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

The Practicus of the monk Evagrius. You previously revealed to me, while dwelling in the Skete on the holy mountain, having desired, brother Anatolius, that the symbolic form of the monks in Egypt be made clear to you, you requested; for I have not gone over it without reason, considering it to have such a variation from the other forms 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 innocence 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, they labor in vain who build; unless the Lord guards a city, they watch in vain who keep watch' (Ps 127:1). And such voices indeed produce humility, but they uproot pride, that ancient evil, which cast down the Morning Star rising in the morning into the earth.

And the bareness of the hands shows the sincerity of the lifestyle; for vanity is terrible, covering and overshadowing virtues, always hunting the honors from men and driving away faith. How can you, he says, believe, receiving honor from one another and not seeking the honor from the only God? For it is necessary that the good be chosen not through another but rather through itself; for if this were not given, that which moves us toward the work of the good would appear much more precious than the thing becoming, which would be among the most inexplicable things to conceive and to say of God.

And the mantle, entwined crosswise about their shoulders, is a symbol of the faith taking hold of the gentle ones, always casting aside what hinders and providing the work unhindered to them. And the belt, tightening around their loins, repels all impurity and this part...

It is announced: 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 participation in the evils of the soul, possess the staff; 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 to those who lean upon it as if upon a secure Lord. The shape of these things is a symbol as a summary of the realities; these words are what the Fathers always say to them: the fear of God makes faith firm, and again self-control makes this firm, and patience and hope make it unshakeable, from which apathy is born, of which love is the offspring, and love is the door to natural knowledge which theology receives and the ultimate blessedness.

Let enough be said to us regarding the form of the holy and the teaching of the elders in the present matter. But concerning the life of both the practical and the contemplative, we now discourse, not as much as we have seen or heard, but as much as we have learned to say to others from them, passing through the practicals abbreviated in one hundred chapters and the contemplatives in fifty toward the six hundred; having highlighted 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.

1 THE SAME PRACTICAL LOGOS CHAPTER 4. 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 apathy of the soul with the knowledge of true beings. 3 The kingdom of God is the knowledge of the Holy Trinity co-extended with the constitution of the mind, surpassing its incorruptibility. 4 Whatever one desires, of that he also hungers, and whatever he hungers for, of that he...