anchors 121–130

97. One person is given the quality of wisdom, another the quality of spiritual knowledge, another the quality of faith, and someone else one of the other gifts of the Spirit enumerated by St [00122] First Century [00123] Paul (cf. 1 Cor. 12:8-11). In the same way, one person receives through the Spirit, according to the degree of his faith, the gift of that perfect and direct love for God which is free from all materiality; another through the same Spirit receives the gift of perfect love for his neighbor and another receives something else from the same Spirit. In each, as I have said, the gift that conforms with his state is energized. For every capacity for fulfilling a commandment is called a gift of the Spirit. [00124] 98. The baptism of the Lord (cf. Matt. 20:22) is the utter mortification of our propensity for the sensible world; and the cup is the disavowal of our present mode of life for the sake of truth. [00125] 99. The baptism of the Lord typifies the sufferings we willingly embrace for the sake of virtue. Through these Sufferings we wash off the stains in our conscience and readily accept the death of our propensity for visible things. The cup typifies the involuntary trials which attack us in the form of adverse circumstances because of our pursuit of the truth. If throughout these trials we value our desire for God more than nature, we willingly submit to the death of nature forced on us by these circumstances. [00126] 100. The baptism and the cup differ in this way: baptism for the sake of virtue mortifies our propensity for the pleasures of this life; the cup makes the devout value truth above even nature itself. [00127] Second Century [00128] 1. Christ mentioned the cup before the baptism (cf. Matt. 20:22) because virtue exists for the sake of truth but truth does not exist for the sake of virtue. Thus he who practices virtue for the sake of truth is not wounded by the arrows of self-esteem; but he who pursues truth for the sake of virtue does harbor the conceit which self-esteem generates. [00129] 2. Truth is divine knowledge, and virtue the struggles for truth on the part of those who desire it. A man who endures the labors of virtue for the sake of such knowledge is not vainglorious, because he knows that truth cannot be grasped naturally through human effort. For it is not in the nature of things for what is primary to be circumscribed by what is secondary. But a man who expects to attain knowledge by means of the struggles he makes for the sake of virtue invariably suffers from self-esteem, because he imagines he has gained the victor’s crown before he has sweated for it. He does not know that labors exist for the sake of crowns, but crowns do not exist for the sake of labors. For by nature every spiritual method ceases to be practiced once the purpose for which it was intended-has been achieved or is thought to have been achieved. [00130] 3. He who seeks only the outward form of knowledge, that is, knowledge which is merely theoretical, and pursues the semblance of virtue that is, a merely theoretical morality, is puffed up, Judaic-wise, with the images of truth.