Chapter 10

Josaphat, filled with deep compunction at all this, was in tears. He said to the old man: You have made everything clear to me, and have set out this awesome and wonderful account with certainty. Since, then, these things lie before us, what must I do to escape the punishments prepared for sinners, and to be found worthy of the joy of the righteous? Barlaam answered: It is written that once, when Peter—who was also called the chief of the apostles—was teaching the people, they were pricked to the heart, just as you are today; and when they said, "What shall we do?" Peter said to them: Repent, and let each of you be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call. See, then, that he has poured out his rich mercy upon you also, and has called you—you who in your mind were far from him and were serving gods that are not your own, but rather destructive demons and idols deaf and senseless. Therefore, before all else, draw near to the one who has called you, from whom you will receive a knowledge of things seen and unseen that does not lie. But if, after being called, you are unwilling, or you delay, by the just judgment of God you will be cast out of your inheritance,

unwilled because you yourself were unwilling; for so the same apostle Peter spoke to one of the disciples. But I believe that you have indeed heeded the call, and that, heeding it still more plainly, you will take up the cross and follow God your Master who calls you, who summons you from death to life and from darkness to light. For ignorance of God is in truth darkness and the death of the soul, and to be a slave to idols, to the ruin of all nature, seems to me to lie beyond all senselessness and folly. To what shall I liken them, and what image of their stupidity shall I set before you? Let me set before you an illustration told to me by a most wise man. He used to say that the worshippers of idols are like a bird-catcher who caught one of the smallest of the little birds—they call it a nightingale. Taking up a knife to kill it and eat it, the nightingale was given a voice with words. And it said to the bird-catcher:

What good will my killing do you, man? For through me you will not be able to fill your belly. But if you set me free from these bonds, I will give you three commandments, which, if you keep them, will profit you greatly throughout your whole life. Astonished at its speech, the man promised that, if he heard something new from it, he would quickly set it free from captivity. The nightingale turned and said to the man: Never attempt to attain what is beyond reach; do not grieve over a thing that is past; and never believe a word that is past belief. Keep these three commandments, and it will go well with you. Admiring the clarity and good sense of these words, the man loosed it from its bonds and sent it off into the air. Then the nightingale, wishing to learn whether the man had grasped the force of what had been said to him and whether he had reaped any benefit, said to him as it flew in the air: Alas for your folly, man—what a treasure you have lost today! For within my body there is a pearl greater in size than an ostrich's egg. When the bird-catcher heard this, he was overcome with grief, regretting that the nightingale had escaped his hands; and trying again to catch it, he said: Come into my house, and after entertaining you well I will send you off with honor.

But the nightingale said to him: Now I know for certain that you are utterly without sense. For though you received what was said to you eagerly and heard it gladly, you have gained no benefit from it. I told you not to grieve over a thing that is past; and see, you are overcome with grief that I escaped your hands, grieving over a thing that is past. I commanded you not to attempt to attain what is beyond reach; and you try to catch me, though you cannot reach my flight. Besides this, I charged you not to believe a word that is past belief; and see, you believed that within my body there was a pearl exceeding the measure of my whole frame, and you had not the wit to understand that I in my entirety do not reach the size of an ostrich's egg—so how could I have held such a pearl within me? In just this way are those without sense who put their trust in idols. For they made these things with their own hands, and they worship what their own fingers made, saying: These are the ones who fashioned us. How, then, can they regard as their fashioners the things they themselves crafted and shaped? And, what is more, keeping them safe so that they may not be plundered by thieves, they call them guardians of their own safety; and yet how great a folly is this, and what failure to recognize that, being unable to keep and help themselves,

how could they be guardians and saviors of others? For why, it says, do they seek out the dead concerning the living? They squander money to set up monuments and statues to the demons, and they babble that these are the givers of good things, asking to receive from them what these idols themselves have never possessed and never will. Therefore it is written: Let those who make them become like them, and all who put their trust in them—those who, it says, having hired a goldsmith, made things by hand, and bowing down worshipped them. They lift them upon their shoulders and carry them; but if they set them down in a place, they remain there and cannot move. And whoever cries out to them, they will not hear him, nor save him from evils. Therefore be ashamed with an everlasting shame, you who trust in carved images, you who say to molten images: You are our gods. For they sacrificed, it says, to demons and not to God, to gods whom their fathers did not know; they came new and recent, because they are a perverse generation, and there is no faith in them. Out of this wicked and faithless generation the Lord calls you, saying to you: Come out from among them and be set apart, and touch no unclean thing, but be saved from this crooked generation. Arise and go, for this is no rest for you; for the multiplicity of rulership among your gods is disordered and faction-ridden and altogether without existence.

But with us it is not so; there are not many gods and lords, but one God the Father, from whom are all things and we for him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him, who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation and of all the ages, for in him all things were created, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers. All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be that has come to be; and one Holy Spirit, in whom are all things—the Lord and giver of life, God and maker of gods, the good Spirit, the upright Spirit, the Spirit who is our advocate, the Spirit of adoption. Each of these, considered in itself, is God: as the Father and the Son, as the Son and the Holy Spirit; yet there is one God in three, one nature, one kingdom, one power, one glory, one essence, divided only in the persons. For there is one Father, to whom belongs unbegottenness; one only-begotten Son, to whom belongs begetting; and one Holy Spirit, to whom belongs procession.

For thus do we, illumined by light from the Father, the Son, light in the light of the Holy Spirit, glorify one Godhead in three persons; and he is the true and only God, known in the Trinity, for from him and through him and to him are all things. By his grace I too, learning your situation, was sent to teach you what I have learned and kept from the beginning until these gray hairs. If, then, you believe and are baptized, you will be saved; but if you refuse to believe, you will be condemned. For the things you see today and take pride in—the glory and luxury and wealth and all the deceit of this life—will very soon pass away, and will cast you out from here even against your will. Your body will be shut up in a tiny tomb, left utterly alone, stripped of all the company of friends and kin; the delights of the world will be gone, and great loathsomeness and foul decay will spread over it in place of your present beauty and sweet scent; and your soul they will cast down into the depths of the earth, into the condemnation of Hades, until the final resurrection,

when the soul, taking up again its own body, will be cast out from the presence of the Lord and handed over to the fire of Gehenna that burns without end. These things will befall you, and far worse than these, if you remain in unbelief. But if you eagerly heed the one who calls you to salvation, and, running to him with longing and joy, are sealed with his light, and follow him without turning back—renouncing all things, clinging to him alone—hear what security and gladness you will attain. If you sit, you will be without fear; if you sleep, you will sleep sweetly, and you will not fear any sudden terror, nor the assaults of the impious demons coming upon you; but you will go your way confident as a lion, and you will live in gladness and everlasting exultation. For upon your head will be exultation and praise, and gladness will overtake you; there pain and grief and groaning have fled away.

Then your light will break forth early, and your healing will swiftly spring up, and your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of God will enfold you. Then you will cry out, and God will hear you; while you are still speaking he will say: Behold, I am here. For I am the one who blots out your iniquities and remembers them no more; but do you remember them, and let us be judged together. Tell your own iniquities, that you may be justified. And though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow; and though they be as crimson, I will make them white as wool. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things.