The Combat of Virtue

Chapter 1. Those who possess the heavenly land by labors gaze intently neither at the belly nor at anxious care for perishable things — not like those who offer prayers for the sake of gain, supposing godliness to be a means of profit — but with noetic vision the pure companies partake of the nourishing nature of the heights, wrapped in light from glory.

And you yourself (O initiate of the virtues, Eulogius), while being nourished by the sacred substance of the highest ones, shedding the bulk of the flesh through the gatherings of thoughts, knowing that the matter of the flesh becomes the food of thoughts, just as having seized the methods by the center of labors, you appoint me to become a mouth for your works against them; and if it were not for the bold command of love, I would have declined such a seafaring of the vessel; but since it is necessary to obey rather than to oppose those of the same soul: be for me the things toward God, so that a word may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, and I shall be for you the things of obedience, so that you may be given to reap the fruits of the seed.

Chapter 2. Exile is the first of the splendid contests, especially when, in addition to this, you go abroad alone, athletically stripping off homeland, race, and property, having stood before the splendid contests; if you thus begin according to God, walking the path of the beginning with fiery faith and divine Spirit, and keeping it safe by the perfection of endurance, your soul shall be a gilded wing of virtue, departing from familiar places and hastening to fly toward heaven itself. But the begetter of evil schemes to cut off the wings of this way of life, mirroring the earth from which your race has come forth, especially in the incursions that occur in sickness; and in the settling of the hottest exile, he retreats for a little while until he learns the soul is nauseated amid tribulations...

Like a storm-tossed ship, the night-raven, bringing on the night of thoughts, darkens the soul from the ray of the superior ones. But if he were stationed alone in the wrestling-ground of the desert, and the body should happen to be struck by sickness, it shows the soul's exile all the more harshly.

It is not in a place, but in a manner that the one subjecting the soul to the virtues is established; and that having consolation at home from his kin, there he could have kept the contests of renunciation without pain; where there is also a ready service for weakness, and not as now, hardship and painful fainting; and especially where the zeal for hospitality is not lacking from brotherhood. Therefore, “Depart!” he says, you who bring joy to your own kin and carry off glory for yourself, yet have left behind unendurable grief without sympathy; for many, without fleeing their fatherland, have chosen virtue from the midst of their kin.

But he, having clothed himself in the purple of afflictions in the station of exile, and having the hopes of labors crowned with faith and the endurance of thanksgiving against these thoughts, shakes off the snowflakes from without; and however much they dig to turn the heart back, let us chant psalms against them all the more: “Behold, I went far off in flight, and I lodged in the desert” (Ps 55:7 LXX). For reproaching they oppress, and they flatter to turn you aside, so that, having emptied the intention, they may cut off the thanksgiving in endurance, and thus thereafter widen the nets with much security, and from the proper things.

Chapter 3. For this reason, he who begins to touch virtue, let him count also the war against it, so that, not being seen untrained as if unready, he might be seized. For courage is praiseworthy when virtue is in peace, but this manliness is more praiseworthy when war is standing by; for this is virtue, not only through which it works, but also through which it fights against evils, the one impassive through more wars...