The Conferences 6.11–7.5

“Although we have said that temptation is twofold, that is, in prosperous or adverse things, it must be known that all people are tempted for three reasons: often for testing, sometimes for purification, occasionally for the deserts of their sins. For testing, as we read that the blessed Abraham, Job, and many of the saints bore countless tribulations; or as it is said to the people through Moses in Deuteronomy: ‘And you shall remember all that way along which the Lord your God led you for forty years through the desert, to afflict you and test you, and that what was in your heart might be made known, whether you would keep his commandments or not’; and what is said in the psalm: ‘I tested you at the water of contradiction’; and to Job: ‘Or do you think I spoke to you for any other reason than that you might appear righteous?’ For purification, when he humbles his righteous ones for some small and light sins, or for pride in their purity, and hands them over to various temptations, so that he may burn out in the present all the filth of their thoughts and, in the words of the prophet, the dross which he sees has hardened in their hidden parts, and send them on to the future judgment like pure gold, allowing nothing to remain in them which the fire of judgment, searching them afterwards, would find to purge with penal torment; according to the words: ‘Many are the tribulations of the righteous’; and: ‘My son, do not neglect the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves he corrects, and he scourges every son whom he receives. For what son is there whom the father does not correct? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are bastards and not sons.’ And in the Apocalypse: ‘Those whom I love I rebuke and chasten.’ To them also the word is addressed through Jeremiah, in the person of God, under the figure of Jerusalem: ‘For I will make an end of all the nations among which I have scattered you; but of you I will not make an end; but I will chasten you in judgment, so that you may not seem to yourself innocent.’ For this wholesome purification David prays, saying: ‘Prove me, O Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart.’ Isaiah too, understanding the usefulness of this temptation, says: ‘Correct us, O Lord, but in judgment, and not in your fury’; and again: ‘I will confess to you, O Lord, for you were angry with me; your fury has turned away, and you have comforted me.’ For the deserts of sins the blows of temptation are inflicted, as where the Lord threatens that he will send plagues upon the people of Israel, saying: ‘I will send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the fury of things that drag along the ground’; and: ‘In vain have I struck your sons; you did not receive discipline.’ In the Psalms too: ‘Many are the scourges of sinners’; and in the Gospel: ‘See, you have been made well; sin no more, lest something worse happen to you.’ We also find a fourth reason, by which we know from the authority of the Scriptures that some sufferings are inflicted on certain people only to manifest the glory and works of God, according to the Gospel: ‘Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested in him’; and again: ‘This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified by it.’ There are also other kinds of vengeance, by which some who have gone beyond the heap of malice are struck in the present, as we read that Dathan and Abiram and Korah were condemned; and above all those of whom the apostle says: ‘For this reason God gave them up to shameful passions and to a reprobate mind’; which must be judged heavier than the other punishments. For of them the psalmist says: ‘They are not in the labors of men, and they will not be scourged with men.’ For they do not deserve to be saved by the Lord's visitation or to obtain healing by temporal blows, ‘who, despairing, have given themselves up to lewdness, to the working of all error, to uncleanness,’ and who by hardness of heart and the habit and frequency of sinning have gone beyond the purification of this very short age and the punishment of the present life. The divine word reproaches them too through the prophet: ‘I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand snatched from the fire; and even so you did not return to me, says the Lord.’ And Jeremiah: ‘I have killed and destroyed my people, and yet they have not turned back from their ways’; and again: ‘You struck them, and they did not grieve; you crushed them, and they refused to receive discipline; they hardened their faces above rock, they would not return.’ The prophet, seeing that all the medicine of this time had been spent in vain on their healing, despairing as it were of their salvation, cries out: ‘The bellows have failed in the fire; in vain has the smelter melted; for your wickednesses have not been consumed. Call them rejected silver, because the Lord has rejected them.’ The Lord complains that he has applied this wholesome purification of fire in vain to those who are hardened in their crimes, under the person of Jerusalem, encrusted with the deep rust of sins: ‘Set it empty on the coals, that it may grow hot, and its bronze may melt, and its filth may be melted out in the midst of it. Much labor has been spent, and its great rust has not gone out of it, not even by fire. Your uncleanness is detestable; because I wished to cleanse you, and you were not cleansed of your filth.’ Therefore, like a most skilled physician who has spent all his healing cares and sees that no kind of remedy remains that can be applied to their sickness, the Lord is in a way overcome by the greatness of their iniquities and compelled to withdraw from that merciful chastisement of his, and so he announces to her: ‘I will no longer be angry with you, and my jealousy has departed from you.’ But of others, whose heart the frequency of sins has not hardened, and who do not need that most severe and, so to speak, caustic medicine of fire, but for whom the instruction of the saving word is enough for salvation, it is said: ‘I will correct them by the hearing of their tribulation.’ We are not ignorant of other causes too of chastisements or punishments, which are inflicted on those who have sinned most grievously, not to expiate their crimes or to wipe out the deserts of their sins, but for the correction and fear of the living. We know that these were clearly inflicted on Jeroboam son of Nebat, on Baasha son of Ahijah, and on Ahab and Jezebel, as the divine sentence declares: ‘Behold, I will bring evil upon you, and I will cut off your posterity, and I will kill of Ahab every male, both him that is shut up and him that is last in Israel. And I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah, because you have acted so as to provoke me to anger and have made Israel sin. The dogs also shall eat Jezebel in the field of Jezreel. If Ahab dies in the city, the dogs shall eat him; but if he dies in the field, the birds of the sky shall eat him’; and what is announced as a great threat: ‘Your corpse shall not be brought into the tomb of your fathers.’ Not that so short and momentary a punishment could suffice to burn out either the profane inventions of the one who first set up the golden calves for the perpetual transgression of the people and their impious separation from the Lord, or the countless and wicked crimes of sacrilege of the others; but so that the terror of these punishments, which they feared, might be struck by example into others too, who, either neglecting or wholly disbelieving the future, were moved only by consideration of the present; and so that by the proof of this severity they might recognize that there is no neglect of human affairs and of daily providence with that majesty of the supreme Godhead, and might see more plainly through the things they most feared that God is the rewarder of all actions. We also find that some received the same sentence of death in the present even for lighter faults, by which those also were punished whom we mentioned as the authors of sacrilegious transgression; as happened to the man who gathered sticks on the sabbath, or to Ananias and Sapphira, who through the error of unbelief kept back a little of their property. Not that the weights of their sins were equal, but because, being found the first to dare a new transgression, they had to give others an example of punishment and terror as well as of sin; so that whoever afterwards attempted the same things might know that, according to the same pattern by which they were condemned, even if punishment is deferred in the present, it will be paid at the examination of the future judgment. And since we seem to have made a digression from the discourse we set out on, while we wished to run through the kinds of temptations and punishments, in which we were saying that the perfect man always remains immovable in both kinds of temptation, let us now return to it.”

