On Fleeing the World 25–51

Let us flee from here, then, where there is nothing, where everything thought magnificent is empty, where even one who thinks himself something is nothing and does not exist at all. “I saw the wicked man,” it says, “exalted beyond measure and lifted up beyond the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not.” Pass by, you too, like David; pass by like the good servant, so that it may be said to you: “Pass by, recline.” Pass by like Moses, so that you may see the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and see the great sight. This is the great sight. But if you wish to see, loose the shoes from your feet, loose every bond of iniquity, loose the chains of the world, leave behind the shoe, which is earthly. Therefore Jesus sent the apostles without shoes, gold, silver, or money, so that they would not carry earthly things with them. For one who seeks the good is praised not for his shoe but for the swiftness and beauty of his feet, as Scripture says: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of peace, who bring good news of good things!” Loose, then, the shoe from your feet, so that they may be beautiful for preaching the gospel. He said “loose,” not “bind.” Loose, so that you may pass by and find that the wicked man whom you admired on earth is nothing and can do nothing. Pass by, then; that is, flee from the earth, where there is malice, where there is avarice. Therefore David says to you: “Turn aside from evil and do good.” To turn aside is surely to flee; and evil is on earth, good is in heaven. Hence he added: “Seek peace and pursue it”; peace is in heaven. Indeed, coming from heaven, he said: “Peace I give you, my peace I leave you.” Since, then, evils are to be fled and turned from, and evils are on earth, iniquities on earth, let us flee earthly things lest iniquities seize us. They seized even holy David, as he himself testifies, saying: “My iniquities have seized me, and I could not see,” because the eye of the soul is blinded by the smoke of iniquity so as not to see what is bright. So, then, Laban could not see Jacob’s goods, nor the prince of the world the glory of Christ.

But perhaps you say: why then was Jacob sent to Laban, if Laban was blameworthy? If we consider the name, it means in Latin “white.” So Jacob is ordered to go out to more splendid things. But because he was carnal, we better understand the more splendid things of this life. As one not yet perfect, he first goes to him, so that for a time he might exult in his light. But he had worse sons, that is, a name more tolerable than his works. And therefore, by his mother’s counsel, by a divine oracle, and by the will of Jacob himself, a lover of discipline, he is deserted and left behind.

Holy Rachel, that is, the church or prudence, hid the idols, because the church does not know empty ideas and vain figures of idols, but knows the true substance of the Trinity. Indeed it has abolished the shadow and made manifest the splendor of glory. Let us leave the shadow, then, we who seek the sun; let us forsake the smoke, we who follow the light. Smoke is iniquity, because as smoke is to the eyes, so is iniquity to those who use it. Life is a shadow; for this life of ours on earth is a shadow, as Job said. And what is here but temptations? All time is in anxiety, all life in troubles. “You will walk,” it says, “in the midst of snares.” And another complained of snares stretched out for him, but hidden, on the way by which he walked. Lest he be caught and fall, he wished to flee like a sparrow, but the snare was not yet broken. “Flight,” he says, “has perished from me.” He had wings weighed down by that dark water in the clouds of the air, and perhaps he could not fly. Indeed he sought to receive those wings, so that he might fly away and be at rest, as it is written: “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” For where there is flight, there is rest. Indeed elsewhere he says: “If you sleep among the lots, the wings of a dove covered with silver.”

But perhaps you say: how then does he say here that flight has perished from him, who had said above: “If I take my wings before the dawn”? Is it a contradiction? Not at all. For the contests of the just are many. Does an athlete wrestle only once? How often, after many crowns, is he beaten in another contest! How often does one who has often won sometimes waver and hang in uncertainty! And often it happens that the strong man meets the strong, and greater contests arise where there are greater proofs of strength. So David, when he sought flight to escape the adversary, did not find his wings; he was wavering in a doubtful contest; whereas where he has his wings in his power, the title of the psalm is “To the end,” that is, toward the perfection and completion of victory. Indeed, as a victor, he says: “Lord, you have proved me and known me. You have known my sitting down and my rising up.” Rightly did he have the power of flying who had received the wings of resurrection. But here he is still in the cave, that is, in the flesh, in a kind of cavern of this body, contending with King Saul, the son of hardness, and with the power of that spiritual prince who is not seen but understood. Hence too the title of the psalm is “Understanding,” which David, though placed in the flesh, nevertheless concluded; but he merited to conclude it by praying. Indeed he began with the voice of prayer.

