Voluntary Poverty (To the Deaconess Magna)

Earlier, writing a discourse to those who pursue the monastic life rather carelessly, we reproached them enough, showing how far they had fallen short of exactness by their zeal for vain things, clinging to possessions and entangled not least in the distractions of the life of the lovers of wealth. But now, since we must also praise the zeal of those among you, and of those like you, who have kept the rule of having nothing unbroken as it was from the beginning, it is necessary to say what things plainly urge those who love the lawful way of life to choose it, and guide them to the choice of what is fitting. For as the condemnation of what is bad shames those caught in it and turns them, repenting, toward the better, so the praise of what is good rouses even the sluggish to make it their own, enticing them with the longing for good repute and drawing them eagerly to itself, until, having weighed with sober reasoning the uselessness of human things, they see the truly profitable glory with which God glorifies those who live godly lives: now making them manifest by the rewards of their labors, and crowning them at the time of judgment before the whole rational creation, when, judging justly, he renders to each, not according to the mistaken opinion held here, but as holiness stands according to the very truth of the deeds done. For if to those who out of sympathy pitied their kinsman worn down by want he says, “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you,” how will he not speak the same words to those who gave little to the flesh, and only so much as the need of living compelled, but spent most of their time persevering in the occupation of the soul, and made it their care that the soul be presented pure and unstained by filthy thoughts to him who is to judge the secrets of the heart and to examine the thoughts, how each stands, whether it has made the troubling passions its own or become estranged from them? For as those are worthy of acceptance by the Judge for their compassion toward their kin, so these are alike worthy for their philosophy toward the things that entice. For as the merciful are not grieved when their wealth is lessened by sharing it each day, but rather rejoice as it is spent on the needy, so desire for present things does not [grieve] those who have nothing, but makes them leap and be glad, both because they look down on what others think precious, and because, freed from occupation with vain things, they attend with free reasoning to the … of all better things, enjoying freedom from the things in which most people have chosen an unprofitable and useless slavery.

Let no one think that the achievement of having nothing is free of toil and gained with ease. For by having nothing we do not now mean involuntary poverty, which, arising from necessity, afflicts the mind as it considers its condition unwanted, but the self-chosen contentment with little that belongs to the will: it is gained by the authority of reason, yet it too brings toil for a while, until the practice becomes a habit and shows to be bearable what for a long time seemed hard and difficult to accomplish. For alike a comely appearance of body and splendid material of wealth [stir] desire to longing, and each [calls for] a noble soul, and …

Worthy of great admiration, and above all praise that words can give, are those who outstripped even these in exactness and came to stand within the bounds of perfect having-nothing. For they draw those now living to zeal, as these choose to imitate them, and they guard them against arrogance over the good deeds they do, since they are eager to walk in their footsteps and yet fall short of their renunciation. For just as surpassing others in virtue is a source of boasting and conceit, so not having outstripped them keeps the mind humbled, … either grieving over where it fell short, or not lifted up over where it seemed to make progress. None of those now living reaches, or has reached, the virtue of the saints of old, whose way of life is recorded as without house, without hearth, without clothing: always wandering from place to place, eating gladly whatever food came their way, lying down wherever and however it happened, and having many who plotted against them and persecuted them, not, as at present, many who honor and attend them. For Paul presents them in a description when he said, “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they died by the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, of whom the world was not worthy.” For even if one of those now living imagines himself their equal in honor by his purpose, and seems perhaps to have emulated them in his deeds, he falls short, since he is courted for the virtue for which they were in danger, and he has the glory that follows it as a consolation for his labors; but those blessed men were wholly deprived of it, and found the provisions of good repute to be occasions of persecutions and of cruel deaths. They had no roof and no storehouse, no bed, no table; sheepskins and hair were their clothing; the food of the present day was improvised, and the next day was free of care. For by the philosophy of their purpose they anticipated the Lord's exhortation, in which he says, “Look at the birds of the sky: they do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them.” And again, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they do not toil or spin.” They knew that what is needed follows upon the body's need, when there is the will to please God who supplies these things, and when the possession of the kingdom of heaven is sought first …

But for us food is prepared long in advance, and clothing suited to the seasons, and a house that keeps off every annoyance of cold and heat alike; and the acquisition of money and property and of the rest of superfluous matter is not neglected. How can our ways be equal to theirs? They had no thought of bodily imaginings, but a pure longing for divine things, always lifting them on high, persuaded them to forget what is thought splendid on earth. They had nothing on earth except the body, which nature held down below, heavy by nature and hard to carry along on the journey upward, since they longed to have even it with them where they lived with the mind, reckoning up the good things in heaven, and never torn away from the delight and benefit there, unless nature turned them back again to the body's need, compelled out of reverence for him who joined them to it to take care of the body, though they knew from experience that estrangement from it was profitable and fitting. For every earnest person truly judges even a brief occupation with the service of the flesh to be a loss, reckoning that the time has been well spent which he spent on the work of better things, knowing that he will find abiding there the labor that has been spent on the soul's progress, not the labor spent on caring for the body's service, which gave way when the occasion of need passed, having relieved the necessity, and which, once the need is over, no longer exists: useful yesterday, and today not present.

For such is the body's need: it flows and runs past, from the past into the present and from the present into the future, providing no forethought; it heals what is present and is useless for the want that follows. But the labor of virtue is a seed whose fruit never fails: in the very work it gladdens the conscience with the expectation of enjoyment, and after the departure from here it is found seemly and useful for the age to come; and it does not make even the past unprofitable, unless an irrational passion empties what has been gathered. And what has not yet come into act, but exists in purpose, is counted equal to what has been done, since what has been firmly decided is trusted to be truly accomplished, on the strength of the promises already made. For if what the mind earnestly intended did not have time suited to action and did not get as far as the deed, then by the just judgment of the divine justice what was done to please God is judged a deed fully accomplished, accomplished as the eagerness intended, had not some necessity prevented the eagerness from coming to completion. And it was truly just, and worthy of the divine verdict that judges hidden things, to give that person the reward for whose sake he undertook the work, and toward which his aim looked from beginning to end, not passing from one aim to another. For opposites are often cut short by opposites, and what was set forth is moved over into the opposite rank: when what is done for human glory is corrected by sober reasoning as having lost its [proper] tension, and what was set forth for the sake of the good itself no longer follows its former aim when a vainglorious thought comes in, but … to the opposite, and wholly changes over to it. For in this way people shift in turn from worse to better and from this to worse, sometimes to their salvation, sometimes to their ruin, exchanging one for the other: toward what is profitable out of zeal, toward what is not fitting out of laziness …

Therefore to those who set out to do good the Lord says by way of exhortation, “When you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your [Father] in secret.” And again, “When you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you,” bidding us refuse display as harmful. And the prophet, saying that “he who gathers wages has gathered them into a purse with holes,” shows how by the corrupt aim of a mania for glory the labor vanishes, slipping through as through a purse, when the mind is not secured by modest thinking. For modest thinking is a treasure, a stronghold that stands firm on every side, “where moth and rust do not destroy, nor thieves break in and steal”: the moth means the conceit born within, which destroys the good things from which it arose, and the thieves the praises that come in from outside and plunder all at once, by arrogance and pride, the treasures gathered by virtue's great toil. For as the moth consumes the material from which it received its existence, and as robbers digging through walls [carry off] what was carefully gathered, so a thought moved to elation over good works destroys what has been acquired; and the praises of people who crowd and jostle together [puff up] light minds and leave none of the good things within, but drive out through the opening of the ears what was rightly [stored]. But may no one be so mastered by this passion, nor so stupefied by the longing for vainglory, that he suffers the total loss of his own labors. Let him be sober even while the wall is being dug through, and … the plotters before the loss, and destroy them, striking them in the very breach made by the thought, before … makes the thought into action.

For this is what the law clearly declares when it says, “If the thief is found in the breach, and is struck and dies, it shall not be murder; but if the sun has risen on him, it shall be reckoned murder.” It shows that the mind's attachment to bad thoughts, like a vision in the night, has pardon. For every sudden seizure by the enemies through a sudden assault is truly a deception and needs pardon; but after the plunderer has long been practising, and after clear … recognition of the one who does harm, punishment fittingly follows. For the fault then belongs to the will: it is a self-chosen assent, not the involuntary habit of ignorance; and whoever has consented to an evil that is plain becomes justly liable, because of his attachment to the enemy, as though in the light of the sun, and because he did not fight down with all his strength the enemy who had appeared. For since the breach has its beginning in the very assault of the harmful thoughts, they ought to have been struck there and to have fallen dead in the battle. In this way his life would thereafter have been free of war, and his life an ordinance of gladness, rejoicing in the enjoyment of the things whose loss he came close to lamenting bitterly. Such too was the one who said, “… from the mouth of the beasts I tore out two legs, and the lobe of an ear,” taking these before they were swallowed and recovering them for himself. For whether it was a thought of desire for earthly things, entangling the feet and hindering for a time the progress toward better things, or a word able to corrupt good character through [bad company], he does not let these, like beasts holding the snatched limbs in their gaping jaws, do harm, but forestalls their outrage with an earnest hand and with sobriety prevents the harm that is close at hand.

For the one who has begun to be caught by a passion, being close to it, is in no less danger than the one who is in the beast's mouth. He too was near to being swallowed, had he not kept awake and sharply [escaped] the destruction that held him. Hence those skilled in the shepherd's art, David and [Jacob], who prided themselves on their steadfastness in it: the one says, “I seized the bear by the throat, and [snatched] from the lion,” clearly restoring what was unharmed to life; the other, “What was taken by beasts I did not bring [to you; I repaid] from my own what was stolen by day and what was stolen by night,” for he let none of the irrational and brutish desires come to deadly action; and if ever something of the more indifferent kind, which carries no great danger, was stolen through the wandering of the mind, such as saying something unfitting or hearing another say it, he at once repaid what was stolen out of his own store, filling up the fault of his neglect with intense zeal, and by correction quickly making it count again in the list of the other good things, so that the whole body of virtue might be sound and faultless together, lacking nothing, and not maimed in any of the members that make up its natural comeliness. And Peter, preferred above the choir of the apostles and always their leader, who both netted fish with the casting-net and caught men alive by grace, speaking of the beast and its madness for food, says, “Your adversary the devil, as a lion, [prowls around,] seeking whom he may devour.”

