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| Chapter VI. An account of the three sorts of renunciations.
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Chapter VI.
An account of the three sorts of renunciations.
We must now speak of the
renunciations, of which tradition and the authority of Holy Scripture
show us three, and which every one of us ought with the utmost zeal to
make complete. The first is that by which as far as the body is
concerned we make light of all the wealth and goods of this world; the
second, that by which we reject the fashions and vices and former
affections of soul and flesh; the third, that by which we detach our
soul from all present and visible things, and contemplate only things
to come, and set our heart on what is invisible. And we read that the
Lord charged Abraham to do all these three at once, when He said to him
“Get thee out from thy country, and thy kinsfolk, and thy
father’s house.”1208
First He said
“from thy country,” i.e., from the goods of this world, and
earthly riches: secondly, “from thy kinsfolk,” i.e., from
this former life and habits and sins, which cling to us from our very
birth and are joined to us as it were by ties of affinity and kinship:
thirdly, “from thy father’s house,” i.e., from all
the recollection of this world, which the sight of the eyes can afford.
For of the two fathers, i.e., of the one who is to be forsaken, and of
the one who is to be sought, David thus speaks in the person of God:
“Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear: forget
also thine own people and thy father’s house:”1209
for the person
who says “Hearken, O
daughter,” is certainly a Father; and yet he bears witness that
the one, whose house and people he urges should be forgotten, is none
the less father of his daughter. And this happens when being dead with
Christ to the rudiments of this world, we no longer, as the Apostle
says, regard “the things which are seen, but those which are not
seen, for the things which are not seen are eternal,”1210
and going forth in heart from this temporal
and visible home, turn our eyes and heart towards that in which we are
to remain for ever. And this we shall succeed in doing when, while we
walk in the flesh, we are no longer at war with the Lord according to
the flesh, proclaiming in deed and actions the truth of that saying of
the blessed Apostle “Our conversation is in
heaven.”1211
To these three
sorts of renunciations the three books of Solomon suitably correspond.
For Proverbs answers to the first renunciation, as in it the desires
for carnal things and earthly sins are repressed; to the second
Ecclesiastes corresponds, as there everything which is done under the
sun is declared to be vanity; to the third the Song of Songs, in which
the soul soaring above all things visible, is actually joined to the
word of God by the contemplation of heavenly things.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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