Julianus Pomerius

I told you that by praying you could accomplish what you could not effect by teaching….

A Patristic Treasury: Early Church Wisdom for Today, edited by James R. Payton, Jr

For how many of my insurmountable problems do I pray, asking God for guidance, for a solution? When looking at conditions around me, around my community, around the nation, around the world – do I hand these over to God, in repetitive prayer?

Matthew 7: 7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

We are told to ask, seek and knock. Not one time, not quietly, not passively. If asking doesn’t get us there, and in seeking we find no answer, start knocking – pounding the door with repetitive prayer.

How many times do I knock, for how many issues? Not never, but not enough.

Sin

Let a soul before it sins look to the penalty that is due to sin. Let it weight against carnal enticements the torture and anguish that usually pursue the sinner, and no sin will please it nor will any carnal delight tempt it to sin.

I recall a skit on the Simpsons: Homer was mixing mayonnaise and vodka, or some such. Marge reminded Homer of how this completely turned his stomach every time after binging on this concoction. Homer replied: “That’s tomorrow-Homer’s problem.”

I think that is how many consider the consequences of sin. I think one need be in an advanced state of life with Christ for this thought by Julianus to be true in his life.

Pride

If pride is the beginning of every sin and concupiscence is the punishment of sin, evil concupiscence cannot be overcome unless pride is first guarded against by the virtue of humility, which is its enemy.

Not only is pride itself a sin; no sin in the past, present, or future could be committed without it. For all sin is nothing but contempt of God, by which His precepts are trodden underfoot; and that which prompts people to this contempt of God is pride alone.

All sin is built on pride; the Christian life is built on humility.

If there is one thing that only prayer can accomplish, it is humility. By definition, humility cannot be the product of human effort.

Faith and Reason

Faith does not come from reason; reason comes from faith.

Otherwise, we just get to make up our truth.

Truth…does not first become great when great men teach it; no, truth itself makes great those who have the capacity of teaching it or learning it.

Truth is objective, to be discovered. We must learn it, not invent it. If truth is not this, not objective, we make God a liar, inconsistent, and of no worth. It is this truth, God’s objective truth, that offers the path to make men great.

What further does one seek whose Maker becomes his all?

Once one has the perfect everything, there is nothing else.

Or what will suffice that person whom God does not suffice?

If the perfect everything does not suffice, then nothing will. Nothing: nihilism. I guess it is nihilism that suffices (superficially) when God does not.

The Log in My Eye…

It is a fact that one is ignorant of his own sins, which he ought to acknowledge and mourn, even while he pries and probes into those of others.

Not Everyone Who Says “Lord, Lord…”

A soul is doubly guilty if it not only fails to do good, by which it might live spiritually, but makes a pretense of good, under which it may live badly and hide.

These are the people who, content to have renounced the world in word only, not in deed, live in a worldly manner and hide their faults under the empty profession of a better life, and, cloaked by the name of pretended religion, assume a reputation for virtue instead of true virtue … Displeased with what they do in secret, they are eager to seem great, not to become great.

Without a foundation on God, on humility, on serving Him and His will, our works are worthless.

Humility

Humility renders human beings like the holy angels.

Virtue

When anyone, won by the convincing fairness of virtue, has broken to some extent with his former way of life, immediately another temptation against which he must struggle confronts him.

The devil is not concerned with the one who is not virtuous, or the one not striving for virtue. The closer to virtue, the more the devil will attack – for it is the truly virtuous who are the danger to Satan.

Without God’s gift, virtues can be neither sought nor possessed, nor can their imitation, made to resemble virtues, be avoided.

Prayer: ask, seek, knock. It is the only way.

If one who lives religiously, temperately, soberly, and compassionately gives the credit to God, by whose gift he is assisted to live well, he lives according to God – spiritually.

And for those who superficially live that way without giving credit to God, any reward they receive will be on earth, offered by humans.

It will profit us nothing to have learned what we should do unless we strive to carry out what we have learned.

Something that weighs on me in regards to my work on this blog. My intention is not a Christian academic journey, but a Christian lived journey.

The Contemplative Life

This is the title of his only extant work.

Let the one who pursues the contemplative life approach his Creator to be enlightened in heart; let that person watchfully serve Him by contemplating Him and untiringly enjoying Him; let that person desire Him continually….

Even ten minutes of this before prayer would go a long way for many of us, myself certainly.

What is it to love God, except to be occupied with Him in our soul, to conceive the desire of enjoying the sight of Him, to have hatred of sin and contempt of the world, to love one’s neighbor also (whom He decreed should be loved in Himself)?

Other

We should prefer to incur the enmity of those who are unwilling to be corrected rather than to risk offending God by humoring sinners.

The truth of this has hit home to me recently. I will say this much, as the details are quite close to home: we are told that love is love – in other words, any amorous relationship between any two sentient (or non-sentient) beings is love just like any other.

But this isn’t love. There is no love without discipline. I think about the child whose parents never tell them “No.” Is this love? Hardly. More likely, it will lead to depression…at best.

The greatest love is the love for another’s soul – their eternal condition. Is there room in this for “love is love”? Yet, who will earn enmity: the one who accepts this lie or the one who speaks truth in love?

Biographies / Sources

Little is known about the life of Julianus. He was born in North Africa sometime in the latter fifth century, moved to France and was teaching by 497, dying sometime in the sixth century.