But what need is there even to speak of binding and loosing for those in such a state, when even those who have the Paraclete within themselves, forgiving sins, tremble lest they do anything contrary to the will of him who dwells within them and speaks through them?
But who is so mad, and so lifted up in such audacity, as — before receiving the Paraclete — to speak and to do the works of the Spirit, and to perform the things of God without the will of God?
Woe to those who dare such things on the fearful day of judgment, on which the incorruptible and unerring Judge, the Lord, sits upon the throne and fearful judgment-seat, rendering to each according to his works, his thoughts, and his words — to whom is due all glory, honor, and worship, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the endless ages of ages. Amen.
God is nowhere to those who see with the body, for he is invisible; but to those who perceive spiritually he is everywhere, for he is present; for he is within the whole and outside the whole. In this sense he is near to those who fear him, while his salvation is far from sinners.
The remembrance of Christ enlightens the mind and drives away demons; and the light of the Holy Trinity, shining in a pure heart, removes it entirely from the world, and makes the one who partakes of it, even from this present life, already be filled with the glory that is to come, so far as it is receivable by a man who is worked upon by grace from above, though he is still hidden by the veil of the flesh.
If, after the passing away of visible things, nothing else exists except God alone — who is, and was, and shall be — then surely those who richly partake of his grace in this present world, even though they are present on earth, have for the most part already been joined to the age to come; and they, as it were, groan, being weighed down by the shadow and the trailing burden of the flesh.
The Lord does not bless those who simply teach, but those who have first been deemed worthy, through the practice of the commandments, to recover their sight, and who have beheld within themselves the illuminating light of the Spirit shining forth, and through it have come to know, in true vision and knowledge and activity, the things about which it is necessary to speak and to teach others. It is necessary, then, that those who attempt to teach be first raised up in this manner, as has been said, lest, speaking about things they do not know, they lead astray both those who believe them and themselves, and thus destroy them.
He who does not fear God does not believe that God exists, for he is a fool; but he who believes this fears him, and fearing, keeps his commandments. But he who says he fears God, yet does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the fear of God is not in him; for, it is said, where there is fear, there is the keeping of the commandments. And if this is not in us, nor the keeping of the divine commandments, we differ in nothing from the heathen and unbelievers.
Faith, the fear of God, and the keeping of his commandments procure rewards in proportion to purification; for to the extent that we are purified, to that extent we are raised up from fearing him to loving God, and we pass, as it were, by progress, from fear to the love of God; and then we hear from him: 'He who has my commandments and keeps them, that one is he who loves me.'
And when this comes to pass, he himself loves us, as he promised; and as he loves us, his Father likewise loves us also, the Spirit indeed preparing the way and making ready beforehand the dwelling, so that, in one gathering of the persons, we become an abode of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The indwelling of the tri-hypostatic Godhead, which comes to pass knowingly and perceptibly in the perfect, is not the fulfillment of longing, but rather the beginning and cause of a more intense and greater longing.
For from that time on, it does not allow the one who has received it to remain at rest, but, as though ever kindled and set on fire, causes him to be lifted up into a still more divine flame of longing.
For the mind, being unable to find comprehension and an end of the object of its longing, is likewise unable to set a limit to its longing and love; but, striving to attain and lay hold of an end that has no end, it carries within itself a longing that is ever unending and a love that is never fulfilled.
He who has come to this limit does not think that he has found in himself the beginning of longing or love for God, but is disposed as one who does not love God, being unable to lay hold of the fullness of love; hence, considering himself the last of all who fear God, he deems himself, from his very soul, unworthy even of salvation together with the faithful.
But faith in him justifies and perfects the believer, since faith in Christ is reckoned in place of the works of the law; and this faith, being confirmed and demonstrated through the commandments of the gospel, makes the faithful partakers of the eternal life that is in Christ himself.
Faith is to die for Christ's sake, for the sake of his commandment, and to believe that this death is the cause of life; to reckon poverty as wealth, and lowliness and contempt as true glory and renown; and, in having nothing, to believe that one possesses all things — or rather, to have acquired the unsearchable riches of the knowledge of Christ — and to regard everything visible as mere clay or smoke.
Faith in Christ is not only to despise the pleasures of this life, but also to endure with patience and to bear every trial that comes upon us in sorrows and afflictions and misfortunes, until God should will and visit us.
Those who prefer their own parents in any matter above the commandment of God do not possess faith toward Christ; for they are certainly judged by their own conscience, if indeed they still have a living conscience concerning their unbelief. For this is what belongs to the faithful: in nothing, in no way whatsoever, to transgress the commandment of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Faith in God gives birth to the desire for good things and the fear of punishments; and the desire for better things and the fear of punishments bring about the exact keeping of the commandments; and the exact keeping of the commandments teaches men their own weakness; and the recognition of our true weakness engenders the remembrance of death; and he who has acquired this as a housemate will himself earnestly seek to learn what shall become of him after his departure and withdrawal from this life; and he who is always eager to know about the things to come ought first of all to deprive himself of present things. For he who is held fast by attachment to these things, even to some small degree, cannot acquire perfect knowledge of those things.