Add this, that that psalm is said to be in the person of the Savior, this one in the person of David, who did not have victory in his power but hoped for it from Christ. And yet he too, after he spread out his hands to God like the wings of his soul, and fled to the Lord, and asked for the guidance of the Holy Spirit so that he might know the way by which he could ascend, saw the heavens bowed so that Christ might descend, and asked that he lift him up with his hand. Or perhaps he no longer sought his own wings because, made more perfect, he desired the hand of Christ.

So let one who wishes to be lifted by Christ’s hand first fly away himself; let him have his own wings (one who flees the world has wings); and if he does not have his own (lest perhaps he alone has his own who has the power of flying), if, I say, he does not have his own, let him receive them from him who has. One who flees the world, then, flies. “Behold,” he says, “I have gone far off in flight and stayed in the wilderness.” David flew away, then, like the night raven in its dwelling, like the solitary sparrow in the house. But if you refer it to Christ, he flew away in the suffering of the body, so that under the shadow of his wings he might protect the peoples of the nations; he flew away in divinity, he remained in body and dwelt in the desert, so that the children of the desolate woman might be more than of her who had a husband. Let us follow that body, then, so that we too may rise; for where the body is, there also the eagles will be.

Let one who cannot fly like an eagle fly like a sparrow; let one who cannot fly to heaven fly to the mountains; let him flee the valleys first, which are quickly corrupted by moisture, and cross over to the mountains. Abraham’s nephew crossed to the mountain of Zoar and was saved; but she who could not ascend, bent back by a woman’s feeling, lost her safety. “Draw near to the everlasting mountains,” the Lord says through the prophet Micah; “rise up from here, for this is no refreshment for you because of uncleanness. You have been corrupted with corruption; you have suffered persecution.” And the Lord says: “Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains,” where there is Mount Zion and Jerusalem, the city of peace, built not of earthly but of living stones, and ten thousand angels, the church of the firstborn, the spirits of the perfect, the God of the just, who in his own blood has spoken better than Abel. For Abel cried out for vengeance, he for pardon; Abel accused his brother’s sin, he forgave the sin of the world; Abel revealed a crime, he covered it, according to what is written: “Blessed are those whose sins are covered.”

But let one who flees flee swiftly, so as not to be caught; let him swiftly plunder this world as the Hebrew plundered Egypt. Let one who is in labor give birth, lest with the womb of the mind laden and weighed down with iniquities he be unable to flee; and let him flee not as one carrying a suckling but as one unencumbered, not bearing a little one but presenting someone perfect in Christ; let him flee not as one on holiday on the sabbath but as a worker at his business, not as one barren in the cold but as one rich in the harvest. For this reason it was said: “Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the sabbath.” So flight is fruitful in virtues, not exhausted of merits. This flight knows not the cold of fear, the trembling of death, the cramp of anxiety, the idleness of dissipation, the holidays of wantonness, the torpor of sluggishness; but it requires a tireless traveller of the heavenly life, a vigorous candidate for the kingdom above, a rich farmer, who gathers his fruits and in gathering hurries them away.

For what else is asked of you, O man, but that you fear God, seek him, walk after him, grasp his ways? “With what,” it says, “shall I lay hold of the Lord? Shall I lay hold of him with burnt offerings?” Not with ten thousand kids, not with thousands of rams, not with the fruits of impiety is the Lord reconciled and sins redeemed; but in a good life the grace of the Lord is laid hold of. “It has been declared to you, O man,” it says, “what is good; or what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and love mercy and be ready to walk with your Lord?” The Gospel says to you, then: “Rise, let us go from here”; the law says to you: “You shall walk after the Lord your God.” You have learned how to flee from here: why do you delay? The Gospel says to you again: “Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come?” And it says this to those who were coming to the baptism of repentance.

