Holding Jesus in My Arms

It had not occurred to me before that in the Icon of the Mother of God, especially in the Icons such as the Vladimir Icon and the Sweet Kissing Icon, Christ is holding on to His Mother.  The typology and doctrine of the Church is clear.  The Theotokos is the Church, or the Church is type of Mary, the Mother of Jesus; or you might even say that who Mary is, the Church is called to become.  We are all called to conceive by the Holy Spirit Christ in our hearts and to bear Him, or bring Him forth in the world.  

But this very Christ, who is God, clings to us.  God as a man, as a human child, clings to us.  It is almost embarrassing.  God becomes like a child grasping his mother, clinging, refusing to let go.  God loves us that much.

Unlike a merely human child, the God-man as child experiences no separation anxiety, no insecurity, no need for motherly comfort.  Rather, He senses our need to be loved, our need to be clung to, our need to be reassured again and again of our Father's love for us.  And this is how our Father shows us His love, by becoming our child and clinging to us, wrapping His arms around our necks and not letting go.

What condescension!  What humility!  What amazing trust in us, who continually demonstrate our unfaithfulness.  God submits to the abuse of our neglect.  God waits for us to notice Him, to come to Him, to hold Him in our arms.

But will we hold Him in our arms as Mary did?  Will we let go of other things to hold Christ?  You can't have arms full of burdens and hold Christ.  You cant have hands busy with other things and hold Christ.  You can't serve two masters.  

Of course, we don't hold Christ in our physical arms as Mary did; rather, we hold Christ with the invisible arms of our heart--by our inner attention.  What busies the invisible arms and hands of our hearts are fears, fears like balls we must juggle, keeping our mind and heart busy, consuming our attention, but going nowhere, going only around in circles, occasionally falling, but always drawing us back into the same busy circle of anxiety.  The arms and hands of our hearts are too busy to hold Jesus--who so firmly clings to us.

In my life I have responsibilities.  I have balls I have to keep in the air.  That is why the quiet time is so important.  I need to set down the balls, the responsibilities, for a little while every day.  I have to wrap my arms around Jesus--even if just for a little while.  I cannot hold on to Him very long.  I know my love is weak, my attention is scattered, my life is busy.  But He clings to me.  He clings to me waiting for the arms and hands of my heart to be empty, for me to let go internally of the juggling balls which are my responsibilities in this world so that I can hold Him.  And holding Him, even for a moment, makes all of the difference.  For a brief moment I am somewhat like the Theotokos.  For a brief moment, I am moving toward becoming the Icon I see before me.

Silence and Baseball in Chicago

First let us force ourselves to be silent, and then from out of this silence something is born that leads us into Silence itself.  May God grant you to perceive some part of that which is born of silence.

St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 64

I'm at an archdiocese convention in Chicago, in a huge hotel with hundreds and hundreds of people.  Last night, I went to a Cubs game with some of my fellow delegates.  We took the subway (E-ticket ride if ever there was one!)  Lots of shouting and cheering, moderate amounts of beer and an unbelievable "Chicago Style" hotdog.  More meetings today.  More people.

And yet, I have been thinking about silence.  I have been practicing silence--in a crowd.  I explained to someone once that a hermit is the most connected member of the Body of Christ because he or she carries the whole world in their heart.  We who are surrounded by the world, who swim in the world, have hearts that are empty, lonely and selfish.  Silence, it seems to me, functions in a similar way.  Of course, outer silence is part of the way to inner silence; but the "forcing" of silence that St. Isaac is speaking of is not talking so much about that outer silence as it is the quieting of the noise in our minds.  Forcing our thoughts to be silent, we can experience something of a birth into an even deeper Silence--the Silence which is the language of God Himself.  

Even at a busy convention one can take moments alone.  You go to your cell (room), unplug the TV and turn off your phone; or if you have a busy room, then you take a long walk or find a lonely room in the convention centre part of the hotel.  If you look, you can usually find a corner of relative external quiet somewhere.  Here you say your prayers, read your spiritual book, say the Jesus Prayer and do a few prostrations.  Here you force the mind to be quiet.  You let go of all of the world that you mentally started grabbing onto through the day.  You find, or create, the quiet place in yourself and you just stay there for a while, for a few moments, for as long as you can.  

And then you take the quiet with you into the noise.  As your attention is drawn from here to there, for person to person, from responsibility to responsibility, under it all is a kind of eson, a kind of hum of quiet, gentle remembrances from the quiet place.  Sometimes it is a feeling (faint, for sure), sometimes it is a word from your spiritual reading or an impression that came to you in prayer.  You let it re-emerge even in the midst of the hubbub.  It's your little secret thought, your secret communion with God in the midst of the city, the noise, the people.  It doesn't stay long.  As you get tired and busy and passions flare up, the quiet is hidden beneath the layers of noise.  

That's why you have to return to the quiet place.  You have to go back to your corner, go for your walk, hide in your closet...whatever it is that you do to find enough external quiet to force your mind to let go and return to the quiet.  

We can't do anything much about our situations in life.  We are where we are, and we do what we do.  God knows that.  But God also knows that there are closets, quiet places, niches, walks in the park, stolen moments in the middle of the night, God also knows that these are there for us if we want them, if we will look for them.  And God will use whatever it is that we have and whatever we offer to Him to come to us, to help us know His abiding in us.  We can't make that happen.  We can just take advantage of whatever little spaces and places and moments we can find to wait in relative quiet--Just in cast, just in case God at that moment wants to give birth in us something of the Silence that comes from silence.

One of the things I love about St. Isaac it that he speaks not only to those who achieve the heights, but also to us who slog it out in the muddy lowlands.  He prays for us.  St. Isaac prays that God would grant even us who are still in the valley, that even we may perceive some part of that which is born of silence.  You see: even a part.  A part is good.  Just because I will never be in a place in life where I can scale the lofty spiritual heights that St. Isaac knows, still I can know a part.  And as it is with the Holy Eucharist, so it is with any way God comes to us: a part of God is all of God.     

This is the mystery.  This is the irony.  I can fail and still be full, as full as I am capable of being.  God will fill my little cup if only I will make a little effort to hold it out to Him.  Sure saints have much more capacity--they have spent a lifetime purifying themselves so that they can hold more.  But whether our cups are large or minuscule, to be full is to be full.  

Silence is possible in the city--in some small part.  And a small part is huge when we are talking about God.

Compuction and Tears as Prayer

The fullness of prayer is the gift of tears.  

St. Isaac the Syrian

Growth in prayer comes through discipline and routine and the recitation of fixed prayers.  This recitation of fixed prayers, hymns and psalms is often referred to generally as psalmody or one's rule or office of prayer.  Learning to attend to psalmody can bring an experience of "sweetness." Sweetness in prayer is the term used by St. Isaac (and many other Orthodox spiritual writers) to describe peaceful joy and communion with God in prayer--or at least that is what I think he means by sweetness.  

