Letter 234

Isidore of PelusiumUnknown|isidore pelusium
From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk at Pelusium
To: Agathodeamon
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore maps the three stages of the spiritual life — beginning, middle, and end — and describes what characterizes each.

The path of the spiritual life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning is harsh — it requires breaking habits that have become second nature, and the resistance is greatest when the change is newest. The middle is where the real work happens: the disciplines are established, the progress is real but not dramatic, and the temptation is either to relax or to be discouraged by the slowness of change. The end — for those who persist — is a kind of stability that the beginner cannot imagine and the one in the middle cannot quite picture yet.

Know which stage you are in. What is required of you is different at each stage. Do not expect the middle to feel like the beginning, or the end to feel like the middle.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.