Κεφ. ΚΘ'
The Balanced Ascetic
Evagrius teaches that a monk must balance the urgency of mortality with the practical stewardship of the body to maintain spiritual discipline.
Our holy teacher, who had such deep experience in the ascetic life, used to say: A monk should always prepare himself as if he were going to die tomorrow, yet care for his body as if he were going to live with it for many years. He says that the first outlook cuts off thoughts of acedia and makes the monk more diligent, while the second keeps the body healthy and his self-restraint steady.
Read the original Latin
Ἔλεγε δὲ ὁ ἅγιος καὶ πρακτικώτατος ἡμῶν διδάσκαλος· οὕτω δεῖ ἀεὶ παρασκευάζεσθαι τὸν μοναχὸν ὡς αὔριον τεθνηξόμενον, καὶ οὕτω πάλιν τῷ σώματι κεχρῆσθαι ὡς ἐν πολλοῖς ἔτεσι συζησόμενον. Τὸ μὲν γάρ, φησί, τοὺς τῆς ἀκηδίας λογισμοὺς περικόπτει καὶ σπουδαιότερον παρασκευάζει τὸν μοναχόν· τὸ δὲ σῷον διαφυλάττει τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἴσην αὐτοῦ ἀεὶ συντηρεῖ τὴν ἐγκράτειαν.
The Praktikos companion
A daily portion of stillness
Chosen Portion delivers one short contemplative reading and a guided moment of silence each day — the ascent, one step at a time.
Chosen Portion is the paced doorway into this collection: it portions the dense mystical treatises into one daily reading plus guided silence, exactly as the 14-day plan teaches.
- Daily bite-sized excerpts from the contemplative classics, never a wall of text
- A built-in timed stillness practice that grows from 2 minutes to 10
- Gentle progression through the tradition — the app remembers where you are on the ascent