The Conferences 14.9–14.19

“Therefore, if you care to reach the light of spiritual knowledge, not through the vice of empty boasting but for the sake of cleansing, first be inflamed with desire for that beatitude of which it is said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” so that you may also reach that of which the angel speaks to Daniel: “But those who are learned shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who instruct many in righteousness like the stars for ever and ever,” and in another prophet: “Light for yourselves the light of knowledge while there is time.” Keeping, then, the diligence in reading which I perceive you have, hasten with all zeal to grasp fully, as soon as possible, practical, that is, ethical discipline. For without it that contemplative purity we have spoken of cannot be grasped. It is attained, as a kind of reward after many wages of works and labors, only by those who have been made perfect not by the words of others who teach but by the virtue of their own actions. For gaining understanding not from meditation on the law but from the fruit of their work, they sing with the psalmist: “From your commandments I have understood,” and, all their passions refined away, they say with confidence: “I will sing, and I will understand in the blameless way.” For he who sings will understand what is sung who walks in the blameless way with the step of a pure heart. And therefore, if you wish to prepare in your heart the holy tabernacle of spiritual knowledge, cleanse yourselves from the contagion of all vices and strip yourselves of the cares of the present world. For it is impossible for a soul occupied even slightly with worldly distractions to merit the gift of knowledge, or to become a begetter of spiritual meanings or retentive of sacred readings. Observe, therefore, first of all, and especially you, John, whose still youthful age favors keeping what I am about to say, that you impose the greatest silence on your mouth, lest your zeal for reading and the labor of your desire be made void by vain elation. For this is the first entrance into practical discipline: to receive the instructions and sayings of all the elders with an attentive heart and, as it were, a mute mouth, and, storing them carefully in your breast, to hasten to carry them out rather than to teach them. From the latter the ruinous presumption of vainglory will spring up, but from the former the fruits of spiritual knowledge. So never dare to put forward anything in the conference of the elders unless either ignorance that would be harmful or the need for necessary knowledge drives you to ask, as some, distracted by love of vainglory, pretend to ask about what they know very well in order to show off their learning. For it is impossible for one who applies himself to reading with the purpose of gaining human praise to merit the gift of true knowledge. For whoever is bound by this passion must also be bound by other vices, especially pride; and so, overthrown in the practical and ethical contest, he will by no means attain the spiritual knowledge that is born of it. Be, then, in all things “quick to hear, but slow to speak,” lest there fall on you what is noted by Solomon: “If you see a man quick in words, know that a fool has more hope than he”; and do not presume to teach anyone in words what you have not first done in deed. For our Lord also established by his example that we must keep this order, of whom it is said: “what Jesus began to do and to teach.” Beware, then, lest, leaping to teach before acting, you be counted among those of whom the Lord speaks to the disciples in the gospel: “What they tell you, keep and do; but do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with their finger.” For if he who breaks one of the least commandments and teaches men so “will be called least in the kingdom of heaven,” it certainly follows that he who neglects many and greater ones and presumes to teach will be held no longer least in the kingdom of heaven but greatest in the punishment of hell. And therefore you must beware of being urged to teach by the examples of those who, having acquired skill in disputation and fluency of speech, because they can discourse ornately and at length on whatever they wish, are believed to possess spiritual knowledge by those who do not know how to discern its force and nature. For it is one thing to have facility of tongue and elegance of speech, and another to enter into the veins and marrow of the heavenly sayings and to contemplate the deep and hidden mysteries with the purest eye of the heart; this no human learning or worldly erudition will possess, but only purity of mind through the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

