Just as Crabs
Just as a bundle of green logs suffocates and puts out a bonfire causing clouds of smoke, so excessive grief often surrounds the soul with thick cloud and dries up the fount of tears.
Just as a blind person is no use as an archer, so a disciple with the mania of contradiction will end in perdition.
Just as tempered metal can sharpen soft or rusty metal, so can a zealous brother set a tepid one on the right track.
Just as clouds hide the sun, so do vile thoughts darken the soul and lead to its destruction.
Just as iron, even without willing it, is drawn by a magnet, so is a slave to bad habits dragged about by them.
Just as the winds whip up the seas, so does anger stir confusion in the mind.
Just as crabs always stay in the same place because first they go forwards and then they go backwards, so does the soul make no progress if it vacillates, now laughing, now crying, now plunging into unrestrained merry-making.
Just as anyone who climbs a rotten ladder risks his life, so are honours and power a danger for humility.
John Climacus Stairway to Paradise, 26, Appendix (PG88, 1085)
Idleness Contains All Sin
The cradle of all temptations and all useless and unhealthy thoughts is idleness. Idleness contains all sin.
The idle are never servants of God. Those who do not do what they must with fidelity and fervour, those who do not do it with the intention of serving God, are idle when they come to act.
And it is ridiculous to look for idle works to escape idleness. An idle work is one that has no usefulness or is done with no intention of becoming useful: useful in the first place to one’s own conscience, enriching the heart’s treasure.
Do you want to know what you should busy yourself with? Over and above daily prayer you need to work—in such a way, though, as to preserve, or rather, to increase your spiritual happiness.
Certainly, some kinds of heavy work distract the soul and weary it. All the more reason for you to have a sense of your own weakness and to have humility of heart.
Bernard of Clairvaux Letters to the Brethren, 21 (PL184, 321)
~ Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, A Patristic Breviary: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
