Well, I'm sure they laugh at any of your jokes. Really? Again, welcome to all the Dominican sisters. I'm glad to meet you and I'm glad to have you be a part of what we're doing here. Maybe I can sort of bring you in on what we've done so far and this is a good point at which to join us because we're about to turn a corner in the work that we've done so far. We have planned six hours together and we passed three of those hours already and what we did in the first three hours was in a sense sort of review our monastic tradition of Lectio Divina. sort of asking ourselves how we can freshen that process, what we can learn from it, and with a couple of focuses that are perhaps were, I don't know, they were new to us, but hopefully helpful in this sense.

[01:02]

Perhaps you're familiar with the tradition of Lectio Divina, and its four steps of reading the text and pondering it on the basis of that praying and in God's own good time being brought from that to contemplation. But what I stressed as we were reflecting on this was that in our pondering of any given text, We're not left merely to our own ingenuity to ponder that text, that we have a very sure guide in that, in what we call the church's rule of faith. This is a term that comes from the patristic church, but it's a way of reading the scripture that brings out from the scriptural text their fullest and deepest sense. which can be summarized really in the great mysteries of the faith. And the great mysteries of the faith can all be subsumed, this is all in the patristic tradition, the great mysteries of the faith can all be subsumed under three huge mysteries.

[02:06]

The mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the Trinity which is revealed to us through the mystery of the Incarnation. And the reason that the mystery of the Incarnation and the mystery of the Trinity are revealing themselves to us is for the third dimension of the mystery, for our deification. This is again a word used by the Fathers to describe at depth the way in which we participate in the divine life. We may call that our being divinized. We sort of laid out that framework for our Lectio Divina. And then this morning we practiced that, looking at texts which at first glance perhaps seemed not to, they would not really bring us very forward in the Trinitarian mystery. But knowing this rule of faith and searching for it in the text, more and more things were able to come out of the text for us.

[03:12]

So I proposed it here to my fellow monks as a way of reading the text that we learned from our own tradition. One image that perhaps can work as a summary of what our work was I took from Irenaeus of Lyon who said that the scriptures are the myriad pieces of a mosaic and the rule of faith is the master plan for their assembly. So to translate that, it's like the scripture is a vast and complicated book, some of it very clear and some of it not at all. But all of it we call the inspired Word of God. How do we know how to fit it together? The rule of faith shows us how to weigh each of its parts in such a way that by reading the text we come every day more and more into the mystery of the Trinity.

[04:13]

which we can come to only by means of the mystery of the incarnate Lord. And we never see that as an objective content. We always see it as it is transforming us, transforming me personally into a share in that Trinitarian life. Lectio Divina is really that dimension of the monastic practice that assures that I am opening myself personally to these mysteries, that I don't keep them at arm's length, but that I am very much open to them. It's from out of that that we can maybe, as I say, turn the corner into tonight's topic, the desert monk Evagrius Ponticus. That was the original way in which I got invited to come to Mount Saviour. Evagrius is the Egyptian desert father upon whom I wrote my doctoral thesis.

[05:16]

And Father Martin discovered a copy of the printed version of that when he went to Rome in 1992 and wrote me a very nice letter about it saying, I'm so glad that somebody's writing about Evagrius because when he was a young monk he found Evagrius useful and wondered why people didn't write more about him. And anyway, it was a... It was a great experience for me to have this as a thesis topic and one that really helped me a lot in my own personal monastic life. So I wrote a big thesis on it, learned a lot from it and then I did a shrunk down version which some of you have copies of in your hand. This is the big version and it shrinks down into the little book. What I think to do in the next three hours that we have available to us is sort of introduce, just introduce Evagris and particularly the one work of Evagris that I wrote about in that book.

[06:21]

But I would like to connect him with what we've done on Lectio Divina so far. And we can do that in a couple of steps. The first step would be that we need to locate Evagrius within the broader monastic movement of what was happening in Egypt in the fourth century. And that's a very interesting movement that can be approached from a number of different angles. Let's just approach it from one angle, namely from the point of view of the role of scripture in the life of the desert monks. You're perhaps familiar, if you've read any of the desert literature at all, say the sayings or the lives of the desert fathers, you're perhaps familiar with how often this little ritual occurs among the fathers in which one monk goes to another and says, Father, give me a word. Sometimes the ritual says, Father, give me a word, what should I do?

[07:24]

There's more in that than perhaps first meets the eye. What the disciple was asking for in that moment was not just for any word, but the disciple was asking for the Father to give him a word from scripture, but the word that he needed in that moment. So thus it is that sometimes the disciple will come and say, I'm having this problem. So give me a word." Or, I read this in the scripture, but what does it mean? Or, I read this in the scripture, then what should I do? If you remember that about Egyptian monasticism you can take then under the umbrella Everything that we've done in the previous three hours everything that we've said about the Word of God You know again is we said many beautiful things about the Word of God you might have gotten?

