|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE | LIBRARIES | BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | FREEWARE | BOOKSTORE |
|
|
Translated by W. Curtis.
Origen Resources OnLine & in Print
|
104 Pages
Page 79
Besides all these, being above all a creation and formation of God, we owe it to preserve a certain disposition towards Him with love that is from a whole heart and from a whole strength and from a whole mind, and if we fail to achieve this we remain God's debtors, sinning against the Lord. And who in that case shall pray for us? For if a man sinning sin against a man, then shall they pray for him: but if he sin against the Lord, who shall pray for him? as Eli says in the first book of Kings.
Moreover, we are debtors to Christ who bought us with His own blood, just as every house slave is also debtor to his purchaser for the sum of money given for him. We have also a certain indebtedness to the Holy Spirit: we are paying it when we do not grieve Him in whom we were sealed unto a day of redemption, and when, without grieving Him, we bear the fruits demanded of us, He being present with us and quickening our soul.
And even though we do not know precisely which is our individual angel that looks upon the face of the Father in heaven, it is at least manifest to each of us upon reflection that we are debtors to him also for certain things. And inasmuch as we are in a world theater both of angels and of men, one must know that as the performer in a theater owes it to say or do certain things in sight of the spectators, and if he fails to perform this is punished as having insulted the whole theater, so we, too, owe to the whole world, to all the angels and the race of men alike, those things which, if we have the will, we shall learn of wisdom.
Apart from those more general debts, there is a certain indebtedness to a widow who is being provided for by the church, a second to a deacon, another to an elder, while that to a bishop is heaviest of all--being demanded by the Savior of the whole church and avenged if not paid. As already said, the Apostle mentions a certain common debt between husband and wife, when he says: Let the husband pay his indebtedness to the wife and wife likewise to the husband, and continues Deprive not one another.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/prayer.asp?pg=79