However, psalmody is not the end, it is the means.  Psalmody is a training ground, a place where we can learn to concentrate our attention by paying attention to our thoughts in prayer.  More specifically, in psalmody we attend to thoughts and learn to control them, forcing ourselves to attend to what is true, pure, good and beautiful emerging from our hearts as we reflect on the words of the prayers and psalms.  In psalmody we also learn to attend to compunction, to feel the pain (literally, the puncture) of our heart.  This pain is the mother of the pure prayer that emerges from undistracted thoughts--what St. Isaac calls "unwandering concentrated prayer."  When this feeling overcomes us we can no longer say prayers because this unwandering concentrated prayer is the prayer that overtakes prayers.

St. Isaac says, "When prayer gives you her hand she will take the place of your office."  

Compunction is the pain of heart, or the broken and contrite heart, that God does not despise.  Sometime, however, we wonder: is the pain of heart that I am experiencing godly compunction? Are the tears the "gift of tears" that the holy Fathers and Mothers talk about?  Certainly there is such a thing as selfish tears, tears of self pity and anger.  There are also tears of laughter and sentimentality.  In my experience, it is usually easy to identify selfish tears.  What I cannot identify in my own experience are tears that are godly, that are a gift given by God and offered to God as prayer.

Tears shed in confession, for example, are they holy tears?  My heart and mind is so mixed.  I cannot tell where in myself the tears are coming from.  Do they come from my anger with myself for my lack of self control?  Do they come from my shame and embarrassment?  Do they come from a sadness that I have broken God's commands and alienated myself from Him?  I don't know.  I have stopped trying to figure it out.  Whenever I feel compunction, pain of heart, and that pain leads to tears, I offer the tears to God as prayer.  Sure it is impure prayer.  All of my prayer is impure.  There is nothing pure in me.  Yet all I have to offer God is the mixed mess that I am.

St. Isaac says that the fullness of prayer is the gift of tears.  I don't know if I have ever experienced the gift of tears.  I do know that I have often experienced pain in my heart--pain at the brokenness of the world, of myself, of those I love.  And sometimes, though not often for me, that pain leads to tears--and even if no actual tears appear, I often feel as if I should be crying.  When I feel this way I can only offer this feeling, this sadness, this what I think is compunction, to God: "God you see!  God you know!"  

When I am feeling this compunction, I cannot say prayers.  I cannot read.  I can only sit or stand in pained silence with no thoughts at all, just an overwhelming sense of sadness that is sometimes, but not often, slowly overcome by hope.  Most often the prayerful experience of compunction leaves as my thoughts distract me--almost always thoughts of how I can or should or might "fix" things.  The pain remains, but somehow the prayer is gone.  That's when I have to return to the prayers, to psalmody and reading.

When reading the spiritual advice of saints, I often get the sense that I am miles away from what they are talking about, that the experiences of my heart are nothing like what they describe.  Yet other times I recognize something that is familiar.  Not the same, but familiar.  It is like saying that you know someone.  Having met someone briefly once, you can honestly say that you know that person--you can identify her, you know her name.  However, a lifetime of intimacy is still not enough to really get to know someone--to know as one is known, to know as God knows us.  I think knowing God through prayer and the inner life is similar.  One can read the words of St. Isaac, someone who knows God well, and recognize certain features, certain characteristics of what he is talking about.  What knowledge of God I possess is cursory, fleeting, and very shallow--like the scent memory of a beautiful rose that walked past last spring.  And yet it is real.  And it is enough, enough to keep me seeking, enough to recognize in the words of St. Isaac and of other Saints descriptions of that same Rose, and to trust their advice, to let them guide me again toward that garden.    

Whether the pain I feel in my heart is real spiritual compunction or not, I do not know. Whether the few tears I shed are due to a genuine gift I tears, I doubt.  And yet, my experience has the faint fragrance of something St. Isaac is speaking about.  And if all I have to offer God is something that smells faintly like what St. Isaac speaks of (even if it is also mixed with a whole lot of what smells putrid), so be it.  It is what I have.  It is what I am.  And in the end, that is all any of us have to offer God: ourselves.

Death to the World

A couple weeks ago, I spoke to the regional Greek Orthodox Youth convention.  While I was there, I had a chat with one of the editors of the Death to the World (maga)zine.  We chatted quite a bit on the topic of happiness.  Afterward, Jason invited me to write an article for Death to the World on the topic of happiness.  If you follow the link above to the Death to the World web page, you will see that the audience for Death to the World is a rather edgy bunch.  So keeping that audience in mind, I wrote the following.  

I'm sharing the article here because I haven't been able to write much over the past two weeks because of construction work on Holy Nativity (we moved the iconostasis back several feet to make more room in the nave).   As we move into June and July I will be traveling, so it looks like blog postings will be sparse for a while.  But I will try to put something up at least once a week—even if it is only an edgy, death-to-the-world rant like what follows.


Happiness is underrated.  Yes, underrated.  Most of what passes for happiness now days is either infantile fantasy, whether of the Disney or the Maxim Magazine sort, or, in most cases, what passes as happiness is merely the momentary relief from pain.  There is very little happiness out there.  Driven by passions to succeed, to win, and to appear to be the best, we seldom are ourselves--if we can even figure out who our real self is.  The world shreds us into multiple selves.  And we put up with it because of a lie, because of the lie that if I play along nicely my passions will be fulfilled, that if I succeed, I will finally be happy.

But you never succeed, you are never successful enough.  That’s part of the lie.  Passions are never satisfied.  Living inside us like parasites, our passions feed and become stronger each time we let them rule us, each time we let ourselves be driven.  And the lie never changes.  You would think that having been lied to so many times by driving passions, by lusts and envy, fears and hatred, you would think that we would learn.  But we don’t.  We’re addicted, addicted to our passions.  Happiness is always somewhere else.  Happiness is always yesterday or tomorrow.

St. Isaac the Syrian was a hermit who taught how to quiet the passions, how to find yourself, find peace, find God.  In fact, to find yourself is to begin to find God, for God dwells in our hearts--our as St. Isaac puts it, our heart is like a great house in which there are serpents and demons and hell itself; but also in our hearts dwell the angels, heaven and God Himself.  Finding ourselves and our true heart is the beginning of finding God.  And finding God is happiness, or blessedness.  It is the happiness of finding yourself and being at peace with who you are and who you are becoming.

But how do we know?  How do we separate what is true and good within ourselves from what is twisted and broken?  St. Isaac says that it begins with a hatred of the world.  Until you hate the world, you cannot begin the journey to yourself.  The world is the lie.  The world is our passions--it is what drives us and preys upon us and feeds in us hate and fear and the lustful desires that seek only selfish gratification (which also is a form of hating).  The world teaches us to hate other human beings, that other people are the problem, are the barrier to my happiness.  But really it is the system, the system of this world that we must come to hate.  The world we must die to, the world that we must hate is the system, not the people.  And we can only begin to die to the world once we realize that the world “out there” is not so much my problem.  The biggest obstacle to my experiencing happiness, to experiencing the blessedness of union with God, is not the world out there, but the world as it has latched itself to my own heart and mind as a parasite.  

