More On The Fear Of God

It seems that some of my beloved readers do not recognize what I am talking about as I have been speaking about fear of God.  Let me keep working on it.

Certainly one of the hurdles to overcome when speaking about the fear of God is images of God that paint Him as vengeful.  However, an equally important hurdle to overcome is the dualism that often accompanies correctives to the false image of the vengeful God.  What I mean is that in trying to combat the false image of the irrational, vengeful and punitive God, we end up creating another false God, a God who is powerless, who merely weeps and suffers with us, as if that were all love was about.  We create a God for whom there is no justice, a God who is powerless in the face of suffering, a God whose ways are not higher than our ways.

It is this dualism, it seems to me, this inability to experience God as both just and merciful that is a large part of the problem.  And while I am the first to plead St. James' words that mercy triumphs over justice, still the triumph of mercy is not without its (or should I say our) encounter with justice.  And it is this encounter with justice that is the source (or one of the sources) of the fear of God.

It seems to me that this is one of the main points of the Book of Hebrews.  The audience of the book wants to shrink back from following Christ because it's getting hard.  They are being persecuted.  Their property is being plundered.  They are being rejected by their Jewish friends and family who do not follow Christ.  They are misunderstood, maligned and mistreated.  It's just getting too hard for them to live as Christians any more.  The author of Hebrews tells the readers to hang in there.  That their suffering is a form of God's chastisement: God is treating them as His own very children.  God is forming them through suffering.  However, the author adds that if they "willingly sin," if they turn away and "trample the Son of God underfoot," then they will suffer a much worse punishment (chastisement or discipline for reformation).  "It is a fearful thing," the author tells us, "to fall into the hands of the living God."  It is fearful because God does love us.  It is fearful because God will not let us go, no matter how hard we make it on ourselves.

The God who suffered death in the flesh and descended into hell "to loose the bonds of those who were there" will certainly not shy away from entering with us into any kind of death or hell in order to save us.  That, for me, is another source of the fear of God.  God will indeed let me shoot myself in the foot.  God will indeed let me turn away from Him.  God will indeed let me choose the torment of a burning conscience carried even into eternity because I consistently and unrepentantly sought selfishness and hated all who got in my way.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.  Yes, God loves me that much.

Some of you know that I have universalist tendencies.  I do not think I am an actual universalist, I just trust that God loves everyone and will be as merciful and kind to everyone as is possible (though I really have no clue what that will look like in the age to come).  But even if I were a full-fleged, card-carying universalist, I would need to make the case for the fear of God.  I believe it is Dimitry in the Karamosov Brothers who presents a universalist vision of heavenly reformation likened to a man walking for thousands of thousands of miles and slowly, slowly coming to his senses.  But even such a vision of heavenly reformation, while much less severe than eternal conscious suffering in fire, is still a pretty frightening prospect.  Imagine walking for almost an eternity wondering: "Why did I spend my life ignoring God, driven by lusts and fears, selfish and unsatisfied, hurting people and in the end dying miserably?"  

And for me, fear of God has much less to do with what I may suffer than it has to do with the suffering I may cause others.  This hit me really hard when I had children.  I could do something really selfish and stupid and God would let me do it and my kids or my wife (most likely both) would suffer for it.  I also knew (from experience) that often my conscience would bother me before I fell into something really stupid (literally: like in a stupor).  However, I often ignored my conscience, preferring the pleasure of the moment.  And when I ignored my conscience, my conscience got quiet.  I didn't want God to let my conscience get quiet.  I didn't want others to suffer because of my sinful, selfish stupidity.  This feeling, akin to fear, I have also come to associate with the fear of God.  

Having said all this, I'd like to make a few caveats.  First and most importantly, my experience is not normative.  What I have experienced in my life and relationship with God and have associated with words (fear, faith, love, peace, etc.) may not be exactly what you have experienced and associated with those words.  That there is something called the fear of God the Church makes pretty clear.  What exactly that feeling/emotion/experience is probably varies somewhat (maybe a great deal) among people.  So much depends on our own journeys, at least in terms of what we actually experience in life and how we associate those experiences with words.  

