jesus Himself condemned sin, but deferred its author, that there might be one through whom the just might be proved. For since God did not make evil, and the wickedness of the devil sowed it, God deferred His vengeance, that the devil might be overcome by those very ones whom he had deceived. Therefore the deceived are exercised, that they may both pay the penalty of their pliability and take up the pursuit of virtue, the diligence of caution. Whence He says:
'Be wise as serpents' (Matt. 10:16). Why as serpents? That the enemy too may be despoiled of his own, and he who wished to strip others may lose what is his — not the venoms, but the gifts of nature. In short, that one is cast down when you ascend. For it is written: 'I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.' Not 'lightning,' it says, but 'like lightning,' because he lost his own light which he had, before he wished to take away your light from you. But perhaps you may say what we read concerning the Savior: 'As the lightning that flashes from under heaven, so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be.' Well here too 'like lightning,' because He is above the lightning. In short, lightning is from under heaven, but the true Light is above heaven. Therefore Satan is like lightning, because he lost what he had; but you have received back what you had lost.
For the sentence has not been loosed concerning him as it has concerning you; for the grace of Christ, which loosed you, bound him fast; for the curse directed against the serpent remains because of your deception. For thus it was said to him: 'Cursed are you above all the beasts of the earth.' For he is the common enemy of all, who was the foe of the good, and he is condemned on behalf of those whom he had not yet harmed, since he who harmed man, to whom all those things are subjected, harmed all things. For he loosed the common law, since he himself is subject, along with the rest, to man. Therefore by the common hatred and execration of all is his curse made heavy. But the kind of his condemnation is not death, but a lasting punishment. 'Upon your breast and belly,' it says, 'you shall walk.'
For the noxious conscience had to be pressed down and malice trodden under, and the fraudulent secret had as it were to be banished from the face of God; at the same time it is shown that the malice is earthly which bends back toward the earth. In short, He added: 'And you shall eat earth all the days of your life.' Indeed the nature of the serpent seems to be described by these words, but rather every vessel of malice is described, every serpent of wickedness, who casts himself down upon his belly and shuts up his venom within himself, and rolls it about within his breast, slippery in his thoughts and walking upon his own frauds, entangling himself in his own deceits, ever moving and stirring up his venoms, and when he plots, trampling down also his belly, that is, the seedbed of his own heart. Whence David beautifully says:
'The wicked are estranged from the womb; they have gone astray from the belly; they have spoken lies; their fury is according to the likeness of a serpent, like the deaf asp that stops her ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers and of the enchanter who is charmed by the wise.' For this reason also that seems beautifully said which we read in the prophetic book: 'My belly, my belly! I am in pain,' because there is malice where innocence ought to be, and that part labors the more which in us ought to be more tranquil, and it is trampled by the footprints of wickedness, goaded by claws, shaken by a certain advance and increase of wickedness — there where is the generative seed of eternal posterity.
Indeed this seems to be referred to the fact that he grieved that the sons he had created and taken up had perished; but much more to the fact that in his belly he did not have the seedbed of the Word. Therefore he calls his belly as it were most precious. For precious is the womb of the mind, in which the fruitful crop of counsels is wont to sprout from the seed of the Word, and certain members, as it were, of the whole life and of the virtues and disciplines are wont to be formed. But to return to our purpose: that God thought malice for the time being to be restrained rather than abolished, He says to the serpent: 'And I will put enmities between you and the woman, and between your seed and the seed of the woman. She shall watch your head, and you her heel.' Where there are enmities, there is discord.
And there is a zeal for harming; where there is a zeal for harming, there malice is placed. Therefore there is discord between the serpent and the woman. Beneath the discord lies malice; therefore malice has not been removed. In short, it was reserved to the serpent that he should watch the heel of the woman and of her seed, whereby he might harm and pour in his venom. Let us therefore not walk in earthly things, and the serpent will not be able to harm us. Let us take up the evangelical sandal, by which the serpent's venom is shut out, his bite is blunted, that we may be shod with feet for the Gospel. And perhaps for this reason Moses is bidden to loose the sandal of his feet, that he might take up the sandal of the Gospel; or because the preaching of the Gospel was owed not to Moses, that is, not to the prophets, but to the apostles.
This is the sentence, as we said above, pronounced against the serpent. Let us also consider of what sort the sentence directed against man is. Cursed is that one who is the author of the fault, but not cursed is this one who was deceived by another's fraud; nevertheless, because he did not keep God's commandment, he is condemned to the labor of his works — the earth indeed is cursed, but in the works of the sinner — and he is cursed until he be resolved into earth. Therefore for this reason Jesus took flesh, that He might abolish the curse of sinful flesh, and He was made a curse for us, that blessing might swallow up the curse, integrity sin, pardon the sentence, life death. For He took upon Himself even death, that the sentence might be fulfilled and satisfaction made for what was judged:
the curse of sinful flesh, even unto death. Nothing therefore was done against the sentence of God, since the condition of the divine sentence was fulfilled; for the curse was unto death, and after death is grace. We are therefore dead to the world: why do we still make decisions about the world? We are dead with Christ: why do we still seek the deeds of this life? We carry about the death of Christ in our body, that the life of Christ also may be made manifest in us. Therefore we now live no longer that life of ours, but the life of Christ — a life of innocence, a life of chastity, a life of simplicity and of all the virtues. We have risen again with Christ; let us live in Him, let us ascend in Him, that the serpent may not be able to find on earth our heel, which it may wound.
Let us flee from here. You can flee in mind, even though you are retained in body. You can both be here and be present to the Lord, if your soul cleaves to Him, if you walk after Him in your thoughts, if you follow His ways by faith and not by sight, if you take refuge in Him. For He is a refuge and strength, to whom David says: 'In you have I taken refuge, and I have not been deceived.' Therefore, since God is a refuge, and God is in heaven and above the heavens, surely we must flee from here to there, where there is peace, where there is rest from works, where we may feast the great Sabbath, as Moses said: 'And the sabbaths of the land shall be food for you.' For to rest in God and to behold His delight is a banquet, full of joy and tranquility.