“You must hasten, then, if you would reach the true knowledge of the Scriptures, first to acquire an unshaken humility of heart, which will lead you, through the perfection of love, not to the knowledge that puffs up but to that which enlightens. For it is impossible for an unclean mind to obtain the gift of spiritual knowledge. And therefore avoid with every precaution that, through your zeal for reading, there should arise for you not the light of knowledge nor that everlasting glory which is promised through the enlightenment of teaching, but instruments of perdition from the vanity of arrogance. Next, you must strive in every way, all anxiety and earthly thought driven out, to give yourself assiduously, or rather continually, to sacred reading, until continual meditation imbues your mind and forms it, as it were, into its own likeness, making of it in a way the ark of the covenant, which has within it the two tablets of stone, that is, the lasting firmness of the twofold Testament; and the golden urn, that is, a pure and sincere memory, which keeps with lasting tenacity the manna hidden in it, that is, the everlasting and heavenly sweetness of spiritual meanings and of that bread of angels; and also the rod of Aaron, that is, the saving standard of our high and true High Priest, Jesus Christ, always putting forth leaves with the greenness of immortal remembrance. For this is the rod which, after it was cut off from the root of Jesse, grows green again, having been put to death, more vigorously. All these are covered by the two cherubim, that is, by the fullness of historical and spiritual knowledge; for cherubim is interpreted “multitude of knowledge.” They will continually protect the mercy seat of God, that is, the calm of your breast, and will overshadow it against all the assaults of the spiritual forces of wickedness. And so your mind, carried forward not only into the ark of the divine covenant but also into the royal priesthood, and in a way absorbed in spiritual disciplines through its indissoluble love of purity, will fulfil that command given to the high priest by the lawgiver: “And he shall not go out from the holy places, lest he pollute the sanctuary of God,” that is, his heart, in which the Lord promises that he will always dwell, saying: “I will dwell in them and walk among them.” Therefore the sequence of the sacred Scriptures must be diligently committed to memory and ceaselessly reviewed. For this continual meditation will give us a twofold fruit: first, that while the attention of the mind is occupied in reading and preparing the readings, it cannot be taken captive by any snares of harmful thoughts; and second, that the things which we have gone over with very frequent repetition while we labored to commit them to memory, but which at that time we could not understand because the mind was occupied, we afterward see more clearly when, freed from the allurements of all actions and sights, we turn them over silently, especially in meditation by night; so that the understanding of most hidden meanings, which we did not perceive even with the faintest notion while awake, is revealed to us while we rest and are sunk, as it were, in the stupor of sleep.

“As the renewal of our mind grows through this pursuit, the face of the Scriptures too will begin to be renewed, and the beauty of a more sacred understanding will in a way advance with the one who advances. For their appearance is adapted to the capacity of human understanding, and will appear earthly to the carnal and divine to the spiritual, so that those to whom it seemed before wrapped in thick clouds can neither grasp its subtlety nor bear its brightness. But so that what we are trying to establish may be made clearer by some example, let it be enough to bring forward one testimony of the law, by which we may prove that all the heavenly commandments extend to every kind of person according to the measure of our state. It is written in the law: “You shall not commit sexual immorality.” This is kept to one’s profit, according to the simple sound of the letter, by a man still bound by the passions of carnal obscenities. But by one who has already withdrawn from this filthy act and impure disposition, the same thing must be observed spiritually: namely, that he withdraw not only from the ceremonies of idols but also from all the superstition of the pagans, and from the observance of auguries, omens, all signs, days, and times, or at least that he not be entangled in conjectures from certain words or names, which pollute the sincerity of our faith. For by this sexual immorality Jerusalem too is said to have been defiled, “who committed sexual immorality on every high hill and under every leafy tree,” and whom the Lord again rebukes through the prophet: “Let the augurs of the heavens stand and save you, who gazed at the stars and reckoned the months, to announce from them what would come upon you.” Of this sexual immorality the Lord also says elsewhere, rebuking them: “A spirit of sexual immorality has deceived them, and they have committed sexual immorality against their God.” But whoever has withdrawn from this twofold sexual immorality will have a third to avoid, which is contained in the superstitions of the law and of Judaism. Of these the apostle says: “You observe days and months and times and years,” and again: “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle.” There is no doubt that these things were said of the superstitions of the law, and whoever falls into them, having without doubt committed adultery against Christ, does not deserve to hear from the apostle: “For I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ”; but what follows will be directed to him by the voice of the same apostle: “But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus.” And if he escapes the uncleanness of this sexual immorality too, he will have a fourth, which is committed by the adultery of heretical doctrine. Of this the same blessed apostle says: “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among yourselves men will arise speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” And whoever has been able to avoid this too, let him beware lest by a subtler sin he fall into the vice of sexual immorality which consists in the wandering of the thoughts; for every thought, not only a shameful one but even an idle one and one departing even slightly from God, is reckoned by the perfect man as a most unclean sexual immorality.

