81–120

81. It is impossible for a person to escape death — for this there is no means and no device. Knowing this well, truly intelligent people, experienced in soul and God-loving, labour only to gain virtue and think godly thoughts, and they meet death without any sighing and groaning, without fear and weeping. They consider that bodily death is the unavoidable lot of man, and that it also removes us from that evil which we may incur in this earthly sinful life.

82. We should not hate those who lack virtue, nor be angry with such people, who have forgotten the godly life pleasing to God and for this reason reason about unrighteous and blasphemous doctrines; rather, we should pity them all the more, for they have grown poor in understanding, have gone blind in heart and are rushing to destruction, since they count evil as good, do not know God and are thrice accursed. Such people we should pity and help as far as we can, so that they may understand their error.

83. Do not enter into conversation with everyone about godliness and the virtuous life. I warn you of this not from fear of envy, but because, as I think, to the senseless man your conversation will seem merely laughable. Like has sympathy only with like; but many are not ready for such conversation, nor are there many truly worthy hearers of spiritual conversations — rather, such are very few. Therefore it is better not to speak at all with a senseless person, since this is not what God wills for your salvation.

84. The soul suffers with the body, but the body does not sympathise with the soul. So, for instance, when the body is beaten, the soul suffers along with it; and when the body is healthy and strong, the soul’s feeling in a person is gladdened by it. But when the soul ponders something grievous and is full of repentance, the body does not ponder and repent along with it, but remains by itself, so that it does not act as the soul does and is as though turned to stone in one place. To ponder something grievous and to repent of sins is something painful for a person’s soul, not for the body; and in the same way it is from the soul alone that the evil passions also arise — ignorance of God, pride, unbelief, love of gain, love of honour, discord, insensibility to good and other like evil passions of a person.

85. When you think about God, be reverent, free from envy, kind-hearted, self-restrained, humble, obedient, generous, sharing with others, not given to disputes and filled with the other virtues, for the first gain for a person’s soul is to please God by all these virtues. Besides this, it is not fitting for us to blame or to judge anyone while we think about God; that is, let us not say of any of our brethren, he is evil, he has sinned; it is better to examine our own evil deeds and to look carefully at our own life when we are alone, and to ask ourselves: is it pleasing to God? What have we to do with it if someone else is a sinner?

86. The truly believing person strives to be reverent; and such is one who will not desire for himself anything foreign and outside. Foreign and outside, for the believing person, is everything earthly. So loathe and disregard everything earthly, for you are the image and likeness of God. A person has the image and likeness of God when he lives righteously and in a way pleasing to God; and such a life is impossible if a person does not keep away from everything that can rouse in him evil passions and foul desires. He who has a God-loving mind is experienced and skilled in everything that can be saving for the soul. Such a person is truly reverent. The God-loving person reproaches no one for anything and does not judge his brother for a sin, for he knows that he himself is a sinner too. Such a worth of the God-loving soul — the not judging of others — is one of those marks which belong to a soul that has set out on the way of salvation.

87. Only those people desire evil deeds who spare none of their strength and ability in order to gain passing, earthly glory and riches. They have forgotten death and the eternal destruction of their own soul, and do not care at all for anything that might be saving for their souls. These wretched people cannot imagine even faintly the whole sharpness and endlessness of the torments which they will have to endure after death for the evils committed in this world during their life.

88. God is not the cause of evil. The Creator granted man understanding, the ability to tell good from evil, and with it full freedom; but evil passions arise in a person’s soul because he gives himself to sloth and heedlessness. God is in no way the cause of these evil passions, which wound a person’s soul and drive it to destruction. And the demons too, who were created by God as good angels of light, became evil spirits precisely by the choice of their own free will, just as the greater part of people too have been enslaved to evil only by their own will.

89. The God-fearing person who lives a godly life will not allow an evil passion to take hold of his soul; and when there is no evil in the soul, then it lives without danger and without harm. Over such people neither the evil demon nor the craft of chance has any hand. God removes every evil from them, and they live unharmed under His shelter, being themselves made like God. If someone praises such a person, he will laugh in his heart at the one who praises him; and if someone blames him, he will not try to defend himself against those who blame him, nor will he be angry that they speak of him so.

90. Evil attaches itself to what is natural just as rust attaches itself to copper, or dirt to a person’s body. But as the coppersmith did not produce the rust, and a person’s parents did not produce the dirt, so neither did God create evil. God granted man conscience and understanding so that he might be able to keep away from evil, since with them he would know: evil is harmful to my soul and prepares nothing for me but torment. So look into this, brother; and if you ever meet a man who is prospering in power and riches, do not please him in any way and do not praise him for such a position, for if you praise and please him, you will yourself be found deceived by the demons. At such a time let death always stand before your eyes; and if it is so, you will never desire anything evil for yourself, that is, the goods of this life and of this world.

91. God our Creator granted immortality to the beings that dwell in the heavens, but at the same time created them subject to change, since He granted them freedom too. To all the rest He gave life and movement, and all this He created for man. So let the good things of this life not carry you away, to which the devil pushes you by suggesting evil thoughts; rather, always remember that heavenly goods await you; in every time of temptation say to yourself: if I wish it, I am able to withstand evil and to overcome the evil passions in my soul; but I shall not win the victory if at the same time I also want to satisfy my own desires! Labour in this way, brethren, and you will be able to save yourselves.

92. The life of man is the accord, the union of the mind (the spirit), the soul and the body; and death is not the perishing and disappearing of these united parts, but the dissolving of their bond; and after this bond is dissolved, God preserves them all.

93. The mind is not the soul. It is a gift of God, which must save the soul. The mind that pleases God goes before the soul in this life and counsels it to loathe everything passing, material and corruptible, and instead to love the eternal, incorruptible and immaterial, that is, spiritual, goods, so that a person, while still living in the body, may picture and know the divine goods with his mind. Thus the God-loving mind of a person is the benefactor and the saviour of the soul.

94. The soul that acts to please the body becomes dark from these pleasures and in the end perishes. The God-loving mind acts to the contrary. It sends affliction upon the body, wears it down with toil, with fasting, with vigil, and so saves it from destruction, like the physician who cuts the body with a knife or cauterises it in order to heal it of disease and save it from death.

95. Those souls which are not bridled and guided aright by a God-loving mind, and which therefore have submitted to the evil passions — to earthly pleasures and to the sorrow that comes from them — such souls are doomed to destruction, like the senseless beasts. Such souls, carried away by evil passions, are like those horses that the charioteer can no longer hold and that rush to their destruction.

96. The greatest sickness for a person’s soul, its utmost misfortune and ruin, is ignorance of God, who created everything for man and for his salvation, granting to him alone understanding and the gift of speech; by understanding and by this gift of speech a person’s soul can be raised to heaven and become a partaker of God, when it beholds Him, knows Him in truth and glorifies Him for ever.

97. The soul dwells in the body; in the soul dwells understanding; and in the mind is the word, through which God, beheld and glorified, makes a person’s soul immortal — grants it incorruption and eternal blessedness. For God gave life to everything that exists by His one goodness.

98. God, who is unenviously generous in every mercy and all-good, created man free, having power over himself, and granted him the possibility of pleasing his Creator, if, of course, he has the desire for it. And a person will please God if there is no evil in him. For if even people themselves praise and extol the good deeds and virtues of a pure, God-loving soul, and likewise blame and revile its evil and shameful deeds, then how much more will God love everything good in the man He created, for whom He has willed salvation!

99. Every good that a person does he does from God, and every virtue he has received from Him. But evil he does by his own will, from a cause within himself — from evil passions and foul desires, because of which a person is without feeling for good.

100. The unfeeling soul, immortal by nature and mistress of the body, becomes its slave by reason of the desire for the pleasures of the senses, since it does not know that in pleasing the body it destroys the soul; so the soul of a person, darkened and distorted by unfeeling, pampers the body with care and, to its own ruin, wishes to give it pleasures.

101. God is good, but man is unsightly and evil because of his sins; in the heavens there is no evil, and in this world there is no true good. But the intelligent person chooses the better for himself: with all his ability he strives to know God, gives Him thanks for everything and glorifies Him. And as for his body, first of all he will loathe death, since he does not become a slave to its evil passions (its needs and desires) and does not satisfy them, for he knows well how destructive they are to the soul.

102. The person who loves sin strives to gain as many of the goods of this life as he can, but for righteousness he is less diligent, since he does not think at all about the injustice, the instability and the shortness of this earthly life; such a person does not remember death and does not know that it is incorruptible and unavoidable. If in old age too a person remains such — shameless and senseless — he is, like a rotten tree, of no use for any work and altogether useless to God.

103. We feel relief and pleasure after we have endured something sorrowful and hard. For a person will not drink water with delight unless thirst is killing him; and one who has not endured hunger will take food without pleasure; and a person will not fall sweetly asleep unless, tired with toil, he has first been nodding off; and a person will not feel joy so strongly unless he has endured sorrow. And in exactly the same way we shall not be able to delight in eternal goods in the heavens if, during our life in this world, we do not loathe everything passing and short-lived.

104. The word uttered by the tongue is the servant of the mind. Whatever kind of person he may be, sensible or senseless, what his mind wants the word expresses too.

105. The mind can see everything, even what is in the heavens, and nothing can darken it so as to take away that ability, except one thing — sin. And for a pure, undefiled mind there is nothing that it cannot know, just as for the word there is nothing that cannot be uttered.

