Ascetic Works 3-1 part 2/3

He who tries to search out the deliberations of others does not in fact search out his own deeds; do not mock the one who has died as one who lived carelessly, lest, as from the habit formed toward the living, you become a bitter judge even of the dead;

do not hold to those who stumble with an arrogant thought that lifts you up as a judge, but attend to yourself with a sober thought, a tester of your own deeds.

Groan when you stumble, and do not puff yourself up when you do right; do not boast that you are not to be despised, lest you put on evil as an ornament.

For some, being unable to be known from piety, made haste at least to be known thus from wickedness;

and others, having grown great in envy, shoot off pretexts, and set at naught those who are stable in the virtues.

Some who are noised about among those round about them for base things clothe themselves in a venerable life, not that they may lament their base faults with labors, but that they may overshadow the rumors of the blame.

But do not preen yourself on the one who deceives you, nor exult in being deceived;

for if for the sake of a bare name you lay hold of the things of the diligent, you work not for God but for men; do not give free familiarity to the one who lives without labor, even if a great name is paraded for him;

there is a friend for the sake of countenance (favor of the face), and time becomes the accuser of this one.

Acquire a fearful friend who mocks (rebukes) you, that you may find a shelter for your faults; and what is envied in you, hide rather from the one who envies.

...lest, while taking heed, you be bitten, and siphon a bitter poison into your soul.

For this is the work of Satan: that he may inflame that one with envy, and consume you with bitterness.

But let us rather be humbled, and prefer such people in honor, taming them—even through the table—the disposition that has been made savage by jealousy.

Do not, as though from another person, blame your friend out of jealousy, so that, blaming him as though from another's mouth, you may make yourself out as innocent, and exalt yourself as blameless.

For this is a disguise of Satan, who from the person of the serpent blamed the Most High, that, as though from another's mouth forsooth, having attached his own envy to God, he himself might be reckoned free of envy.

Do not, wishing to have your brother as a subject-slave, try to seize upon a fault of his, lest you be found a fellow-worker of Satan.

Let him who has stumbled not watch for others either to speak or to stumble, that he may not be alone in having fallen into the evil—which very thing was also the first work of the devil's falling away.

But let him be one who repents over the absurd deeds he has done;

recognizing the lament of grief against them, he will also draw to himself the foremost stillness of labors, which shows to him the many-eyed contemplation of the virtues.

Let him who keeps stillness with the tongue play the man against the thoughts;

for the courage of the soul is shown not in the stillness of the mouth alone, but also in valor against the thoughts, and in steadfastness amid insults and injustices;

for from this place the dreadful scourges of the devil are shaken off in the encounters.

Let not the mouth alone be guarded, but also the heart, for then the eye of the soul is darkened by the eye of complacency, when the mind ceases.

Let your mind be maimed concerning the most shameful things, for the Lord makes such people wise as blind, but discerning concerning the most beautiful things, that it (the mind) may be blinded concerning the most evil things.

Consider with me that there are two fornications, yoked in division: that of the body, and that of the spirit;

whenever a thought of fornication mixes with your spirit, then your soul keeps company with an image of error.

A demon shapes itself with the face of a female, in order that it may bewitch the soul to mingle with it;

a fleshless demon wears a carving of a form, in order that by a licentious thought it may make the soul play the harlot.

Do not, then, veil yourself with a non-existent idol, lest you do the like also in the flesh; by a spirit of fornication such ones were led astray—those who do not scare off, by the cross, the inner adulteries of the spirits.

Maltreat the thoughts with a fasting from foods, that they may speak not of fornication but of hunger;

with vigil of prayer set up a tear, that you may receive help in the present war.

In the time of the war of fornication, decline the invitations of hosts; and the stranger who arrives you will refresh by serving him, but you yourself, in a concealed manner, will fence yourself about with fasting.

Let your reward from both works be double, to each one who renders the practical for the sake of virtue;

do not eat with your brother for the belly's sake, but for Christ's sake lodge together in love.

