Section LXXXIV

For everyone always had that by which, if he had willed, he could have procured salvation for himself. “Fathers,” Macarius concludes¹,

who are upon earth generate children from their own nature,

and instruct those who are born with every care as their own sons until they become perfect men and successors and heirs. For the whole purpose and every endeavor of fathers tends from the beginning to this: that they may generate children and have heirs; and if they do not generate, they are affected with the greatest sadness and grief, just as, on the contrary, when they have begotten children, they are filled with joy.

Τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου σωτηρίας φροντίσας, πᾶσαν οἰκονομίαν καὶ σπουδὴν ἐπετέλεσεν ἐξ ἀρχῆς διὰ πατέρων, πατριαρχῶν, διὰ νόμου καὶ προφητῶν· ἔσχατον καὶ αὐτὸς παραγενόμενος, καὶ σταυροῦ αἰσχύνης καταφρονήσας, ὑπέμεινε θάνατον· καὶ οὗτος ὅλος ὁ κάματος, καὶ ἡ σπουδὴ αὐτοῦ γέγονεν, ὅπως γεννήσῃ ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ ἐκ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ φύσεως τέκνα ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος, ἄνωθεν εὐδοκήσας γεννηθῆναι ἐκ τῆς αὐτοῦ θεότητος· καὶ ὥσπερ οἱ πατέρες οὗτοι, ἐὰν μὴ γεννήσωσι, λυποῦνται· οὕτως καὶ ὁ Κύριος ἀγαπήσας τὸ γένος τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὡς ἰδίαν εἰκόνα, ἠθέλησεν αὐτοὺς ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ σπέρματος γεννῆσαι τῆς θεότητος. Εἴ τινες οὖν μὴ θελήσωσιν εἰς τοιαύτην γέννησιν ἐλθεῖν, καὶ ἐκ τῆς γαστρὸς τοῦ πνεύματος τῆς θεότητος γεννηθῆναι, πολλὴν λύπην ὁ Χριστὸς ἀναδέχεται, παθὼν δι᾽ αὐτοὺς καὶ ὑπομείνας, ἵνα τούτους σώσῃ.

In the same manner our Lord Jesus Christ, solicitous for the salvation of man, accomplished every dispensation and endeavor from the beginning through the ministry of the Fathers, the Patriarchs, the Law, and the Prophets; at last he himself also came and, contemning the ignominy of the cross, endured death. Therefore, all that labor and his endeavor consisted in this: that he might generate from himself, from his own nature, sons from the Spirit, being well pleased that they should be born from above from his divinity. And just as these fathers are distressed by sadness and grief if they have not generated, so the Lord, loving the human race as his own image, willed to generate them from the divine seed itself. Therefore, if any are unwilling to come to such a generation and to be born from the womb of the divine Spirit, Christ undergoes the greatest grief, who suffered and endured for them that he might save them.

Wherefore nothing is more true than what another Macarius, surnamed the Alexandrian, confirms: that only those perish eternally who,

although they could, were unwilling to use the mercy of the Creator and Reformer. For, having first described² the condition after death of those faithful who were guilty of sins, and then proceeding to those who died before they were initiated by baptism, he adds³:

But the rationale is not equal for those who did not receive holy baptism. For these unilluminated souls (τὰς ἀφωτίστους ψυχάς), when they have departed from the body, cruel angels receive harshly, striking and pressing upon them: “Hither, hither, impious soul; see who Christ, thy Lord and the Lord of all, is, ὃν οὐκ ἐθέλησας γνῶναι, ἐν ἀνέσει διάγουσα ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, whom thou wast unwilling to know while passing this life negligently. Know him at last, condemned as thou art to perpetual punishments.”