Chapters about sobriety

According to modern patrolological research, the essay “Chapters on Temperance” (28 chapters) is a compilation of the works of St. Macarius the Great and Maximus the Confessor and cannot belong to St. Mark the Ascetic. The work focuses on the importance of internal control and vigilance in spiritual life. Sobriety is seen as a state of mind and heart that allows a person to be attentive to his thoughts, feelings and actions. 1. Whoever, according to the Gospel, is only a believer, by faith moves the mountain of his evil nature (Matthew 21:21), constantly pushing away from himself the inclination that was in the feeling to be under the feeling. Whoever can be a disciple, receiving from the Word with his hands the crumbled bread of knowledge, feeds thousands (Matthew 14:19), showing by his very deed the multiplying power of the Word. And whoever was able to be an apostle heals every ailment, every disease, casting out demons (Matthew 10:1), that is, driving away the effects of passions, healing the sick, that is, leading those deprived of piety by hope to practice it, and raising those who are sick with laziness with the word of faith; for he who is commanded to step on the head of serpents and scorpions (Luke 10:19) also destroys the end of sin. 2. The Sabbath of Sabbaths (Lev. 16:31) is the spiritual peace of the rational soul, which, distracting the mind even from all the most Divine “words” secretly contained in beings (created), in the delight of love, completely clothed it in the One God and with mysterious theology made the mind completely motionless from God. 3. The harvest of the harvest (Lev. 23:10) is every inaccessible (to others) contemplation of God, composed in the mind in an unknown (to ourselves) way after the secret contemplation of mental things, (contemplation), which is appropriately brought by the one who, from visible and invisible creatures, worthily honors the Creator. 4. He who spends the sixth day evangelically, having first mortified the first movements of sin, through virtues reaches a state of dispassion, pure from all evil, subservient ( Ex. 16:29–30 ) with his mind even from the most subtle representation of passions in the imagination. And the past Jordan (Gen. 32:10) is transferred to the land of knowledge, in which the mind, mysteriously created by the world, becomes a dwelling place in the spirit of God. 5. Whoever has divinely fulfilled the sixth day (Num. 29:29) with the offering of deeds and thoughts, and has done his deeds well with God, has by contemplation transcended every being subordinate to nature and time, and is brought into the secret vision of the ages and the eternal, in an unknown way subservient to the mind, (and celebrating) the complete abandonment of created beings and exaltation above them. If someone was worthy of the eighth (day) (Num. 29:35; Lev. 23:36) and rose from the dead (that is, from all sensory and mental words and thoughts according to God), he began to live the blessed life of God (the law, which is truly rightly called life, and is life), since he himself became god by deification (John 10:34). 6. Everything visible has a need for the cross, that is, in such a state that would keep everything produced by the cross in feeling; everything spiritual has a need for burial, that is, complete immobility of what this burial produces in the mind. For when all natural action and movement is destroyed along with the effect of those (phenomena) on us, then the mind, being only in itself and as if resurrected from the dead, appears above everything that has an outline from it, and nothing in natural relation has any affinity with it. For the salvation of those who are being saved is by grace, and not by nature. 7. Until we completely get out of our minds from the usual attachment to the essence of ourselves and to everything that comes after God, we will not acquire immutability in virtue. When we achieve this dignity through love, then we will recognize the power of God’s promise, for those who are worthy must believe that there is an unshakable affirmation where the mind will first establish its power through love. For without coming out of itself and from everything that is possible to think, and without establishing itself in silence, which is above thinking, the mind cannot be free from the changeability (inherent) in everything. 8. All thinking necessarily involves multiplicity, or at least duality. For thinking is an average relationship between certain extremes and comes into contact with both: the thinker and the thought. But none of them retains complete uncomplexity. For the thinking is something subject, which necessarily has the power of being thinkable concomitant with it (the power to represent oneself in self-consciousness as separate from oneself. Moreover, duality necessarily remains), or the subject essence to which this power belongs. For no being is entirely, in itself, a simple being or thinking, an indivisible unit. But God, let us call Him essence, does not have the power naturally concomitant with Him to be conceived in such a way that He is composed; whether we call It thinking, does not have a naturally underlying essence suitable for thinking. But God Himself, in essence, is thinking, and all thinking, and One, and above all essence, and above all thinking; therefore, it is an indivisible unit, having no parts and simple. Therefore, whoever has a certain way of thinking has not yet emerged from duality; and whoever has completely abandoned it has in some way ascended into unity, having superiorly laid aside the power of thinking. 