So repentance is a good flight; the grace of God, in which the one who flees is taken up, is a good flight; the desert is a good flight, to which Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist fled. Elijah fled the woman Jezebel, that is, the outpouring of vanity, and fled to Mount Horeb, which means “drying,” so that in it the carnal flux of vanity might be dried up and he might know God more fully. For he was at the brook Cherith, which is “knowledge,” where he might drink the flowing abundance of divine knowledge, so fleeing the world that he did not seek even the food of this body except what the birds brought as his servants, although his food was mostly not earthly. Indeed he walked forty days in the strength of the food he had received. Surely so great a prophet was not fleeing a woman but this world; nor did he fear death, he who had offered himself to the one seeking him and who said to the Lord: “Take my life,” bearing weariness of this life, not desire for it; but he was fleeing worldly enticement, the contagion of a stained way of life, and the sacrileges of an impious and transgressing nation.

Solomon too sets forth the corruption of this world in the figure of that woman and teaches that the arts of a harlot must be avoided. This is the strange and fornicating woman, from whom he urges you to guard yourself and not to turn your heart to the ways of the world, but to place it in the hand of the Lord, in which is the heart of the king. For one who rules himself, which is worth more than commanding others, has his heart in the hand of God, and God turns it where he wills. No wonder if he turns it to good, he who is of perfect goodness. Let us be in the hand of God, then, so that we may seek the good, that incorruptible and unchangeable good, of which the prophet Amos says: “Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord God almighty will be with you, as you have said: We have hated evil and loved good.” Where God is good, therefore, there are good things, which David desired to see and believed he would see, as he himself says: “I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.” For those are good things which remain for ever, which cannot be corrupted by the change of time or age.

He who has sought God and found him is among those good things. For where a man’s heart is, there also is his treasure; for the Lord does not usually deny a good gift to those who pray. Since, then, the Lord is good, and especially good to those who wait for him, let us cleave to him, let us be with him with all our soul, all our heart, all our strength, so that we may be in his light and see his glory and enjoy the grace of heavenly delight. To that good, then, let us lift our minds, and let us be in it and live in it, cleave to it, which is above every mind and every consideration and enjoys everlasting peace and tranquillity; and peace is above every mind and above every sense. This is the good which penetrates all things, and we all live in it and depend on it; but it has nothing above itself, but is divine; for “no one is good but God alone.” So what is good is divine, and what is divine is good. And therefore it is said: “When you open your hand, all things will be filled with goodness”; for by the goodness of God all good things are rightly given to us, with which no evil is mixed. These good things Scripture promises to the faithful, saying: “You shall eat the good things of the land.” Let us be like that good, then, so that we may obtain what is good: the good that is without iniquity, without guile, without harshness, with grace, with devotion, with sincerity, benevolence, love, and righteousness. And so goodness embraces all the virtues like a fruitful mother.

There is therefore no small reason why we ought to flee from here: that we may come from evil things to good, from uncertain things to faithful things full of truth, from death to life. The Lord himself too, by saying, “I have set before you good and evil, life and death,” showed that the good is life, but eternal life. For if this life is subject to the world and its malice, surely that life is good which is not corrupted and changed, which degenerates through no vice, which is acquired by virtue. Let us flee, then, the malice of this world, in which, it says, “the days themselves are evil,” and let us flee without sluggishness. And therefore Isaiah cries: “Be strong, you weak hands and feeble knees,” that is, be strong not in the knees of the body but of the soul, so that the footstep of the mind may be lifted straight to the heights of heaven, so that its course may be firmer, life riper, grace fuller, prudence more circumspect.