“So the mind of the righteous man ought not to be like wax or any other softer material, which always yields to the stamp of those who seal it and is shaped according to its form and image, and keeps it only until it is reshaped by another seal pressed on it again. So it would happen that, never remaining in its own quality, it would always be turned and changed into the form of whatever is impressed on it. Rather it ought to be like a kind of adamant seal, so that our mind, always keeping its own form inviolate, may stamp and transform all the impressions that befall it into the quality of its own state, while it itself can be marked by no assaults.”

Germanus: “Can our mind keep one state continually and always remain in the same quality?”

Theodore: “It is necessary, according to the apostle, that one who is renewed in the spirit of his mind should make progress every day, always stretching out to what lies ahead; or, if he neglects it, it follows that he goes back and slips into a worse state. And therefore the mind can by no means remain in one and the same quality. It is as if someone tries to force a boat up against the current of a violent river by the stroke of the oars: he must either, by the strength of his arms, cut through the rush of the torrent and climb upstream, or, relaxing his hands, be carried back headlong by the downward stream. Therefore this will be a clear sign of our loss: if we realize that we have gained nothing more, let us not doubt that we have been carried back in every way on any day on which we have not felt ourselves progress upward. For, as I said, a man's mind cannot remain continually in the same state, nor will any of the saints, while in this flesh, so possess the height of the virtues that they remain immovable. For something must always either be added to them or taken away, and in all creation there can be no such perfection as is not subject to the passion of changeability, according to what we read in the book of the blessed Job: ‘What is man, that he should be spotless, and one born of woman, that he should appear righteous? Behold, among his holy ones none is unchangeable, and the heavens are not clean in his sight.’ For we confess God alone to be unchangeable, whom the prayer of the holy prophet thus addresses: ‘But you are the same’; and he says of himself: ‘I am God, and I do not change’; because he alone is by nature always good, always full, and always perfect, to whom nothing can ever be added or taken away. And therefore we must always stretch ourselves toward the pursuit of the virtues with unremitting care and concern, and occupy ourselves continually with these exercises, lest, when progress stops, decline follow at once. For, as we said, the mind cannot remain in one and the same state, that is, so as neither to gain increases of virtue nor suffer losses. For not to have gained is to have lost, because when the desire of progressing stops, the danger of going back will not be absent.”

“And therefore constant dwelling in the cell must be kept. For as often as anyone has wandered away from it, so often, even when he has returned, he will waver and be troubled like a new and beginning dweller in it. For the intention of mind he had acquired while staying in the cell, if it has been relaxed, he will not be able to recover again without labor and pain; and so, brought back, he will not think about the progress he lost, which he could have added if he had not been shaken out of his cell, but will rather rejoice if he feels that he has recovered the state from which he fell. For just as time lost and past cannot be recalled, so neither can the gains that have perished be restored. For however much the intention of the mind works afterwards, it is the progress of the present day and the gain of the present time, not the recovery of a profit once lost.”

“That even the heavenly powers are subject to changeability, as we said, is shown by those of their number who fell through the fault of a corrupt will. Hence neither are those who remain in the blessedness in which they were created to be thought of unchangeable nature, because they have not likewise been corrupted to the contrary side. For it is one thing to be of unchangeable nature, and another not to be changed, through the grace of the unchangeable God, by the effort of virtue and the keeping of the good. For whatever is acquired or held by diligence can also be lost by negligence. And therefore it is said: ‘Do not call a man blessed before his end’; because one who is still in the struggle and, so to speak, in the arena, though he usually wins and gains frequent palms of victory, cannot yet be safe from fear and anxiety about the uncertain outcome. And therefore God alone is called unchangeable and good, who, possessing goodness not by the zeal of effort but by nature, cannot be anything other than good. No virtue, then, can be possessed by man immovably; but, in order that it may be held continually once gained, it must always be guarded with the same diligence and effort by which it was acquired.”

“No one who has fallen should be believed to have collapsed by a sudden ruin, but either to have been deceived by the beginning of a bad training, or, through a long carelessness of mind, the strength of the soul gradually declining and the vices therefore growing little by little, to have fallen in a miserable collapse. ‘For injury goes before destruction, and an evil thought before a fall.’ Just as a house never falls in ruin by a sudden shock, unless either through an old fault in the foundation or through the long sloth of the inhabitants the defences of the roof have been gradually rotted by very small drips getting in first; and when these have been opened up more widely and have given way through long neglect, the storm of rains and showers afterwards flows in in streams. ‘For through slothfulness the roof-beams will sink, and through idleness of hands the house will leak.’ The same Solomon indicates in other words that this happens spiritually to the soul: ‘Drips drive a man out of his house on a winter day.’ He has elegantly compared carelessness of mind to a neglected roof and housetop, through which at first very tiny drips of the passions, as it were, get into the soul. If these are neglected as small and light, they rot the beams of the virtues, and afterwards the vices flow in in a great shower; by which, on a winter day, that is, in time of temptation, when the devil's attack comes, the mind will be driven out of the dwelling of the virtues, in which, while it kept watchful diligence, it had once rested as in the possession of its own house.” Having learned these things, we received an infinite delight of spiritual food, so that we were filled with greater joy of soul from this conference than we had before been affected by sadness at the killing of the saints. For we were not only taught about the things we had doubted, but also, under the questioning of that problem, learned things which, through the slenderness of our understanding, we had not known how to ask.

