The Symbols of the Spiritual Life and the Structure of the Work

The Practicus of the monk Evagrius. Since you previously revealed to me — I dwelling in the Skete on the holy mountain — most desired brother Anatolius, and requested that the symbolic habit of the monks in Egypt be made clear to you, for you have not considered it without reason nor superfluous, having such a variation from the other habits of men: come, let us declare whatever we have learned from the holy Fathers concerning this.

The hood is a symbol of the grace of our Savior God, covering their ruling faculty and sheltering the infancy in Christ against those constantly attempting to strike and lash. Therefore, those who carry this upon their head sing these things by power: ‘Unless the Lord builds a house and guards a city, in vain has the builder labored and he who attempts to keep watch’ (Ps 127:1). And such voices indeed produce humility, but they uproot pride, that ancient evil, which cast down into the earth the Morning Star rising in the morning.

And the bareness of the hands shows the sincerity of the way of life; for vainglory is terrible, covering and overshadowing the virtues, always hunting the honors from men and driving away faith. For how can you, he says, believe, receiving honor from one another and not seeking the honor from the only God? For the good must be chosen not through another but rather through itself; for if this were not granted, that which moves us toward the work of the good would appear much more precious than the thing produced — which would be among the most absurd things, to conceive and to say that anything is better than God.

And the mantle, entwined crosswise about their shoulders, is a symbol of the faith in Christ which takes up the gentle and always prunes away what hinders, providing them the work unhindered. And the belt, tightening around their loins, repels all impurity and commands this: ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman.’

Those who always carry the death of Jesus in their body and silence all the irrational passions of the body, while cutting off the soul’s evils by participation in the good, possess the sheepskin; they love poverty and flee greed as the mother of idolatry. The staff is the wood of life to all who hold fast to it, and secure for those who lean upon it as upon the Lord. The shape of these things is a symbol, as in summary, of the realities; these are the words which the Fathers always say to them: the fear of God makes faith firm, children, and self-control makes this fear firm again, and patience and hope make it unshakeable — from which dispassion is born, whose offspring is love, and love is the door of natural knowledge, which theology succeeds, and the door of final blessedness.

Let enough be said to us regarding the holy habit and the teaching of the elders in the present matter. But concerning the life both practical and contemplative we now discourse, not as much as we have seen or heard, but as much as we have learned from them to say to others — dividing the practical matters concisely into one hundred chapters and the contemplative into six hundred and fifty; having concealed some and shadowed others, so that we might not give holy things to dogs nor cast our pearls before swine (Matt 7:6). These things will be manifest to those who have stepped into the same track.

THE SAME PRACTICAL LOGOS — 100 CHAPTERS. 1 Christianity is a doctrine of our Savior Christ composed of the practical, the natural, and the theological. 2 The kingdom of heaven is the dispassion of the soul with true knowledge of beings. 3 The kingdom of God is knowledge of the Holy Trinity co-extended with the constitution of the mind, surpassing its incorruptibility. 4 Whomever one loves, for him he also reaches out, and whatever he reaches for, for that he...