Nilus of Ancyra→Kyriakos|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted
To the same person.
A man can be with Christ even while he is in the body, according to what the Apostle [Paul] said: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" [Galatians 2:20]. But much more so once he has departed from the poor flesh, as the same man again writes: "I long to be released and to be with Christ" [Philippians 1:23]. For the soul, being an intelligible thing, reaches out for intelligible things, inasmuch as it is a divine inbreathing and a wondrous piece of workmanship; and so, being weighed down by the earthly body on account of its mortality, it now naturally desires to be dissolved, so that purely, free from care, and without fear of death it may be together with the Master, having departed from what is mortal toward what is immortal and unchangeable. And after the present dissolution, in the resurrection, having received back its own body incorruptible and immortal, made alive by the Holy Spirit, it thereafter dwells eternally in unbroken gladness, and in blessedness, and in sinlessness. For you must be restored to the pure nature, that is, to a condition that is divine and ageless, free of grief, and released from every anxiety.
A man can be with Christ even while he is in the body, according to what the Apostle [Paul] said: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" [Galatians 2:20]. But much more so once he has departed from the poor flesh, as the same man again writes: "I long to be released and to be with Christ" [Philippians 1:23]. For the soul, being an intelligible thing, reaches out for intelligible things, inasmuch as it is a divine inbreathing and a wondrous piece of workmanship; and so, being weighed down by the earthly body on account of its mortality, it now naturally desires to be dissolved, so that purely, free from care, and without fear of death it may be together with the Master, having departed from what is mortal toward what is immortal and unchangeable. And after the present dissolution, in the resurrection, having received back its own body incorruptible and immortal, made alive by the Holy Spirit, it thereafter dwells eternally in unbroken gladness, and in blessedness, and in sinlessness. For you must be restored to the pure nature, that is, to a condition that is divine and ageless, free of grief, and released from every anxiety.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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.