For this is to flee: to know where you are heading, to lift yourself from the world, to lift yourself from the body, lest anyone exalt himself in vain again, and, being puffed up in the mind of his flesh, not hold fast to the head; and lest it be said of them: “They fled and did not see.” But this is to flee from here: to die to the elements of this world, to hide one’s life in God, to turn from corruptions, not to be defiled by desires, not to know what belongs to this world, which lays various sorrows upon us; it empties when it has filled, and fills when it has emptied. And all these things are empty and void, in which there is no solid fruit. The rich man died and has nothing, because he is not rich toward God; and therefore he is foolish, because wisdom is the worship of God, and to abstain from evil is discipline.

Who, then, would not flee a place of malice, a workshop of wickedness that does not know how to perish? Indeed, not idly was a mark placed upon Cain, lest anyone kill him, to signify that malice is not extinguished and removed from the earth. Cain was afraid of being killed, because he did not know how to flee. For malice is increased and heaped up by its very use, and it is without measure, without end, deciding by guile and fraud; it is betrayed by its own deeds and by the blood of the slain, as Cain too was betrayed. So malice moves about on earth and wanders here; and therefore we pray that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven, so that innocence may be here too. And so malice, since it has no place there, goes about here, rages here, and pours itself out, neither drowned by that flood of the world nor burned up by the fire of Sodom. Indeed it later sprouted more grievously in its seedbeds, even laying parricidal and sacrilegious hands upon the very author of the salvation of all. The law condemns the deed; it does not take away malice. The Lord Jesus himself condemned sin but put off its author, so that there might be one through whom the just are proved. For since God did not make evil, and the devil’s wickedness inserted it, God put off vengeance, so that the devil might be conquered by the very ones he had deceived.

So the deceived are put to exercise, so that they may both pay the price of their credulity and take up the pursuit of virtue and the diligence of caution. Hence he says: “Be wise as serpents.” Why as serpents? So that he may be stripped of what is his, and he who wished to strip others may lose what is his own, not his poisons but the good qualities of his nature. Indeed he is cast down when you have ascended. For it is written: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” Not lightning, he says, but like lightning, because he lost the light he had before he wished to take your light from you. But perhaps you will cite what we read of the Savior: “As the lightning flashes from under heaven, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Here too it is well said “like lightning,” because he is above lightning. Indeed lightning is from under heaven, but the true light is above heaven. So Satan is like lightning because he lost what he had; but you have received back what you had lost.

For the sentence was not loosed for him as it was for you; for the grace of Christ, which loosed you, bound him tighter; for the curse directed at the serpent because of your deception remains. For thus it was said to him: “Cursed are you above all the cattle of the earth.” For he is the common enemy of all who was the foe of the good, and he is condemned on behalf of those he had not yet harmed, since he who harmed man, to whom all those things are subject, harmed all. For he broke the common law, since he himself is subject to man along with the others. Therefore his curse is loaded with the common hatred and execration of all. And the kind of condemnation is not death but a lasting punishment. “On your breast and belly,” it says, “you shall go.” For a guilty conscience had to be pressed down and malice trampled, and its deceitful secrecy banished as it were from the face of God; at the same time it is shown that malice is earthly, which bends down to the earth. Indeed he added: “And you shall eat earth all the days of your life.”

In these words the nature of the serpent seems indeed to be described, but much more every vessel of malice is described, every serpent of wickedness, who casts himself on his belly and shuts his poison up within himself and rolls it about inside his breast, slippery in his thoughts and walking upon his frauds, entangling himself in his own deceits, always stirring and agitating his poisons when he thinks, and trampling his belly too, that is, the seedbed of his heart. Hence David says beautifully: “Sinners are estranged from the womb, they have gone astray from the belly, they have spoken falsehood; their fury is after the likeness of a serpent, like a deaf asp that stops its ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers and of the sorcerer who is charmed by the wise.” For this reason too that saying we read in the prophetic book seems beautifully said: “My belly pains me, my belly,” because malice is there where innocence ought to be, and that part labors more which ought to be calmer in us, and it is trampled by the footsteps of wickedness, goaded by its claws, shaken by a certain advance and increase of wickedness, there where is the generative seed of an eternal posterity. This seems indeed to refer to his grief that the sons he had created and received had perished, but much more that he did not have the seedbed of the Word in his belly. Therefore he says “my belly” as most precious. For precious is the womb of the mind, in which a fruitful crop of counsels is wont to sprout from the seed of the Word, and certain members of the whole life, of the virtues and disciplines, are wont to be formed.