For example, it seems that St. John the Beloved and St. Peter the apostles had somewhat different encounters with the Saviour.  Both were in the "inner three,"  both were with Him from the beginning, and both followed Jesus after he was arrested.  But St. Peter denied Christ three times.  He said so confidently that he was ready to die with Jesus--while St. John was leaning quietly on His breast.  Jesus said that St. Peter would deny Him three times, but he firmly denied it.  St. Peter was so confident that he attacked those who came "with clubs and staves" to arrest Jesus and cut off Malchus' ear. St. Peter was so, so confident. And yet, at the word of a little girl he denied Christ.  And again.  And again.  And then he heard the cock crow and ran out and wept bitterly.  St. John, on the other hand, stayed with Jesus all of the way to the Cross.

Perhaps St. John never experienced anything like what I think of when I speak of the fear of God.  But I am not much like St. John.  I am more like St. Peter.  I have tended to be boastful and arrogant, and like St. Peter I have experienced some of how terrifying the love of God can be.  Words are so tricky.  In heaven, I have heard, there are no words.  We just know as we are known.  Perhaps St. John knew that.  He knew that it was enough to lay quietly at Jesus breast.

Another caveat I'd like to make is that there seems to be a progression in the Christian experience from fear to love.  I believe it was St. Anthony the Great who said, "I used to fear God, but now I love Him."  This progression is probably not liner because our growth in godliness, our paths, our journeys, and our circumstances in life are all so varied.  Nonetheless, I think it is definitely the case that both one's experience with God and one's interpretation of one's experiences with God grows and changes in life. Where each of us are in our journeys may influence our abilities to hear one another clearly.  I, too, may be missing the mark.  We have to love and listen to one another and let the Holy Spirit make hidden things plain.  

And finally, some of us may have been so abused or beleaguered by false understandings of the fear of God that the phrase itself has become toxic.  We can't imagine anything associated with that phrase being connected to our loving Father.  It may be that some of us can't understand or associate any experience to that phrase because the phrase itself carries too much baggage for us.  These people may indeed experience the fear of God, but they do not call it that.  Their aversion to the phrase is such that they can only use love language when they speak about their relationship with God, despite the fact that the Church uses both words: love and fear.  In as much as this is the case with some of us, patience and charity is required by all.  Again, words are tricky.  The advice of St. James is, I think, the best: "let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger."

Of Fear and Feet

Barbara asks a very good question: "Your last blog talks about love and faith being wed to fear. This blog talks about love casting out fear. Can you write more about what you mean by fear and its relationship to faith and love? "

What indeed is the difference between the fear that is united to faith and love as we draw near to God and the fear that love casts out?  

On one level I don't think I can find words to talk about these different experiences, both of which we call fear. The problem is that the word 'fear' refers to multiple experiences. Some have tried to distinguish fear in the sense of reverent awe from fear in the sense of an emotion of dread in the face of something dangerous or potentially painful. Such a definition is certainly useful, but not adequate. God is dangerous, in the sense that He is powerful and cannot be controlled, manipulated or avoided. At a certain level, all fear has certain characteristics in common. All fear involves a certain unpleasant emotion caused by feeling out of control, by not knowing what will happen and by suspecting that whatever may happen will be painful. I think the fear of God and the fear of rattlesnakes (for example) have these things in common.

However, and this is something experienced and not easily explained, the fear of God can also be mixed with the love of God and faith in (and the faithfulness of) God in such a way that fear of rattlesnakes or fear of any other created thing is driven out. Fear of what might happen is driven away when I draw near to God with fear and faith and love. And even the fear of God takes on a new dimension when it is combined with love and faith--both my love for God and more importantly God's love for mankind, and my faith in God and more importantly God's faithfulness to mankind. Fear of God and faith and love enable us to draw near to God. Fear does not go away. There is always, at least in my experience, a certain trembling before God. However, fear mixed with faith and love somehow creates something new. And this something new draws us toward God whereas fear alone makes us want to hide from God.