9 . In plurality there is difference, and dissimilarity, and distinction, but to find ourselves outside of this in God, the truly One and Only, means to rise above plurality to contemplation of God. And this is shown by Moses, who set up the tabernacle (Ex. 33:7,11–23) outside the army and then talked with God. For it is not safe to try to express the inexpressible with the spoken word, for the spoken word contains duality and more. Or rather, without a voice, with a single soul, to contemplate existence, because (then) it resides in an indivisible unit, and not in multiplicity. For the bishop, who was commanded to enter into the Holy of Holies only once a year (Heb. 9:7) inside the veil, teaches (us) that only one who has passed through the courtyard and the holy place and entered the Holy of Holies, that is, who has passed through the entire nature of sensory and mental (beings) and has become clean from every property consistent with temporary existence, should proceed to the visions of God. 10. The great Moses, having placed his tabernacle outside the regiment, that is, having established his thought and mind outside the visible, begins to worship God (Exodus 34:8) and, having entered darkness (Exodus 20:21), into an invisible and immaterial place of knowledge, he remains there, initiated into the most sacred secrets. 11. He who fulfills the law in outer life and behavior is free only from the consequences of evil, sacrificing the unreasonable action of passions as a sacrifice to God, and for salvation he is content with this way (of actions) due to spiritual infancy. 12. He who truly loves the Gospel life has destroyed both the beginning and the end of his evil behavior, and in deed and word he goes through every virtue, offering the sacrifice of praise and confession; having freed himself from all anxiety (arising) from the action of passions, and, being free in his mind from the struggle with it, he has only in the hope of future benefits an insatiable pleasure that nourishes the soul. 13. The fear of Gehenna encourages beginners (a virtuous feat) to avoid evil; the desire to repay benefits gives those who are successful zeal to do good; and the mystery of love elevates the mind above all created things, making it blind to everything that is after God. For those alone who have become blind to everything that comes after God, the Lord makes wise (Ps. 145:8), showing them the most Divine. 14. Having desired knowledge, he must immovably establish the “standing” (foundations) (Ex. 26:19) of the soul before the Lord, as God says to Moses: “Stand here with Me” (Deut. 5:31). You should know that there is a difference even between those who stand before the Lord, unless those who are inquisitive read this carelessly: “There are none of those who stand here, who have not tasted death, until they see the Kingdom of God come with power” (Mark 9:1). For the Lord does not always appear to all who stand before Him with glory, but to the beginners He comes in the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7), but to those who can follow Him, ascending the high mountain of His transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–7), He appears in the image of God (Phil. 2:6), in which He was, “before” even “the world was not” (John 17:5). The same Lord can appear in the same way to everyone who is with Him, but to some in this way, to others differently, according to the faith of each, revealing to them various contemplations. 15. “The sun rises and the sun sets” (Eccl. 1:5), says Scripture. Therefore, the Word sometimes seems to stand high, sometimes low, that is, according to the dignity and proportionality and conformity of those who pass through virtue and turn around Divine knowledge. But blessed is he who, like Joshua (Joshua 10:12–13), keeps within himself the unsetting Sun of righteousness throughout the day of evil (Matthew 6:34) of this life, described by evening and ignorance, so that he can lawfully drive away the evil demons that have arisen against him. 16. Whoever undergoes philosophy (based) on piety, and takes up arms against invisible forces, must pray that both natural reasoning, which has a light commensurate with its strength, and the enlightening grace of the (Holy) Spirit, will be preserved in him, for that (natural reasoning) by the active fulfillment of the commandments, like a mentor, guides the flesh to virtue; This (the grace of the Holy Spirit), enlightening the mind, leads it to prefer cohabitation with wisdom to everything else (Wis. 7:8, 8:9), with which it destroys both the strongholds of evil, and “every reproach charged to the mind of God” (2 Cor. 10:5). Joshua demonstrates this with his prayer, asking that the sun stand opposite Gibeon, that is, that this unsetting light of knowledge of God be preserved over the mountain of mental contemplation, and the moon - against the wilds (Joshua 10:12), that is, that natural reasoning, which lies above carnal weakness, remains unchanged (in relation to) virtue. 