Satiety of foods feeds the thoughts, and a drunkard waters sleep with fantasies.

Pleasure dies after the ravine of luxury, and the lecheries of the belly breathe their last in the tomb.

The labors of one's inheritance end in rest, but the ways of luxury end in burning.

He who withers the flower of the flesh by asceticism daily meditates in the flesh upon his own end.

Let the reckoning of the heart measure out the body, lest, when this is stricken, it too grow weary;

let it be enough for the flesh to cut away its natural superfluities;

let your bodily exercise be managed in accordance with your characters (habits), that you may learn to labor with the heart, and to suffer-with-it in soul.

Those who make the pallor of their face shine in asceticism, let them cast away the praise that comes from men even before it arrives—since the thought casts this in within, even before the encounter.

...of oil and of superfluities; then the thoughts reckon up for you the years with praises—that you may slacken in your labors—since they exercise you for the body's sake.

Fittingly, then, you will speak back to the evil-minded reckoners whatever things are set against them, for the overthrow of their crookedness.

A certain one of the brethren, being praised from within for his labors against the demons, was singing psalms.

‘Let them be turned back forthwith, being put to shame, who say to me:

Well done!’ Do not bear with the thought of those who carry to you a long cycle of years in the solitary life, lest they hang your labors upon the years, nor be taken alive in boasting over the endurance of the desert;

but in the endurance of meanness remember to be an unprofitable servant.

On account of deep old age, someone was forcing a certain steadfast solitary elder to be removed from the desert.

‘Cease your force,’ he said, ‘for I have not yet been recalled, as an evildoer, from exile.’

And when I sought to learn from him the meaning of this teaching, he said:

‘Seek first, with labor, the implanted fear, and then you will find within the experienced word—the word that teaches a man knowledge.’

And the same man, being asked also about fear, answered thus:

‘He who has the remembrance of death as a care is led also to the fear of the judgment.’

With the fear of the divine Scriptures be a daily companion;

for by companionship with these you will cast out the conversations of the thoughts.

He who treasures up the divine Scriptures in his heart by meditation easily casts out the thoughts from it.

Hearkening to the divine things in night-time reading during the vigils, let us not deaden our hearing with sleep, nor betray the soul to the captivity of the thoughts, but with the goad of the Scriptures let us prick the heart to compunction, that by the compunction of diligence we may cut in two the opposing negligence.

Some, for the sake of reputation and not care for the soul, become friendly with the devout, that they may procure for themselves an adornment without labor;

but he who, for the sake of the remembrance of heavenly things, is set ablaze for love, is purged in his reflection of the complacency in earthly things.

Do not dismiss the conscience that bears witness against you by a thought that despises and sweet-talks the fault; do not strain together with the contentious thought, lest, having warred passion with passion, you be vanquished by virtue; do not be lifted up together with the proud thought that puffs back against a counter-wind.

There is no praise in a tongue that runs glibly, but there is glory in lips that move steadfastly;

when listening to words, question your mind, and then, having discerned, you will give your verdict;

do not defraud your mind by ill-considered words, lest your Canaanite tongue be cast down a precipice.

Let not a spirit of much-speaking lead you astray, for in it lurks the deceitful lie.

He who is bitten by the revilings that come from others, and does not cast these upon the devil,

rouses up against himself the populace of his own thoughts, and provokes them still more to prepare darts against himself, in that the soul, being wounded through such things, collapses.

If you go to a foreign land for the sake of service, do not make ready to be received hospitably by all, reckoning yourself unworthy of the honor, that you may thus put to flight the thought of reviling, even if it tells the truth.

I reckon that, where there is no love, being reviled in the greatest degree, or wronged, you will not bear a grudge, but will bless.

For he who bears a grudge against the demons does not bear a grudge against men;

but he who bears a grudge against his brother is at peace with the demons.

