Letters 1 part 6/32

Reckoning the dissolution of body and soul to be a release from every evil, await the enjoyment of the eternal good things, of which all the saints have become partakers.

But you, weighing continually as on a scale, set pious reasoning against the devil's suggestion, yielding to the former, as though giving way to the tilt of the balance-pan.

And especially when the evil thought rises up and says:

What benefit is there for you in dwelling in this place? What profit do you gain from withdrawing from the company of men? Or do you not know that the bishops appointed by God over the Churches of God regularly associate with men, and continually hold spiritual festal gatherings at which especially those present receive great benefit? For there, revelations of proverbial riddles, resolutions of apostolic teachings, expositions of gospel meanings, hearing of theology, and meetings with spiritual brothers afford great benefit to those who take part, even from the mere sight of one another's faces.

But you, having made yourself a stranger to so many good things, sit here, perhaps grown as savage as the wild beasts.

For here you see much stillness, no small inhumanity, a lack of teaching, estrangement from the brethren, and the spirit remaining much idle with regard to the commandment of God. Therefore, whenever the evil thought, rising up with such numerous and plausible pretexts, wishes to break you down, set against it, through pious reasoning, the actual experience of the matter, saying:

Since you tell me that the things in the world are good, it is precisely for this reason that I have moved here, having judged myself unworthy of the good things of the world.

For evils are mixed in with the good things of the world, and indeed the evils prevail over them.

For once, when I attended the spiritual festal gatherings, I scarcely met with one brother who, though seeming to fear the Lord, was in fact held fast by the devil, and I heard from him clever words and tales fabricated for the deception of those who met him.

And after him I met with many who were thieves, plunderers, tyrants.

I saw the unseemly spectacle of drunkards, the blood of those who were oppressed.

— tormenting my chastity of mind.

And indeed I escaped the deed of fornication, but I defiled my own virginity in the thought of my heart.

And indeed I heard many words profitable to the soul;

yet in none of the teachers did I find virtue worthy of their words.

After this again I heard countless tragic tales clothed in dissolute melodies.

Again I heard the sweet sound of the lyre, the clapping of leaping dancers, the voice of jesters, much foolishness and coarse jesting, the shouting of a countless crowd.

I saw the tears of those who had been plundered, the sufferings of those led away by tyranny, the wailing of those being tortured.

And I looked, and behold, it was not a spiritual festal gathering, but a sea stirred by wind and troubled, eager to cover everyone together with its waves.

Tell me, O evil thought, and demon of transient sensual pleasure and vainglory, what benefit is it to me to behold and hear these things, since I am able to help none of those who are wronged, nor permitted to come to the aid of the powerless, nor to correct those who go astray, but am perhaps even about to destroy myself along with them? For just as a little clean water is made to vanish by a great storm of wind and dust, so too the good things we think we do in life are covered over by the multitude of evils.

For the tragic spectacles, like thorns, are driven into the hearts of those living in the world through mirth and joy, so as to darken the purity of psalmody.

And the groans and lamentation of men wronged by their own kinsfolk come about, so that the endurance of the poor may be displayed.

For I have been delivered like a sparrow from the snare of the hunters.

For indeed, O evil thought, I dwell in this very desert in which the Lord abode.

Here is the oak of Mamre; here is the heaven-bearing ladder and the encampments of angels that appeared to Jacob; here is the desert in which the people, having been purified, received the law, and thus, entering the land of promise, saw God.

Here is Mount Carmel, on which Elijah, dwelling, was well-pleasing to God.

Here is the plain to which Ezra withdrew and, by the command of God, brought forth all the God-inspired books.

Here is the desert in which the blessed John, eating locusts, proclaimed repentance to men.

Here is the Mount of Olives, to which Christ would go up and pray, teaching us to pray.

Here is Christ, the friend of the desert.

"Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Here is the narrow and afflicted way that leads to life.

Here are teachers and prophets, who wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth.

Here are apostles and evangelists, and the desert-dwelling life of monks.

These things, then, I have willingly accepted, that I may receive what has been promised to the martyrs of Christ and to all the other saints, so that I may say without falsehood:

And why should I speak at length, when the Savior himself was crucified for us, that by his own death he might give us life, and might anoint and draw us all toward endurance? Toward him I hasten, and toward the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Yet neither do I exist for the sake of the world, but the world for my sake. Reckoning these things, then, within yourself, and carrying them out earnestly according to what has been said to you, contend for the truth even unto death.

For Christ also became obedient unto death.

