Letters 99.1–100.13

From the time I received your Blessedness's letters together with the paschal book until the present day, I have been so shaken by the grief of mourning, by anxiety, and by the various rumours coming from every side about the state of the church, that I have barely been able to turn your volume into Latin. You know very well the old saying that eloquence is not sad, especially when sickness of body is added to sickness of mind. And this very letter I have dictated in excessive haste, burning with fever and now lying in bed for the fifth day, telling your Blessedness briefly that I have taken great pains in translating it, so as to render every thought with equal charm and so that the Latin style might in some measure answer to the Greek eloquence.

At the beginning you philosophize, and while dealing in general terms and instructing everyone, you cut the throat of one man; in the rest, which is the hardest thing of all, you join the philosopher to rhetorical eloquence and bring Demosthenes and Plato together for us. How much is said against self-indulgence, with what praises continence is extolled! And from the inmost disciplines of wisdom the account of day and night, of the course of the moon and the sun, and the nature of this world are described; and you refer this very discussion to the authority of the Scriptures, so that you may not seem in a paschal book to have borrowed anything from secular springs. What more? I am afraid to praise you, lest I incur the charge of flattery. It is an excellent book, both in its philosophical parts and in pleading the cause it has undertaken without ill will toward persons. So I beg you to forgive my slowness; for I have been so overcome by the falling asleep of the holy and venerable Paula that, apart from the translation of this book, I have written nothing else of sacred work up to the present. For, as you yourself know, we have suddenly lost a comfort which, as the Lord is witness to our conscience, we speak of (regarding) not as our own needs, but as the refreshment of the saints, whom she served with care. Your holy and venerable daughter Eustochium, who receives no consolation for her mother's absence, and the whole brotherhood humbly greet you. Send us the books which you told us some time ago that you had written, either for us to read or to translate.

Now once again the living Wisdom of God calls us to celebrate the holy Pascha, desiring that all should share in it. Therefore, hastening to it with running step, fighting with fasts and continence and every affliction of the body, let us reduce the pleasures that fight against the practice of virtue to nothing, supported by the Saviour's help; and, simply confessing our sins to God, who is able to heal, let us fear the true judgment of conscience, so that, crying aloud with David and saying, 'Remember not the sins of my youth and my ignorance; according to your mercy remember me,' we may consume our growing vices by the terror of eternal fire. The end of these is to do such things no more, and the beginning of salvation is the forgetting of what is past. For as the beginning of the good way is to do just things, so the beginning of ceasing from sins is to restrain their onset, while they are either bridled by reason or, through fear, do not come to the precipice. And when the remembrance of the law is in the mind, they flee at once, and ceasing to advance further they withdraw into the camp of the triumphant virtues, and little by little, drawing back their foot through repentance and avoiding the judgment of the wise, they dissolve into nothing like smoke. Evils that are not crushed at once, as soon as they begin to grow, are healed with difficulty; their uprooting is easy when those who have long sinned turn through repentance to prudence and find the end of sinning to be the gain of repenting. For we cannot crush the incitements of vices unless we begin to practise virtues; nor will old vices cease before they are shut out by the works of new virtues. And as past sins are blotted out if we resist with firm mind the pleasures that assail us, so, if the forgetting of the past persists, future offences will be unable to grow further. For the workers of evil, bringing as it were into their own power those who can forbid and do not, rage with all madness in sinning and, drawing silence into consent, strive to fulfil in deed whatever the lust of the mind suggests. Freedom given to present vices breeds future vices, and if you neglect the first, it is the spring and seedbed of those to come.

