Let Us Sanctify Ourselves in Both Thoughts and Deeds

Let Us Sanctify Ourselves in Both Thoughts and Deeds

. . . let us sanctify ourselves in both thoughts and deeds, let us yet refrain from carnal desires that war against the soul, (1 Peter 2,11) maintaining good conduct in ourselves, peaceable, compliant, obedient, humble, reliable. And this is the blessed life: but pleasures and trifles, occasions of laughter and dissoluteness and all such inordinate behaviour should be left to the lovers of the flesh and to the lovers of life, who see and do not see and hear and do not hear, for their hearts are insensitive (Mark 8,17-18) and their ears blocked up so as not to distinguish good from bad, light from darkness, life from death, but so as to go towards the fire that is ready. For the desire of the flesh is fire, and yet they rush towards it unbridled; love of money is a pit, and yet deep embedded they do not cease to follow their self-chosen demon and to be entitled to be called miserable rather than blessed, because despising what is truly good they embrace rather perishable corruption. 

But we, brethren, let us hold fast to the confession in which we stand, and let us boast in the hope of the glory of God, (Romans 5,2) let us keep to the discipline in which the saints disciplined themselves, as indeed did the blessed Pachomius, whom we recently celebrated. Let us see healthily, let us hear healthily, let us touch healthily, using all our members healthily, so that guided by the word and as servants of the word we may become inheritors of eternal life according to the promise, (1 Timothy 4,8) in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

St. Theodore the Studite
Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons