Discourse 42

The discourse which he sent to his natural and spiritual brother: that he might persuade him by the writings to go and visit him in his cell, as he longed to see him. 42. Not as you suppose, O man: there are powers or beatitudes. But rather, you are already passing away in your weakness: your destruction is easy for you. Therefore, with this confidence, ask of me that which, when nature is raised from the thought that burns in you according to its custom, is not equal to the edge of what is and is visible to you, but that which from it, by a providential arrangement, might be shown. Do not seek from me that which is at rest from the body and the mind, but that which, for the salvation of the soul, is prepared. A little while longer, and the time will pass away from this world. With how many persons will you meet when you come there? And with how many kinds of pain and places, until I return again to my place? And what are the causes of the thoughts that my soul receives in their encounters, that it is disturbed by the pains that are stirred up in it? That a little respite from them is near: from you it is not hidden. Therefore, the solitary one is humbled by the sight of worldly things: and you are passing away. Not only of women, but also of men. And see how many changes his mind undergoes: he who has been at rest for a long time with himself, when he again meets with these from silence: and hears and sees something outside his custom.

I do not know the encounters of the powers, nor their order. I do not know what kind of struggle is cast into the heart, and how it fights with its enemy when its mind is not at peace. By what means does a man know that he has been reconciled from the shame of his enemy? Especially for those who have the practice of many things: knowledge is near from now. But as for those who are not ascetics, this I have not been able to do. Do not let your heart stray after those who say that in no way do hearing and sight hinder you, and that they set you in the desert and in solitude, in your cell and outside in your thoughts, by means of a sign from the tongue, while you do not receive a bad change, and you do not perceive your sin in the encounters of persons and wills in the firmament of passions. Those who say these things do not know, even when they are struck. For your sin does not yet reach this level of health. We have bonds, O solitaries, that if they were to be loosed from the sinew even for one day, and if they were to come out from under the splenia and the bonds, the worms would cast them off.