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For a beginner, the best order for every word and deed is to begin with God and end with God (1). If you believe a little in me, not a daring theologian, then I will tell you that you have already comprehended one thing, and in order to comprehend another, pray about it. Do not neglect what is in you, but let the rest remain in the treasury. Ascend through works in order to acquire what is pure through purification. Do you want to eventually become a theologian and worthy of the Divine? Keep the commandments and do not go against the commandments. For deeds, like steps, lead to contemplation. Work with your body for your soul. And can any person become so tall as to reach Pavlov’s measure? However, he also says about himself that he sees only through a glass darkly, fortune-telling, and that the time will come when he will see face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). Let us assume that in words and we are superior to others in wisdom, however, without any doubt, you are lower than God. It may be that you are more prudent than others, however, before the truth you are small to the same extent as your being is distant from the being of God. We have been given the promise that we will one day know as we ourselves are known (see 1 Cor. 13:12). If it is impossible for me to have perfect knowledge here, then what else remains? What can I hope for? Without a doubt, you will say - the Kingdom of Heaven. But I think that it is nothing other than the achievement of the purest and most perfect. And the most perfect of all that exists is the knowledge of God (1). In both Divine and human affairs, those who could not do something are equally not subject to condemnation, but those who did not want to do something are subject to responsibility (1). As a deed without a word, a word without execution is equally imperfect (1). While doing good, try and stand in it, because the transition to bad will quickly occur (2). A silent deed is better than an unfulfillable word. No one has ever become great without good deeds, and many have become famous without a red word. Grace is given not to the one who speaks, but to the one who lives well (2). Have God as the beginning and end of everything (2). Understand everything, but do what is permissible to do (2). Those who have succeeded either in deeds, leaving the word, or in the word, leaving deeds, are, it seems to me, no different from the one-eyed people who suffer great damage when they themselves look, and even greater shame when they are looked at. But whoever can succeed in both and become equally dexterous with both hands, it is possible for him to be perfect and in this life to taste the bliss there (2). Whoever has most of it is ashamed not to acquire everything; the beginning is already half of the whole thing, and where there is more than half, what else can there be if not the whole (2)? We are ready to praise you, although you have not yet admitted your wisdom. For we no longer look at what you say, but at what you do. And this very thing is not to admit one’s wisdom in a very wise way, as the critic Dionysius says about the rhetorician Lysias 53 that his artlessness was extremely skillful 54 (2). Lysias - Athenian orator of the 4th century. BC – Approx. ed. From a letter to St. Gregory to the unknown. – Approx. ed. You might be interested in: