How Do I Become Poor In Spirit?

Recently one of my parishioners wrote to me asking the following question. With her permission, I’d like to share with you the question and my response because I think it is a question that many of us ask at various seasons of our lives.

She wrote: 

I've been wondering how to become poor in spirit. I seem to swing between pride and hopeless self-criticism and negativity. I want to know myself and see myself honestly - see all the many ways that I am a mess, but usually I don't. Rather than recognizing those things, I either think of them as strengths and pridefully embrace them, or I see them as weakness and beat myself up over them thinking (again pridefully) that I could and ought to fix them myself. How can I be real and humble in my brokenness, before God?

Sometimes, when I recognize certain sins, I say 'Lord, have mercy' or 'God, I am a mess, but I am your mess' ... but it doesn't come as readily as I would like it to. Often I don't recognize my sin (e.g., anger) when I am in the middle of it. Or I don't want to stop being angry.

I want - or I think I want - my sin to 'always be before my eyes' (or however it says it in the Psalms - I'm sure I'm misquoting). How can I get there?

This is approximately my response:
Hopeless self-criticism is only pride in different clothing. Someone who is poor in spirit accepts who they are. Getting to this place, however, for some Protestant converts often is experienced as a kind of see-saw. This is because most Protestants have inbred in them a theology that God loves and accepts them when they are good--i.e. first you repent (change) then God loves and accepts you. 

It takes a long time to reorient oneself in the Church. God's love and acceptance never, ever, ever, ever changes because God never changes. We only hurt ourselves and create obstacles in ourselves when we misbehave. For many people, sin functions a lot like a stress induced headache. The more you think about how to fix the headache, the worse the headache gets. Actually, asthma also functions that way in some people (like me for example). For me, the trick was to teach myself not to become anxious when I felt an asthma attack coming on. I had to accept that this undesired phenomenon was happening to me and peacefully put myself in a situation away from what seemed to be causing the irritation and where I could calmly focus on relaxing and breathing regularly until the worst of the asthma attack passed.

In the same way, some sins sneak up on us and take us by surprise. Sometimes we are well into "sinning" before we realize what we are doing. When that happens, when we realize that we are in the middle of sinning (in the way we are thinking or talking or acting), then we must calmly and peacefully withdraw as much as we can from the situation (even if the withdraw is merely to stop talking or to busy ourselves with other things). We do not need to become angry with ourselves--it doesn't help. We need merely to recognize that we are poor, sick, and spiritually lame. We can pray, Lord have mercy.  

However, for some, Protestant training has taught them that sin is a choice, in the same way that making a left or a right turn is a choice. But sin is very seldom that way. Those who do not want to sin are most often tricked into it (you might say) by mechanisms that are mostly subconscious. Learning to recognize those mechanisms in ourselves is a life-long process.

And while we are learning, we must never despair of the love of God. In fact, it is God Himself, the Holy Spirit within us, that is enabling us to see our sin. Were it not for the Love of God and the Grace of God already at work in us, we wouldn't even notice that we sin. So that you notice is evidence of God's love for you.

Humility, or poverty of spirit, requires that we hold these two things in our heart at the same time: on the one hand, God's unchanging and unfailing love and acceptance; and on the other hand, our chronic sickness which will not be fully healed until the age to come. And this sickness is sin. 
Spiritual disciplines, loosely categorized under the three headings of Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving, help us learn to manage this sickness and to begin to see its root in ourselves. This helps us recognize the development or evolution of sin within ourselves while it is still just a thought and learn to deal with it there, in our minds and hearts, before it becomes a determined thought effecting our feelings, words and actions. But just like any disciplines that can bear good fruit in our lives, spiritual disciplines require practice over time and bear fruit slowly.

So, to return you your original question, "how can I become poor in spirit," you become poor in spirit by owning your poverty without despairing of God's love and acceptance. But this will require time and a certain amount of retraining yourself not to think of your sins merely as failures of choice (failures you could remedy if you worked harder); but rather to think of your sins as manifestations of a deeper sickness that you are just beginning to learn how to manage.


People who get type 1 diabetes as teenagers have to learn to pay attention to their bodies. They cannot get mad at themselves for feeling dizzy. They have to learn to recognize imbalance in their system and what to do about it before it becomes dizziness. Similarly, through prayer, confession, and other spiritual disciplines, we begin to recognize in our souls the beginning of sin and through experience learn what to do to "nip it in the bud." The fruit of this growing understanding and inner work of "nipping in the bud" (aka repentance) is the beatitudes, or the fruit of the Spirit.

What To Do About Corruption In The Church

In the Orthodox Church, when someone moves from one parish to another, it is expected that he will bring a letter from the priest or bishop of the former parish introducing him and assuring the priest or bishop in the new parish that he is an Orthodox Christian in good standing. Although this practice is often overlooked by the laity nowadays, it is a practice still strictly adhered to by clergy. This is an ancient practice. In fact, many of the letters (epistles) of the New Testament were originally written for this very purpose: to introduce someone to a new community, sending greetings from the leader of the former community, and assuring the new leader that the bearer of the letter is a faithful Orthodox believer. St. John’s third epistle is the simplest example of this kind of letter in the New Testament and, like all of the epistles, provides wonderful insight into the real-life problems that the Church had to deal with at the time—problems just like the ones the Church faces today.

St. John’s third epistle is written to Gaius, who is one of the leaders of the Church in a certain area (probably a home church leader). The letter begins with St. John praying for Gaius and then encouraging him in the good work of helping both brethren and strangers, and particularly those whom we might today call missionaries: those who “went forth for His Name’s sake, taking nothing from the Gentiles.” St. John commends Gaius because he sends “them forward on their journeys in a manner worthy of God.” In other words, Gaius treats those who come to him as though they were God, as Jesus Christ Himself, giving them concrete physical assistance (food, money, shelter, etc.) as best as he was able. Of this activity of materially helping those who “go forth for His Name’s sake," St. John says that doing so makes one a fellow worker in the Truth. [I find it interesting, by the way, that St. John is assuming a norm in which, although only a few actually go out preaching, those who support the one’s “going forth,” become fellow workers. Thus, without those who stay home and work, it would not be possible for those called to go forth to do so. The proclamation of the Gospel is a team effort.]

Towards the end of the letter, St. John recommends the one who is carrying it, Demetrius. He is a man with a good testimony. Finally, St. John gives some farewell greetings.  It is the middle part of the letter, however, that I want to focus on today. In this part, St. John speaks of a problem in the larger Churches in the area where Gaius lives. One of the leaders of the Church in that area, Diotrephes, is someone who loves to be first. Diotrephes sees himself as the leader of the leaders and will not accept or give hospitality to those whom St. John sends. In His letter, St. John says, “I wrote to the Church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us.” In fact, in his position as preeminent among the leaders of the Church in his area, Diotrephes has gone so far as to excommunicate some who, like Gaius, continue to receive those whom St. John sends even though Diotrephes doesn’t.

What a messy problem to have in the Church: a leader, perhaps a bishop, who loves being preeminent so much that he refuses to show hospitality to those who come to him, even those bearing a letter from the Apostle John, the Beloved Apostle, himself. And even worse, throwing his authority around, he excommunicates those who do show hospitality to those who come from the Apostle. What a terrible situation for any Church to find itself in: to have an overbearing bishop, throwing his weight around, excommunicating those who disagree with him and refusing to accept apostolic authority. You might think such a letter was written in our time, but it wasn’t. It was written in the first century, while the Apostle John was still living—in fact, he writes the letter!

So what are we to do when we encounter such corruption in the the Church? Should we protest? Should we just leave the Church? Should we post all of our accusations on the internet? What does St. John recommend? St. John says that he, himself, will come and deal with Diotrephes. But what should Gaius do in the mean time? St. John gives Gaius these instructions: “Do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.” That’s it. Those are the instructions.  

I often meet devout Orthodox believers who are distraught by the corruption, immorality, arrogance or greed that is occasionally encountered here or there in the Orthodox Church, as though brokenness should not be found in the True Church. However, St. John’s letter to Gaius (as do the letters of St. Paul and St. Peter) make it abundantly clear to us that sexual immorality, greed, arrogance and corruption of all sorts has been present in the Church even from its earliest days. Why should we be surprised? Do we think that we should be or are any better than they were?

What did Jesus say about this matter? He said that the Kingdom of God was like a farmer who sowed good seed, but while he was sleeping, an enemy came and sowed tares. The wheat and the tares, Jesus says, are allowed to grow up together in the same field. They are not separated except by the angels at the End of the Age. Of course there is corruption in the Church—Jesus told us it would be this way. “Offences must come,” Jesus said, “but woe to the one through which they come.” I think we often drive ourselves to distraction asking the wrong question. We want to know why God allows such tares to grow among the wheat, why God allows those who offend to come to positions of authority in the Church? Jesus does not tell us why—at least not directly. Rather than asking why, the question we need to be asking, and the question St. John answers for Gaius is this: What should we do when we are confronted by worldly behaviour in the Church?

St. John tells Gaius, and us, that we are to imitate what is good and not imitate what is evil.

He does not tell us to judge or condemn. He does not tell us to protest or leave the Church. He tells us to imitate what is good, not what is evil. Now this does not mean that we should not speak the truth. We should never call evil, good. We should always communicate our concerns to our clergy—whether or not they listen is another matter. And there are also canonically established ways of dealing with corruption in the Church. Certainly, these should be followed, even though the processes are generally painfully slow and sometimes unresponsive. I am not saying that we should be silent. I am saying what the Apostle is saying: we should imitate what is good, not what is evil.  

In St. John's first letter, he tells us not to love the world.  Unfortunately, many of us have the false notion that “the world” refers to something outside ourselves, as though the world were something “out there.” No, St. John makes it clear by describing what He means by “in the world” - that the world is inside each one of us. He says, “All that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” All of these things reside in each person.  Each person must struggle within his or herself not to be of the world.  

Why do I bring this up?  I bring it up because it is very common when we see weakness and corruption in those whom we had expected to be pillars of morality and virtue, to begin pointing fingers. “There’s the problem,” we say. “Something must be done about it,” we demand. And in our zeal to eradicate the bit of the world we see manifest in someone else in the Church, we ourselves fall prey to worldly attitudes and actions ourselves. Instead of imitating good, we end up imitating evil. We lose our peace; we become angry and fight; we resort to political and deceptive means to gain a supposedly good end. “Brothers and Sisters, this ought not to be!” to borrow the words of St. Paul.

If I cannot speak the truth without becoming angry, then I need to keep my mouth shut. If I am so disturbed that I cannot pray, then I need to reexamine my faith. Do I really believe in God or not? Is Christ the Head of the Church or not? Do I believe the Gospel—the very words of Jesus telling me that it would be this way—or not? If Jesus told us that impostors would come, if St. John said that many antichrists have already come, and if St. Paul told us that in the last days perilous times would come for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers…rather than lovers of God, if we are warned so many times, why then are we still so surprised. Do we think God doesn’t see what’s going on?

I have a theory about why we are so easily offended by the failings of others that is based on my own inner experience. I don’t know what happens in others, but I notice in myself a certain phenomenon. When I am offended by worldly behaviour manifested by others, I am not paying attention to the worldly impulses in myself. And the more I focus on the brokenness of others, the more depression or anger and less peace I experience. I can become almost fixated on the evil in someone else that is so offensive, that I fail to focus on the evil in my own heart and my own repentance. And thus, perhaps, being offended becomes a distraction that keeps me from repentance and peaceful prayer, and keeps me from imitating what is good.

It is always painful when those we trust fail, when those who should know better, obviously don’t. Jesus doesn’t tell us why it is this way, why it is that men after God’s own heart, like King David, turn into murderous adulterers. Nor does God tell us why some, like David, find repentance and others apparently do not. But what are we told?  We are told that it will be this way, that tares will grow along with the wheat, that false apostles and false brethren will be among us. And we are told what we should do when we, like Gaius of old, encounter corruption in the Church: above all else, we are to imitate what is good, not what is evil.  We are to attend to the salvation of our soul, not using offence of any kind as an excuse to imitate what is evil.

I’d like to end with a saying of the desert fathers. I don’t remember which father said this, but the saying goes something like this. “You shouldn’t be paying attention to the funeral at your neighbour’s house when there is a corpse in your own living room.”  

The True Church is a Church full of men and women striving for salvation, and men and women who are not, and men and women who are wavering between the two. Following St. John’s advice, let’s strive for our own salvation imitating what is good even when others do not seem to be doing the same. It is, after all, Christ’s Church; and he knows better than we do how to care for it.

Spiritual Swords

Every morning at the end of matins, the Church prays the last three Psalms of the Psalter, which include the following verses.  

