Letter 843: The spiritual life is a journey with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Nature, as it seems, has placed within all creatures a certain modesty in prosperous times and a certain endurance in adverse ones. And from those things which the ancients wisely decided, this truth emerges most clearly. Those who transform wickedness into a daily practice — as though conducting some unholy liturgy of iniquity — will ultimately discover that nature itself rebels against their perversion. For even the beasts of the field maintain their appointed order, and the birds of the air follow their ordained patterns; only the human being, endowed with reason and free will, chooses to deviate from the path that the Creator has set before him. The vineyard that is not pruned will run to wild branches and bear only sour fruit; so too the soul that is not disciplined will produce only the bitter fruits of vice. Therefore I counsel you to submit yourself to the divine Husbandman, who prunes not to destroy but to make fruitful, who cuts away not in anger but in love. For every branch in Christ that does not bear fruit, the Father takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. For let us not be deceived by appearances: the vineyard that looks flourishing may be rotten at the root, and the tree that appears barren may be storing its strength for a magnificent flowering. God's ways are not our ways, and his timing is not our timing. What he prunes, he prunes for fruitfulness; what he uproots, he uproots for replanting. The wise cultivator does not mourn the loss of a dead branch but rejoices that the living tree has been freed to bear better fruit. So too should we receive the disciplines of God — not with resentment but with gratitude, not with despair but with hope, knowing that the one who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ.
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
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