probably begin, and in our work last night we're pretty well acquainted with the overall structure of the text, and I think today to sort of move through it from start to finish, if we can get that far, we'll see how far we'll get, pausing on some of the proverbs and spending more time on it. It's just, One other structural thing I'd like to draw your attention to that I didn't have time to do last night as part of the overall structure. You remember that we found a... a set of ten proverbs in the middle of the text. There's also another interesting set of ten proverbs after the turning point of the text. Remember we called number 107 the turning point and we'll come upon that and experience it as a turning point as we move through the text. But if you turn to number 123, proverb number 123, this too is the beginning of an interesting chain of ten proverbs that function together and it also secures the idea that from number 107 to the end we're dealing only with the realm of knowledge.

[01:17]

Remember we were working with the practical asceticism up until that turning point and from 107 to the end we're only dealing with knowledge. This chain that goes from 123 to number 131 is about the two virtues that Evagrius always consistently associates with knowledge, namely wisdom and prudence. Look at number 123, you see in the first line wisdom and the second line prudence. We know that chain is over, we'll talk about the content later, but this is just structural engineering here. Look at 131, we know the chain is over when wisdom and prudence are mentioned again. But, not only that, just to see how tight it all is, in the middle, see number 126. Number 126 is the middle proverb of the set of 10 and it's the longest proverb in the whole thing. If you go right to the middle of that proverb...

[02:19]

You find the middle line is there is no prudence and there is no wisdom in their teaching. So he's made a perfect X here with this. That's the middle. If you count all the lines of all ten proverbs, that's the middle. Or if you count just the lines of number 126, that's also the middle. So, again, you just see the incredible detail that he's built this text with. And you might think, well, is he crazy or what? Let's remember this about the ancient world. There were no photocopying machines, no printing presses, not tons of paper to waste and throw away. If you had anything at all that was written, it wasn't going to be junk. You might have one book in your life. Okay? And so if somebody writes 13 pages, he's not crazy if he writes them very well, if he makes them very carefully, if he makes a book that you will return to again and again to discover more and more in it.

[03:22]

That's kind of what's happening here, I think. Anyway, let's go back to the beginning of the text. We said in commenting on number one, we're going to try to comment on this kind of in the light of what we did in our first meetings together, the Lectio Divina that keeps on trying to deepen our grasp of the Trinitarian mystery, of the mystery of the Incarnation, and of our divinization, that is, our share in it. And we begin right away with this first proverb, understanding our divinization by these Pauline words, heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ. The whole Pauline phrase is supposed to echo in our minds and what Paul is saying, this is in chapter 8 of the letter to the Romans, he said, you are heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ if only you suffer with him. This is what makes you a co-heir, and you're supposed to hear this unspoken part of the text.

[04:26]

So what makes us heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ? Our willingness to undertake suffering, and the suffering will be, in the monastic life, concrete. All of the ascetical practices will be my identifying with Christ. And I am a co-heir with Christ, suffering with Him so as also to share in His resurrection. We saw that proverb number three, in a sense, the entire text is condensed in proverb number three and that the rest of it opens up around that. I said that there were many virtues between faith and love, but number three is not only a proverb that opens the whole text or condenses the whole text, it also gets down to business in a specific chain that unfolds in the proverbs that follow. Look at number four, fear of the Lord and temperance.

[05:26]

Number five, perseverance and hope. Number six, passionlessness. Number seven, chastity and temperateness. And number eight, love. We've moved from faith to love. And these virtues that Evagrius mentions here, he always mentions in this order in all his writings. These are the virtues in their order that move us from faith to love. So he's just started the text unfolding, if you will, The first line of number three, faith the beginning of love. But how do we get to love? Well, by fearing the Lord and by temperance, by persevering in hope, by enslaving our passions that we may become passionless. There's the word passionless, we saw it later in the text, but this is first occurrence here. See how passionless just comes right before love, right?

[06:29]

And then finally, love. Anakoresis in love purifies the heart. Anakoresis in hate agitates it. And then having reached love, I like to call these proverbs exercises. We're not supposed to go nearly as fast through the text as I'm going. You're actually supposed to, you know, Father give me a word, I take one proverb, I go and work on that all week. So I work all week on fear of the Lord, guarding my soul and good temperance, strengthening it. But eventually, Let's just keep imagining, as we started to do last night, that we're in the circle of Evagrius. He is our father. We're used to the way that he teaches in general. And so I open up these individual proverbs by talking about the way that he teaches in general. That's actually the way in which commentators comment on Evacrius because he's so incredibly pithy that the only way you know for sure what he's doing is to find him talking about the same thing elsewhere and you sort of piece it together.