Wishing to commend to the minds of the studious Abba Serenus, a man of the highest holiness and self-control and a mirror of his own name, whom we admired with singular veneration above the others, we think we cannot fulfil our desire otherwise than by trying to include his conferences in our books. Beyond all the virtues, which shone by God's grace not only in his conduct and character but even in his very face, the gift of chastity was poured into him by a special favor, so that he no longer felt himself troubled even by natural incitements, even in sleep. But since it seems beyond the condition of human nature, I think it necessary first to explain how, with the help of God's grace, he came to this extraordinary purity of the flesh.

He, then, persevering tirelessly in prayers by night and day, and in fasts and vigils, for the inner chastity of his heart and soul, saw that he had obtained what his prayers asked and that all the heats of fleshly desire in his heart had been extinguished. Inflamed, as it were, by the most delightful taste of purity, he burned with a greater thirst and zeal for chastity and began to apply himself to more intense fasts and supplications, that the mortification of this passion, which had been granted to his inner man by the gift of God, might extend also to the purity of the outer man, so that he would no longer be troubled even by that simple and natural movement which is aroused even in little children and infants. Encouraged by the experience of the gift he had obtained, which he knew he had received not by the merit of his labors but by the grace of God, he was more ardently spurred to obtain this too in the same way, believing that God could much more easily tear out by the roots these goads of the flesh, which even the skill of human art sometimes removes by certain potions or drugs or by the knife, since he had given by his gift that purity of spirit which is higher and which it is impossible to attain by human labor or zeal. And as he persisted untiringly in the petition he had begun, with constant supplication and tears, an angel came to him in a vision by night, and as if opening his belly, tore out of his entrails a kind of fiery swelling of flesh and threw it away, and put back all his inner organs in their places as they had been, and said: ‘See, the incitements of your flesh have been cut off, and know that today you have obtained the perpetual purity of body which you have faithfully asked for.’ Let it suffice to have said this briefly about the grace of God which was specially granted to this man. As for the virtues he possessed in common with the other greatest men, I think it superfluous to mention anything, lest this particular account under his name seem to take away from others what has been specially proclaimed of him. Inflamed, then, with the greatest desire for his conference and instruction, we took care to see him during the days of Lent. When he had asked us, in the gentlest way, about the quality of our thoughts and the state of the inner man, and what our long dwelling in the desert had contributed to its purity, we began with these complaints.