Let us learn exactly that a person first comes into the lion's mouth through desire, and is then fitted both for being swallowed and for getting out. Thereafter, by neglecting himself [or not], he becomes the cause of one or the other, choosing by the authority of his will whatever he wishes, and becoming of his own accord one of the portion of those who are saved or of those who perish. For this reason the great Paul too, who saw clearly the designs of the enemy and was not ignorant of his arts, devised for the ruin of the simpler sort, commands that the one who is in the lion's mouth through great despondency be drawn out by exhortation and much encouragement, saying, “lest such a one be swallowed up by excessive sorrow”; for such a person is near both to getting out of there, if he is consoled by the comfort of those who console his despondency, and to being swallowed, if he is overlooked and despairs of himself. Since, then, the road that leads to the kingdom has so much difficulty, being narrow and bordered on both sides by cliffs, what need is there for people weighed down with burdens of money, or gaping after those who praise or blame them, to try to travel it, since it is impossible? For the cares of material things distract and quickly drag one down; and a readiness to look toward glory or dishonor causes a fall on this side or that, since wandering of the mind toward anything at all makes the slip easy, because the eye is not kept busy where safety demands much care and wants it present and sober. For even so the journey on the narrow way is scarcely made without stumbling and presents great difficulty. For if, according to the Lord's word, narrow and hard pressed is the way that leads to life, then surely the one who goes along it must be lightly equipped and wakeful, neither weighed down by a burden and shifting it as he walks, nor looking about carelessly this way and that. For to both the danger is great and very grievous, since any turning aside carries one down into the gaping pit, to destruction.

For this reason both the Lord and Paul sometimes speak of having nothing: “Do not acquire gold, nor silver, nor [copper] in your belts”; and, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow”; and, “Having food and covering, with these we shall be content”; and, “No one serving as a soldier entangles himself in the affairs of life.” And sometimes they counsel us not to be excited about glory, saying, “When you fast, do not be gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so that they may appear to people to be fasting”; and, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray at the street corners, so that they may be seen by people”; and, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” For one so disposed is not so much lifted up by what he has achieved as humbled by his anxiety to complete what lies before him; he does not turn back to [what is behind], since things done often puff up the lighter-minded to arrogance, while what still demands work restrains the mind by the uncertainty whether it will reach its end, grieving it before it happens. Hence the Lord too, [making] those who had reached the summit of virtue … secure against [a slip] into conceit … says, “When you have done all that was commanded you, then say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we ought to have done.” He allows them to rejoice as over [an achievement], but does not let them think highly of themselves. For what was rendered, he says, was a debt, not a voluntary gift; and it is not right for one who has paid what he owed to be elated before his creditor as though he were a benefactor, thinking that he has graciously paid what, had he been unwilling, he would have been made to repay under torture.

And the Apostle not only commands us to consign what lies behind to [forgetting], knowing that remembering it makes those easily moved look toward boasting, but also commands us to guard carefully against the attacks from both sides, when he says, “… through the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left, through glory and dishonor, through ill report and good report, as deceivers and yet true.” For blame wrongs the one hastening to perfection no less than the praises that slacken him, since it makes the mind low and loosens eagerness through despondency and grief. Therefore one must run toward the goal, for the prize of the upward call, both worthily and without distraction. The first, according to him who says, “So run that you may obtain,” makes one reach the end of what one strives for, even if late; for the distance is long and needs wings rather than feet to reach it. So the one convinced of this said, “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly away and be at rest?” The second, sobriety, warns of the snares that trouble us on this side and that, since the enemies stretch cords before the feet on the right and on the left, contriving with nooses the capture of those who run well: on one side glory and good report, on the other dishonor and [blame], fixing [the reproach] of a condemned life, so that one snare of the plot, however it is prepared, if it prevails, either makes him fall completely or at least holds him back from the race for a little, so that his progress toward the good is hindered for a while and he fails of the perfection he strives for. Why, then, do the things that falsely slander one's reputation grieve so much? Or why do the things that raise it to admiration [elate one] and slacken one into dissipation?

For if one were to be shown [approved] before the impartial Judge on the strength of the verdict given here, having pleased people well, who would not be eager to receive the testimony of this world, bringing it as a pledge for the future, and to be shown blameless on the grounds for which he was commended by the judges here? But if outward appearance, acceptance and the glory of those who now vote on our affairs count for nothing there, and the images of our deeds and thoughts stand naked, clear proofs of bad and good thoughts and works, judged not by what seemed right to the many but by what the truth itself establishes, then it is truly a vain pursuit to want to persuade these people how our affairs stand. Their full conviction profits us nothing for the judgment above, which sees things as they are; it is not [misled] by what is supposed, but knows what has happened; it does not side with the advocacy of those who try to show falsehood plausibly as truth, and who by the cleverness of sophistical speeches dispose the minds of their hearers as they wish, giving, while the facts are otherwise, a different, deceived impression of how things appear. But where the facts take shape as they are now brought before sight, [the truth] is clearly revealed as it now is, hidden, and not as it is made up and whispered for praise or blame by the many, for whom it is surely a pleasure and delight to busy themselves with other people's affairs and to discuss them with one another when they have the chance. This is their constant and unprofitable work, because of a leisure that does not profit all as it should.

But there are three ways of life in the world: extreme having-nothing, the middle way, and the material way with many possessions. For there was one way from the beginning, ordained by the Creator and lived by all alike, free of care and wholly [without possessions], which the minds of human beings later cut up into these different ways, as they were divided in various directions toward the things to which they inclined. It is necessary, then, to go through the character of each, and what benefit or harm comes from them to those who follow them, and which ought to hold the first rank and has been given it by him who from the beginning legislated our way of life. For this one will surely be judged more honorable than the others even by the very unfeeling, since truth shames them into admitting its worth, even if in their deeds they are disposed the opposite way, enticed by the allure of what gives pleasure and not choosing what is profitable by reason. What life, then, was commanded to the first-formed man? “You shall eat,” he says, “the grass of the field.” And let no one now stir up reasonings against this, looking for plausible arguments whether, as he supposes, a diet fit for cattle befitted the rational creature; for the dignity of the one who gave the command forbids such meddlesome inquiry. And perhaps this diet was even more profitable to human beings, and better suited to the quickness of mind sought by those made in the image of God, than one that, by its great richness, weighs down the intellect and darkens the subtle and sober part of the reason. For that things were so before, and that what seems reasonable is so (let us consider it), the work of the Maker also guarantees the proof, who always acts for the benefit of what he has made, and turns even our inclinations toward the worse to what is useful. For not to abandon the one who had transgressed and disobeyed as hopeless and uncared for, but by a second method [to correct] the first … fault, and … later to turn those who came after to sacrifice to him, and at other times to make other arrangements with each according to the times, and to use their untimely impulses for what is needful, turning the deadly desires of unruly sick people cleverly to their salvation: this belongs to the greatest providence, which comes to meet the weakness of [those being saved] and permits for a time those things that their present strength is able to do for their good.

So when Adam could not bear the satiety of his flourishing honor and grew wanton against that gladness (for God himself willingly came to him for daily converse, since he needed recreation in his solitude, having no one to console his weariness; and God permitted him free enjoyment of every fruit of the plants in paradise, commanding him to abstain from one only, not because he grudged him the taste, but to train him meanwhile in obedience, since there was no other matter suitable for giving a law, so that, ruling over all the other living creatures, he might know that he himself was also subject to law and might have the commandment as a clear sign of his submission to the one who gave it), God cast him out of that first and pure luxury, yet he did not leave him, disobedient as he was, bereft of care, nor, though he had transgressed the commandment, did he deprive him completely of his own providence. Instead he legislates for him again a second life, suited to his condition and fitting for one who had not used his ease as he should: he commands him to provide his food by work and toil, since, when he had leisure, he did not know how to attend to the service of God and give himself to converse with him while resting from bodily labors. And he makes garments of skin for him, at once covering the nakedness that had then become shameful, which had not been so before, while he kept the commandment; and, saying nothing in words but teaching by the deed what clothing one ought to use, he restrained from then on, by that garment, the softness later introduced by innovators, and by the plainness of the covering he condemned in advance the vanity in dress now in fashion.

Which way of life, then, was fitting or profitable for him? The one he was commanded when the law was given him, or the one to which he was condemned after disregarding the commandment? When he had all the enjoyment and delight of the contemplation in paradise and the use of the various plants, or when, wretched in the toils of farming, he ate his bread in the sweat of his face? When he took without care whatever fruits he wished, and plucked every delight with his hand, troubling it only to eat, and satisfied his appetite at an effortless table, fulfilling his desire for food and comforting it with food seasoned by nature? Or when he handled spade, mattock and sickle, furrowing with the plough the earth that shortly before had borne useful things of itself: sowing, watering, reaping, carrying sheaves, threshing, treading, cleaning the produce with the winnowing fan, and after that preparing the grain with the machinery of mills, grinding the wheat, kneading the flour with water, baking it with fire, and so eating bread that cost much toil? When he heard the friendly words of God, and his soul was gladdened through his hearing by unspeakable words, or when his ears were battered by the troublesome noise of lowing, bleating and braying? The first are the marks of having nothing, the second of the life of much matter; the first were proclaimed by divine laws, the second were devised by human desires. The first depends on hope in God and has its sufficiency supplied from there at all times; the second totters very insecurely on vanity and has a close kinship with misfortune.

Experience is witness to these things, and the events of every day that convince the senses: how what seemed likely has often deceived hope, but the care of the Stronger has never belied its help. For who does not know the losses that go with farming? Who is ignorant of the injuries that befall crops? Often the very rains that nourish them have harmed them as well; breezes of unsuitable winds have either chilled them beyond measure or scorched them, and have destroyed the crop as it stood and flourished; a [flood] brought on by untimely rain has swept away what was heaped up, or has carried off the produce while it was still being threshed and spoiled it; locust, blight, caterpillar and many other creatures like beetles are known to do great damage. I leave aside the [worms] bred in the very storehouses, which feed on the grain and make all the labor spent on it useless. Who, again, has not been taught by time the security that comes from divine providence: how, when it is needed, it provides suitable food without toil or hardship to [those who trust it], while the rich, who contrive everything to have plenty of food, are worn down by want; and how, when it wishes, it sets a table ready for those who trust it, beyond all expectation, sometimes giving unsown bread from unploughed clouds in the desert, the manna, sometimes bringing up quail from the sea, and at other times pouring out abundant streams from a dry rock for the thirsty, so that it might generously fill the need of both kinds of nourishment, the moist and the dry, and might comfort with variety the appetite, which is by nature restless at a diet of one kind?

Who prepared the ravens to bring food to Elijah twice a day in the famine? Who made the handful of meal in the jar, though it was poured out, last for so long a time? How did [Elisha] satisfy a hundred men with ten loaves, using the leftovers as witnesses that they were filled? Or how, again, did he change the stew in the pot, made bitter by a poisonous herb, into something fit to eat, so that the need of those who then wanted food might be met? These men had no ox, no ploughland, none of the rest of the farmer's equipment; and how was the body's need always met for them without any lack? Others always have at hand everything suited to working the land, and nothing that human effort contributes to the growing of crops is neglected by them. And how is it that they mostly remain in want, tending their sown fields with all their strength and reaping no fruit at all from their labor? Because the outcome of hope in God is secure, but the aim of human confidence is false. Such a one trusts in what seems reasonable and fittingly fails of his expectation; he judges the extraordinary impossible and reckons the customary certain, and is later persuaded by experience that whatever seems to be [won] by our own skill has an uncertain and doubtful presence, while the use of whatever comes from the divine [bounty] is admittedly present, since these things are abundant and incorruptible streams from the ever-flowing fountain of providence. The Lord said well somewhere, and David the psalmist in agreement with him: the one, “The worker is worthy of his food”; the other, “The rich have become poor and gone hungry, but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.” They show that those who are free for the service of God have the supply of food ready from there. It is a wage before the principal wage, meanwhile fittingly due to the work and owed to the service of the body. For the principal wage, matched to the labor, remains kept for the soul in the future; the other is given to the living body for the sake of virtue itself and of godliness, and it is truly fed like a beast of burden, which carries the part that acts and needs care to last in its service, as long as it is yoked and serves the bondage to which it was subjected by the Creator.

