Nilus of Ancyra→Marcian|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted
To the same person.
You asked me why we first wash our hands outside and then enter the house of the Lord in this manner to pray. Learn the intelligible before the perceptible. For just as one washes off the bodily filth with water, so through prayer one makes the soul radiant. For no human being is clean from transgression, even should someone in his life vie with Moses, that great lawgiver. All of us human beings, therefore, have need every day of the cleansings that come through prayer; for prayer washes away every impurity that comes upon us. For in respect to the fearful baptism we were washed once at the beginning of the faith, and it is not permitted that the faithful and orthodox person be baptized a second time; but in respect to our needing always to scour off the stains that form upon us out of inattention and negligence, and to scrape them away, and to cast them far outside, away from us, at nearly every hour, we have need of this washing, since we are in constant contact with faults both intelligible and perceptible, both voluntary and involuntary. For I think that Job spoke on our behalf, saying, "If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse myself with clean hands, you have dyed me sufficiently in filth" [Job 9:30-31]. Therefore, just as throughout the whole of our hard-pressed life we also drink, so too the scouring of ourselves goes on for us without ceasing, since it is not possible for any human being whatsoever to be found blameless and unstained altogether. For this reason, believe the Prophet who cries out, "You shall wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow" [Psalm 50:9 LXX / 51:7], and Paul who writes, "Let us draw near to God with a true heart, sprinkled clean in our understanding from an evil conscience" [Hebrews 10:22], and what follows.
You asked me why we first wash our hands outside and then enter the house of the Lord in this manner to pray. Learn the intelligible before the perceptible. For just as one washes off the bodily filth with water, so through prayer one makes the soul radiant. For no human being is clean from transgression, even should someone in his life vie with Moses, that great lawgiver. All of us human beings, therefore, have need every day of the cleansings that come through prayer; for prayer washes away every impurity that comes upon us. For in respect to the fearful baptism we were washed once at the beginning of the faith, and it is not permitted that the faithful and orthodox person be baptized a second time; but in respect to our needing always to scour off the stains that form upon us out of inattention and negligence, and to scrape them away, and to cast them far outside, away from us, at nearly every hour, we have need of this washing, since we are in constant contact with faults both intelligible and perceptible, both voluntary and involuntary. For I think that Job spoke on our behalf, saying, "If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse myself with clean hands, you have dyed me sufficiently in filth" [Job 9:30-31]. Therefore, just as throughout the whole of our hard-pressed life we also drink, so too the scouring of ourselves goes on for us without ceasing, since it is not possible for any human being whatsoever to be found blameless and unstained altogether. For this reason, believe the Prophet who cries out, "You shall wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow" [Psalm 50:9 LXX / 51:7], and Paul who writes, "Let us draw near to God with a true heart, sprinkled clean in our understanding from an evil conscience" [Hebrews 10:22], and what follows.
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.