St Peter of Damascus: I do not know what to ask for. If I ask for life, I fear the trials of life...
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Lessons by our Holy Fathers
I see how the first-created man was sent into exile (cf. Gen. 3:23); how Cain became his brother’s murderer (cf. Gen. 4:8); how Canaan was cursed (cf. Gen. 9:25); I see the citizens of Sodom burned by fire (cf. Gen. 19:24-25); Esau banished (cf. Gen. 25:33); I see the Israelites subjected to God’s wrath (cf. Num. 14:34); I see Gehazi and Judas, the apostle, cast out because they were sick with avarice (cf. 2 Kgs. 5:26-27; Matt. 26:15,24); I see David, the great prophet and king, lamenting his double sin (cf. Ps. 51); I see Solomon, for all his wisdom, fallen (cf. 1 Kgs. 11:911); I see how one of the seven deacons and one of the forty martyrs lapsed, as St Basil the Great says; Gleefully the prince of evil entrapped the mean-spirited Judas, one of the twelve; he snatched man from Eden, and ensnared one of the forty martyrs. Grieving for him the same Basil the Great says, ‘Foolish and worthy of our tears is he, for he went astray in both lives: in this life he was destroyed by fire and in the next went to eternal fire. And I see many others, numberless, who fell; not only unbelievers, but also many of the fathers, in spite of all their labors.
St Peter of Damascus
Book1 A Treasury of Divine Knowledge
The First Stage of Contemplation