[07:37]

I'm sort of trying to recreate that by saying Evagrius always used to say, all right? And I promise you that when I do that, I'm actually citing other texts of Evagrius, which we don't have time to actually look up and go into. But notice this, when we get to number eight, let's say we're coming a week at a time and getting a proverb. Week after week now, he's going to give me proverbs on love. You'll get the point. It's quite important, all right? Anachoresis in love purifies the heart. Anachoresis in hate agitates it. Better the thousandth in love than one alone with hate and inaccessible caves. that he often uses with much humor. He hates cranky old monks. And he says, you may be the most isolated and ascetical hermit in the world, but if you're out there in your hermitage just hating the world, forget you. It'd be better to come in a thousandth in the race of love, at least you're in that race, than out there alone.

[08:45]

And number 10, the one who binds memory of injury to his soul is like one hiding fire in chaff. He talks about love in concrete ways as well. And this number 10 would be one of the concrete ways of talking about love. It is very important to forget and forgive injuries. In number 11, The mood changes. Do not give much food to your body, and you will not see bad visions in your sleep. For in the way that a flame enkindles a forest, so does hunger burn up shameful visions. In the life of praktike, which I said we have two basic divisions in monastic life as conceived by the Egyptian monks, and Evagris is just a spokesman for this in this case, but we have what we may call praktike, or the ascetical life, and then knowledge, or the contemplative life.

[09:47]

Basically, praktike works on two of the three parts of the soul. Now you kind of wonder, I didn't know there were three parts of the soul. This is just kind of standard teaching in the Greek Christian world. And let me just expose it to you briefly, the three parts of the soul, urging its usefulness in this sense. We're probably not inclined to be as ontologically precise as the ancient Greeks would have been. We say soul and we got a sort of a vague sense of something inside me. You know, that somehow I am something more than the sum of my bodily parts. That's about as far as we go in our finesse in philosophy. The Greeks were a little more detailed in their understanding of it, but whether you really take on a Greek ontology or not, my sense of how Evagrius' understanding of the three parts of the soul can be useful for us, just normal kind of Americans with sloppy ontology, the way it can be useful is, what he does in these three parts of the soul is he talks about dimensions of our interior life, interior energies.

[11:06]

that need to be purified. I actually already mentioned these last night, two of them. The desiring part of my inner life and the, what I call, the verve or strength of character. These are two parts of my inner life. The third part is what he calls the rational part of the soul. That part of my interior life with which I grasp relationships, with which I understand things, really my mind. Well, Praktike is about purifying my desiring part and my energy part. The technical terms for those parts are the concupiscible part of the soul and the irascible part of the soul. And it's okay to use those terms. In fact, we should use them just because they're traditionally used in any discussion of this Greek ontology. It's okay to use them if we understand them as neutral terms. Actually, concupiscence and irascibility now are negative terms for us.

[12:11]

And in its description of parts of the soul, they're neutral. So we would say something like, is your concupiscible part of your soul, is it going to go bad or good on you? Is the irascible part of your soul, is it going to go bad or good on you? So you see that kind of the language isn't maybe necessarily the best for distinguishing that. The concupiscible part of the soul and the irascible part of the soul have to be purified so that we can love. When we are purified there and can love, then the rational part of the soul can look on God and know Him and love Him and desire Him. That's kind of the anthropological structure of how salvation is conceived here. So, if we're working on love, We're working on the irascible part of the soul. If we're working on food and sex and money, we're working on the concupiscible part of the soul.

[13:17]

In numbers 8, 9, 10, we worked on the irascible part of the soul. Do not give much food to your body is about the concupiscible part of the soul. And number 12 is about irascible man. What is Evagrius doing here? He's going to, all through this part of the text, he's going to bounce us back and forth between these two parts of the soul. And the idea will be to knit tightly together health in those parts of the soul. We have a word that, a generic term for those two parts of the soul. The generic term is the passionate part of the soul. These are called the passions together. And the goal here is to become passionless. Not in the sense of a dull creature, but in the sense of someone whose passions are not turbulent, but who are in order. So we're going to work on this piece by piece.

[14:21]

The passion about food, we have an exercise on it. But the place that it's all going to come together around is the question of irascibility, and its opposite, gentleness. And number 12 is the first to introduce that. An irascible man will be terrified. The gentle man will be without fear. Remember at the turning point 107 last night I drew your attention to the word gentleness as summarizing so much of what Evagrius is concerned about. Other virtues Evagris will concentrate on in the text and then we tend not to see them again. The virtue of gentleness is spotted evenly throughout the entire text. Let's just... I just want to demonstrate that and I want you to feel that. Number 12, it appears. It'll be at issue without the actual word appearing in many other Proverbs. But look at number 31. You'll find the word there in number 31. You'll find it again in 34.

[15:24]

You'll find it again in 53. You'll find it again in 99. And in 107. And then In 111, 112, we've passed the turning point and he's still talking about it. And then finally you will find it in 133. And just evenly always coming back to gentleness. This is a key virtue in the monastic life as conceived by Evagris and really by all of the other Egyptian monks. Number 13 is a practical dimension of that. A strong wind chases away clouds, memory of injury chases the mind from knowledge. Look, we're on to his terminology here.

[16:30]

We realize that knowledge is the goal of the monastic life. Knowledge of the Holy Trinity is the goal of the monastic life. You've been sort of jumping around thinking, I'm living a life that has a high and lofty goal. Knowledge of the Trinity. And you're so proud of yourself for living a life that has this high and lofty goal. Meanwhile... you won't forgive anybody. And he's just telling you that you're so far away from knowledge you haven't a clue, you know. And if I go, Father, give me a word, and I think he's got to give me some new insight into the Trinity. And the new insight into the Trinity that he gives me is I've got to let go. I've got to let go of the injuries that have done me. Something that's important in Evagrius and in all the monastic fathers, and it would be true of the biblical literature itself, is that when we have a metaphor, don't just take them as a sort of throwaway flourish to it all here.

[17:34]

He says, a strong wind chases away clouds. Really the best way in which one can understand what Evagris is getting at here is to go outside and look at the clouds racing by and when there's a strong wind and they really are moving quickly. The ancients were so much more deeply poetical than we are and it would be worth kind of recovering some of that. It's not just that that's a good illustration. It's that there's a kind of coherence that the sky tells me about my soul. There really is something like that and so that my soul is invisible to me. But the world will tell me about my invisible soul. So I will look at the world. And I will see in it many beautiful things, but I will also see in it horrifying visions of how quickly my mind goes away from the very thing it was made for, knowledge, if I remember, injury.

[18:46]

So let me urge you really to stop at any metaphor and really chew on it for a long time. You'd be surprised how much more comes out of the word. That sounds just, you know, like kind of a poetic urging, When I really did this in my own work on writing this book, I was amazed at how much more came out of the text for me. In number 10 we already had one, hiding fire and chaff. You know what happens when you hide fire and chaff, you know? First nothing and then all at once the whole thing is ignited. That's your soul, he's telling you. It's a strong image. All of the images that he uses around the question of irascibility are very strong images and we do well to take them seriously. Also, notice the word mind in number 13. We've heard Evagrius talk for years now, and we know how he uses words.

[19:49]

And we know that his word, the word mind, is one of the most important words that he has. It's one of the most important words in the Greek ethos, really. Let me say what it isn't. It isn't a big brain. Okay? It isn't, you know, what the mind is, for the Greeks, the deepest part of the human being. It is the deepest part of the interior life of the human being. And it is Accordingly, in the hands of the Greek fathers of the church, when they exegeted the biblical text, Genesis 1.26, God said, let us make man in our own image and likeness. That image and likeness is above all in the mind. Not in the brain, in the mind. Notice how I'm just instinctively pointing to this part of my body even, huh?

[20:53]

To the mind. And the mind is a capacity with which I have been made that is in the image of God. And what is that capacity? It's a capacity to receive God. in a way that we could dare to say, in a way that, in a sense, can be made to be worthy of God. Imagine this. Now, what would be a receiving of God that could be worthy of God? Understanding God. Never adequately, but to some measure, in a way that a rock and a doggy and a horsey never will. Okay? We are made with a capacity to understand something of God. He made us that way. That was His doing. This is not... It does Him no honor to say otherwise. He made us this way.