17. Those who sit “for fear of the Jews” in Galilee in an upper room, “with a closed door” (John 20:19), that is, out of fear from the spirits of evil, living safely in the land of revelations, at the height of Divine contemplation, having closed their senses, like doors, they accept the Word of God coming in an unknown way, which appears to them without sensory action and the proclamation of peace (John 20:19,21) grants them dispassion, and by the breath (John 20:22) - the division of the Holy Spirit, and gives power to the evil spirits (Mark 16:17), and shows them signs (John 20:20) of His secrets. 18. The land of the Chaldeans (Acts 7:4) is a life of passion, in which idols of sins are created and received worship. Mesopotamia (Acts 7:2) (Mesopotamia means the country between the rivers) is a life that shares both opposite morals. And the land of promise (Heb. 11:9) is a state filled with every good thing. So, anyone who, like the old Israel, returns to his old habit, is again reduced to the slavery of passions, deprived of this freedom. 19. It is worthy of remark that none of the saints, as we see, descended into the land of Babylon, for it is indecent and inconsistent with a reasonable concept for those who love God to choose the worse instead of the good; if some of them, along with the people, were taken there involuntarily, then by these we mean those who, not by choosing something more preferable, but because the salvation (of their neighbors) required it, for the sake of guidance for those in need (of it), leave the highest word of knowledge and undergo the teaching of the passions. Therefore, the great apostle decided that it was more useful for him to remain in the flesh (Phil. 1:24), that is, for the sake of the disciples for their moral teaching; although he also had a perfect desire to be freed (Phil. 1:23) from the moral teaching of others and to be with Christ in the world above and in simple mental contemplation. 20. He departs from the flesh (2 Cor. 5:8) who has passed from the active skill to the skill of knowledge, admired like clouds by the highest understandings into the transparent air of secret contemplation, so that he can be with the Lord. He certainly departs from the Lord (2 Cor. 5:6), who cannot, without sensory actions, with a pure mind, contemplate, to the best of his ability, the highest understandings and cannot comprehend a simple word about the Lord without fortune-telling (without images and comparisons). 21. In the Holy Scriptures we see, through various divinations, God clothed in flesh and the word of God; but we do not yet see mentally the incorporeal and simple, One and only Father, as we mentally saw Him in the incorporeal, One and only Son, according to what was said: “He who saw Me in the form of the Father, and I in the Father, and the Father in Me” (John 14:9-10). Therefore, a lot of intelligence is needed so that, having first penetrated through the veils of the sayings (spoken) about the Word, we are thus able to see Him with a pure mind, standing naked and showing Himself as a man. Therefore, it is necessary for one who piously seeks God not to be bound by anything that has been said, lest he in ignorance accept (what is said) about God instead of God, that is, lest, to the offence, (deceptively) instead of the Word, he does not love only what is said (in the literal sense) in Scripture, and so that the Word itself does not withdraw from the mind, which, holding clothes, imagines holding the Most incorporeal Word, like that Egyptian woman who did not hold back. Joseph, but his clothes (Gen. 39:12), and those ancient people who, captivated by visible splendor alone, in ignorance “served the creature more than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). 22. When the mind rejects many opinions about the words of truth that lie on it, then the clear word of truth appears to it, gives it the guarantee of true knowledge and removes the previously accepted opinions like scales (Acts 9:18), from the visual powers, as if from the divine and great Apostle Paul. For opinions (attached) only to the sayings of Scripture alone, and partial contemplations in the sense of visible things, are indeed scales that lie on the contemptuous power of the soul and hold back the passage to the pure word of truth. 23. Who valiantly conquered the passions of the body, and fought hard against evil spirits, and expelled their intentions from the land of his soul; he must pray that he would be given a pure heart and a right spirit renewed in his womb (Ps. 50:12), that is, that he would be completely freed from evil thoughts, and by the gift of grace would be filled with Divine thoughts, and thus become the mental world of God, bright and great, consisting of moral, natural and theological contemplations. 