Vigils Reading – 23rd Sunday

THE THREE RENUNCIATIONS

By John Cassian

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The tradition of the Fathers and the authority of holy scriptures both

affirm that there are three renunciations which every one of us must strive to

practice. To these let us turn our attention.

First, on the material level, we have to despise all worldly wealth and

possessions; secondly, we must reject our former way of life with its vices and

attachments, both physical and spiritual; and thirdly, we should withdraw our

mind from all that is transitory and visible to contemplate solely what lies in the

future and to desire what is unseen.

We read that the Lord commended Abraham to make all three

renunciations at once when he said to him: Leave your country and your

kindred and your father’s house. First he said your country, meaning worldly

wealth and possessions; secondly your kindred, that is our former way of living,

with its habits and vices which have grown up with us and are as familiar to us as

kith and kin; thirdly your father’s house, in other words every secular memory

aroused by what you see.

This forgetfulness will be achieved when, dead with Christ to the

elemental spirits of this world, we contemplate as the apostle says not the things

that are seen, for what is seen is temporal but what is unseen is eternal. It will

be achieved when in our hearts we leave this temporal and visible house and

turn the eyes of our mind toward that in which we shall live for ever; when,

though living in the world, we cease to follow the spirit of the world in order to

fight for the Lord, proclaiming by our holy way of life that, as the apostle says,

our homeland is in heaven.

It avails little to undertake the first of these renunciations, even with

wholehearted devotion inspired by faith, unless we carry out the second with the

same zeal and fervor. Then having accomplished this as well we shall be able to

go on to the third, whereby we leave the house of our former father, of him who

fathered us as members of a fallen race, children of wrath like everyone else,

and turn our inward gaze solely toward heavenly things.

We shall attain to the perfection of this third renunciation when our

mind, no longer dulled by contact with a pampered body, has been cleansed by

the most searching refinement from every worldly sentiment and attitude, and

raised by constant meditation on divine things and spiritual contemplation to

the realm of the invisible. It will then lose all awareness of the frail body

enclosing it or the place it occupies, so absorbed will it be by things divine and

spiritual.