St. Isaac tells us that there are two common ways that people come to hate the world.  Both begin with a simple deduction, a realization that goes something like this:  If there is a world, there must be a creator; and if there is right and wrong, then there must be a judge; and if there is a creator and judge, there must be Truth.  Some who come to this realization experience a fear of judgement, and this fear goads them to seek the Truth.  Others, however, do not experience fear so much as longing, longing for the Real, longing for the True, longing for the happiness that cannot be taken away.  Both fear of judgement and longing for the Real motivate us to turn our back on the world, to say no to driving passions within us: to stand up when the world sits down.

Jesus said, “Happy (Blessed) are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”    When we hate the world, we are free to be poor.  We are free to be meek, to be weak, to be at peace, to be happy.  And being at peace, we become peacemakers.  Letting go of driving passions, we radiate something different, a Light from another Realm.  Turning our backs on what the world loves and values, we find freedom to be ourselves, freedom to become and grow.  In learning to control ourselves we are free not to control others (or better, free to let go of the fantasy of controlling others, a control that we never really had).  

There is a happiness that comes from weakness, a happiness that is often called joy.  When I am weak, St. Paul said, then God is strong in me.  So long as I love the world, I have to be strong.  I have to win.  I cannot show weakness.  But when I find the strength to turn my back on the world, I find the strength to accept my weakness.  I find the strength to depend on God, the strength to weep with those who weep.  Then there is peace.  Then there is happiness, a kind of happiness that remains even in sadness.  The hymns of the Church sometimes refer to this as the “bright sadness.”  

Happiness, or blessedness, comes from hating the world, especially the world in ourselves.  Happiness comes as we gain knowledge of ourselves, knowledge of our weaknesses and of our dependence on the Creator.  This is the journey of Salvation.  This is the narrow way. This is the path to blessedness.

St. Isaac and Theosis (and the Experience of Fear)

I am preparing now to give a presentation at the Antiochian Orthodox Institute in the Fall on the topic of divinization or theosis according to St. Isaac the Syrian.  I have been enjoying reading through the latest edition of St. Isaac’s homilies, and when I was asked to present a small lecture on some aspect of the topic of theosis, I suggested that my focus be St. Isaac.  Most of the time, when Orthodox Christian people speak about theosis, they focus on the language and patterns presented in the Philokalia.  Specifically, following St. Maximus the Confessor, we usually speak of three steps or phases in the process of theosis. [By the way, theosis--also sometimes called deification or divinization--refers to the process or experience by which one becomes, by Grace, more like Christ, that is more like God].  The three steps or stages of theosis according to St. Maximus the Confessor and the tradition of the Philokalia are these: purification, illumination and theosis.

In this most common way to look at or present the process or experience of theosis, purification generally refers to our cooperation with the Grace of God to purge passionate thoughts from our minds.  But purifying our minds of passionate thoughts begins with controlling our bodies through ascetic discipline.  Therefore, the beginning of theosis is often found in beginning to control oneself physically leading to a knowledge of oneself that makes the purification of the thoughts, by the Grace of God, possible.

Illumination refers to the knowledge of God, again and always granted by Grace, that transcends the rational aspect of our minds.  This knowledge of God is often referred to as noetic after the Greek word for ‘mind’; however, in this context it does not refer to ‘mind’ as we usually think of the word in English. It refers to the aspect of our mind that is open to and perceives spiritual, heavenly realities.  There is no equivalent word for this aspect of the mind in English, which is why the Greek word noetic is generally used, although the words ‘heart’ and ‘spirit’ are sometimes used in English to try to get at this higher or deeper knowledge: for example, we might say something like “knowing God in your heart”  or “to know God spiritually” to try to distinguish this kind of knowledge from merely rational knowledge, knowledge about God.  

The third step or experience of theosis in this philocalic pattern is to actually participate in the Grace of God to such an extent that one becomes, as the Fathers say, a god by Grace: that is, one acquires the Mind of Christ (to use St. Paul’s expression), or partakes of the divine nature (to use St. Peter’s expression), or one loves as God loves (to use St. John’s oft repeated expression).  Another way the Fathers talk about this final stage of theosis is that one shines with or reflects the Grace of God without ceasing to be oneself; without ceasing to be a creature, one shines with or reflects the uncreated Light of the Creator.  This Grace or Light is also sometimes referred to as the Energies of God by the Greek Fathers.

Certainly this way of speaking about thesis (purification, illumination and theosis) as it is found in the philocalic tradition is useful and thoroughly Orthodox, but it is not the only Orthodox way to speak of this process or experience of becoming more and more like Christ.  St. Isaac the Syrian (+700) was a near contemporary of St. Maximus the Confessor (+662), but he lived in a very different part of the world--outside the Byzantine Empire--and he did not write in Greek (he wrote in Syriac).  Although St. Isaac does not use the same vocabulary or the same imagery that many of the Greek Fathers use to speak of the experience of theosis, he nonetheless speaks of a transformation or transfiguration that one goes through as one draws nearer to God.  St. Isaac uses several different images to speak of this process or experience.  One image he uses (in Homily 62) is that of three different kinds of knowledge: Carnal knowledge, natural knowledge and knowledge of the truth.

I find this particular image or way of speaking about our transfiguration in (and into) Christ to be particularly helpful because St. Isaac uses this image to speak directly about the Christian experience of fear.  Many Protestant and Catholic converts to Orthodox Christianity have a very perverted understanding of the fear of God that torments them to no seeming end.  Unfortunately, for some converts the only way they have been able to deal with the pain that their perverted understanding of fear has caused them has been to reject completely the notion of fear in relation to God.  Of course this is not a very helpful strategy because we do actually experience a kind of fear in our relationship with God and denying its existence leads only to delusion or worse.  But St. Isaac can help us here.   In many of St. Isaac’s images of the Christian journey, he speaks of the transformation of fear, and of the various kinds of fear we experience as we grow in our relationship with God, and of how all of these fears eventually dissolve or transform into love.  This particular image of the three knowledges, or kinds of knowledge, is no exception.  St. Isaac speaks of two kinds of fear linked to the first two kinds of knowledge.  These fears, however, are “swallowed” by love as one comes into the third kind of knowledge.  

