Discourse 38

The heads of the chapters of the division of the sections of the treatise. 38. Smallness of soul: it is a sign of cutting off. But the mother of both of them is simplicity. A person who is contemptible, after his two illnesses he makes known his shame. By love of the body and by poverty of faith. Love of the body is a sign of lack of faith. Whoever proclaims concerning himself, makes known concerning himself that he has lied to God, and he casts away the future. If without afflictions he approached God, you also will be likened to him. Boldness of heart, and that which proclaims a man over every quietness, is from one of two causes: either from hardness of heart, or from very great faith in God. And to that which is from hardness of heart, high pride is attached. To this, however, humility of heart. A person who has placed his trust in God cannot be shaken, unless he first completes his will by means of the sign. Trust in God and courage of heart: testimony of the vision that gives birth to them. From the true testimony of our thoughts, we have trust in God. The testimony of the thought becomes from that which a man does not separate from himself, that he might rest from duty as much as he is able. If our heart does not separate from us, revelations are our faces toward God.

Impudence, then, is from harsh practices and from a base thought. It is difficult for the service of the body. But one who is of little perception in his thought no longer strives to serve this harsh yoke of the Lord. Silence, which is said to be the mother of both of them, and the mother of both of them is stillness: from one of three causes their benefit occurs in a person. Either for the sake of the glory of the good, or because of the warm zeal of excellence, or because of some divine matter that is within him, which has subdued the mind to itself. But one who does not have these latter, as from the yoke, is sick in the first. Excellence is this: not many distinctions of the acts of the body, but the heart of the wise in his thought, which adorns them for right action. For many are the times when, even if the acts do not give a hand to labor, the mind is able, and apart from them it is increased. The body, however, apart from the wisdom of the heart, cannot increase even when it labors. It does not, however, diminish a person of God when there is place for the labor of the good things, so that he does not even in the revelations show his love by the toil of their labor. The first order always succeeds. The second, however, sometimes succeeds and sometimes does not.

Do not suppose that the passion is small, that it is far from the causes of pains and removes them from him. The movement of the lower members, which occurs only with sharp thoughts, or else with drunken intoxication, that which falls down from the wall hotly and drives the soul with delight outside of will. Without doubt, from a full belly you will be convinced that it demands in the body. Consider the zeal of the solitary: this is accounted to you as that which is far from the sight of women. That which the pure one accomplishes by his power, even the one in the world cannot accomplish. Do not suppose that the pure one errs until death: for that which is from God, by its roots was sown and hidden. To the purity of the pure and to the solitude of the solitary. Thus for every impulse that exists: the distance of the passions puts it to sleep in the members, and to idleness and to error it gives its remembrance. Other thoughts of distant passions come, which make a peaceful passage in the mind, and a deep and cold movement which from itself occurs.

and other disturbances, that from the fullness of life, which stirs the thought by an image that cannot be grasped, and from proximity, it becomes far from pain, when it is anointed like oil to its wick, that which, when it flickers and is near to extinction, and disturbs the sea of the body by the movements of the passions upon the surface of the thought. That movement which from nature alone is from it and to it, which from God the creator is established for the growth of the world of the body, without any addition from outside to disturb the will from its tranquility, to shake its steadfastness from continence, is not possible. For God does not give power to the chaste to overcome the will that is excessive in relation to him. But when a person is purified from anger and from desire, it is not that which is placed in the chaste as a difficult thing for him to go out from the boundary of the chaste and be outside of obligation, but rather the addition of the senses acting upon that natural one, by means of the causes of the will. God: everything he did, he did well and powerfully. And as the measure of the natural chaste faculties is rightly kept, so that they do not overflow like a canal outside the path of the law of God, the chaste do not. But the movements that are stirred, the body alone with its movable faculties.

Thus: as only the one who knows the passion that is pain, not indeed from the disturbance or from the agitation of the course of continence and of solitude, or from the incitement to anger. But there is a time when the passion is known through the sentient faculties: then, because of them, and anger that is not weeping passes beyond taking offense, or in excessive eating and drinking, or in the sight of the proximity of a woman who has been defiled, or in the histories about her. Then from them, the fire of desire is kindled in the body. From here to that pure incitement, towards wakefulness, they place a power to be directed, or in the fullness of the colors of roses, or through changing visions of the passions. There is, however, also from the abandonment of hope. But this: it is not that one. To these, they call the battles of freedom, which is the pure way of the interior. The battle that is from the abandonment of hope becomes known to him: when, with labors and vigilance, there is a burden, and beyond these causes, the offense of desire is cast upon them beyond the power. For the rest, however, they are from their laxity.

nature, when the increase comes by way of the senses or by the belly, it takes away from the measure of that first creation of his, and is not preserved. But he who casts off afflictions and suffering against his will, because he is compelled to bear sins, is not indeed separated from the causes of the vision, nor can he be, however much he may increase, these diminish. For afflictions are destroyers of the life of passions, and life, on the other hand, is the increaser and bringer of them. Therefore it is clearly known that God and his angels rejoice in afflictions, while Satan and his servants rejoice in ease. For if the commandments of God are fulfilled through the sufferings of the body, but he casts them off, then he is known to be the one who despises the giver of the commandments, so as to cast them off. Just as through the passions that are born of ease, he abolishes that which is the cause of excellence. This, however, is compulsion. In the measure that he approaches ease, in that same measure the place for passions that act is made. For in a body that is compelled, thoughts cannot shine in vain. But when he endures sufferings with joy and patience, he also has greater power to command thoughts. For in that case, not even thoughts hinder him in his labors.

When, therefore, a human being, by the recollection of his former evils, anticipates his own arising in afflictions and torments, then also God takes pleasure in his petition, as one who rejoices, seeing that he himself, before being compelled, has passed judgment upon himself because of the perversity of his way; which is the sign of repentance. And the more he constrains himself, the more his honors increase from God. Every joy, however, whose cause is not from abundance, this is a momentary thing, stirred up by the passions of desire in the one who experiences it; concerning every painful passion that is to be examined in this way, it is not pure alone.