May He Establish Your Hearts Blameless in Holiness

And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.  (1 Thess 3:12-13)

I swear on the very Logos, who for me is greatest God,

source from source, of the immortal Father,

image of the archetype, a nature its begetter's equal,

who descended even into human existence from heaven;

I swear I will not, diabolically minded, cast off the Great Mind

with heretic mind, nor the Word with heretic word.

If I should sunder the divinity of the luminous Trinity,

hearkening to the will of this inimical age;

if the great seat should ever goad my mind to madness,

or should I lay on my hand with heretical desire;

if I should prefer a mortal guardian to God,

securing my line to a weak rock;

if I should ever have a haughty spirit in good fortune,

or confronted with ills, conversely fall feeble;

if feigning righteousness I should dispense a justice somehow skewed;

if the supercilious should receive my esteem before the holy;

if seeing the base somehow at peace or crags on the route of the noble

I should veer from the right path;

if envy should dissolve my spirit; if I should mock

the stumbling of another, even one unholy, as if holding my own step secure;

if my mind should collapse with tumid anger, and if unbridled

my tongue race and my heart turn a wonton eye;

if I should hate someone fruitlessly, and if I should punish

my enemy stealthily or even openly;

if from my home I should dismiss a beggar empty-handed,

or a spirit still thirsting for a heavenly word;

may Christ attend another more gently, but as for my efforts,

even up to my white hairs, may the breeze take them.

By these laws I bind my existence.  And should I achieve

the fulfillment of my desire, Eternal Christ, thanks be to you.

Gregory Nazianzen, Poemata de seipso 2.1.2
Trans. Suzanne Abrams Rebillard