Walking the Tightrope of Remembering God

I would say, then, that the saints who keep a firm hold on the remembrance of God, and are carried along, as it were, with their steps hung on a line stretched out on high, may rightly be compared to tightrope walkers, commonly called funambuli. They stake all their safety and their life on the path of that very narrow rope, and they have no doubt that they will at once meet a most dreadful death if their foot swerves or trips in the very slightest degree, or strays off the line of the course on which alone there is safety. While they ply their steps through the air with marvelous skill, if they do not keep their steps to that all too narrow path with careful and anxious control, the earth, which is the natural base and the most solid and safest foundation for everyone, becomes for them an immediate and certain danger. This is not because its nature is changed, but because they fall headlong onto it by the weight of their bodies. [a]

So too the unwearied goodness of God and his unchanging nature harm no one. It is we ourselves who, by falling from on high and sinking to the depths, are the authors of our own death; or rather, the very fall becomes death to the one who falls. For it says: “Woe to them, for they have departed from me. They will be laid waste, because they have transgressed against me.” And again: “Woe to them when I depart from them.” For “your own wickedness will correct you, and your apostasy will rebuke you. Know and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for you to have forsaken the Lord your God.” For “every man is bound by the cords of his sins.” To such people the Lord aptly directs this rebuke: “Look,” he says, “all you who kindle a fire, surrounded with flames: walk in the light of your fire and in the flames you have kindled.” And again: “He who kindles wickedness will perish by it.”