This being so, those who are able to restrain sinners, but through shunning toil and in idle silence pretend not to see and allow evils to grow, will most rightly be judged partners of those who are the authors of the crimes, and will pay the penalty of negligence, since they preferred irrational ease to the labour of those who punish wrongdoing, choosing a culpable quiet rather than a severity that cuts vices down. For if we withdraw from vices, they will utterly perish; their deceitful sweetness will dry up, and all the onsets of pleasure will grow numb with a kind of languor, so to speak, when our mind becomes the dwelling of virtue. The remembrance of the law does not allow sins to be born or to grow; and when the mind thinks of the coming tribunal and the dreadful day of judgment, it will forbid the beginning as well as the middle and end of sin, and will dry up its bitter waves and swelling floods down to the very spring and its sources. Virtue accompanied by the law crushes the seeds of vices and raises the soul from low things to the heights; vices, on the contrary, unless they are restrained, grow proud and thrust those who obey them down to hell, and once they have taken possession of souls, they oppress them with the enticements of pleasures and do not allow them, in keeping with the upright form of the human body, to look up on high, but like cattle bend them down to earthly things. Of these the psalmist testifies, saying, 'They called their names upon their lands.'

Someone may say here: 'If vices have such strength and trip up so many by alluring persuasion, what ought those to do who, aware that they are sinning, long to exchange sins for virtues and, for love of better things, despise worse?' Hear Moses speaking to such people: 'Have you sinned? Stop,' overturning former sins by the end of sin and correcting vices with the most effective remedy, the ceasing of vices. Shun the allurements of this life of sweet evil and the caressing pleasures of the body as poisons, and do not walk the slippery, soft path of delights; for the festival is laid hold of by fasts and continence, and only by labouring and sweating can we exchange evils for good things and crush the pleasures that fight against us. Few are they who, trampling vices, keep to the path of truth, since malice uses countless arts of harming and cannot be overcome unless we are supported from above by the help of Wisdom, who cries to us and says, 'Do not fear, for I am with you.' The death of evil is to do evil no more; the root of vices is to despise the decrees of the law. As negligence breeds sins, so care gives birth to virtues. The law kept puts disgrace to flight; neglected, it brings forth punishments; and as far as it imitates the harshness of a severe judge if it is despised, so far it shows the gentleness of a most merciful father if it is kept. Therefore the ceasing of sin is the beginning of virtue, and the remedy for past, present, and future vices is unwearied meditation on the law, which, when it has the security of its possessor, is free from all disturbances. For Wisdom works good in us once we have offered her a clean dwelling of the heart and have turned our thoughts into deeds. Nor is it doubted that we have free power either way, to do good or not to do it; and when crooked things are crushed, right things are born, and then the chorus of virtues sings in harmony, when there is a solitude of vices in the soul. For as continence, holding sovereignty in our bodies, prevents sicknesses from arising, neither weakens nor kills those who love it, restores past illnesses to former health, and, expelling what is against nature, recalls what agrees with nature, so that the order of this life is preserved in even balance, so the soul that keeps the commands of the laws, as far as human nature can receive it, is separated from the contagion of evils, and, anxious on every side and watching itself, allows nothing to enter it that is contrary to excellent thoughts. Rather, turned into a temple of God, it enjoys a continual heavenly festival, having as its riches the keeping of the law, which raises those who lie fallen, punishing some and correcting others, and always crying out, 'Shall he who has fallen not rise again, or he who has turned away not return?' It grants hope of salvation to the penitent, since it warns in order to help and rebukes in order to amend, and, casting shame for former sins upon them, makes them pursue better things, which they cannot seek unless they first condemn the wounds of their conscience.

But since the law hastens by the best counsels to call back to better things those who neglect it and are sunk in error, being as it were a rule for crooked works, while it does not allow those who obey it to be without reward or to be pressed by eternal straits, let all of us who celebrate the holy Pascha make the Lawgiver our friend by continence and fasts; and, since the prophet promises to those who celebrate the Pascha, 'You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God,' let us seek a rich banquet of virtues, adorning ourselves with the knowledge of the Scriptures as with festal garments. Let us prepare holy kisses for the angels who rejoice with us in heaven, putting all negligence to flight and breaking off delay, so that with eager step we may go to the Saviour with the disciples and say to him, 'Where do you want us to prepare the Passover for you?' And set in the upper room of heaven and keeping the mystical Pascha, we may be able to sing, 'How lovely are your dwellings, Lord of hosts!' For there we shall find the choirs of angels, and celebrating the feast with them we shall have them as companions of the mysteries of God and shall exult with unspeakable joy, learning the sacraments of wisdom with them, where there is no deceit of fraud, where he who has no wedding garment is forbidden to enter the banquet, even if in the present age he boasts that he is righteous. All there are of old, advanced, and full age, and no one there, according to the prophet, will be found of immature wisdom; for, he says, 'the youth shall be a hundred years old,' showing the perfection of learning by the size of the number. Therefore, holy brothers and partakers of the heavenly calling, let us hear the Saviour crying through the prophet: 'I come to gather all nations, and they shall come and see my glory, and I will send upon them a sign of the world.'