[08:29]

Enthusiastic or something about it say well now I'm gonna read the Bible, but wait We need help. Where do I start? What word do I need today? That's the question. And there you have defined the relationship between a spiritual guide and the one who follows that guide. Very concretely, what is the word for today and what should I do? One of the things that we can see in the desert monks' attitude to the scripture is that in everything they are wanting to imitate the scripture. They are wanting to saturate themselves in the whole mentality of the scripture and they're always trying to do the scripture. I think you monks read in the Refectory Douglas Burton Christie's book, The Word in the Desert, and it's a very fine book for exposing story after story how concerned the monks of the desert are to do what it says in the Bible and to see the force of that word.

[09:36]

There's just delicious stories there. Anyway, this question, what should I do? we should notice is already imitating the scriptural text. This is the question that the rich young man posed to Jesus. What should I do to gain everlasting life? Or in Luke's account, which is similar to that, a lawyer who asked, what should I do to gain everlasting life? Also in Luke's gospel, the crowds that heard John the Baptist preaching were struck to the quick and asked him, what should we do? After the resurrection, Peter, in the homily that is reported in the second chapter of Acts, shakes the Israelites to the depths of their being in what he announces to them. And they say, then what should we do? Paul, on the road to Damascus, struck by a blinding light, says, then what should I do, Lord?

[10:39]

Do you remember when the angel came and released Paul from prison and the guard is going, oh my God, my prisoners have escaped, I'm just going to slay himself. And Paul says, don't, we're here, don't worry. And he preaches Christ to him right in that moment and the guard says, what should I do? This question is everywhere in the scriptures. The reason the monks were asking the question was because the scripture themselves modeled the question, but they needed a father that would say to them, what should I do? Generally it was the tradition in the Egyptian desert that there wasn't like we might be inclined to do today, like if you're a spiritual guide for another and that other comes to you and asks you what should he do, you know, you give that person about an hour of your time and you kind of... not in the desert. the question was asked, the father pondered a minute, he gave you the word and you went away and got to work.

[11:45]

This is how the aromedical existence was preserved and the reason a father was a father was because he was thought to be a sacrament of the word and he embodied the word so he knew right then what kind of medicine to give. Just to share a little something that I think is interesting. In my own monastery I'm the junior master and so that means I have eight monks under me. And I've been doing this for about five years now. And I came back with all of this, I was just full of this desert stuff, you know, and yet the more recent habit in our monasteries of spending a lot of time with the juniors, talking with them and all that, which is a good and sensitive practice. But I introduced, in addition to that, an encounter with me, once a week, just three to five minutes, in which they have to come in and ask me for a word.

[12:47]

They have to ask. They have to want it. And then I have to be ready for them. I pray and I look for the word in the scripture and I give it to them and they depart and they work on it. Well, this has been very good. I mean, they like it. They kind of wonder what's going to hit them next, you know. But this is part of the grace of the moment, huh? To receive this Word and to work on it for the week. Sometimes I have in mind something that I know they need anyway and I'm kind of like hoping and praying that they'll ask about that. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But I can give the word I want them to have. And you see what we've done there is we've crossed a lot of territory very fast. A lot of territory that presumes what the religious life should be able to presume. Namely, we're here to grow. We're here to move quickly and advance quickly in the ways of God.

[13:51]

We have many graces, among them the Word of God. So let's use it quickly. That's what the desert monks are doing. You may wonder if I'm ever going to talk about Evagrius. Oh, I am. All this is to situate a text like we have in this text called Admonikos, or actually in any other of Evagrius' works, which have a rather unique literary style. They are written words. Anything that's written is a word, you'll tell me. Yes, no, what I mean is they are written These father give me a word, they are that moment in writing and they are very quick and they are very dense and you're meant to spend a long time with just two to four lines. We need to know that or we won't come into this text properly.

[14:57]

We need to know that a whole set of attitudes is presumed in the reader. And further, we need to know that actually Evagris, we know from other sources, was a much esteemed father for the verbal words that he was able to give. He was quick, he was good, he was kind. He was also, he could elicit a lot from a soul because he was often enigmatic. in a way that just hooked you enough that you went away pondering, I wonder what he meant by that? And you kept thinking on it and thinking on it and that word would open up more and more inside you. The fathers who are really esteemed, you can trace this in them, the ones that were really thought to be good were good because their words were if not just citations from scripture, they were a citation from scripture with a citation bent just a little bit, with a word changed here or there to make a point for this monk that's receiving the word.

