The Conferences 21.22–22.2

Theonas: “If we weigh everything we do by the reasonable examination of the mind, and always consult not the judgments of others but our own conscience about the purity of our heart, it is certain that this interval of refreshment cannot hinder a just strictness, provided, as has been said, that the uncorrupted mind, weighing indulgence and self-restraint in an equal balance, checks excess on either side alike, and discerns with true discernment whether the weight of pleasures is pressing down our spirit, or whether greater austerity of abstinence is weighing down the other side, that is, the body; restraining or relieving the part it feels to be either lifted up or burdened. For our Lord wants nothing done for his worship and honor without the moderation of judgment, since ‘the honor of the king loves judgment.’ And so the most wise Solomon, that we may not lean to either side by a swerving judgment, warns us, saying, ‘Honor God from your just labors, and offer him of the fruits of your righteousness.’ For there sits in our conscience an uncorrupted and true judge, who sometimes alone is not deceived about the state of our purity when all others err. So let the attention of a continually watchful heart be kept with all caution and skill, lest in some way, when the judgment of our discernment errs, either kindled by the craving for an ill-considered abstinence or enticed by the desire for too great relaxation, we weigh the substance of our strength on an unjust scale. Rather, placing the purity of the soul in one pan and the strength of the body in the other, let us weigh both by the true judgment of conscience, so that, perverted by the preponderating affection for one thing, we do not tip the balance of fairness too far to either side, either to immoderate strictness or to excessive relaxation, and there should be said to us, whether for excess of relaxation or of strictness, ‘If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned?’ For those victims of fasting, which we wring from ourselves inconsiderately by a violent convulsion of the bowels and believe we offer rightly to the Lord, he who loves mercy and judgment abhors, saying, ‘I the Lord love judgment and hate robbery in the burnt offering.’ And those who take the chief part of their offerings, that is, of their duties and acts, for the comfort of the flesh and their own uses, and bring the Lord the remnants and the smallest portion, the divine word condemns as fraudulent workmen: ‘Cursed is he who does the works of the Lord fraudulently.’ Not without reason, then, does the Lord rebuke one who deceives himself by such an unjust weighing, saying, ‘But the sons of men are vain, the sons of men are liars in the scales, so as to deceive.’ And so the blessed apostle, that we may keep the moderation of discernment and not be drawn by excess to either side, warns us, saying, ‘your reasonable service.’ The lawgiver also forbids this in the same way, commanding, ‘Let the balance be just and the weights equal, the modius just and the sextarius equal’; and Solomon too gives a like sentence on this: ‘A great weight and a small, and double measures, both are unclean before the Lord, and he who makes them will be entangled in his own devices.’ So we must strive not only in the way we have described but also in this: not to have unjust weights in our hearts or double measures in the storehouses of our conscience. That is, we must not take for ourselves a more abundant indulgence of relaxation, softening what belongs to the rule of strictness, while we crush those to whom we preach the word of the Lord with stricter precepts and heavier weights than we ourselves can bear. When we do this, what are we doing but weighing or measuring out the merchandise and produce of the Lord’s precepts with a double weight and measure? For if we dispense them one way to ourselves and another way to our brothers, we are rightly rebuked by the Lord for having deceitful scales and double measures, according to that saying of Solomon: ‘A double weight is an abomination to the Lord, and a deceitful balance is not good in his sight.’ We also clearly incur the guilt of a deceitful weight and a double measure if, from desire of human praise, we display before the brothers practices stricter than those we are accustomed to keep privately in our cells, wishing to appear more abstinent and holy to human eyes than to God’s. This disease must be not only avoided but abhorred by us above all. But meanwhile, having wandered a little too far from the question put, let us return to the point from which we departed.”