These are the advantages of the first having-nothing; these are the rewards of the undistracted life. This is the way of life fitting for the rational creature: to be free for God and to receive what is needed as from the storehouse of his providence; to hope in that alone and to reap its help in all things; to despise earthly things and to have the earth bringing its good things as gifts for enjoyment in due measure; to possess nothing in the world, and yet with authority, when needed, to use its good things while serving the Creator truly, and to levy tribute on creation for what is needed; to sojourn here as he wills, and to choose one's dwelling where there truly is a dwelling; to count nothing that stays here as important, and to make much of whatever contributes to that life. This is the life that the Creator ordained for human beings from the beginning, and in obedience to him all the saints lived it. They had not even the smallest measure of land as their own by title of possession, and yet they reaped the whole earth like masters, its necessaries wherever they happened to be found. They were not distinguished among people by wealth and power, and yet they were [held] in reverence for the dignity of their virtue. They had no household servants supplying menial work for the body's luxury, and yet the parts of creation served them for what was necessary. They had no service of pack animals to carry their goods, and yet ravens brought these things, meeting their need more swiftly.

By their purity they strove to become friends of Christ, and among the creatures of their friend they gave orders with boldness, as they wished. They commanded heaven to give food to those in need, and it brought down manna to them as it was ordered. At other times they shut heaven to chastise the ungrateful, and though it was eager to give its usual rain, it held it back, bearing its burden for three years and [six] months, gradually growing heavy with it, as one pregnant, because of those who had commanded it. Once it also rained by night, when ordered, to burn up certain wicked men, and at another time it rained hail with well-aimed throws on other lawless men and wrought much death among them, taught this by the nod of those righteous men. They split the earth with a great [chasm] and brought the rebels down to the recesses beneath the earth, together with their tents and the cattle of a great herd. They made the deep dry land, a highway, and the [dry] land … waterless, into an abundant supply of water that before was scarce. They crossed rivers with dry feet; they walked about in a furnace of fire and knew no harm from the fire, fighting the flame with their bodies as though with cold water and conquering the destroyer with what is perishable. They were handed over to the rage of beasts to be eaten and did not experience their savagery, for they calmed them by prayer as by a charm that tames to gentleness. They lit up lightless darkness with a pillar of fire; they kept off the noonday heat, shading the open sky with a cloud. Water that was bitter and made the land barren they made drinkable for the thirsty and fit for the growing of crops, for those who lived in that country. They gave barren women the bearing of children, and their dead … they gave back to them alive. They withstood tyrants … escorted by great crowds; they laughed at battle lines; they routed opposing phalanxes of enemies; they passed unharmed through ambushes contrived by plotters; they were rescued from prisons, the doors opened for them by an invisible power; they were freed from bonds, the fetters that held them loosed beyond expectation; they passed safely through the murderous threats of rulers and the rage of maddened mobs, never at all experiencing anything terrible.

All these things, and more than these, belonged to those righteous men because, freed from the tangled cares of the world, they worshipped God with undistracted attendance, and through their boldness toward him became revered by all creation, so that they could command it. Who they were, the history of Scripture [shows], making known their names, each in its place, from their deeds, each by its miracle, to those who wish to learn. It would be long, and at the same time superfluous, to list them now in this discourse, since they are plain even to those who read the divine Scripture without much diligence; [but they profit] those who make it their study, and are perhaps also a diversion from sad thoughts. For to those who labor at the work with attention, the words are useful also for contemplation, enriching the mind with their meanings and leading it by the hand, now to one saying, now to another, toward understanding of each as it comes, each in turn always taking over the care of the one before and drawing it out further, until the things that stir the thought, broadening philosophy as it advances day by day, bring it lawfully to the end toward which it hastens.

You know also those of the new covenant who had nothing: John the forerunner of Christ, and the choir of the apostles with him, with whom the monastic life began. The one chose of his own accord to live in the desert, eating locusts and wild honey and wearing clothing woven of camel's hair; the others, obeying the Lord, kept to a single tunic and to food found for the hour from wherever it came, acquiring nothing at all, as they had been taught, not even a staff and a wallet, which are among the things most useful to travellers for many purposes, so that they might not seem perhaps to trust in these and so blunt their hope in God, disregarding the power that works with them unseen. That power does not allow its grace to be shared with things that are reasonable and plausible, but wishes to show it bare of every veil, turning to itself the readiness of human beings, which is divided alike between what is likely and what is true, and not letting them be drawn about by things thought to work together with it for … security. This is surely not the idleness that comes from Adelphius of Mesopotamia and from Alexander, who for a short time troubled the imperial city of Constantinople, people who made the appearance of persevering continually in prayer a door to idleness and a cloak for laziness about work: both young boys and men vigorous in bodily strength, who ought to wear that strength down with many labors. By not working, through their ease, they gave their passions and their reasoning license to revel in the material of these things, until the seeming prayer, which is not what it is called, perishes altogether,

and becomes a burden of fleshly desires, which not only does not let one converse with God, but even soils with images of shameful thoughts the mind that seems to be praying. For it is good to persevere in prayer and to train the mind for converse with God, but only so far as not to turn the time of peace into a time of war, nor, by stretching the time beyond what is due, to give entry to the hostile passions. They are accustomed to take the thoughts captive to strange notions, dragging them out of prayer as out of a sacred sanctuary and leading them by force to the mind of the flesh, so that the thoughts go over the very things that this mind, once it prevails, compels them to say. Who of sensible people, then, will call this prayer: this battle of thoughts opposed to and contending with one another, when one gainsays what the other proposes, and the other tries to persuade as it wishes, and each sets itself against the other until one wins a clear victory? Is it not rather a boxing match or an all-in fight? And would that it were so; for it would be good to stand and struggle against what troubles us, and not to be dragged like bought slaves without any resistance. For often, drawn away from the words of prayer, we follow the thoughts that lead us, without shaking them off or being vexed, as though our will did not agree with what urges us toward unfitting things. Our body shows the posture of prayer, for, bent on our knees, we appear to onlookers to be praying; but in thought we picture pleasant things: talking kindly with friends, railing angrily at enemies, feasting with banqueters, building houses for our relatives, planting, travelling, trading, being dragged by force to the priesthood, administering with great reverence the affairs of the churches entrusted to us. And we go through more of these than have been named, each one as the passion knows how to dispose the mind toward each.

But prayer does not want this. It wants … the mind pure of every such thought, not [only] thinking of …, but [of anything], however venerable, beside what is set before it; it does not even take notice of any earthly thing. Possessed by God, it has as it were gone out of its usual concerns and of what is dear to the body, to where it has resolved to be occupied, making its petition with reverence. And let occupation with prayer have so much measure as practice can provide for each to attend to it without distraction. So let them not be allowed to deceive the simpler sort, those who are equally inexperienced in prayer and in ascetic practice, and who, with the fancy of a greater work, command them to refrain from what seems lesser. For their aim, it seems, is rather to eat what others provide with idle hands, decently collecting provisions for the body under the respectable pretext of prayer, than to live as benefits both soul and body. For the one who divides his time between work and prayer, according as he is suited to the one or the other, tames the body by toil and its unruly impulses toward greater gentleness; and he leads the soul, which has toiled with the body and longs for rest, eagerly to prayer as to another task, its strength again at its height. For the soul is refreshed by changing its very work, passing from one task to another, not lingering in a single monotonous one, but rejoicing in the variety of labor, as though laying aside the toil of the task that seems to be ending and approaching the next fresh, as one who is just beginning.

But the one who loves ease feeds his passions with idleness and gives his desires freedom to stir toward what they naturally tend to, especially at the time of prayer, when the mind, drawn in on itself, becomes [the prey] of what troubles it. He goes over in his thoughts what the passion that dwells within [suggests], and instead of conversing with God and asking him for what is profitable, he stirs up thoughts of dishonor, turning aside from the words of prayer to words of wickedness or impurity, or to whatever has gained the mastery over his mind and, having used it up, has given it its color. Paul knew that this happens to such people, and so he condemns idleness, methodically checking the evils born of it. For he said, “We command you, brothers, [and exhort you] in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who walks in disorder and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us: that we were not disorderly among you, nor did we eat anyone's bread for nothing, but in toil and labor we worked night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you; not because we do not have the right, but to give ourselves to you as an example, so that you might imitate us. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: if anyone will not work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you are walking in disorder, doing no work but being busybodies. Such people we command and exhort through the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and eat their own bread.”

He makes the rebuke severe with many proofs. He called idleness disorder; he added, “Let him not eat who does not work”; he gave himself, toiling day and night at his work, as an example and pattern; he does not reproach those people directly but speaks to others about them; and he bids the healthy keep away from them as from people in the grip of a disease. In this way he displayed great and unbearable indignation. For idleness is truly the cause of many evils for many: by leisure it increases the evils they are used to and teaches those they did not yet know; for it is an innovator and very apt at devising new wickedness. And Paul rightly shows it to be abominable and to be fled, by the words quoted and by many others, exhorting, being angry, grieving, rebuking, and using every means to shame those whom he himself called disorderly into working quietly and walking decently toward those outside. He knew that work is the mind's anchor, enabling it to ride safely at its moorings. Even if gales and whirlwinds threaten shipwreck from every side with violent winds, the mind stands unmoved, held by work as by an anchor; it is washed over a little by unsettling thoughts, but it is not torn away into danger, since the cable is stronger than the winds that drive against it.

So those who refuse the work of their hands on the pretext that they must persevere in prayer do not pray either, since the mind cannot stretch toward what it longs for; they are distracted, beyond the measure of their own strength, by many unfitting things, and by feeding the body delicately they make it unfit for prayer by the very means by which they think, through idleness, to give the soul freedom from care, entangling it in a labyrinth of thoughts that has no way out. For the body, wearied by work, holds the mind to itself, since the mind must be present to the task no less than the eyes and must work with them so that the activity proceeds without stumbling; but when the body is relaxed it gives the mind freedom to wander, for the passions are roused in the ease, and at each reminder of desire they drag the mind about, alone, like a captive.

If, then, the mind, when present to the work, makes the labor complete, and when absent shows it faulty and far short of what is needed, how will it have intensity and freedom from distraction in prayer, when the one who should direct prayer is distracted by [many things] and continually falls away, I do not mean from complete ecstasy, but even from the prayer of words? For the chief attention of the perfect is a kind of rapture of the mind and a complete [withdrawal] from the things of sense, when the Spirit intercedes with God with groanings that cannot be uttered, before God who sees the disposition of the heart unfolded like a written book and showing its will in voiceless figures. So Paul was caught up to the third heaven, not knowing whether he was in the body or out of the body. So at another time in the temple he came to be [in ecstasy] and heard with the [ear] of the heart (for the body's hearing, with the other senses, [was suspended] through the ecstasy) the Lord saying, “Go out from here quickly, for they will not receive your testimony about me.” So Peter, going up on the roof to pray, saw the vision of the sheet, in which were all the wild beasts and the cattle and the creeping things of the earth and the birds of heaven, showing the differences among the conditions of human beings. So the hawk shown by God to Job, spreading its wings motionless and looking toward the south, signifies by its posture the composure of one who prays, and by its name his holy mind.

Second after the first kind of prayer is to say the words with the mind following them in compunction and knowing to whom it offers its petition. But prayer that is interrupted by thoughts and cut through by bodily cares stands far from the state of one who prays. For if the one praying does not hear himself, distracted as he is by many things, and does not know what he seemed to say, how will he have the divine hearing attending to words that he himself, being distracted, has not been able to attend to? Those who say, “Attend to my petition, give ear to my prayer,” and, “Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my petition,” had their whole mind earnestly gathered there, not poured out over the things on which the mind of the careless is accustomed, as it wanders, to dwell and be scattered.

Such, then, was the saints' having-nothing, as was said a little earlier, and it provided them with all the things that have been listed in their place. The middle way, too, coming far after it, has its usefulness, being suited to the times and to the body's necessity. It cannot lay claim to the first prizes, nor does it boast of equal honor with the higher way of life; but it holds the second rank of honor and will not endure to yield it to the third and fourth rank of those who live more carelessly, for it falls short not so much of perfection as of the difference in the way of life. For the first saints lived for the soul alone and for God who made it, taking no account of the body; and so they had their needs met without care, fittingly, at the right time, not laid up in storehouses but arriving as from a treasury at the hour, by the divine will. But those who came after them, taking thought for the body's necessary comfort, so that the living creature might not perish against the will of him who bound soul and body together, give their hands to work … only so far as to serve unavoidable necessity, and give the greater part of their time to the care of the soul, to prayers and readings and the exercise of what is fitting, pursuing their progress in good things as is right.

The last of these, being entirely men of the flesh, have given themselves wholly to the service of the statue: they farm, raise cattle, trade, and follow every money-making art, not acquiring as much as they need for life in the flesh, but as much as shows them to be not inferior to the elegant among the wealthy, so that by this too they may be seen to be eager for display. Since they have not won renown by their way of life, they woo distinction for themselves by extravagance; and in this they clearly put their own folly on public display, thinking an accusation to be praise and supposing that they are admired for things for which they deserve mockery and laughter. For just as what suits each calling reasonably gives grounds for approval, so what does not fit it, even if it is praiseworthy in another, incurs great condemnation in the one to which it does not belong. No one, at any rate, has approved of a man adorned with a golden hair-clasp and precious things, nor of a woman wearing a brooch and a man's cloak. For the adornment that nature has assigned to each becomes, when it is changed, an occasion for mockery.

To which of those on either side, then, are those on the border more akin? Surely to those whom they come nearer in their work, and to the kinship of those to whom they are eager to be near in their way of life. For it is not because they hold the middle rank that they are related equally to both. They are followers of those who lead, going after them and stepping in their track while it is fresh; but from those who lag behind they are as far apart as runners, little by little, are separated from those who walk or stand still. For what fellowship do those of many possessions … have with those who have nothing? What agreement do those who mind the things of the flesh have with those who mind the things of the Spirit? What share have those entangled in business with those who serve God without care? These left what they had, as the apostles did, even if it was little; those acquired even what they did not have. The one live quietly within, caring for gentleness and dignity; the others fight it out for money, battling over possessions. The one wrestle lawfully for the heavenly goods against the spiritual forces of wickedness; the others fight over earthly goods with those who share their possessions and are fought by them in turn. The one spend their time caring for the salvation of souls; for the others a whole lifetime is not enough, divided as it is among the many occupations of the body. The one, living free of business, move those who see them to give thanks; the others become a cause of [blasphemy] to them, doing nothing worthy of their profession.

Of the first Paul says, “You shine as stars in the world,” shining, that is, by the distinction of their way of life, and becoming promoters of good zeal for those who see them; of the others, “Because of you my name is blasphemed,” since, plainly, they do the opposite of what they profess and carry about a habit that contradicts their works. So it is fitting that the one are admired and the others spat upon, the one called blessed and the others wretched, the one loved justly and the others hated with a hatred that is not unjust. For who would not rightly [admire] the one who has wholly renounced the tumults outside and chosen the quiet life free of business? Who would not love with amazement the one who turns away from the occasions of quarrel with those who share possessions and with fellow craftsmen, and who, by his solitude at home, stands aside alike from doing something irreparable and from suffering it: neither troubling nor troubled, neither wronging nor wishing to wrong, nor able to be wronged? The first he does not choose by his will even if he could; the second he does not undergo, since there is no material in which he could be wronged.

And who would not loathe the one who says he has been released from life and yet is entangled in its distractions; who boasts of having despised the world and madly [pursues] its affairs; who professes to look down on earthly things and belies his promise by his works; who counts human things, as he says, a mockery, and yet is seen to strive for them more than other people; who has bidden farewell to vanity and is not separated from it; who [professes] renunciation to be cross and death alike, and shows no proof of mortification? You have come out of Egypt, man: what have you to do with brick-making any more? You are travelling through the desert, hastening to the land of promise: why do you linger in vain labors and become a slow traveller on the long journey? The race set before you calls for much zeal, so that you may not wander in trackless places and fall away from the rest. You have put your hand to the plough-handle: why do you turn back and become unfit for the kingdom of heaven? You have left the burning of the Pentapolis: why do you long to see what is happening [and turn back?]

You took up the cross: follow Christ, having left everything, father, boat, nets and all the tools of your trade, and with them every attachment and every memory of kin; for Christ, to whom you pledged yourself, wants to be loved more than all these. You died with him; you were buried with him in the blessed burial of dispassion. Why do you again undergo the passions of the living, making much provision for the flesh to satisfy its desires? Care for the body with a little comfort, since for the present you are bound to it, so that you may have it as a fellow worker in the labor of virtue and the soul's progress may not be hindered; for the soul wants to have nearly all the time, and scarcely thinks a little of it worth giving to necessity. But one who looks after oxen, counts flocks of sheep every day, and is always tending vineyards, groves, cornfields and gardens, when the whole day is not enough for their service: where or when will he remember God? When will he sing psalms? When will he pray? When will he exercise himself in ethical, natural and theological contemplation? And if, among his many labors, he is able now and then to make this a side task, how will he offer his petition to the Master, when his mind is not torn away from the things that claim so much of his care and attention? How [will he watch] the movements of the passions, so as to know the difference between [yesterday] and today, the change toward better or worse? How will he discover the interweaving of thoughts, as they come in one upon another in various ways and make watchfulness difficult?

… For some thoughts come first looking venerable: those of the avaricious appear compassionate and merciful; those of the resentful promise the correction of the one who causes the grievance; those of the vainglorious and proud promise the perfection of virtue; and, in short, the thoughts that seem respectable go ahead of all the wicked ones, beguiling those inexperienced in such deception with the image of the good they long for, but afterwards handing them over, routed, to the opposite thoughts, and … no longer able at all [to escape] the deception. For the mind, once colored by what it has already reasoned, even if it perceives its error, withdraws from it with difficulty, drawn more by the pleasure of what is sweet than it hastens to flee the harm of what is unprofitable. Since things stand so and call for so much zeal, where is there any time left to you suitable for labor spent in vain beyond what is needed? Do you not see how by day your affairs afflict you, and by night the memories of them, turning the time of rest into one of pain? For then these memories bring before you, one by one, those who moved your boundary stones, those who damaged your crops, those who blocked your share of the water, those who grazed down your grass, and those who did you any other harm or wrong, so that the angry part of the soul fights for revenge; and they give no time for rest in sleep, still less for prayer, which needs much quiet on every side and leisure, and gives freedom from care in return.

For what does Paul say? “I want you to be free of care.” And he adds, “The unmarried man cares for the things of the Lord, how he may please him; but the married man cares for the things of the world, how he may please his wife.” If, then, it is not possible to serve God free of care, and those who do not take wives nevertheless bear the burden of care, being not free of care, how [will they please] the Lord? For they differ in nothing from the married, caring for the things of the world as they do, and they do not incur the same blame in this, but a much greater condemnation. For to the married the Preacher grants some pardon, since they take on labor in vain in order to pass on a little comfort for life to their children, who may perhaps face early orphanhood, so that these may not, perhaps through the loss of their parents and worn down by want, endure every pain from every side in their affliction. But of the others he declared the plain folly, saying, “There is one, and there is no second; he has no son or brother, and yet he toils” … “for the wind.” Very reasonably is this said to such a person, who is free of heirs, for whose sake [the married man] perhaps has a plausible excuse; he ought rather to use his release as is fitting and make the time wasted by most people useful to himself for laying up the goods of the soul. For let [the command] stand for him: “Do not be anxious for your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or what you will put on”; and let him not waver, doubting whether the things he needs will or will not be there for one who serves God. Why does he not [say], “Having food and covering, with these we shall be content,” and sow in the fields of the Spirit the labors that those who care for the world sow in the works of the flesh, so that from them he may reap [eternal life], toiling at all times in these with all his strength? How much leisure would he have, and how little would the body's need require, if he looked to it only for necessity and were not scattered by extravagance into the sea of pleasures! … but wholly on earthly things …

For if, according to the Apostle, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, why do we not pay it back a little, with whatever comes to hand, so that the debt does not trouble us, and live for the soul by the Spirit, working wholly at those things to which we necessarily owe our work, since it is lasting and does not perish with the refuse that perishes in the belly? Solomon speaks well when he rebukes the one who has abandoned the cultivation of the soul and takes great care of the land: “[He has forsaken] the ways of his own vineyard, and has wandered from the furrows of his own field; he goes through waterless places in the desert, and a land laid out in [thirst], and gathers fruitlessness with his hands.” For care for bodily things beyond need, with no profit, is truly a wandering and a trackless way: it makes one stray in impassable deserts and has as its end the fruitlessness of labors whose provision contributes nothing to the life to come. One of the prophets too cries out piercingly, calling this wretched: “Woe to him who gathers for himself what is not his own, and makes his yoke heavy.” He shows that everything not directed to virtue is a burden foreign to the one who does it, so that he may turn away zeal from vain things and transfer it to useful ones, so that the worker may have his toil as his own possession, stored up for him in the heavens for an enjoyment that has no end; and when those who labored in vain lack even a drop of cold water, then he will rejoice generously and very richly in the good things that he sent ahead and that he brought with him, having become a wise steward of his own labors. The divine laws want us to be patterns for other people and to give no offense to anyone by the blamelessness of our life. Of what, then, shall we be patterns to them, when in our zeal we strain after vain things more than they do? How shall we give no offense to them, when we cling more than they do to the things we were taught to despise and seem to have renounced, and so put stumbling blocks and countless scandals before them, since they reckon that the things we pursue are truly worth fighting for, and that ambition for them does no harm to godliness?

