Homilies and Sermons 3.0–3.7

"Give heed to yourself."

God who created us gave us the use of speech so that we might reveal the counsels of our hearts to one another and, because our nature is social, each share them with his neighbor, bringing out our thoughts as from storehouses, the hidden places of the heart. If we lived as naked souls, we would at once communicate with one another by our thoughts; but since our soul does its thinking hidden under the curtain of the flesh, it needs words and names to publish what lies in its depths. So when our thought takes on a meaningful sound, it is carried across by speech as by a ferry … and passes over to the hearer. If it finds deep calm and quiet, the word comes to anchor in the ears of the learners as in calm harbors sheltered from storms; but if the noise of the hearers blows against it like a rough squall, it breaks up in mid-air and is shipwrecked. Make calm, then, for the word by your silence. For perhaps it will prove to carry some useful cargo. The word of truth is hard to catch; it can easily escape those who do not give heed, since the Spirit has arranged for it to be concise and brief, so as to express much in few words and, by its brevity, to be easily retained in the memory. For it is by nature the virtue of speech neither to hide what it signifies by obscurity nor to be superfluous and vain, flowing aimlessly around the matter. Such is the word just read to us from the books of Moses, which the diligent among you surely remember, unless perhaps its brevity slipped past your ears. The text runs thus: "Give heed to yourself, lest there be a hidden word in your heart, a lawless thing."

We human beings are prone to sins of thought. That is why he who fashioned our hearts one by one, knowing that the greater part of sin is accomplished in the impulse of the will, commanded us first of all purity in our ruling faculty. For the point at which we most readily sin he judged worthy of the greater watchfulness and care. As the more provident physicians protect the weaker parts of the body with … precautions, so the common guardian and true physician of souls [protected] with precautions that part of us which he knows is most [prone] to sin. For actions done through the body need time, opportunity, labor, helpers and other resources; but the movements of the mind work without time, are completed without toil, come about without trouble, and find every moment suitable. Some solemn person, with eyebrows raised in dignity, wearing an outward mask of self-control, sitting in the midst of those who often call him blessed for his virtue, has run off in his mind to the place of sin by a hidden movement of the heart. He has seen in his imagination the things he longs for, has pictured some unseemly encounter, and altogether, painting the pleasure vividly within himself in the secret workshop of the heart, he has committed the sin inwardly, unknown to all, until he comes "who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and disclose the counsels of hearts." Beware, then, "lest there be a hidden word in your heart, a lawless thing." For "he who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." For the actions of the body are hindered by many things, but one who sins by intention has his sin completed with the speed of thought. Where the fall is swift, then, a swift guard has been given us. For he solemnly warns, "lest there be a hidden word in your heart, a lawless thing."

[2] But let us rather go back to the very beginning of the saying. "Give heed," it says, "to yourself." Every living creature has from God, who constituted all things, resources within itself for preserving its own constitution. And if you study carefully, you will find that most of the irrational animals have an untaught aversion to what is harmful and, again, are drawn by a natural attraction to the enjoyment of what is beneficial. That is why God who trains us has given us too this great command, so that what they have by nature may come to us through the help of reason, and what the irrational creatures achieve without oversight may be accomplished by us through attention and constant watch over our thoughts; and that we may be exact guardians of the resources given us by God, fleeing sin as the irrational creatures flee poisonous foods, and pursuing righteousness as they seek out nourishing grass. Give heed to yourself, then, that you may be able to distinguish what harms from what saves.

Since heeding is twofold (one kind is to fix the bodily eyes on visible things, the other to apply the mind's power to the contemplation of incorporeal things), if we say the command refers to the activity of the eyes, we shall at once show it to be impossible. For how could anyone take in the whole of himself with his eye? The eye does not use its sight on itself: it does not reach the top of the head, it does not know the back, nor the face, nor the condition of the inward parts. It is impious, then, to say that the commands of the Spirit are impossible. It remains, therefore, to understand the precept of the activity of the mind. "Give heed to yourself," that is, look around yourself on every side. Keep the eye of the soul sleepless in guarding yourself. "You walk in the midst of snares"; the enemy's [traps] are set on every side. Look around at everything, then, "that you may be saved like a gazelle from the nooses and like a bird from the snare." For the gazelle cannot be caught in nooses because of the keenness of its sight (whence it is named for its sharp sight), and the bird with its light wing [rises] above the plot … [See that you do not prove] worse than the irrational creatures in guarding yourself, lest you be caught in the snares and become the devil's prey, "taken captive by him to do his will."