“The solemnity of those days, then, must be kept in such a way that the relaxation allowed helps rather than harms the care of body and soul; for neither does the joy of any festival blunt the goads of the flesh, nor does that merciless adversary know how to be softened by reverence for the days. So that on feast days the customary solemnity may be kept and yet the most wholesome measure of frugality not be exceeded, it is enough to let the indulgence of relaxation go only so far that the food which was to be taken at the ninth hour of the day is taken a little earlier, that is, at the sixth hour, because of the festive season; but only on condition that the usual amount and kind of food is not changed. Otherwise the purity of body and integrity of mind gained by the abstinence of Lent may be lost by the relaxation of Pentecost, and what we have obtained by fasting may do us no good if careless satiety forces us soon to lose it; especially since the well-known cunning of our enemy attacks the fortress of our purity above all when he feels that its guard has been relaxed by the celebration of some solemnity. So we must take the most watchful care that the vigor of our mind is never weakened by pleasant seductions, and that, as has been said above, we do not lose in the rest and security of Pentecost the purity of chastity sought by the continuous labor of Lent. And so let no addition at all be admitted in the kind or amount of food, but let us refrain on the most solemn days likewise from the foods by abstaining from which we guarded the integrity of our chastity on ordinary days, lest the gladness of the festival, stirring up a most pernicious battle of carnal incitements, be turned into mourning and snatch from us that more excellent festival of the mind which exults in the joy of incorruption, and we begin, after the brief vanity of carnal gladness, to weep with the long grief of repentance for the chastity of heart we have lost. Rather we must strive that the warning of the prophet’s exhortation be not addressed to us in vain: ‘Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, and pay your vows.’ For if the solemnity of the intervening days does not change the constancy of our self-restraint, we shall enjoy spiritual holidays continually; and so, as we cease from servile work, there will be ‘month after month, and sabbath after sabbath.’”

Germanus: “Why is Lent kept for six weeks (though in some provinces a perhaps more zealous care for religion seems to have added a seventh week as well), when neither number, once Sundays and Saturdays are subtracted, makes up the total of forty days? For only thirty-six days are contained in those weeks.”

Theonas: “Although the devout simplicity of some would cut short the question on this matter, yet since you examine scrupulously even what another would have thought unworthy of a question, and wish to know the whole truth of our observance and its mystery, hear a most clear reason for this too, so that you may see more plainly that our forebears handed down nothing unreasonable. In the law of Moses a general command was issued to the whole people: ‘You shall offer your tithes and first fruits to the Lord your God.’ So we who are commanded to offer tithes of our property and of all our produce must much more offer tithes of our very way of life, of our human activity and our works; and this is clearly fulfilled in the reckoning of Lent. For the number of all the days in which the circling year is contained is tithed by the number of thirty-six and a half days. In seven weeks, if Sundays and Saturdays are subtracted, thirty-five days remain assigned to fasting. But when that day of the vigil is added, on which the Saturday fast is prolonged until cockcrow as Sunday dawns, not only is the number of thirty-six days completed, but, for the tithe of the five days which seemed left over, nothing will be lacking to the full total if the space of the night that was added is reckoned in.”

“And what shall I say of the first fruits, which it is certain are offered daily by all who serve Christ faithfully? For when, woken from sleep and rising with an eagerness as if revived after slumber, before they conceive the movement of any feeling in their heart or admit any memory or care of household affairs, they consecrate the rise and beginnings of their thoughts as divine burnt offerings, what are they doing but truly paying the first fruits of their produce, through the high priest Jesus Christ, for the use of this life and as an image of the daily resurrection? And when, roused from sleep, they likewise offer God the victim of their jubilation, calling on him with the first movement of their tongue and celebrating his name and praises, and, unlocking the first bars of their lips to sing hymns to him, sacrifice to God the service of their mouth, to him they also bring in the same way the first offerings of their hands and steps, when they rise from their beds and stand in prayer. Before they use the service of their members for their own affairs, they take nothing of their service for themselves first, but move their steps to his honor and fix them in his praise; and so they pay the first fruits of all their movements by stretching out their hands, bending their knees, and prostrating their whole body. For we cannot otherwise fulfil what is sung in the psalm, ‘I came before at the dawn and cried out,’ and, ‘My eyes came before you at daybreak, that I might meditate on your words,’ and, ‘In the morning my prayer shall come before you,’ except by daring, after the rest of sleep, when we are called back to this light as if, as we said above, from darkness and death, to take nothing at all of all the services of mind and body for our own needs. For there is no other whom either the prophet came before in the morning or whom we ought likewise to come before, except either ourselves, that is, our occupations and mortal affections and cares, without which we cannot be, or the most subtle suggestions of the enemy, which he tries to bring upon us while we are still resting and sunk in sleep, through the fantasies of empty dreams, so as to seize and entangle us with them as soon as we wake, and so be the first to pluck and carry off the best of our first fruits. So we must take care with all caution, if we wish to fulfil in practice the force of the verse just mentioned, that skilful watchfulness guards the first rise of our morning thoughts, lest the hasty presumption of the envious enemy defile any of them and cause our first fruits to be rejected by the Lord as already cheap and common. If we do not come before him with the watchful circumspection of the mind, he will not give up his habit of most wicked anticipation and will not cease to come before us daily with his frauds. And so, if we long to offer God first fruits from the produce of our mind that are pleasing and acceptable, we must spend no small care to keep all the senses of our body, especially in the morning hours, as most holy burnt offerings of the Lord, unblemished and untouched in every way. Many even of those in the world keep this kind of devotion with the greatest care: rising before light or at daybreak, they by no means become entangled in the familiar and necessary business of this world before they run to church and hasten to consecrate the first fruits of all their actions and works in the sight of God.”