The first kind of knowledge is called knowledge of the flesh, or carnal knowledge.  Carnal knowledge, according to St. Isaac, refers to a subhuman knowledge:  knowledge of oneself, of the world and of God in a way that is sub-natural, or not according to nature, or not according to reason.  When one knows with carnal knowledge, one perceives according to the impulses of the flesh, of the fallen nature, or in accord with the temptations of the demons. One who knows according to carnal knowledge, St. Isaac says, fears death “as an animal fears slaughter.”  For someone with this kind of knowledge, the fear of God consists mostly in the fear of death, and in the fear of losing those things that one has come to associate with power over death: political power, the perception of control, wealth, authority, etc.  Thus, the fear of God, when one knows only according to the knowledge of the flesh, is a fear that God will take something away from us, a fear that God will kill us or diminish our lives in some way.  A carnally minded person is often superstitious in his or her relationship with God. It is a relationship that is full of fear and appeasement because, as we all know, death is inevitable; and so long as one fears death “as an animal fears slaughter,” one is in a kind torment trying desperately to postpone the unavoidable.

The second kind of knowledge comes as one draws near to God with what St. Isaac calls natural or reasonable knowledge.  When we begin to overcome animal appetites and urges through reason and begin to perceive through observation of the world and of ourselves that A) there is a Creator and B) I am not Him, then we also begin to know naturally that this Creator will demand from us an account for what we have done with our lives.  Thus the fear that is associated with this second kind of knowledge, this rational knowledge, is the fear of judgement.  According to St. Isaac, this rational knowledge is our natural knowledge, or our natural way of knowing reality; and the fear of judgement that comes from this natural knowledge is the initial motivation or the “rod” we use to control ourselves.  The fear of judgement, then, is the kind of fear St. Isaac associates with the natural or rational knowledge of God, ourselves and of the world.  Although there is a kind of fear associated with this kind of knowledge, St. Isaac points out that rational or natural knowledge is the “proper” and “fit” place or condition from which we can begin to actually draw near to (and thus become more like) God.

As we proceed forward, “guided by [natural] knowledge and discipline” we draw near to God and begin to know “the truth by the active participation of the mysteries of God, and [we] become steadfast in [our] hope in things to come, [and thus we are] swallowed up by love.”  Not only are our fears swallowed up by love, but our whole being is swallowed by love.  The trials and tribulations of life, our continual experience of fall and repentance, and the continual judgement of ourselves by our own conscience followed by the sweetness of forgiveness that we experience as we over and over again confess our sins, all of this experienced again and again throughout a lifetime convinces us, not by theory but by actual experience, that we are indeed sons and daughters of God, that we are indeed among the beloved, that we have indeed passed from judgement into Life.  Fear of judgement slips away as we judge ourselves.  The Love of God swallows us as we perceive within ourselves the action of Grace and as our hearts swell with pity, with the compassion that God Himself has and has shown through the Incarnation and the Cross for all creation.  Here there is no fear--only love consumes everything.  And for St. Isaac, as I read him, to love as God loves is to be what God is, in as much as it is humanly possible by Grace.

I want to stop here, on the mountain top, at the crescendo;  but I must go on.  I must explain two more things before we end.

First I want to be clear that this is only one of the ways St. Isaac talks about the process or experience of theosis, of becoming more like Christ.  He uses other images, types and patterns, some of which I hope to present in my little speech next Fall.  

Second we must also understand that although these three ways of knowledge that I have presented here represent a kind of progression, they by no means represent distinct steps or states or experiences.  Movement from the knowledge of the flesh to natural knowledge is not like crossing a line: it is not as though one moment you are on one side of the line and the next moment you are on the other side.  Rather, the progression that St. Isaac seem to be envisioning is more like a sunrise.  The light of a higher knowledge begins to dawn even while we are still surrounded by the darkness of a baser perception of reality.  And even as the light of a higher knowledge shines with noonday brightness, still there are shadows, still there are animal appetites and broken memories and demonic arrows that assail us, sometimes it seems, like the constant dripping of a rainy day.  Throughout his homilies, St. Isaac warns us never to think we have arrived.  The greatest ascetics fall, how much more must we then be aware of our own shadows.

But even a fall, even a great fall is not the end.  St. Isaac tells us that a great fall, if we confess our sin, then even this can be the beginning of a new humility, a new knowledge of the mystery of God’s love.

Why Does Life Have To Be So Hard?

“The door to heaven is opened for a man by the hand of trials.”

“It is not possible that God should benefit the man who longs to be with Him otherwise than by bringing temptations upon him for the sake of truth.”

St. Isaac the Syrian Homily 59

“Why does it have to be so hard?”  This is a question I have often asked myself.  It is a common question, one that I think we have all asked at various times in our lives--even if we have not asked it out loud.  “Why does life have to be so hard?” 

During the Paschal season, we read the Acts of the Apostles.  Pascha declares Christ’s triumph over death and the promise of our victory in and with Him.  In the Acts of the Apostles we see how Christ continues to preach the Gospel and work signs through His Apostles.  Christ continues to be present in this world, now in a many-membered body.  However, not only is Christ’s power manifest in signs that amaze and draw the attention of the crowds.  Christ is also present in the continued trampling down of death by death.    In fact, according to the Acts of the Apostles, it is often these very signs that lead to the persecution and tribulations that provide the opportunity for His disciples also to follow Christ in trampling down death by death.

For example, when Sts. Paul and Barnabas were preaching the Gospel in the town of Lystra (Acts 14), by the Grace of God, St. Paul heals a man who had been crippled from birth.  However, this leads to a profound misunderstanding: the people think that Sts. Paul and Barnabas are pagan gods and the people want to offer sacrifice to them.  When Sts. Paul and Barnabas figure out what is going on, they tear their clothes and run about among the people telling them that they are mere men and with much effort, we are told, “they could scarcely restrain the multitudes from sacrificing to them.”  

But as often happens, misunderstanding leads to frustration and frustration leads to violence.  Urged by some enemies of the truth who had already heard and rejected the message of Christ, the crowd dragged St. Paul out of the city and stoned him, apparently, to death.   However, after the crowd’s left, the disciples gathered around him in prayer and St. Paul got up: he arose like our Master Christ, trampling down death by death.  

And lest we think that St. Paul’s experience of following Christ’s example of suffering and death (or near death) was an exception, we are told immediately after this account that St. Paul went to all of the Churches strengthening and encouraging the disciples by saying the to them the following: “We must through many tribulations enter the Kingdom of God.”

St. Isaac the Syrian says, “No one has ascended into Heaven by means of ease, for we know where the way of ease leads, and how it ends.”  And even the “way of ease,” as many of us have found out, is not that easy.  Worries, illnesses, discipline and self control are encountered and required no matter where we are or what we do in this world.  “The way of ease” is not really an easy way.  The way of ease is just the way of the world, it’s my own way, a way that leads the heart away from God, a way led by passions and impulses, and a way isolation, delusion and fear.  

