Mystagogy 1 part 10/13

Do you see that in loosing every bond of unrighteousness from our heart, and undoing every knot of forced contracts of malice, and hastening to do good to our neighbor out of the whole soul, we are illumined with the light of knowledge, and are set free from the dishonorable passions, and are filled with every virtue, and are illumined by the glory of God, and are set free from all ignorance;

and praying the things of Christ we are heard, and we shall have God with us continually, and we are filled with the desire that is according to God.

Let us therefore love one another, that we also may be loved by God.

Let us be long-suffering toward one another, and He is long-suffering toward our sins.

Let us not render evil for evil, and we shall not receive according to our sins.

For we find the forgiveness of our trespasses in the forgiveness of our brethren.

And the mercy of God is hidden in mercy toward one's neighbor.

'Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.'

And, 'If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your trespasses.'

'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.'

'With what measure you measure, it shall be measured to you in return.'

Behold, the Lord has freely granted us a way of salvation, and has given us eternal authority to become children of God;

and henceforth our salvation lies in our own will.

Let us obey Him, and He unwearyingly defends us against our enemies;

'If My people had hearkened to Me,' He says, 'if Israel had walked in My ways,

then in a moment I would have humbled their enemies, and against those who afflict them I would have turned My hand.'

Let us set all our hope upon Him alone.

And let us cast all our care upon Him alone, and He will deliver us from every affliction, and He will sustain our whole life.

Let us love every man from the soul;

but let us set our hope upon no man;

for as long as the Lord preserves us, all our friends cherish us, and all our enemies are powerless against us.

But when the Lord forsakes us, then all our friends also forsake us, and all our enemies prevail against us.

But he also who trusts in himself shall fall with a terrible fall;

but he who fears the Lord shall be exalted.

'For I will not hope in my bow, and my sword shall not save me.

For You saved us from those who afflict us, and put to shame those who hate us.'

Let us not give way to thoughts which make light of our sins and divine that forgiveness of them has already taken place.

For concerning these the Lord, securing us, said:

'Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing;

but inwardly they are ravening wolves.'

For as long as our mind is troubled by sin, we have not yet obtained its forgiveness;

for we have not yet brought forth fruits worthy of repentance.

The fruit of repentance is the soul's dispassion;

and dispassion is the blotting out of sin.

But we do not yet have perfect dispassion, being at times troubled by the passions, and at times not troubled.

We have not, then, perfectly obtained the forgiveness of sins.

For from ancestral sin we were set free through holy baptism, but from the sin dared after baptism we are set free through repentance.

Let us therefore repent genuinely, that being set free from the passions we may obtain the forgiveness of sins.

Let us despise temporal things, that we may not, fighting with men because of them, transgress the commandment of love and fall away from the love of God.

Let us walk by the Spirit, and we shall by no means fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Let us watch, let us be sober, let us at last cast off the sleep of slothfulness.

Let us emulate the holy athletes of the Savior;

let us imitate their struggles, forgetting the things behind, and stretching forward to the things before.

Let us imitate their unceasing course, their burning zeal, the steadfastness of their self-control, the sanctification of their chastity, the nobility of their endurance, the forbearance of their long-suffering, the pity of their compassion, the calm of their meekness, the fervor of their zeal, the unfeigned quality of their love, the loftiness of their humility, the simplicity of their poverty, their courage, their kindness, their fairness.

Let us not be supine in pleasures, let us not be slackened by [evil] thoughts, let us not defile the conscience; let us pursue peace with all men, and holiness;

without which no one shall see the Lord.

And upon these things let us flee the world, brethren, and the world-ruler.

Let us forsake the flesh, and the things of the flesh.

Let us run up into the heavens;

there let us have our citizenship.

Let us imitate the divine Apostle, let us lay hold of the Author of life, let us enjoy the fountain of life.

Let us dance with the angels, let us with the archangels hymn our Lord Jesus Christ;

to whom be the glory and the might, together with the Father, with the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

TWO HUNDRED CHAPTERS ON THEOLOGY and on the Incarnate Dispensation of the Son of God. FIRST CENTURY. (1) One God, without beginning, incomprehensible, possessing wholly and entirely the whole power of being;

utterly repelling the notion of when and how He is;

as inaccessible to all, and not to be known by any of the things that are through any natural manifestation.

(2) God, as it is possible for us to know, is not in respect of Himself;

He is neither beginning, nor middle, nor end, nor anything else whatever of those things naturally contemplated in the things that come after Him;

for He is undefined and unmoved and infinite, being infinitely beyond all essence and power and activity.