[16:11]

So we know that Evagrius, along with lots of others in the Egyptian desert, were very good in this tradition. But Evagrius also received requests for words in writing from monks who were far away. And sometimes they would request whole works from him. And so he would collect together a whole bunch of words. And Avegris was among the first of the Egyptian monks to really begin to write the tradition down. And I'll give you a little bit of background about his life that will help you to understand that what he did was he really was, he innovated. and was the beginning of a style of monastic literature that was to have centuries of following after him. How did that come about? Just briefly, his life. He was born in the year 345 in Pontikus, which is in northern Cappadocia, present-day Turkey.

[17:19]

As a young man, he was sent to be educated in the imperial capital of Constantinople under the tutelage of the great Basil the Great. This is significant because from Basil he learned philosophy, from Basil he learned theology, and as we were talking with the monks in the previous sessions, it was stressed a lot the significance of the way in which the Scripture is read in such a way as to continually articulate and refine the Church's Trinitarian faith. After Basil retired as Archbishop of Constantinople, Gregory Nazianzus was Archbishop during the Council in 381, the Council that defines the Trinitarian doctrine per se, as it is under controversy. Evagrius by this time was a deacon and was what we call a paritus at the council, a theological expert behind the scenes.

[18:22]

We know from other sources that he was very sharp and good in theological argument, very good and precise in the way he could advance an argument. So, that's all very nice. Here's a man, a young man, a young theological talent stamped with conviction about the Trinitarian orthodoxy of the Church. But he had other tendencies as well. He was handsome and he loved nice clothes and he had a charming personality. And he became amorously involved with a woman very highly placed in the imperial court. Some scholars think that it may have been the Empress herself. In any case, We have the makings of major first-class scandal on our hands that all of the opponents of Trinitarian Orthodoxy would love to get their hands on. It would be not too much different from if you could find, if you were one of those, you know, one of those tough Catholics that just is sure there's something intrinsically wrong with Vatican II.

[19:32]

And if you could find out who wrote such and such a document and find out that later that theologian was involved in an amorous relationship with so-and-so, wouldn't it cast kind of a little bit of doubts on the council? Well, Evagris had a nightmare to this effect, literally. He dreamt that he was caught, that it all started unfolding. And he thought, oh my God, if there's only some way out of this. And in his dream he promised, he said, if I could just turn time back, I would leave the city. And he wakes up and he realizes, well, I could turn time back. I can leave the city before I'm caught. So he left. And he went to Jerusalem, where he had the plan, I'm just going to put this behind me and I'm going to join the monastery there on the Mount of Olives, as a double monastery of men and women on the Mount of Olives, run by Rufinus and Melania, two of the sharpest experts in the spiritual exegetical tradition that descends from the great origin of Alexandria.

[20:45]

Rufinus and Melania were taking his way of reading the scripture and applying it to the spiritual life. So, you know, things seemed to go fine for a couple of years, but the Mount of Olives is not very far away from Jerusalem, and Jerusalem's a holy city, but it's just a normal city too, and there was lots there to attract Evagrius, and he fell in love again. It was very interesting because this time he seemed to get stomach ulcers from it and he was really upset. And Melania says to him one day, with a lovely intuition that she was able to offer, she said, what is it? And he said, oh, I keep getting headaches and I have a stomachache. He said, I think it's the weather here or something. And she just looks at him and she says, no, it's not the weather and you know it's not the weather. She said, look, you know what you really need to do if you want to be a monk is you better go to Egypt.

[21:54]

And I'll tell you what part of Egypt to go to. I got some friends down there. I'll give you a letter of introduction and you're in with the monks of Nitria who are doing what we do here with the scripture and you'll be just fine there. So he went there and lived the rest of his monastic life there, some 14 to 16 years. That background is important because I want you to see a couple things pasted together that Evagrius eventually becomes the synthesis of. Evagrius understands on a theological level Trinitarian doctrine very well from his youth and the importance of the orthodox solution of the Council of Constantinople. In addition to that, he's beginning to learn the application at depth of Origen's way of reading the scripture to the spiritual life.

[23:00]

Then he comes to Egypt, where the theological traditions are not very refined, but where monasticism, as a very serious way of dedicating oneself to the Lord, has already got a hundred years of tradition behind it. A very strong asceticism that would very often lead to a deep kind of prayer, but that not many of them were especially skilled at assessing or understanding theologically. And to make a long story short, Evagrius receives something in the desert and also contributes something. What he receives is a very firm monastic practice. A monastic practice that is extremely well established and wise about human nature and that brings one into a deep kind of prayer. But what he brought to it was what I was calling in the earlier lectures Trinitarian eyeglasses.

