or laziness deliberately closes his eyesthat is, his faculty of choiceand at once consigns the knowledge to oblivion because in his indolence he fails to put it into practice. What health and sickness are to the body, virtue and wickedness are to the soul, and knowledge and ignorance to the intellect. If we bring all this to mind, we will be amazed at God's compassion, and with trembling will marvel at His forbearance and patience. We will grieve because of what our nature has lost angel-like dispassion, paradise and all the blessings which we have forfeitedand because of the evils into which we have fallen: demons, passions and sins. The pure in heart are those who have accomplished every virtue reflectively and reverently and have come to see the true nature of things. In this way they find peace in their thoughts. If you turn from all other activity and give yourself entirely to the cultivation of the virtues of soul and body...then the tears of joy and understanding will well up copiously within you and you will drink from their plenitude. Each virtue lies between two unnatural passions. Moral judgment lies between craftiness and thoughtlessness; self-restraint, between obduracy and licentiousness; courage, between overbearingness and cowardice; justice between over-frugality and greed. By means of the virtues of soul and body, and after many struggles, a person is enabled to rise noetically, by Christ's grace, and to engage in spiritual labourthe labour of the intellectso that he begins to grieve inwardly for his own soul. See also Philokalia Eastern Christian monasticism Eastern Orthodoxy Nicodemus the Hagiorite Macarius of Corinth Church Fathers Further reading Gouillard, Jean (1939). Un auteur spirituel byzantin du XIIᵉ siècle, Pierre Damascène. Échos d'Orient. Reprinted in: La vie religieuse à Byzance. London: Variorum Reprints, 1981. Peters, Greg (2011). Peter of Damascus: Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. . Peter, Greg (2005). Recovering a Lost Spiritual Theologian: Peter of Damascus and the Philokalia. St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, pp. 437–459. Palmer, G. E. H.; Sherrard, Phillip; Ware, Kallistos, eds (1984). The Philokalia: The Complete Text compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber. . References