Psalm 149:6-9 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, And a two-edged sword in their hand, To execute vengeance on the nations, And punishments on the peoples; To bind their kings with chains, And their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute on them the written judgment—This honour have all His saints. Praise the Lord! 

How are Christians to understand these verses?  Almost certainly they were originally written to be read literally. In the Old Covenant, resurrection had not yet been revealed except in the vaguest types and shadows. With the exception of a few prophets and holy men and women, the promise of God was understood exclusively as a promise of land--land taken away from the ungodly by the force of arms. The blessing of God was understood exclusively in terms of abundant harvests, secure borders, long life and many children. Death was the end: "For in death who can praise you?" the Psalmist asks.   

However, in Christ all of this changes. The Church reads the Old Testament in the light of Christ, or through the lens of Christ's life, teaching, death and resurrection. In my Protestant days, we sometimes referred derisively to this Christ-ized reading of the biblical text as "spiritualizing the text." We thought that reading the Old Testament this way was a kind of bastardization of the text--a sort of free-for-all that made room for anyone to imagine the text to mean anything they wanted it to mean. Yet even pre-Christian Jews in their interpretation of the Old Testament texts often spiritualized their readings, and from the earliest days of the Christian reading of the Old Testament--heck, throughout the entire New Testament itself--the Old Testament is Christ-ized.  As Jesus says to the Pharisees, "You search the scriptures because in them you think you will find eternal life, but it is these that speak of me." 

So, to return to the Psalm that we pray every morning, how do we understand the two-edged sword in the hand of God's holy ones executing vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples?  I do not pretend to speak for the whole Church, but it seems to me that one way these verses can be understood within the Orthodox Christian Tradition is the following.

In the light of Christ's teaching, life, death, resurrection and the experience of Christians from the beginning, it seems obvious to me that the blessing of God is not to be understood in terms of material blessing. Blessed are you poor, Jesus says in Luke's Gospel. Similarly, if the blessings of the Kingdom of God are not material, neither then are its judgements: the vengeance and the punishments.  

Many of the hymns of the Church speak of the martyrs putting to flight the demons and defeating the tyrants by not being terrified of fire or sword. In these hymns, we have an interesting play on both the spiritual (Christ-ized)  and literal use of military language. The martyrs (in a spiritual sense) put to flight the demons and defeated the tyrants by not being terrified of (literal) fire and sword. For the martyrs, the Kingdom of God had become so real that spiritual reality was substantial, was really real, while the temporal reality was like a dream, a vision that passes away. 

And so in the martyrs, the demons are put to flight in their attempt to drive the saints out of the "land" of their spiritual inheritance, which is manifest in them as the knowledge of a reality that transcends the temporal, and that judges the temporal. That is, the demons through the fear of death cannot drive the saints to abandon what they have come to know of the Age to Come.  For the saints, all that is right and true of the temporal age gets its alignment from the Kingdom of God which in now known only (or primarily) through inner perception. Those wielding the weapons of this age, in their attempt to control and manipulate those whose hearts are anchored in the Kingdom of Heaven, are put to flight because temporal sufferings cannot dislodge the certain inner knowledge of the Kingdom of God. And this is the judgement on those who wield temporal power.  

Christ tells us that in the Age to Come, the Apostles will sit on twelve thrones judging Israel (the people of God, specifically and perhaps all mankind, generally). But how will this judgement take place? It will not be like the judges of this temporal age who refer to books and laws and do their best to determine how much one did or didn't deviate from what was written. No, not at all. The judgement of the age to come will not be like that at all. Yes, the books will be opened, but only to reveal what has been actual and true for every living thing--nothing will be hidden. 

The judgement itself, however, will not require books. The judgement will be the judgement of a plumbline, as the prophets of the Old Testament say. Our own conscience will be the prosecutor--nothing will be hidden, not even from ourselves. In that moment, we will see the Apostles and all of those who in this life did not fear death in its various forms, and then we will know that they are the true ones, while we are crooked. They lived in accordance with reality, while we only talked about it, while we didn't even think it was possible to live according to the eternal spark that glowed faintly in our hearts. They were the ones who saw clearly, who loved in spite of temporal loss, while we refused to see--then it will be clear to us that our blindness was chosen--while we preferred to save our temporal life rather than to lose even a little of what's perishing anyway for the sake of love.  And that is the judgement: our twisted and perverted life against the plumbline of the saints.

That's when the two-edged sword will slay the nations. That's when God's holy ones (that's what the word "saint" means), that's when God's holy ones will execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the people. The two-edged sword in their hand is the life they have led. It is the Word of God incarnate in a life lived--not words in a book, but love shown; tears shed; and kindness, patience and gentleness manifest in a thousand daily, often unconscious acts. This is the judgement written, this is the honour all of His saints have. 

So when we read of the hueing down of enemies in the Old Testament

The Thank You Tree

One of my parishioners tells the story of how, when she was a university student, God helped her keep her relationship with God alive through a sacramental encounter with God through a tree.  As many young people do when they go off to university, this young woman stopped going to church.  It wasn’t as though she was running away from God, but the Pentecostal church culture she had grown up in just wasn’t doing it for her.  

One morning as she was walking to class, she turned a corner and saw the sun shining behind a tree glistening with droplets.  The site was so overwhelmingly beautiful that she had to stop and pray.  Right there on the path, she had a sacramental encounter with God through the beauty of the sun shining and refracting through the thousands of drops of water hanging from the edges of the leaves on a tree.  When she came out of her reverie and realized that she had to hurry on to her class, as she passed under the tree, she reached out to one leaf and took a drop of water that hung from it and anointed herself with it saying Thank you.  

Every morning after that, when she passed that way to go to class, she reached out to one of the leaves of that same tree and took a drop of water to anoint herself with and say, thank you.  She began to call the tree the Thank You Tree.  And she was amazed that every morning, the tree had a drop of water for her—which would probably be even more amazing most other places in the world, but on the Pacific Coast of Canada, wet trees are rather the rule than the exception.  But more to the point, her daily encounter with the Thank You Tree became a sacramental encounter for her, a means by which she kept her faith in God alive.

Many years later, this young woman encountered the Holy Orthodox Church.  She was drawn to the the mystical theology the Church and sacramental nature of its worship.  For the past several years, the memory of the Thank You Tree had sustained her and taught her to look for God everywhere, to encounter God sacramentally in as many places as she could.  In fact, as she stood at the doors of the Church one of her serious concerns was this: Would the veneration of specific sacramental objects (specifically icons) lessen her encounter with God through beauty in nature, music and in other often unexpected places?  

