Sermo ad Antiochum ducem

Of Our Father among the Saints Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, to Antiochus the Ruler. Let us consider, O blessed man of God, in all things, through all things, and before all things, how we walk and what we plan concerning ourselves, knowing that many of the things done and thought by us have invisible witnesses standing by, who look not only at the outward appearance but peer into the very souls and expose the hidden things of the heart. For truly many angelic powers stand around us on all sides, recording in heaven with all precision what is said and done by us, and even what is thought down to a mere intention, for our conviction on the fearful day of judgment; when the whole creation of visible things, shaken with indescribable violence, is driven to its own end; and heaven and earth will pass away root and branch, and the elements between, burnt up, will be dissolved; and the Ancient of Days will take his seat, and books will be opened, containing the records of our deeds, words, and thoughts, faithfully and without falsification. A thousand thousands serve him, and ten thousand myriads stand by him, and a threat of fire runs everywhere, encompassing all around, melting mountains like wax; for a river of fire flowed before him; when Tartarus and a bottomless, immeasurable pit, and outer darkness, and a sleepless worm, are shown to be present. And the fear of these things stood suspended, as they awaited the outcome.

and the avenging angels of wrath, flashing fire, seeing fire, and breathing fire, stand ready for every punishment of every lawlessness. Moreover, all creation, both earthly and heavenly, as many as are among the angels and the powers above the angels, and as many as are in the heavens, stand with trembling, awaiting the fearful revelation of the divine will. When we descend upon them, deeds will be read, and the exposure of secrets will take place, so that all will know each other's sins as each knows his own, reading the book of his own conscience. "I will convict you," it says, "and set before your face" your sins; and again, "Their designs will surround them." And behold, a man and his work, and an unerring judge, having the magnificent power of the heavenly orders standing by, sits enthroned on high, flashing all righteousness, and distributing to each according to worth through a true and just apportionment: to those on the right, for their good deeds, he will stand gentle, mild, and kind, giving the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world; to those on the left, who have obtained their station through the lack of good works, he thrusts away with wrath into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Who could endure that fire when it rages? Who does not shudder at that strange sight of the worm? Who will be able to bear that outer darkness, both thick and heavy? Who will withstand the roaring Tartarus and the abyss crashing together from its depths?

Who among those assigned to this does not tremble, shaken, at the grim and piercing gaze of the angel, and at the dejection of its face? Who will not fear the most dreadful of all evils, the turning away of the face of God, who is by nature gentle, philanthropic, and merciful? All creation turns away in revulsion and loathes those who, through a contentious disposition, have impaled themselves on such evils, justly indignant against them, as having shown themselves to be such before God, who is by nature and alone philanthropic? Who will endure the boundless shame of conscience that will come upon the revelation of hidden things? Who will be able to bear the unceasing lamentation and that bitter tear, and the gnashing of teeth, and the wailing of those pressed in torments, or the pains from negligence, lying upon the middle of their heart and justly consuming them? Who is able to describe the constriction that comes upon them from having no hope of a term for repentance, nor an end to the impending punishment, nor expecting or hoping for a change back to living well? For that final judgment is alone fearful, and just more than it is terrifying; and it is terrifying precisely because it is just, and because it encloses all ages within itself according to its just verdict. Who, taking to mind the groans and sighs that are offered from the midst of their heart, and that strike the very marrow and bitterly gnaw at the entrails, will be able to be free from tears?

Who could bear the lamentation and the wailing, apart from the dejection that is upon it, and with what words of repentance are offered, both by each of the punished toward himself, and by all toward all? For truly each one becomes a judge of his own faults at that time when the matters appear naked before them, free from every hindrance of deceit. Your judgment is just, O God; for you called us, and we did not obey you; you provided words to us, and we did not attend; therefore we rendered your counsels void. Justly has destruction, ruin, storm, affliction, and siege come upon us. And now we call upon you, and you do not hear, and we seek from you, and we find no mercy. For we who hated wisdom and the Word of the Lord, not choosing it, nor wishing to attend to the counsels of God, we reap such fruits from our own seeds, and we are filled with our own folly. For the deceit of life blinded us, and we did not know the mysteries of God, nor did we at all hope for a reward of holiness; and because of this we were filled with paths of lawlessness. We traversed impassable paths, that is, of divine oversight; but we did not know the way of the Lord. And what is the wealth that has been joined to us with arrogance? All those things have passed like a shadow and like a fleeting message, and like a ship passing through billowing water, of which, when it has passed, there is no trace to find, nor a path of its passage in the waves. Or like a bird flying through the air, no evidence of its journey is found.