At this, first moved by a hidden compunction and then groaning deeply, I said: “All these things that you have set out so abundantly have brought me greater increases of despair than I had borne until now. For besides those general captivities of the soul, by which I do not doubt that all the weak are assailed from outside, a special hindrance to salvation is added through that knowledge of literature which I seem to have touched slightly. In it either the insistence of my tutor or the attention of continual reading has so steeped me that now my mind, as if infected by those poems, meditates even at the time of prayer on those trifles of fables and stories of wars in which it was steeped from childhood by the first rudiments of study. While I sing psalms or pray for the pardon of sins, either the shameless memory of poems is suggested to me, or the image of warring heroes turns before my eyes, as it were; and the imagination of such phantasms, always mocking me, so prevents my mind from aspiring to heavenly contemplation that it cannot be driven out even by daily weeping.”

Nesteros: “From this very thing from which your greatest despair of purification arises, a quick and effective remedy can also spring up, if you are willing to transfer to the reading and meditation of the spiritual Scriptures the same diligence and persistence which you say you had in those secular studies. For your mind must be occupied with those poems as long as it does not acquire, with like zeal and assiduity, other things to turn over within itself, and bring forth spiritual and divine things in place of those fruitless and earthly ones. When it has conceived these deeply and profoundly and been nourished on them, the former can gradually be driven out or wholly abolished. For the human mind cannot be empty of all thoughts, and therefore, as long as it is not occupied with spiritual pursuits, it must be entangled in what it learned before. For as long as it has nothing to which to run back and on which to exercise its unwearied movements, it must fall back upon those things in which it was steeped from infancy, and always turn over what it took in by long use and meditation. So, that this spiritual knowledge may be strengthened in you with lasting firmness, and that you may not enjoy it only temporarily, like those who touch it not by their own effort but through others’ reports and perceive it, as it were, by the smell of the air, but that it may be stored up in your senses, as it were built into your very being, seen and handled, you must keep this with all care: even if you happen to hear brought forward in a conference things you know very well, do not receive them with scorn and disdain because they are already known to you, but commend them to your heart with the eagerness with which the desirable words of salvation ought either to be poured unceasingly into our ears or continually brought forth from our mouth. For however often the narration of holy things is repeated, satiety will never produce disgust in a soul that has a thirst for true knowledge; but, receiving them every day as new and desired, the more often it drinks them, the more eagerly it will hear or speak them, and will gain confirmation of the knowledge received from their repetition rather than any disgust from frequent conference. For it is a clear sign of a lukewarm and proud mind if it receives with disdain and negligence the medicine of saving words, even when applied with the zeal of great assiduity. For “a soul that is full mocks at honeycombs, but to a needy soul even bitter things seem sweet.” If, then, these things have been carefully received, stored in the recess of the mind, and sealed with silence, afterward, like certain sweet-smelling wines that “gladden the heart of man,” when they have been matured by the gray hairs of understanding and the age of patience, they will be brought forth with great fragrance from the vessel of your breast, and like a perennial fountain they will overflow from the veins of experience and the watered channels of the virtues, and will pour out continual streams as from an abyss of your heart. For there will come to pass in you what is said in Proverbs to one who has accomplished this in deed: “Drink waters from your own vessels, and from the spring of your own wells. Let the waters of your spring overflow for you, and let your waters pass through your streets”; and according to the prophet Isaiah: “You shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters shall not fail. And the places desolate for ages shall be built in you; you shall raise up the foundations of generation after generation; and you shall be called the builder of hedges, turning the paths into rest.” For that blessedness will come to you which the same prophet promises: “And the Lord will not make your teacher fly away from you any more, and your eyes shall see your teacher, and your ears shall hear the word of one admonishing behind your back: This is the way, walk in it, neither to the right nor to the left.” And so it will come about that not only every direction and meditation of your heart, but even all the wanderings and roamings of your thoughts, will be for you a holy and unceasing rumination on the divine law.

“But, as we said before, it is impossible for anyone without experience either to know or to teach these things. For how will one who is not even capable of receiving be fit to hand on? Even if he presumes to teach something about them, his words will certainly be ineffective and useless and will reach only the ears of his hearers; they will not be able to penetrate their hearts, betrayed as they are by the idleness of his works and the fruitlessness of his vanity, since they are brought forth not from the treasure of a good conscience but from the empty presumption of boasting. For it is impossible for an unclean soul, however much it toils at persistent reading, to obtain spiritual knowledge. For no one pours a noble ointment or the best honey or any precious liquid into a foul and corrupt vessel. For a jar once steeped in horrible stenches more easily contaminates even the most fragrant myrrh than takes on any of its sweetness or charm, since clean things are corrupted much more quickly than corrupt things are cleansed. So too the vessel of our breast, unless it has first been cleansed from every most foul contagion of the vices, will not deserve to receive that ointment of blessing of which it is said through the prophet: “Like the ointment on the head, which ran down upon the beard of Aaron, which ran down to the border of his garment,” nor will it keep undefiled that spiritual knowledge and the words of the Scriptures, which are “sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.” For “what partnership has righteousness with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? And what agreement has Christ with Belial?””