But the very unavoidable sufferings of this world (illness, misunderstanding and violence) are also the means of salvation, if we will embrace them in Christ.  It really does seem like trials and tribulations and suffering of all sorts create a moment of decision, a moment of choice, a crisis in which we must choose: will we humble ourselves and turn to God in our pain and confusion, or will we turn away from God and try to handle it ourselves.  Will we lift up our hearts and hands to God and beg mercy, believing that our whole life is in His hands: the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the brilliant and the dark.  Or, will we turn a way, perhaps in anger, perhaps in pride, or perhaps in a simple unwillingness to admit that we are not really in control of our lives.

“The door of Heaven,” St. Isaac says, “is opened by the hand of trials.”  Whether we enter or not us up to us.  If we enter, or seek to enter, then the trial becomes a means of personal transformation, a context for a new and deeper intimacy with God, an opportunity to love others as God loves us.   But if we don’t, if we turn away from God, then the trial becomes meaningless.  The suffering is just as painful, but it is now empty.  God seems far away and instead of polishing us and transforming us to be more like ourselves, more like our better selves, the selves we long to be; instead of this, the suffering becomes a corrosion eating away at us, producing bitterness, and driving us into an insular mental reality that blames everything and everyone else and makes love stingy, something we mete out in small bits, something that shrinks and does not grow within us.

As long as we live in this world, there will be suffering, trials and tribulation.  There is no escaping it.  The world is broken, sin has distorted everything.  What remains for us is not whether or not we will suffer, but whether or not we will, like Christ, find Life in death; whether or not we will, like Christ, willing lay down our lives for one another; whether or not we will, like Christ, be transformed and transfigured and drawn close to our Heavenly Father by drinking willingly the cup that has been given to us, the cup of trial and suffering in this life.

Avoiding Destructive Good

Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 58

“...[The realization of the good we desire] belongs to God. For this, a man has need of God’s help.  Therefore we accompany our good desire with constant prayer, and we pray not only because we need help, but also so that we can distinguish whether it [the good we desire] is pleasing to God’s will or not.
“For not every fair-seeming desire falls into the heart from God, but only that which is profitable*.  It happens that a man desires good, but God does not help him therein; for a semblance of a good desire may also enter a man from the devil.  It seems to the man that this [the good desire that came into his heart] is for his help, but often it is beyond his measure.  The devil himself contrives this for the man’s detriment and compels him to seek a [apparently good] thing, although he has not yet attained to this mode [level, depth, quality] of life; or because it is alien to his monastic [or other] state; or because when he moves the man to accomplish his desire, it is not the right time to do so; or because the man has neither the knowledge nor the bodily strength sufficient for it; or because the present moment does not lend us a hand.  The devil strives in every way under the guise of some good thing to trouble the man, or to harm his body, or to set a hidden snare in his mind.
“Howbeit, let us make constant prayer fervently, as I said, with respect to the good desire that arises within us, and let each of us say: ‘May Thy will be done, until I bring to completion the good work which I have desired to do, if it be pleasing to Thy will.  For it is easy for me to will it, but to do it is not within my power, unless I receive grace from Thee; though in truth both are Thine, “both to will and to do” (Phil. 2:13).  For it is not without Thy grace that I was either persuaded, or afraid, to accept this desire set in motion within me.’
“The habitual practice of the an who desires good in the discernment of his mind is this: in prayer to labor for it continually, and through prayer to receive power that aids him in doing it and wisdom to distinguish what is genuine from what is counterfeit.  The good is discerned by much prayer, by toil and watchfulness, incessant yearning, constant tears and humility, and by assistance from Heaven, especially when a man has proud thoughts which oppose it; for these obstruct God’s help from us; but we bring them to naught by prayer.”

* So often, we think of the good as a (Christian) philosopher would rather than in terms of what will bring profit (spiritual, emotional, social, even biological) to specific people in specific settings at specific moments in history.  We too easily crush the real, the immediate, the other in the name of a good.  Unlike Jesus, we rush to extinguish the smouldering wick and cut off the bruised reed.  Smoldering wicks are messy and far from ideal, but still contain a spark.  St. Isaac warns us to be patient and prayerful lest we create real harm (to ourselves and others) in our rush to impose idealized good.

Humility as Evangelism

Archimandrite Vasileios, “The Saint: Archetype of Orthodoxy” pp 45,6

A young man once came to the monastery and told us the story of how he had come to have a relationship with the Church.  It happened while he was still in school.  His parents were divorced.  He had read Nietzsche and Sartre, and gone quite wild.  He liked to give the impression that he was very atheistic, very modern.  At school, of course, they used to make fun of the Religious Education teacher.  But then that teacher left, and there was to be a replacement.  Soon they discovered it was to be a woman!  [not common in Greece in the mid 20th century where education was segregated] They thought they would really have fun stirring her up.  They prepared to receive her with provocative, ironic and impertinent questions.  The day came and she entered a classroom filled with smirking children who rained down on her the questions they had prepared.  She remained unmoved, however, and taught the lesson.  The same thing happened the next day, and the next.  The teacher calmly continued her work, and the children started to become curious.  Our young man began to ask himself: what is going on here?  If you shoot at someone and your bullets pass through them and do them no harm, then either they must be a ghost, or they are receiving power from somewhere else.  Something is happening here.  And indeed, the children’s behavior quickly changed.  The young man began to see their teacher as the only really genuine human being he had ever met--she became a mother to him, and he was able to open his heart to her.  It was she who led him to the Orthodox Church.  Now the young man was at university.  He went regularly to church and to confession, and had a relationship with saints.

This teacher presented in real life the archetype of Orthodoxy.  She showed her pupils what a saint is.  She demonstrated in action how Christ behaved during His Passion.  She made the Children understand the meaning of the words, “I neither disobey nor contradict.”  She endured everything, she let the children mock her--she had the strength to do it.  After all of the mocking and frenzy, the children became her own children.  In the process she introduced them to the Orthodox Church--to Christ, to the Mother of God, and to the saints--and in this way she enabled them to receive salvation.

The End of The Line

One of my parishioners told me last week that a relative of hers is looking into Orthodox Christianity. When I asked her why she was looking, the answer surprised me. She said that her aunt is beginning to read about Orthodox Christianity because, as she put it, “she had rode the Charismatic bus to the end of the line.”

I think I know what she means. In my Protestant days, I was a Baptist Charismatic with Word of Faith influence, a Four Square Pentecostal, and a close friend of the Vineyard Christian fellowship. I even did a couple of years stint in YWAM. I too rode the Charismatic bus to the end of the line.  

In the Protestant Charismatic and Pentecostal world as I experienced it, there seemed to be a progression of Christian experience that went something like this: First you are saved, which means that you have an encounter with Christ in which you accept Christ; that is, you accept the fact that Christ died for (read: instead of) you on the Cross. This salvation was considered real if it included an embrace of traditional American “family” values (especially in the Baptist and Pentecostal circles I was in) and the cessation of “worldly behaviour.”  Worldly behaviour was defined variously, but generally included (but was not limited to) the following: smoking (anything), drinking alcohol, dancing (except as worship in church) and going to places where people smoke, drink and/or dance. I realize that not all Charismatic groups put the same emphasis on the cessation of clearly defined “worldly” behaviours, but most of the groups I was associated with did.  