Let us hasten to the festival and say, 'But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of Christ.' He will give, I say, he will give joy to those who labour, and blessing those who fast he will say: 'They shall be to the house of Judah for joy and gladness and for good festivals, and you shall rejoice; love truth and peace.' For the festival is not everyone's, but the house of Judah's, that is, the church of Christ's. Therefore, since according to the psalmist it is 'time to act for the Lord,' and Paul writes, 'The night is far gone, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; let us walk honestly as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil its desires,' it is right that all, cleansed by the fear of the Lord, should purchase chastity, a worthy festival, by continence and fasts, and rouse the sleeping sense with watchful faith, and imitate the most wise Daniel, of whom it is written: 'There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of God, and in the days of your father watchfulness and wisdom were found in him.' For those who take care of themselves so as to advance to better things, having the law as their mightiest leader, obey its commands and overturn the sins that come against them, lighting up the feast of the Pascha by the splendour of their works, and, disregarding the darts of disturbances in the security of a good conscience, anticipate the victory in hope. And those who imitate them, before they enter the battle, seize the palm of triumph by their desire for virtue, and, beholding with the mind, with unveiled face, the crown that the victors over slippery pleasure possess in heaven, cry out and say: 'The Lord God is my strength, and he will set my feet to the end, setting me on the heights, that I may conquer in his song.'

Let us not think, dearest brothers, that the contest is perpetual and grow weary on that account, but let us know that its end is the crown of righteousness, which no length of ages will corrupt. The racecourse of this life and of the contest is temporal; those who have run with unstumbling step and come to the finishing line of the prizes will find new dwellings, showing their victory with songs. So, since the grace of the Lord promises us triumphs over the most wicked demons, let us keep the fasts duly, so that we may also duly share in the festival. Let us by no means sigh for a cup of wine in the days of Lent, as luxurious rich men are wont to do, nor delight in eating meat in the line of battle, where toil and sweat are needed. For gluttony and drunkenness and the other enticements of this life drain the richest treasure of souls and choke the fruitful sowing of knowledge and teaching by mixing themselves with it. That is why the Lord and Saviour, calling his disciples to the rigour of continence, said: 'Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly; for like a snare it will come upon all who sit on the face of the whole earth.' 'Rise, let us go hence': punishments will at once overtake those who neglect themselves. But those who keep the precepts of the laws know no wine in fasts, reject the eating of meat, and restrain insatiable avarice by the fear of God. Therefore Scripture daily cries to the continent, 'They shall not drink wine or strong drink'; and on the contrary the Jews hear because of their fault: 'You gave the holy ones wine to drink and commanded the prophets, saying, Do not prophesy.' Those who are captured by the delight of luxury cannot accept correction; nor can those love fasts who do not restrain the greed of the belly by reason and counsel, who disgrace the pursuit of virtue by sloth and quickly perishing pleasure, not blushing to drink wine secretly and, avoiding witnesses, to drink honeyed wine with greedy throats in their bedrooms, so that in the season of fasts they exchange the abstinence and fasts they ought to seek of their own accord for luxury and drunkenness. They do not know that, even if they escape the knowledge of men and eat meat behind closed walls, and in the days of Lent, with Pascha drawing near, tear fattened fowls with unclean hands while promising fasts outside with sad faces, the Lord rebukes such people and says, 'These commit great iniquities, so that they depart from my holy things.' It does not befit those who fast in the time of contest and battle to eat meat, since Scripture warns, 'You shall afflict your souls,' nor to search out pheasants with anxious labour, and to stuff chattering birds and their fat into a gaping gullet, nor to hunt for expensive cooks who soothe the madness of the belly with many sauces, with meats changed by pounding, and with various flavours of food, with steaming dishes and a savour that flatters the frenzy of the throat, while wines of different flavours and colours are sought to the injury of continence.