For the evils of persons who seem more venerable become objects of emulation, especially for the simpler sort, and are accepted without examination: “They would not have done it,” they say, “if it were truly evil, as people think.” For this reason the great Paul, who set the rule for the virtuous life, charging those who despise the harm done to the simpler, says well, “If someone sees you, who have knowledge, reclining at table in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, since he is weak, be built up to eat food offered to idols?” By one charge he checks indifference in anything whatever, and shows that what is done by those thought to know better what is profitable easily leads the more naive to imitation, since they think it edification and not the destruction of the good. For this is what “will be built up” hinted at: he will think it progress, he says, and improvement, to imitate what he saw. For when he says, “Build one another up, one the other,” he lays down as law the benefit of one to another, so that each, doing good, may urge the other on to practise it, becoming a pattern to him for perfection by additions made part by part. Of what donkey millstones and what depths of the sea … for punishment are such people, who become causes of such scandals to the simpler, and who, when these perhaps incline rather to walk by [the rule of having nothing], provoke them by rivalry with themselves toward many possessions, … so that they choose things plainly unprofitable? For “zeal,” he says, “comes to a man from his [neighbor],” and he wants to outdo his neighbor alike in good things and bad. Such is contentiousness: it forces one to defeat whoever strives against him in anything whatever, judging it not so much a danger to prevail unjustly as shameful and disgraceful to be justly defeated. Indeed, everyone knows this from experience: toward what is profitable rivalry is sluggish and contentiousness lazy; but if something unprofitable or [unseemly] is done by some, or done to their liking, emulation is ready and imitation does not delay, for it seems to have a defense in having followed others who led the way, and it ascribes the blame to those who began, not to those who took up the example. And perhaps one of the prophets shows this when he questions the people of old and confirms by their [answer] the truth of the fault, saying, “If [a man carries] holy meat [in the fold] of his garment, and [it touches bread] or stew, will it be made holy?” And they answered, “No.” And he said, “If one defiled in soul touches [any of these], will it be defiled?” And [they said], “It will be defiled.” They show that those who look on take the stamp of bad things rather than of good ones, and are more inclined to imitate the former than the latter, having learned by bad custom to welcome what harms before what helps. And how is it that those who despise this do not fear the fearful threats against those who give scandal? Foolishly they procure for themselves a double punishment in the [life to come]: both because they chose worse things instead of better, and because they have become an occasion to others, inflaming, by their great attachment to vain things, the greedy appetites of those who are excited by them toward the desire for more.

[Chapter 39] Some of the Jews, too, not compelled by the law, embraced this way of life of their own accord, wishing to worship God free of care: they lived in tents and abstained from everything that could distract the mind from better things, as they themselves say to those who question them and who are curious about their novel way of life: “Vineyard and field and house we have not had,” for they knew that the care of these things hinders the work of godliness. And not a few of the Greek philosophers showed such freedom from possessions that they lived like dogs without a roof and made their food whatever happened to be found at the moment, so that their contemplation of vain things might seem to have a pure apprehension, not troubled from any side by practical cares. One of them, at any rate, who possessed nothing except a cup, with which he took both food and drink, when he saw shepherd boys bringing water to their mouths with hollow hands, threw away the cup and said, “I have learned, boys, what escaped me until now; I have learned the perfection of having nothing”; and he gratefully confessed that the youths had helped him to what was lacking to the summit of his philosophy. So perhaps his aim was to lay aside even the body, if that were possible, and with it to strip off every care of life, and to live with the naked soul, without the dung of the flesh, in his insatiable longing for philosophy.

But we, who hear both the Lord and the apostles constantly sounding in our ears about this, since until now we have resisted their divine exhortations and have not of ourselves been moved toward the good, let us at least be put to shame by these men, who reproach our many possessions with their having nothing. For it is fitting that we should be humbled by those to whom we ought to be venerable for the dignity of our way of life, and, being first in doctrine, not to be second in life, so that, if we are in a worse state than the Greeks, the Lord's name that has been called upon us may not be blasphemed while we do things alien and foreign to what we ought to do. I know that what has been said will sting those who read it; but it stings those who are open to the blame, not those to whom this discourse of mine to you is addressed. For I am persuaded that the others will not even be [shamed] by these reproofs, since their sickness is incurable. Nor, if something sharper were said to shame them, would they correct their fault, since they have once washed off their shame and no longer blush at their sins; for not even, according to the wise Solomon, was the sluggard shamed by the example of the ant into [using] his hands and [shaking off] his inveterate idleness.

For it is hard to put away a passion that has long had its pasture, and to loosen a habit lengthened by long custom, if one has not used great zeal to correct the evil habit. Those held by it, as though bound by fetters that cannot be loosed, even if they manage to slip out of it, are somehow still dragged back by necessity through the memory of what they were lately in, turning back unwillingly and constantly returning to what they are hastening to run away from. For Solomon cries out piercingly to the sluggard, “Go to the ant, you sluggard, and emulate it when you see its ways.” And to those who profess the solitary life but are entangled in the materials of life, the Lord says … “Look at the birds of the sky: they do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them.” Yet neither did these give up their care of the land as they were commanded, nor did that sluggard take his hands out of his bosom, preferring slack want to plenty that costs a little toil. So the one in the grip of habit is hard to change toward [what is better]; he loves to remain where he is, even if it is admittedly unprofitable, rather than to cross over to what he is not used to, even if its benefit is plain and evident.

But you, friends of Christ and careful guardians of his laws, who bring to the Lord the coins of the commandments doubled, who of your own accord have gone beyond what you owe of the things commanded by what you add of free choice, and by the freedom of your will surpass what is laid on slaves as work that cannot be refused; you who went up with Christ and were initiated on the mountain into the doctrines of the high philosophy, and who show by your works that what was handed down is worthy of belief; you who have followed in the apostles' footsteps and work so as not to be a burden to anyone, yet are so occupied with this that the time for more necessary work is not spent on lesser things, but have divided your time well, giving a small part to the body's need and much to the care of the soul: for this is truly fitting justice, which distributes not equally to all but to each according to worth, offering a measured and sufficient due to the handmaid and allotting the whole to the mistress, who is truly the lady and is owed great honor; you who serve as soldiers of Christ nobly and with greatness of soul, and are not entangled in the affairs of life, so as to please him who enlisted you; you who contend lawfully, and slip through the holds of your opponents by the smoothness of having nothing, as though anointed with oil, since they have no material to grasp and so cause you loss or throw you, having gained the mastery through the passion of greed, as the Egyptian woman did when she seized Joseph's cloak. She could not have done this if the athlete had been naked, as a true contestant is; yet even so she accomplished nothing of what she wanted, though she got hold of it, since the athlete stripped off the things by which he was being dragged by force, and learned by experience that one who lives among the passions and fights them must be naked, coming to the wrestling from the start such as he was afterwards when he fled. [Put off] care and anxiety for every thing that can be sensed. For by these they are defeated, both those who desire to lay claim to them and those who, deprived of them, are defeated by grief, clinging to money and possessions and enjoying them in a way they ought not …

But you, free of such bonds, like the wild ass in Job, let loose in the desert, laughing at the crowds of the city and not hearing the tax-collector's reproach; you who are released from care for possessions and from the annoyance of tax-gatherers; who have nothing in possession and hold all things in use; who, according to the Lord's word, do not own a second tunic and have put on Christ, who drives off every outrage that assails from outside; who walk on earth because of the body's necessity and live in heaven by your purpose; who hasten eagerly toward the prize of the calling, completing the course of godliness as swiftly as birds; who have shaken off every burden of worldly care from the shoulders of the soul and nimbly leap over the stumbling blocks that hinder progress: the way of life you received from those before you, if you change it, change it toward greater earnestness, so that you too may have some boast as having labored together with those who went before; but never change it toward greater carelessness, so that you may be known as genuine children of the fathers by your virtue and not be judged bastards by the difference of your works. It is no small reproach to descendants to boast of kinship with their fathers and not to confirm the relationship by their manners. For just as the features of faces and the other marks of the body teach by likeness who is whose son or father, so ways of life show who are whose disciples and pupils, interpreting their teachers, the contemplative by word and the practical by works. But why do I use relations of clay as an example for those who have risen above bodily examples, wanting to illustrate what is exceedingly great by very small things, and by shadow-drawings that are not images, since they have not been made distinct with colors … comparing you with living forms? For you are [Christ's] … disciples and sons of the eternal Father; for so the Lord calls you brothers, saying, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and [mother],” and he names you sons of his own Father where he says, “Do not be anxious what you will eat or what you will drink; for your Father knows that you need all these things.” And he teaches how this kinship is established and this relationship comes about, giving occasions to those who long to rise to that nobility and choose to pass from slavery to adoption, when he says, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.” And again, “Be merciful, as your heavenly Father is.” And, “Be [kind], as your Father is.” And, “Above all be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Since, then, the divine nature is set before us for imitation, what need is there to look at human pursuits and to inquire who attend to the good, how, and how far, and how others, given over to pleasures, wallow in vain distractions? Rather we should look only at this: how it is possible to be made like God in all things, how to come to that perfection, and by what labors to recover the ancient dignity of our nature, becoming from above an impression of the archetypal form, and having made our settled state in virtue like a nature from [the beginning], unchangeable toward turning to the opposite. What time, then, do we have for imitating the nature of God? What strength will suffice to stamp the marks of the divine likeness on ourselves? How and when shall we become all that belongs to God? For the imitation is surely possible, since he who knows each person's strength commanded it. Scarcely could someone who began in childhood and used zeal through every age to the end of old age [conform] himself to the archetypal virtue; but one who has neglected some of the time already past, how hard must he strain, and how great must his eagerness be, to achieve in a short time what is achieved with difficulty in a whole life? Yet difficulty does not make the thing altogether impossible, nor does a late start make perfection doubtful or hopeless for the one beginning. For purpose has a short cut to the end of its goal, a short road, quickly accomplishing by eagerness, and establishing in no [long] time, a work that needs much time. Trustworthy witnesses of this are the workers of the eleventh hour in the vineyard, who received the same as those who worked from dawn until evening, and were not prevented by the shortness [of time] from overtaking those who had gone before them. For such is laziness and such is diligence: the one … with much freedom accomplishes small things not worth mention; the other accomplishes great things even in a short time, outrunning by zeal what the others neglected.

