¹ O you, life, how many you have deceived, how many you have seduced, how many you have blinded! While you fly, you are nothing; while you seem to be, you are but a shadow; while you are exalted, you are but smoke. You flee daily, and you come daily; in coming, you flee; and in fleeing, you come. You are unlike in outcome, yet alike in origin; unlike in luxury, yet alike in transience. Sweet to the foolish, bitter to the wise.

² Those who love you do not know you, and those who despise you are the ones who truly understand you. Therefore, you are not truthful, but deceitful: you present yourself as if true, yet reveal yourself as false.

³ What, then, are you, O human life? You are the way of mortals, not life itself—beginning in sin and ending in death. Indeed, you would have been true if the sin of the first human transgression had not interrupted you. But you became fleeting and mortal when you consigned all your travelers to death.

⁴ Thus, you are a way to life, not life itself; for you are not true. You are a path, but not a smooth one—long for some, short for others, broad for some, narrow for others, joyful for some, sorrowful for others. Yet for all, you hasten onward without pause or recall. You are a way, I say—a way—but not one manifest to all. Many see you, but few understand that you are a path. So subtle and deceptive are you that only a few recognize you as a road.

⁵ Therefore, you must be questioned, not believed; passed through, not clung to—O wretched human life! For no one dwells upon a road, but rather walks upon it, so that those who journey upon the way may come to dwell in their homeland.

⁶ Why, then, O mortal life, are you inhabited, loved, and claimed? You are loved and claimed by the foolish and the lost, but despised by the wise and avoided by those who seek salvation. You are to be feared, O human life, and greatly guarded, for you are so fleeting, so slippery, so perilous, so brief, so uncertain, that you dissolve like a shadow, or an image, or a cloud—or into nothingness, mere emptiness.

⁷ Since, therefore, you are nothing, O mortal life—whether an image, fleeting like a bird, uncertain as a cloud, fragile as a shadow, or passing like a dream—one must journey through you with the utmost care, caution, and swiftness, so that, like travelers, we may hasten with understanding toward the true homeland.

⁸ One must be secure in what has passed but vigilant about what remains. For it profits you nothing to have ascended, unless you also escape what lies ahead. Indeed, this life [or rather, this way] must be considered a journey and an ascent.

⁹ Let us not seek on the road what is to be found in our homeland. For toil and labor belong to the journey, while rest and security are prepared in the homeland. We must beware, in case we become secure on the way and fail to reach our true home.

¹⁰ There are, indeed, some in this journey who are idle, complacent, and envious, as if they were not on the road but already in their homeland. They go toward their homeland not willingly but reluctantly—yet, alas, they have already lost it. For here on the road, they have exhausted themselves for an earthly homeland, and in exchange for a brief life, they have purchased eternal death.

¹¹ Unhappy are they, rejoicing in a fraudulent trade: they loved what was fleeting and not their own, and neglected what was eternal and truly theirs.

¹² Therefore, however delightful, however alluring, however splendid earthly things may be, let us shun what is foreign and temporal, lest we lose what is our own and eternal. Let us be faithful in what is another’s, so that we may become heirs of what is our own—granted to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

¹³ Amen.