Of course, what she has found is the opposite of what she feared.  Learning to encounter God in specific liturgical objects, has helped her more and more to encounter God in beauty everywhere.  It is as though worship in the Church has attuned her worship anywhere. 

Others have had a similar experience with prayer.  That is, before encountering Holy Orthodoxy, they have had genuine encounters with God through prayer in the form of speaking their thoughts to God.  For them, real prayer consisted of telling God what the problem was and how they would like God to fix it.  And for those used to praying this way, the set prayers of the Orthodox Church seemed to be a hinderance to real prayer rather than a help.  However, what they find is that praying set prayers actually teaches one to pray.  

I often tell converts who struggle with this that they should continue praying as they have always prayed, but to add to their prayers some of the morning and evening prayers of the Church.  As they faithfully say the prayers of the Church, they often experience a change in the way that they say “their own” prayers.  As the prayers of the Church teach us that God already knows what the problem is and how to fix it, and as we come to know this to be true through our actual experience in prayer, then less and less does it feel necessary to see prayer as a time in which we explain things to God.  More and more, prayer becomes a time of communion, often silent communion, as the words of the Church prayers become memorized and require less thought, and prayer becomes more about just being before God rather than talking to God.

People inquiring into the Orthodox Church are sometimes afraid that the Church might take away from them something very important to their relationship with God, something that has had great meaning to them and has helped them along the way.  But this is seldom the case.  Generally what people find is that the Church provides a context in which what was good before can become better, more deeply understood, and more sanely practice.  

For example, before I was Orthodox I was a Charismatic/Pentecostal Christian.  One aspect of that way of being a Christian that was very meaningful to me was what we called prophesy or word of knowledge.  It is a little embarrassing for me now to say these things, but at that time it all made sense.  If we had a dream or a thought or a picture in our mind and it turned out that what we had dreamed or thought or seen in our mind somehow helped us or someone else, we would say, “God told me this.”  This culture in which we encouraged one another to try to see or hear things that we thought were from God and say them to one another.  And sometimes, these words we gave to one another were amazingly bang on and brought a great deal of encouragement.  

Now I don’t want to try to parse out right now how much of what we were doing was merely psychological, how much was genuinely spiritual and how much was possibly demonic; but I do want to say that God was at least involved in enough of what we were doing to lead us to the door of the Holy Orthodox Church.  But standing at the door of the Church, we wondered (or at least I did), how would these “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” as we understood them, function in a Church setting were people do not lay hands on one another and prophesy and are not encouraged to give each other “words from God.”  Well, we did come into the Church, and with time we found answers to our questions.

At first, though, it was a kind of death.  We had to let go of some ways of doing things, committing them to God and trusting that what the Church had to offer would be enough.  And it was enough, more than enough.  We began to learn about stillness, holiness, and humility—topics that never seemed to come up much before we came into the Church.  We began to learn about the importance of not drawing attention to ourselves, of taking the lowest seat, and of praying in secret.  We began to learn about very holy men and women who do speak words from God, but never, ever called them that.  They just speak, humbly, peacefully and with love.  They are men and women whose holiness is manifest in peace, gentleness, and kindness, whose life is a disciplined cycle of prayer, work and self control.  There the word of knowledge and prophetic word has its place in the Orthodox Church: in the mouths of men and women who have been purified of their passions and who draw no attention to themselves.

We began to understand that God is interested in our sanctification, our transformation into His Image.  We began to understand that intimacy with God came through silence.  And we began to see that our confidence that the words we heard or saw in our minds were “from God” was rooted in a kind of pride born of insecurity.  Yes, God may indeed speak to us or show us things, but how much of what we hear or see in our minds is really of God or of the devil or of our own confused psyches we really could not know.  And that’s fine because if God wants to say something through me to someone, what I think about it is irrelevant.  In fact, I am better off if I do not know that someone is being encouraged by God through something I do or say.  It’s better for me to assume that my mind is too confused to hear anything clearly.  It’s better for me and others not to think of myself as one “being used by God” or to think of myself as one “who has a gift or a ministry.”  It’s best just to humbly be, to trust in God, but to doubt myself; to repent, to love and to leave the giving of words to those who through holiness have purged themselves of passions. 

This was my experience coming into the Holy Orthodox Church.  What was best and most meaningful of what I had before the Church was renewed and expanded and deepened in the sea of the Holy Orthodox Tradition.  Yes, some of the techniques and attitudes were left at the door.  Yes, there was a letting go, a little death into a glorious resurrection.  But when I think back I see that I have lost nothing.  I have lost nothing and gained so much.

Lord, If You Had Been Here....

Lord, if you had been here…

When Lazarus dies, his sisters, Martha and Mary, are overwhelmed with sadness, confusion and probably not a little anger. A few days before Lazarus’ death, Martha and Mary sent messengers to Jesus telling Him, “Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.” Martha and Mary reached out to Jesus because they believed in Him. They believed in His love for them and their brother. They believed that Jesus not only could, but would heal their brother; and so they reached out to Jesus. And Jesus heard their cry for help.  He received the message but then waited two days before beginning the two or three day journey to Bethany.

Jesus waited, and Lazarus died.  

For Martha and Mary, Jesus did not show up—not when they needed Him, not when they expected Him, not when they believed he would and should have shown up, not in time to keep their brother Lazarus from dying. For Martha and Mary, Jesus shows up four days too late. So when they do see Jesus the first words out of the mouths of Martha and Mary, the first words they say to him—and they meet him separately, yet say exactly the same thing—their first words to Jesus are a rebuke, their first words are telling Jesus what He did wrong: “Lord,” they say, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

The Gospels tell us that Lazarus was a friend of Christ.  Mary had poured out costly perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. Martha had served meals for Jesus and his disciples. They had seen Jesus heal the sick.  They had seen him heal multitudes of strangers. All who came to Him, He healed. And yet it seemed to Martha and Mary that in their hour of greatest need, their friend Jesus, whom they loved and served, their friend Jesus wouldn’t come and heal their brother. He wouldn’t come on time.  He wouldn’t hurry up. He would just let their brother die.  “Lord, if you had been here,” they cried.