This is why we were made according to the image of God: so that we might show those who see us the properties of those features and, by the distinction of our way of life, clear marks of our likeness to him. “I,” says God, “am compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and abundant in mercy, and keeping righteousness.” With these colors the image of the divine likeness is painted. These are the features of the bodiless form; by these the soul is recognized as kin to God. It emulates his freedom from need in its longing for pure freedom, but is [hindered] by its bond with the body; yet by needing little it still cries out that it longs for that complete freedom from need, offering this as a clear proof, and showing by what is attainable for now its desire for what cannot be attained, since it strives to put off natural necessities. It shows with how much desire and longing it has achieved what was permitted it, having earnestly acquired goodness and long-suffering, kindness and love of humanity, and all that signifies the nature of God. Where nothing hindered it, it used its authority eagerly and passed with great ease into the things its strength could reach. For this reason, though honored with the divine form, it was made, as David says, a little lower than the angels, when, mingled with the clay of the body, it is compelled by unavoidable need to attend to the body's necessities, if only for a little, while it longs wholly to care for better things and to live in contemplation, where it has pure gladness, not muddied by the memory of anything. For who will not call the one who flees the tumults of the crowd and declines the annoyance of burdensome affairs, who avoids the company of rash and indifferent people, and at home is mostly free, in quiet, for prayers and the study of God's oracles, who is seen as venerable because he rarely goes out, gentle, untroubled, sympathetic and friendly, who will not call him truly an emulator of God, his image and imitation, flashing with the divine rays of goodness and gleaming with that likeness through the virtues as with fine colors?

Repainting this image and urging his disciples toward this likeness, and teaching how one may become [like] God by imitation, the Lord said, as has already been said, “Be compassionate, as your heavenly Father is compassionate,” generously offering equal honor to those … who wish to rise to this honor. For [truly] … the divine is pure of envy and of every other passion. It rejoices in those who lay claim to its glory, since it is not by nature diminished by sharing with others, nor does it begrudge those who become by zeal what it itself is by nature; it remains always unchangeable and unalterable and wishes all to be within a settled steadfastness. Human beings, whose honor is accidental, naturally envy the successes of others, suspecting that they will be surpassed in what makes them proud; and fearing the progress of those who come near them from below toward equal honor, lest they appear inferior, they envy them, as seems reasonable to them, since they want to be above everyone in everything and, from love of glory, cannot bear to have anyone at all above them. But God, whose glory is his own, shares it with all without fear and suffers no wrong. For practice never outdoes nature, even if by much exercise it becomes a settled habit; nor does it push nature out of first place, even if it seems to excel in the second, since it knows its own rank and does not insult the higher, keeping to the honor granted it and not seizing the one that surpasses it. So Paul too, following behind the Lord's words, likewise makes the image in each person clear by the same words, so that the likeness may be exact. For he says, “Become imitators of God,” and he works out how this is achieved: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, if anyone has a complaint against another, as Christ forgave you.” And again, “Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, long-suffering,” wishing us to be adorned with the virtues in which the divine form, being loving to humanity, shines most.

This is what characterizes God, and the person who emulates God: gentleness, forbearance, freedom from anger, freedom from envy, beneficence, sympathy, freedom from resentment, love of the good, kindness, treating others as equals, helpfulness, care for others, generosity, and, in a word, the things by which God shows the abundance of his goodness, “making his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sending rain on the just and the unjust.” By these let the one who strives to be his imitator be known: remaining equal to all in doing good, both to friends and to those hostile to him; even if he suffers ill, repaying evil with good, and shaming those who wrong him, not only by bearing magnanimously what they dare to do, but also by doing them, as far as he can, good from the heart. For no one has become, through wickedness, so wholly alien and estranged from human nature as not to be put to shame by one who could do the same in return for what he suffered, yet uses his power for good. Such a person sinks with shame at having wronged the kindness of his benefactor; he rightly reproaches himself for his wickedness and rightly admires the philosophy of the other, by whose example he has been helped to turn from wickedness and change to the good he has come to know. Thereafter he himself becomes to those who plot against him what he had in the one who, by his kindnesses, subdued his wickedness to peace. With these words Paul was able to teach the sober life to those ready to obey; but knowing that some are hard to lead to it, he ingeniously tries to draw us away from vanity by further admonitions, leading us toward what is lawful by honorable names: sometimes, “You are God's temple”; sometimes, “Walk as children of light”; and again, “Live worthily of the gospel”; and again, “Your bodies are members of Christ”; and at other times he calls us holy and blameless, at other times blameless, innocent children of God, without blemish. He testifies to these as present, though for the time being they are not present and must be acquired, so that we may not be humbled by false praises but may rejoice to be called what we also are in our deeds, recognizing the testimony as true in our conscience and not as irony. And thereafter, taking great care for our progress and anxious how to bring us in every way to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, he sets every device in motion on every side, leaving out nothing that contributes to this.

So he wants us to be dead and crucified to the world, having no perception of its pleasant or its painful things, since he knows the form of this world: its pains are small and like a passing form, and what gladdens in passing is likewise small; they do not last, nor do they give the perception of either by remaining long, but run past with the swiftest motion and leave no trace of memory in the soul. At any rate he says, “You died to the world, and your life is hidden with Christ in God,” knowing another life after the death he spoke of, which those live who have risen with Christ, seeking and minding the things above, who have died to the elements of the world and no longer live in them, as some do whom he rebukes, saying, “If you died to the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you submit to decrees: Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch; for all these perish with use,” … the impulse of appetite toward them. But also, “Present yourselves,” he says, “to God as alive from the dead,” wishing us to be dead in the part in which the passions of the flesh that lusts against the Spirit are active, and bidding us live in the part in which the works of virtue are done to please God. For this reason he calls those a living sacrifice who have put to death their members on earth and walk in newness of life. They are neither moved toward bad things, since the power directed toward them has been put to death by the sacrifice, nor idle in good things, since, being a living sacrifice, they have not destroyed the strength for useful things together with the force for unfitting ones, but use it, at its height and fresh, against the mind of the flesh, their old enemy. They are no longer [ruled] by such irrational desires, because they have passed entirely from the bodily to the spiritual way of life and live no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit.

For to these he can also say, “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit,” since, though they still wear the bulk of the flesh, they are no longer troubled by it in anything, so that sin does not reign in their mortal body, nor any longer forces them like a tyrant to obey its commands; the law in the members, which wars against the law of the mind, is too weak to take them captive to the law of sin, but is itself taken captive in turn to obedience to the commandments of Christ and yields like a slave to the laws in which Paul says he delights according to the inner man. He is “ready to punish” all that he once slipped into when deceived, promising to wrestle it back by his later zeal, doing to the body, through labors for virtue, what he suffered from it when enticed by pleasures. What this punishment is, and how it is carried out, he teaches in writing to the Romans, where he says, “Just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to lawlessness, so now present them as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.” Those know what the labor is, and how great, who struggle to reshape an evil habit into a good one while they are tyrannized by custom. In what they seem to advance by tireless labors they easily slip back, as custom drags them backwards quickly as with a bond and often makes their labor useless, until, retreating often and often driven back, they are able little by little to depart from the evils in which they had lived and to bring their disposition over completely from the worst to the best, so that these members remain weapons of righteousness against the hostile passions, made out of weapons of unrighteousness, and are justly subdued by the very things they once lawlessly served, to the ruin of their owners.

For an eye that sees the good things of a neighbor, when it moves the mind to desire or envy, becomes a weapon of unrighteousness; but when it disposes one to give thanks to the giver, it becomes a weapon of righteousness. So too a tongue that serves slanders and mockeries, a hand that ministers to greedy robberies, and a heart pregnant with cunning thoughts that contrive to bring each of these to the end the purpose intended: each rightly receives an ill-sounding name; but when they fill a right and profitable place, they receive a name worthy of the work, acting lawfully and honored by praiseworthy deeds. Since, then, you are a living sacrifice, well-pleasing to God, for rational worship; since you died with Christ and were buried with him by being dead to the world, so as to mind the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God; since you have your citizenship in heaven before the resurrection and live the carefree life after the resurrection, like the angels (Paul supposed this possible when he said, “if somehow [I may attain] to the resurrection from the dead,” having anticipated that time by a way of life fitting for it, though he hinted that he had not yet attained it, hiding the dignity of his virtue by humble thinking); and since “you are the light and the salt of the world,” bracing with your austere character those who are dissolved in indifference and not far from corruption, and shining by the distinction of your way of life, and, according to the Lord's word, rousing those who see your good works to glorify your Father in heaven: persevere in the good, and make still more progress in it, becoming an incentive to the more careless in the things in which you excel, persuaded that from this you will have double praise from the Master. For whoever follows such a life as yours, training himself in it to the exactness of perfection, has one reward for the work itself, another for urging those of like zeal to imitate him, and a third for helping those who are strangers to godliness, preparing them, by the blamelessness of his way of life, to judge the religion to be pious and truly the only holy religion of God, adorned with the works with which those ought to be adorned who enroll God as their leader and live as he who presides over them is pleased. For he wishes those who profess kinship with him to be adorned with exceptional advantages, and says to them at the fitting moment, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and the scribes, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

What the Pharisees then were to the apostles, enrolled, supposedly, in the same pursuit with them, that is what those are to you who seem to share your profession but by the abundance of their life deny fellowship with you: they began with you the start of the road to the promise and have not reached its end. For the fertile land, full of cares, held them back, with the sons of [Reuben] and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh, and made their journey vain, since their purpose did not advance as it should, because of what was lacking from the time before, nor did it turn out as it was intended from the beginning. And, as the true saying goes, every labor is truly useless that does not reach the end for which it began, but stops before the end and leaves off there, where one could reap the fruit of what was set before it. So you, beloved, running toward the goal for the prize of the upward call and near to the crowns, do not [slacken] your good eagerness, but hand it on to those after you as you received it, at its height, from those before you; and those who for the present delight in vanity, and spend on their industries the labors that belong to virtue, pity as people who toil uselessly and sow to the flesh, from which one reaps corruption.

Do not quarrel with them too contentiously, as people who fail in what befits the apostolic life. For with those who are not minded to listen you gain nothing; rather, they can be shameless against exhortations so as not to seem plainly caught and made manifest to all, by the reproofs, in their sorry state; [it is better] if you receive them kindly, so that they may not, in turn, think themselves defeated by your silence. For if they were disposed to be corrected, they would surely have respected the teaching words of the Lord before any human exhortations, the words he spoke to the man of many possessions: “If you want to be perfect, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and take up the cross, and come, follow me,” unloading him so that he might easily pass through the narrow [gate]. But these embrace possession, heavy and burdensome as it is, and make entry into the kingdom difficult or altogether impossible for themselves, an entry that the Truth likened to the eye of a needle, which scarcely admits a soul stripped of worldly cares and every encumbrance, and even that perhaps pushing and forcing its way in with [difficulty] because of the narrowness of the gate, which is hard to enter and squeezes even bodies that go in sideways, much less those loaded with very heavy burdens. How will those say, “See, we have left everything and followed you,” who cherish dung, and things more worthless than dung, as if they were real goods, who have left nothing and acquired what they did not have, making their life an occasion not for philosophy but for trade? Yet [having nothing] is truly an occasion for the greatest trade, in the good things to come, not in the splendid things of the present: by poverty and want and the other things now thought trifles it procures the enjoyment of all delights, and by obscurity and lack of distinction it gives boldness before God and eternal glory. Since you have the hope of these things secure, through the witness of your conscience to what you have done, you strive more and more to despise what you have already justly despised after reckoning well; for they are truly such, even to the sober, even if they seemed desirable to fools, who have attached themselves, by a deceived imagination, to very shameful things as if they were fine, and to matter, as if to a truly beautiful woman, though she is not so, but painted with a seeming bloom, enticing to delight those who are pleased with such things before useful ones and who choose, rather than what is profitable, what provokes their impulses by its allure.

