On Appearance, Practicality, and Brotherly Love

By deceiving with vague hopes, many having fallen were immediately uprooted, while others were not able to stand because of the habituation of pleasures as if bound by law. For what do you know, man, if you will live in order that you might also repent, that you are writing down periods of life for yourself?

And while stumbling there, you grant a favor to your flesh; it is better to grant yourself the memory of death and so that you might paint for your heart the terrible judgment of the court, if perhaps you might be able to extinguish the fever of the flesh with prudence. For you will not extinguish the passions any other way than by tempering the pains of their reconstruction in your flesh. Nor indeed the psychic passions, before you cause the fruits of love to overflow in the heart. The bodily passions take their beginning from the natural things of the flesh, through which also self-control exists, but the psychic ones have their origin from the psychic things, through which also love exists. Love is a kinship with apatheia, and an elimination of passions, bringing forth patience, and cooling the burning mind, putting forward humility, and carrying away pride. Love has nothing of its own except God; for this is God.

He who, becoming a new convert to the bright assembly of monks, let him push away the thoughts approaching him from the praises of his kin, so that he might seek not the praise from men, but the beatitude from the commandments. And let him cleanse himself from the demons entering his cowardice; for you did not receive a spirit of cowardice again into fear. Let him not strike himself with a spirit of cowardice, nor let him tremble at the nocturnal beats of the demons, when they do not even have authority over pigs. Therefore, when coming out of the cell in the night watches, let him not be terrified, but let him enter back without retreating as if fleeing from the demons, but rather, bending his knees in that place, let him pray in cowardice; for they will not fall upon you even if they terrify you thus. But when he rises, let him refresh the heart, let him call upon God with psalmody, 'You shall not fear (he says) from the fear of the night, from the arrow that flies by day, from the thing going about in darkness, from the happening, and from the demonic north wind' (Psalm 91:5). For having done this once and many times, he will drive away the demon of cowardice from himself. For being unable to harm by work, they make the soul timid through phantasms, so that the weak men...

that they may think themselves strong and powerful.

Chapter 43. Do not adorn yourself with fine garments, so that you do not clothe yourself more visibly with the demon of vainglory; for virtues are not carried in the beauty of garments, but in the beauty of the soul the labors bring forth gold. Rather, one should clothe himself with the fear of God through the scourges of judgment, so that he may clothe himself with the unquenchable heat of the fire, and through the bad skill of the thoughts be more subtle, for the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). He who announces the error of the thoughts through experience will not be known by all, except those in experience, for experience has become the way of the knowledgeable in this respect; for the cause of both is practical training, which, by possessing it more intensely, we come to know ourselves, and to know the thoughts, and to know God. Let him who, through the departure from practical training and the indwelling of the knowledgeable in the thoughts, mocks the unskilled through his skill, watch lest he struts in knowledge for the sake of a display of glory; but if the thought of these great things plunders, let him take for help the Greek Jethro, who gave to Moses the great prophet the wise counsel from grace through judgment (Exodus 18). Let the power of your thoughts be in works, for the practical things of the words are more philosophical, just as they are also more laborious; when action is present, it is as if the words flash with lightning, but when works are not present, the words of the works do not flash with lightning. The fault of the city is a younger word, and lips shaking somewhat with laughter; but he who agitates and is agitated in vain will be outside of calm, and though there is no storm, he is tossed by a blizzard.

Chapter 45. Do not store up the untimely tongue, so that you do not remain under that which you do not wish. Flee from wagging the tongue at your neighbor, so that you too may escape the wagging of the devil; flee from reproaching your brother for his stumble, so that you do not fall away from sympathy as a stranger. He who does not have kindness and love for the brother, how could he be a member of the Christ-bearing love? If a brother interrupts your concise fast, do not receive the listlessness of the thoughts by assuming for you a crowd in your stillness, and a disturbance in your fast, and they do this so that, seeing your brother, you may not see him as God himself. Let us not claim that the continuous oversight of brothers is a disturbance, but rather that it is an alliance; according to the...