“The counting of the years and dwelling in solitude, in view of which you conclude that we ought to have attained the perfection of the inner man, have brought us only this: that we have learned what we cannot be; but they have not made us what we strive to be. For we know that we have gained by this knowledge neither the fixed stability of the purity we desire nor any strength of firmness, but only increases of confusion and shame. For in all disciplines, the purpose of daily study is to exercise and advance, so that, passing from timid rudiments to sure and stable skill, one begins to know what one at first knew doubtfully or did not know at all, and, advancing with a firm step, so to speak, in the character of that discipline, one moves in it perfectly and now without any difficulty. On the contrary, laboring in the pursuit of this purity, I find I have progressed only so far as to know what I cannot be. From this I feel nothing brought to me but labor with such contrition of heart that the matter for tears is never lacking, and yet I do not cease to be what I ought not to be. And so what good has it been to learn what is highest, if once known it cannot be grasped? For when we feel the direction of our heart stretching toward its aim, the mind imperceptibly turns back and slips with a more violent rush into its former wanderings; and so, occupied with daily distractions, it is carried off unceasingly into countless captivities, so that we almost despair of the correction we desire and this observance seems superfluous. For the mind, wandering every moment in slippery excursions, when it is brought back to the fear of God or spiritual contemplation, vanishes again more fleetingly before it is established in it. And when, as if waking up, we catch it having strayed from the intention set before it, and, bringing it back to that contemplation from which it departed, we wish to bind it with the most tenacious intention of heart as with chains, in the very act of our effort it slips from the recesses of the mind faster than an eel. Therefore, burning with such daily observances and yet seeing that no strength of stability has come to our heart from them, we are brought, broken by despair, to this opinion: that we believe these wanderings of the soul are present in the human race not through our own fault but through the fault of nature.”

Serenus: “It is a mark of dangerous presumption, before matters have been rightly examined and a sure reason gathered, to define hastily the nature of anything, and to draw a conjecture from the consideration of one's own frailty rather than to give an opinion from the state and character of the discipline itself or from the experience of others. For if someone who does not know how to swim, knowing that the weight of his body cannot be borne by liquid water, should wish to define from the experience of his own lack of skill that no one at all surrounded by solid flesh can be held up by the liquid element, his opinion, which he seems to have put forward according to his experience, would not for that reason be judged true, since it is proved by the surest reasoning and the undoubted evidence of the eyes that this is not only not impossible but is done very easily by others. The nous, then, that is, the mind, is defined as aeikinētos kai polykinētos, that is, always moving and much moving. This is also described in other words in the Wisdom called Solomon's: kai geōdes skēnos brithei noun polyphrontida, that is, ‘and the earthly dwelling weighs down the mind that thinks many things.’ By the condition of its nature, then, it can never stand idle; but unless it has provided where it may exercise its movements and in what it may be continually occupied, it must run about by its own mobility and fly over everything, until, accustomed by long exercise and daily use, at which you say you labor in vain, it experiences and learns what materials it ought to prepare for its memory, around which it may turn its untiring flights and gain the strength to dwell; and so it may prevail to drive out the hostile suggestions of the enemy by which it was distracted, and remain in the state and quality it desires. We must not, then, ascribe this wandering of our heart either to human nature or to God its Creator. For the saying of Scripture is true: ‘God made man upright, and they have sought out many thoughts.’ Their quality, then, depends on us, because ‘a good thought draws near to those who know it, but a prudent man will find it.’ For whatever is subject to our prudence and effort in order that it may be found, if it is not found, must without doubt be reckoned the fault of our sloth or imprudence, not of nature. The psalmist too agrees with this, saying: ‘Blessed is the man whose help is from you, O Lord; he has set ascents in his heart.’ You see, then, that it lies in our power to set in our hearts either ascents, that is, thoughts that reach up to God, or descents, that is, thoughts that fall to earthly and fleshly things. If these did not lie in our power, the Lord would not have rebuked the Pharisees: ‘Why do you think evil in your hearts?’ Nor would he have commanded through the prophet: ‘Take away the evil of your thoughts from my eyes’; and: ‘How long will harmful thoughts remain in you?’ Nor would their quality be required of us on the day of judgment like that of our works, as the Lord threatens through Isaiah: ‘Behold, I come to gather their works and thoughts, together with all nations and tongues.’ Nor would we deserve to be either condemned or defended by their testimony in that terrible and fearful examination, according to the saying of the blessed apostle: ‘Their thoughts accusing or else excusing one another, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men according to my gospel.’”