Take care of the movements of the mind, paying attention to what the memories of affairs produce in it, and whether it receives their images with passion or without. For these movements, rushing in disorder, are accustomed to do much harm, and more easily in thoughts than in actions: they yield to the passions and agree with them unseen, and, giving no sign to those outside, they are defeated and often fall, and the fall, until it comes to action, escapes for the time being those who cannot see what is within. A person may seem venerable to those present because of his composure, while he alone knows his hidden shames and blushes that what is hidden in him is the opposite of what appears, for the truth contradicts the honored stage-mask and rightly makes his conscience sink, because the thoughts of his heart do not agree with the reputation that those who tell of him celebrate. Such a one is like a whitewashed tomb: the corruption of his mind is full, like a real tomb, of dead men's bones and all impurity. For how does the mind, when it thinks unfitting things, differ from a tomb? It is like it, and even more impure. For a tomb gives off its stench for a little while, as long as the body is still rotting; but when the fluid has drained from the bones, the stench [ceases], once the fleshly parts have dissolved into earth and dust … [the walls] … which, when they bloomed, had their structure of clay … plastered, whitened on one side and reddened on the other, and so shining they [hide] the stains lying on the surface. But a heart full of unseemly thoughts has a perpetual stench, smelling worse than a rotten body, and alone enjoys its own shamefulness.

Those who pay attention to the visible statue know nothing of what is planned in secret, but rather [admire] the venerableness that is seen and seems real. For a calm character, a stern eye and an unsmiling face are taken to proclaim nothing else than great stability in the depths, from the care for better things that has been mentioned; this gives those who do not know the reflections dwelling in the recesses the impression that the inner disposition agrees with the outward appearance. Let this, then, shame you greatly into disposing the inner things in harmony with the outer and regulating what is within likewise by the glory without, so that, such as we seem to people, we may appear to God in our thoughts, thinking the things that the many suppose we think. And it is, as you yourselves know from experience, not very hard for those who choose to do this with labor, if they search out the causes and, by stopping them, easily stop the troubles that grow from them. For since pleasure and grief follow desire, and desire follows perception, the one who has not given way to perception gives no opportunity to the others, as one who crushes a snake's head as it squeezes through an entrance keeps out with it the whole body that is dragged after it, which would surely come in easily if the leading head found any entry at all. The image has a close kinship with what it signifies, since the followers fall in together with the leaders. For perception stamps the mind with the forms it sees, and the mind moves desire toward what delights, fanning every day by memory the images of what it has seen before and carrying their idols about, distinct as statues, until either failure brings grief or success brings pleasure and teaches clearly by experience how great the harm is that comes from these things.

For both alike, whether one gains or misses what was wrongly desired, produce unprofitable joy and unfitting grief. For the grief is not according to God, so as to work, as Paul says, a repentance without regret leading to salvation; nor does the joy consist in the Lord, as the same Paul understands it, for to those who rejoice in a good conscience he gives the exhortation, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Rather, it is a demonic attachment of the soul, depending on none of the eternal goods but on perishing matter, which also proves the desire useless. For some might say: “Have the cares that befit us run out, so that [we fill] the mind with vain thoughts, picturing wealth, power, glory and what most people think good fortune? Have our characters been set right? Have the passions been subdued? Does perception do nothing amiss? Has the road of progress been levelled and made easy? Has ascetic practice become a settled habit with us? Does the heart enjoy deep peace? Has our battle ceased? Has the wrestling against the principalities and powers been broken off? Has the flesh, hostile to the Spirit, made a truce with it? Does it no longer war against the Spirit, wholly conquered, admitting defeat and serving as a captive? Have you beaten your swords into ploughshares and your spears into sickles, turning the works of war into farming tools because of great peace? Do we rest, according to the divine promise, each under his own vine, rejoicing in the works of our hands and exulting on our beds, with nothing troubling us from any side, no passion, no spirit of the opposing power inflaming desire toward things in no way fitting for us?” And even if, as has been said, our affairs were so free of passion, and we had calm from the things that usually trouble the mind, and were above all worldly desire like the saints of old, where would care and distraction about vain things be useful to us, being aimless and achieving nothing of what is pursued? For none of the things not in our power comes about by our own skill, even if it is [good] in itself; they are gifts of the Providence that governs our affairs, not works of human effort.

For this reason the Lord says to those who know how to listen well, “Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?” By the futility of this anxiety he shows that every anxiety that does not reach its end through our own effort is vain and truly useless: it simply unsettles the reasoning and draws it away from true care, and can procure for no one any of the things it dreams of; it dreams of bright things and, when awake, always proves empty the hope of its fancies; it revels in vain thoughts and never sees them come true, as in Isaiah's comparison, where he says, “As the thirsty man dreams that he is drinking, and when he wakes is still thirsty, and his soul has hoped in vain.” For such is the hope of vain things: a pleasure like a feast by night, gladdening by the deception of a dream, and never producing the gladness one imagines. Why, then, do we always pursue what is not ours as though it were ours, and what belongs to others as though it were our own, spending on empty thoughts the time meant for considering what is necessary? If, as we suppose, the passions have abated, and the spirits of wickedness that plot against us have withdrawn, we ought to give thanks, with remembrance in our prayers, to the Master, Christ, who has brought us to such a state. For all our time would scarcely suffice for this, short and narrow as it is, and for [thanks for] the benefits we enjoy every day from him who has set us above the things that afflict many. For if the lawgiver wants us to give both limits of the span of time, I mean day and night, to the study of the law, commanding this very thing when he says, “You shall meditate on it, sitting in your house and walking on the road, lying down and rising up,” leaving no time at all for idleness; and another commands us to bless the Lord at all times; and Paul to pray without ceasing: what time is left for the leisure to think about things that do not befit us, when each of these commands demands the whole of our time and yields nothing to the others?

For how will one pray without ceasing who does not meditate on the law of the Lord day and night? And how will one bless the Lord continually who does just one of the things mentioned, when the time scarcely suffices to serve any one of the deeds of virtue? For this reason Scripture has hemmed in the laziness of the many with commands greater than our strength, so as both to stretch our zeal toward what is possible and to cut away the excuses of weakness. Thus the one who works the good is humbled rather by the things he does not manage to do as commanded, than puffed up because he has done part of the commandments; he does not think he will be praised for what he seemed to accomplish, but expects to be blamed for what he neglected. For no unfinished work brings [praise] to the one who worked on it, but rather causes him to blush that he did not bring to completion what he undertook. Some works of craft have a limit toward which the aim of those beginning looks; each of these is completed in no long time, worked in material, and has its end standing still and awaiting the one who reaches it. But virtue is of great length, perhaps endless; it drains the strength of the one who pursues it, and still stands off from being grasped; it provokes longing by seeming to be near, and it slips away from those who approach so far as also to drain their eagerness, … stealing the toil of the one who advances by withdrawing little by little unnoticed. And this, it seems, is what was well said of the patriarch: that he came to the place of which God had told him, and Abraham, lifting up his eyes, saw the place [from afar]. He seemed to have reached it, so that the hardship of the labor might be consoled, and he learned, by still being some way off, that he had not yet attained it, so that his eagerness might not collapse as though the task set before him were accomplished, but might always be stretched toward greater earnestness by the hope of soon being where he was hastening.

These things describe the method of virtue, which cleverly leads its pupil on to the progress that is possible. It neither appears far off, lest it seem to make him despair by the great distance, nor waits until it is caught by its pursuer, lest it stop his eagerness before his death; rather it draws out his zeal through his whole life, always at its height, since its end cannot be reached; and by always appearing near it urges his strength toward what can be reached, to as much progress as nature yields when summoned, while after many labors it still stands well off from being grasped. For who has so achieved virtue that nothing is lacking to him for perfection? And who, though using all his zeal, has not been left far short of its limits? To show this plainly, it is fitting to speak of the properties of the truest love, since love is, and is rightly called by divine Scripture, the fulfilment of the law, embracing all the parts of the good things of the law: it teaches us to do good to our own kind, does not permit us to wrong them or do anything against them, and willingly forgives evil. Who, then, [loves] his neighbor so as to regard him in all things as another self? Who rejoices in his brother's [successes] in the good as in his own, and is not unreasonably galled by them, and moved to envy, thinking himself dishonored in whatever his neighbor surpasses him? Who does not judge another's honor, in whatever he obtains it, to be the undoing of his own? Who, when another [is preferred] in any honorable thing, is not despondent, counting second place as a kind of dishonor? Who is not [pained] at the praise of a fellow worker as at blame of himself? Who has [grieved] at someone's slip as though he thought it his own? Who has sympathized with another as with himself? Who has not laughed at someone's disgrace? Who has not rejoiced at another's fall and been lifted up by it, [boasting] in his mind that he himself stands? Who, [seeing another] blushing at the reproof of a fault … and not rather counted the other's discomfiture as, so to speak, his own gain, thinking his own glory raised higher in the very things in which that of others happens to be lessened? And who, according to Paul, readily rejoices with those who rejoice and [weeps] with those who weep, being disposed toward each as each is disposed, when tested by bright or gloomy circumstances?