Many devout followers of Christ have had experiences similar to Martha and Mary’s. It seems always to be the devout followers of Christ who suffer the most. Of course death—in all of its forms: sudden loss of life; slow, lingering illness; dementia; moral failure; betrayal; misunderstanding; irrational hatred; sudden poverty—death in all of its forms brings suffering and sorrow to everyone and anyone it touches. However, for those who believe, for those who believe in the God who does wonders, those who believe in miracles, who know that God can do whatever He pleases, for these there is a unique kind of suffering associated with deaths. “Lord,” we cry, “where are you?”  “Lord, if you had been here….” For those who believe, deaths are often accompanied by a strong sense of the absence of God.

This is not always the experience of devout believers. That is, many devout believers have experienced a profound sense of the nearness of God in the face of deaths of various kinds. I, too, have experienced this inexplicable comfort in the face of tragedy. Yet I have also tasted of the deeply troubling sorrow of Martha and Mary. This is a sorrow compounded by sorrow. Not only is there the loss and pain of death with its myriad of manifestations, but there is the loss or failure of faith. God has not done what you believed, what you knew so confidently, He would do.  “I did my part—what more could I have done?” We wrack our brains: “What is it? What is it? Surely, I can’t have been so wrong. Have I offended God? Have I made a mistake?  God, what did I do wrong?! Lord, where are you?! Lord, if you had been here….”

When Martha confronts Jesus, she enters into dialog, into a kind of negotiation: “But even now,” she says, “I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” But Jesus redirects her attention toward the resurrection. Martha imagines only the future: “Yes, yes, someday, at the end of the world, my brother will rise again.” But Jesus corrects her, corrects both her tense and her understanding of what (or rather who) resurrection is: “I am the resurrection and the life….”

Mary, on the other hand, when she confronts Jesus, is different. After her initial words, “Lord, if you had been here…” Mary only weeps. She has no more words. Mary weeps and those who are with her weep and Jesus weeps.

We know from the Gospel that Jesus does raise Lazarus from the dead. The hymns of the Church teach us that this is to be understood as a confirmation of the universal resurrection. In Christ, everyone and everything is raised, even though in time this may yet be a future event. Christ is the resurrection and the life, even though we still must pass through time, through the confused words of Martha and the tears of Mary, through what the Psalmist calls the Valley of Tears.

I have a german shepherd who loves to go for walks.  She walks on leash very well—so long as she doesn’t think she knows where we are going. Once she thinks she knows, then she starts to pull on the lead. Then I have to change direction. I have to train her to pay attention to me, not to where she thinks we are going.

Jesus invites us to walk with Him. He amazes us with His signs and wonders, with His love and with the experience of His nearness. Yet instead of paying attention to Him, we strain our focus to where we think God is going. We have visions and dreams that we are sure are His, that we are sure are pointing us to where God is going. We deduce principles and guidelines. We teach others where we think God is going (and how to help God get there). We begin to interpret every drop of Grace as a sign confirming what we think we already know—rather than as a sign pointing back to the Giver, as a sign calling us to attend to our Master.

And then the inevitable happens. Death surprises us.  Failure sneaks up on us. People disappoint us. Illness attacks us. A temptation overwhelms us. The dream fades, the vision crumbles. “Lord, if you had been here….” But the Lord is where He has always been—in our hearts. Our attention, however, has wandered. Like my energetic german shepherd, my attention has strained to where I thought we were going, and I have stopped paying attention to my Master, to my heart, to the place where my Master abides. Some of us, the wise (I suppose) weep. There are no words. Some of us, like Mary, have no words and only weep. Some of us, like me, will have to argue a little, will have to pull at the leash until in brokenness we too run out of words and collapse in tears at Jesus’ feet: “A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

The earliest Christians referred to our faith as “the Way.”  The Way refers not to a particular path we may walk or a particular place we are going, but to a particular way we walk whatever path we find ourselves on. We walk in this Valley of Tears with our attention not on the destination or even on the road, we walk with our attention on the One who abides in our hearts by faith. Yes, there are paths and there are destinations and there are things we do in life—but none of this is where our attention belongs. In fact, it has been said by many that it is the very unpredictability, the very disappointing and confusing nature of our walk through this world that forces us to attend to “the one thing that is needful.”  

Some of us, the more stiff necked (I suppose), may need more disappointment to turn our gaze away from what is outside us, to teach us to see within us what cannot be seen outside us. Jesus is the resurrection—even when death seems to be winning. Jesus is the resurrection—even when our loved ones don’t understand. Jesus is the resurrection—even when the Church seems deeply broken.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life. When we believe in Him, though we die (and die we will) yet we shall live. And as we live and believe in Him, we shall never die. A divine mystery: We believe and we die and we live and we believe and we never die. It is a mystery only known in the heart, where Christ lives, where both life and death teach us to focus our attention.

The Dark Night Of The Soul

“The Dark Night of the Soul” is a term made famous by St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth century Spanish mystic. St. John wrote a long poem called “Dark Night” in which he reflects on the steps or stages of mystical experience through which one lets go of this world and enters fully into the Heavenly Reality.  

It’s been many years since I read The Dark Night, but the image of the dark night as a passageway from one level or way of knowing God to a deeper, more Heavenly way has stuck with me as a poignant way to describe a relatively common experience among Christians who are earnestly seeking to grow in God.  

When I was in elementary school, we were introduced to volleyball by playing the game with a low net and an interesting new rule: the ball was allowed one bounce after each touch. I believe I was in fourth grade when I learned to play volleyball this way. We learned all of the different ways we were supposed to hit the ball: dig, set, spike and block. We learned the rules about not touching the net and only hitting the ball three times per side and how the boundaries functioned. It was a lot of fun, once we got used to it. In fact, I got pretty good at it and liked to play "volleyball" at recess. I felt quite good about myself and my athletic ability.

Then came fifth grade, and the ball was not allowed to bounce, and the net was higher. I hated volleyball. The game that I had so quickly become good at, was now like a completely new game—and I was terrible at it. I was afraid of the ball hitting my arms and stinging. When I did hit the ball, it didn’t go where I wanted it to go. I was terrible at it. It was a dark night for my athletic soul.

I think many of us go through a similar experience in our spiritual life, and often several times in our lifetime. The various phenomena (feelings, impressions, thoughts, experiences) that we have come to associate with God’s love and nearness are somehow changed, taken away or otherwise revealed to be unreliable. We enter a dark night. God seems to have abandoned us. It seems as though God does not care. We find ourselves confused, angry at God, and frightened. Sometimes we are even tempted to sin, like peevish children who imagine that by hurting themselves they will be punishing their parents. It feels like a kind of death—it is, I think, a kind of death.