The story of holy Daniel and the virtue of the three youths, in harmony with it, teach us to seek and honour fasts. To shorten long discourse into a brief compass: when their freedom was exchanged for slavery, and as captives they might have been expected to long for delicacies, they despised the Babylonian dishes and preferred simple food to the royal table. For King Nebuchadnezzar had commanded the chief of the eunuchs to bring into the palace, from the sons of the captivity of Israel and from the royal seed, youths in whom was no blemish, handsome in body and apt for learning wisdom, so that they might be in the king's court and learn the letters and the language of the Chaldeans and live on the remains of his table and drink the wine received from it. So Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael were chosen from the tribe of Judah, united in race and in faith, whose nobility hard slavery had changed. Of these Daniel, as Scripture testifies, 'purposed in his heart not to be defiled by the king's table.' The three youths too, joined to him no less by religion than by kinship, took up the man's counsel and approved his wisdom, and together entreating the chief of the eunuchs, by the help of God's mercy they obtained what they desired, and in the land of captivity kept the nobility of their race. For the overseer feared that the cheerful face of the other youths would bring him to capital punishment, and they calmed him by reason and counsel, speaking these words: 'Test your servants for ten days, and let seeds be given us, and we will eat and drink water; and let our faces and the faces of the youths who eat from the king's table appear before you, and as you see, so deal with your servants.' For they trusted that the mercy of God, sustaining their desire for virtue, would keep their bodies handsome and strong, that faith would overcome all ugliness, and that no leanness would change the brightness of their beauty.

We have gone over these things, dearest brothers, so that, knowing the words of the apostle Paul preaching about the virtues of the saints, in which he says, 'Considering the outcome of their manner of life, imitate their faith,' we may persuade those who delight in eating meat in the time of fasts to imitate the continence of the saints. No force could overcome them so as to make them lose the rigour of virtue, or, fearing the empire of the Babylonians, show in themselves a captive pleasure; but they remained free, overcame the desires of the belly by reason, conquered the tickling self-indulgence of the gullet, and left us examples of their fortitude, dwelling in Babylon in body but in mind and faith abiding with the angels in the heavenly Jerusalem, so as to teach every age thereafter that in the time of fasts one must abstain from wine and meat, seek the seeds of the earth, and drink water, the companions that chastity uses.

Why should I recall the famous victories of the Maccabees? Rather than eat unlawful meats and touch common foods, they offered their bodies to tortures, and in the churches of Christ throughout the world they are proclaimed with praises as stronger than their punishments, more ardent than the fires that burned them. In them every device of cruelty was conquered, and whatever the anger of the persecutor invented, the fortitude of the sufferers overcame. Amid the punishments they were more mindful of their fathers' law than of their pains: their inner parts were torn, their limbs flowed with corruption and gore, and yet their resolve remained unmoved; the mind was free and despised present evils in the hope of things to come. The torturers grew weary, and faith did not grow weary; bones were broken, and on the whirling wheel every joint of sinews and limbs was loosened, and fires breathing death rose to an immense height; the frying pans were full of boiling oil and resounded with incredible terror as they fried the bodies of the saints; and yet among all these things, walking in paradise in their minds, they did not feel what they suffered, but what they longed to see. For the mind fortified by the fear of God overcomes flames and spurns the various pains of torments, and once it has given itself to virtue it tramples and despises whatever adversity befalls; such was Paul, writing, 'In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.' For what the frailty of the flesh cannot endure, overcome by natural weakness, the mind conquers by faith, conversing with God.