But to return to our subject, that God thought malice should for the present be restrained rather than abolished, he says to the serpent: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and the seed of the woman. She shall watch your head, and you her heel.” Where there is enmity, there is discord and the eagerness to harm; where there is eagerness to harm, malice is present. So there is discord between the serpent and the woman. Malice underlies discord; so malice has not been taken away. Indeed it was reserved to the serpent to watch for the heel of the woman and her seed, in order to harm it and pour in its poison. Let us not walk among earthly things, then, and the serpent will be unable to harm us. Let us put on the gospel shoe, by which the serpent’s poison is shut out and its bite blunted, so that we may be shod on our feet for the gospel. And perhaps Moses was told to loose the shoe from his feet so that he might take up the shoe of the gospel; or because the preaching of the gospel was owed not to Moses, that is, not to the prophets, but to the apostles. This is the sentence, which we spoke of above, pronounced against the serpent; let us consider of what kind is the one directed against man.

He is cursed who is the author of the fault, but this one is not cursed who was deceived by another’s fraud. Yet because he did not keep God’s command, he is condemned to the toil of his works (the earth is cursed, to be sure, but in the works of the sinner), and he is cursed until he is dissolved into earth. Therefore Jesus took up flesh, to abolish the curse of sinful flesh, and he became a curse for us, so that blessing might swallow up the curse, integrity sin, pardon the sentence, life death. For he took up death too, so that the sentence might be fulfilled and satisfaction made to what had been judged: a curse on sinful flesh until death. So nothing was done against God’s sentence, since the condition of the divine sentence was fulfilled; for the curse is until death, after death grace. We are dead to the world, then: why do we still make decisions about the world? We have died with Christ: why do we still seek the activities of this life? We carry about the death of Christ in our body, so that the life of Christ too may be manifested in us. So we no longer live that life of ours, but the life of Christ, a life of innocence, of chastity, of simplicity, and of all the virtues. We have risen with Christ; let us live in him, ascend in him, so that the serpent may not find on earth a heel of ours to wound.

Let us flee from here. You can flee in spirit even if you are held back in body. You can both be here and be present with the Lord, if your soul cleaves to him, if you walk after him in your thoughts, if you follow his ways by faith, not by sight, if you take refuge in him. For he is a refuge and strength, to whom David says: “I fled to you and was not deceived.” Since, then, God is a refuge, and God is in heaven and above the heavens, surely we must flee from here to there, where there is peace, where there is rest from works, where we may feast on the great sabbath, as Moses said: “And the sabbaths of the land shall be food for you.” For it is a banquet, full of delight and tranquillity, to rest in God and to see his delight. Shall we, then, who have fled to God return to the world? Shall we who have died to sin seek sins again? Shall we who have renounced the world and its use stick again in its mud? Let us flee from here, because the time is short.

Hear how you are to flee: “And let those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who weep as though not weeping, and those who rejoice as though not rejoicing, and those who buy as though not possessing, and those who use this world as though not using it; for the form of this world is passing away.” Let our works, then, not pass away with the passing form of the world, lest we too pass away; but let us remain in the truth. If we remain in Christ, we remain in the truth, and we shall remain with him and shall not pass away, but we shall say: “The blessing of the Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of the Lord.” For those who pass by cannot say it, because “those who passed by the way did not say: The blessing of the Lord be upon you,” as the prophet said. And so if we want our works not to pass away, let us not pass by the command of God, let us not pass by diligence in seeking the Lord Jesus and earning his grace. That woman did not pass him by, who went even into the Pharisee’s house, where Christ was reclining, and poured ointment on his feet.