[24:06]

And he began to understand and speak about what was happening in the monks' lives in such a way that it could be understood theologically. Evagrius is a major chunk then in the chapter of what we may call Trinitarian spirituality. Now, we're getting closer to this work we have in hand. Somebody requested Evagrius for a word in writing. Somebody requested, we don't know who, but somebody said, give me a work, take your time, but I want you to give me what you can. We have some of the introductory letters that Evagrius wrote to others of his work saying, you asked me about this and so I'm writing this.

[25:08]

We have no introductory letter to this text called the Admonikos. But what a careful reading of the text yields is a continual series of surprises at how intricate the structure of this text is. Evagrius has designed a jewel and he knows it. But not just any reader is going to be prepared to detect that jewel. It takes a long time. In a sense I can tell you what the experience in part of my own writing the thesis was. I encountered this text, it's a short one, you have it in hand, It has some commentary as well, but it's only, this is an off print from the book, it's only about, well it's 13 pages long. It's a short text.

[26:08]

There are 137 proverbs. I encountered it in a seminar that I was taking in school, and it didn't seem to hang together very tightly or anything, but some of the proverbs were especially beautiful, others struck me as especially bland. And I thought, what kind of text is this? And why did anyone care about it, or why did anyone ever copy it? Well, the more I began to read the text, the more I noticed that the proverbs were grouped. Sometimes I'd say two or three together on a certain theme. Then I'd say, no, actually there's five or six together on a theme. And then I'd say, there's kind of a middle in the middle. And so I started looking at it more and more closely and I thought, this is incredibly carefully constructed. And then I asked myself, well then why?

[27:10]

What's going on here? And meanwhile I was studying about the way in which I described these encounters between a monk and a father and how he'd just give you two, four lines and you'd go and work on it for a long time. That's the only way I'm going to crack this text, I said to myself, so I have to start reading it. in its order, starting with one, and going to two, and then going to three, but very slowly, and just trying to let the words open up inside me. Well, as I did that, I found that Evagrius has created in this text a work that is unique among all his works. It is a text that describes the entire spiritual journey from the beginning to its culmination. All the other works of Evagrius are about a part of that journey at one point or another.

[28:15]

Only in this text do we have the whole journey laid out as a shot. What is the advantage of that? One of the advantages is if you're an Evagrian freak, which you don't need to be to profit from him, so fear not. But if you are an Evagrian freak, that means that you can interpret all of his works, and should, I think, interpret all of his works on the basis of how the various parts hang together in this one work. But more important for us, let's just say this is the only work of Evagrius we have before our hands. Can it do me any good in my own religious life? I think a lot, because What the text is, is what I like to call an architecture of the spiritual life. And you know, if you study a building and how it's built, you find the beams that hold it together. You find that some pieces are absolutely essential or the roof falls in and others are just pieces up there.

[29:22]

I mean, we got a whole roof up there, right? Look at it. But clearly, these beams are necessary. You take probably two of them out and it'd be over. But you could take 20 or 30 of those boards out and we'd still have a roof. So, I mean, that's architecture. And there's other things. There's walls, windows, all the rest. And it all fits together to make a very handsome room. There's a room that you can understand by looking at it. You can understand how it's held together. This is what this text is. We see what are the main themes that hold this spiritual life together. And seeing that, we know how to use the room. We know how to move in it. We know where to center ourselves in the room. Another image for understanding what we have here might be to call it a road map.

[30:25]

A road map of the spiritual life. And it's territory that is difficult and rugged to cross. And a father would say, I don't recommend you do it without a map. So that when you come to this particular twist in the road, you not lose your way. Because it can be lost here. This is a dangerous turn. or so forth. And this is a map, thus the title that I gave to the little book, because the editor of Liturgical Press said to me, I couldn't possibly sell a book that's called Admonikos. I said, well, that's what it's about. He says, no, no. He says, you've got to make up a title. So I thought, well, in the spirit of Evagrius, I can call this The Mind's Long Journey to the Holy Trinity. and therein is described the whole purpose of the book. Maybe that can be enough of an introduction to do what I'd like to do in the rest of the time we have available tonight and in the two hours we have tomorrow to acquaint you with this text enough

[31:37]

If you would want to use it further, you would be prepared to do so. And the way we do this is in two passes. One is a sort of pass that overviews the text and its structure, seeing what are the main beams. And even just seeing that is fun and instructive. But then after that, tomorrow probably, what I'd like to do is comment on individual proverbs in such a way as to show you, okay, we may only have four lines here, but Evagrius expects me to be able to meditate on these lines in such a way that they just open up in successive waves, and that as I advance in the text, and let's say get to number 67 or something, and what I understand in 67 brings me back again to number 31 to understand it in a different way. It becomes Baroque and you don't need it to be, but if you want it to be, you can have the big book, okay?