But even if, by some dispensation of God, he should taste of this knowledge, yet if he does not quickly abandon the things by which and in which he is held through attachment, and become wholly given to such knowledge — willingly consenting to think of nothing else outside it — then even that which he seems to have will be taken away from him.
Renunciation of the world and complete withdrawal — undertaking an exile from all the material things, customs, opinions, and persons of this life, together with the denial of body and will — becomes, in a short time, a source of great benefit to the one who has thus fervently renounced the world.
You who flee the world, take heed that you in no way give your soul over to consolation at the outset, making your dwelling in it, even if all your relatives and friends compel you to do so.
For the demons suggest this to them in order to quench the fervor of your heart; for even if they are not able to hinder your purpose completely, they will certainly render it more slack and weak.
When you are found brave and unmoved toward all the pleasures of this life, then the demons, turning your relatives, as it were, to sympathy, make them weep and lament for you before your very face.
And you will know this to be true when, while you remain unmoved in this attack, you suddenly see them inflamed with rage and hatred against you, turning away from you as from an enemy, and unwilling even to look at you.
When you see the affliction caused on your account to your parents and brothers and friends, laugh at the demon who variously instigates this against you, and withdraw with fear and great earnestness, and fervently entreat God to bring you swiftly to the harbor of a good father, in whom he himself will give rest to your soul, weary and burdened as it is. For the sea of life holds many causes of dangers and utter destruction.
He who wishes to hate the world must have love toward God from the depths of his soul, and unceasing remembrance of him; for nothing else, as these do, makes one leave all things behind with joy and turn away from them as though from refuse.
If the world and all things in the world pass away, but God alone is everlasting and immortal, rejoice, all you who for his sake have left behind perishable things. And perishable are not only wealth and possessions, but also every pleasure and enjoyment, for sin is corruption. Only the commandments of God are light and life, and this is what they are called by all.
If you have caught fire, brother, and for this reason have run and come to a monastic community or to a spiritual father, then even if you are urged by him, or by the brothers who practice asceticism with you, to make use of baths or foods or other bodily comforts for the sake of rest, do not consent to this; but always be prepared for fasting, for hardship, for the strictest self-control — so that, if you are urged by your father in the Lord to partake of some consolation, you may be found obedient to him, while yet not even in this doing your own will out of personal preference; but if this is not so, you will patiently and joyfully bear that which you willingly desired to do, being profited in soul.
For by keeping this, you will be, in every respect and at all times, as one fasting and practicing self-control and having wholly renounced your own will; and not only this, but you will also preserve unquenched the flame within your heart, which compels you to despise all things.
When the demons have done everything within their power, and are not able either to shift our purpose according to God or to hinder it, then they secretly enter into those who feign piety, and through them attempt to hinder those who are struggling.
And first, as though moved, forsooth, by love and sympathy, they advise them to resort to bodily comforts, saying, 'lest the body also grow weak,' and, 'you fall into listlessness.'
If a certain earnest man, obeying them, becomes like them, they turn about and mock at his destruction; but if he is not led astray by their words, but keeps himself a stranger to all, thoughtful, and reserved in speech, they are moved to envy and do and contrive everything until they even drive him out of the monastery. For dishonorable vainglory cannot bear to see humility, which is praised, standing opposite to it.
The vainglorious man is choked with distress when he sees the humble-minded man pouring forth tears and being benefited in two ways: making God gracious to himself through them, and unintentionally drawing men to praise him.
From the moment you have wholly dedicated yourself to your spiritual father, know that you are a stranger with respect to all the things you bring in from outside — I mean human affairs and possessions — apart from him you should wish to do or perform nothing concerning them; nor should you ask him to allow you even a small or great thing, unless he himself, of his own accord, either orders you to take it or with his own hand provides it to you.
Do not give alms out of the possessions you brought in, without the approval of your father according to God; nor should you desire, through an intermediary, to have anyone receive a portion of them from him.
For it is better for you to be, and to be called, poor and a stranger, than to scatter your wealth and give to the poor while still a beginner; for it belongs to unadulterated faith to entrust everything, as it were, to the hand of God or to the will of your spiritual father.
Do not, then, ask to receive a drink of water, even if it happens that you are burning with thirst, until your spiritual father, moved of his own accord, urges you to drink.
Constrain yourself and press yourself hard in all things, persuading and saying to your reasoning: If God wills, and if you are worthy to drink, he will surely reveal it to your spiritual father, and he will say to you, Drink — and then you shall drink with a clear conscience, even if the hour is out of season.