Germanus: “This definition seems to us by no means supported by truth or based on probable reasoning. For since it is plain that all who either do not accept the faith of Christ at all or corrupt it by the impious perversity of their doctrines are of unclean heart, how is it that many Jews and heretics, and even catholics entangled in various vices, have attained perfect knowledge of the Scriptures and boast of the greatness of their spiritual learning, while on the other hand a countless multitude of holy men, whose hearts have been cleansed from all contagion of sins, content with the simple devotion of faith, know nothing of the secrets of deeper knowledge? How then will this statement stand, which ascribes spiritual knowledge to purity of heart alone?”

Nesteros: “One who does not carefully weigh all the words of a statement that has been made does not rightly examine the force of a definition. For we said before that such people have only skill in disputation and ornament of speech, but cannot enter into the veins of the Scriptures and the secrets of spiritual meanings. For true knowledge is possessed only by true worshipers of God; and that people certainly does not have it to whom it is said: “Hear, foolish people, who have no heart; who have eyes and do not see, and ears and do not hear,” and again: “Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you may not serve as priest to me.” For since in Christ “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are said to be “hidden,” how can one who has scorned to find Christ, or who, having found him, blasphemes him with sacrilegious mouth, or who at least pollutes the catholic faith with unclean works, be believed to have attained true knowledge? For “the spirit of God will flee from deceit, and does not dwell in a body subject to sins.” Spiritual knowledge, then, is not reached otherwise than by this order, which one of the prophets elegantly expressed: “Sow for yourselves unto righteousness, reap the hope of life, light for yourselves the light of knowledge.” First, then, we must sow unto righteousness, that is, spread practical perfection by works of righteousness; then we must reap the hope of life, that is, gather the fruits of the spiritual virtues by expelling the carnal vices; and so we shall be able to light for ourselves the light of knowledge. The psalmist also decrees that this order must be kept, saying: “Blessed are the blameless in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who search his testimonies.” For he did not first say, “Blessed are those who search his testimonies,” and afterward add, “Blessed are the blameless in the way,” but first he said, “Blessed are the blameless in the way,” showing clearly by this that no one can rightly come to search out God’s testimonies unless he first walks blameless in the way of Christ by his practical way of life. Those you have mentioned, then, do not possess this knowledge, which the unclean cannot have, but pseudōnymos, that is, knowledge falsely so called, of which the blessed apostle says: “O Timothy, guard the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words and the oppositions of knowledge falsely so called,” which in Greek is tas antitheseis tēs pseudōnymou gnōseōs. Of those, then, who seem to acquire some image of knowledge, or of those who, though they apply themselves diligently to reading the sacred books and memorizing the Scriptures, do not give up carnal vices, it is elegantly expressed in Proverbs: “Like a golden ring in the nose of a swine, so is beauty to an ill-conducted woman.” For what does it profit anyone to acquire the ornament of the heavenly words and that most precious beauty of the Scriptures, if by clinging to filthy works or thoughts he breaks it, as if by rooting in most unclean earth, or pollutes it in the muddy wallowing of his lusts? For it will come about that what is usually an adornment to those who use it rightly not only cannot adorn these people but is even soiled with the filth of greater mire. For “praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner,” to whom it is said through the prophet: “Why do you declare my righteous ordinances and take my covenant in your mouth?” Of souls of this kind, which by no means steadily possess the fear of the Lord (of which it is said: “The fear of the Lord is discipline and wisdom”) and yet try to acquire the sense of the Scriptures by continual meditation on them, it is quite properly said in Proverbs: “What use are riches to a fool? For one without heart cannot possess wisdom.” But this true and spiritual knowledge is so far removed from that worldly erudition which is polluted by the filth of carnal vices that we know it has sometimes flourished wonderfully in some who were ineloquent and almost illiterate. This is proved most clearly in the apostles and in many holy men too, who did not spread out in an empty luxuriance of leaves but were bent down by the true fruits of spiritual knowledge; of them it is written in the Acts of the Apostles: “And seeing the boldness of Peter and John, and finding that they were unlettered and ignorant men, they marveled.” And therefore, if you care to reach its unfading fragrance, labor first with all your efforts to obtain from the Lord the purity of chastity. For no one in whom the disposition of carnal passions, and especially of sexual immorality, still rules can possess spiritual knowledge. For “wisdom will rest in a good heart,” and: “He who fears the Lord will find knowledge with righteousness.” The blessed apostle also teaches that spiritual knowledge is reached by the order we have described. For when he wished not only to compose a list of all his virtues but also to set out their order, to express which follows which or which gives birth to which, after some others he added: “In vigils, in fastings, in chastity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned.” By this linking of virtues he wished to teach us most plainly that from vigils and fasts we come to chastity, from chastity to knowledge, from knowledge to long-suffering, from long-suffering to kindness, from kindness to the Holy Spirit, and from the Holy Spirit to the rewards of unfeigned love. When, then, by this discipline and this order you too have come to spiritual knowledge, you will without doubt have, as we have said, not a barren or idle teaching but a living and fruitful one; and the most abundant rain of the Holy Spirit following will make fruitful the seed of the saving word that you have committed to the hearts of your hearers, and, according to what the prophet has promised, “rain will be given to your seed wherever you sow in the land, and the bread of the fruits of your land will be most abundant and rich for you.”