[32:47]

If you don't want it to be, you can have the shrunk down version, all right? Now let's just look at the main architecture of the text. I think some of you have copies, huh? And actually, we can maybe share copies. In the back of the book, yeah, you have that little copy. That's what I have. And yeah, maybe you could share that, Father Leo, with somebody else that doesn't have a copy. I have one here. Oh, here, use mine. I gave her. Toward the middle of the text, you have the actual Proverbs. I don't know what page it's on, because I don't have that copy. Thirty-one. Thirty-one, okay. So let's start with there, and we'll start to discern the major structure of the text. We read Proverb 1. Heirs of God listen to the reasons of God.

[33:49]

Co-heirs of Christ receive the sayings of Christ. so that you can give them to the hearts of your children and teach them the words of the wise." A couple things we can notice straightway here that will serve as general remarks to all the proverbs that follow. Do you recognize some scriptural echoes here? You may not be sure where they're coming from. If you're real good at scripture, you will. But there's scriptural echoes here. Heirs of God, co-heirs of Christ is Pauline language. But listen to the reasons of God so that you can place them in the heart of your children and teach them the words of the wise. These are the first verses of the book of Proverbs. So he's combined Paul and Proverbs here. This is the key to everything, folks. This is New Testament, Old Testament, right here from the start. But also feel this, because this is what's happening in the Lectio Divina tradition. This Word of Scripture is addressed to you, the reader.

[34:54]

Thus, we've jerked the scripture around a little bit here, but we have a new scripture on our hands here. This is the scriptural text. And when a father echoes and alludes to the scripture, the reason he's doing that is because he knows it's his task to give the scripture to his readers. I can package it differently, because I know that packaging it differently will help you, but this is nothing less than the Word of God. because it's the Word of God quoted. And so all the power of the Word of God, those of you from the monastery that were here for the first three conferences, everything we said about the Word of God being crafted for us by the Spirit to bring us infallibly to a knowledge of saying, Jesus is Lord, Abba to the Father. This is what the Spirit does by means of His Word. Okay, all of this is opening for us here. We'll come back to this.

[35:56]

I got to stay on the overview as opposed to getting too deeply into individual Proverbs. We've introduced the text and number two continues that introduction and focuses it a little step further. It's like a funnel coming tighter to, a good father trains his sons, an evil father will ruin them. This also is from Proverbs, okay? But it's also from Proverbs saying, hey, What's happening right now as you read this text, a father is talking to you. And he's suggesting, I'm going to have to say some hard things. Don't be bummed out by that. I'm a good father and it's all part of training. It's part of raising one. Let's just go, well, let's read number three. So far, we're clearly in an introductory mode in the first two proverbs. Number three, as it were, really does get right down to business. Faith, the beginning of love.

[36:59]

The end of love, knowledge of God. Oh, this is a big one. Now, when I first read Evagrius, I thought, big deal. You know, you see a line like that and you kind of think, well, you know, that's about as bland as it gets. Because there's no energy under it or anything. But if you knew Evagrius, which is what you have to know to interpret an Evagrian text, To understand this text, you've got to read all the other Evagrius texts. So I do that. If you know Evagrius, one thing you learn about him is that he speaks with incredible consistency and precision and with a biblical language that is precise. Actually, even though Evagris wrote words, every Saturday night in the monastery in Nitra, where he lived, he eventually came to be one of the most esteemed fathers.

[38:04]

And they would spend the whole Saturday night in prayer and vigils, but a lot of that was taken up by conferences, at the time he was there, by Evagris himself. He would teach them. Let's pretend we've heard Evagrius speak for a long time, then we go somewhere else or he dies and now we have his written work. If we'd heard Evagrius speak for a long time, we would know that he has three words that keep coming up again and again. Faith, love and knowledge. And we would know further, and this is all in the big book if you want to read Maury Vagers and hear him talking this way, but it's enough for me just to teach you this now. It's a good idea. We would know further that faith is the first of the virtues. It's what launches us into the spiritual life. And it has as its goal bringing us to love.

[39:06]

And many other virtues stand between faith and love. And he explains what they are, too. But right now, he's just given us the first and the last. Knowing that if I ponder this word long enough, I'll know that he means... He's just got two lines here, but if I let these two lines sit in me, all the virtues that are in between open up as well. But every time Evagrius used to speak about love, and my being able to learn to really love another. He always had another word right on his lips after that. It was knowledge. And he was careful to distinguish what he meant by knowledge. By knowledge he didn't mean mastering something intellectually. By knowledge he meant the kind of knowledge that comes, in the biblical sense of that term, of knowing the other.

