Κεφ. ΛΗ'
Love as the Bridle of Anger
Evagrius explains that love and self-control are essential to restrain the passions, specifically identifying love as the necessary remedy to bridle anger.
The passions are naturally stirred by the senses. When love and self-control are present, they are not stirred; when these are absent, they are. Anger, however, requires more remedies than desire, and for this reason love is called great: it is the bridle of anger. That holy Moses, speaking symbolically in his writings on nature, also called love a serpent-fighter.1
Read the original Latin
Ὑπὸ τῶν αἰσθήσεων πέφυκε κινεῖσθαι τὰ πάθη· καὶ παρούσης μὲν ἀγάπης καὶ ἐγκρατείας οὐ κινηθήσεται, ἀπούσης δὲ κινηθήσεται· πλειόνων δὲ παρὰ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ὁ θυμὸς δεῖται φαρμάκων, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μεγάλη λέγεται ἡ ἀγάπη ὅτι χαλινός ἐστι τοῦ θυμοῦ· ταύτην καὶ Μωσῆς ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἅγιος ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς συμβολικῶς ὀφιομάχην ὠνόμασεν.
Notes
- 1 ↩Literally “serpent-fighter,” a symbolic title whose precise Mosaic referent is uncertain.
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.
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