The Writings of Gregory of Narek

established and restored for the ark of rest returned from captivity—which is a parable of the recovery of the lost soul—and may it be acceptable to your will.

B. But since the sound of your awesome judgment of retribution, having resounded strongly in the valley of vengeance, begets within me a double uprising of strife—foretelling now the movements of contradictory agitations that are manifest within my own self, a tumult of crowds, striking against one another with sword and weapon, the hosts of thoughts, the evil against the good—and having captured me into death according to the ancient event that occurred before the grace arrived unto me, which the chosen one of the apostolic orders, Paul the Apostle, having taken Moses the lawgiver as an example, shows to be victorious through the salvation of Christ. For if the day of the Lord is near, as the scripture says, in the narrow valley of the arena of Jehoshaphat a valley associated with the final judgment and the central torrent, the small theater of the meeting of rights, which by this temporal life images forth for me the things to come, then all the more has the kingdom of God—I being made flesh—drawn near unto me, finding me greatly an occasion for harm, for many interests, for the various parts of the truthful accusers, more than the supervision of his hand there once upon a time in the blows against the Edomites ancient enemies of Israel and the Philistines and other barbarian nations. For that choice was measured by years, but the punishment of my debts has no limit. Alas, a pit and an inescapable snare, according to the prophet and the author of parables. Having arrived at my doors in great distress, to draw the shame of eternal duration here.

For it is yours alone to perform the miracle of the fruits of medicine in the means of life for the all-wavering uncertainties of the dangers of souls, the cleanser of all, praised in the ineffable glory of the boundless height, forever and ever.