[40:08]

But also grasping with one's capacity to understand a thing or another person, grasping that with one's mind. That's the word knowledge. And Evagrius always used to teach that really the goal of the spiritual life is knowledge of God. He's often misunderstood for this formulation because it's just a modern misunderstanding. But we think, we like the word love better than knowledge. Okay, that's fine. Love is the greatest gift. Evagris knew that as well as anyone else who read the scripture. But Evagris is focusing here a dimension of what love comes across. Love comes across as having some measure of grasping. Who God is. Understanding who God is. Why does he care about that?

[41:12]

This man was at Constantinople in 381. This man learned to read the scriptures from Rufinus in Melania. This man knew that the more one loves Loves, that's what Jesus did. The more one penetrates the mystery of his incarnation, the more one comes to understand, understand, to know who God is. God is love. To know God is to know that. We have in number three nothing less than the whole journey summarized. Faith, the beginning of love, the end of love, knowledge of God. You're supposed to fill in the blanks or read the rest of the text. Because the rest of the text fills in those blanks.

[42:13]

But just so that you know, how it's going to get filled in. Let's go to the last two proverbs. Number 136, which is really the last proverb with content, and number 137 is the sign-off. I'm done, boys. I'm out of here. Goodbye. Please pray for me. Sort of signing off the way you might sign off in sections of the way the Book of Proverbs ends. But let me read number 136. Knowledge of incorporeals raises the mind and presents it before the Holy Trinity. Now we're getting a little ahead of the game there because I haven't said anything about incorporeals. But we'll learn as we advance in this text that to come to knowledge of God we've got to know a lot of other things before that. We've got to know what the world's for. We've got to know the history of sin and the history of redemption. We have to know a whole lot of other things. All of this is knowledge. You won't know a speck of it without love.

[43:16]

He'll say this again and again through the text, you won't know a speck of it without love. But don't think that just because you begin to understand what the stars are for, and that you begin to understand the beauty of the interior nature of the human person, all these are beautiful things, don't think that that's the end of knowledge. Because there's something after all that, and it's knowledge of the Holy Trinity. This is our ultimate goal. And, as I said, number 137 is the sign-off. But what I want you to notice here is that the text finishes being with the mind presented before the Holy Trinity. So we've looked at the start and the finish. We're beginning with faith. We want to come somehow to real practical love. And if we can get to that real practical love, we can mount up the steps, however many there are, of levels of knowledge so that my mind can be presented to the Holy Trinity. There's lots to learn between the beginning and end of this text.

[44:20]

There's lots of words that we want to become skilled in keying in on. Actually, we have... several here in number 136. Incorporeals, what does that mean? Well, Yves Agrius, if you listen to him long enough, you come away with no doubt about what an incorporeal is. So, we'll keep talking here on our Saturday night conferences and he'll explain that. And if you want a word, ask him, what is an incorporeal? You keep saying that, what do you mean? Another word that he's always using is the word mind. You ask him a question about mind. You say, by mind do you mean like a big brain? Because I'm not very brainy so does it mean that I can't come? No, I don't mean that by mind at all. I'll tell you what I mean by mind and he gives us a word on mind and so on. We'll find this as we move through the text, okay? We have, what I've done is I've described the two ends of this room and what's holding it and making it a room. What's in the middle of the room? What are the beams in the middle?

[45:21]

The middle of the text is number 67. Let's go to number 67. In front of love, passionlessness marches. In front of knowledge, love. And there are two of the three buzzwords we had in number three. We've got love and we've got knowledge and also in the same order. But he's introduced another word here. It actually comes earlier in the text. A word that he uses again and again and again, so I'm not surprised to find it here. The word passionless. Again, we must understand it how he understood it, not what it rings on our 20th century American ears. To us, being passionless means you're about the dullest guy around, that's all that means. But in the ancient world, being passionless, apatheia is the word, it means you're no longer troubled by your passions. The passions are a generic term that describes two basic energies in the soul.

[46:25]

One is what we might call a desiring energy and the other we might call just a verb, strength. Both of these energies can either go sour and go haywire, in which case we desire the wrong things, like we desire food and sex and creature comforts and lots of money. And if that verve or that energy of the soul goes wrong, what we do with that is we just get mad at everybody and bite their head off the minute they cross my space. I become irascible. But those energies, if they come in line as they're meant to, they help me to desire knowledge and to use my entire being to come to it. That's being passionless. And when your energies come in line that way, when you finally, you've got your desiring straight and your verve straight, you are on the borders of love and we call that passionless.