“A figure of this perfect mind is most beautifully signified by that centurion of the Gospel. His strength and constancy, by which he was not carried away by whatever thoughts assailed him, but by his own judgment either admitted good ones or drove away contrary ones without any difficulty, is described in this figurative meaning: ‘For I too am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this one, Go, and he goes, and to another, Come, and he comes, and to my servant, Do this, and he does it.’ If, then, we too, fighting manfully against disturbances and vices, are able to subject them to our control and discernment, to extinguish the passions warring in our flesh, to bring the unstable cohort of our thoughts under the command of reason, and to drive the most savage troops of the hostile powers from the borders of our breast with the saving standard of the Lord's cross, we shall be promoted, for the merit of such triumphs, to the rank of this spiritual centurion, whom we read mystically signified by Moses in Exodus too: ‘Appoint for yourself chiliarchs, and centurions, and captains of fifty, and captains of ten.’ And so we too, raised to the height of this dignity, shall have this power and strength of command, by which we shall not be carried away by thoughts we do not want, but shall be able to dwell and cling to those in which we spiritually delight. We shall command the evil suggestions, ‘Go,’ and they will go; to the good we shall say, ‘Come,’ and they will come; to our servant too, that is, the body, we shall likewise enjoin what belongs to chastity and self-control, and it will serve without any contradiction, no longer rousing hostile goads of desire against us but showing every service to the spirit. What the weapons of this centurion are, or for what exercises of battle they are prepared, hear the blessed apostle proclaim: ‘The weapons of our warfare,’ he says, ‘are not fleshly, but mighty in God.’ He has said what they are like, that is, not fleshly or weak, but spiritual and mighty in God. Then he indicates against whom the conflicts are to be waged: ‘for the destruction of strongholds, purging thoughts and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and taking captive every understanding to the obedience of Christ, and ready to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience has first been fulfilled.’ Since to go through these one by one, though necessary, belongs to another time, I wish only to show you the kinds and properties of the weapons with which we too, if we wish to fight the Lord's battles and serve among the centurions of the Gospel, must always go girded. ‘Take,’ he says, ‘the shield of faith, with which you may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the most wicked one.’ It is faith, then, that catches the burning darts of lusts and deadens them by the fear of the future judgment and belief in the heavenly kingdom. ‘And the breastplate,’ he says, ‘of love.’ This is the one which, surrounding and fortifying the vital parts of our breast, set against the deadly wounds of the disturbances, blunts the hostile blows and does not allow the devil's darts to penetrate to our inner man; ‘for it bears all things, suffers all things, endures all things.’ ‘And for a helmet the hope of salvation.’ The helmet is the protection of the head. Since, then, our head is Christ, we must always fortify it in all temptations and persecutions with the hope of future goods as with an impregnable helmet, and above all keep faith in him unharmed and whole. For someone maimed in other members, though weak, can still somehow survive; but without a head no one's life is prolonged even for a short space. ‘And the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.’ For it is ‘sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart,’ dividing, that is, and cutting off whatever it finds fleshly or earthly in us. Whoever is fortified with these weapons, always defended from the darts and plundering of the enemy, will not be led away as a captive and subject, bound in the chains of the plunderers, to the hostile land of thoughts, nor will he hear through the prophet: ‘Why have you grown old in a foreign land?’ But as a conqueror and victor he will stand in whatever region of thoughts he wishes. Do you also want to know the strength and power of this centurion, by which he carries these weapons we have mentioned, not fleshly but mighty in God? Hear the King himself gathering brave men for spiritual warfare, with what levy he marks and tests them: ‘Let the weak say, I am strong’; and: ‘Let the patient man be a fighter.’ You see, then, that only the patient and the weak can fight the Lord's battles; with that weakness, surely, on which our centurion of the Gospel was grounded when he said with confidence: ‘For when I am weak, then I am strong’; and again: ‘For power is made perfect in weakness.’ Of this weakness one of the prophets says: ‘And he who is weak among them shall be like the house of David.’ The patient man too will fight these battles, with that patience of which it is said: ‘You have need of patience, that, doing the will of God, you may receive the reward.’”