But the Apostle also says:

"Take heed lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God; but exhort one another, and build up one another, as long as it is called 'today.'" For "today" signifies the whole span of our life.

Living thus, then, brother, you will both save yourself and gladden us and glorify God unto the ages of ages.

ADMONITION TO THE YOUNG. Learn, you who are a monk and a faithful man and a laborer of piety, and be instructed in the gospel way of life, in the subjection of the body, in a humble disposition, in purity of thought, in the extinguishing of anger.

If pressed into service, add more for the Lord's sake;

if defrauded, do not go to law;

if reviled, console.

Be put to death to sin; be crucified for God;

cast all your care upon the Lord, that you may be found where there are myriads of angels, festal gatherings of the firstborn, thrones of the apostles, seats of honor of the prophets, scepters of the patriarchs, crowns of the martyrs, praises of the righteous.

Desire to be numbered together with those righteous ones, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

To him be glory unto the ages.

TO A MONK WHO HAD FALLEN AWAY. I do not say "Greetings," for there is no rejoicing for the impious.

For disbelief still holds me fast, and there does not come into my heart the reality of so great an outrage and the great deed you have done, if indeed it is already so in appearance to everyone.

For I marvel how so great a wisdom was swallowed up, how so great a rigor was dissolved, whence so great a blindness came to envelop you, how, having considered nothing at all, you have wrought such and so great a destruction of souls.

For if this is true, you have delivered your own soul to the abyss, and by this impiety you have slackened the resolve of all who hear of it.

You have set aside the faith, you have missed the mark of the good contest.

For what priest, hearing of it, will not lament? What churchman is not cut to the heart? What layman does not go about downcast? What ascetic does not mourn? Perhaps even the sun grew dark at your fall, and the powers of the heavens were shaken at your ruin.

Even the senseless stones wept at your madness, and even your enemies wept because of the excess of your lawlessness.

O great hardness of heart! O terrible cruelty!

You did not fear God, you did not respect men, you were not put to shame before friends, but you have shipwrecked everything at once, you have been stripped of everything at once.

You who proclaimed to all the pursuit of the kingdom, have fallen from the kingdom.

You who instilled in all the fear that belongs to teaching, did not have the fear of God before your eyes.

You who preached holiness are found to be defiled.

You who took pride in your poverty are found to be plundering wealth.

You who exposed God's punishment through your teaching have procured punishment for yourself.

How shall I lament you? How shall I grieve over you? How has the morning star that rose at dawn fallen, and been shattered upon the earth? Both ears of everyone who hears shall ring.

He was renowned by all for his writings; today his memory has perished with a resounding noise.

He who was full of understanding has wrought a manifold, intricate sin.

For those who were benefited by your teaching have been harmed by your ruin.

Those who lent their ears to your discourse have now stopped their ears at the news of your ruin.

But I, mourning and downcast, utterly unstrung on every side, eating ashes like bread, and having cast sackcloth upon my wound, recite to you such lamentations—or rather, composing a funeral oration, I remain inconsolable and uncured, because comfort is hidden from my eyes, and there is no poultice to apply, neither oil, nor bandages.

For my wound is grievous.

Whence shall I be healed? If, then, any hope of salvation still remains for you, if any slight remembrance of God, if any longing for the good things to come, if any fear of the punishments stored up for the impenitent, sober up quickly, lift up your eyes to heaven, come to your senses, cease from your wickedness, shake off the drunkenness that has overwhelmed you, rise up against him who cast you down.

Find strength to rise up from the ground.

Remember the Good Shepherd, that in pursuing you he will rescue you.

Even if it be but two legs or the lobe of an ear, leap away from him who has wounded you.

Remember the compassions of God, that he heals with oil and wine.

Do not despair of salvation.

Take up the remembrance of what is written: that he who falls rises again, and he who turns away returns; the wounded one is healed, the one seized by wild beasts is delivered, the one who confesses is not cast out.

For the Lord does not desire the death of the sinner so much as that he should turn and live.

Do not, having fallen into the depth of evils, grow contemptuous.

It is a time of forbearance, a time of long-suffering, a time of healing, a time of amendment.

Do not stand in the way of sinners, but leap away.

For when you turn back and groan, then you shall be saved.

For health comes of labors, and salvation of sweat and toil.

See to it, then, that in your wish to keep covenants with certain men, you do not transgress the covenants with God which you confessed before many witnesses.

Do not, then, on account of any human reasonings, hesitate to come to me.

For I will take up my dead one and mourn him; I will care for him; I will weep bitterly over the ruin of the daughter of my people.

All will receive you, all will suffer with you in compassion.