So those who imitate fasts, that is, the angelic way of life, on earth, and remember the saying, 'The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and joy and peace and gladness,' gain for themselves great and eternal rewards by continence with brief and small toil, and receive much more than they offer, and soften present straits by the glory of the time to come, since for those who fight for virtue on this racecourse there will one day be an end of the contest. And those who enter the battle against vices and have dedicated their souls to the disciplines of wisdom, and, as far as the human condition allows, seek the knowledge of things to come, beholding the kingdom of heaven in mind and faith through a mirror and an image, will obtain eternal rewards that no end of time will close. Day and night follow one another in fixed spaces of hours, and, decreasing little by little, receive back what they lose, and give back what they have received, meeting at the same measure twice a year; they do not remain in the same state, but mark out the moments of the hours by shortness and length, so as to make the variety of seasons useful to the world. For the day by its order and circuit borrows from the time of the night, and the night in turn receives back what it lent; and while they give and receive by turns, and in a kind of circle, gradually decreasing and increasing, recover what they had gradually lost, they interpret the wisdom of God the Creator. And from this alternation of spaces either the monthly orb of the moon is completed, or the year of the sun returning in its own footsteps is fulfilled; and while they grow and shrink, and things to come succeed the passing of what is past, the seasons change, always the same and always other. So the moon too, founded by God's most wise workmanship and changing the variety of her shapes, tends to fullness and hastens to diminishing, so that whatever she gained in growing she loses and gives up in waning; nor does she stand in the same state, but, ascending and descending by certain steps, goes from poverty to riches and returns from riches to poverty, showing by the very variety of her shapes that she is changeable and created. Who could express in worthy words the course of the sun and the circle of the year agreeing with the reckoning of the months, as it revolves through four seasons and always returns into itself, climbs and descends by the same measure, and glides in an eternal order, so that what the moon's space fulfils in thirty days and nights, the sun's course accomplishes in the spaces of the turning year? And when it has reached the equality of day and night and has stood a little while in the balance of its just course, it hastens to inequality, leaving the point it had reached. This, I think, is what Ecclesiastes says in his book, so that we may not draw our teaching from others' springs: 'Circling round and round the wind goes, and the wind returns to its circuits,' signifying the sun's yearly course, which returns into itself by the same wheel of seasons, going back to where it had set out.

But the holy and heavenly festival, sending us the rays of its splendour, is bounded by no spaces; and when the contests of the saints and the toil of the present age have come to an end, perpetual joy and an eternal feast will follow. That is why perfect men, separating their souls from all the darkness of errors, already now sing the feast: 'Let us enter his gates with confession, his courts with hymns,' making the Saviour's coming resound with joyful voices. For when malice reigned in the whole world and the demons had poured darkness over human eyes, and no one could help them, according to what is written, 'I looked, and there was none to help; I considered, and there was none to uphold,' then, so that impiety might at last have an end and the deceit of idolatry be destroyed, the living Word of God, leaving out nothing of our likeness except sin alone, which has no substance, deigned to come to us in a new way, so as to become the Son of man and remain the Son of God. Born of a virgin, he was believed by foolish minds to be only what their eyes showed; but from his works and the greatness of his signs the invisible God was discerned by the wise, and the one whom his face showed to be a man, his mighty works signified to be God, covered with the lowliness of the form of a slave. For although the Jews handed him over and cried out with impious voices that he should be crucified, blaspheming God by killing his body, or rather becoming slaves of impiety by slaying the Lord's flesh, yet, approaching death fearlessly to give us an example of virtue, he was shown to be the Lord of glory in his very passion, remaining impassible in the majesty of his Godhead and found passible in the flesh, according to the word of blessed Peter. And so, suffering for us, he did not flee death, lest we, fighting for godliness, should lose the victory through fear of death. For if he had feared the cross, doing the opposite of what he had taught, which of his disciples would willingly have fought for religion? So he is mocked by the foolish and unbelieving, he who subjected the whole world to his faith and bestowed on the saints the dignity of the Christian name; and though the greatness of his mighty works is plain to all, they do not cease to blaspheme. But he who is mocked was shown by his works to be God, so as to overthrow the temples of the demons and to expose the shifty impiety of the Origenists, whose author Origen so deceived the ears of the simple and lighter-minded by his persuasion, as the floods coming from the deep are wont to dash on the shore and break upon themselves in a foaming mass.