This is how I have experienced the dark night of the soul, or at least what I call the dark night of the soul. I am sure many have experienced nights of the soul far darker than what I am describing. How many, in times of war for example, experience the full reality of losing family and all material support along with the loss of the spiritual touchstones they had relied on? Yes, there are darker nights than what I have experienced. I am only a baby in the spiritual realm.

Why does God let this happen? Why must we go through dark nights? The thesis of St. John of the Cross was that we have to learn to let go of all that is earthly. This should not strike us as strange. At death, every human being must let go of all that is earthly. And while learning to trust God and let go does seem to be one important aspect of the dark night, in my experience, another aspect has seemed to be more important. For me, letting go has always led to a new or deeper holding on.  

What I mean is that when I had to let go, for example, of certain emotional feelings that I had associated with God, I came to be aware of a “knowing” that was deeper than emotion. Or when a certain theological system that I had put so much faith in proved to be inadequate, I came to know a more mystical theology—not nearly as neat and easily delineated as the old one, but much more—I don’t know what to say—more Real.

I have had dark nights last for months and for years. Some are darker than others. Some have ended with a kind of discovery—like my discovery of the the Orthodox Church, which promised so much light. And I have encountered light as an Orthodox Christian.  There have been times when I have felt overwhelmed by the insight, beauty and Presence I have encountered in the Orthodox Church. And I have had some very dark nights as an Orthodox Christian. People fail, systems don’t work as they should (or as I think they should), and lots of hard work and spiritual striving is seen by no one but God: in more than one way Orthodoxy teaches us that our reward is not in this life.

However, sometimes, in fact most of the time, dark nights have ended for me gradually. Like the slow sunrise of a summer day. I just keep on keeping on, and slowly I know more deeply than before. Slowly, slowly my wound heals.  Slowly, slowly I feel again my Saviour’s embrace—but not like before. There is now something a bit more severe about it, a lot less fleeting, and much more calm. My confidence is gone, or at least what I used to call confidence or what I placed my confidence in (calling it “God” but now knowing it wasn’t). My confidence is gone, but my peace is increased, and increased is my trust in God, the God whose ways are past finding out.

The dark night is a passage way, a birth canal, perhaps.  The dark night requires that we leave behind what was once so useful, so meaningful and so dear to come to know what is more real, more solid, more beautiful, and more true.

Everyone dies. Everyone passes through the final Dark Night. However, for some of us, for some of us who long for the life of Heaven even while on this earth, for these God gives a foretaste. A foretaste of death and a foretaste of the Life of the Age to Come. After all, isn’t that what we signed up for through our baptism?  

“Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).

Parsing Out Charismatic Signs And Wonders As An Orthodox Christian

From This

To This

My Christian experience before Orthodoxy was among the Charismatic and Pentecostal Protestants.  Recently several people from this same Charismatic Protestant background have begun coming to me in order to inquire into the Holy Orthodox Church. Consequently,  I have been given cause to think about what exactly was wrong, or potentially wrong (or perhaps “dangerous” is a better word) with the apparent miracles, or manifestations I experienced in those days.    

Perhaps those who have never been among Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians will not understand the importance signs and miracles play among these groups, and perhaps they will think that such claims to experiencing signs or miracles are always false, delusional or that they are strictly from the devil. However, from my own experience, I can testify that this is not the case. Yes, there are among the Charismatics and Pentecostals many charlatans and I often encountered people who claimed experiences that seemed to me to be exaggerations, imaginations or even manifestations of mental illness, and certainly, the devil has his share in much of this craziness.  

However, I personally experienced or saw many real physical healings, clairvoyant insights, and even prophetic words—including the predicting of an earthquake (which, I admit, in Southern California, is statistically about as impressive as predicting a tornado in Kansas). Nevertheless, all of this did happen. Now how much of this was of God or of the devil or manifesting group think or derived from psychological power or personal insightfulness or even will power, I do not know. But I do know that in my Charismatic worldview, such signs were what lead me to the door of the Orthodox Church. Such signs led me to the Orthodox Church knowing beyond a doubt that it is the True Church and that in submission to the Church I would find salvation in Christ. Based on my own experience, I must say that whatever mix of demons, angels, and human psychology was going on, God in His great love was definitely in the middle of it all guiding us, in as much as we would let Him, from darkness into Light.

God used signs and wonders to lead us, but for the most part, I have not tried to parse it all out. I have not tried to figure out what exactly was of God or of the devil or of some merely human origin. But recently into my life have come some wonderful Protestant (mostly of Mennonite background) men and woman who are very zealous for Charismatic manifestations and at the same time hungry for Orthodox spirituality. They are saying the Jesus Prayer and experiencing the Grace of God like they have never before experienced it, and they are searching for someone to tell them what all this means. (By the way, I did not teach them the Jesus Prayer. They encountered the Philokalia on their own and began saying the Jesus prayer. Now they are knocking at the door of the Church looking for help.) What am I to say to them about all of their experiences of dreams and clairvoyant impressions and miracle healings? Should I tell them that none of that is real or all of it is “of the devil”? I can’t do that. I can’t do that mainly because I do not believe that. At the same time, I know that much of what they believe and experience is mixed with serious error and is deceptive and misleading.

Orthodox Christians also experience miracles, dreams and clairvoyant impressions, but the Church has taught us not to put very much stock, or invest much meaning into such experiences when or if they happen. And especially, the church teaches us not to become passionate about such experiences. Here, I mean passionate in both the popular meaning of “to be enthusiastic and motivated about something” and the technical Orthodox spiritual meaning of “to allow disordered thoughts and feelings to be stirred up because of or concerning something.” The excitement and passion that are aroused by the experience of supernatural phenomenon, these, it seems to me, are the most dangerous aspects of the matter. St. Paul warns us that the devil often appears as an angel of light, and it would be very foolish (and manifest a great deal of pride), were I to assume that I have the spiritual insight and maturity to discern the difference. Therefore, no matter what kind of clairvoyant insight or miraculous experience I encounter, it is best that I not get too excited about it. If it edifies, good; but even then, the fruit of some trees takes years to mature. The genuine fruit of any word or action may not be known for a generation or even until the Age To Come.

Excitement derived from the experience of supernatural phenomenon (genuine or not, divine or demonic) is dangerous because it is so easy for us to interpret it as evidence or confirmation that what we think, believe, have done or have experienced.  We may wrongly conclude that what we think or have done is vouchsafed by God Himself. Or as one of my inquiring Charismatic friends said, “to mistake excitement for the Presence of God.”