(3) Every essence, introducing along with itself its own definition, is by nature a beginning of the motion contemplated in it according to potentiality.

And every natural motion toward activity, conceived after the essence

but before the activity, is a middle, as being by nature distinguished according to the mean between both;

and every activity, naturally circumscribed by its own principle, is the end of the essential motion conceived before it.

(4) God is not essence, either in the sense of essence spoken of absolutely or in any qualified sense, so as also to be a beginning;

nor power, in the sense of power spoken of absolutely or in any qualified sense, so as also to be a middle;

nor activity, in the sense of activity spoken of absolutely or in any qualified sense, so as also to be the end of the essential motion conceived before it according to potentiality;

but He is the essence-making and super-essential Being;

and the power-making and super-powerful Foundation;

and the active and never-ending Habit productive of all activity;

and, in short, the Maker of all essence and power and activity, of beginning and middle and end.

(5) Beginning and middle and end are marks of things divided by time;

and one would speak truly in saying that they are also marks of things contemplated together in the age (aeon).

For time, having its motion measured, is circumscribed by number;

but the age (aeon), having the category of 'when' conceived together with its existence, undergoes extension, as having received a beginning of being.

And if time and the age are not without beginning, much more are the things contained in them.

(6) One alone and only, by nature always and properly, is God, enclosing within Himself in every way the whole of proper being, as being also Himself higher than proper being.

And if this be so, in no way whatever does anything anywhere of those things said to be have, on the whole, the property of properly being.

Therefore nothing at all is contemplated together with Him from eternity as different in essence;

neither age, nor time, nor any of the things that dwell in these.

For 'properly being' and 'not properly being' never coincide with one another.

(7) Every beginning and middle and end does not at all repudiate the relative category throughout;

but God, being infinitely and infinitely times higher than every relation universally, is reasonably neither beginning nor middle nor end,

[Editorial note: The text derives from the Patrology, volume 90 (typed by his mother

Arsenios Meskos), in comparison with the text of the editions 'TO BYZANTION' of the series 'GREGORIOS PALAMAS,' Thessalonica, PHILOKALIA OF THE NEPTIC AND ASCETIC [FATHERS], volume...

nor anything else whatever of those things in which the category of relation can be contemplated according to relation.

(8) All things that are are said to be objects of thought (intelligible);

having the principles of the knowledge concerning them as demonstrable;

but God is not named as an object of thought;

rather, He is believed merely to exist from the things that are objects of thought;

wherefore none of the things that are objects of thought is in any way whatever comparable to Him.

(9) The knowledges of the things that are naturally possess, for their demonstration, their own proper principles, by which they naturally undergo circumscription;

but God is believed merely to exist through the principles in the things that are;

giving to the devout, more firmly than any demonstration, the confession and faith that He properly is.

For faith is a true knowledge having indemonstrable principles, as being the substantiation of things beyond mind and reason.

(10) God is the beginning and middle and end of the things that are, as working but not being acted upon, as also are all the other things by which He is named by us.

For He is a beginning as Creator;

and a middle, as Provider;

[and an end, as final cause.] For 'of Him,' it says, 'and through Him, and unto Him are all things.'

(11) No rational soul is by essence more honorable than [another] rational soul.

For God, creating every soul according to His own image, as being good, brings it into being self-moving;

and each, according to its purpose, either chooses for itself honor, or willingly admits dishonor through its works.

(12) God is the Sun of righteousness, as it is written;

simply shining upon all the rays of His goodness;

but the soul, according to its disposition, is by nature apt to become either wax, as a lover of God, or clay, as a lover of matter;

just as, then, the clay is by nature dried up by the sun;

but the wax is naturally softened;

so also every soul that is a lover of matter and a lover of the world, being admonished by God and, like clay, resisting in its disposition, is hardened;

and thrusts itself, like Pharaoh, toward destruction;

but every soul that is a lover of God, like wax, is softened, and receiving the impressions and characters of divine things, becomes a dwelling-place of God in spirit.

(13) He who has illumined his mind with divine intellections, and has accustomed his reason unceasingly to honor the Creator with divine hymns, and has sanctified his sense with undefiled imaginings;

this one has added to the natural good 'according to the image' the gnomic good 'according to the likeness.'

(14) One keeps the soul unstained for God, if he constrains the understanding to think only of God and of His virtues;

and establishes the reason as a right interpreter and expounder of those same virtues;

and teaches the sense to imagine piously the visible world and all things in it, announcing to the soul the magnificence of the principles in them.

(15) God, who freed us from the bitter slavery of the tyrannizing demons, has bestowed on us the loving yoke of godliness, namely humility;

by which every diabolical power is subdued,

while every good is wrought for those who choose it, and is preserved untampered with.

