Withdraw for a time.

Christ is baptized!

And immediately after his baptism, he was led by the Spirit into the desert, where he was tempted by the devil. This is the gospel we heard yesterday for the Saturday after Theophany (Matt 4:1-11). The 40-day fast of Jesus in the desert immediately after his baptism foreshadows for us the coming 40-day Great Fast before Pascha. The Great Fast before Pascha is also the Great Fast after Theophany. When Pascha is very early, the Triodion starts almost immediately. This year, however, we have endless days of feasting – well, until the end of February.

Jesus endures his fast in the desert in preparation for his ministry. Though he is perfect and unchangeable in his divinity (and so you might think he doesn’t need any preparation), in his perfect humanity, he does change and need preparation.  He grows in wisdom and in stature, as Luke tells us (2:52). In the desert, Jesus experiences hunger, which is a very human thing to experience. He fasts and then he is hungry (Matt 4:2). And he is tempted by the devil to eat bread.

Fasting weakens us. At first, it makes us more susceptible to temptations, not less. Anyone who has made a strenuous effort at the Great Fast knows it has a tendency to produce irritability, short tempers, and the easy formation of resentments. This is why some of the fathers point out to us that it does no good to fast from meat if we were only going to turn around and bite the backs of our brothers and sisters.

Fasting also weakens Jesus. Here is God in the wilderness weakened in his humanity and hungry.

  

But we submit to this time of weakening as a necessary training. It's a bit like when an athlete undergoes a strenuous workout. You know that when you lift a lot of heavy weights it actually, in the short-term, weakens you. That same day, you're wiped out. The very fibers of your muscles are torn apart by the effort. However, they respond to this by healing over time and coming back with greater strength so that, next time, they can lift that weight more easily.

The same is true of the spiritual effort of fasting and other ascetic labors. They train us in self-denial. Then when we're tempted to do things that really are evil, unlike eating food, which is not evil, we have the strength to resist – like Jesus resisted his temptations in the desert – because we’ve practiced not giving into our desires. Habit is a powerful thing. And we're going to need good habits and great strength because greater temptations are coming to us then we have so far experienced.

The same thing is true in the human life of Jesus Christ. He comes out of the desert, which he entered to be tempted and strengthened in his humanity, only to walk straight into horrible adversity. Today, we hear in the holy gospel that, immediately after he rebukes the devil in the desert, he hears that John has been arrested (Matt 4:12). John, his Forerunner and his Baptist, the servant to whom he had bowed his head and from whom he had received baptism only 40 days or so before.

This arrest bodes poorly for Jesus, you understand. He and John were publically affiliated with each other. The authorities that had arrested John would likely be coming for Jesus next. This is one of those adversities for which Jesus trained in the desert. This is a moment of spiritual discernment by our Lord. He has a decision to make, and in making it he must not be rattled by difficult circumstances.

He could rail against those authorities that have arrested John and heroically be arrested with him. He could witness to the gospel by bravely facing the false accusers right away. But Jesus is able to respond to the adversity dispassionately and with wisdom. He knows that first the gospel must be preached to the people before he is given up, or rather freely lays down his life for us.

First, he must preach. For our faith, as Paul will teach us, comes by hearing – and hearing the preaching of Christ (Rome 10:17). If the word was not preached, it would not be heard, and we would have no faith. So, Jesus does not stand at this time and rail against the wicked persecutors of John. Rather, at this time, he withdraws into Galilee and leaves Nazareth and goes and dwells in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.

By this example he teaches us, St John Chrysostom says, that “it is not blameworthy not to throw oneself into peril.” This was shown to us also when Jesus was a baby. When Herod ordered the slaughter of the Holy Innocents in his effort to destroy the Christ Child, Joseph is warned by an angel in a dream and the Holy Family flees into Egypt (Matt 2:13).

Knowing of coming peril and destruction, it is at times good for us to withdraw for a time. This is not to say that we are to be cowards. Far from it. Jesus embraces the cross and commands us to do the same. We must be courageous, but we need not be foolish. (Though perhaps some of us are to other kinds of foolishness – to the ascesis of folly – to be fools for Christ’s sake). But Jesus is no fool. He reserves his passion for a better time. It is necessary, as I say, for him to preach the gospel first.