Similarly, even on a human level, love for someone or even love for an idea or an institution can drive away fear.  Love is stronger than fear (love is stronger than death, the Song of Solomon says). Yet even when love overcomes fear, the fear does not completely go away. Compelled by love, I have faced confrontations with people or situations I have feared, willingly accepting the pain, misunderstanding or suffering that might result because I considered the love motivating me more worthy, more important than the potential pain I might endure. The fear did not go away, but the love overcame it.

And so when we talk about love driving away fear, I don't think we mean that the unpleasant emotion that we call fear goes away completely (although sometimes it may). I think what it means is that love overcomes fear: the snake loses its fangs, the wasp loses its sting. The fearful feeling may annoy me, but it no longer overcomes me. And this is on a human level.

When we speak of our relationship with God, however, things are somewhat different. God never loses His Power. Yet as great as God's power and justice is, God's love and mercy are greater. "Mercy triumphs over justice," St. James tells us. God's love and our little love, God's faithfulness and our little faith blend with God's justice and our sometimes crippling yet still little fear so that with "fear and trembling" we are able to draw near to God. And drawing near, God touches our trembling heart and grants peace. I don't know how, it just happens.  

At the washing of the disciples' feet at the Last Supper (John 13), Jesus said to his disciples that it is right that they call Him Master and Lord. However, two chapters later Jesus calls his disciples friends. I think this illustrates a principle of the spiritual life. When we approach God, it is always with a certain amount of fear and trembling. We are approaching our all-knowing, all-powerful Lord and Master. Yet when we approach, we find that our Lord and Master washes our feet and calls us friends. He calls us friends, we do not call Him friend: we call Him Lord and Master. And so there is a paradox. We draw near with fear and faith and love, and He comes to us with compassion and mercy and peace. How can we find words to adequately describe this? I don't think we can.

Why Do We Fast In Lent?

As we are inching closer to Great Lent, I have had several opportunities to speak with catechumens and others about fasting. One of the hurdles that many encounter as they think about fasting is their own legalist rather than Orthodox ethos when approaching this subject.

I find myself often saying in conversation: "Fasting is not about jumping through the right hoops, it's about humility, contrition and transformation." Unfortunately many, even those who have been Orthodox their entire lives, look at a fasting calendar and see only obstacles that must be overcome or a challenge to be conquered. For them, a good Lent is to strictly keep all of the rules, as though we had returned to the Old Testament with its emphasis on ritually clean and unclean foods. I say repeatedly, "fasting is not about food, it is about inner transformation: food is only one of the means. It is the end, not the means, that is important." However, it seems like I am pushing sand uphill.

I once spoke to an Orthodox lay woman who told me of her best Lent ever. She said that about half way through Lent one year, having fasted very strictly and attended every service at Church that she possibly could, she became depressed. In a moment of weakness, she stopped her car at a fast food restaurant and ate a cheeseburger. The guilt she felt for this stayed with her. She continued the fast, and still attended services, but somehow it was different. She somehow now identified with the Publican, the Harlot and the Thief. She no longer had a sense of enduring or conquering Lent; rather, she now had a conscious awareness of her weakness. She fasted, but not as one conquering a challenge or enduring an ordeal; she fasted as one who had failed, as one weak, needy and unworthy. The prayers took on new meaning to her. She wept with the harlot, she prayed "remember me" with the Thief, and beat her chest with the Publican: "have mercy on me." And during Holy Week, she experienced the Humiliation, Death and Resurrection of Christ in a way she had never before experienced it.

This is why we fast. Not so that we can dot all of the "I's" and cross all of the "T's." We fast to see and know our weaknesses. We fast to know that indeed we are the Publican, the Harlot, and the Thief. If our fast is not producing this result in us, then we are not fasting correctly--even if we are keeping all of the rules.  

