Faith: the beginning of love. The end of love: knowledge of God. (Ad Monachos, No. 3)
The seven capital sins indicated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 1866) date back to the 4th century. Though they were systematically presented by Sts. John Cassian and Gregory, the first to mention them within the Christian tradition was Evagrius Ponticus, a good friend of Sts. Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzen. He was born in Pontus in 345 CE in the Black Sea town of Ibora. During his youth, an affair with the wife of a nobleman got him into serious trouble and he had to flee to Jerusalem where Melania the Elder, a revered spiritual woman, received him. She guided him, and under her influence he decided to enter the monastery. He first lived in lower Egypt and later moved to Kellia in the Nitrian desert, where he remained until his death in 399. He was a keen observer of human nature and an astute psychologist who imbibed the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. His works were very popular and would have an endearing influence on spirituality, especially in the Eastern tradition. The Second Council of Constantinople (553) found Origenist tendencies in his writings, and he was condemned. Though the Greek works were destroyed, some of his writings survived in Syriac. They were also handed down under the names of other Fathers, especially Nilus of Ancyra.
Evagrius believed that Christian life involved three essential elements: Praktike (the cultivation of virtues), phusike (the contemplation of created beings) and theologike (the knowledge of God). Despite the fact that his original Greek works were destroyed, some of the texts which survived to this day include Ad Monachos, the Praktikos, the Gnostikos, the Kephalaia Gnostica, Chapters on Prayer, and various letters of which the Letter to Melania is an important one. His style of writing was unique and mainly consisted of short phrases which were enigmatic or obscure statements. They were easy to memorize and contained various layers of meaning. Only after years of prolonged asceticism and meditation was it possible to understand the profound meaning of these apparently simple statements. Evagrius’ whole spirituality was oriented towards a restoration of a broken relationship with God and this process began with faith and ended in union with God. He believed that thoughts (logismoi) stirred up passions and apatheia (the dominations of passions) transformed these passions into agape (love).
The two lines from Ad Monachos offers us a beautiful insight into his spirituality. The first line describes the beginning of praktike (the cultivation of virtues) through faith. Love begins with faith and as seen in the second line reaches its end with the knowledge of God Himself. The link between: a) a life of virtues; b) knowledge and c) union with God is ‘love.’ The entire circle of love which begins in faith and ends in being united with God was presented as follows: a) faith → b) fear of God → c) self-discipline and practice of virtues → d) virtues leading to charity → e) charity leading to knowledge → f) knowledge of material realities leading to knowledge of non-material realities → g) ultimate union with God. The schema proposed by Evagrius is not a mechanistic process, but a dynamic one which aids spiritual progression. Today’s world looks for coherent and viable methods in order to progress in spiritual life. The method offered by Evagrius has stood the test of time and responds to this need even today. His classifications of passions and virtues, the importance of apatheia and the schema indicated above allows a faith which is rooted in love progress towards a growing internal knowledge of God.
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