[47:32]

And so right before love enters into your whole capacity, something precedes it, no longer being bothered by the passions. But once you love, something else is there, namely the knowledge that flows upon that. That's the exact middle of the text in the number count, if you don't count number 1 and 2 and number 137 as merely introductory. And then this becomes the exact middle. And you might think, well, then it's almost the middle. But actually, in this middle of the roof, or whatever you want to call it, We have 10 proverbs that are in the middle of the whole text. They begin with number 63 and go to number 72. And that can be recognized in a couple different ways. One of the, this, what I'm kind of exposing to you here in what's a major romp through the text, I realize, I think this overview is useful to become acquainted with it.

[48:45]

I kept discovering more and more details here and then I began to learn what the signs were for making me sure that I wasn't just making this up or sort of imposing my structure on the text. I have a couple signs here. Number 62, all you need to do is look at the first line there, you see the word is pride, it's about pride. I know that Evagrius would always talk about eight principle problems that a monk had. We call them the eight principle demons or the eight principle evil thoughts. The last in that list is pride. When he's done talking about pride, he always shifts gear. Well, what's preceded here are the principle sins. He's done with pride now. We might expect him to shift gears, and sure enough, he does. And he places in number 63, actually in the first line there, two words, way of life.

[49:52]

and knowledge, which are about what the next ten proverbs are going to be about. He's placed that in the first line there. He's setting us up for what classical writers called an inclusion. You put what the whole thing is about in the first line, and then you put its climax in the last line. Go to the last line of number 72, and what do we have there but the word knowledge of God. I couldn't translate it this way in the English, but in Greek the first word of number 63 is polytheia, which means way of life. And it's a word that Evagrius consistently uses to refer to the ascetical dimensions of monastic life. But you probably are aware that Evagrius is in the whole Egyptian tradition of identifying two basic phases to the monastic life, the ascetical phase and the phase of contemplation.

[51:00]

His words for that basically are what he calls praktike, and knowledge. Praktike is a word I prefer to keep in the Greek because it's a technical term. It's from which our word practice comes. But it means doing something. It means the active struggle for virtue. Whereas knowledge means kind of what I just described, this grasping of the Trinitarian mystery. So the first line of number 63 is a word that is about praktike, the first phase of the spiritual life. The last word in number 72 is knowledge of God. Okay? all ten of the proverbs which form this chain. Each one of them meditates in several lines about keeping both phases of this life in balance. Evagrius, throughout his writings, is concerned that we understand that as we advance into the contemplative realm, we never think that we can be done with paying very close attention to all the practical details of asceticism.

[52:17]

We can never stop paying attention to that. Just to help you catch a scriptural illusion in number 63, let's read the whole proverb. Knowledge keeps guard over a monk's way of life, but he who descends from knowledge will fall among thieves. A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves. Jerusalem, the image of contemplation. Jericho, the image of falling into sin and darkness. And so, what is going to keep us from falling among thieves? Attention over our way of life, over the whole monastic practice. Only this will keep us from falling among thieves. And now I can get down to business. From a spiritual rock, A river flows.

[53:18]

Who is the spiritual rock? The rock was Christ. I'm quoting Saint Paul here. Of course you recognize that illusion if you're trained by Evagrius. And all drank from the rock that followed them, Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. And the rock was Christ. And so this is an image for the contemplative life, receiving life from the river. from which he flows. And this morning we looked at some river images in the scripture, all of which swirl around in that text, that the river that flows, that the rock that is struck, remember Moses had to strike the rock so that water would flow from it. A soldier had to strike the rock with a lance so that blood and water could flow out as well. And that river that flows also flows in the heart of everyone who follows Christ. For he who believes in me, scripture has it, from that one a river will flow.

[54:23]

From your heart will flow waters of everlasting life. All of this is here. So, all you rivers, clap your hands. Shout to God with cries of gladness. Everything I'm citing here, Evagrius uses elsewhere. We find him talking that way about rivers. So if I am an evagrious disciple, then when I get these two lines from him, I remember all that he used to do with rivers. And I know he loved that river image. I know that river is the image of the contemplative life, of eternal life flowing within me. But what word is he giving me with river today? He's saying, don't you ever forget that this is the purpose of praktikeya. Pratike is always important. The ascetical dimensions of the monastic life are always important. Evagrius will never let you forget it. If you follow this text in order, about the time that you're ready to just sail away with the wings of a dove into a contemplative flight of fancy, he will remind you that you must love your brother and not eat too much.