Do not fall back; remember the days of old.

There is salvation, there is amendment.

There is no law that condemns to death without mercy, but grace that defers the punishment, awaiting amendment.

The doors have not yet been shut; the Bridegroom is listening; sin does not have dominion.

Wrestle again; do not delay; have pity on yourself and on all of us, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion, now and forever, unto the ages of ages.

For either an unsympathetic manner, once adopted, casts me under the charge of misanthropy; or, on the other hand, wishing to show sympathy, it wrongly turns me into one grown soft toward the passions.

Alas, what shall I write, or what shall I think, caught as I am at a crossroads, if I come to remember your former vain manner of life, when wealth and that groveling little glory flowed about you? I shudder.

A fleeting enjoyment, attended by manifest danger and unjust gains; and at one time the fears inspired by rulers scattered your very notion of salvation, at another the tumults of public affairs shook your household, while the crowding press of evils spun your mind away from the One who was able to help you.

when little by little you were beginning to look about for the Savior, who brings fears for your benefit, who delivers and shelters you, while you sported against him in times of safety.

when you were training yourself toward a change to a solemn manner of life, counting your perilous wealth as refuse, and renouncing the care of your household and the company of your housemate.

But wholly uplifted, like a stranger and a wanderer, exchanging fields and cities, you hastened to Jerusalem, where I too, dwelling together with you there, counted you blessed for your athletic labors, when, remaining fasting through weekly cycles, you devoted yourself in philosophy to God, at the same time avoiding chance encounters with men under the pretext of a change of speech, and, having fitted upon yourself quiet and solitary living, you turned away from the tumults of civic life.

Piercing your body with rough sackcloth, and girding your loins tightly with a hard belt, you steadfastly crushed your very bones.

Hollowing your sides through privation all the way to the parts of the back, you emptied them out; you refused the use of a soft binding-cloth, but instead, drawing your flanks inward like cupping-glasses, you forced them to cling to the region of the kidneys; and having drained away all the fat of your flesh, you nobly dried up the channels of your lower belly, and having contracted your very stomach through abstinence from food, you made your rib-cage, like some overhanging roof, cast its shadow upon the region of your navel; and with your whole frame thus drawn together, confessing to God through the hours of the night, you drenched and smoothed your beard with streams of tears.

And what need is there for me to recount each detail? Remember how many holy mouths you kissed in greeting, how many sacred bodies you embraced, how many cherished your hands as undefiled, how many servants of God, like devoted worshippers, ran and clung about your knees.

And what is the outcome of all this? A slanderous rumor of adultery, flying swifter than an arrow, wounds our ears, piercing our very hearts with a keener sting.

What such artful cunning of the Deceiver has led you into so ruinous a fall? What manifold nets of the devil, having entangled you, have proved the workings of virtue powerless to move? Where has the story of your labors gone? Is it indeed worthy of disbelief? And how should we not, from what is now manifest, receive into belief even what was hitherto hidden—since you have bound souls that had fled for refuge to God with dreadful oaths, when it has been carefully observed that whatever goes beyond a simple 'yes' and 'no' is assigned to the devil? At once, then, you have become guilty of a ruinous perjury, and, having debased the very character of the ascetic life, you have sent the disgrace up even as far as the Apostles, and the Lord himself.

You have shamed the boast of chastity; you have defamed the profession of self-control; we have become a tragedy for captives; our affairs are turned into a spectacle for Jews and Greeks.

You have turned those who were indifferent toward a zeal for licentiousness.

As far as it lay in you, you have dissolved the boast of Christ:

'Take courage,' he says, 'I have overcome the world and its ruler.' You have mixed a bowl of ill repute for your homeland:

You have truly brought the Proverbs into deed:

'Like a deer shot through with an arrow in the liver.' But what now? The tower of strength has not fallen, brother; the remedies of return have not been discredited; the city of refuge has not been shut.

Do not remain in the depth of evils; do not deliver yourself over to the Murderer of men.

The Lord knows how to set upright those who have been broken down.

Do not flee far away, but run back to us.

Take up again the labors of your youth, dissolving by fresh acts of virtue that base and cloying pleasure.

For now the children of Jews and Greeks alike are being driven together toward the fear of God—do not, then, altogether deny the Savior of the world:

lest that most dreadful sentence overtake you: 'I do not know you, who you are.' — TO A VIRGIN WHO HAD FALLEN. Now is the time to cry out that prophetic word and say:

'Who will give water to my head, and to my eyes a fountain of tears, that I may weep for the wounded of the daughter of my people?' For even if a deep silence enfolds these, and they lie once for all stupefied by the calamity, deprived by the mortal blow even of the very sense of their suffering, yet it is not fitting that we should pass by so great a downfall without tears.