Jesus said to the Pharisees who saw his disciples picking ears of grain on the Sabbath, "Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man." The same is the case with Great Lent and all of its fasting rules and extra prayers and church services. Our goal is not to keep Lent perfectly. NO! Our goal is to know our weakness, to pray with longing and hunger in our hearts, not necessarily our bellies. Yes, fasting helps us do this, but to fast perfectly for the entire period of Great Lent and not to be broken and humbled by it is much worse than not fasting at all. At least the one who does not fast has no delusion of his or her spiritual prowess. Remember, the devils never eat at all.

So as we prepare with God's help to enter the arena of the Great Fast, let's not mistake the means for the end. Let's use the tools the Church gives us wisely. Let's push ourselves. Let's deny ourselves that we may know ourselves. Let's pray with the Publican, the Harlot and the Thief. And let's together long for the Glorious Resurrection of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ.

The Patriarch's Hopes and My Passionate Fear

His Beatitude, John the Tenth, newly elected Patriarch of Church of Antioch, was enthroned today in Damascus, Syria.  You can find his enthronement speech here.  The speech is certainly worth reading if you are at all interested in what the "spirit of Antioch" is.  It is not an emotional speech, yet it is moving.  It is moving in that His Beatitude lays out some of the emphases of Orthodox, particularly Antiochian Orthodox, Christianity; and he lays them out in a series of paragraphs introduced with the phrase "God is not pleased," or some equivalent statement.  I think this emphasis on humility (how we have not pleased God) portends good things.  It suggests that whatever His Beatitude thinks may need to be done or stressed during his reign as Patriarch of Antioch will be done in a spirit of repentance and the humility born of the desire to turn from what has displeased God.

The first thing that God is not pleased with is authoritarian leadership.  That His Beatitude would begin with this suggests that it is his sincere intention to lead not as an autocrat, but as a servant, brother and father.  Such a leader at the top helps set the tone for the entire Patriarchate of Antioch.  Of course the daily realities of leading a large organization of any kind are such that it will be very difficult "not to command as if he [were] an autocrat" (one of many citations from the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch in the speech).  Nonetheless, the fact that His Beatitude would specifically mention this matter as the first item with which God is not pleased bodes well for the future of Antioch.  

The second matter with which God is not pleased is that we do not care enough for the poor.  Here, citing St. John Chrysostom and sounding in many ways like a son of this great saint, His Beatitude challenges us to set as our goal not to "possess anything that [we] have," for all that we have is both ours and our neighbours', "like the sun, the air and the earth."  He then connects this care for the poor with the care for the youth in our churches who "drift away, leave the flock or become indifferent."  He suggests that the way we can do this is through "liturgical revival."

This comment on liturgical revival leads to the third matter with which God is not pleased, and that is "clinging to the letter of things." "Eccclesial Tradition," His beatitude says, "is not something motionless or stagnant but a tool of salvation."  We must "differentiate between the one Holy Tradition and the many secondary traditions and practices to which we often cling."  This renewal is to include the modernization of texts "to make them understandable in the language of our time."

Further, "the Lord is saddened" by violence.  His Beatitude calls us "to carry the cross of our countr[ies] and to pray and work for reconciliation, brotherhood, peace, freedom and justice in our region[s] categorically refusing all kinds of violence and hatred."  And finally, "Jesus cries" over the divisions in the Christian world.  His Beatitude encourages us to "try and instil harmony between the Eastern and Western churches and to strengthen cooperation in the fields of ministry and pastoral care."

I'd like to comment briefly on this liturgical renewal and ecumenical work that His Beatitude calls for.  As a former Protestant who saw the Main-line Protestant Churches slide into a moral and theological liberalism under the guise of liturgical renewal and ecumenicism, I must admit that His Beatitude's desire to "liberate some of our practices from monotony," to modernize the language of liturgical texts, and "to take daring  religious initiatives so that we may reach, in God's good time, the communion [presumably with Rome] in the one chalice" at first strikes me as frightening.  

However, I wonder if this initial fear response in me is a passion fuelled by past painful experiences and not based on the reality of the Orthodox Christian experience.  Once I take a few deep breaths and pray peacefully for a moment or two, I see that my emotional response to these words is indeed merely a passion.  The demise of the (already heretical) Main-line Protestant traditions was based not at all on liturgical renewal or ecumenical dialogue, but on the theological liberalization of Main-line Protestantism that took place in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Liturgical renewal and ecumenicism were merely the pretexts to manifest openly the theological change that had already taken place.

