The cypress is green in summer and in winter alike. The basil is fragrant in summer and in winter alike.
Lambs are slaughtered in summer and in winter alike.
Beware of wolves, when they attack you, one from the front and another from behind. But beware still more of two sins: fear of sinners and contempt for sinners. For your greenness will vanish like the greenness of the willow. And your fragrance will turn to unfragrance. And your humility will become pride. And sinners will call you their namesakes.
Righteous ones, sin is powerlessness, and fear of sinners is fear of powerlessness. The sinner is afraid of the dead righteous man within himself, and twice as much of the living righteous man beside him.
Do not fear him who fears you twofold.
Is not the Lord the courage of the righteous? Is not the Almighty Lord the general of the army of the righteous? Truly small is the righteousness of those who stand beside the Almighty and fear the all-powerless.
If your righteousness is the righteousness of God, your might is divine might. In the beginning divine might seems weakness to sinners, for it is too gentle, and tender-hearted, and long-suffering. But in the end, when the divine victory comes, sinners see with horror that their house has been washed out by underground water, and is crashing down beyond recall.
Like grass, God's victory grows slowly and silently. But once it has grown, it can no longer be trampled down nor mown down.
Sinners are a flock without a shepherd; you are not. And when the shepherd leaves you, he does not leave you to abandon you, but to sift you through a fine sieve. Your shepherd will return soon, and you will die of shame for your betrayal.
Righteous ones, sin is sickness, and contempt for sinners is contempt for the sick. He who gives of his own health to the sick multiplies his health. Contempt for the sick undermines the health of the healthy.
Sin sits at the table of those who fear to sit at the table of sinners. Sin enters the house of those who fear to enter the house of sinners. He who turns back from his road, that he might not meet a sinner, returns home laden with sin.
At every gate of your soul set a watchman, that pride may not enter your temple. For if it enters, it will extinguish at one stroke the candles of all your virtues. And you will be like a skin filled with wine, when it is pierced with a needle.
Short is this day of life, but true life knows no night.
He who dies of sin on this day will die a death that knows no day.
Righteous ones, learn school after school without weariness. Whoever finishes one school of righteousness, the Lord sends him to a higher and harder one. The sinner is tormented by ignorance, the righteous man is tormented by learning. But truly the torment of the righteous is sweeter than the torment of the sinner, as returning to one's homeland is sweeter than sitting in — a foreign land.
Merciful Heavenly Theotokos, preserve all those who have set out upon the path of righteousness, that they may not be frightened of sinners, and may not despise sinners.
That fear may not make them God-betrayers, and that contempt for sinners may not make them man-slayers.
That their half-righteousness may not be merely a little height, from which they will fall the deeper into perdition.