He who has had experience of spiritual benefit and has acquired unadulterated faith, calling God to witness the truth, said: I set within myself such a resolve as never to ask my father either to eat or to drink, nor ever to partake of anything at all apart from him, until God should fully assure him and give me the command; and holding to this, he said, I never once failed of my purpose.
He who has acquired manifest faith toward his father according to God, when he looks at him, considers that he is looking at Christ; and when he is with him or follows him, he firmly believes that he is with Christ and following Christ.
Such a man will never desire to converse with anyone else, nor will he prefer any of the things of the world above the remembrance and love of that father.
He who, out of genuine disposition, loves those who revile or wrong or hate and defraud him, and prays for them, ascends in a short time to great progress.
For when this comes to pass with a perception of heart, it brings the reasoning faculty down into an abyss of humility and into fountains of tears, in which the threefold part of the soul is submerged; and it raises the mind up into the heaven of dispassion and renders it contemplative, and by the taste of the goodness that comes from there, it causes one to regard all the things of the present life as refuse, and even to partake of food and drink itself not with pleasure nor too frequently.
He showed manifest faith — both toward the place in which his guide and father stood, revering it as holy, and toward the dust of his feet, which he fervently gathered in his hands and poured upon his own head and applied to his heart, as a cure for his own passions and a cleansing of his sins — while yet not daring to approach that man himself, nor simply to touch any of his tunics or coverings without his command; and when handling something of his, he did so with fear and with reverence, judging himself unworthy not only of the sight and service of these things, but also of dwelling in his cell.
Many renounce this life and the affairs of life, but few also renounce their own wills — concerning which the divine word also rightly declares, saying, 'Many are called,' but 'few are chosen.'
Whenever you sit at table with all the brotherhood, and mentally all things are sketched before your eyes as in a shadow, and you do not perceive the sweetness of the foods, but have your whole soul astounded with wonder and filled with tears, then know that God's grace shows you these things thus because of your great humility arising from fear, so that, having seen the works of God and having been taught the powerlessness of sensible things, you may transplant your fear into love of things intelligible.
And this is spiritual knowledge, which you also hear called by that name; it is found between fear and love, and imperceptibly and without danger conveys a man from the one over into the other.
It is not possible in any other way for anyone to acquire perfect, unforfeitable love toward God, except according to the measure of spiritual knowledge; and this increases little by little in the soul that labors practically each day.
And the mind, purified of reasonings and freed from preconceptions, illumined by the mercy and grace of God, will be able, according to the measure of its illumination, worthily to behold the contemplation of beings.
Just as at night we see with sensible eyes only in that place where we light the lamp of fire, while the rest of the whole world is, as far as we are concerned, night, so too for those sleeping in the night of sins the good Master becomes a small light — He who as God is uncontainable by all, sparing our weakness.
And then, suddenly looking up, the man, beholding the nature of beings as he had never before beheld it, is astounded, and without pain spontaneously pours forth tears, by which he is cleansed and baptized with that second baptism, the baptism of which the Lord speaks through the Gospels: 'Unless one is born of water and Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.'
One must not only abstain from wicked deeds, but the ascetic must also be zealous to be free from contrary reasonings and thoughts, and always occupy himself with thoughts profitable to the soul and spiritual, so that thus he may remain free from care regarding the things of life.
Just as one who has stripped his whole body naked, if he has his eyes covered with some covering and is unwilling to lift and shake it off, cannot from the nakedness of the rest of his body alone see the light, so too the one who has despised all other things and possessions together, and has been delivered even from the passions themselves, if he does not also free the eye of his soul from worldly thoughts and wicked notions, will never see the intelligible light — our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God.
For as long a time as they are left, we shall not see; but when they are removed by the remembrance of death, then we shall clearly see the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world above.
One who is blind from birth will neither understand nor believe the power of the things written; but one who has once been deemed worthy to see will testify together that the things spoken are true.
And one who has spiritually recovered sight and sees with intelligent eyes, having beheld the true and unsetting light, when through negligence he turns back to his former blindness and is deprived of the light, he perceives well the deprivation of this, and does not fail to know whence this came to happen.
But he who remains blind from birth knows nothing by experience and by actual operation concerning these things, except perhaps something he hears by report and learns concerning what others have seen, and relates to others what he has heard, while neither he nor his hearers know concerning what things they are conversing with one another.
For to the degree that one indulges the belly, to that same degree he deprives himself of that enjoyment; but to the degree that he mortifies the body, proportionately he will be filled also with spiritual nourishment and comfort.
Let us leave behind all things upon the earth — not wealth alone and gold and the other materials of life, but let us also drive out entirely from our souls the very desire for them.