For this is the advantage of love: it makes the disposition of all one, each rejoicing with the other and grieving likewise, bound together like the members of one body, sharing their experiences with one another in sympathetic harmony and receiving them from one another. If, then, not even all our time suffices for the care of virtue, and those who contend have great need of sobriety because of the demons who contend against them, how can those who gape about and let their minds wander either complete the road, hard to travel and long as it is, or guard against the plots of their adversaries, who are many and invisible, and use our passions and senses as weapons against us, turning against us the very things nature gave us as defenses against them? [The eye] often serves them for desire of what is seen, producing longing for every splendid thing; hearing produces grief at gloomy news and naturally moves pleasure at news that seems welcome; anger is kindled from any pretext, boiling up and shaking the whole body, troubling the reasoning and muddying its purity, like clear water, so that the impressions of the thoughts cannot be seen distinctly; vainglory forces one to make one's work public, wanting to please people rather than God, and makes the labors useless, for the reward does not follow what is done amiss, since it is done not to please him who can reward but for the praise of onlookers; pride lifts up the mind entirely, teaches it to despise everyone and to spit on the whole human race as worthless, persuades the reasoning to the madness of imagining itself equal to God, does not know the providence and care of the Stronger, reckons the graces it enjoys as wages owed for its works, does not want to recognize God's cooperation in what it does and achieves, thinks itself sufficient for every good, seems everything in its conceit while it can do nothing at all, swollen with vain [opinion], and is shown to be nothing. Evil spirits set stumbling blocks beside the path in things that seem reasonable, leading away from the truth; others spread nets as for birds, trying to catch with the nooses of arrogance those raised above others … a little above earthly things

…, having occupied the heavenly places, as Paul says, “the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places,” they try to catch within the nets of pride those who have their citizenship in heaven, there, contriving to overthrow from the highest lookout, by the passion by which they cast down to earth the devil who was first driven mad, those who ascend in their way of life. And all the things that wage war and box and fight … and wrestle, and run with the runners, not to reach the prize of the calling with them but to trip them up and hinder them in the race, are many, as Paul also says, and could lengthen this discourse; it is hard to number them, and not easy. Those who fight them have no time at all to occupy the mind with other things, since any distraction becomes the cause of defeat for them and of victory for the enemies. To these, then, one must attend, and not be distracted toward things that work with our adversaries against us. For whatever one thinks of that does not contribute to the exercise of our contest is a hold for our opponents, who seize us and throw us out of the ring; and this, even if it is not a fall, is still a defeat: to be shaken from our place and pushed away from what we ought to care for toward what ought in no way to concern us. For, by the judgment of truth, as action is in material things, so in our counsels an unfitting thought is defeat and a fall. For this reason, “the thoughts of the righteous are judgments, but the ungodly [devise] deceits”: the former stand firm in the good with discernment, the latter are easily steered toward evil by the one who pilots the deceit toward his goal by various methods, now this way and now that, continually turning their counsels, as one directs the course of a ship by shifting the sail toward the harbors he set out for. For this reason the one says, “Let a man's heart think just things, that his steps may be directed by God”; the other, “Whatever is virtue, and if there is any praise, think on these things.”

Teaching those who want to keep the course of their thoughts right to use such thoughts, David sometimes said, “The meditation of my heart is understanding”; sometimes, “I will meditate on your statutes”; and again, “I will meditate on all your works, and on your doings I will muse.” He gives himself this musing, so that the ever-moving mind may have no time [to turn] to unfitting things, but may attend to those things whose musing brings delight and great benefit, gladdening the senses with what is seen and the soul with contemplation. For what a thing it truly is to spend one's time wholly in meditation on the works of God: now to lift the eye to heaven, attending to the sun by day and to the stars by night; now to bring it down to the earth, seeing the sprouting of every kind of fruit and the countless differences of living creatures; and again, seeing in the air and in the sea the kinds of countless birds and fish that live there, even before knowing what benefit comes from each of these, to marvel meanwhile at the Creator's wisdom and to glorify God, taught by the variety of creation. And when one goes on also to the purpose for which the things seen exist, complete gladness holds the mind as it feasts on the natural knowledge of earthly things. For there is none of the creatures that does not surely teach us some ethical and theological contemplation. But since we have weakened in ourselves the power of reason by luxuries, and are no longer reminded by it of what is profitable to do, [we need] reminders from outside of how we ought to live and conduct ourselves, so that we may be well-pleasing to our Maker.

For this reason God's caring grace sets up as teachers now the ant, now the bee, exhorting us to imitation with a voiceless voice, by their deeds. It says, “Go to the ant, you sluggard, and emulate its ways”: it lays up at harvest its food for the winter and so usefully suggests that we gather provisions for the age to come. “Go to the bee, and learn how [industrious] it is”: it plucks the flowers of plants and makes honeycombs, and this too it does wisely, teaching … the advantages of good men, who store up sweetnesses for themselves for the sweet life of the life they hope for. At other times it bids the disobedient emulate [the stork] and the swallow, saying, “[The turtle-dove] and the swallow of the field keep the times of their coming, but my people have not known the judgments of the Lord.” And it adds, “How will you say, We are wise, and the law of God is with us?”, reproaching rational beings with the constancy of nature and the unchanging law of the animals' habits, since they are more insensible than irrational creatures in knowing the will of God. Again, to those who are not moderate in their [desires] but overrun their own kind without limit, he sets before them the sea, ringed by the sand …, in the words, “Will you not fear me, says the Lord, or will you not tremble before my face, who set the sand as a boundary for the sea, an eternal decree, and it will not pass beyond it? But this people has an unhearing and disobedient heart.” By the reverence of a soulless element for its decree he makes them reverent in keeping the commandments: just as the wave of the sea, driven from the open water by the wind and rising little by little to rival the mountains in size, is broken back as soon as it comes near the sand of the shore, respecting the limit set by him who fettered it, so rational beings, commanded by reason, should restrain every unjust impulse and punish every lawless thought, and especially humble the pride that swells without reason, doing at least what insensible things do. They ought to do this even without a law, reckoning to do it by their own free judgment, which is the mark of a free mind, moved by its own command to what the compulsion of the law was going to lead it.

It teaches, too, what each of the luminaries is useful for when seen. The sun suggests that we understand the Son by his radiance [from] the Father, and as witness of this I call Paul, who says, “who, being the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his substance.” For what he saw the nature of the visible thing taught him: he discerned with the soul's eye the meaning that lies in its make-up, which the Creator placed symbolically in the star, through natural contemplation, guiding the minds of those who see it to the Son's co-eternal relation to the Father. The moon, waxing and waning, shows the changeableness of our affairs, and by the quick turns of its shapes it exhorts us neither to rejoice in prosperity as though it were lasting, nor to think adversity grievous as though it would be long; for they exchange places with one another so quickly that they do not let us perceive their presence apart from their withdrawal, one lying in wait for the other, the one that follows immediately succeeding the one that leads, like the continuous phases of the moon. These do not give way to one another so far as to make the usual waning and waxing of its light a sudden turn, and their change is hard to observe, since the gradual addition or subtraction fittingly escapes perception. And many things that grow or diminish in this way have an imperceptible daily change in whatever respect it happens, and no one can easily know how much the stature of growing things adds each day as they advance continually, and the size of the progress … until time [shows] this … which continuous watching of what is happening cannot teach.

No one who watches continually has ever known the gradual growth of plants, grasses, animals and children; but one who for some time has not seen the growing things, and then sees them again, recognizes the little-by-little addition in the meantime, learning from what has come to be what was coming to be. So too someone who sees a rock hollowed to a depth over time by water dripping on it without ceasing is convinced that each drop accomplished some part of the hollow, but how much he does not know: for sight recognizes the coarser objects of sense to some extent, and often errs even in these, but cannot reach the finer ones at all, being somewhat slow and weak in grasping such bodies. And if one emulates the dimmer and brighter stars, he will neither, being obscure and undistinguished, envy those who surpass him in rank and wealth, nor, being distinguished in these, despise the humble as refuse, seeing the stars content with their own order and glad to remain in the place allotted them, as God, who appointed them the measures of their light, willed. And the Lord, wishing us to be wise like the [serpent] and innocent like the dove, makes us disciples of all the parts of creation, since we did not keep the nobility of our creation and are fittingly trained toward good order, away from folly, by those who were once our slaves, so that, receiving our schooling from those beneath us, we may be put to shame, we who are able, by the knowledge within us according to which we were made, to live blamelessly, choosing the good of ourselves and not from outside, like beggars asking for it. But you, most blessed ones, deserve to be admired, besides all your other good qualities, for your harmony and for your experience in what befits each one's state: like a well-tuned psaltery, in different notes you produce one song of godliness, each pursuing a different form of it, and none out of tune with your obedience to one another, which naturally binds together those divided in body, of one soul in their wills, toward the one goal of the work, as a musician blends the proper sharp or deep tone of each string into a harmonious melody. For the very fact that each string sounds differently, being tuned to a different tension, is what most produces the harmony, the various trills serving the rhythm of the song, and each part fitted for clear sound by the varied whispering of the notes.

And again, those still newly enrolled, anchoring in the harbors of perfection, know their own rank among you: some turning away from gluttony, others from vainglory, and those who excel from pride, as from deadly passions, and earnestly practising self-control, not looking to human glory, and freedom from conceit. For fullness of the belly brings a flooding of the parts below the belly, which are watered as by bitter channels with the streams that come from satiety; these produce rough itchings and make the contest of chastity laborious by their ticklings. They know vainglory, again, to be a useless imagination, and rightly flee it, since it persuades them to labor for virtue and then makes the labors useless: it does not wish to show them to God, who openly gives the reward for hidden works, but wants to publish what is done to people and to offer their praise as a wage, sufficient for nothing more, and to cost them the eternal and great honor. For whoever undertakes any toil whatever in order to be admired by people differs in nothing from the wonder-workers on the stage: he is content with the wage he gets from those who enjoy the show, and it is no longer reasonable for him to ask another from God, since from the beginning he chose to receive not God's wage but theirs. They also rightly abhor the irrational passion of pride. For what reasonable pretext for such madness does anyone have, that he is lifted up against his neighbor and thinks highly of himself in comparison with him? Has he achieved something more than others, and has he surely striven to have a great abundance of good things beyond the rest? Then he himself will receive the wages of his zeal. Is someone else lazy about virtue? He himself suffers the loss, and does not lessen the other's wages. And those who make progress …

Why, then, is the haughty one puffed up and swaggering, as though he contended for others and were the common savior of the race? He does not know that conceit is apt to do no less harm than neglect: it hinders eagerness for what is still lacking in progress, as though the task set before it were accomplished, and by despising those who have fallen it procures great punishment for itself. But humility among you has given no room to envy or pride, since you imitate well the common working of the members and make the glory of each your own, as of one body. For neither is the perfect one lifted up against the one still making progress, as his superior, since he knows that he too was such when he was making progress, and is persuaded that the other will soon come to the same measure of perfection; nor does the one who for the present falls short of him in the worth of virtue [envy] the perfect one … that such a one has come to be so, and that one simply differs from another, and not wishing [to excel] by boastfulness of mind. And perhaps one who saw your great zeal for [this] would find [the only contest among you to be] who shall be more modest in character than another, whereas among others one can find each wanting to be preferred to the other because of love of glory in this life. But you, as you have learned Christ, so live in him, having learned obedience to one another from him who became obedient to the Father unto death, even death on a cross, setting the measure of obedience as far as that danger; and [you practise] the other virtues with all zeal, since he, by doing and teaching them himself, has become the teacher of all people, showing learners that they are possible by doing them first. You have, then, a great and surpassing affection for one another, having learned that he gave the apostles the very badge of his disciples, where he says, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Be at peace sincerely with all. “My peace I leave with you.” “Love those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and mistreat you.” Therefore …

For he himself commanded this, training you in afflictions, like athletes, for endurance. You heard him say, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,” and you have shown the imitation in deed: struck on the right cheek, you turn the other also; and when your tunic is taken, you yield your cloak too, bearing insult and loss rather than rushing readily to [retaliation]. And you know better than others the things the Lord forbade, knowing that this way of life befits soldiers and athletes. None of the Lord's beatitudes has passed you by unused; you have always had them all in hand, with the rewards joined to them. You have become [poor] in spirit, meek, peacemakers, merciful and pure in heart; within you is the kingdom of heaven, which you also pray to be counted worthy of, having become emulators of your … , whose prize is the enjoyment of the kingdom promised to all who are worthy, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.