For if Jeremiah judged those wounded in body during war worthy of countless lamentations, what could one say concerning so great a calamity of souls? 'Your wounded,' he says, 'are not the wounded of the sword, and your dead are not the dead of war.' But I lament the sting of true death—grievous sin—and the fiery darts of the Evil One, which have savagely burned up souls together with bodies.

Surely the laws of God would groan greatly, beholding so great a pollution upon the earth—they who ever forbid and have long cried aloud, of old indeed:

'You shall not covet your neighbor's wife'; and through the holy Gospels:

And the very spirits of the saints themselves would groan:

Phinehas the zealot, because it is no longer possible for him, taking the javelin in hand as before, to avenge this pollution in the body;

and John the Baptist, because he cannot leave his dwelling above, as he then left the wilderness, to run to the reproof of this transgression, and, if it were needful to suffer something, to lay down his head rather than his frankness of speech.

Rather, indeed, if—as with the blessed Abel—he too, though dead, still speaks, then even now he cries out, and shouts louder than he did then concerning Herodias:

'It is not lawful for you to have her.'

For indeed, even if the body of John, by nature's necessity, has undergone the divine limit of death, and his tongue is now silent, yet the word of God is not bound.

For he who carried his frankness even to the point of death, because the marriage of a fellow servant was being violated—what would he suffer, beholding so great an outrage committed against the holy bridal chamber of the Lord? But you, having broken the yoke of that divine communion, having fled from the undefiled bridal chamber of the true King, and having fallen shamefully into this dishonorable and impious corruption—since you have no way to escape this bitter accusation, nor any means or device to conceal the disgrace—you press forward to meet your boldness head-on.

And since, being impious, and having fallen into the depth of evils, you now hold in contempt and deny the very covenants made with the Bridegroom, crying out that you are neither a virgin nor ever made any such promise—you who received many tokens, and displayed many tokens, of virginity.

Remember the good confession which you confessed before God, and angels, and men.

Remember the solemn sisterhood, and the sacred choir of virgins, and the assembly of the Lord, and the church of the devout; remember the aged grandmother in Christ, now growing young again and flourishing in virtue; and the mother in the Lord, striving to rival her, contending through certain strange and unaccustomed labors to overthrow the sway of habit; and likewise the sister, in some things imitating them, and in others zealously striving even to surpass them, outstripping the achievements of her forebears by her surpassing virginal excellence—and how she, as she supposed, earnestly called you, her sister, both by word and by life, to a rivalry of equal virtue.

and of the spiritual life lived in the flesh, and the heavenly citizenship maintained upon earth.

Remember the untroubled days and the illumined nights, the spiritual songs and melodious psalmody, the holy prayers, the chaste bed, the temperate table, and the virginal comportment.

Where now is that solemn deportment of yours? Where the orderly character, and the simple garment befitting a virgin, and the fair blush that came from modesty, and the becoming pallor that bloomed from self-restraint and vigils, shining forth more graciously than any fine complexion? How many times, in your prayers to keep your virginity unspotted, did you perhaps pour out tears? And how many letters did you write to the saints, by which you asked them to intercede earnestly for you—not that you might obtain a human marriage, still less this dishonorable corruption, but that you might not fall away from the Lord Jesus? And how many gifts of the Bridegroom did you receive? What need to speak of the honors that came to you, for His sake, from those who are His—the fellowship shared with virgins, the processions made together with them, the greetings received from virgins, the praises given for virginity, the blessings of virgins, the letters addressed to you as to a virgin? But now, having received but a slight breath of that airy spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience, you have become one who denies all these things, and you have exchanged that precious and hard-won possession for a brief pleasure—one that for a season sweetens your throat, but which afterward you will find more bitter than gall.