It is interesting to note, as Matthew does, where this adversity sends him and where he consequently first preaches the gospel. To the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. It will help to know something about this place. Where are Zebulun and Naphtali? Or, maybe, who are Zebulun and Naphtali? Well, first of all, they were two sons of Jacob, according to the Book of Genesis. They are two fathers of two of the 12 tribes of Israel. The tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali settled in the North. It was here that the Jews experienced their first captivity by the Assyrians. It was here that they first forgot the Torah and descended into idolatry.

When Isaiah describes them as a people who sat in darkness, it helps to have some understanding of what he's talking about (Isaiah 9:2). These are the people who have forgotten the Lord – and it is to them that the Lord comes. For those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned (Matt 4:16). That light is Jesus Christ and his preaching of the gospel.

Isn’t this remarkable? Those who first forgot the Lord and abandoned his law and turned to other gods – it is to them that he first of all comes! It is among them that he first preaches! We are never abandoned by the Lord, even if we have abandoned him. Very much to the contrary, he comes to seek out and save those who are lost, confused, mired in sin, and idolatrous. Us, in other words. The beautiful shepherd leaves behind the 99 sheep on the mountain to go and find the one who has gone astray (Matt 18:12).

And listen to the first word he preaches to them and to us, the first word he preaches ever to anybody: “Repent…, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  

Violent Prayer

“The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent bear it away” (Matt. 11:12). What does this mean?

This runs somewhat against our usual way of speaking as Christians, even though these are the words of Jesus Christ. This is no pacifist blurb, but a warcry! When Jesus says things like this, if we have a pacifist tendency, maybe we get embarrassed and don’t know how to respond. Or, if we are disposed the other way, maybe we get heated and take it as a justification for the violence we do or long to do or see done toward others. But I don’t think Jesus is talking about doing violence against others as a path to heaven.

I think he may be speaking rather about the spiritual warfare of the ascetic life. He’s talking about John the Baptist, after all - a great ascetic (for whom I’m named, by the way) who lives in the wasteland and not in a palace; who dresses in coarse robes of camel’s hair and nothing soft and luxurious; who fasts constantly - eating only locusts and wild honey (Matt 3:4; 11:7-8). (By the way, did you know that we can eat insects during fasting seasons? No one ever wants to take that up for some reason….) This ascetic way of life involves a kind of intense striving that may well be called violent.

St Gregory of Sinai says, “No bodily or spiritual activity without pain or toil ever brings fruit to him who practices it, because ‘the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”

He’s speaking of the effort involved in prayer. Our prayer must be joined to effort, to work, to toil, to striving, even to violent striving. We must pray even if it is inconvenient or uncomfortable - especially if it is inconvenient or uncomfortable! We must join our prayer to fasting and ascetic discipline. Otherwise, we’re telling ourselves and the whole world that other things are more important.

But nothing is more important than God and entering into union with him, entering the kingdom of heaven, taking it by force.

 Icon of the Third Finding of the Head of John the Baptist (bottom, center),
surrounded by St. Onesiphorus and other saints
Konetz, 19th century, Russia

Yet, today is a feast day. The Church feasts as well as fasts. Today is not a fast day, but a double feast day! It is the feast of the third finding of the head of John the Baptist and it is a post-festive day of Pentecost. Even though today is Friday, we do not fast even from meat today because of Pentecost. This is one of only a few Fridays of the year when we traditionally eat meat.

But we are celebrating a great faster! So that’s a bit paradoxical. We feast to celebrate finding the head of one who always fasted.

The other similar feast - the feast of the first and second findings of the head of John the Baptist, we also feast. (They kept losing his head! First he lost his head and then the Church kept losing it again!) It usually falls during the Great Fast, so we mitigate the fasting on that day if it does.

Then there is the day of his beheading. On that day we fast! Our Church commemorates the Beheading of John on August 29th with a strict fast - traditionally, we also eat nothing head-shaped on that day and nothing from a plate, in remembrance of John’s head, which was put on a platter for Salome.  

So, for losing his head we fast, but for finding his head we feast. There is death and there is also resurrection. The two are intertwined. You can’t have one without the other. As Paul says today, “we are… always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:10). This is a violence in us as Christians - the violent death of Jesus is always within us, because we are baptized into his body.  If we would rise with Christ, first we must die with Christ (Rom. 6). If we would enter the kingdom of heaven, first we must become a people of persistent, fervent, violent prayer, make war against our own sinful passions, and take it by force.