[3] "Give heed to yourself," then: that is, give heed neither to what is yours nor to what is around you, but to yourself alone. For we ourselves are one thing, what is ours another, and what is around us another. We are the soul and the mind, inasmuch as we have been made in the image of our Creator; ours are the body and the senses that work through it; around us are possessions, crafts and the rest of life's equipment. What, then, does the saying mean? Do not give heed to the flesh, nor pursue its good by every means (health, beauty, enjoyment of pleasures, long life); do not admire wealth, glory and power; and do not consider great the things that serve this temporary life and so, in your eagerness for them, neglect your own principal life. But give heed to yourself, that is, to your soul. Adorn it and care for it, so that by attention every stain that comes on it from wickedness may be removed, every disgrace of vice cleansed away, and it may be adorned and made bright with every beauty of virtue. Examine yourself, who you are; know your own nature: that your body is mortal but your soul immortal, and that our life is twofold, one proper to the flesh, quickly passing, the other akin to the soul, admitting no limit. Give heed to yourself, then, so that you neither cling to mortal things as if eternal, nor despise eternal things as if passing. Disregard the flesh, for it passes away; care for the soul, a thing immortal. [Give heed] to yourself with all exactness, so that you may know how to give each what is fitting: to the flesh nourishment and covering, to the soul the doctrines of piety, a refined way of life, the practice of virtue, the correction of the passions; neither to overfatten the body nor to be busy about a mass of flesh. For since "the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are opposed to one another," take care that you do not, by siding with the flesh, give great power to the worse. For as in the tipping of a balance … [if you weigh down one pan] you will certainly make the opposite one lighter, so too with body and soul: the increase of one necessarily brings about the diminution of the other. When the body lives in comfort and is weighed down by corpulence, the mind is necessarily inert and slack for its own activities; but when the soul is in good health and is raised by the study of good things to its own greatness, it follows that the condition of the body [is reduced] …

[4] This same command is useful to the sick and most fitting for the healthy. In sicknesses doctors urge their patients to give heed to themselves and to neglect nothing that bears on their treatment. In the same way the Word, the physician of our souls, heals by this small remedy the soul made sick by sin. Give heed to yourself, then, that you may receive help from the treatment in proportion to your fault. Is the sin great and grievous? You need much confession, bitter tears, intense vigils, unceasing fasting. Is the fault light and bearable? Let your repentance also [be equal to it]. Only give heed to yourself, that you may recognize the health and the sickness of the soul. For many, through great inattention, are gravely and incurably sick and do not even know that they are sick. Great too is the benefit of the command for those who are vigorous in action, so that the same saying both heals the sick and perfects the healthy. For each of us who are disciples of the Word is the servant of some one of the tasks assigned to us in the gospel. For in this great house, the church, there are not only vessels of every kind, of gold and silver, of wood and clay, but also crafts of every kind. For the house of God, "which is the church of the living God," has hunters, travellers, master builders, builders, farmers, shepherds, athletes, soldiers. To all of these this short saying will be fitting, producing in each both exactness in his work and zeal of purpose. Are you a hunter, sent by the Lord who said, "Behold, I will send many hunters, and they will hunt them on every mountain"? Give careful heed, then, that the prey does not escape you, so that, catching with the word of truth those made wild by wickedness, you may bring them to the Savior. Are you a traveller, like the one who prays, "Direct my steps"? Give heed to yourself, that you do not turn aside from the road, that you do not swerve to the right or to the left; walk on the royal road. [Let the master builder lay the foundation] of faith, which is Jesus Christ. Let the builder see how he builds, not wood, not hay, not straw, but gold, silver, precious stones. You shepherd, give heed that you do not neglect any of your duties: … bring back the straying, bind up the broken, heal the sick. You farmer, dig round the barren fig tree and apply what helps its … [You soldier, suffer hardship with the] gospel; fight the good fight against the spirits of wickedness, against the passions of the flesh; take up the whole armor of God; do not entangle yourself in the affairs of life, that you may please the one who enlisted you. You athlete, give heed to yourself that you do not transgress any of the athletic laws. For "no one is crowned unless he competes according to the rules." Imitate Paul, running, wrestling, boxing; and like a good boxer, keep the soul's gaze [undistracted]; protect your vital parts with your guarding hands; keep your eye fixed on your opponent. In the races, "strain forward to what lies ahead." "So run that you may obtain." In wrestling, contend against the invisible ones. The word wishes you to be such all your life: not slackening nor sleeping, but standing guard over yourself soberly and watchfully.