And then there is the matter of pride. It is very difficult, almost impossible, to experience (or believe you are experiencing) clairvoyant impressions, dreams and other miraculous manifestations that seem to be “of God,” and seem to help and encourage people and to create a lot of excitement for God, and not to interpret the fact that such things are happening to and through you as a sign that you yourself, what you believe, what you think and how you perceive things is correct, that somehow God is confirming you.  

This is why in the Orthodox tradition, neophytes or beginners (and I consider myself a beginner), are taught not to read significance into a thought or experience that seems to be clairvoyant or otherwise miraculous. In fact, we are taught to dismiss it. We are taught that if God really has something to say or do, He will do or say it without drawing attention to me, He will do it through the channels of the Church that are already established. And if I happen to say something that turns out to be clairvoyant or say a prayer and God heals someone, then I should perceive that as a matter of someone else’s faith, as almost an accident, as having nothing to do with me. When you read the lives of holy elders who have manifested multiple and profound miracles, it is clear that they themselves do not read much significance into the miracles—except as a call to deeper repentance.

Then there is also the matter of what my Charismatic Protestant friends call covering, or what we in the Church would simple refer to as humility. In the Church there are two streams of authority that we are called to submit to and that both vouchsafe and create humility. The first is the hierarchy  and liturgical structure of the Church. One does not speak in the Church without the blessing of the bishop. One enters into and humbly receives the Tradition and teaching of the Church. If one is called and gifted to speak to or in the Church, one must wait until the bishop recognizes such a calling and blesses what you have to say.  In this formal structure of the Church, everyone may have and express their opinion, but only the bishop (or those he blesses or delegates) may speak with authority. In such a structure, one must trust in God. One must trust that both the context and the authority to speak (or act) will be granted from outside. Just as St. Paul submitted to the bishops/elders both at Jerusalem and Antioch, being sent out with the laying on of hands, so we too in the Orthodox Church must do nothing without the blessing of the bishop.

However, there is also another stream of authority in the Church, that functions within the visible structure of bishops and liturgics. This is what we in the Orthodox Church often refer to as the Charismatic giftedness of spiritual fatherhood (but not “charismatic” in the contemporary Protestant and Roman Catholic sense).  Typically, and again I must stress that this takes place within the structure of the bishops and liturgical life of the Church, a spiritual father or mother is an older, more experienced Orthodox Christian to whom one submits for spiritual guidance. In its classic form, spiritual fatherhood takes place in a monastic context. A monastic novice is assigned an elder in the community to whom he or she must confess all of his or her thoughts on a daily basis. The elder then helps the novice discern the thoughts, assigns penances (or spiritual exercises to heal the soul and produce virtue—the fruit of the Spirit), and gives obediences, or assignments for work around the monastery.  This exercise of submitting every thought to one’s elder frees you to humbly just be. You simply trust God to guide you through your elder and (learn to) assume that you know nothing on your own.

This ideal form of spiritual fatherhood, however, is seldom realized these days. There are just not that many true spiritual fathers. And, I hasten to add, there are not that many men and women who would truly submit to them if they did exist. (Warning! The thought that may have just occurred to you that you would submit to a true spiritual father if you had one, that thought is almost certainly from the evil one.) If we cannot even submit to the wisdom of our stumbling, bumbling parish priest, then we are deluding ourselves if we think we could submit to a God-bearing Elder. As Jesus said, he who is faithful in little will be found faithful in much.

But even though the ideal form of spiritual fatherhood seldom fully manifests itself these days, nonetheless, every Orthodox Christian should have a spiritual father or mother. This is essential because we cannot see most of our own sin and none of our delusion. We need someone outside us, someone whose authority we respect, someone whom we have given permission to speak truth, even painful truth, into our lives. As the ancient saying goes, “he who discerns his own way, has a fool as a guide.” We need a spiritual guide who is not necessarily excited by what excites us nor disturbed by what disturbs us. We need someone outside us who can say, “Yes, that one thing is important—forget the rest.” or “Have you considered this possibility?”  or sometimes, “I think you’re missing the point.”  

Of course one must be careful. All men and women, even spiritual fathers, are broken in various ways. There is no magic relationship; there is no perfect fit. You have to work within the limits of what (and who) you have, what you feel safe disclosing, and above all use common sense. But if God can speak through a donkey, God can speak to us through weak spiritual fathers and mothers. You see, it is very easy to see the weaknesses and failings of others, so even a spiritually blind priest like me can most of the time see where others need to repent and grow. Finding someone who can accurately point out your errors and wanderings astray is not nearly as difficult as humbling yourself to listen to them with an attitude of obedience. That’s the real work.

Perhaps it seems that I have wandered away from my topic of parsing out Protestant Charismatic experiences of clairvoyance and miracle healings, but I have not. OK, maybe I have a little, but all of what I have said about the hierarchical and liturgical structure of the Church and the practice of spiritual fatherhood really does apply to my topic. It applies because outside of the Church, outside of the context that God created for such manifestations to take place, it really is impossible to parse out these things.  Even within the Church, discerning such things often requires more than a lifetime. So outside the Church, I don’t think we can know at all how much of a miracle healing or an apparently prophetic word is or is not from God. And unfortunately, outside the Church, there is very little to stop the collateral damage done through pride, false confirmation, and misinterpreted excitement that often accompanies such experiences.

In the troparion (hymn) for Christ’s Nativity, we sing “Through a star, God taught those who worshiped the stars to adore You, the Sun of righteousness.” Certainly in my life, God used signs and wonders to teach me to adore the Significant One, the Wonderful One. And just as the Magi from the East never looked at the stars in the same way again, I too don’t look at signs and wonders the same. They still happen. Miraculous words, events and healings happen all of the time in the Orthodox Church—just as the stars continued to shine in the sky for the Magi—but their significance is not the same.  

Miraculous signs are more than miraculous, they are first and foremost signs. A sign points to something. And that something to which the sign points, that is the important thing. To be excited about the miracle and to miss the sign is, perhaps, the greatest demonic delusion of all. Perhaps that is what St. Paul was referring to when he spoke of “lying wonders.” Millions of people saw the sign of the Star, but very few saw the significance, only three saw the significance and got up and went to where the Star led.  May God help us all, Orthodox, or otherwise, to have the wisdom, courage, and steady-mindedness not to be caught up in the miraculous, but to see and follow the sign to the Cave, the Stable, the Manger, the place of humility, where we too will find Jesus.