At this, who would not lament and say:

How has the faithful city Zion become a harlot? And how would not the Lord himself declare to one of those now walking in the spirit of Jeremiah:

"Have you seen what the virgin of Israel has done to me? I betrothed her to myself in faith and incorruption, in righteousness and in judgment and in mercy and compassion, as I promised her through Hosea the prophet"

"But she loved strangers, and while I, her husband, still live, she is reckoned an adulteress and is not afraid, having given herself to another man." What then would the groomsman say — the divine and blessed Paul, both that ancient one and this new one — under whose mediation and teaching, having left your mother's house, you were joined to the Lord? Would not each of them, deeply grieved at so great an evil, say:

"For the fear which I feared has come upon me, and that which I dreaded has met me:"

"For did I not betroth you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ? And I feared always lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your thoughts might somehow be corrupted"

"and I set before you the dignity of virginity, and, calling you the temple of God, gave, as it were, wings to your eagerness, lifting you up toward Jesus, and by the fear of that dreadful thing I helped you not to fall, saying:

'If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him.' And indeed I added also the security that comes from prayers, that somehow your whole body and soul and spirit might be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ"

"But indeed I have labored over you in vain, and the outcome of those sweet labors has turned bitter for me, and I am compelled again to groan over her in whom I ought to have rejoiced"

"For behold, you have been deceived by the serpent more bitterly than Eve"

"And not your thoughts alone have been corrupted, but along with them your very body as well:"

"and that horrible thing, which I hesitate to say and yet cannot keep silent (for it is like a fire burning in my bones, and I am utterly undone everywhere and cannot bear it): having taken the members of Christ, you have made them the members of a harlot"

"This alone among all evils is beyond comparison; this is a deed unprecedented in all of life"

"For pass over," it says, "to the isles of Kittim and see:

and send to Kedar and consider diligently whether such things have happened, whether the nations exchange their gods, though they are no gods at all. But the virgin has exchanged her glory for her shame"

"heaven was appalled at this, and the earth trembled exceedingly the more"

"she has forsaken me, the true and holy bridegroom of holy souls, and has fled to an impious and lawless corrupter of both soul and body alike"

"She has departed from God her Savior, and has presented her members as slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness"

"She forgot me and went after her lover... It would have been better for him if a millstone had been hung about his neck and he had been thrown into the sea, than that he should have caused the virgin of the Lord to stumble"

"What insolent slave has ever been so mad as to cast himself into his master's bed? What robber has been driven to such a pitch of madness as to lay hands on the very votive offerings of God — not lifeless vessels, but living bodies possessing an indwelling soul made according to the image of God? Who has ever been heard of, from ages past, in the midst of a city and at broad noonday, daring to inscribe the forms of unclean swine upon a royal image? If anyone sets aside a human marriage, without mercy, on the testimony of two or three witnesses, he dies"

"Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, shall he be deemed worthy who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has corrupted the bride betrothed to him, and has outraged the spirit of virginity?" "But," he says, "she was willing, and I did not force her against her will"

"For indeed that wanton mistress herself was mad with desire for the goodly Joseph, but the madness of the unchaste woman did not overcome the virtue of the chaste man, nor, though she forced herself upon him with her own hands, was he driven into transgression"

"But," he says, "this had already been decided by her, and she was no longer a virgin:"

"and if I had not been willing, she would have been corrupted by another"

"For indeed," he says, "the Son of Man had to be betrayed, but woe to him through whom he was betrayed:"

"and it is necessary that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come"

"And after she had committed all this fornication, I said:"

"'Return to me,' but she did not return"

the mysteries concerning death and resurrection, the sayings concerning the fearful judgment and eternal punishment, the doctrines concerning repentance and the remission of sins, those countless examples of conversion:

the drachma, the sheep, the son who devoured his living with harlots, who was lost and was found, who was dead and came to life again

Let us make use of these as remedies for the evil; through these let us heal our own soul

Take into consideration the last day (for surely you will not live forever), and the anguish and suffocation, and the hour of death, and the pressing sentence of God, and the angels hastening on, and the soul in these circumstances terribly troubled and bitterly scourged beforehand by a sinful conscience, and pitiably turning back toward the things of this world, and the inexorable necessity of that long journey

when he comes to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his deeds:

when that trumpet, sounding forth something great and terrible, shall awaken those who have slept from ages past, and those who have done good shall come forth to the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment

"I beheld," it says, "until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days sat down, and his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool, his wheels a burning fire"

"A river of fire flowed forth before him"

"thousand thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him"

"The judgment was set, and the books were opened" — the good deeds, the wicked deeds, the manifest and the hidden things, the deeds and the thoughts, all things at once clearly revealed to the hearing of all, both angels and men

In view of these things, what manner of persons must those be who have lived wickedly? Where indeed shall that soul sink down, which, suddenly appearing before the eyes of so many spectators, is full of shame? And with what body shall it endure those endless and unbearable scourges, where there is unquenchable fire, and the worm that punishes without ceasing, and the dark and horrible depth of hades, and bitter wailings, and extraordinary shrieking, and weeping and gnashing of teeth, and the terrors have no end? From these there is no release after death, nor any device or contrivance for escaping the bitter places of punishment