Translation:Cassian Conferences XXII/Chapter 5
1. Theonas: Indeed, with all the diligence that is in us, we should apply ourselves, so that we might maintain the unstained purity of chastity in that time especially, in which we elect to approach the venerable altar, and with the most alert attention we should take care, lest the blamelessness of our flesh which previously we maintained, in that particular time in which we are preparing ourselves for the communion of the life-giving banquet, should be cheated from us at night.
2. But if that most vile enemy, in order to withdraw from us the medicine of heavenly cure, has violated the safekeeping of our sleeping mind, provided only that it has been contaminated by no blameable sensual desire, no assent to delight, but merely some voiding produced by natural necessity, or at least drawn out by the attack of the devil without any pleasurable sense to create an obstacle to our sanctification, we can and should confidently approach the grace of the life-giving food. But if it is through our fault that this accumulation has been discharged, in accordance with our consciences, let us beware that apostolic dictum: Whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Let each person therefore examine themself, and thus let them eat of that bread and drink from that cup.
3. For whoever eats and drinks the bread and cup of the Lord unworthily, eats and drinks judgment on themselves, not discerning the body,[1] that is to say, in no way severing that celestial meal from the utility of common food, nor judging it to be such, that only the pure in mind and flesh ought to presume to. Then he continues: So amongst you many are sick and weak, and many sleep,[2] that is, saying that spiritual illness and death is principally generated by this presumption. For many people, who presume to this by a forbidden usurpation, are infirm in faith and weak in mind, that is to say entangled in the sluggishness of the passions, and sleeping the sleep of sin, are never aroused from this lethal slumber by saving disquiet.
4. Then it follows: But if we judged ourselves, we would by no means be judged[3]: that is, if judged ourselves unworthy of receiving the sacrament, whenever we were prevented by the wound of sin, we would thereby so devote ourselves to ensuring that, through the correction of repentance, we would be able worthily to approach it, and so not, as shameful, being chastised by the most severe scourging of the Lord, that even thus goaded to the healing of our wounds we might hasten back, lest held unworthy in the present world of the briefest of reproof, we be condemned in the future one together with the sinners of this world.
5. Which even in Leviticus is taught by the clearest of condemnations: Everyone who is clean shall eat meat, but any soul in which there is uncleanness that shall eat from the meat of the saving sacrifice which is of the Lord, he will be destroyed before the face of the Lord.[4] In Deuteronomy also, the unclean person is similarly segregated in a mystical way from the spiritual camp: If there is anyone among you, who is polluted by a nocturnal dream, let them leave the camp, and not return before they have washed in water in the evening; and after the setting of the sun, they may return to the camp.[5]