After one was saved, the next step was to be filled with the Spirit. This generally involved an emotional/spiritual experience, generally with the laying on of hands, and was often accompanied by glossolalia, or speaking in tongues.  This second phase of the Charismatic Christian experience often included teaching about spiritual gifts and encouragement that one practice “functioning” in one’s spiritual gift. Alternately, especially in the Vineyard circles I haunted, “inner healing” functioned as a cathartic spiritual (and usually very emotional) experience. This second stop on the Charismatic bus line might be summarized as being healed and empowered, and was followed by ministry and outreach.

The last stop along this Charismatic Christian line is ministry or outreach. Having been saved, healed, filled with the Holy Spirit and equipped through the laying on of hands or teaching (which is sometimes considered an additional stop or an alternative stop to #2 for non-Charismatics), one is then expected to give oneself to ministry. This ministry can take many forms, from evangelistic work, to teaching and from administrative work to giving prophetic words. One was supposed to be doing something “for the Kingdom.”  Catch phrases like “you are either a missionary or a mission field” were common. Despite this (or perhaps because of this), there is often a great deal of pining that goes on among Charismatics who have been around for awhile and do not yet have something to do in Church that can be readily identified as a ministry. For these, the advice is often the same: Go back to step two. More teaching or more inner healing or more prophetic insight should reveal your ministry to you and remove all blockages to the successful and dynamic functioning of said ministry.  

Those who are already confident in their ministry minister with all their heart, as though the eternal destiny of all they come in contact with were at stake: after all, “saved to serve, serve to save,” that’s the driving (though not always spoken) premise of Protestant Charismatic ministry (at least to what I have been exposed to). And sooner or later (more often sooner than later), the active Charismatic minister burns out. Sometimes this burnout takes the form of moral failure of some sort. Other times it takes the form of emotional and physical exhaustion—even to the point of exhibiting symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  

At this point of burnout, you are left with three options: either A) take the bus back to the beginning, assuming that perhaps you were not really saved at all (I personally experienced two extra baptisms based on this assumption); or B) you get more inner healing or more education; or C) Having repeated A and B several times already, you give up. People don’t usually give up on God (totally), although some do; rather, most just give up on church as they know it. They cannot deny the reality of their encounters with Christ, yet they cannot go back to where they were before: it is just too painful. Something isn’t working right.

But what if salvation is not just about accepting Christ?  What if salvation is the whole process of being conformed into the image of Christ? What if we are not saved to serve?  What if we are saved to become like Jesus?

I think, for many, this is the appeal of Orthodox Christianity. As Orthodox Christians, we understand salvation to be a process of transformation—a process that takes a lifetime, and even more than a lifetime. If salvation is of the Lord, as the scriptures tell us, then even when I do serve the Church, I am not serving so that others might be saved. The eternal destiny of no one depends on me, the eternal destiny of no one except myself that is. I am called to save myself in Christ, to hide myself in Christ, to find myself in Christ. I am not called to save anyone but myself.  And saving myself is merely a matter of learning again and again to accept Christ as the Lord of my life, in ever widening areas of my life, in ever deeper levels of my being. But if I save myself (in Christ), thousands around me will be saved: “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden,” Jesus tells us.

St. Isaac the Syrian tells us that ministry is not unimportant. Yes, we must love one another in practical ways, in ways that are often unique to our personalities, callings in life, resources, and relationships. However, St. Isaac also says, “How beautiful and praiseworthy is the love of neighbor, if only its cares do not distract us from the love of God!” You see, that’s the problem. We get in ministry “mode” and all of our focus is shifted outwards: What does God want me to do? What is God saying to this or that person? What am I supposed to teach? How can I help this or that person or situation? All of our focus is scattered around us and we have very little time or energy to focus on “the one thing needful.” And that one needful thing is to attend to Christ in our hearts.

In the Protestant Charismatic world there are very few resources and spiritual practices that encourage one to develop this one needful thing. In my experience, Bible reading, which was called quiet time, was the only spiritual practice that I was encouraged to engage in. And I must say that nearly all of the enduring spiritual transformation I experienced in those years came out of my quiet times reading the Bible. Nowadays, perhaps there are more resources. One Charismatic Mennonite friend of mine runs a centre for silent retreats. This is certainly a step in the right direction: outer silence may be the beginning of inner stillness.  

And yet there is a paradigm problem. In fact, I think it is more than a paradigm problem there is an acute eccleisial problem:  The Protestant Charismatic church is just not the Church, not in the full historical and theological sense of the Orthodox Church. I have a regular weekly lunch with some Protestant Charismatic leaders who have become friends of mine, and I explained this problem to them this way: The Charismatics today are much like the Corinthian Church St. Paul wrote to. They love Christ and they are zealous for spiritual gifts; and like the Corinthian Church they sometimes “value giftedness more than character” (by the way, that was a phrase used by one of my Charismatic leader friends).  However, the early Church, I pointed out, was terribly persecuted, which in many ways kept most people honest. One is not so tempted to seek ministry if one knows that life and property are on the line. You risked everything to follow Christ. About 250 years later, when the persecution ceased, the monastic movement began in earnest, which in many ways functioned in the same way the persecutions did: it kept people honest. This self-imposed persecution or asceticism again forced one to put it all on the line in order to serve, lead or minister in the Church. And this ascetic way, this desert tradition has continued in the Orthodox Church—to a greater or lesser extent—to this day.  

My Charismatic leader friends are amazed that within the Orthodox Church we have all the miracles and signs that the “Corinthians” are zealous for. But what amazes them more is the fact that holiness and character and godliness leading to theosis is what is emphasized.  Raising the dead is nothing: Knowing yourself, repenting and becoming transformed into the image of Christ, now that is something.

None of my Charismatic leader friends seem particularly interested in becoming Orthodox. For now, they are interested in learning from Holy Orthodoxy bits and pieces that they can apply in their context, in their paradigm. I keep warning them that the results will not be the same, that Orthodox Christianity is a “whole meal deal.” But still, they keep asking, so I keep giving whatever I can.  After all, salvation is of the Lord. I cannot help them. Only the One who is Lord of both me and them can help or save any of us.

Success

I did a forty day memorial recently for a woman who died at a relatively young age (by today’s standards) who had been an immigrant to Canada from a war-torn Orthodox country where she had been raised in near abject poverty.  As young adults this young woman and her husband immigrated to Canada, worked very hard and raised two very successful children. Both have become doctors, one at a major research university. After the memorial service, the surviving spouse, let’s call him Theo, kept repeating to me: “She was a very good woman. Both of our children have become doctors because of her encouragement.”

