Concepts create idols; only wonder grasps anything. - St Gregory of Nyssa

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Adornment


Seen on Facebook, Holy Fathers:

The True Adornment Of Woman
By: St. John Chrysostom

Do you wish to adorn your face? Do not do so with gems but with piety and modesty; thus adorned, a man will find your appearance more pleasing to behold. For that other kind of adornment generally arouses suspicions which give rise to jealousy, enmity, strife, and quarrels. For there is nothing more disgusting than a suspiciously beautiful face. But the adornment which comes from almsgiving and modesty drives out all wicked suspicion and draws your husband to you with greater strength than any chain. For natural beauty does not make a face become beautiful as much as does the disposition of him who beholds it, and nothing is more likely to produce this disposition than modesty and piety. Hence, even if a woman be beautiful but her husband hates her, she will appear to him as the ugliest of women; if a woman does not happen to be comely but she pleases her husband, he will find her the fairest of women. Judgments are made not in the light of the nature of what is seen but in the light of the disposition of those who see it.

Adorn your face, therefore, with modesty, piety, almsgiving, benevolence, love, kindliness towards your husband, reasonableness, mildness, and forbearance. These are the pigments of virtue; by these you draw not men but angels to you as your lovers; for these you have God Himself to praise you. When God shall approve of you, He will win over your husband to you in every way; for if wisdom illumines the face of man, much more does virtue make the face of a woman shine forth.

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