On the contrary, Orthodox Christianity is, well, Orthodox.  It has nothing in common with the liberalized and academic theology of 19th and 20th century Main-line Protestantism.  Rather, as His Beatitude points out, as Orthodox Christians firmly rooted in our faith and Tradition, we are free to love and be open to others, to all others.

There is no compromise here.  There is only a hope.  It is a hope that Christians and Moslems can cooperate, as "sons and daughters of this good earth" to build societies of freedom and justice.  It is a hope that "in God's good time," all Christians will be united in one chalice.  And after all, isn't this what we pray for in the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil when we pray that God would cause "the schisms of the of the Church to cease"?  And it is a hope that guided by the Holy Spirit, as in previous generations, we may be able to communicate the Gospel clearly within the Tradition we have received, a Tradition that has and will continue to discover and lay aside traditions (small "t") so that the Light of Christ may shine brightly in specific contexts as the needs demand.

Of course what will happen remains to be seen.  Yet as a son of Antioch--an adopted son at that--the least I owe my Church and my Patriarch is love, and love casts out fear.  Love also "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things." So I choose to hope too.  I choose to believe that God has given the Holy Church of Antioch the right man for the job (and certainly I have no reason to doubt this).  And I choose to bear all things with patience and prayer that the hopes and dreams of our beloved Patriarch John X will indeed "in God's good time" come about.

Prayer Is Not About Me

Prayer Is Not About Me

This is what Fr. Abbot said was a necessary insight that must be grasped if one is going to experience any success, any regularity and consistency in his or her prayer life:

So long as we believe that prayer is supposed to be about our needs and our cares, so long as we expect prayer to conform to our expectation of a certain experience, we will be disappointed in prayer.  Prayer must be worship.  Not worship in the sense of singing songs that make me feel close to God--that's still about me.  Rather, worship in the older sense of offering in fear what is justly due to One supremely greater than myself.  And it is to this fear that faith and love are wed.

If we approach prayer, personal and corporate, as a sacred duty, a duty God has commanded of human beings, then we find the motivation to pray with a certain discipline and consistency.  Certainly, prayer motivated by duty alone will eventually produce bad fruit.  Duty is essential, but not enough.  But duty alone can carry us over the dry spots, when faith and love wane.

Not Grasping Riches

I was cleaning up some old notes and ran across these snippets.  They inspired me this morning.  Maybe they'll encourage you too.  I'll share one today and one tomorrow.

Not Grasping Riches
From Metropolitan Anthony Bloom: Wealth in one area often is accompanied by poverty in another.  What has been given us is our possession, but if we hold on to it, we lose something.  Wealth was meant to pass through our hands, not be held tightly in our grasp.  Wealth of all kinds.
In passing through our hands, it becomes offering.  Thus our whole lives are offering for we did not will oursleves into existence.  We do not have breath and strength and intelligence because we somehow made ourselves have life; our intelligence is something that will pass away; and we did not determine for ourselves in our mother's womb our intelligence, our social grace, our physical beauty, the family into which we would be born, the opportunities in life with which we would be presented.  All of these are gifts given to us, not that we might possess them firmly and permanently, but that they might pass through our hands as gifts from God and now also gifts from us, we participating in God's work of gracious giving.  For If God did not give us something to give, we would have nothing to offer, but God does give richly: to one, one kind of riches to another, another.   Just as Christ did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself...and thus was highly exalted, so we must learn not to grasp, but to empty ourselves (which is our sharing in Cross of Christ) that we may share in Christ's exaltation.