Holy Repentance leads to Holy Communion.

St. Mary of Egypt
19th century

Our holy mother Mary of Egypt is a glorious example of repentance, and she shows for us, I think, the deep connection that exists between Holy Repentance and Holy Communion.

In her youth, Mary was brazenly impenitent. She was nymphomaniacal, jaded, and profane. For seventeen years in Alexandria, she lived a dissolute and promiscuous life. It is not known how she began to suffer from this “insatiable desire and… irrepressible passion”[i] but I suspect that she had suffered from the sins of others. It is hurt people who hurt people.

Anyway, upon hearing of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem from her home in Alexandria, Mary resolved to accompany the pilgrims, not as a pilgrim but rather to use them to satisfy her lusts.

By choosing young pilgrims to the Holy Land to be her sexual partners and conquests, Mary heaped evil upon evil. These were people who were trying to repent and experience God and Mary resolves to do her best to distract them from that purpose and to seduce them. She is successful, too, and by prostitution, she pays for her passage to Jerusalem. Beyond even this, she “frequently forced those miserable youths even against their own will [into every] mentionable or unmentionable depravity.” So her sins here are manifold and one sin begets another, just as it does in our own lives.

But the grace of God is all-powerful and God's love for us is not diminished by any of our sins. Mary pays for her passage to Jerusalem with sin, and yet in Jerusalem, despite her own impure intentions, she experiences God. She was “hunting for youths,” but God was hunting for her and “seeking [her] repentance. For He does not desire the death of a sinner.” God brings good out of evil. He does it all the time. Listen to what happens next.

Mary is so jaded and free of compunction for her sins, she is so impenitent about what she has done and is doing that, following everyone else, she marches right up to the doors of the Church of the Anastasis – the place of Christ's resurrection – the Holy Sepulchre – and intends to go in among the pilgrims as if she is one of them – though in her heart there is no piety or fear of God – she is following the crowds for her usual reasons.

God sees through our masks – straight into our hearts. There is nothing Jesus hates more than our hypocrisy. He condemns it again and again with vivid language. We are whitewashed tombs (cf. Matt 23:27). Don't say, “Oh, he's only talking about the Pharisees, not me.” Don't look at Mary's sins and say, “Thank God I am not like her.” Let us remember our own sins and repent of them like the publican (cf. Luke 18:11).

God – who is not mocked and is not fooled by our pretensions – sees Mary coming (cf. Gal 6:7). And, out of love for her, does not let her in. She finds that she cannot walk into the holy place. She tried three or four times to enter but each time was repelled by a mighty force. This is a great mercy from the Lord because this spiritual force opens her eyes to her own sin and brings her to repentance in which is her one hope for salvation – without which we cannot be saved. Take this seriously: St. Mark the Ascetic says, “There is a sin which is always ‘unto death’ (1 Jn. 5:16): the sin for which we do not repent. For this sin, even a saint’s prayers will not be heard.”[ii]

Mary is a creature of extremes. She had sinned boldly and now she begins her repentance with an even greater zeal. After she repents before an icon of the Theotokos and promises to “never again defile [herself] by… fornication,” she is able to enter the holy place. Mary experienced the great mercy of a physical manifestation of the spiritual reality. None of us who are impenitent are welcome in the holy place. Spiritually, we are not in the holy place.

If we are impenitent for our sins, especially if we do not love one another – if we are resentful and unforgiving of those who have wronged us, how can we approach Holy Communion in the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ? Communion in the Lord is also communion with the whole Church. And who's in and who's out of the Church is not a judgment we're competent to make. When we invite the people of God to Holy Communion in the Lord, we proclaim, “Approach with fear of God and with faith.” If you do not fear God or if you have no faith, do not approach! If you do, you will eat and drink condemnation upon yourself because you are not truly discerning the body (1 Cor 11:29). As I say, the force that prevented Mary's approach was a great mercy.

After she did repent, Mary was able to enter the holy place – the Church of the Resurrection – and there venerate the holy cross and she then went the Church of the Forerunner and received the holy mysteries of the Church. Holy Repentance leads to Holy Communion. You can't really have one without the other.