Stirred then by zeal for the faith, let us speak to the man who dared to write that bodies were fashioned as the fall of rational creatures: if you like impiety of this kind, how is it that the apostle Paul writes, 'I want the younger women to marry and bear children'? Did he command marriage so that the bodies born of women might prepare prisons for the angels falling from heaven and, as you say, turned into souls, or so that the marriage union, serving God's sentence, might preserve the human race? For if he wants the younger women to marry and bear children, through whom human bodies are born, and if wandering souls are clothed with bodies for the sake of penalties and punishments, no one doubts that the bonds of marriage are given to young women for the punishment of souls and not for the order of generation. But far be it from us to believe this, and to believe that the covenants of husband and wife were joined not for blessing but for sin. Nor did God, when he formed Adam and Eve, join them with a blessing because of minds fallen from heaven and the fall of rational creatures, saying, 'Increase and multiply and fill the earth.' For if souls were sent to earth because of sins committed earlier in heaven, to be bound to bodies, then Paul lies when he writes, 'Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled.' But he by no means lies; therefore bodies are not fashioned because of the fall of souls, but so that the world may make up the losses of the dying by the succession of those born, and overcome the shortness of human life by perpetual succession. For if minds bound to bodies are blessed by God, they will be of better condition after they have received bodies; but if they are cast down so as to receive bodies in punishment of sins, how are they blessed in the bodies to which they came because of sins? One of two things must be so: either they were in blessing before the fall, or after the fall, bound to bodies, they can by no means be blessed. For if blessing follows that life, it deserts this one; if it is transferred to this one, it is proved not to have been in that. And if they were in blessing before they fell and before they were clothed with human bodies, and, falling and having bodies, were blessed again, then the former life and the latter will be alike in their condition of blessing; which by no means follows, since sinful souls deserve punishments, not blessing for sinning. Whichever of the two they answer is true, they will fall into error, since they will not keep the rule of the church's teaching. For if souls falling from heaven because of sins were bound to bodies as to a prison and chains, let them answer how Adam and Eve, male and female, living in bodies, were blessed; for, contrary to their ravings, it is not naked souls that are called man and woman, but bodies, which distinguish the two sexes. Or if before bodies they dwelt in the heavens and their life then without bodies was blessed and worthy of blessing, on what ground were they either blessed before they fell or, after they fell and were joined to gross bodies as a penalty for their fall, given a blessing again? For blessing and punishment are not the same thing; they are far apart both in name and in effect and can in no way be joined, divided by so great an opposition. And how is a multitude of children promised to the righteous as a blessing, as the prophet says, 'The least shall become a thousand, and the last a great nation'?

Therefore those who wish to celebrate the Lord's feast should despise Origen's idols and overcome the foulness of his doctrines by reason. For just as the most impious of the heathen prefer error and custom to truth, making idols in the likeness of men and blaspheming the invisible God by imagining that he has form and limbs and organs of generation, confessing him now as male, now as female, 'and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man' and of various shapes, so Origen, through the credulity and impiety of those who believe him, left the monuments of his treatises like shrines of idols. Let us, overthrowing them by the authority of the Scriptures and zeal for the faith, use this comparison. As builders who wish to build a house of squared stone measure the walls equal on every side, keep them straight with the square and the plumb line, build in work what they have pictured in their minds, join the four sides of the same measure at the corners by the square, and keep the evenness they began gradually as they rise, so that the beauty of the work unites the variety of the material and the skilled structure preserves the lines of the corners, so the teachers of the church, holding the testimonies of the Scriptures, lay firm foundations of doctrine and remain fearless, offering their works to Christ and saying, 'Strengthen me in your words.' For he is the one of whom it is written, 'The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner,' joining us and those who are above in one festival; and sailing to it with swift course, let us not at all fear the rage of the heretics' waves against us, which will quickly be dissolved.