(16) He who believes, fears;

and he who fears is humbled;

and he who is humbled becomes meek, having acquired a habit inactive toward the movements of incensive desire and concupiscence that are contrary to nature;

and he who is meek keeps the commandments;

and he who keeps the commandments is purified;

and he who is purified is illumined;

and he who is illumined is deemed worthy to share the bridal chamber of the mysteries with the Bridegroom-Word.

(17) Just as a farmer, searching out a suitable plot in order to transplant some wild tree, stumbles upon an unhoped-for treasure,

like the most blessed Jacob, when asked by his father the manner of his knowledge:

"What is this that you found so quickly, my child?"

"That which the Lord God delivered up before me."

For whenever God delivers to us the wise contemplations of His own wisdom without toil, when we did not expect it, let us reckon that we have suddenly found a spiritual treasure.

For the spiritual farmer is the approved ascetic, who transplants the contemplation directed at the perception of visible things, as a wild tree, into the region of the intelligible;

and finding a treasure—the manifestation, according to grace, of the wisdom that is in beings.

(18) Knowledge of divine contemplations falling suddenly upon the ascetic who did not expect it because of his humility, breaks down the reasoning of the one who, for display's sake, seeks it with toil and labor and does not find it;

and it begets in the senseless man groundless envy toward his brother, and a contriving of murder, and grief to himself, since he does not have the inflation that comes from praises.

(19) Those who seek knowledge with labor and fail, either fail through unbelief, or perhaps, being naturally untalented, they are inclined to contend and exalt themselves against those who do know—as the people of old did against Moses;

to whom the Law fittingly says, that some, forcing their way, went up onto the mountain, and the Amorite who dwelt on that mountain came out and wounded them.

For it is necessary that those who, for display's sake, counterfeit virtue, not only stumble in adulterating godliness, but also are wounded by their own conscience.

(20) He who craves knowledge for display's sake and fails:

let him neither envy his neighbor nor grieve;

but let him make his preparation in some of the neighboring matters, as has been enjoined,

according to practice, first laboring through the body to prepare in the soul the readiness for knowledge.

(21) Those who rightly and with godliness approach beings, devising no manner of self-display, will find the all-radiant contemplations of beings going out to meet them, producing in them a most exact apprehension of themselves;

"When you enter in, you shall inherit great and beautiful cities, and houses full of all good things, which you did not build;

and cisterns hewn out, which you did not hew;

and vineyards and olive groves, which you did not plant."

For he who lives not to himself but to God becomes full of all the divine gifts of grace,

which until now, because of the besetting harassment of the passions, were not appearing.

(22) Just as perception is spoken of in two ways:

the one that is ours even when we are asleep, apprehending none of the underlying objects—

of which there is no benefit, when it is not stretched toward activity;

and the one by which we apprehend sensible things—

so too knowledge is twofold: the scientific, which gathers up the inner principles of beings by mere habit;

of which there is no benefit, when it is not extended toward the activity of the commandments;

and the other, practical according to activity, which through the experience of beings brings the true apprehension itself.

(23) The hypocrite, so long as he seems to escape notice, keeps quiet,

hunting after the reputation of seeming to be righteous.

But when he is detected, he puts forward death-bearing words, thinking by railings against others to cover up his own indecency;

him the Word likened to a brood of vipers, as fickle, and commanded him to bring forth fruits worthy of repentance;

that is, to transform the hidden disposition of the heart toward the manifest ways of conduct.

(24) Some say that a beast is everything which, by the law concerning the animals in air and on earth and in the sea, has been judged unclean, even if it seem tame in temperament;

by which names the Word designates each of men according to his own proper passion.

(25) He who feigns friendship to the harm of his neighbors is a wolf concealing his own malice with a sheepskin.

When he finds a bare custom or word done or spoken simply according to Christ, he seizes and corrupts it;

pouring out countless reproaches, which he fastens upon their words or their ways;

like a spy upon the freedom of the brethren in Christ.

(26) He who feigns silence for the sake of malice contrives deceit for his neighbor;

failing of which, he departs, having added pain to his own passion.

But he who is silent for the sake of benefit increases friendship, and will depart rejoicing, as one who has received an illumination that delivers from darkness.

(27) He who in an assembly rashly cuts off the hearing of words has not escaped notice as ailing with vainglory;

by which being captured, he puts forward countless runnings and circlings of propositions, wishing to break apart the coherence of what is being said.