So clearly and emphatically did our holy mother Mary of Egypt understand this, that she then began a life of severe repentance for many years. For seventeen years, she battled the wild beasts in the desert – that is, her own mad desires and passions. When you go to a place of isolation and quiet, you will see more clearly the battle being waged over your own heart.

St. Mary was not a frequent communicant. Only after more than seventeen years of repentance in the desert with severe fasting, ceaseless prayer, and self-discipline did Mary finally again receive Holy Communion from the priest Zosimas.

I'm not going to recommend this degree of severity to anyone. I believe a more frequent nourishment from the body and blood of Christ is helpful and even necessary for most of us as we seek and strive by the grace of God for ever greater union with God.

However, I am going to insist that for the most part, we Catholics have been taking Holy Communion far too lightly for many years – and we do so to our peril. Frequent reception of Holy Communion without holy repentance – will not save us. You can't have one without the other. The first word Jesus preaches to us is, “Repent” (Matt 4:17).

An essential – that is to say, not an optional – part of repentance is the holy mystery of repentance, which our holy mother Mary received in the Church of the Forerunner the evening she began to repent. Whatever you want to call it – going to confession, the sacrament of penance, reconciliation – we can't skip over this entirely and remain in good with the Church. This must be a part of our lives as Orthodox Catholic Christians. This doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from the Holy Spirit through the Church and through the Scripture. We can't live without it. I'm serious – there is no life without it. 

How often you need to go personally is a discussion that you need to have with your spiritual father or mother. A good general guide is to go four times a year – once during each of the four fasts. If you haven't been to confession in a long long time, please make a point of going before the Great Fast ends. It's not going to hurt you. It's only going to help you. It's sin that hurts us, not repentance. As St. John Chrysostom says, “Sin is a wound; repentance is a medicine.” Do not be ashamed to repent. Be ashamed to sin.[iii]

Do not utterly neglect to confess. Do not fail to repent. Let us be inspired by the example of our holy mother Mary of Egypt – by her fervor and zeal for repentance – and let us not take too lightly the discipline of God (cf. Heb 12:5). Let us repent and approach with fear of God and with faith.

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[i] The Life of Our Holy Mother Mary of Egypt. http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/st.mary.html

[ii]No Righteousness by Works 41, The Philokalia, London, 1979, v. 1, p. 129.

[iii] John Chrystotom, Homily 8, On Repentance and Almsgiving

4) Knowledge of God according to Maximus the Confessor

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St. Maximus the Confessor 

The first sentence of the first century of Maximus the Confessor’s work, Chapters on Knowledge states that God is “incomprehensible” and “not discernable by any being on the basis of any natural representation.”[13] This begins a long apophatic listing of what God is not “insofar as it is possible for us to know” what he is not.[14] So then, Maximus understands knowledge of God to be possible.

How is it possible to know the unknowable God? Firstly, “no knowable object can compare in any way with [God].”[15] God is not like anything that exists. He is being and beyond being. Knowledge of created beings is demonstrable, but knowledge of God is both indemonstrable and “clearer than any demonstration.”[16] This knowledge is a divine gift.

God gives to those who are devout a proper faith and confession which are clearer than any demonstration. For faith is a true knowledge from undemonstrated principles, since it is the substance of realities which are beyond intelligence and reason.[17]

Maximus here identifies the divine source of the knowledge of God. Only God can make himself known, as he does in the person of his Son incarnate among us (cf. John 1:18). Faith is a freely given gift of God. Yet it is not a gift given to all, but only to those “who are devout.” This is the remarkable reality – to know God, we must live the faith devoutly, not merely profess it with our lips or assent to it with our rational minds. Having stepped out in faith and followed the Lord, he gives us no mere guesses, but certain assurance of his relational presence in our lives. Faith is the substance of reality, and it is not, as many suppose, whimsical and defiant belief.

