Discourse 75

On the hidden movements, powers, and operations within them. These, my brother, are the subthemes for you: the performance of wonders, the anticipation of the types of future things, the expansion of the senses, the joy from battles, the victory over each of the passions, the acquisition of each of the virtues, the fullness of time from grace, the purity of prayer and the fervor of spirit, spiritual joy, and all the other petitions that exist, which a person is able to accomplish in the nature of each one of these, whether evil or good, and the agitation of the heart. God inclines to his will when he wills, and when he sees his evil and his worthiness, he grants his petition and gives him rest. As for the mysteries, however, which are his own, that is, of the spirit, which are the movements of spiritual prayer and the entry of the mind into the inner sanctuary from the veil of the Holy of Holies, and the perception of the inheritance of incorruptibility—if a person does not give their due, they are not attained. God gives; nor if the whole creation were to persuade on his behalf. Their due, however, is purity of the soul.

When a person reaches the purity that is from the senses, then things that the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard, and that have not entered the heart of a man to ask for in prayer, are revealed before him—that purity which never ceases from one of the mysteries and from spiritual visions. And that which a physical power would be unable to perform toward the nature of the earth, this grace performs in purity toward the soul itself. For even to the fixed roots in the depths it knows its power. And like a fire to the censer it makes the earth boil, so that it may bring forth the treasures of the knowledge that God has placed in its nature—for the delight of creation and the praise of Him. Thus grace brings forth into the open all the splendor that God has hidden in the nature of the soul, and shows it to her and delights her with its beauty. For when she sees the great and ineffable treasures that God has placed in her, and which were hidden from her by the covering of the senses and ignorance, and now they appear to her so that she may forget the burden of the senses from her joy, she becomes intoxicated by His love from earthly things. And she no longer remembers the body, which had hidden them from her sight of the beauties of her stature. Then she sees in herself heavenly beauties, like a true mirror that, by the clarity of its emptiness, shows the beauty of the faces.

Holiness, indeed, is fitting for the holy ones. Every excellence of which it may be said, and every work of righteousness that is accomplished in it, cannot be performed, established, or fulfilled apart from stillness. For need and purity have no place apart from the stillness of the saints.