Answers of the Great Masters of the Spiritual Life to the Questions of Their Disciples.

Disciple: What do you say of him who speaks foolishly? 

Master:  He who speaks foolishly has no mind, for he speaks with no thought at all.

Disciple: And he who speaks an intelligent word?

Master:  To speak an intelligent word that profits the soul is a gift of God.

Disciple: What are empty words?

Master:  Words that seek to determine the measures of heaven and earth, the size of the sun and the stars.  These are the sports of men who labour in empty vainglory which brings them no profit.

Disciple: Master, compare the body and soul.

Master:  As man leaves his mother's womb naked, so does the soul leave the body.  But the intelligent soul, reflecting and remembering what follows after death, lives righteously.  But the sinner has no feeling for the other world and so disdains what awaits them there..

Disciple: What else?

Master:  Just as the body must be born after completing its development in the  womb, so the soul when it has reached God's limit must leave the body.

Disciple:  And on imperfections?

Master:  Just as the baby cannot live if it comes out of the womb imperfect, so the soul cannot be saved if, upon leaving the body, it has not been perfected through a good life.

"Philokalia"

(03-23-04)