[55:30]

Okay? Alright? But what's the architecture there? He's knitting together the shape of the spiritual life. And he's building a building that can't fall down because all of its details are so carefully put together there. But as he knits that one, he also has another bugaboo that just bugged the heck out of him in the desert. And that was people that were so ascetical, you just couldn't stand it. But that's all they were, was ascetical. That is to say, they fasted so that they were thin and you looked at them and you go, gosh, must be very holy. And sleeps on a mat or hardly sleeps at all and all this. But cross them and they'll bite your head off. Okay? Cranky old monks. Nothing worse than that. All right? And so, what he's doing in these ten proverbs that show us the two kinds of the life is he's showing us that, uh-uh, be careful here, because asceticism isn't the main thing.

[56:39]

So, a soul that's accomplished in praktikeya will drink from the waters of contemplation. Another image for it, a vessel of election, the pure soul. but the impure soul will be filled with bitterness." We find, again, the two halves of the spiritual life with his words, purity. Evagris consistently uses the word purity for the goal of the first phase of the monastic life. To purify the soul, that is to say, to purify my desiring energy and my energy of force and strength of will. And he uses a very nice expression. Do you catch the biblical allusion? Do you know it's biblical language? Do you recognize where it's from? A vessel of election. Who was a vessel of election? Paul. And Paul was a vessel of election because he was caught up into the third heavens in ecstasy to there understand things that cannot be spoken.

[57:41]

What an image then for the knowledge that is the goal of it all. And so, a vessel of election, the pure soul, that's what purity is for. Not so that you can brag about how thin you are and how ascetical you are. Purity is so that you will become a vessel of election. And the opposite of that is bitterness. Cranky monks. Again, the desert was apparently full of them because Evagrius insists again and again on it. Alright, now let's just go on to the next one, another biblical image. Pauline, you'll recognize it. Without milk a child is not nourished and apart from passionlessness a heart will not be raised up. Nice, huh? Remember what I said about what passionless is. But this is milk. And we want to go on to solid food, which is knowledge. But you don't start with solid food.

[58:43]

You start with milk. That is to say, you start with passionlessness. But the heart then is raised up. The heart is raised up to the kind of food that will finish this. You already saw it in 72. Honey. The best of all. The best food. But also the richest food. But there's the word passionless. in number 66, but we found that in number 67 too, the exact middle. Look at 68, there it is again. So, in the middle of the middle, we've got a middle. And it's about passionlessness. Turning both ways and bringing us toward love. So, it's one thing to see the main beam and say, we got a pretty good roof there, doesn't look like it'll fall in, but if you kind of somehow went under it and saw how those boards fit together, you'd say, boy, that's tightly knit. It's even earthquake-proof. Because what's he telling us here, though? That the thing that's going to hold the whole structure together is love carefully bound round by passionlessness.

[59:50]

But don't ever forget the goal, which is, we'll find at the end of this set of ten, sweet as honey, it's calm and delight, but sweeter than both is the knowledge of God. And in a sense here, without mentioning the Trinity, we're already at the end of our text. Another way we recognize that these ten proverbs form a unit is if pride was a sort of signal that he might be shifting gears, we also see in number 73 that he's starting up again. Listen, O monk, to the words of your father. And as such, then, he takes a new beginning and he's imitating the biblical book of Proverbs, which I don't know if you've ever read it straight through from start to finish. I had never done that until I had to do this work. I just, you know, read a few Proverbs, get bored and come back later, you know. But if you just read it straight through, what you see is, is that he keeps starting over again.

[60:53]

Just like this. This is a direct lift from, I think, chapter 5 of Proverbs. Just listen, and we'll start in again. And so, we find a basic structure of the text that goes from there until number 107. Now, in number 107, this was... This took some of the most meditation for me to actually secure the argument of my thesis. But I finally got it from just, I think, praying and pondering long enough. I noticed at number 107, let's read it. Like a morning star in heaven and a palm tree in paradise, so a pure mind and a gentle soul. I noticed, first of all, that it's a beautiful proverb.

[61:55]

It's suggestive. I want to ponder it more. I want to be sure I get all the scriptural allusions. That's why he gave it to me. If I don't get the scriptural allusions, I'm supposed to go look for them, because I don't see him for at least another week to get another word from him. So I got time to figure this out. I pray the Psalms a lot. I get it pretty quickly. The just shall flourish like a palm tree. And I remember Evagrius, he'd always say, justice, that's when all the virtues are in their right order. Everything is in place. So, I know this is a very strong word for him, as is the word paradise, but... Like a morning star in heaven, ooh, that's even stronger from the Christological Psalm 110 that we always sing at Vespers. Like the morning star before the dawn, I have begotten you. but also Morning Star. Isn't that Lucifer's name, Morning Star?

[62:59]

Yes, and I remember years ago, Evagrius talking about, in one of those Saturday night conferences, about the Morning Star, Lucifer.

[63:11]

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