When God made human beings, he put in them a kind of divine faculty, more alive and splendid than a spark, to illuminate the spirit and show it the difference between good and evil. It is the conscience with that law which is part of its nature.
The patriarchs and all the saints were able to please God by obeying the law of conscience. But people trampled on it and muddied it with their sinfulness. As a consequence we needed a written law, we needed the prophets, we needed the actual coming of our Lord Jesus to rediscover, to re-awaken, to rekindle in us the spark which had been smothered.
So now it depends on us whether we smother it again or allow it to shine out and give us light through our obedience.
If our conscience tells us to do something and we do it, our conscience is still alive. If we do not do what it tells us, we trample on it again and bit by bit yet again we smother it. In the end it will no longer be able to speak plainly to us because of the clods of earth we throw on it. Like a dirty light it will show us things half in shadow, so that we cannot see clearly.
Just as in muddy water you cannot recognize your face, so we will gradually discover that we cannot perceive what our conscience is telling us. In fact, we might even imagine that we have no conscience at all. But there is no one without a conscience. It is, as we said previously, a divine faculty and it never dies.
Dorotheus of Gaza
Teachings, 3 (SC92, pp.209ff.)
~ Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, A Patristic Breviary: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
Threefold Obedience to Conscience
To keep our conscience dear must inspire all our dealings with God, our neigh hour and material things.
In the first place, in relation to God: we must take care never to go against his commandments, even in things that nobody will ever see. For instance, we must keep a watch over our thoughts, and when an impure desire comes into our hearts we must overcome it quickly instead of consenting to it. We may see our neighbour do something odd and judge him guilty in our minds, thus offending against charity. We must be careful about everything we do in secret.
Then, in relation to our neighbour: we must never do anything that, in our opinion, may upset or offend, whether it be in our acts, our words, our attitudes or our expressions. I repeat, even a look can be offensive. Every time we know we are behaving with the intention of hurting or making another feel bad, we defile our conscience because we are aware of this intention.
Finally, in relation to material things: we should be careful not to make bad use of them, losing them or wasting them, even if they are things of little value. Treating our clothes badly, not being happy with sufficient food to satisfy the necessities of the stomach but seeking always more refined and costly delicacies, all of this goes against our conscience.
Dorotheus of Gaza
Teachings, 3 (SC92, pp.215ff.)
~ Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, A Patristic Breviary: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
