Translation:Cassian Conferences XXII/Chapter 3

1. Our ancestors have recorded three causes of this disturbance, which interrupts the measure of the fixed period with an untimely deviation. For either it is accumulated by an excessive superfluity of eating; or it slips out through carelessness of mind; or it is provoked by the taunting snares of the enemy. First, therefore, the vice of gluttony (that is of overeating and greediness) presses out this excess of impure liquid. For also when in times of strict abstention it pollutes the state of purity, it is poured out not, as you think, from the present fasting, but from the excesses of the previous fulness.

2. For what had been stored up in the marrows through voracious gluttony, must be discharged through the sexual itching, albeit unawares, of the body, worn out by howsoever great fasting. For this reason, not only should we avoid lavish feasts, but we should also restrain ourselves from plainer food with equal self-control. Indeed, we should beware of fulness even of bread and water, so that our acquired bodily purity might endure for longer in us and we might imitate to a degree unviolated chastity of spirit. Albeit we must confess that sometimes without any effort of mind, either through the nature of their bodies or through maturity of age, certain men are rarely contaminated, or at least are not soiled by the voiding of this flow.

3. But it is one kind of merit to arrive at the peace of idle good fortune, another to achieve the triumph of glorious virtue. For the power of the latter is the conqueror of all vices and worthy of marvel, whereas the former, whom innate good has kept safe in their idleness, is I might say more worthy of pity than praise.

4. The second cause of this impure discharge is if a mind empty of all spiritual endeavour and exercise, and not fixed by the discipline of the inner human, draws to itself a certain rust of slothfulness by the habit of continual inactivity, or when by not bewaring the trifles of unclean thoughts it becomes sluggish in pursuing sublime purity of heart, so that it comes to believe that the whole sum of perfection and chastity lies in the correction of the outward human. By the fault of which error and indolence it consequently happens not only that the diverse wanderings of the thoughts shamelessly and impudently burst in upon the solitude of the mind, but also that the seeds of all original passions persist within it.

5. Which, inasmuch as they hide themselves away in the mind's inner sanctuary, then with howsoever strict fasts the body is corrected, nevertheless they disturb the sleeper with alluring fantasies, by which before the proper course of time, not yet from the necessity of nature, but rather from wicked deceit, unclean fluids are enticed out. Which, not so much by emptiness of the flesh than by circumspection of the mind and by virtue, if they cannot be entirely prevented, at least they are led to that simple quality of an emptying, the grace of God assisting. And so first of all the wanderings of the senses are to be restrained, lest the mind, accustomed to filthy incitements by these deviations, is drawn when asleep to wantonness.

6. The third cause occurs when indeed by contrition of heart and body we desire to achieve the perpetual purity of chastity through the regulated and careful discipline of continence. As we have surpassing regard for the benefit of body and spirit, however, the envy of the most deceitful enemy attacks us. He tries to destroy the assurance of our conscience and to humiliate us by some offense, particularly on those days in which, through greater merit of integrity, we seek to please the divine sight. This he does indeed without any itching of the flesh or consent of the mind, nor yet by the deceit of fantasies. But rather, by the simple voiding of this flow, he would pollute us, to deter us from holy communion. Moreover, in certain of those who are starting out and whose bodies have not yet been worn down by the extended correction of fasting, we may believe that diabolical action causes this deceit for the following reason. When he knows these people to be zealous in strict fasts, he seeks to undermine all of their attempts by this trick. Then they feel themselves not only to have made no progress towards bodily purity by stricter fasting, but even to have been more grievously assaulted. Thus, they may come to recoil from strict abstinence, this schoolmistress of incorruption and foster-mother of purity, as if she were jealous.

7. For which reason we should know that it is not that we should be purged from every vice for its own sake, because it would occupy our senses with its own disturbances, but because it would not be content to dominate without any company, but having brought in the dire guild of all the vices, our mind given over to them would be plundered by a multiplied captivity. And so gluttony is not to be conquered for its own sake only, but lest it ruin us with a more oppressive voracity; and not on account of this only, lest it set us on fire with the carnal longing, but lest it make us the slaves of anger or fury and of despair and of every other passion.

8. For when food and drink is served to us late or too little or poorly prepared, if we are weighed down by the domination of gluttony, it will follow that we will also be provoked by the goads of anger. And again we cannot be stroked by pleasurable tastes without the disease of avarice, through the overflowing splendor of which extravagance delights in great expenditures. But avarice, vainglory, pride, and the multitude of all the vices are joined in inseparable association, and so whichever vice, if it has begun to grow strong in us, will sponsor the importation of the others.