“As for what you say, that in some provinces Lent is kept in different ways, that is, for six or for seven weeks, one reckoning and the same measure of fasting are contained in the different observance of weeks. For those have fixed on the observance of six weeks who think one should fast on Saturday as well. So they keep six fasts in the week, which, repeated six times, make up the same thirty-six days. So, as we said, there is one reckoning and the same measure of fasting, although they seem to differ in the number of weeks.”

“But when human neglect had wiped out the reason for this, this season, in which, as has been said, yearly tithes are offered to God by thirty-six and a half fasts, received the name of Quadragesima. Perhaps it seemed it should be called by this name because Moses, Elijah, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself are recorded to have fasted forty days. To the mystery of this number are also not unfittingly fitted those forty years during which Israel stayed in the wilderness, and likewise the forty stations by which it is described as mystically passing through it. Or perhaps the tithing itself rightly took the name Quadragesima as if from the custom of the toll? For so that public levy is commonly called, from which as large a portion of the profit is assigned to the king’s revenue as is also required of us, as the lawful tax of Quadragesima, by the King of all ages for the use of our life. And indeed, though it does not belong to the question put, yet since the occasion of the narrative has offered itself, I think I should not pass over this either: that our elders very often testified that in those days every kind of monk is especially attacked, by an ancient custom of the hostile race, and is pressed more sharply to move from his dwelling. For after the likeness in which the Egyptians then oppressed the children of Israel with violent afflictions, the spiritual Egyptians now also try to bow down the true Israel, that is, the people of the monks, with hard and muddy works, so that we may not leave the land of Egypt through the quiet that is dear to God and pass over with profit into the desert of the virtues; so that Pharaoh roars against us, saying, ‘They are idle, and therefore they cry out, saying: Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord our God. Let them be oppressed with labors, and be busy with their works, and not be busy with vain words.’ For to him the holy sacrifice of the Lord, which is not offered except in the desert of a free heart, is evidently the height of vanity; ‘for religion is an abomination to the sinner.’”

“The righteous and perfect man, then, is not bound by this law of Lent, nor is he content to be subject to this small rule. The leaders of the churches established it, of course, for those who are entangled in pleasures or worldly business throughout the whole year, so that, constrained by this quasi-legal necessity, they might be forced to give themselves to the Lord at least in these days, and dedicate to the Lord at least a tithe of the days of their life, all of which they were going to devour like produce. But the righteous, for whom the law is not laid down, and who spend on spiritual duties not that small portion, that is, a tenth, but the whole time of their life, are free from paying the legal tithes; and so, if an honorable and holy necessity presses them unexpectedly, they dare to relax this station of fasting without any dispute. For the smallness of a tithe is not reduced by those who have offered all that is theirs to the Lord together with themselves. One who offers nothing voluntarily to God and is compelled by the necessity of the law to pay his tithes without excuse could certainly not do this without the gravest guilt of fraud. It is therefore clearly proved that a servant of the law cannot be perfect, whether he avoids what is forbidden or carries out what is commanded, but that those are truly perfect who do not use even what is permitted by the law. And for this reason, although it is said of the law of Moses, ‘For the law brought nothing to perfection,’ we read that some of the saints in the Old Testament were perfect, because, going beyond the command of the law, they lived under the perfection of the Gospel, knowing that ‘the law is not laid down for the righteous, but for the unrighteous and insubordinate, for the impious and sinners, for the wicked and defiled,’ and so on.”