“Beware also lest, when riper age has brought you forward to teach, you should, led astray by love of vainglory, thrust these things, which you have learned not so much by reading as by the sweat of experience, indiscriminately upon unclean people, and incur what the most wise Solomon forbade: “Do not bring the ungodly into the pastures of the righteous, and do not be led astray by fullness of the belly. For delights do not profit a fool, nor is wisdom needed where sense is lacking. For he is rather led by folly, since a hard servant will not be corrected by words; for even if he understands, he will not obey,” and: “Say nothing in the ears of a fool, lest he mock at your wise words,” and: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you.” You should therefore, covering the mysteries of spiritual meanings from such people, sing effectively: “I have hidden your words in my heart, that I may not sin against you.” But perhaps you will say: “And to whom are the mysteries of the divine Scriptures to be dispensed?” The most wise Solomon teaches you: “Give strong drink to those who are in sorrow, and wine to drink to those who are in grief, that they may forget their poverty and remember their sorrows no more”; that is, to those who are weighed down with grief and sorrow in repentance for their former deeds, pour out abundantly the joy of spiritual knowledge like wine, “which gladdens the heart of man,” and refresh them with the fullness of the saving word, lest perhaps, sunk in continual grief and deadly despair, such people be swallowed up by overmuch sorrow. But of those who are in lukewarmness and negligence and are stung by no grief of heart, it is said: “For he who is easygoing and without grief will be in want.” Avoid, then, with all the caution you can, lest, distracted by love of vainglory, you should be unable to share in the lot of him whom the prophet praises, “who has not put out his money at interest.” For whoever dispenses the words of God (of which it is said: “The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried by fire, proved, purified from the earth seven times”) for love of human praise puts out his money at interest, and will deserve for it not only no praise but even punishment. For he chose to squander the Lord’s money for this reason, that he himself might gain a temporal reward from it, not that the Lord, as it is written, might receive his own with interest when he comes.

“It is clear that the teaching of spiritual things is ineffective for two reasons: either the one who teaches, commending things he has not experienced, tries to instruct his hearer with an empty sound of words, or else the hearer, worthless and full of vices, does not receive with his hardened heart the saving and holy teaching of a spiritual man. Of these it is said through the prophet: “For the heart of this people has been blinded, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and they have closed their eyes, lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I should heal them.”

“Sometimes, however, by the generous liberality of God our dispenser, “who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” it is granted that one who has not shown himself worthy of gospel preaching by a blameless way of life obtains the grace of spiritual teaching for the salvation of many. But in what ways the gifts of healing for driving out demons are also granted by the Lord, it follows that we should explain in a similar discussion, which let us reserve for the evening, rising now for our meal, since whatever is taught gradually and without excessive bodily strain is always taken in more effectively by the heart.”