On one level, I have to agree with Theo. It is an amazing thing to come from dire poverty, immigrating to a country where you don’t speak the language and working hard to provide a home and every academic advantage to two children who both grow to become what most people would consider very successful adults. It is an amazing thing what this couple has done.

And yet on another level, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. Isn’t there anything more important in life than success--especially as we remember someone who has departed this life? As we contemplate what is most worthwhile to leave behind us when we depart and what is most important to impart to our children in this life, isn’t there anything more important than material and social success?

So much of what we consider success in this world has to do only with what can be seen and measured. But you can have it all and still be miserable. What makes us happy and what gives meaning to life are those things that cannot be seen nor measured. Love cannot be counted. Satisfaction cannot be bought. Peace cannot be earned. All that is longed for has nothing at all to do with how much status or money or power someone has. And yet we continue to pursue these things and teach (and sometimes drive) our children to do the same.

In “The Christian in a Changing World,” Archimandrite Vasileios says that the devil has a very limited vocabulary.  He is always telling us the same lies. There are no new lies (though technology is changing, what life is about in this world is not changing at all). The devil tells us the same lies he told our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents all the way back to the Garden of Eden. The devil tells us the same lies our whole life long, even though we have, through our own personal experience, come to know that they are lies.  

We have come to know that wealth does not bring happiness, yet we continue to hear the same lie whispered in our ear. We have come to know that success does not bring love, but we hear the same lie whispered in our ear.  And we have come to know by our experience that owning newer and bigger and better things does not bring satisfaction--yet the same lie continues its monotone drone in our ears: “Buy this and it will be enough”; “accomplish that and you will be loved” ; “If you only had a few hundred or a few thousand or a few million dollars more, then you would be happy.” They’re the same lies over and over again. We know they are lies, but we are still seduced by them.

Someone once observed that people will believe whatever they hear repeatedly, no matter how ridiculous it is. A casual look at the quickly changing social landscape of North America over the past fifty years can confirm the truth of this observation. If we are not attentive, our minds are changed by the mere repetition of ideas. And herein lies the devil’s power: his very limitedness. The power of the evil one is that the he whispers in our ears the same lies over and over again.  

How do we escape? How do we overcome this human weakness? The first step is to admit that we have this weakness. We must admit, confess, that we have these thoughts. We must confess that we do indeed hear a drone, a continually dripping lie as from a slowly leaking faucet saying in our mind: do this and you will be happy; do this and you will be loved; do this and you will be satisfied. The specific form or forms of this lie that each of us hears differs depending on our personalities, backgrounds and the specific weaknesses that we have been susceptible to in the past.

Some hear a whisper: “look at this pornography, and you will find relief form your boredom or stress or loneliness.”  Some feel an urging that would translate into something like: “eat a little more or have another drink or get high one more time; it will be worth it, it doesn’t matter, you will feel better.” And some have an impulse or a driving idea: “If I just had the newest model, if I only had the latest fashion, if I could only accomplish this higher goal; then it will be enough, then I will be satisfied. And even among the religious, the devil has his few but ever repeated phrases: If only you prayed more, if only you were more disciplined, if only you hadn’t made that mistake, then God would love you and bless you and be near to you.  

Lies, lies, lies--and yet through repetition we believe them. The first step to get free from these lies is to confess them, to confess to God, to yourself, to your priest, and to whomever God has put in your life to help guide you out of darkness and into the Light. Confess that you do indeed experience these thoughts and urges and feelings and although you know they are lies, you are still somehow drawn by them; you still somehow find them attractive.

Having confessed, the next step is to recognize that you are not your thoughts. You are not your feelings or urges. You are a human being who has thoughts and feelings and urges, but you are not those thoughts and feelings and urges. You are the one experiencing these things and deciding what you are going to do. Just because, for example, you have the thought that a hamburger would taste good right now, doesn’t mean that your body needs a hamburger. But if that thought lingers in your mind, soon your body will begin to sympathize with it. The thought of eating a hamburger will generate a feeling of hunger. But even a feeling of hunger doesn’t mean you are actually hungry. We know this by experience. Most of us have experienced at some time in our life the feeling of being full after a wonderful meal, but wanting to eat more and so eating more until we make ourselves uncomfortable or even sick.  

Similarly, most of us have experienced buyer’s remorse.  The new thing we just had to have, once we acquire it does not do for us what we expected, but on the contrary, becomes a kind of burden (and something else we have to figure out how to pay for). And then there is the illusion of success. Every goal achieved only reveals a higher goal. Every record broken only raises the bar of expectation: now I have to work harder to keep pace and strive even more to break into the next level.  

However, those desires and thoughts and feelings are not me. The desire to have the newer, better car or boat or house or outfit is not me. I am not the sum total of my desires and urges. My identity is not found in the records I break or the goals I achieve. These are all things I may do or feel or experience, but they are not me.

But if all of this jumble of thoughts and feelings and urges is not me, then who am I? Ah, now we are asking a vital question, now we are beginning to make progress in our salvation. Who we are, or better, who we are becoming has not yet been revealed, according to St. John’s first universal letter. But what we do know is that what we are becoming looks a great deal like Jesus. Who I am becoming looks like Jesus and yet still looks like me. Who I am is someone who is becoming, someone who is growing and changing. I am someone who is becoming myself. And all of the thoughts and feelings and urges that I experience provide a kind of context, a proving ground if you like, a place where I can become myself, my better self, my more Christ-like self.

Human beings were created as noble creatures, creatures worthy to be filled with the Spirit of God. However, human beings also participate in and experience an animal life; and human beings can, if they are not attentive, become like mere animals. As the Psalmist says, “A man being in honour did not understand; he is compared to the senseless cattle and became like them.” In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were given the charge and authority to rule over all that is animal, but if we are not careful, if (as the psalmist puts it) we don’t understand, then we will compare ourselves to, or make as our standard, the senseless animals instead of comparing ourselves with our God and making our Creator and His calling for us our standard.  

Certainly it is important to work and contribute to the social and merely animal aspects of our life in this world.  Yes, it is much better, if you are able, to be someone who contributes to society, someone who helps others rather than someone who merely takes. (But in reality we all give and take--some giving is more noticeable or considered by society to be more valuable, yet we all give and take). However, if we merely succeed on this animal and social plane, and fail to become full of the Spirit of God; then can we consider ourselves to have been successful at all? Didn’t Jesus ask the same thing when he said, “What does it profit someone to gain the whole world but lose their soul?’

Just like the animals, the animal aspect of our life will one day pass away; and with it will pass away all of the social success we may have attained and the possessions and the power and the wealth we may have acquired. Then, on that day, who we are will be revealed. What we have become will be known. May God grant us to keep that day in mind and to consider success to be the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, to be mastery over our animal passions, and to be victory over the demonic lies that perpetually bombard us. This is success: to become, by Grace, God-filled human beings, to become all that God has called us to be.