Let us hate not only the pleasures of the body, but also its irrational movements, and let us be zealous to mortify it through labors; for it is through the body that the workings of desire are set in motion and brought into action, and while it lives, it is altogether necessary that our soul be dead and hard to move — or even wholly immovable — toward every commandment of God.
Just as the flame of fire always rises upward — unless you remove the fuel from which it is kindled — so too the heart of the vainglorious man cannot be humbled; rather, if you tell him the things for his own benefit, he is lifted up all the more; for when rebuked or even admonished, he vehemently contradicts, and when praised or even encouraged, he is wickedly exalted.
For contradiction is a snare, having self-justification as its bait, by which, being deceived, we swallow the hook of sin, by which the wretched soul is wont to be seized also — as by the tongue and the throat — by the spirits of wickedness, and is at one time raised up to the height of pride, and at another time sunk into the chaos of the abyss of sin, and condemned together with those who fell from heaven.
But if he contradicts with bitterness, or even speaks with insolence, he has given the serpent strength to pour out its venom in his heart and savagely devour his inward parts, so that, being strengthened thereby each day, it makes a meal of the good correction and strength of this wretched soul; and that man lives thenceforth to sin, but is altogether dead to righteousness.
If you wish to renounce the world and be taught the evangelical way of life, do not hand yourself over to an inexperienced or passion-ridden teacher, lest instead of the evangelical way of life you be taught the diabolical way; since from good teachers come good lessons, and from bad ones, bad ones, and from wicked seed, without exception, a wicked harvest.
Everyone who does not see, yet promises to guide others, is a deceiver, and casts those who follow him into the pit of destruction, according to the word of the Lord: 'If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.'
The one who is blind toward the One is blind altogether toward all things; but the one who sees in the One is in the contemplation of all things, and yet is wholly apart from that contemplation; he comes to be in the contemplation of all things, yet is outside the things contemplated; being in the One, he sees all things, and being in all things, he sees none of all things.
He who has not clothed himself, sensibly and knowingly, in his reasoning and intelligent inner man with the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly Man and God, is still only blood and flesh, unable through reason to receive a perception of spiritual glory — just as those blind from birth cannot come to know the light of the sun through reason alone.
He who thus hears and sees and perceives knows the power of the things spoken, as one who has already put on the image of the heavenly Man and has come up to the perfect man of the fullness of Christ; and one who is thus disposed is able also to guide well, in the way of God's commandments, the flock of Christ.
But he who does not know this, and is otherwise disposed, is manifestly one whose faculties of soul are not opened and healthy — for whom it would be far better to be led than dangerously to lead.
He who believes that his own life is in the hand of his shepherd, and his death likewise, would never contradict him; but ignorance of these things begets contradiction, which is the procurer of the intelligible and eternal death.
Before the condemned man receives his sentence, a place is given him to speak in his own defense to the judge concerning what he has done; but after the disclosure of the deeds and the judge's sentence, he no longer contradicts his tormentors, whether little or much.
Before the monk enters this tribunal and discloses the things of his heart, it is perhaps permitted him to contradict — some things out of ignorance, others as one thinking to hide his own faults.
But after the disclosure of one's thoughts and sincere confession, it is not permitted ever to contradict the one who, after God, is one's judge and authority, even unto death.
For the monk who has entered this tribunal from the beginning and stripped bare the secrets of his heart is persuaded from the outset — if indeed he has acquired knowledge in any way at all — that he is worthy of countless deaths, and believes that through his obedience and humility he is redeemed from all punishment and chastisement, if indeed he truly understands the manner of the mystery.
He who keeps these things indelibly in his mind will never be shaken in heart, whether being disciplined, admonished, or reproved, since he who falls into such evils — I mean into contradiction and unbelief toward his spiritual father and teacher — is, while yet living, wretchedly brought down into the pit and depth of Hades, and becomes a house of Satan and of all his unclean power, as a son of disobedience and destruction.
I exhort you, son of obedience, to turn these things over continually in your mind, and to strive with all zeal not to fall down into the aforesaid evils of Hades, but rather to entreat God fervently each day, saying: 'O God and Lord of all, who have authority over every breath and soul, who alone are able to heal me, hearken to my supplication, wretched as I am, and by the visitation of your all-holy Spirit put to death and destroy the dragon lurking within me; and count me — poor and stripped of every virtue — worthy to fall with tears at the feet of my holy father, and draw his holy soul to compassion, that he may have mercy on me.'
Those who have laid a good foundation of faith and hope in the court of piety with fear and trembling, and have fixed their feet unshaken upon the rock of obedience to their spiritual fathers, hearing what is enjoined by them as from the mouth of God, and building upon this foundation of obedience without hesitation, in humility of soul — such immediately succeed, and there is accomplished in them this great and first achievement: the denial of self.