A burning of the heart is the wrath of contradiction, but the souls of those who bear no grudge are bedewed spiritually;

as coals of fire belch forth sparks, so also do grudge-bearing souls belch forth evil thoughts;

just as the sting of a scorpion has a most acrid pain, so also a grudge-bearing soul has a most bitter poison.

Bear a grudge against the spirits of fornication and of vainglory—two bitter demons opposed to one another;

for the one flees faces, but the other rejoices in faces.

the demon of licentiousness, suddenly hurling filthiness at the contestant of asceticism, leaps upon him sharply, not bearing the heat of the fiery torch-bearing of labors; but upon the one who has been slackened by the flattery of pleasures, the demon of self-control little by little mounts up to converse with the heart, so that, being kindled with evils, it may dispute and be led captive, and bring the hatred of sin to its end.

But the deceiver of vainglory, being a crowd-pleaser, stands by the soul of the self-willed laborers in a shadowed manner, hunting in them the glory that comes through the labors by which they work.

If, then, anyone wishes, with God, to get the better of these, let him make the flesh lean against fornication, and humble the soul against vainglory.

For thus we shall easily thrust out the vain glory of the one, and please God, and blow away the unclean fantasies of the other, and make the heart pure of pleasures.

It is a most difficult thing for the heart to be buried together with the habit of pleasures, and there is need of many toils to cut off to the uttermost the pasturage of evils.

Do not, then, accustom the thought to converse with the pleasures;

for in an assembly of evils a fire is kindled. For thus, heating you up, they make you reason that it is a labor to master the conflagration of nature, and that the life of self-control is a long one; and they bring up for you also remembrances of the shameful things which by night they fantasize for you, fashioning for you fiery idols of error; then, having more vehemently kindled the fever in the flesh by the law of sin, they give you counsel within, that you are not strong enough to hold back the violence of nature—that even if you sin today out of necessity, yet tomorrow you will repent because of the commandment.

‘For the law is loving toward mankind, and pardons sin to those who repent.’

And they bring forward certain of those who stumbled in the midst of self-control, and again repented,

in order that from these they may make plausible the counsel of their own deceit;

so that, having recalled the soul by repentance the wrong way round, they may make the temple of chastity into a brothel.

Thus do the double-tongued serpents hiss at the thought in the busy workshop of the heart.

But you, O man of self-control, do not be lured again under the pretext of repentance by uncertain hopes, for many who fell were snatched away at once, while others were not strong enough to rise, being bound by the habit of pleasures as under a law.

For what do you know, O man, whether you will live, so that you may also repent—that you should mark out for yourself spans of life? And here, by stumbling, you do a favor to your flesh, when you ought rather to do yourself the favor of the remembrance of death, and so that there may be painted on your heart the fearful sentence of the Judgment—if somehow you might be able to quench the feverish mind-set of the flesh;

for you will not otherwise quench the passions, before you mix into your flesh the labors of their dismantling.

Nor indeed the passions of the soul, before you rain down upon the heart the fruits of love.

The bodily passions take their origin from the natural things of the flesh, against which is self-control; but the passions of the soul have their conception from the things of the soul, against which is love.

Love is the conjunction of dispassion, and the wiping-out of the passions—putting forward long-suffering, and cooling the seething rage; setting forth humility, and bringing down pride.

Love has nothing of its own except God;

Let him who is newly grafted into the radiant senate of the monks thrust away the thoughts that come to him of praise from his kindred, that he may seek not the praise that comes from men, but the blessedness that comes from the commandments.

Let him take courage against the demons who throw in cowardices;

for you have not received a spirit of cowardice (fear) again unto fear;

let him not cower before a spirit of cowardice, nor tremble at the nightly knockings of the demons, since they have authority not even over swine.

In whatever place he is afraid, let him pray, for they will not fall upon you, even if they thus startle you;

but when you rise up, take courage in your heart, comfort yourself with psalmody, saying: ‘You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, of the arrow that flies by day, of the thing that walks about in darkness, of the mishap and the noonday demon.’ For thus, having done so once and many times over, you will more swiftly drive the demon of cowardice away from yourself.

