Worldly Desires, That Is, Sins, Shorten Life
The Wise Man: O world, I have told you that I bend my ear and listen to all things, and just as the bee searches through every flower and every place and gathers sweet honey wherever it may find it, and where it finds bitterness, leaves it there, so too I, having heard all your words, both good and evil, shall listen to this one as well. Since you offer me one day out of a week — six days to act according to my own will, and one according to yours — let me first reckon the days of my life, and if I find enough time to delight and make merry to the full, as you tell me, I shall do this too. But if I do not find sufficient time, but only enough to begin and end, then to what profit and by what reckoning shall I heed your word?
Always Remember Three Things: Death, the Resurrection, and the Righteous Judgment to Come
The World: Listen to me, I pray you, a little, that I may show you a fine reckoning, which I know will please you greatly — for indeed it has good reason to please you; and should it not please you, you shall make a reckoning of your own. Let us say the length of your life is a hundred years; if you count fifty weeks per year, that makes five thousand weeks; taking one day out of each of these, that makes five thousand days, which amounts to thirteen years and three hundred and twenty days, and if you take two days out of each week, that makes nearly twenty-eight years. Now reckon it this way: before reaching the age of twenty, either you had no opportunity, or you were under the obedience of another and could not spend your time in pleasure; but once you reach this age of twenty, count the number of days from those five thousand weeks — of which, as I have said, taking one day each makes thirteen years and three hundred and twenty days, and two days each makes twenty-seven years and two hundred and eighty days — and so, from the age of twenty, eat, drink, play, delight yourself and be merry until the age of forty-eight or even fifty. And from then on, if you wish to turn your mind also to heavenly things, you still have fifty years left; in this way you will be able both to spend your time in the world and, having reached the age of a hundred years, ending honorably, to inherit also the kingdom of heaven. Is this reckoning not fine and clever, good and worthy of praise for both sides? So, if you wish to heed me, torment your mind no longer, tossing it about in vain and to no purpose to find some other, better reckoning, for this is the perfect reckoning and the good way. Go, then, as a good and worthy champion, along this path.
The World changes her face once more, and it is precisely this change that must be watched closely. She no longer asks for one day a week — a request the Wise Man had already weighed and found unfitting unless he had „enough time.” This time she comes with something far more deceptive: an entire ledger of life, divided mathematically, precise down to the last day — fifty years of indulgence, fifty years of repentance, and, at the end, the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven guaranteed as an arithmetical result. It is the oldest temptation of all: postponement.
The very title Cantemir places before the World’s answer — „always remember three things: death, the resurrection, and the righteous judgment to come” — is, in fact, the weapon that overturns her whole calculation before it is even spoken. The remembrance of death (mnēmē thanatou) is, in the ascetic tradition, one of the most effective spiritual weapons: St. John Climacus places it as a rung of the Ladder, saying that whoever truly lives with death before his eyes will not be able to sin, and Sirach writes: „In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin” (Sirach 7:36). The World’s entire reckoning rests on an assumption no one has the right to make: that one will live a hundred years, neatly divided into stages. But Christ Himself undoes this very assumption in the parable of the rich fool, who likewise planned his years to come, saying to his soul, „take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” and to whom God replies: „Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee” (Luke 12:19-20).
St. John Chrysostom calls this postponement „the most cunning of all the devil’s snares,” because it does not openly deny the Kingdom, but merely delays entry into it indefinitely, leaving repentance for „later” — a later that no one has ever been guaranteed. The Savior Himself warns: „Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come” (Matthew 24:42), and Abba Evagrius called this thought of postponement one of the subtlest tricks of the enemy, precisely because it clothes itself in the garment of prudence and good sense, not of open sin.
This is why the Wise Man does not answer with a hasty „yes” or „no,” but first asks the right question: will he, in truth, have „enough time”? This is the whole difference between worldly reckoning and spiritual wisdom — one calculates the years as though they were man’s guaranteed possession, the other knows, with St. Isaac the Syrian, that repentance is not a stage reserved for old age, but the daily labor of a watchful heart, which does not purchase its salvation from the years remaining, but gains it, through grace, from this very moment.