Evagrius
MS 285 c. 1485
Armenian Patriarchate
Kaffa Monastery

In calling faith “the substance of realities,” Maximus clearly draws on Hebrews: “Now faith is the substance (ὑπόστασις) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). It is not a far cry from this passage in Hebrews to understanding faith as “a true knowledge.” The term “substance” attests to the truth and essential reality of what one hopes for and believes in faith and the term “evidence” attests to the justification of that hoped for and believed in truth. Faith, then, is the justification of true belief. “Faith is a true knowledge.” Yet, faith as true knowledge does represent a development of the doctrine of the knowledge of God. “In speaking of faith as true knowledge, Maximus is clearly correcting Evagrius, who saw the two as different realities.”[18] 

Apparently, it was difficult for Evagrius to accept, just as it is difficult for many contemporary thinkers to accept, the full implication of Hebrews’ teaching on faith. Perhaps this is because so many limitedly understand faith as mere belief or strong opinion. There is a problem in English with the term “I believe,” which commonly translates πιστεύω. “I believe” carries multiple senses. It can mean either “I have faith” or “I have an opinion.” This range of meaning is not so wide with the Greek term, πιστεύω. Пιστεύω comes from πίστις, which means “faith.” Пιστεύω is usually translated “I believe,” but more literally it means, “I have faith” and cannot really mean, “I have an opinion.” Yet, there are semantic problems with this term in Greek as well. Belief is an act of human will, while faith is a gift of God. Yet, we humans must cooperate with God in receiving this gift and he has given us the freedom to resist it absolutely.

Maximus identifies two hindrances to the attainment of “the knowledge of divine contemplation.” Firstly, those who fail to find knowledge despite searching for it with toil “fail because of a lack of faith.”[19] Faith is the primary means of knowledge. Secondly, they fail because they are “foolishly in rivalry with those who have knowledge.”[20] Humility and asceticism are prerequisites, along with faith, for the attainment of knowledge of God.

It is not enough simply to believe the truth about God – believers must also live the faith. Only faith truly lived is true knowledge. “The one who seeks knowledge for the sake of display” will not succeed.[21] One who would attain knowledge must first prepare “by practice, first on the body, then on the soul.”[22] Significantly, the external and ascetic bodily practice of the virtues (πρακτική) precedes that action in the soul. This is “an indispensible prerequisite of contemplation,” which is, “the perception or vision of the intellect (νοῦς) through which one attains spiritual knowledge (γνῶσις)."[23] To come to the knowledge of God, it is first necessary to act according to the way of faith. Remarkably, here is an epistemology not entirely caught up in the life of the mind, as if reason and rationality were the sole things worthy of consideration when it comes to such an abstract notion as knowledge. Believers in Christ must truly live out their faith in all humility and love if they are to know anything of God. Mere philosophizing will attain to no true knowledge of God, who we can only truly know by authentic direct experience.

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[13] Maximus Confessor. “Chapters on Knowledge.” Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. 1:1; 129.
[14] Ibid. 1:2; 129.

[15] Ibid. 1:8; 130.
[16] Ibid. 1:9; 130.
[17] Ibid. 1:9; 130.
[18] Berthold, George. “Notes.” Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. 171.
[19] Maximus. 1:19; 132.
[20] Ibid. 1:19; 132. 
[21] Ibid. 1:20; 132.
[22] Ibid. 1:20; 132.
 [23] G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. “Glossary.” The Philokalia. Vol. 2. London: Faber and Faber, 1981. 381.

Monasticism and the Baptized

Blessed Pope John Paul II on Mount Sinai, where, on Feb. 26, 2000, he visited the Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine, which, he said, "stands indomitable as a witness to divine wisdom and love."

One significant work of the recently beatified Pope John Paul II for the Eastern Churches is his Apostolic Letter, Orientale Lumen. In this letter, Blessed Pope John Paul II identifies monasticism as “a reference point for all the baptized.” One could look at each Christian way of life and see in it a model for all Christians, without denying the distinctiveness of particular vocations. Another way of putting it is that there is not one spirituality for monks, another for priests, and another for the married. There is one Christian spirituality and theology, just as there is one Christianity, one Christ, and one Church. “There is… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all” (Eph 4:4-6). A monk is not living just a part of the Christian life, but the whole of Christian life. The same is true of a priest, a married person, and each Christian. Looking at Christianity as expressed and lived in each vocation instructs each Christian in their own living of Christ. Monasticism, however, is particularly suited to this type of examination.