For being unable to harm by deed, they cow the soul with fantasies, that men may suppose the weak and powerless to be strong and powerful.

Do not array yourself in the finest garments, lest you put on the demon of vainglory more conspicuously;

for the virtues are not worn in the beauty of garments, but the labors are arrayed in gold in the beauty of the soul;

but clothe yourself over with the fear of God, of the chastisements of the Judgment, so that by the fear of fire you may put on an unquenchable heat, and be made wise against the evil craft of the thoughts more swiftly—for the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

He who declares the deceit of the thoughts through experience will not be well known to all except to those in experience, for experience is the road of the gnostic (knowledge) in this part;

for the cause of both is the practical (way of life), which, holding more laboriously, we shall come to know ourselves, and to condemn the thoughts, and to know God.

Let him who, out of the practical departure and the gnostic indwelling, anoints the simple by the art of the thoughts, take heed that he not boast of the gnostic for a display of glory;

but if a thought, magnifying these things, plunders him, let him take to his aid the Hellene (gentile) Jethro, who out of grace gave wise counsel to Moses the great prophet for judgment.

Let the power of your thoughts be the works, for the things to be done are more philosophical than the things to be said, just as they are also more laborious;

when action is present, the words flash forth as lightning; but when works are not present, the words do not flash forth the power of works.

A reproach to gray hairs is youthful speech, and lips puffed up, shaken with laughter; but he who is troubled and troubles others without cause will be outside of calm, and, when there is no storm, is tossed by tempest.

Do not hunt for words from an untimely tongue, lest you yourself endure the same thing from those whom you do not wish.

Flee from tripping up your neighbor's tongue, that you too may escape the tripping-up of the devil;

flee from reproaching your brother's fault, lest, as an alien, you fall out of compassion.

He who does not have kindness and love toward his brother, how could he be a member of the Christ-bearing love? Whenever a brother comes alongside your strenuous fast, do not accept the displeasure of the thoughts that suggest to you disturbance to your stillness and a hindrance to your fast; they do this so that, seeing your brother, you may not see him as God.

Let us not say that the continual visitations of the brethren are disturbances, but rather that they prove to be an alliance;

let us entrust their choral standing to the battle against the phalanx of the adversary.

For thus, united by the love-charm of love, we shall thrust out wickedness, and shall transfer the works of our hands into the treasury of hospitality.

Let us not receive the brethren as though we were doing them a favor, but, as being debtors of the loan, let us entertain them as strangers with supplication, just as Lot showed.

Some, on account of a strange (high) rank, are also strangely puffed up, and whenever they invite a stranger, they do not entreat him at all, but even broaden out with arrogance the very wording of the invitation, while they blame the one who declines as though he had committed an insult;

on account of this, great conceit is kindled up from there.

For the thoughts blind the eye of the soul by pricking it, so that we may make the worst use of the most excellent of the commandments.

When a thought hinders you from urging your brother too strongly at the table, then through it the demon mocks you, that you may not have a tongue constrained to the constraint of love;

for to you perhaps it suggests that the brother is one of the wanderers, and that he should come and be content with bread; while into him it casts the notion that he found no hospitality at all with you;

for keeping its eye on the change of his conduct, it casts one against the other in their hearts, that in the one it may cut off hospitality, and in the other make abuse sprout up.

Abraham, sitting before his tent, if anywhere he saw any of those passing by, received them with deeds;

to those living in impiety he spread out his table, and receiving even barbarians, he did not fail to entertain angels.

All who, having gone abroad as strangers, have been entertained under it, know the sweetness of hospitality, when a kindly word too seasons the table sweetly for the heart.

Let us therefore with much zeal practice hospitality kindly, that we may receive not only angels but also God.