24. A pure heart (Ps. 50:12) is one that has presented to God a memory that is completely formless (pure from impressions) and has no images, and is ready to accept only the impressions of God, from which it usually becomes bright. 25. Some who are inquisitive ask how there will be a difference between the eternal abodes and the promises? Is it by a certain place or by a mental representation of the spiritual difference separating the quality and quantity of each monastery? And to some the first seems (fair), to others the second. For he who knows what is said: “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), and: “The Father’s many mansions” (John 14:2), will accept the second. 26. Whoever, through Divine desire, has overcome the spiritual disposition towards the body, has become unlimited (has risen above limitation), although he is in the body. For God, who attracts the desire of the one who desires, is without comparison above everything and does not allow the desirer to attach his desire to anything that is after God. So, let us desire God with all the strength of our desire and let us make sure that our free choice is not possessed by anything bodily, and let us place ourselves above all truly sensory and mental things by (spiritual) disposition; and (then) we will not accept any harm from the natural life in relation to being with God, indescribable by nature. Question: Does a person enter this state at all times? Answer: Grace constantly abides with a person, and from a young age it takes root in him, like leaven, penetrates him, and, as if something natural and fused with him, becomes a participant in him; and although grace is one, it acts in a variety of ways, as it wishes, providing for the benefit of man. Sometimes it ignites and flares up more, sometimes more quietly and more moderately. The light itself at times flares up and shines more, but sometimes it moves away, and there is darkness. And the lamp always burns and shines; when it is purified, it no longer gives light, that is, it becomes more obvious in the communion of God’s love; sometimes the co-existing light dims. To some the sign of the cross appeared in the light and was impressed on the inner man. It once happened that a man in prayer seemed to go into a frenzy and saw himself standing on the altar in the church, and three loaves were brought to him, as if leavened with oil; and the more he ate them, the more they multiplied and increased. And at other times there appeared, as it were, some bright robe, which does not exist on earth in this age and which cannot be made by human hands. Just as the Lord with John and Peter, having ascended the mountain, was transformed, and “His garments were shining” (Mark 9:3), such was that robe, and the man clothed in it was horrified. At another time (this light) was constantly visible in the heart and the inner, deepest and most hidden light opened, a new, bright world was opened together with the Lord, praising and praising, so that that man, completely absorbed in its sweetness and contemplation, no longer controlled himself, but was like a madman and a foreigner to this world because of the overwhelming love, and sweetness, and hidden things. secrets, and, at that time freed, soon reached the perfect measure and was clean from sin. But then the grace disappeared, and the veil of opposing power came. This is partly as if a person had become one degree below the standard of perfection, that is, he had to, so to speak, go through twelve degrees and thus achieve perfection; and for some time he reached and reached this measure and entered into perfection; but then grace diminishes again, and he descends to one degree and becomes the eleventh. If anyone is rich in grace, he always, night and day, stands in perfect measure, being free and pure, always captivated (by grace) and at the same time suffering grief. And now, if those wondrous gifts that were revealed to man, and which he tasted through experience, were always preserved in him, he could not accept (on himself) the ministry of the word or any burden (of his neighbors) and would not be able to hear anything or care about anything, even if it concerned himself, or about the future, but could only lie in a corner somewhere, worn out by grief and intoxicated. Therefore, the perfect measure was not given to him so that he could exercise himself in caring for the brethren or in the ministry of the word. However, “having destroyed the mediastinum of the fence” (Eph. 2:14), only his condition is as if some dark force lay over him. Just as light and thin air covers a lamp, although it always burns and shines, so there is a veil in it over that light. Therefore, I confess that he is imperfect and not entirely free from sin, but, so to speak, he is both free and not free. The mediastinum of the fence was destroyed and excavated, but in some parts it was not completely destroyed, and his prayer was not always equal. There is a time when it is more kindled, and comforts, and reposes, but there is a time when it hides and is hidden under darkness, as