By the Same Theoleptos of Philadelphia (Chapters)

By the Same Theoleptos of Philadelphia

1 The mind, withdrawing from external things and gathering in internal ones, concentrates in itself, that is, it is naturally united with its word that is in the intellect, and through the essential word that is with it, it is united with prayer and by prayer ascends into the knowledge of God with all the power of love and zeal. Then the lust of the flesh dies, and every voluptuous feeling stops, and earthly beauty seems unpleasant. The soul, leaving behind everything bodily and everything that relates to the body, follows after the beauty of Christ, going after Him with honorable deeds and purity of thought and singing: “The virgins shall be brought to the king after [Him]” (Ps. 44, 15); imagining Christ, seeing Him before it and saying: “I have always seen the Lord before me, for He is at my right hand” (Ps. 15, 8); falling down before Christ with love and crying: “Lord, all my desire is before You” (Ps. 37, 10); always looking at Christ and calling: “My eyes are always toward the Lord” (Ps. 24, 15); turning to Christ with pure prayer and delighting Him in joy: “May my conversation be pleasing to Him, and I will rejoice in the Lord” (Ps. 103, 34). The Lord accepts the prayerful conversation as the One who is loved and who is called upon for help, and grants unspeakable joy to the praying soul. She remembers God by the conversation of prayer, and the Lord makes her glad: “I remembered God,” says the prophet, “and was glad” (Ps. 76, 4).

2 Avoid the senses and you will make sensory sweetness inactive. Avoid also intellectual sweet fantasies and you will make the voluptuousness of thoughts inactive. The mind, when it remains without fantasies, because it does not accept them either from voluptuous representations or from thoughts of desire, and does not allow them to arise and manifest, remains in simplicity. And having become higher than all sensory and intellectual things, it raises the intellect to God, uttering no other words except the Lord’s name, as a child calls upon his father. “I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you” (Ex. 33, 19), says Scripture. And just as the hand of God created Adam from dust and the Lord breathed a living soul into him with a divine breath, so also the mind, when it is formed by virtues, through frequent invocation, uttered with a pure thought and warm zeal, is changed by a divine change, made alive and deified, because it knows and loves God.

3 When you turn away from desire for earthly things by frequent and pure prayer, and as if in a dream rest from every thought that is after God, and establish yourself completely in the single memory of God, then the love of God will be restored in you as a helper. When you pray, zealous invocation flows out divine love, and divine love prompts the mind to reveal the hidden. Then the mind, united with love, acquires the fruits of wisdom and by wisdom proclaims unspeakable things. For God, whom in prayer, in heart invocation, we call the Word, takes the thought of the mind like a rib and grants knowledge. And instead of it, filling it with goodness, grants virtue, builds light-creating love, and brings it to the mind that is in ecstasy, and sleeps and rests from all earthly desire. And love becomes a helper to the mind that has rested from irrational passion for sensible things. Therefore, it prompts the mind, as pure, to words of wisdom. Then the mind, looking at it and enjoying it, in broad words reveals the secret abodes of virtues and the invisible action of knowledge.

4 Depart from everything sensory, reject the law of the flesh – and the spiritual law will be written in your intellect. “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5, 16), according to the word of the Apostle. He who departs from the senses and sensory things, that is, from the flesh and the world, arrives at walking in the Spirit and thinking spiritually. And learn about this from what God did for Adam even before the disobedience.

5 He who struggles in keeping the commandments and remains in the paradise of prayer and by frequent memory lingers near God, him God frees from the voluptuous action of the flesh and from all movements that come from the senses, and from all representations that are in the intellect, and makes him dead to passions and sin, and makes him a partaker of eternal life. He is as if asleep and like a dead man, but in reality alive. The first – by the action of the body, and the second – by the action of the soul. So also he who remains in the Spirit is mortified to the flesh and the world and lives by the wisdom of the Spirit.

6 When you understand what you sing, you will acquire comprehension. Through comprehension you will acquire knowledge, from knowledge comes the action of what is seen, through action you acquire by habit the fruits of knowledge, and when there is experience, then knowledge opens contemplation. And through contemplation, wisdom shines with the radiant words of grace, filling the space with words and explaining hidden things through external things.

7 At first the mind seeks and finds, then it is united with what is found. And the search is made by word, and the union by love. And searches in words are for the sake of truth, and union is for the sake of the good of love.

8 He who stands above the fleeting nature of present things and avoids the desire of passing things, does not look at earthly things, does not desire earthly beauty, but sees how the heavenly visions open, and contemplates the heavenly beauty, and discerns the blessedness of incorruptible things. But for him who looks closely at earthly things and is drawn to fleshly pleasures, the heavens are closed, because his intellectual eyes are clouded. He who despises the earthly and turns away from it, his mind rises to the height, and he sees the glory of the ever-existing, and receives the brightness destined for the saints. Such a one also receives the love of God descending upon him from on high, and becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, and desires divine commandments, and is led by the Spirit of God; he is deemed worthy of sonship, and God is pleased with him, and he pleases God. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Rom. 8, 14).

9 Do not skip prayer a single day, even through weakness, as long as your life lasts. Listen to what the Apostle says: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12, 10). When you do this, you will have more benefit, and it will soon lift you up by the action of grace. Where the Spirit consoles, there is neither weakness nor despondency.