All those things have passed, leaving this fire to us, an inheritance that endures for all ages. Your judgment is just, O God; for saying these things we will never cease from now on. We were called, and we did not obey; we were admonished, and we did not pay heed. Concerning these terrible things we were taught each day, and we despised what was said. Not even a little did the words about these things grieve us then; otherwise the realities would not now grieve us so severely. What now constrains our life was then considered by us to be nonsense. This we continually chanted: Alas for our negligence! Alas for our deception! Alas for our evil counsels! Alas for our wicked transactions! Alas for the wonder of God's just judgment and sentence upon these things! How for each form of our sins he has given back to us a fitting torment! For the sake of a pitiable and despicable pleasure of the flesh, we have been justly condemned to have this fearful Gehenna; we have been condemned to inhabit this gloom and darkness. Because we loved all that is shameful, and all the divine goods together

we despised them, and preferred the horse-races, the theaters, and the wild-beast shows, in which the mobs of demons danced, and every divine watch and recognition of angels was absent. There, the dignity of joy was outrageously insulted in many ways, while the evil and abominable vice of licentiousness was honored. We are now justly deprived of light, because we did not contemplate creation for the glory of God who made it, according to our temporal life; but we defiled our eyes, ears, and tongue, or rather the soul made in the image of God, with all the spectacles, hearings, and words hated by God, and we corrupted it with mutual envies, and we were cast into this Tartarus, cruelly worn down by frost and abyss against them. Since we preferred pride to the high and lofty humility that procures divine things, and we rejected the narrow and intense path of virtue because of the excessive softness and disposition of the flesh. Where now is our pride, and the arrogant disposition toward all, and the sluggish and easily dissipated softness of the flesh? O the folly! Instead of unrestrained laughter and the licentious noise of the cheeks, there is this heavy gnashing of teeth. Not having wished to practice the learning of divine and saving words, but having preferred the immoderate drunkenness of divine praise through speech, we are now terribly punished, with the tongue suffering from a fearful thirst in vain.

We also reap the fruit of hatred toward our brethren, of envy and deceit and hypocrisy (from which and through which envy arises), of slander and false accusation, of rancor, of falsehood, and of perjury: that sleepless worm, which insatiably devours the depth of our soul. For having corrupted the straightness of love, we twisted it, creating through hatred a voluntary evil worm for ourselves, and through falsehood we dug a more crooked path, by which we were not united with God, who is straight and upright. For He Himself said through the holy prophet David: "A crooked heart has not cleaved to me." Therefore we receive what is worthy of our deeds; or rather, we obtain rewards worthy of our own disposition according to our intention: the fire of pleasure, the fire of Gehenna; the darkness of ignorance and of temporary deceit, eternal darkness and a punishing and sleepless worm; the worm that through hatred and falsehood has made the heart crooked and twisted; the noise of lascivious cheeks, the sound of chewing and the gnashing of teeth; the height of vain pride and dissipation, a drink and a vast depth and a narrow confinement; and, to speak simply, for each of our voluntary evils we justly receive the corresponding penalty and involuntary punishment. Alas for our wretchedness! We, the miserable ones, have not extinguished the fire of the flesh through fasting and vigil and the study of the divine scriptures, which are good and easy extinguishers of that fire, and we are not now being fried by this fire.

Why have we not accustomed the tongue to see, hear, and speak according to nature, so that we might not now have this darkness and this most oppressive silence, but rather that we also might enjoy the light, the word, and the wisdom of God together with the saints, having become spectators, hearers, and hymnodists of the divine glory? Or have we, through love, killed the voluntary worm of hatred, and through truth, annihilated falsehood? If so, we would now be free of this burning worm and of the rest that now constrains our most dreadful life. The judgment of God is just. We do not find what we sought; the gate of the kingdom of heaven is not opened to us. For since we did not knock at the gate of goods through action, we do not receive the enjoyment of eternal goods; since we did not ask for the grace of knowledge through prayer (for we had no love for any of the divine things, but, having bound the mind to earthly things, we have corrupted our entire life along with them); and all those things have passed away like smoke, vanished; but the account of the judgment upon them remains forever impassable. And those, learning anew the power of divine justice from what they suffer, will converse with one another, as if to encompass it in a type. But I, having become wretched, relying on what deeds shall I hope to be removed from the terrible condemnation?

Devoid of every virtue and every knowledge, I fear that, bound hand and foot, I may be cast into a dark and gloomy land, into a land of eternal darkness, where there is no light nor sight of mortal life, having voluntarily bound the practical virtues of the soul with passions, and hindered its steps from the divine course of the angelic polity. Be merciful, O Christ, and save us from this anguish. For with those whom in this present age we have chosen by our will, through our wicked practices, to consort according to our deliberate choice, with these we shall, against our will, be justly condemned to be in the age to come. For there will truly be, there will be a time when a terrible trumpet will sound with a strange voice, and this whole universe will be dissolved, its visible order falling apart; the whole visible world will pass away, receiving its proper end; and the now-expected world of beings will appear, bringing all strange mysteries to eyes, ears, and minds. And God renders to each according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil, according to merit, giving a great and fearful and final conclusion to all. But may it be that we all take up both the saving fear of Gehenna and the precious desire for the kingdom of the heavens! The fear producing for us complete abstinence from and inactivity in evils.

but desire, which cheerfully impels us toward good deeds, so that we may obtain the enjoyment of the promised goods in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom belong glory and power, together with his beginningless, all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.