(28) The wise man, both teaching and being taught, wishes to teach and to be taught only the things that profit;

but he who is wise in seeming, both asking and being asked, puts forward only the more superfluous things.

(29) Of whatever good things one has partaken according to the grace of God, he is a debtor to impart them ungrudgingly to others as well.

For he who hides the gift under the earth slanders the Lord as harsh, abjuring virtue out of sparing of the flesh.

But he who sells the truth to enemies, being later caught as a lover of glory, unable to bear the shame, hangs himself.

(30) Those who still tremble at the war against the passions, and fear the onset of the invisible enemies, ought to keep silent;

that is, not to employ the mode of refutation on behalf of virtue;

but to yield to God through prayer the care for themselves;

to whom it is said in Exodus:

"The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace."

But those who, already after the destruction of their persecutors, are seeking out the modes of the virtues for grateful instruction, ought to have only the ear of the understanding open;

to whom it is said, "Hear, O Israel."

But to him who, on account of his purification, exceedingly longs for divine knowledge, reverent boldness is fitting;

to whom it will be said, "Why do you cry out to Me?"

Therefore, to him to whom silence is enjoined because of fear, only refuge to God is suitable;

but to him who is exhorted to hear, the readiness for obedience to the divine commandments is fitting;

but to the gnostic, it is appropriate to cry out unceasingly in supplication, both for the averting of evils and for thanksgiving for the participation of good things.

(31) Never can the soul be extended toward the knowledge of God, unless God Himself, using condescension, lays hold of it and leads it up to Himself.

For the human mind would not have had such strength to run up so as to lay hold of some divine illumination, unless God Himself drew it up—as far as it was possible for the human mind to be drawn up—and illumined it with the divine rays.

(32) He who imitates the disciples of the Lord does not refuse, on account of the Pharisees, to make his way on the Sabbath through the grain fields and to pluck the ears of grain; but having come, after the practical life, into dispassion, he gathers up the inner principles of the things that have come to be, piously nourished by the divine knowledge of beings.

(33) He who is faithful only according to the Gospel removes the mountain of his own evil through action;

thrusting from himself, by the unstable revolution of the things subject to sense-perception, his former disposition toward them.

But he who is able to be a disciple, receiving from the Word with his hands the fragments of the gnostic loaves, nourishes thousands;

showing by action the multiplied power of the word.

But he who has been strong enough to be also an Apostle heals every disease and infirmity, casting out demons;

that is, putting to flight the activity of the passions;

leading it back through hope, and also bracing up with the word of judgment those who have become slack through sloth.

For having been bidden to tread upon serpents and scorpions, he makes to vanish the beginning and the end of sin.

(34) The Apostle and disciple is altogether also faithful;

but the disciple is not altogether also an apostle, yet altogether faithful.

And he who is only faithful is neither disciple nor apostle;

yet he can, through life and contemplation, be transferred—the third into the rank and worth of the second, and the second into that of the first.

(35) Whatever is fashioned in time according to time, when perfected, stands still, ceasing from natural increase.

But whatever the knowledge of God works out according to virtue, when perfected, moves again toward increase.

For their ends have been established as the beginnings of others.

For he who, through the virtues in practice, has caused the substance of corruptible things to cease in himself, has made a beginning of other, more divine configurations;

for God never ceases from the good things, of which He never even had a beginning.

For as it is proper to light to give light, so it is proper to God to do good.

And to the Gospel, which introduces the condition of intelligible things, this is made resplendent through the beneficence of good works;

even if those are vexed who do not yet know that the Sabbath came to be for man, and not man for the Sabbath;

and that the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.

(36) There is, in the Law and the Prophets, both a Sabbath and Sabbaths, and a Sabbath of Sabbaths;

just as also there is a circumcision, and a circumcision of circumcision;

and a harvest, and a harvest of harvest, according to what is said: "When you reap your harvest."

The first, then, is the consummation of practical, natural, and theological philosophy.

The second is the release from coming-into-being and from the principles connected with coming-into-being.

And the third is the bringing-in and enjoyment of the more spiritual principles concerning sense and mind.

And this happens, evidently, in a threefold manner for each of the things mentioned, so that the gnostic may know the principles according to which Moses keeps the Sabbath as he dies outside the holy land;

and Joshua the son of Nun circumcises, having crossed the Jordan;

and those who inherit the good land bring to God the offering of the deferred double harvest.

(37) A Sabbath is the dispassion of the rational soul,

according to which, in the practical life, it has utterly cast off the marks of sin.

(38) Sabbaths are the freedom of the rational soul,

having, through natural contemplation in the Spirit, laid aside even its very natural activity toward sense-perception.