[5] The day would fail me if I told of the pursuits of those who work together for the gospel of Christ, and the power of the command, how well it fits all of them. Give heed to yourself: be sober, prudent, a guardian of the present, provident for the future. Do not throw away through carelessness what is already present, and do not imagine the enjoyment of things that neither are nor perhaps will be, as if they were in your hands. Is this sickness not natural to the young, through lightness of mind, to think they already have what they hope for? For whenever they find quiet or the stillness of night, they fashion for themselves baseless fantasies, carried everywhere by the facility of their thought: they imagine brilliant careers, splendid marriages, fine children, ripe old age, honors from everyone. Then, unable to stop anywhere in their hopes, they puff themselves up to the greatest things among men. They acquire fine large houses, they surround themselves with as much land as the vanity of their reasonings can cut off for them from the whole creation. Again, the wealth from these [they store] in the [storehouses] of vanity …, a multitude of servants beyond counting, civic offices, the government of nations, generalships, wars, trophies, kingship itself. Having gone through all these in the empty fictions of the mind, through their great folly they think they enjoy what they hoped for as if it were already present and lying at their feet. This is the peculiar sickness of an idle and careless soul: to see dreams while the body is awake. Repressing this vanity of mind and this inflammation of thought, and checking as with a bridle the instability of the mind, the word gives this great and wise command: "Give heed to yourself," it says: do not imagine what does not exist, but order what is present to your advantage.

I think too that the lawgiver used this exhortation to remove that other passion from our habits. Since it is easier for each of us to busy himself about other people's affairs than to examine his own, so that we may not suffer this, he says: Stop prying into so-and-so's faults; do not give your thoughts leisure to examine someone else's sickness, but give heed to yourself: that is, turn the eye of your soul to the examination of yourself. For many, as the Lord said, notice the speck in their brother's eye but do not see the beam in their own. Do not cease, then, searching yourself, whether your life goes forward according to the commandment; and do not look around outside, in case you might find some fault in someone, like that heavy and boastful Pharisee who stood justifying himself and belittling the tax collector; but do not stop examining yourself, whether you have sinned in your thoughts, whether your tongue has slipped, running ahead of your mind, whether something you did not intend was done in the works of your hands. And if you find many sins in your life (and you surely will, being human), say the words of the tax collector: "God, be merciful to me, the sinner." Give heed to yourself, then. This saying will stand by you usefully when you are prospering brilliantly and your whole life is flowing with the current, like a good counsellor [bringing to mind] human things. And again, when you are pressed by hardships, it may be sung over your heart at the right moment, so that you are neither lifted up by conceit into overweening boasting nor cast down by despair into ignoble dejection.

Are you proud of your wealth, and do you think much of your ancestors? Do you exult in your country, the beauty of your body, the honors you receive from everyone? Give heed to yourself, that you are mortal, "that you are earth, and to earth you will return." Look round at those who before you were in similar positions of splendor. Where are those who held civic power? Where are the invincible orators? Where are those who put on the festivals, the brilliant horse-breeders, the generals, the satraps, the tyrants? Is not all dust? Is not all a tale? Are not the memorials of their life [kept] in a few bones? … [Look into the tombs and see who was] the slave and who the master, who the poor man and who the rich. Distinguish, if you can, the prisoner from the king, the strong from the weak, the handsome from the ugly. If you remember your nature, then, you will never be puffed up; and you will remember yourself if you give heed to yourself.

Again, are you of low birth and without reputation, poor from a poor family, without home or city, weak, lacking your daily bread, trembling before those in power, cowering before everyone because of your humble life? "For the poor man," it says, "does not stand up to a threat." Do not, then, despair of yourself, and do not, because nothing enviable belongs to you at present, throw away all good hope; but lift up your soul to the good things already given you by God and to those laid up for later by promise. First, then, you are a human being, the only living creature fashioned by God. Does this not suffice, for one who reasons soberly, for the highest cheer: to have been formed by the very hands of God who constituted all things? Then, that having been made in the image of your Creator you can rise by a good life to equal honor with the angels? You have received an intelligent soul, by which you comprehend God, see by reason the nature of what exists, and pluck the sweetest fruit of wisdom. All the land animals, tame and wild, and all that live in the waters … are subject to you. Did you not invent the arts, found cities, and devise all that is necessary and all that serves for luxury? Are not the seas passable for you because of reason? Do not earth and sea serve your life? Do not air and heaven and the dances of the stars display their order to you? Why then are you downcast because you have no horse with a silver bridle? But you have the sun, running its swift course all day long and carrying its torch for you. You do not have the gleam of silver and gold, but you have the moon shining round you with its countless light. You have not mounted chariots inlaid with gold, but you have feet, a vehicle of your own and grown with you. Why then do you call blessed those who own a fat purse and need others' feet to get about? You do not sleep on an ivory bed, but you have the earth, more precious than much ivory, and sweet rest on it, quick sleep free from care. You do not lie under a gilded ceiling, but you have the sky, gleaming all round with the inexpressible beauty of the stars. These are human things; but there are still greater. For you God came among men; there is the distribution of the Holy Spirit, the destruction of death, the hope of resurrection, divine commands perfecting your life, the journey to God through the commandments, the kingdom of heaven made ready, crowns of righteousness prepared for those who do not shirk the labors for virtue …