For "Inasmuch," He says, "as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." One of those who pursue virtue with deeper knowledge answered thus:

The zeal of hospitality, and abundant service eagerly rendered, is wont to make vanish the fantasies of the demons that echo in the heart, provided that one is in some way freed from material things;

and these things, done with humility and contrition of heart, more quickly deliver the labourer from the fantasies.

For the demons exceedingly dread humility, knowing it to be a commandment of the Master.

One of the most approved, moving discourse concerning humility, disclosed this also: that a Father, he says, one of the very approved, being struck on the cheek by a demon-possessed man who raged terribly, at once turning offered the other also ready; but the demon, as if struck back by the lightning of humility, and crying out, suddenly leapt away from its prey.

This saying also is of Saint Epiphanius the bishop.

It came to pass, he says, that the son of a faithful widow had a spirit of Python, and the affliction lingering long, did not yield to treatment.

But when his mother was humbled with mourning, thanksgiving cooled the suffering, which, hanging her soul as it were from the cross, by her prayers tore the demon away from the child;

for while the young man wandered about in the surrounding regions and the mother prayed at home, the demon, crying out her name, was driven by torments;

but she, hearing this very thing, did not rush to the matter, binding the conflict of nature with humility; though dragged by others against her will she was led away, and the demon raged the more at using flight.

So she, having come upon him and embraced the child with tears, set thanksgiving and humility against the demon; and when she had wept bitterly, and entreated Christ, and made the sign of the cross, before many scourgings the demon fled from the child more swiftly.

The demons envy those who shine in submission to a Father, and gnash their teeth against them, because in submission they have yoked together renunciation free from care; and against these, scrutinizing pretexts, they prepare provocations, and with the anger that arises they engrave rancour, then little by little they boil up hatred toward the Father, as though he reproved unjustly and showed partiality;

so that, having shaken the soul by various means, they may scatter it from the embrace of the Father.

Let him therefore who is in submission to a Father be overcome by insults, and conquer by humility, and be ordered by long-suffering, and not, when the thoughts murmur within, give way to harshness and to brashness toward the brethren.

And because liberty is no equal counterweight to a wretched servitude, they press in especially, and yet further than these things, so that, having made the subordinate self-willed, they may easily impale him upon material things;

for some they are zealous to separate from spiritual fatherhood by these means, and others by other means.

"Work, and acquire, and show hospitality," they chant within, "so that you may win yourself a good name";

for from things seemingly good they sow piece by piece the tares of wickedness, and at the outset they let him be sweetened by vainglory, and be sober with continual fasting, and rise eagerly in prayers and in the assemblies, so that he may reckon: "Being a subordinate, I was never such as this";

"for there were insults, and griefs, and disturbances, but here is peace, and calm, and joy; there the Father's harshness, and fear, and rebuke, but here freedom from care, from fear, and from reproof."

And thus, having stolen his mind in such things, they snatch it away;

and suddenly coming upon him in a sleep beyond bounds, they sprinkle his soul with fear, and cut off the assemblies by negligence and listlessness, and put it into his mind that hospitality is a nuisance, and bring on all the snares of evil, that, having cast listlessness upon him, they may also work in him hatred toward the life itself, and thus, having set him stripped of the virtues, may expose him before the angels.

Sometimes the demons magnify the labours through the thoughts, and sometimes they belittle them as accomplishing nothing, so that in the one case they may instil presumption, and in the other sow despair.

For to those who are not bent, in order to slacken them, they magnify the labours, that they may instil presumption; but to those who refuse to be bent by presumption, they offer nothing more than to chant that the labours accomplish nothing, so that, having slackened them, they may sow despair.

Whenever, therefore, the thoughts magnify the labours, let us spit them out and belittle the soul; but whenever again they make the labours small as accomplishing nothing, let us, as far as we are able, magnify the mercies of Christ;

for the more you discipline your body harshly, the more you search out your conscience.

Know yourself, perceiving the secret plunderings of the thoughts, lest, being carried along unawares, we be darkened concerning their hidden robberies, and so reap the virtues by hardship alone.