[21:54]

Okay? He made us with this capacity to grasp Him. The name for that is the mind. Okay? We have to try to hear those overtones because to us it just sounds like a big brain. Well, the word mind occurs in three proverbs in this whole text. Right here, as part of the first, I see this whole first movement of the text as a movement from proverb number three all the way, we'll go to number fifteen, from faith to love. and the word mind is there as being chased from its goal. The other place where mind occurs, we already saw it, is number 107, the turning point. Okay? I'll just read it to you again so that it keeps on sinking in. It's no accident that the word mind is there. A pure mind in a gentle soul. We're beginning to hear some words again and again here. A pure mind in a gentle soul. And the last place where the word mind will occur in this text is at the end.

[22:55]

Knowledge of incorporeals raises the mind and presents it before the Holy Trinity. That's the title I made up for this book, The Mind's Long Journey to the Holy Trinity. Okay? Alright, let's go back and kind of stay inside the rhythm of the text to number 13. Number 14 is about praying for one's enemies and keeping guard over the tongue. Number 15, this is a good example of the way the fathers will, I say, Father give me a word and he'll give me a word that's supposed to be from the scripture. but he'll change it just slightly to fit my situation. You'll recognize the biblical understanding behind this. If your brother irritates you, lead him into your house and do not hesitate to go into his, but eat your morsel with him. For doing this, you will deliver your soul and there will be no stumbling block for you at the hour of prayer.

[23:58]

So just take your brother into your house. There's a whole bunch of proverbial text behind that there. Eating your morsel describes the monastic practice of a morsel of bread. But sharing a meal, basically what it means is, you know, you can't really eat with someone you hate. It's an impossible thing to do. That's just an anthropological fact. Why can't you do that either? Because eating, and why is eating really an act of love, eating with another? Because eating is what keeps us alive. And implicitly what we're saying when we eat together is, I want you to stay alive. And I want you to be good. I want you to be well. Anyway. Things shift to number 16. We've really reached a kind of high point there, but let me draw your attention to the last line of number 15, the hour of prayer. This is an absolutely regular expression of a vagaries for knowledge of the Holy Trinity, and he uses it interchangeably.

[25:04]

And it's interesting that he does so. That's one way of of helping me to insist on when he says knowledge of the Trinity, he doesn't mean book learning. He means prayer. He means communion. Actually, he also says something that I bet you can all verify in your own lives. He talks about here the hour of prayer and there'd be a stumbling block at the hour of prayer. Basically, if you try to sit down and have a good a session of contemplative prayer and you've got someone that you're mad at or feuding with. their face appears right there when you're praying. You can't do it until it's settled. And Evagrius actually points this out again and again. You really cannot get into the contemplative life and that this person's face will actually appear before you while you're praying. And actually he would say that and I'm saying it now also.

[26:08]

because if it doesn't, it should, and you'll remember that I did it, and then you'll curse me for saying it, because that person's face will keep coming up, and you'd wish that I hadn't ever told you that it should, but it won't go away, but I'm inserting that in there, just the way the Lord Himself inserts it in there, because that's a gift from the Lord, saying, I don't want your contemplation until this is solved. Number 16, 17 and 18 we see begin to move around a different theme. They function together. It's about love and poverty and wealth. Just look at the words that are occurring there. I'm just going to draw your attention to the words because you see how he's knitting the issues together here. Love, poverty, wealth, rich man, knowledge, quoting the scriptures, a camel through the needle of an eye. He who loves money will not see knowledge.

[27:10]

All of this stuff. What are we doing here? We've shifted back to the other part of the soul. We've shifted back to the desiring part of the soul. We were a long time in the irascible part of the soul working on love. Now we've come back. But there's a very firm link. Love, in number 16, rejoices in poverty. That is to say, love is going to help my concupiscible part of the soul to come into line. And the issue here is what the issue always is in number 17. The rich man will not acquire knowledge. And knowledge is the goal. And he's half equating it here with the way he quotes the scripture, knowledge with the kingdom of God. And the camel will not enter through the eye of a needle. He's quoting the Lord here, huh? But the Lord says it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And A. V. says, it is impossible for rich man to have knowledge. This is how we know what he understands the Kingdom of God to be.

[28:13]

So it's a useful little homily. It's a useful little exegesis. The Kingdom of God is nothing less than knowledge of the Trinity. Number 18 is specifically about loving money. Number 19 summarizes the whole issue here around the issue of humility. In the tents of the humble, the Lord will make camp, but in the house of the proud, curses will abound. And then number 20 to 24 opens an interesting kind of chain that has to do with either honoring God's law or dishonoring it. Rather typical wisdom literature from the Bible, the two ways. The one who transgresses God's law dishonors him, but he who keeps it glorifies the one who made him. All of this brings us to one of the most beautiful proverbs in the whole collection, and we'll pause a moment on this.

[29:18]

Which, in a sense, I wanted to, rather than just go to number 21 straight away, I want to kind of get there through all these proverbs, even though I'm going too fast. But I wanted you to see, we've exercised the irascible and concupiscible parts of our soul quite a lot here now. And we come to a kind of beautiful Christological meditation in number 21. Let me read it to you. If you imitate Christ, you will become blessed. Your soul will die his death and it will not derive evil from its flesh. Instead, your exodus will be like the exodus of a star and your resurrection will glow like the sun. Let's start with its mood. Let's just feel the mood of this. I've been coming to Evagrius' door for 20 weeks now. And every week he gives me one of these proverbs to work on.

[30:23]

And I was getting kind of tired of it, you know. He just kind of says, you know, do this, do that, do that. And I'm exercising. And suddenly I come today. He hasn't talked like that before. This is beautiful. If you imitate Christ, you will become blessed. Blessedness. I can remember when Evagris would preach on Saturday nights, he always used the word blessedness. Blessed for the goal of the whole thing. Knowledge of the Holy Trinity is being blessed. And he once gave a sermon on the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the gentle. And he always showed us that what this blessed means is that the poor, the gentle, those who are at peace with each other, these are the people that will come to knowledge, to blessedness.

[31:24]

So what's he done? He's opened up the last 20 weeks of work for me. and he showed me that this is nothing less. All of these exercises he's given me to forgive my brothers and sisters and to live in poverty and not to take too much food. He's shown me that all of this is imitation of Christ. He's used Paul's phrase here, imitate Christ. And he's been behind this proverb as I go away meditating on it. Boy, he used a good word there, I'm saying to myself. He used a word that makes me realize all of Paul's theology is behind this. If you die with Christ, you will rise with Him. If you imitate Christ, you will become blessed. This eschatological blessedness which is the goal of the whole life. And then he keeps me right inside that Pauline language with the next line. Your soul will die his death.

[32:26]

And I know that my soul has three parts. Okay, I know that my soul has three parts and so I know. And just for our purposes, I just say dimensions that will help me understand what it means to die with Christ. It means I must die to whatever desires take me away from Him. I must die to the irascibility that causes me to hate and be ungentle with others. And I can begin to wonder, I haven't had any exercises on it, but I wonder what death in the rational part of my soul would be. Probably to die to falsehood and false ways of knowing Him. By the time you get to that chain of ten in the second half, you'll see that that's what the whole chain is about, okay, is to die to false understandings of God. So all this, my soul will die His death. And look here, just speaking in terms of the mysteries of our faith, we're talking here about the mystery of the Incarnation combining together with the mystery of our divinization, Christ's death.

[33:39]

is for me. And in a sense there's only one death to die that leads to life. It's his death. But this proverb is telling me by its careful playing of your soul, his death. It's telling me that my soul can undergo something that I receive from Christ and my soul will not derive evil from its flesh. Behind this, too, it's an occasion for a lot of Greek anthropology, but basically we can summarize it by something that we kind of have a general sense of, that one of the ways of understanding the body, one of the ways of understanding our flesh is as an instrument for the soul. Or maybe we could put that in ways that seem less dualistic for us. My body is what I'm me with. Okay? I can't be me without this body.

[34:40]

All right? And so that's what they mean when they say it's an instrument of the soul. Well, this body of mine, you know, we all know it. It's a great thing to be in the body, but it can also be terribly troublesome. It can cause you not to be you. It can betray you. You can do with your body what you know you ought not to do with your body, but you do it anyway, because your body isn't you. It's controlling you. All of that. Alright? So... But if you die with Christ, your soul will not derive evil from the instrument, the body. It will be a good instrument. And indeed then, we can shift the language to resurrection. Instead, your exodus will be like the exodus of a star and your resurrection will glow like the sun.

[35:45]

Biblical language there, huh? We have to recognize the biblical language, the exodus. in other works, in exegetical works, where Evagrius will take just a line from the scripture and basically what Evagrius would have learned from, remember last night in his life story, from Melania and Rufinus on the Mount of Olives and before that from Basil and Gregory. He would have learned a way of reading the scriptures that see in the whole history of Israel and in the whole history of the life of Christ, a real history, but also a history whose main patterns are echoed in my soul, such that to read about the exodus of Israel from Egypt is to read about something that happened in history, all right, but it's also to see there something that also happens in my soul. So, I want to ask the question, then, what is the Egypt

[36:50]

from which God's mighty hand leads me out. What is the desert in which I must wander? What is the promised land into which I must come? And if you're kind of getting on to good old Evagrius here and the way he speaks, he says, the exodus, the Egypt that you're leaving behind is your irascible and concupiscible parts of the soul all screwed up. And you're being taught in the desert of Praktikeya And you're being prepared in the desert of Praktike to come into the promised land which is nothing less than knowledge of the Holy Trinity. So the whole Old Testament then becomes language for him for understanding. the interior vision or the interior journey of the soul. And he's just kind of presuming all that's there when he has a kind of throwaway line there like, your exodus. Of course, you have your own exodus. We know that there's an exodus in the Bible. What's your exodus going to be like?

[37:50]

He wants you also to notice that your exodus is an exodus like Christ. The same word exodus is used in Luke's account of the transfiguration. You're supposed to know that. What is Jesus talking to Elijah and Moses on the mountain about? The exodus that He is about to undergo in Jerusalem. So, if you imitate Christ, you will have an exodus like he underwent in Jerusalem, and it will be like the exodus of a star. The Exodus of a Star, here, there stands behind this, and this is actually common in a lot of the fathers. Their understanding of what a shooting star was, they called it the Exodus of a Star, but this is basically what they thought, and I want to go into it just simply because it's intriguing and beautiful. They thought that the air that we breathe goes up as high as the moon.

[38:58]

Okay? That between here and the moon is air. And then there's a space between the moon and the stars which was something different from air. It was more refined. It was called ether. That's our word, ethereal, okay? And then beyond the stars and God, we don't know what there is, all right? But when it was thought that when a soul ascends toward God, that when it leaves the realm of air and hits ether, it bursts into light. And sometimes we see that happening in the stars. Generally we don't. So they actually didn't think a star was falling. They thought a star was just going by on its way to being placed up there somewhere.

[39:59]

Well, that's not Christian teaching, that's just basic Greek teaching on what a shooting star is. But again, in the same way that we read the whole scripture as a vision of what goes on in our soul, we also read the cosmos as a vision of what goes on in our soul. So, what's a shooting star? A shooting star is a vision of what it's like to not derive evil from your flesh and in a sense to leave this world behind and to go up with the stars, which for the ancients, the stars were the perfect vision of the cosmos, of a soul in good order, basically because of the way the stars moved through the sky. We hardly even watch that anymore. But just try to watch it with wonder again. And wonder this. The ancient mind could wonder it better because we know too much about the stars and the distances between them.

[41:08]

But what the ancients wondered about is how is it that those tens of thousands of stars all move in order without bumping into each other and keeping their same place, all of them, in relation to each other. We later figured out it's the word that's moving, not the stars, you know. But just think of this image, though, of this... And why can it all move with such intricate order? Because everything is in order. These are souls totally in sync with the Lord. Totally in sync with His designs. And His designs are intricate, vast, but it all fits and makes one beautiful night sky. You don't actually have to believe that, what we would call

[42:09]

mistake in science to taste the image here that Evagrius is trying to give us of our soul. And that's to say you will be up there moving in sync with the myriads of other beings that are in sync and furthermore your resurrection will glow like the sun. Here we shift images to from Exodus which is a going out to a resurrection which is again very obviously, not an Old Testament term, but a New Testament term, and the image for that, glowing like the sun, where there's no more stars up there, only the sun, and I glow like that. So there's just a whole lot in a proverb like that, and one of the strongest of the Christological proverbs. Okay. Let's skip a little. I would like to draw your attention to number 25 to 30 so that we can come on number 31 and pause a moment on number 31.