“In the East, monasticism was… presented as a symbolic synthesis of Christianity,” writes John Paul. This is for good reason. The life of the monk or nun is one of total absorption in Christ, shown by their commitment to prayer, their apostolically communal way of life, and their radical observance of poverty, chastity, and obedience. This is not to suggest that these elements are unique to monasticism, but that they are expressed by monasticism with rare clarity. As John Paul writes, “The monastery… is where the human being seeks God without limitation or impediment, becoming a reference point for all people.”

Monasticism, like martyrdom before it, stands as a radical sign of the coming kingdom, in which all people are called by God to participate, and which monastics, in a sense, already experience. The martyrs and the monastics count their sacrifices nothing, even a joy, as they know they are imitating the Lord and going to Him. “The Church invokes [the] return [of the cosmos to the Father], and the monk and the religious are its privileged witnesses,” according to John Paul. They witness and experience this recapitulation of the universe primarily in their lives of prayer, both liturgical and individual. John Paul continues, “As a living sign of this [eschatological] expectation, the monk continues and brings to fulfillment in the liturgy the invocation of the Church… a maranatha constantly repeated… with the whole of his life.”

The very breath of a true monastic is prayer. In the East, the witness of the hesychasts’ silent prayer of the heart particularly exemplifies this. “Silence (hesychia),” John Paul notes, “is an essential component of Eastern monastic spirituality,” and each Christian ought to incorporate, to that degree they are able, this prayer into their life.

Heavenly Marriage

11th century Georgian miniature of St. John Chrysostom

          In his earlier letters to Theodore, John Chrysostom mourns for the soul of one who has decided to marry. In his later letter to a young widow, he counsels an end to mourning for the body of a good husband who has died. These situations are opposite in many respects. He addresses his former letter to a young man planning marriage – his latter to a widowed young woman. Each reflects considerably and distinctly on the theme of marriage. He writes the former letters as an ascetic monastic with limited experience – the latter as a cleric with more experience. A comparison of these letters does much to show both the evolution and the consistencies of Chrysostom’s thought and ministerial approach.

Chrysostom’s earlier letter to his friend Theodore is more accusatory and harsher in tone than his more temperate and gentle letter to the young widow. For example, he accuses Theodore of opening his mind, which “the devil has now set on fire… to all manner of soul-destroying and shameful thoughts.” However, he does not write to condemn. In an effort to strengthen Theodore against despair, he gives many examples from scripture of figures that have fallen and repented, returning to their former glory. He then threatens Theodore with a long description of the fires of hell and the torments of the damned, tempered somewhat by an attempt to inspire him with a description of the blessedness of heaven.

Only after thirteen long pages of such bulwarks and admonishments, does Chrysostom get to the point

Clerical Asceticism

This historiated initial contains a bust portrait of a haloed figure, probably intended to be St. Gregory the Great, carrying a cross and a book. It appears in the Saint Petersburg Bede (Saint Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. I. 18), which is famous for containing the earliest such initial in European illumination.

St. Gregory the Great was first a monk and, in some respects, this remained his ideal, yet he was a monk who willingly submitted to the decision of Pope Pelagius II to pluck him from his monastery so that he could serve in the ordained ministry. His own willing response to this became a model of his ministerial ideal expressed in his Book of Pastoral Rule (PR), in which he sought a life of balance between asceticism and serving others in the world. For Gregory, a cleric, like a monk, must have ascetic experience, must embrace suffering and adversity, must struggle to overcome passions and vice, and must become dispassionate and virtuous. Gregory’s advice in these areas is of enduring value in the present age. “How he may please the Lord,” (1Cor 7:32) must always be the cleric’s first concern and the cleric is one called by the Lord to a balance of withdrawal from the world and service to those in it. It seems that, for Gregory, one of “the things of this world” that should not distract the cleric from his vocation is concern for “how he may please his wife” (1Cor 7:33). One aspect of his balance of asceticism with service is his advocacy of clerical continence. Though not addressed directly in the Book of Pastoral Rule, his opinion on the matter is clear enough. Elsewhere, (Epistles I, 44 and IV, 36) he promotes a rule of clerical continence and within this text he speaks negatively of sexual desire (PR III, 27). Even here he seeks a balance however and refers to the state of marriage as “most honorable” (PR III, 27). Further, he makes much use of bridal imagery in his descriptions of clerical life. This too is in keeping with the monastic tradition, which often makes similar use of this imagery.