106. In his body a person is mortal, but in his mind and word he is immortal. When you are silent you are thinking, and by thinking you converse with yourself, since by silence the mind brings forth the word; and the word that gives thanks to God and glorifies Him is the salvation of a person’s soul.

107. A person who speaks senselessly, without judgement, has no understanding, since he utters words in such a way that he thinks nothing about them. But you, judge and consider what it will be profitable to say and to do for your salvation.

108. An intelligent word, profitable for the soul, is a gift granted by God; and on the contrary, an empty, aimless word, by which a person, say, wants to determine the distance between heaven and earth, or the size of the sun and the stars, is the offspring of a man who has laboured in vain, who out of love for pride and vanity seeks what will bring his soul no profit. The efforts of such a person are like a senseless man trying to draw water with a sieve — since the mind of man can never come to the end of all this.

109. No one sees heaven, and no one can know what is in it except the person who lives virtuously and has zeal for God; such a person knows the Creator and always glorifies Him who created everything for the life of man and for his salvation; he is God-loving and knows well that without God nothing exists, and that He is everywhere and abides in everything, since God is limited and bounded by nothing.

110. As a person is born from his mother’s body, coming naked into this world, so at the hour of death the soul comes out of the body naked; and of human souls, some are pure and bright, while others are stained and soiled with sins. Therefore the intelligent and God-loving soul, while it is in the body, always thinks about the torments that await after death a soul stained with sin, and lives reverently, so as not to be condemned by God and not to fall under these torments. But unbelieving people and those senseless in soul cannot understand all this and go on sinning: they disregard in this earthly life what awaits them after death.

111. As a person who has come out of his mother’s womb remembers nothing of what happened to him while he was in his mother’s body, so also at the going out from the body, in the hour of departure from this world, you will remember nothing of what was before.

112. As after coming out of your mother’s womb you became greater and better in body, so also one who goes out of the body pure and undefiled will be better and will dwell incorruptibly in the heavens for ever.

113. As it was necessary for your body to be born after it had developed in the womb and reached its due fullness, so it is necessary for your soul to leave the body after it has reached the limit set by God for its life in the body.

114. As you deal with your soul while it dwells in the body in this world, so it too will deal with you after it leaves the body. If a person has served his body well in this world, denying it no comfort or pleasure and pampering it in every way, by this he has done himself a very bad service for the time after death, for such a person will bring nothing but torments upon his soul.

115. As your still helpless body, when it came out of your mother’s womb, could not live and grow by itself in this world, so your soul will not be able to save itself and be in eternal communion with God unless in this world, by a virtuous life, it is furnished with the gift of the knowledge of God.

116. The body, united with the soul, comes out of the mother’s womb into the light and begins its life in this world. And the soul, when it is united with the body in this way, is held captive in material darkness until it goes out of the body. Therefore we should not pity the body and pamper it, but should put a bridle on it, since it is an enemy and an adversary of the soul. Many pleasures kindle evil passions in a person, and gluttony too breeds foul desires; but fasting and self-restraint quiet the passions and save the soul.

117. The organ of bodily sight is the eye, and of spiritual sight, the mind. As a body without eyes is blind and does not even see the sun, which clothes all the dry land and the seas with the light of day, and does not know what sweetness its light gives, so blind too is that soul which has no comely mind. Such a soul does not know God, the Creator and Benefactor of every creature, and does not glorify Him. For this reason a blind soul cannot gain divine incorruption either, nor become worthy to receive the eternal goods.

118. By divine providence everything that exists and acts in this world is so. By the order established by God there comes to pass unfailingly in this world, for instance, that the sun rises and sets every day, and that the earth brings forth its fruits in due time; and all this was created for man and happens for his sake.

119. Ignorance of God comes from a person’s senselessness and want of understanding. It is from this ignorance that evil arises. But through the knowledge of God a person is granted the good that saves his soul. So if you are watchful and live in the fear of God, striving at the same time not to be enslaved to your desires, then your mind will be turned only to the gaining of virtues; but if you are drunk with ignorance of God and, enslaved to bodily pleasures, strive to carry out your evil desires, then you will become like a beast and perish, since you will not remember the torments that await you after death.

120. Everything that God does, being good and all-good, He does for man; but everything that a person does, he does for himself — both good deeds and evil ones. So that you may not remain in ignorance about the purpose of evil people, I will tell you: as cities keep executioners for the punishment of evildoers who deserve punishment, and not in praise and glorification of their most evil work, so God allows evil people to be in this world and even to form the greater part, in order that through them all the wicked may be punished. But in the end God will judge all evil people because they did not serve Him, but slavishly slaked their own malice and by this brought evil upon people.