The Three Renunciations

We must now speak of the renunciations. Tradition and the authority of Holy Scripture show us three of them, and every one of us ought to complete them with the greatest zeal. The first is the one by which, as far as the body is concerned, we make light of all the wealth and goods of this world. The second is the one by which we reject the habits and vices and former attachments of soul and flesh. The third is the one by which we draw our soul away from all present and visible things, contemplate only the things to come, and set our heart on what is invisible. [a]

We read that the Lord commanded Abraham to do all three of these at once, when he said to him: “Go out from your country, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house.” First he said, “from your country,” that is, from the goods of this world and earthly riches. Second, “from your kindred,” that is, from our former life and habits and sins, which cling to us from our very birth and are joined to us, as it were, by ties of family and kinship. Third, “from your father’s house,” that is, from every memory of this world that the sight of the eyes can supply. For of the two fathers, that is, the one who is to be forsaken and the one who is to be sought, David speaks this way in the person of God: “Listen, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear; forget also your own people and your father’s house.” The one who says, “Listen, O daughter,” is certainly a Father; and yet he testifies that the one whose house and people he urges her to forget is no less a father of his daughter.

This happens when, having died with Christ to the elemental things of this world, we no longer look, as the apostle says, at “the things that are seen, but at those that are not seen; for the things that are not seen are eternal.” Then, going out in heart from this temporary and visible home, we turn our eyes and heart toward the one in which we are to remain forever. We will succeed in this when, while we walk in the flesh, we are no longer at war with the Lord according to the flesh, and show in deed and action the truth of that saying of the blessed apostle: “Our way of life is in heaven.”

To these three kinds of renunciation the three books of Solomon fittingly correspond. Proverbs answers to the first renunciation, since in it the desires for fleshly things and earthly sins are held in check. Ecclesiastes corresponds to the second, since there everything that is done under the sun is declared to be vanity. The Song of Songs corresponds to the third, for in it the soul, soaring above all visible things, is actually joined to the word of God by the contemplation of heavenly things.