anchors 581–590

56. The power of sin - or in other words, the will of the flesh - is destroyed by the grace of holy baptism, and by active obedience to God’s commandments. Such obedience destroys the power of sin with the sword of the Spirit (cf. Eph. 6:17), that is, with the revelation of divine knowledge in the Spirit; for obedience secretly cries to the passion of sin as Samuel cried to Agag: ‘As your. sword has made women childless, so today shall your mother be childless among women’ (1 Sam. 15:33). [00582] 57. Using the mellow thought of pleasure as if it were a sword, the passion of gluttony makes many virtues childless. By means of dissipation it kills the seeds of self-restraint; through greed it corrupts the equity of justice; with self-love it severs the natural bond of compassion, m short, the passion of gluttony destroys all virtue’s offspring. [00583] 58. The passion of gluttony kills all the divine offspring of the virtues. But that passion itself is killed through the spiritual knowledge acquired by the grace of faith and by obedience to the divine commandments. [00584] 59. Our Lord is truly a light to the Gentiles (cf. Isa. 49:6; Luke 2:32): through true knowledge He opens the eyes of their mind, closed as they have been by the darkness of ignorance. Moreover, through His divine conduct He has made Himself a noble example of virtue to the faithful, becoming their model and pattern. Looking to Him as the author of our salvation, we attain the virtues by imitating Him in our own conduct, so far as this is possible for us. [00585] 60. Anyone who hates a man through envy, and maliciously slanders him because he is stronger in the struggle for virtue and richer in spiritual knowledge, is choked like Saul by an evil spirit. [00586] Fifth Century [00587] (cf. 1 Sam. 16:14): he cannot bear to see someone better than himself enjoying the glory that comes through virtue and spiritual knowledge. And he rages all the more because he cannot actually kill this good man (cf. 1 Sam, 18:10- 11). In addition, he often bitterly banishes the beloved Jonathan from his presence (cf. 1 Sam. 19:4-5; 20: 30-32) – that is, he suppresses the innate judgment of his conscience, which rebukes his unjust hatred and from a love of truth recounts the achievements of the man whom he hates. [00588] 61. Let us, too, beseech the noetic David to make our intellect, frenzied by material things, resonant with the lyre of spiritual contemplation and knowledge, and to drive out the evil spirit of material inconstancy that dominates the world of the senses (cf. 1 Sam. 16:23). In this way we may be able to understand the Law spiritually and find the divine principle hidden mystically within it, so that it becomes for us a lasting source of eternal life. [00589] 62. Every lover of salvation is totally committed either to the practice of the virtues or to the contemplative life. For without virtue and spiritual knowledge no one can attain salvation in any way whatsoever. For virtue controls the body’s impulses, skillfully curbing with sound thoughts its gravitation towards unnatural conduct; while by means of contemplation one inwardly lays hold of what has been rightly conceived and intelligently assessed. [00590] 63. Since apprehension is intellective, and what is apprehended is intelligible, what is apprehended is, so to speak, the nourishment and substance of that which apprehends, Thus when God is apprehended by incorporeal beings - who are themselves intellects - and becomes intelligible to them to the degree to which they come into communion with Him, He illumines them from within, their intellects both apprehending Him and being nourished by Him.