The divine law leads us along a royal highway, and the person who has been purified of all desires and passions, will deviate neither to the left nor to the right. And yet how easy it is for a traveller to turn aside from the way. Imagine two precipices forming a high narrow pass; from its centre the person crossing it is in great danger if he veers in either direction because of the chasm on either side that waits to engulf those that stray. In the same way, the divine law requires those who follow its paths not to stray either to left or right from the way which, as the Lord says, is ‘narrow and hard’.
This teaching declares that virtue is to be discerned in the mean: evil operates in either a deficiency or in an excess. For example, in the case of courage, cowardice is the product of a lack of virtue, and impetuosity the product of its excess. What is pure and to be identified as virtue is to be discovered in the mean between two contrasting evils. Similarly, those things in life which reach after the good also in some strange way follow this middle course between neighbouring evils.
Wisdom clings to the mean between shrewdness and innocence. Neither the wisdom of the serpent nor the innocence of the dove is to be praised if a person opts for one to the neglect of the other. Rather it is the frame of mind that seeks to unite these two attitudes by their mean that constitutes virtue. One person, for example, who lacks moderation becomes self-indulgent; another person whose demands exceed what moderation dictates has his ‘conscience seared’, as the apostle Paul says. For one has abandoned all restraint in the pursuit of pleasure, and the other ridicules marriage as if it were adultery; whereas the frame of mind formed by the mean of these two attitudes is moderation.
Since, as our Lord says, ‘this world is ensnared in wickedness’, and everything that is wicked (and therefore opposed to virtue) is alien to those who obey the divine law, it follows that those in this life who pick their way through this world will only reach the destination of their journey in safety if they faithfully keep to that highway which is hardened and smoothed by virtue, and who under no circumstances, veer aside to explore the byways of evil.
Thursday after 4 before Lent
A Reading from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
‘Confess your faults one to another.’ He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final breakthrough to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal their sin from themselves and from each other. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!
But it is the grace of the gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are: he does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work: he wants you alone. As Scripture says: ‘My child, give me your heart.’ God has come to you to save the sinner. Be glad! This message is liberation through truth. You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before others will do you no good before him. He wants to see you as you are, he wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers and sisters, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner. Thank God for that: he loves the sinner but he hates sin.
In confession the breakthrough to community takes place. Sin demands to have a person by himself. It withdraws us from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart.
Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian sister or brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders: he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his sister and brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. The sin confessed has helped the person find true fellowship with his brothers and sisters in Christ. If a Christian is in the fellowship of confession with a sister or brother, he will never be alone again, anywhere.
Friday after 4 before Lent
A Reading from The Enchiridion by Augustine
Every lie constitutes a sin. It is a sin, not only when we know the truth and blatantly lie, but also when we are mistaken and deceived in what we say. It remains our duty to speak what we think in our heart, whether it be true, or we just think that it’s true. A liar says the opposite of what he thinks in his heart, because his purpose is to deceive.
We have been given the gift of speech not to deceive one another, but to communicate truly with each other. To use speech for the purpose of deception is to pervert its purpose and is sinful. Nor should we kid ourselves that there are lies that are not sinful, because (we suppose) in telling a lie we are doing someone a service. One could say the same thing about stealing: it is alright to steal from a rich person because they will never feel the loss if it is in order to help the poor. Or you could make an argument for committing adultery: if I don’t sleep with this woman she will die of love for me. Your action is no less sinful. We value marital fidelity, refusing to countenance anything that will violate a marriage; but are quite happy to violate a relationship by lying. It cannot be denied that they have attained a very high standard of goodness who never lie, except perhaps to protect a person from injury; but even in such cases, it is not the deceit that is praiseworthy, but the good intention. Such deception is pardonable, but not laudable, particularly among Christians.
So let us be true heirs of the new covenant, to whom our Lord said: ‘Let your Yes be Yes, and your No, No; for whatever else comes from the evil One.’ And it is on account of our many failures in this regard, failures which never cease to creep into our living, that we co-heirs of Christ cry out: ‘Lord, forgive us our sins.’
Saturday after 4 before Lent
A Reading from the treatise Pastoral Care by Gregory the Great
Let every Christian leader be both alongside each person under their pastoral care in compassion, and lifted above all in contemplation, so that he may both transfer to himself the weaknesses of others through the inner depths of his mercy, and at the same time, transcend himself seeking the unseen through the heights of contemplation. This balance is important lest in seeking to scale the heights a leader despise the weakness of his neighbour, or in attending to the weakness of his neighbour, he lose his desire for the sublime.
Thus it was that Paul was led into paradise and searched the secrets of the third heaven, and yet, though raised aloft in the contemplation of the unseen, was still able to give his mind to the needs of ordinary people, and even lay out norms governing the conduct of Christian marriage.
Note that Paul had already been introduced into the secrets of heaven, yet by a graciousness of love was still able to give advice to ordinary men and women. He can raise his heart to the contemplation of the unseen, and being so lifted up, can turn in compassion to the secrets of those who are weak. He reaches the heavens in contemplation, yet in his care for others does not ignore the marriage-bed. United by a bond of charity to the highest and lowest alike, a leader is readily caught up in the contemplation of heaven, but equally content to be ‘weak with those who are weak’.
In a similar vein, we find Paul declaring that: ‘To the Jews, I became a Jew.’ Paul did this, not by abandoning his faith, but by expanding his loving-kindness. Thus, by transfiguring the person of the unbeliever into his own person, he learnt at first hand how he ought to be compassionate to others.