Dragon's Wine and Angel's Bread
Dragon's Wine and Angel's Bread
Dragon's Wine and Angel's Bread
Gabriel Bunge
Meekness
- Mother of knowledge
- Prayer is an offspring of meekness and angerlessness.
Gnostic
- One who speaks with God
- Experiences a heartfelt intimacy
The Consequences
The things that happen to us in sleep are for Evagrius the psychologist naturally of the
greatest significance. They are revealers of our present spiritual condition.
- Characteristic of an aroused irascibility are fear-inducing nightmares.
Interpersonal contacts are not at all excluded, but relatively seldom in anchorite life.
Special conditions had to be fulfilled for withdrawal not only from the world but also
from the monastic community itself. Whoever did not get along well with others in
community would also not get along well with himself in isolation.
Withdrawal in love purifies the heart, but withdrawal with hate bewilders it.
(Pachomius)
An Anchorite is one who lives a devout and upright life in the world that exists in his
mind. He aims at internal detachment from worldly passions. For to separate the soul
from the body lies in the power of the man who pursues virtue. This means nothing
other than to free her from the tyranny of the passions so as to let virtue live. Under
such conditions, premature withdrawal is not without harm.
Disturbed human relationships, such as those wrought by wrath, pride, or also grief
(and the depressions linked to these), have the worst consequences for the afflicted
person when he finds himself alone.
The surpassing importance Evagrius ascribes to anger in all his writings is based on its
utterly negative relation to prayer. They are mutually exclusive, like fire and water.
Negative effects of a psychological nature: obsessive fixation on an objector worse, on a
particular person who has actually or allegedly insulted us and away from whom one
cannot tear ones thoughts precisely during prayer.
Demons do not know our heart, from signs () however they recognize what is
hidden there, from whence proceed our good and evil intentions. From these signs, they
create the material of their temptations by stimulating our memory and furnishing us
with the image of one who has offended us. We then hold this image before our
eyes like an idol in order to converse with it instead of with God.
At the time of prayer, the intellect should be free of images because it is holding
converse with the immaterial and formless God. Undistracted prayer is the highest
act of the intellect.
Those who are still held by fits of anger should not strive after knowledge of more divine things.
Self-induced states which only spuriously feels without actually experiencing them. It is
pride, hiding behind this anger, that drives us to seek such imitations ( ) and not wait
to be called (as was Moses by God from the Burning Bush) but rather darinlgy to set foot in the
place of prayer.
Left eye:
o Indirectly through the reasons of created natures
Right eye:
o Unmediatedly and personally that the time of prayer.
o Capable of beholding the blessed light of the Holy Trinity