[43:21]

Number 25 is going to be a chain of five proverbs, each of which mentions something about poverty and knowledge. Again, we begin to understand what the exercise is. He's going to exercise us on the question of poverty, but in a way that connects the question of poverty, which is about the concupiscible part of the soul, with irascibility in terms of taking care of the poor. The monk who gives no alms will himself be in need, but the one who feeds the poor will inherit treasures. What kind of treasures? Knowledge, of course, that's the only treasure. If you didn't get it, you'll get it in the next one. Better poverty with knowledge than wealth with ignorance. Or an ornament for the head, a crown, an ornament for the heart, knowledge of God. I'm not talking about exterior treasures, he's saying. I'm not talking about exterior crowns. I'm talking about what crowns your heart. So, procure knowledge and not silver, and wisdom rather than wealth.

[44:27]

The just will inherit the Lord. The holy ones will be fed by them. Number 30, very practical. He who is merciful to the poor destroys irascibility. And he who cares for them will be filled with good things. So there, in a sense, that's the last. We mentioned on a concrete way the issues of taking care of the poor and taking care of poverty. But he's mentioned the word irascibility. which is his occasion for what he wants to do the next time you come around for a word in number 31 and that's mentioned the opposite in the Gentle Heart, 31. In the Gentle Heart, wisdom will rest, a throne of passionlessness, a soul accomplished in praktike. Might want to put on the brakes here and see if Evagrius hasn't perhaps given us more than first meets the eye. For example, the word gentle, I've said it's a very important word.

[45:29]

We're already aware that it's at the turning point of the text. But we should know that wisdom is another one of those words that he uses with absolute consistency. And it is that if gentleness is the virtue which is to be established in the irascible part of the soul, Wisdom is the virtue of the rational part of the soul. Wisdom is the virtue that will be operating in the realm of knowledge. So, he said nothing less here than, if you're gentle, you'll enter knowledge, which is your goal. But, he said it with biblical language that he would want us to recognize. If we all had the same English translation of the Bible, or if we all read Greek, we would all hear an echo here that jumps right out of you from the Greek text.

[46:33]

Come to me, all you who labor and find life burdensome, and I will give you rest. Learn from me, for I am gentle of heart, and your souls will find rest. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Praktikeya is easy. Asceticism is easy. My burden is light. Learn from me, because I'm gentle." Gentleness isn't a quirk, then, of Evagrius or the other monks at Stresses. This comes from the Lord Jesus. He himself is gentleness. And he himself is also wisdom. Paul says that. He is our wisdom. So, in a sense, there's a way in which this proverb opens up. And I found de Vega is saying as much as this in other texts, but I won't quote them to you now. But basically what he's saying in here, a gentle heart is a heart that becomes gentle from the gentle Christ.

[47:41]

And the gentle Christ is wisdom. Christ is wisdom. And so it's Christ himself who will rest in the soul. And a throne of passionlessness, a soul accomplished in praktike. The word throne was a favorite of Evagrius'. He got it from the Bible and he asks, what is the throne? I think I need to read you these texts because we find him doing it in several different places and it's kind of intriguing. When Evagrius wrote a biblical commentary, he'd just take a verse and find a few words in the verse and go, oh, yeah, well, here's what that word means and then expect you to sort of apply it thereafter. Let me see if I can find here, yes. This is what he says about God.

[48:42]

He's commenting on the psalm verse, God is seated on his holy throne. What does that mean? Here's his explanation. The throne of God is Christ. That's all. God is seated on his holy throne. There's the Trinitarian mystery. The Father is seated. on his throne, Christ, or this, the throne of Christ, your rational nature, your mind. Okay, now let's just pause on that, there's a lot there. My mind, my deepest capacity for God, what is it meant to receive? Christ, just seated here. And who seats himself on Christ? God the Father. That's what the psalm verse ultimately means.

[49:46]

God is seated on his holy throne. You completely misunderstand it like, well, where is that throne? You know, Jerusalem or in the sky or where? That throne is here. God is seated on his holy throne. And by His mercy, I am made that throne. Here's another place where he uses the word throne, just so we're sure we're kind of getting the hang of the word throne. Here's a strange line from the book of Proverbs, and I go to him, Father, tell me what this line means. Father, give me a word. I don't understand this line from the scripture. It says in the book of Proverbs, kill the impious in the presence of the king. and his throne shall be set up in justice." And Evagrius says, oh, that's easy. Here's what it means. He who with a spiritual word kills the old man which was corrupted through deceitful lusts would be killing the impious in the presence of the king.

[50:53]

So, Proverbs says kill the impious in the presence of the king. That means kill your old self. in the presence of the Lord. And that would be setting up your own mind in justice. Because the biblical text says his throne will then be set up in justice. And Evagrius just interprets that the way I told you what throne means. He says that means the mind is set up in justice. Because the mind is said to be the throne of God. And then he goes on to say, for wisdom and knowledge and justice, wisdom, knowledge, justice. You know what each of those words means now. I've talked about each of them. Let me review it for you. Wisdom is the virtue for the rational part of the soul. Knowledge is our goal. Justice, the just man shall flourish like a palm tree. That's when all the virtues are in place. I'll go back to Evagrius' text. For wisdom, knowledge and justice,

[51:57]

are enthroned nowhere except in the rational nature. And wisdom, knowledge, and justice, Christ is all of these. Christ is wisdom. Christ is knowledge. Christ is justice. And He is seated on a throne. What throne? Your rational nature. Okay? All of that is packed into number 31, okay? You may not remember what I'm saying. It may be getting too confusing. Don't worry about it. Just remember number 31, okay? Number 31, you just keep chewing on 31. It'll all come back to you, what I just explained. This is not school, okay? So don't try to remember it like you try to remember things in school. We're talking about great mysteries. We're lucky. We have an hour this morning to talk about mysteries. That's what we do in our way of life.

[53:00]

We sit down and talk about mysteries. And it's almost too much. But then it's summarized here. Okay? That's all. Let's go back to it. Just two lines. Everything I said in two lines. In the gentle heart, wisdom will rest. And Christ is that, okay? In the gentle heart, Christ as wisdom will rest. A throne of passionlessness. Christ is that. Christ is passionlessness. A throne of passionlessness. A soul accomplished in praktike. The whole goal of the ascetical life is what? Love. And before love, passionlessness marches. We saw that in the middle of the text. That's where we're led by this. He said gentle here. He said gentle here because he's going to stay gentle here all the way down to number 36.

[54:04]

Don't you think that you can ever get away from this issue? Thirty-two craftsmen of evil will receive a bad wage, but craftsmen of good things a good wage. The one who lays a trap will himself be caught and he who hides it will be seized by it. Better a gentle worldly man than an irascible and wrathful monk." How many times have we repeated that? And here a synonym for gentleness. Irascibility scatters knowledge, long-suffering gathers it. See how he's kind of alluding to the word of the Lord? He who is not with me scatters, he who is with me gathers. And what's being gathered, what's being scattered? Knowledge. But long-suffering is the traditional traditional translation of the Greek macrothumia. Thumos is the technical word for your irascible part of the soul, your thumos.

[55:08]

Macrothumia means you've made your thumos really big so that it doesn't explode. And the opposite is a microthumia, which doesn't take anything at all and the thing blows up. So, I translated long-suffering just because that's such a traditional translation, but I'd like you to hear it as just another practical way of expressing gentleness. So, irascibility scatters knowledge, gentleness, or long-suffering gathers it. And here, a good strong image, and we'll quit for this morning here. like a strong south wind on the sea, so is irascibility in the heart of a man. If you've ever lived in a climate near the sea, I think of this in the Mediterranean, studying in Rome for a number of years, there's nothing worse than a shiroko, a wind from the south. It brings up sand from the desert.

[56:10]

It causes the pressure to drop so fast that literally everyone in the city gets headaches. I've never seen anything like it. They all get headaches and everybody's grouchy. And then it finally rains and the rain is full of sand. It's just awful. And there, a vision of me when I'm irascible. Okay? Okay, well I just decided I'd go as far as we could for an hour and... We have another hour this afternoon, okay, and maybe this afternoon I'll do a little more skipping so we can concentrate on some of the really important Christological Proverbs in the text. Okay, we've done, but we've already done two very strong Christological Proverbs. Number 21, but number 31 was secretly Christological. By staying with it, by meditating with it, we opened it into its Christological dimensions. And Vagus expected that of us. That's what he hid in that proverb.

[57:11]

Okay? Good. Thank you.

[57:13]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