“It should be known, indeed, that this observance of Lent did not exist at all as long as the perfection of that primitive church remained unbroken. For those who enclosed the whole year in an equal fast were not shut in within the narrowest limits of fasts, bound by the necessity of this command or by a quasi-legal sanction. But when the multitude of believers, falling away daily from that apostolic devotion, began to brood over its wealth and not to divide it for the use of all the faithful according to the institutions of the apostles, but, looking privately to its own expenses, strove not only to keep but even to increase it, not content with following the example of Ananias and Sapphira, then it pleased all the priests of that time to call men bound up in worldly cares, and, I might almost say, ignorant of self-restraint or compunction, back to holy work by the canonical appointment of fasts, and to compel them, as it were, by the necessity of legal tithes. This can indeed help the weak but cannot prejudice the perfect, who, placed under the grace of the Gospel, go beyond the law by voluntary devotion, so that they may reach that blessedness of the apostle’s sentence: ‘For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace.’ For sin truly cannot exercise dominion over one who stands faithfully in the freedom of grace.”

Germanus: “Since this sentence of the apostle cannot be false, and it promises security not only to monks but to all Christians in general, it seems very obscure to us. For if he declares that all who believe the Gospel are free from and strangers to the yoke and dominion of sin, how is it that the dominion of sins is strong in almost all the baptized, according to the Lord’s sentence in which he says, ‘Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin’?”

Theonas: “Your inquiry again stirs up a very large question for us. Although I know that its force can neither be handed on nor received by the inexperienced, I will try to resolve it in words and explain it briefly as far as I can, provided that your understanding follows what we say with deeds as well. For whatever is learned not by teaching but by experience cannot be handed on by one without experience, and likewise cannot be grasped or held in mind by one who has not been grounded in similar zeal and training. And so I think it necessary first to inquire carefully what is the purpose or will of the law, and what is the discipline and perfection of grace, so that from these we may then recognize either the dominion of sin or its expulsion. The law, then, commands above all that the union of marriage be sought, saying, ‘Blessed is he who has seed in Zion and a household in Jerusalem,’ and, ‘Cursed is the barren woman who has not given birth.’ Grace, on the contrary, invites us to the purity of perpetual incorruption and the chastity of blessed virginity, saying, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the breasts that have not given suck,’ and, ‘He who does not hate father and mother and wife cannot be my disciple,’ and that word of the apostle: ‘It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none.’ The law says, ‘You shall not delay to offer your tithes and first fruits’; grace, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor.’ The law does not forbid retaliation for insults and vengeance for injuries, saying, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ Grace wishes our patience to be proved by the doubling of the injuries or blows inflicted, and commands us to be ready to bear a double loss, saying, ‘Whoever strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also; and to him who wishes to go to law with you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.’ The law decrees that enemies are to be hated; grace, that they are to be loved so much that it judges that God should always be prayed to even for them.”