Let us not pass by progress in any discipline, as the young Joseph did not pass it by, for he sought his brothers and hurried to the place where they were pasturing the sheep, and when he learned that they were in Dothan he went there. By the word Dothan is signified a sufficient failing, that is, a failing of vain opinions, not a moderate one but perfect and full, in which there is progress of the soul. For the wise man, when he diminishes, adds; for worldly opinions fail, which are compared to weak women. Hence it is beautifully said, to show that Sarah had come to progress so that she might bring forth laughter and joy: “The ways of women had ceased to be with Sarah.” Good, then, is the failing of desires, the failing of vanity, because it is an addition of truth. Hence the holy man too says: “My soul has failed for your salvation.” For she was about to bear the one whom God had granted and therefore promised, about to bear joy and that sober intoxication of gladness, about to bear by swiftness of mind before the birth was expected, pregnant with wisdom. Indeed of other Hebrew women too you have it that Hebrew women give birth before the midwives come, because the souls of the just do not wait for arts and disciplines for the kinds of discoveries nor seek aids to generation, but bring forth their offspring of their own accord and anticipate expectation.

Jacob was no less quick at finding than at carrying out: when his mother told him to bring food to his father, we see that the kinds of definitions were at his disposal. For he both found quickly and testified that God was the author of his findings, in which both the palm of diligence and the richness of natural talent are signified. The first definition, then, is in finding. What is found is sought, and what is sought belongs to time, and what belongs to time certainly belongs to diligence. But what anticipates the use of time God pours in, God gives; what God gives belongs to nature, not to diligence. Natural talent, then, is of divine gift, and what is of divine gift is of nature. So talent belongs to nature, finding to diligence: the one is without time, the other needs time. And so the one is present without time, the other is searched out in a space of time; the one is above us, the other is referred to us.

When the father was seeking the food of the word (for man does not live by bread alone but by every word of God; such food Isaac sought, such food Peter hungered for when he saw the mysteries of the Gentile people who were to believe), Esau did not have ready the food of a spiritual and quicker mind. While he was hunting and searching and preparing to offer a very hard and rustic speech, Jacob anticipated him with quick finding and a gentle, almost homely answer, providing a pleasant word to soothe and delight him. Hence the father in wonder said: “What is this that you have found so quickly, my son?” Jacob answered: “What the Lord your God delivered into my hands.” The first definition is in the question, the second in the answer. So the father, finding everything complete, whether of talent or of diligence, concluded with the consummation of the definition, saying: “Behold, the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed.” For a field has both a natural talent for fertility and the temporal diligence of cultivation, and rightly there is fullness in that in which neither is lacking. At the same time, by adding “which the Lord has blessed,” he seems to have preferred the grace of nature to the labor of cultivation. And Esau confirmed it, saying: “Rightly was his name called Jacob; for he has supplanted me now twice and taken my birthright.”

But perhaps you say: why did he delay who was sent by his father to hunt? But consider that the father too declared that he could not have ready what was spiritually asked for. And therefore, because he was lacking in talent, he required him to add the support of diligence. He also urges speed when he says: “Take your bow and arrow.” Yet one who recognizes that the gift of talent is higher also receives the fruit of diligence.

Not without reason did he bring homegrown food, he who acquired union with wisdom from the household of his own seed. Good is diligence with wisdom, and finding with natural talent. Indeed holy Isaac, having union with wisdom at hand, walked in the field, or rather withdrew himself. Let us too first be united with wisdom, and so go out into the field, desiring to seek and to find. For many seek badly without wisdom. And so Cain, because he had not received prudence from God, sought badly and went out badly into the field; Abel well, who fulfilled the perfect gift of sacrifice; for the sacrifice of wisdom is good, faith is a good victim, and every virtue. Indeed Wisdom slaughtered her victims and mixed her wine in the mixing bowl. And therefore, to give the drink of faith to the foolish Gentiles, she called them to her bowl, saying: “Whoever is foolish, let him turn aside to me,” and to those lacking sense she said: “Come and eat of my bread and drink the wine which I have mixed for you.” Plato thought he should transfer this mixing bowl into his books, and to its drink he summoned souls; but he did not know how to fill them, since he served a drink not of faith but of faithlessness. Let us flee from here, then, as holy Jacob fled from his homeland; for he knew that the true homeland is above.