grace itself arranges for the benefit of a person. However, having entered into perfect measure, and having at times tasted this age, and having experience (in this), I have not yet known a single perfect and free Christian. But even if someone rests in grace and enters into mysteries, and revelations, and into the great sweetness of grace, at the same time sin is within him. These, because of the abundant grace and light that is in them, consider themselves free and perfect, because they have the effect of grace, but due to inexperience they sin. But I have not yet seen a single one free, although for some time I myself have partly entered into this measure and I can see what kind of structure a perfect one has. 27. Immediately, after the sign of the cross, grace acts like this, pacifies all members, and the soul, due to much joy, appears like a simple, gentle child, and the person no longer condemns either the Greek, or the Jew, or the sinner; but the inner man, with a pure eye, looks at everyone as one, and rejoices equally in the whole world, and wants all Greeks and Jews to worship the Son of God as the Father. And the doors are opened to him; and he enters into many abodes; and as he enters, they open up to him more, and from a hundred mansions he enters another hundred mansions, and grows rich, and again, when he becomes different, other new and wondrous (objects) are shown to him, and as a son and heir he is entrusted with things that cannot be expressed by human nature or by these lips and tongue. At another hour, as an embassy before God, out of much love for Him, he begins to pray for peace, so that the whole world will be saved, like the whole Adam; inflamed with love and wanting everyone to be saved, he teaches (his neighbors) the word of life and the Kingdom, “being an ambassador for Christ” (Eph. 6:20) and, as much as one can hear, telling the heavenly and Divine secrets of the endless and incomprehensible age. At another hour, the whole person is armed, putting on “the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:11), and takes on the heavenly army, and begins to defeat the enemy regiments, and slaughter many corpses there. At another hour, the Lord again acts in the soul, and the soul and the Lord rejoice mutually, and a person finds himself in much light and joy, (turning) to the Lord and to his brethren. The lamp and the light burn night and day, but the whole, according to God’s Providence, does not change, and the whole person is pure, and there is little missing for him to be what he should be; however, the mediastinum is destroyed and death is defeated. Sometimes the lamp flares up more and shines brighter, so that a person cannot bear its radiance and brilliance, but sometimes it is as if allowed. Sometimes the light that is still burning seems to fade, and a thin and gloomy air of an opposing force falls over it, like a curtain. That is why such a person says that he is not completely free. Glory to the Lord forever. Amen. 28. Fasting, vigil, wandering life are good (deeds), but these are only the works of an external good life, but the order of Christians is more internal than these (physical virtues), and no one should (only) rely on them. For it happens to some that these are involved in grace, and the malice (enemies), still hiding inside them, builds feats, voluntarily yields to them and does not act, but makes a person think that his mind has been cleansed, and then leads the person into the conceit that he is a perfect Christian; and then, when a person thinks that he is free and becomes careless, then anger attacks him in a robber manner, secretly making an ambush, and tempts him, and brings him down to the underworld of the earth. For if robbers or warriors, being twenty years old, know how to build forts against enemies, lay ambushes, lie in wait (for enemies), and attack them from the rear, and surround them on all sides, and beat them, how much more (can all this be done) by malice, which lives for so many thousands of years and whose job is to destroy souls. She knows how to create secret annoyance in the heart, and at some times not act in order to lead the soul into conceit of its perfection. The foundation of Christianity is this, so that a person, no matter how many (deeds) of righteousness he does, would not rest on them and would not consider himself to be something great, but would be poor in spirit. And, if he becomes a partaker of grace, so that he does not think that he has achieved anything, and so that he does not imagine himself to be a great man, and so that he does not begin to teach; and, spending a good life in great fasting, wandering and prayer and being a partaker of grace, he thought little of his soul. But, truly, such a beginning of grace was then especially for him so that he would bear labor, hunger and thirst, so that he would not be satisfied (in his striving) and would not consider himself righteous and rich in grace, but so that he would weep and cry, as a mother cries, who had an only-begotten son and raised him, and when he matured, unexpectedly died. You might be interested in: