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“POOR” REFERS TO THOSE LACKING FULL KNOWLEDGE. BASIL THE GREAT: Truly, slander humiliates a person, and slander troubles the poor person. The evil of slander is so great that it brings down both the perfect person . . . from his height, and the poor person, that is, the one who lacks great learning, as it seems to the prophet, who says, “Perhaps they are poor . . . therefore they will not hear. I will go to the great ones,” meaning by “the poor” those lacking in intelligence, and here, of course, those not yet made orderly in the inner person or having attained to the perfect measure of their age. These, the proverb says, are troubled and made to waver. LETTER 223.

LUST CHANGES PEOPLE. BASIL THE GREAT: Angels do not change. Not one of them is a child, or a young man, or an old man, but in whatever state they were created, in the beginning, in that state they remain. Their substance is preserved pure and inviolate for them. But we change in our body, as has been shown, and in our soul and in the inner person, always shifting our thoughts with the circumstances. In fact, we are one sort of person when we are cheerful and when all things in our life are moving forward with the current. But we are another sort in precarious times, when we stumble against something that is not according to our wishes. We are changed through anger, assuming a certain savage state. We are also changed through our lusts of carnal things, becoming like beasts through a life of pleasure. “They become amorous horses,” being madly in love with their neighbors’ wives. The deceitful person is compared with a fox, as Herod was. The shameless person is called a dog, like Nabel the Carmelian. Do you see the variety and diversity of our change? Then, admire him who has fittingly adapted this title to us. For this very reason, a certain one of the interpreters seems to me to have handed over beautifully and accurately the same thought through another title. He says, “For the lilies,” in place of, “For them that shall be changed.” He thought that it was appropriate to compare the transitory state of human nature with the early death of flowers. But since this word has been inflected in the future tense (It is said, “For them that shall be changed,” as if at some time later this change will be shown to us), let us consider whether there is suggested to us the doctrine of the resurrection, in which a change will be granted to us, but a change for something better and something spiritual. HOMILIES ON THE PSALMS 17.1-2 (PS 44).

CONTENTMENT SHOULD LEAD TO RESTRAINT. BASIL THE GREAT: Fasting can be utilized as a weapon against demonic armies: “For this kind does not come out except through prayer and fasting.” Many good things come from fasting, but being satiated introduces the beginnings of insolence. It immediately rushes in alongside the delicacy you are eating and it accompanies rich sauces. All kinds of licentious behavior begin grazing at its table. After this, men start becoming “lusty horses” toward women because all this luxury begins to start a maddening itch that enters into their soul. Those who get drunk begin perverting themselves against nature, using a male like a female, or vice versa. Fasting, by contrast, reveals the proper boundaries for marriage. It curtails the excesses of even those things that may be permitted by law but that are abstained from by agreement so that the couple can devote themselves to prayer.

But we should not limit the goodness of fasting only to abstaining from foods. True fasting, in whatever form, is the enemy of evil. “Loose the chains of injustice!” Forgive your neighbor when an offense occurs against you and forgive his debts. Do not “fast in order to bring about judgment and strife.”

You may not eat meat, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine but hold on to insolence. You wait till evening to indulge in a meal but spend the day in court. “Woe to those who are drunk, but not from wine!” Wrath can also be a drunkenness of the soul, making it senseless, like wine. Grief can also feel like being drunk, weighing down the mind. Fear is another form of drunkenness whenever it fears something where there is no need for fear, because the psalmist says, “deliver my soul from the fear of my enemy.” When taken together, each of these passions that allow the mind to be taken over and to go out of control is rightly termed drunkenness. . . . Guard against this kind of drunkenness, but do not be given over to the kind that comes from wine, either. Do not start being a water drinker just because you have been drinking too much. Do not let drunkenness be what leads you into fasting. The door that leads to fasting is not entered through drunkenness. Neither is greed the entryway into justice, nor is intemperance the way to sound judgment. In summary, evil never leads to virtue. There is another door into fasting. Drunkenness leads to intemperance. Contentment is what opens the door to fasting. HOMILY ON FASTING 1.9-10.

LUSTFUL PEOPLE ARE LIKE BEASTS. BASIL THE GREAT: Humanity . . . did not understand and neglected to follow God and to become like his Creator. And becoming a slave of the passions of the flesh, “he is compared with senseless beasts and is become like them.” Now he is like an amorous horse that neighs after his neighbor’s wife. Now like a ravenous wolf, lying in wait for strangers, but at another time, because of his deceit toward his brother, he makes himself like the villainous fox. Truly, there is excessive folly and beast-like lack of reason that he, made according to the image of the Creator, neither perceives his own from the beginning nor even wishes to understand such great dispensations that were made for his sake. At least, he should learn his own dignity from them, but he is unmindful of the fact, and he throws aside the image of the heavenly, but he has taken up the image of the earthly. HOMILIES ON THE PSALMS 19.8 (PS 48).

GOD CONTROLS CREATION. BASIL THE GREAT: Through all the story of waters be mindful of that first word, “Let the waters be gathered.” It was necessary for them to flow that they might reach their own place. Then, being in the places appointed, they were to remain by themselves and not to advance further. For this reason, according to the saying of Ecclesiastes, “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea does not overflow.” It is through the divine command that waters flow, and it is due to that first legislation, “Let the waters be gathered into one place,” that the sea is enclosed within boundaries. For fear that the flowing water, spreading beyond the beds that hold it, always passing on and filling up one place after another, should continuously flood all the lands, it was ordered to be gathered into one place. Therefore, the sea, frequently raging with the winds and rising up in waves to towering heights, whenever it merely touches the shores breaks its onrush into foam and retires. “Will you not then fear me, says the Lord? I have set the sand as a bound for the sea.” With the weakest of all things, sand, the sea, irresistible in its violence, is bridled. HOMILIES ON THE HEXAMERON 4.3.

ENCOURAGE FAITHFUL CARE. BASIL THE GREAT: When I say “we,” I do not refer to human power but to the grace of God, who in the weakness of people shows forth his own power. This the prophet, speaking in the person of the Lord, says, “Will not you, then, fear me? I have set the sand as the boundary for the sea.” For by this weakest and most contemptible of all things, sand, the mighty One has bound the great and ponderous sea. Therefore, since our condition is somewhat similar, it would follow that some of the true brethren should be sent continuously from your charity to visit us in our afflictions and that affectionate letters should come more frequently to us, on the one hand to strengthen our zeal, and on the other to correct us if we fail in any respect. Indeed, we do not deny that we are subject to many faults, since we are people and are living in the flesh. LETTER 203.