The body’s health vexes you, but consider what the eye of your understanding beholds. For as the disordered eye mistakes the object before it, so does the mind made turbid by the confusion of earthly cares. You pray against the falling of hair, yet the falling of the passions is a far weightier matter. The loss of hair is a trifle, yet even so all the comeliness of the frame seems destroyed. But if this lesser loss causes you such anguish, what ought you to feel over the loss of the soul’s covering, the garment of virtue, worn thin by love of appearances? That race which longs for hair overlaid with molten gold has assumed a portentous form, for they wish to adorn what even nature teaches is a dishonor when pursued with effeminate care. Are not these anxieties the very satanical cries and devilish gestures that disgrace our nature, where the dressing of the hair tends toward impurity and pours effrontery into the soul? Beware lest, under the impulse of this madness, your own heart be plucked up from its chaste foundations, satiating the desire of the wicked demon.
Yet I do not leave you without comfort. For even your small offering is not rejected when it comes from a right disposition. You remember the widow’s mites; some contributed even hair in the fitting up of the temple, and they were not rejected. But if when they had gold, they had brought hair, they would have been accursed. For the greatness of the charity is not shown by the measure of what is given, but by the disposition of the giver. Bring then to God what you truly have: not merely a petition for hair, but a soul humbled under His mighty hand. Lay all this turmoil aside with much speed, that you may be freed from heaviness. For we rejoice not so much on hearing of the health of those we love, as when we see them standing firm in faith, contrary to all hopeless hope.
Therefore, pour out this request if it must be, but let it be the least offering. Let the substance of your prayer be for the health of the inner man, that you may partake of the root and fatness of the true olive tree, Jesus Christ. He who wars with his own providence wars with himself; the injury reaches not only to the body, but the soul also undergoes no small loss. I speak of the sick and relate their anguish not to make you diseased, but to preserve you in health, cutting off your remissness by the fear of greater calamities. When then will you be sober again, now that vanity pours out so much strong wine? Weep and groan bitterly for the iniquity that so easily clings to us, and seek first the crown of righteousness that never fades, leaving the hairs of your head to the wisdom of Him who numbers them all.