Messiah Complex

I think I have a messiah complex. The reason I say this is because I often feel that if I only did something different, if I could only discover what I should do differently, it would make a great difference in the lives of others.

I know that such thoughts are not uncommon. Many people are tied up in knots, praying earnestly that God will show them what to do, that God will help them to pray more or fast more or do something more so that the power or Grace of God will flow and make a difference in the lives of those we care about. We are tied up in knots because we think that we are the essential element blocking the work of God in the lives of those we love. Somehow we think salvation depends on us.

As Orthodox Christians, we are encouraged to see ourselves as the chief of sinners. We are encouraged not to blame others, but on the contrary to blame ourselves. Many saints have had this attitude and the hymns of the Church and the advice of many spiritual fathers and mothers tell us this. I do not dispute it. In fact, I have found this self-condemnation to be quite life-giving. However, what is not helpful is a kind of corollary that I and I think many others make. The corollary goes like this: I think that because I am the worst sinner and because I blame myself and not others, the responsibility of repairing the mess is also mine, that I am the key to fixing the messes that I have made (or contributed to making). But this is not a healthy thought.

In most cases, in my experience, the thought that God is waiting for me to do the "right" thing to pour out His Grace and help, this thought that it must somehow depend on me, actually comes from a kind of pride. Instead of producing humility in me, the thought that my sin contributes to the brokenness of those around me, an illusion of responsibility is produced or even the delusion that I somehow have the ability to fix things: if I could only pray harder, or find the right thing to change in my life, if I would only in one way or another try harder, then others (particularly those I love and care about) would see God more clearly and would themselves find Grace, be healed, and would repent. In my sick and fallen way of thinking, the idea that I am the cause or part of the cause of the sufferings of others (because of my sin or lack of faith or inadequacy), I am somehow the one who has to find the way to fix things.

But this is not at all how healing and salvation come about in the Kingdom of God.

We must see ourselves as the chief of sinners and even as the cause of the suffering of those around us because we are not to judge others. And not judging others, I am the only one left to judge. I judge myself—as Jesus said, so that I will not be judged. So I am the chief of sinners because, as far as I know, as far as I know experientially, I am the only sinner. I cannot judge others. However, this in no way means that I am the one who must or even can fix or cure the physical, relational, psychological and spiritual illnesses around me. I can only repent myself. I can only turn myself towards God. And only God Himself can heal me and others.

It is difficult to acquire the kind of humility in which I do not see myself as the linchpin, as the one who has to figure it out. It is difficult to simply rest and trust God, to rest in the knowledge that while I am a big part of the problem (maybe the only part of the problem), God is the only One who can fix the problem. God is the only One who saves. "Salvation is of the Lord," the scripture says repeatedly. And yet I somehow keep falling into the trap of thinking that I somehow have to figure out how to save others. I cannot save anyone. I cannot even save myself—except in the sense of myself turning and submitting again and again to God.

As a priest it is so easy to develop a messiah complex, to think that I have to figure out what to say and what to do to save others. I am continually tempted to think that I have to push myself harder, to pray longer, to fast more severely so that others may be saved. It is so easy to think that it depends on me. And of course, you don't have to be a priest to have this problem. Many earnest Christians struggle, tie themselves up in knots,  and completely lose any sense of peace or joy in their lives because they are tormenting themselves with the thought: "If only I did more, if only I could figure out what to do differently, then things would be better, then my loved ones would see Christ more clearly, then there would be peace in my relationships. But such thinking never leads to peace. It leads to greater and greater frustration, anger and sadness. And eventually, it can lead to a kind of accusation or blaming of God Himself. The thought might occur to us, "God, why aren't you helping me!"

One of the constant themes of my Bishop, Archbishop Joseph, when the clergy gathers is this: he says, "A priest's first job is to find salvation for himself, then God will save the community." It is like the word of St. Seraphim of Sarov who said, "Acquire the peace (or Grace) of the Holy Spirit and a thousand around you will be saved." Peace does not come once we figure out how to heal our problems and the problems of those around us. That's backwards. Our problems and the problems of those around us will be healed as we acquire peace. And peace comes as we learn to accept our brokenness, as we accept the fact that we cannot save others. We can love, or learn to love, but we cannot save. Only God saves.

And so what are we to do to acquire peace, to acquire the Grace of the Holy Spirit. For me, one of the first steps has been to really accept the fact that I am the chief of sinners, that I am so broken that there is no chance I could help or save anyone no matter how hard I worked or prayed or strove. I am broken. I am a clay pot—a cracked clay pot—that somehow has a little spark of the Grace of God inside. This I must focus on. I must nurture this spark inside myself and let go of the responsibility I have pinned onto myself for the salvation of others—even, and especially, for those I love and care the most about. I cannot save. Only God saves. I cannot save, but I can seek to nurture and attend to the little spark of light that God has put into my soul.

Yet even as I say this, part of me is crying out: "That is so selfish. Where is the love in caring for your own soul when there is so much sadness and brokenness around you?" Yes it would indeed be selfishness, if I actually could do something to save those around me. But since only God can save, the most loving thing I can do for those around me is to attend to God in my own heart and thus be transfigured by the knowledge of God in my heart. My ability to cooperate with what the Grace of God is doing in others depends completely on my growing awareness of and cooperation with the Grace of God within my own heart.  I have to let go of the world to change the world.  I have to let go of my false sense of responsibility and the anger or sadness or frustration associated with it so that I can be transformed by the love and Grace of God already in my own heart.

Sometimes I wonder how much my over-wrought sense of responsibility isn't really just a manifestation of my own sense of guilt. I know I am not a very good priest—even when I try my hardest. I know that I was not a very good parent—even though I tried to do what I thought was best for my children at the time. I know my inadequacy, and somehow in my confused mind, having an over-anxious sense of responsibility is my way of assuring myself, and perhaps my way of trying to tell God, that I really do love and care about those whom He has put into my life. Sometimes, I think, this anxiousness I experience, this messiah complex, is really just that. It is my attempt to assuage my doubts, to convince myself that I really do love and care and want the best for those around me.  And if this is the case, and it seems often to be the case in my life, then letting go of this false sense of responsibility is not really about letting go of my love and care for others, it is about letting go of my coping mechanism and embracing even my own self doubt as part of my brokenness, as a part of what needs to be healed in me.

I cannot save others. Salvation is of the Lord. Sometimes I just repeat this to myself over and over again. It helps me shift my focus. It helps me look to God in my heart and to give over to Him all of the anxiety and worries I have for those I love. After all, God really is the only One who saves.

I Am Not Afraid Of Hell...

"I am not afraid of hell, and I don't think about Paradise.  I just ask God to be merciful to the entire world and to myself."
St. Porphyrios