(39) A Sabbath of Sabbaths is the spiritual stillness of the rational soul,

having drawn in the mind from all the more divine principles that are in beings;

and having wholly bound it to God alone in a loving ecstasy, and having rendered it utterly immovable from God through the disposition of mystical relinquishment.

(40) Circumcision is the laying aside of the passion-laden disposition of the soul concerning coming-into-being.

(41) A circumcision of circumcision is the complete casting-off and removal even of the very natural movements of the soul concerning coming-into-being.

(42) A harvest of the rational soul is the gathering and recognition, with scientific knowledge, of the more spiritual principles of beings according to virtue and nature.

(43) A harvest of harvest is the comprehension of God, untrodden by all, formed unknowably around the mind after the mystical contemplation of intelligible things;

which he fittingly offers who, from visible and invisible creatures, worthily honors the Creator.

(44) There is also another, yet more spiritual harvest, said to be God's own;

and another, more mystical circumcision;

God, keeping the Sabbath from His own works, gives rest, according to: "The harvest indeed is plentiful";

and, "Circumcision of the heart in spirit";

and, "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it;

because on it He rested from all His works which God began to make."

(45) God's harvest is the universal abiding and establishing of the worthy in Him, coming to be at the consummation of the ages.

(46) Circumcision of the heart in spirit is the complete removal of the natural activities concerning sensible and intelligible things, exercised according to sense and mind;

through the presence of the Spirit, which immediately transforms both the body and the soul wholly toward the more divine.

(47) God's Sabbath-rest is the coming of all that has been made wholly into Him;

according to which He causes to cease their natural activity concerning them, working ineffably His own most divine activity.

For God ceases from the natural activity that is, as the case may be, in each of beings, according to which each of beings is by nature apt to be moved, whenever each, having proportionately laid hold of the divine activity, defines its natural proper activity around God Himself.

(48) It must be sought out by the diligent: which works it is fitting to understand that God began to bring into being;

and which, again, He did not begin.

For if He rested from all the works which He began to make, it is clear that He did not rest from those which He did not begin to make.

Lest then perhaps the works of God that began to be in time are all the beings that participate;

such as the diverse essences of beings.

For non-being is older than their being.

For there was once when the participating beings were not.

But God's works that perhaps did not begin to be in time are the participated beings (the participables), of which the participating beings partake according to grace;

such as goodness, and everything if anything is contained in the principle of goodness.

And, simply, all life and immortality and simplicity and immutability and infinity, and whatever is essentially contemplated concerning Him;

which are both works of God, and not begun in time.

For never is the "was not" older than virtue;

nor than any other of the things mentioned;

even if the things that participate in them, in themselves, have begun to be in time.

For every virtue is without beginning, not having time older than itself;

inasmuch as it has God, the sole one, as its eternal begetter of being.

(49) From all beings, both participating and participable, God is infinitely and infinitely times removed.

For everything, if anything has the principle of being predicated of it, happens to be a work of God;

even if the one, according to coming-into-being, has begun to be in time;

while the other, according to grace, has been implanted in the things that have come to be, like a kind of innate power, loudly proclaiming the God who is in all.

(50) All immortal things, and immortality itself;

and all living things, and life itself;

and all holy things, and holiness itself;

and all virtuous things, and virtue itself;

and all good things, and goodness itself;

and all beings, and being-ness itself—manifestly happen to be works of God;

but the one sort, having begun to be in time;

the other sort, not having begun to be in time.

For there was not once when virtue and goodness and holiness and immortality were not.

And the things that began in time are, and are called, that very thing which they both are and are called, by the participation of the things that did not begin in time.

For God is the Maker of all life and immortality, holiness and virtue;

for He is removed beyond the essence of all things that are thought and spoken of.

(51) The sixth day, according to Scripture, introduces the completion of the beings under nature;

and the seventh circumscribes the movement of temporal particularity;

and the eighth intimates the mode of the condition that is beyond nature and time.

(52) He who keeps only the sixth day according to the Law, fleeing the dominion of the passions that actively oppresses the soul, crosses through the sea without fear to the wilderness;

keeping the Sabbath only with the cessation of the passions.

But he who has crossed the Jordan, having left behind even that condition in which the passions are merely inactive, has come into the inheritance of the virtues.

(53) He who keeps the sixth day evangelically, having first slain the first movements of sin, attains the wilderness empty of all evil—the condition of dispassion—through the virtues;

keeping the Sabbath in mind even from the bare fantasy of the passions.

But he who has crossed over the Jordan is transferred to the region of knowledge;

according to which the mind, mystically built up by peace as a temple, becomes a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.