If you give heed to yourself, you will find these things and still more about yourself, and you will enjoy what is present and not be downcast about what is lacking. Everywhere this command, standing by you, will give you great help. For example, has anger overpowered your reasonings, and are you carried away by rage to unseemly words and harsh, brutal deeds? If you give heed to yourself, you will check your anger like a disobedient, hard-mouthed colt, laying the stroke of reason on it like a whip. You will control your tongue and will not lay your hands on the one who provoked you. Again, do wicked desires goad your soul into frenzy and drive it into uncontrolled and licentious impulses? If you give heed to yourself and remember that this present sweetness will come to a bitter end, that the tickling which pleasure now produces in our body will beget the venomous worm that punishes us everlastingly in Gehenna, and that the burning of the flesh will become the mother of eternal fire, at once the pleasures will be put to flight and vanish, and a wonderful calm and quiet will come within the soul, as at the presence of a sober mistress. Give heed to yourself, then, and know that one part of the soul is rational and intelligent, the other passible and irrational. To the former it belongs by nature to rule; to the latter to obey and be persuaded by reason. Never, then, allow the mind to be enslaved and become the slave of the passions, nor again permit the passions to rise up against reason and bring the government of the soul round to themselves. In short, an exact consideration of yourself will be sufficient to lead you by the hand even to the knowledge of God. For if you give heed to yourself, you will have no need to trace the Creator from the structure of the universe, but in yourself, … … as in a small world, you will see the wisdom of your Creator. Think of God as incorporeal from the incorporeal soul within you, not circumscribed by place; since your mind too does not primarily dwell in a place, but comes to be in a place through its union with the body. Believe that God is invisible, considering your own soul, since it too is not grasped by bodily eyes, nor is it contained in any bodily form, but is known only from its activities. So do not seek in the case of God either to perceive him with the eyes, but entrusting faith to the mind, have an intelligible apprehension of him.

Marvel at the craftsman, how he bound the power of your soul to the body so that it reaches to its very extremities and brings the most widely separated members into one concord and fellowship. Consider what power the soul gives to the flesh, what sympathy rises from the flesh to the soul; how the body receives life from the soul, and the soul receives pains from the body; what storehouses of learning it has; why the addition of what comes later does not darken the knowledge of what came before, but the memories are unconfused and distinct, as if engraved on a bronze pillar in the ruling part of the soul …; how, slipping down to the passions of the flesh, it loses its own beauty, and how again, cleansed of the disgrace of vice, it runs back through virtue to the likeness of its Creator … in the structure of the body too, and marvel how fitting a dwelling the supreme craftsman made it for the rational soul. He fashioned man alone of the living creatures upright, so that from the very shape you might know that your life is of heavenly kinship. For all the quadrupeds look toward the earth and incline toward the belly; but for man the upward gaze toward heaven is ready, so that he may not be occupied with the belly nor with the passions below the belly, but have his whole impulse toward the journey upward. Then, placing the head at the highest point, he set in it the most valuable of the senses. There are sight and hearing and taste and smell, all housed near one another. And so, [though set] in a small space, [none hinders] the activity of its neighbor. The eyes have taken the highest watchtower, so that none of the parts of the body may stand in their way, but sitting under a slight projection of the brows they extend straight out from their high position. Again, the hearing is not opened in a straight line but takes in the sounds in the air through a spiral passage. This too is of the highest wisdom: that the voice may pass through unhindered, or rather resound the more as it is turned in the windings, while nothing that falls in from outside can hinder the sense. Learn the nature of the tongue, how soft and supple it is, and sufficient by the variety of its movement for every use of speech. The teeth are at once instruments of the voice, giving the tongue firm support, and servants of nourishment, some cutting it, others grinding it. And so, going through everything with fitting reason, and learning about the drawing of air through the lungs, the keeping of heat in the heart, the organs of digestion, the channels of the blood, from all these you will see the unsearchable wisdom of him who made you, so that you too will say with the prophet, "Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me." Give heed to yourself, then, that you may give heed to God, to whom be glory and might for ever and ever. Amen.