STRIVING FOR SALVATION

Strive now for your salvation; practice virtue before your death.  If you know the good things that await the saints in heaven and the punishments that await those who are negligent, especially those who have known the truth and have not led a way of life worthy of it, you would endure every pain in order to be made perfect.  

Bear death before your eyes every hour. By this the mind is enlightened and the soul sheds tears and turns to God undistracted by earthly things.  Becoming humble by the thought of death, the soul becomes compassionate and without vainglory, lowly and a stranger to all worldliness.  

Let the soul teach the body.  Let the soul say to the feet:  "Stand eagerly for your Lord;"  to the hands, "Stretch yourself out to the Lord;"  to the body, "Worship the Lord."  If the body listens to the soul, both shall enjoy the blessed inheritance; but if the body does not listen to the soul, then woe to both for being bound together because both shall be condemned.  

Paralipomena

(12-08-04)