For thus some, having been deluded with fantasies, were shaken out of their wits like locusts, the demons producing fantasies, and disordering their sight, and at times also plundering the soul with cowardice.

To one of the brethren, keeping vigil by night, the demons fashioned terrifying fantasies, not only to the outward eye but also to the inward sight, so that, with anxiety for the coming night, his mind in distress was in danger of the plundering of his wits; and for many nights the war flew at the soul, while he, in peril, struggled to hold fast within the ruling faculty of the mind, hanging his soul upon the Giver of prayer, and bringing forth the deeds of his faults against himself, he strove to look upon himself;

then also, drawing his soul to the fire of judgment, he frightened it, so that, dashing fear against fear, he might beat off cowardice—as indeed it came to pass, as he who endured the war declared.

For while the demons frightened his soul in manifold ways, the labourer sought after God in prayer; and while they distracted his soul with fantasies, he, recounting the burden of his faults, displayed it to the all-seeing God;

and again, while they were dragging down the eye of prayer, he, exchanging it for the fear of judgment, made the fear of the fantasies vanish;

for the one part of the fear, prevailing over the other, with God's help got the better of the delusion;

for the soul, humbled by the remembrance of its sins and awakened by the fear of judgment, blew the terrors of the demons out from within;

to drive away the terrors, and to uphold the soul that was falling.

For "the Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down." CHAPTER.

There are times when we strive to make our prayer pure, and perhaps are not able.

And there are times again when, though we do not strive, the soul comes to be in pure prayer; the former belonging to our weakness, the latter to the grace from above that calls us back to return to the purity of the soul, and at the same time, through both, teaching us not to attribute it to ourselves in praying, but to acknowledge the One who gives the gift.

For "we do not know what we should pray for as we ought."

Whenever, therefore, we strive to purify our prayer, and are not able, but are darkened, then, drenching our cheeks with tears, let us entreat God that the night of the war may be dissolved, and the radiance of the soul be illumined.

When the brother who lives with you departs for the sake of some service, according to the custom of prayers renew his remembrance;

but beyond measure do not fancy him, lest the demons, taking from you the beginning of care, and whetting it, sharpen it the more, casting his image as a shadow over you in the chanting of the psalms, and making you fall short in God of the care that is according to God, so that, having beaten care against care, they may lead us away captive from the better things, into not reckoning the word, "Cast your care upon the Lord." For they know that, out of the excessive anxiety over the brother, they also fashion griefs, disturbing the ruling faculty.

Moreover they also kindle reproaches of slowness, as though the brother had been negligent about the zeal of his service, so that the over-anxious longing may perhaps even turn into hatred.

And it is the custom of the demons in the cares about one who is away to do this also: on the day they see him arriving, to mirror him to you in a dream, so that, as from the dream that came true, they may make us in the season of those away again welcome the prophets of dreams—whom rather we ought to turn away from and exceedingly shun—lest from these they lead the soul astray into yet other things as well.

For these foreknow nothing, but what they see happening, these things they signify and represent in fantasies;

for often, indeed, while we are in stillness, having beheld a brother coming to us, they have signified it beforehand through the thoughts—things we must not believe, even though they suppose they are speaking the truth;

for through what seems to be the truth they smuggle in falsehood, that piece by piece they may trace out snares along the paths ahead.

Just as raw gold, cast into a furnace, becomes purer, so also a newcomer monk, having his character re-smelted in a coenobium, is restored bright through endurance;

for through the command of the brethren he is brought to learn obedience;

and through the one who rebukes him, his nature is made ready to have long-suffering.

Whenever, therefore, he receives insults with joy, and embraces humility with lowliness, having become superior to the passions that confront him, he contends to shine forth beyond them in the virtues, grace bestowing on him ever greater power.

Just as those who go down into the veins of the earth dig up gold, so those who descend into humility, the gold-bearing ore, bring up virtues.