“Whoever, then, has climbed this summit of Gospel perfection, raised by the merits of such great virtues above all law and despising as small everything commanded through Moses, knows that he is under the grace of the Savior alone, by whose help he understands that he has reached that most exalted state. So sin does not have dominion over him, because ‘the love of God which has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ shuts out all affection for anything else; nor can he desire what is forbidden or despise what is commanded, since all his zeal and all his desire, always intent on divine love, is so little captured by delight in worthless things that he does not use even what is permitted. But under the law, in which the rights of marriage are kept, although the wandering of lust is restrained and bound to one woman only, the goads of carnal desire cannot fail to be strong; and it is hard for a fire to which fuel is even deliberately supplied to be so confined within fixed limits that it does not also stray outside and burn whatever it touches. Even if the barrier set against it always meets it so that it is not allowed to blaze outside, still it burns even while it is restrained, since the will itself is culpable, and the habit of intercourse is swept on to the swiftest excesses of adultery. But those whom the grace of the Savior has set aflame with a holy love of incorruption consume all the thorns of carnal desires with the fire of the Lord’s love, so that not even a warm ember of vices lessens the coolness of their integrity. So the servants of the law slip from the use of what is lawful into what is unlawful; those who share in grace, while they despise what is lawful, do not know what is unlawful. And just as sin lives in the lover of marriage, so too in him who is content merely to pay his tithes and first fruits. For while he delays or neglects, he must sin in their quality, their quantity, or their daily distribution. For one who is commanded to minister what is his own tirelessly to the needy, however great the faith and devotion with which he dispenses it, will hardly fail to fall often into the snares of sins. But in those who have not spurned the Lord’s counsel, but, giving all their property to the poor beforehand, have taken up their cross and follow the giver of grace, sin cannot have dominion. For no faithless care of keeping a livelihood will bite the one who dispenses in devout distribution wealth already consecrated to Christ and money as if it were another’s, nor will sad hesitation drive away the cheerfulness of his almsgiving. For what he has once offered wholly to God he now scatters as another’s, without remembering his own need or fearing a scanty livelihood, since he is sure that when he has reached the poverty he desired he will be fed by God much more than the birds of the air. On the other hand, one who keeps his worldly property and, bound by the sanction of the old law, distributes the tithes of his produce and first fruits or a part of his money, although he largely quenches the fire of his sins with this dew of almsgiving, yet, however generously he dispenses his wealth, cannot possibly rescue himself fully from the dominion of sin, unless perhaps through the grace of the Savior he lays aside the very desire to possess along with the thing itself. In the same way, whoever prefers, by the precept of the law, to tear out eye for eye and tooth for tooth, or to hate his enemy, cannot fail to serve the bloody rule of sin; for while he wishes to avenge his injury by like retaliation and keeps the bitterness of hatred against his enemies, he must always be inflamed with the disturbance of rage and anger. But whoever lives in the light of Gospel grace, and overcomes evil not by resisting but by bearing it, and does not hesitate willingly to offer the other cheek also to one who strikes his right, and lets one who wants to go to law with him over his tunic have his cloak as well, and loves his enemies and prays for those who slander him, has thrown off the yoke of sin and broken its chains. For he does not live under the law, which does not destroy the seeds of sins (so that the blessed apostle not without reason says of it, ‘There is a setting aside of the former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness, for the law brought nothing to perfection,’ and the Lord says through the prophet, ‘And I gave them precepts that were not good, and ordinances by which they shall not live’), but under grace, which not only lops off the branches of wickedness but pulls out the very roots of the harmful will.”

“Whoever, then, has been eager to hold the perfection of the Gospel teaching, being placed under grace, is not oppressed by the dominion of sin; for to be under grace is to fulfil what is commanded by grace. But whoever will not submit to the fullness of Gospel perfection, let him know that, although he seems to himself baptized and a monk, he is not under grace but, still hampered by the chains of the law, is weighed down by the burden of sin. For the purpose of him who takes up all by whom he is received with the grace of adoption is not to destroy but to build upon, not to make void but to fulfil, the sanctions of Moses. Some, utterly ignorant of this and neglecting the grandeur of Christ’s counsels and exhortations, are so relaxed by the security of a presumptuous liberty that not only do they not touch Christ’s precepts as too hard, but they even despise as out of date the very things commanded to them as beginners and little ones by the law of Moses, saying, with a harmful liberty, what the apostle abhors: ‘We have sinned, because we are not under the law but under grace.’ One, then, who is neither under grace, because he has by no means climbed the summit of the Lord’s teaching, nor under the law, because he has not accepted even those small commands of the law, is oppressed by a double dominion of sins, and believes he has received the grace of Christ only in order to become estranged from him through a harmful liberty. He falls into what the apostle Peter warns us not to incur: ‘Act as free,’ he says, ‘and not as having liberty as a cloak for malice.’ The blessed apostle Paul also says, ‘For you were called to liberty, brothers,’ that is, to be freed from the dominion of sin, ‘only do not give your liberty as an occasion for the flesh,’ that is, do not believe that the setting aside of the precepts of the law is license for vices. And the apostle Paul teaches that this liberty is nowhere except only where the Lord dwells, saying, ‘The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ So I do not know whether I have been able to express and make clear this meaning of the blessed apostle as those who have experienced it understand it. One thing I know most plainly: it is opened even without anyone’s explanation to all who have perfectly held the praktikē, that is, the active discipline. For they will not labor to understand by argument what they have already learned by doing.”