More Greener Grass

The Green Shift Phenomenon

In my last post, I spoke of two options for Christian living.  These options, marriage or monasticism, are the dominant options throughout most of Christian history—but not the only options.  In the past twenty years in North America (and a little longer in Western Europe), there has been a dramatic rise in the average age for first marriage, a divorce rate that has hovered around 50% and, outside the Orthodox world, a noticeable increase in the number of monasteries that are closing down.  Although Orthodox monasticism has seen somewhat of a revival over the past fifty years, still the relative number of Orthodox monasteries outside traditionally Orthodox countries is very small compared to the growing number of Orthodox Christians outside these lands.

This confluence of trends has lead to a large number of single Christian adults who do not live in marriage relationships or in monasteries.  I think we might group these single Christians in the following way: 
Those who are living a profligate lifestyle.
Those who are striving to live a holy life.
I know these are rough categorizations, but I choose them because looking at things this way will help me say what I want to say.  

First off, there are many Christians who are living a profligate lifestyle.  The religious sensibilities of our contemporary North American culture teach us that religion is merely a matter of feeling, of the “heart,” or of “faith.”  Particularly, this culture teaches that one’s sexual practices are irrelevant to spiritual or religious life.  If one is a good person (by the culture’s standards) and believes sincerely in and practices some religion or spirituality, that is good enough. In many ways, today’s culture is like the pagan world into which Christianity first entered.  At that time, like today, sexuality was largely irrelevant to spirituality, and in some cases, extra-marital sexuality was encouraged as an expression of religious devotion.  

However in at least one significant way, the religious climate today is much different from the religious climate of the Mediterranean world of 2000 years ago into which Christianity first entered.  Our world is a “post-Christian” world.  Culturally speaking, Christ and His message is well known, but disguised under layer after layer of badly remembered and selectively retold western history.  Everyone knows the name “Christ,” but very few associate it with anything life-giving.  Even those who believe in Christ, who look to Him for salvation, who are baptized and who have some devotion to the Church, even these no longer take the hierarchy of the Church seriously and have largely accepted a culturally reimagined version of Christ: a nice-guy deity, interested mostly in how I as an individual feel about things.  

This, of course, is a far cry from Christ, the God who became human to transfigure human nature into the divine image from which it fell of old in Paradise.  Yet very many Christians today, many Orthodox Christians, do not know this Christ.  They know only the culturally acceptable christ of their imagination. And so they are lost in their own confusion and passions thinking that they follow Christ. And for these, we must pray.  They are like those who have received an inoculation.  They have taken just enough dead virus to put them on the defence against the real.  The false Christ that they have come to know, blinds their eyes and deadens their ears to the real.  

And yet, there is hope for these.  As God brought the Prodigal Son to his senses and as Jesus caught the attention of the Samaritan Woman at the well, so it is not too late for these profligate Christians to repent.  However, more words are not what they need.  They need to be touched by God in some way that God knows will get their attention.  For this we pray.  And for this we love and suffer.  Cornelius, the centurion at the Cross, came to his senses watching Christ die.  How many may come to their senses watching you and I die daily and loving, as Christ did, to the end?  May God help us.

And what is the case for single Christians living a profligate life in the world, is the case also for married people or monastics living a profligate life.  (It may seem strange to those who don’t know many or any monks, but have mostly just read about them, for me to say “profligate monastics.”  But I know from first and second hand experience that there are such monks.  And why should that surprise us?  Nothing magic happens at tonsure.  The flesh and the devil must be resisted in the monastery as in the world.  Even Elder Prophyrios, raised from boyhood on the Holy Mountain of Athos, says in his biography that his elder warned him not to speak to monks whom he happened to meet on his way somewhere, for there are many wicked men even on the Holy Mountain.)

OK, let's now take a look at the other category: those single people striving to live a holy life in the world. For those who are striving to live a holy life but are not in a monastery or in marriage, there are also many precedents.  Consider that before there was any monasticism, there were holy men and women who were not married but were striving to live a holy life.  In fact, this is the beginning of monasticism.  These single Christians striving to be holy often grouped together in houses to encourage and strengthen one another (and pool expenses too, probably).  Sometimes a particularly holy and gifted old man or woman would find younger people gathering around him or her.  And very occasionally, St. Pacomius comes to mind as an example, an angel or a departed saint would instruct someone to build a larger place to accommodate those who were seeking salvation in the single life ( by the way, that’s what the “mono” of monasticism means, single).  

I used to think North America needed more monasteries right away.  Now I do not.  I think North America needs more holy men and women.  Monasteries are institutions.  Having more institutions is not the answer.  However, as single men and women strive to become more like Christ, then houses and perhaps institutions will form to encourage that holy striving.  

I am not against Greek or Russian or Serbian or Arabic monasteries transplanting to North America.  Perhaps in a few generations, these will indeed become indigenous centres of holy living.  What I am against, however, is the assumption I find in so many that in order for a single person to strive for holiness, he or she has to be a tonsured monk.  From what I have seen in North American monasteries and in single life in the world, if one is willing, a person can keep a very strict life of prayer and asceticism in the world—a life perhaps more prayerful and ascetic than is lived in many monasteries.  It really is a matter of what one wants.  

I want to hasten to add that we are not all called to be like St. Pacomius or St. Anthony, or any other saint for that matter.  We are each called with our own strengths and weaknesses, talents and foibles to become as holy as possible where we are right now.  There are, as the Scripture says, five talent, two talent and one talent Christians.  We do not all have the same measure of Grace, the same calling, the same gifts.  However, what we can all do is to take that little measure of Grace we do have and use it where we are now.  Any single person, if he or she goes to bed at a reasonable hour, can get up early and say prayers.  She or he can make attendance at Church services a priority, can throw away the TV and shut off the internet, can read books on the spiritual life, and can seek advice from people who seem to have the Grace to help.  Again, it really is a matter of what one wants.  Starting where we are, we take our one talent of Grace, our small offering, our little faith, and use it.  And as we use it, humbly and with whatever guidance our spiritual mothers and fathers can provide, God will see to it that it grows.  

Whether or not you or any particular single person ever becomes a monk, whether a house or institution of men or women ever comes out of our striving—that is a matter of God's calling and Grace.  It is a matter of many things over which you or I have no control.  However, what we do have some control over is whether or not I will pray today, whether or not I will go to bed on time tonight, and whether or not holiness is a priority that I am striving for.