¹ Since the Lord grants us life, we have said that human life is like a journey, in which each person, making their way toward eternity, ought to be unconcerned with the desires of others and, as if only carrying the necessities for the journey, content with poverty, so that, attached to no enticements, they may understand that all earthly things are foreign to them. Now let us demonstrate, as we have already said, that this same life is a shadow.

² Does it not seem to you that the life of man on earth is a shadow and an image? It is so uncertain and unstable that it is equal to the nature of a shadow. You see, and yet you do not see; it is, and yet it is not. What has been, you do not see; what will be, you cannot see either. You see only what is, what stands for a while. Take away what is, and you see nothing. Thus, it is unseen as if it did not exist. Therefore, each person sees their own life as a shadow, and from morning to evening, as if in a kind of mirror, they contemplate the vanity of their life.

³ But whatever other similar things exist, one sees them only in dreams. In the same way, one mistakes false things for true ones and is enclosed in vanities instead of the image of truth. What, I ask, is the difference between what you saw yesterday and what you dreamt last night? Do they not both seem equally vain to you today? Indeed, those things that vanish from my sight do not satisfy me more than those that appear in dreams. I find both to be vain. For what I am now, I was not before, and I will not be later. Each hour, I am something different, and I never remain the same.

⁴ I am always moving forward, from the day of my birth to the day of my death, and every day of my life, I change. Yet I do not see how or in what way these changes occur. I can never see my entire life at once. What I was yesterday, I am not today; and what I am today, I will not be tomorrow. Thus, I will always be changeable and in flux throughout the rest of my life. From moment to moment, from moments to hours, from hours to days, I rush toward death with the uncertain span of my life, so that there I may see what is certain and true, and behold my entire life in one view—something impossible for me here.

⁵ O wretched me! If I do not see true life there, when I have never seen it truly here! For it must be true life there, where eternity reigns.

⁶ Flee, then, flee, O shadow of mortal life! Flee from us, and let us flee from you! You flee as you always do, for you are ever fleeting, so that true life may come quickly. Let us flee from you, in case you deceive us, for you are accustomed to ensnaring the slow with your enticing hindrances. Flee, I say, and hasten on, you who have led many astray, who press on to seduce us, and will lead others after us, assigning them to death.

⁷ O how blind and deceptive you are, O uncertain life! You wait for me to seize me; you entice me to persuade me; you plead with me to deceive me; you allure me to trick me. Who is so foolish as to believe you, when you deceive those who love you and mislead those who trust in you? Those who love you are deceived, and those who trust in you are led astray. But those who disregard you are enriched, and those who flee from you are saved. Those who despise you seek God.

⁸ Let us, therefore, flee from you before you flee from us. And since you are mortal, brief, perishable, uncertain, unstable, mobile, changeable, and fleeting, let us be lovers and seekers of God and eternal life rather than of you. Let us flee from you as you flow and flee, lest you condemn us along with your lovers. We must indeed flee from what flees, and we must live as if we were to die each day.

⁹ For what does it matter to us whether we die today or tomorrow? Since we must necessarily die, we should consider death as if it had already long since passed. And since nothing endures before death, we should hasten toward death, so that after death we may see what is true and eternal. Therefore, we must not delay but hasten from the shadow of imagined life to the truth of true life.

¹⁰ Since the path of carnal life is different from the path of spiritual progress, let the soul hasten in its progress just as life hastens in its course. Let the maturity of the soul increase as the fullness of age does. And as the circles of life diminish, so let the number of vices decrease, so that we may leave behind what belongs to the world and carry nothing of its ways with us to the Lord—through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.