Germanus: “You have most plainly revealed a very obscure question, and one, we think, unknown to many. So we beg you to add this too to our progress, and explain carefully why sometimes, even when we are fasting more strictly and are exhausted and weak, more violent struggles of the body are stirred up. For often, when on waking from sleep we find that we have suffered the contamination of an unclean fluid, we are so downcast in conscience that we do not dare to rise with confidence even to prayer itself.”

Theonas: “Your zeal, by which you long to reach the way of perfection not superficially but fully and perfectly, spurs us to keep at this discussion tirelessly. For you are inquiring carefully not about outward chastity and visible circumcision but about that which is in secret, knowing that the fullness of perfection does not lie in this visible continence of the flesh, which can be had even by unbelievers, whether through necessity or hypocrisy, but in that voluntary and invisible purity of heart which the blessed apostle proclaims thus: ‘For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision what is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not the letter; his praise is not from men but from God,’ who alone searches the secrets of hearts. Yet since your desire cannot be fully satisfied (for the short space of night that remains is not enough to investigate this most obscure question), I think it fitting that it be put off for now. For these things must be brought forth by us, and impressed on your minds, gradually and with a heart wholly freed from all the noise of thoughts; and just as they must be inquired into for the sake of our common purification, so they cannot be handed on and assigned except by one who has experienced the gift of integrity. For what is sought is not what arguments of empty words, but what the inner faith of conscience and the greater force of truth impress on us. And so nothing of the knowledge and teaching of this cleansing can be brought forth except by one who has experienced it, nor poured into anyone except a most eager and very anxious lover of truth itself, who wishes to reach it not by asking with empty and bare words, but by striving with all the strength of his soul; that is, not with a zeal for fruitless talk, but with a desire for inner purification.”

About seven days later, when the festival of Pentecost was over, we entered the cell of holy Theonas at the very beginning of the night, that is, after the evening synaxis, in suspense with expectation of the promised discussion. The old man, eager and with a cheerful face, spoke to us first with gentle words: “I was wondering,” he said, “that your most ardent zeal could put off for these seven days the solution of the question proposed, and grant so long a delay to your debtor, especially when he did not ask for it. So it is most just that, since your kindness has freely granted me so generous a respite, I too should make no delay in paying the debt. For the business of this loan is pleasant: while it is being repaid it gains greater increase, and it not only enriches the one who receives but does not diminish the one who gives. For the dispenser of spiritual things gathers a double profit: he gains the greatest advantage not only in the progress of his hearer but also in his own discourse, kindling himself no less to the desire of perfection while he instructs the listener. So your ardor is my progress, your anxiety is my compunction. For I myself would now be sluggish in mind and would turn over in my heart nothing of what you have asked, if your ardor and expectation did not rouse me, as if I were asleep, to the remembrance of spiritual things. And so let the question, if you please, be brought forward, whose solution we preferred to postpone the other day for lack of time.”

“Your inquiry, if I am not mistaken, comprised this: why sometimes, when we indulge ourselves more freely, we are titillated by milder goads of this flesh, and sometimes, when we abstain more strictly, with the body afflicted and exhausted, we are pressed by sharper incitements, so that, as your confession disclosed, on waking we find ourselves wet with the discharge of natural fluids.”