Κεφ. ϞΑ'
The Path of Mercy and Discipline
Evagrius emphasizes that a disciplined life combined with active mercy and love is the most effective remedy for the passions.
But we also need to inquire carefully into the ways of monks who have made progress and direct our own course by them, for we can find many things they said and did well. One of them said that a spare but consistent way of life, joined with love, brings a monk more quickly into the harbor of freedom from the passions.1 That same monk freed one of the brothers from the visions troubling him at night by telling him to fast and serve the sick. When asked about this, he said, “Nothing extinguishes passions like these so effectively as mercy.”2
Read the original Latin
Ἀναγκαῖον δὲ καὶ τὰς ὁδοὺς τῶν προοδευσάντων ὀρθῶς διερωτᾶν μοναχῶν καὶ πρὸς αὐτὰς κατορθοῦσθαι· πολλὰ γὰρ ἔστιν εὑρεῖν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ῥηθέντα τε καὶ πραχθέντα καλῶς· ἐν οἷς καὶ τοῦτό φησί τις αὐτῶν, τὴν ξηροτέραν καὶ μὴ ἀνώμαλον δίαιταν ἀγάπῃ συζευχθεῖσαν θᾶττον εἰσάγειν τὸν μοναχὸν εἰς τὸν τῆς ἀπαθείας λιμένα. Ὁ δ’ αὐτὸς ταρασσόμενόν τινα νύκτωρ τῶν ἀδελφῶν τῶν φασμάτων ἀπήλλαξεν, ἀσθενοῦσι μετὰ νηστείας ὑπηρετῆσαι προστάξας· οὐδενὶ γὰρ οὕτως, ἐρωτηθεὶς ἔφη, ὡς ἐλέῳ τὰ τοιαῦτα κατασβέννυται πάθη.
Notes
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