Graced at Tea

Archimandrite Tikhon in Everyday Saints and Other Stories, toward the end of the book, tells several stories about his friend Fr. Raphael. Fr. Raphael was a fearless country priest who drove "his little black Zaporozhets car" like a mad man, played tricks on the KGB, and spent most of his day-time hours drinking tea with whomever came his way. Fr. Raphael spent so much time having tea with whomever that he garnered the reputation, among some, of being an idler. However, Fr. Tikhon points out that Fr. Raphael had a spiritual gift, a charisma for having tea (you might even say) because there was not one person known to have tea with Fr. Raphael-- "from passionate atheist and the intellectual most disillusioned with ecclesiastical corruption to the most desperado criminals devoid of all morals--who after meeting Father Raphael did not afterwards decisively change and turn back to the spiritual life."

Fr. Raphael was not gifted as a public speaker. Fr. Tikhon even jokes about how terrible his homilies were. "But if you chanced to drink tea with him on his little table in his country parish house, he became completely transformed, especially when people exhausted with suffering and heartache from their lost lives in this world came and sought him out." Isn't that the way with the gifts and Grace of God? We must humbly find them and walk in them. God's Grace is at no one's beck and call. No one chooses how, when or even if God will transform them so that through them someone might be touched by God. The graced homilist may be exactly the wrong person to share a long bus ride with. The wise physician of souls in confession may be quite dull at meal time. And the most boring homilist and off-key liturgist might, through his midnight prayers, be the open door through which the Grace of God is working in me or you that we might at all experience some longing for God. Lives are changed when people encounter God: tea is not enough.

"Let's be honest," Fr. Tikhon says, "merely conversing with people who have gotten themselves hopelessly lost in this cold world, and what's worse, in their own selves, is not enough to transform them." One has to actually encounter God; and most usually, people encounter God in other people. Like the Theotokos, we too must learn to be God-beares.  

It is not that God has not come to us. His Spirit is in us at Chrismation. Christ Himself is in us through Holy Communion. God is with us and in us. That's not the issue. The problem, to quote St. Paul, is that "we have this treasure in earthen vessels." We are clay pots of broken humanity housing the Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh of God inside ourselves. Learning to let God heal our own broken humanity and in turn learning to let some of that Grace out onto those around us is basically what our whole lives as Christians is about. There is no program for this--each person is unique--we learn by doing, by living our lives "in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world."

And of course we don't generally know when or if or how light shines from us. We just live, and care, and try. We offer ourselves to God. I'm sure Fr. Raphael never thought of himself as one graced to have tea. I think in his heart he continually begged God's mercy, and wondered why God could not have provided a better homilist for his people. And when he sat down for tea, I bet he sometimes felt a tinge of guilt because he liked it so much. And when he listened to the pain and tears and broken lives of those who came to him, I'm sure he felt every pain and tear and bit of brokenness in his own heart.  

And the Light of Christ shone through Fr. Raphael at tea.

Martyrs All Around Me

Bishop Ansgar (+865), called the apostle of the North, wanted to suffer for Christ from his youth, and he even had a vision in which he was promised that he would be a martyr. As time passed, the Apostle of the North worked and toiled for the spreading and defence of the Christian Faith all over northern Europe, but the expected martyrdom didn't come. Finally, Bishop Ansgar fell ill and felt he was going to die. Lying on his deathbed, he complained to his deacon, almost angrily, how Providence did not fulfill the promise that he would die a martyr's death. The deacon answered wisely that Bishop Ansgar had been a martyr his whole life and that his illness would be counted for martyrdom because, he said, a martyr is not only he who dies a violent death, but everyone who suffers through his lifetime for the sake of Christ and His righteousness.

St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Missionary Letter 279

Today is the feast of Sts. Ephraim and Isaac the Syrians. These holy saints are remembered in the Church primarily because of what they have written and how their writings have inspired those who through the centuries have read them. However, were it not for their writings, they probably would not be remembered as they are. This is particularly the case with St. Isaac who spent almost all of his adult life in solitary prayer. Many holy men and women who have lived lives as holy as Sts. Ephraim and Isaac the Syrians have gone unnoticed by the Church on earth (but not by God in heaven).  

And solitary hermits are not the only saints who often go unnoticed on earth. There are also the everyday saints. These are holy ones who, as the deacon says above, suffer throughout their lifetime for the sake of Christ and His righteousness. I find it interesting that this wise deacon says Bishop Ansgar's illness would be counted for martyrdom. Doesn't just about everyone die of some sort of illness or accident? What distinguishes the illness of a nonbeliever or pagan or atheist from the deifying illness of a martyred saint?  Aren't they the same illness?

Yes, they may be the same illness, but what is different is how one bears the illness. I have often heard our Archbishop Joseph say that illness born without complaining is the same thing as martyrdom. What is different between an illness in a saint and an illness in anyone else is not the illness, but how it is borne. The suffering that produces nothing but suffering in one person can produce holiness and even godliness in another.  

A Christian is not more or less likely to experience accident or disease than anyone else is. However, accident or disease in a Christian can become something much more than merely something painful to be endured. Accident and disease can become a martyrdom. In as much as we are entrusting ourselves to the God of Heaven, then the pain, sadness, infirmity and limitations we endure, we endure for His sake. In as much as we accept our suffering as something God has allowed (not caused, necessarily, but allowed, just as God allows human evil but does not cause it), then our suffering becomes an offering to God. We share in the sufferings of Christ and so are assured that we will share in Christ's resurrection.

Actually saints are all around us. Those who sacrifice themselves to raise children or care for the infirm, those who suffer with illness or handicap while trusting in God, those who pray in secret, and those who give away their wealth or time or labor without anyone knowing it:  All of these are saints--or at least potential saints, saints in the making--even if they don't make it into the Synaxarion.

Suffering, Understanding and The Wrath of God

Anger and wrath are near synonyms in English, wrath often being defined as intense anger.  But in Bible usage, wrath often refers to applied anger, or what one does or would be expected to do when angry.  Thus, to experience someone's wrath is to experience something that you associate with anger--whether or not that person is actually angry.  For example, you can experience the wrath of a king in the form of a military attack on your village, even though the king is not at all emotionally involved.  Nonetheless, the destruction experienced is called the wrath of the king.

This is particularly true of God.  God does not get angry because God does not change.  God's disposition toward His creation is always that of love.  Nonetheless, God has so established and works in the creation to save it.  And how the creation is saved, or how it comes to be purified and to be willingly filled with God's love, depends on human beings.  Human beings are the apex of creation, containing within themselves elements of both the seen and unseen (physical and spiritual) realities.  This is why the fathers of the Church often refer to human beings as microcosms of the universe.  In saving mankind, God saves everything because mankind is composed of everything.

But in that human beings have willingly turned away from God, God works in and through death--the natural consequence of turning away from Life--to turn men and women willingly back to Himself.  And it is this death (in its many forms), this consequence of mankind turning away from God, that mankind often experiences as the wrath of God--or in the language of modern insurance policies, an act of God.

It is a perennial saying among the biblical prophets and in various Church fathers that "God allows war to come upon people just like he allows illness or famine, because of people's sins" (to quote St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Missionary Letter #277).  In cultures that are more aware of God, this suffering is often referred to the wrath of God.  However, in contemporary North American culture, if we think of God at all, we tend to think of Him as a distant manipulator or string-puller: A great heavenly Someone who can manipulate reality for His own purposes.  Both ways of conceiving of God's interaction with our experience in the world are problematic, but the later is much worse than the first.

In as much as we conceive of God as the distant string-puller, we have reduced God to a kind of unfeeling or even maleficent machine, a kind of functionary who for no apparent reason (or worse yet, for ungracious reasons) lets bad things happen to good people.  This kind of God we blame for everything bad that we cannot directly control (earthquakes, diseases, floods, death, etc.), and we basically ignore Him when things are going our way.  We have no relationship with this God.  It is just the God-of-the-gaps, the God of everything we think we don't understand, the heavenly fall guy for all that seriously rocks our boat.

The God of wrath is, at least, a God that can be known; even if misunderstood.  The God of wrath is personally involved in our lives and cannot be ignored.  The God of wrath must be confronted, personally.  And it is in this confrontation, in this encounter with God in the midst of suffering, that we often come actually to know (in some small way) God, and equally importantly, ourselves.  That the God of wrath is not actually angry as human beings are angry may take a lifetime (or more) to understand, but at least a God wrongly conceived as angry is a personal God.  This God is active in the world, in my life; and I have a relationship with this God (whether I like it or not).

As a result of relationship with someone, with God in this case, I can come to know the Other better.  Even if my conception of God is full of errors--often caused by transferring my own fears and passions onto Him--because my relationship with God is an actual relationship, over time many of those false understandings pass away.  I come to know both God and myself as we really are.  

I have noticed in myself, and perhaps you have noticed this in yourself too, that when times are good and everything seems to be going my way, I find myself acting and speaking without reflection.  I do what feels good and say what comes to my mind at the moment.  I don't consider who my actions or words may hurt.  It doesn't even occur to me that others are hurting.  I construct a storyline, an interpretation of reality in my mind, in which I am good and right and innocent and if anyone else in the world has problems, it certainly is not my fault and there is nothing I can do about it.  But when tragedy strikes me (or someone close to me), then--if I am open to the Grace of God at all--I can begin to become aware of my arrogance, I can begin to beg God for mercy and thus begin to become aware of how I too must be merciful.  Death in one form or another, the wrath of God, brings me to my senses and leads me to repentance.

As a priest, when I am trying to help someone work through a crisis, the sufferer will sometimes ask me, "what sin did I do to deserve this."  At that moment, I cannot answer that question.  I cannot answer both because an answer is not what is really needed at the moment, and I cannot answer because I do not know.  To answer that question, we actually have to ask different questions, questions such as who am I, what am I, and what is the purpose of life.  These are questions that are not answerable on demand at a moment of crisis, but they are questions that must be contemplated in prayer in the years preceding or following the crises.  Unfortunately, many of us do not devote much energy to prayerful contemplation in between crises, and so the crises overrun us: we are unprepared.  Jesus likened this to the unprepared householder who does not know when the thief will come.  We must always be preparing for death, for we don't know when the thief will come.

And it is in this preparing that we come to understand who we are, what we are and the purpose of life. We understand not so that we can give answers with discursive logic to others who are suffering or to those who like to play games with hard questions.  We come to understand in the way that we come to know someone, for that indeed is what is happening.  We come to understand in a way that is only known within ourselves and, sometimes with God's help, is communicated silently to others who are suffering.

Spiritual Violence

From activity that demands violence there is born zeal beyond measure.

St. Isaac the Syrian

To someone unfamiliar with St. Isaac, the word above could seem to be advocating physical violence against others. But that is not the activity nor the violence he is talking about. The activity he is talking about is ascetic and spiritual activity requiring a certain violence with oneself in order to accomplish it. For example, you may have to violently force yourself to fast or say prayers, or speak kindly to someone who annoys you. This violence is what the Gospels refer to when they say "The Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force."

Any growth in good requires a certain violence to oneself. You have to make yourself do the good that you know you should want to do, and you do want to do (at some level), but that you are just not motivated to do. There seems to be no energy for it. It doesn't come easily or even seem (at the moment) natural. You just have to force yourself to do it, sometimes with a force that borders on violence.  

But this is not unreasonable. In just about any area of endeavour, a certain amount of self discipline, of violence to the self, is necessary to be successful. There were many a time in my student days when I had to violently grab myself and force myself to study even when nothing in me wanted to do it. Various work responsibilities, household chores, family obligations, and civic duties (filing and paying taxes come to mind) require that one force oneself to do them. And we do force ourselves--sometimes with merely minimal complaining--to do them because we know they must be done. They must be done to keep my job, for the house not to become a dump, to return love to those who have loved me, and to keep out of jail. They must be done, so we force ourselves. And having forced ourselves, we generally discover that what seemed so onerous to begin with, isn't nearly as bad as we feared, and sometimes even interesting or somewhat enjoyable.

When I was a teenager, I hated reading. Yes, it's true. I was (and still am somewhat) dyslexic and very hyperactive. The reward was just too small for the amount of effort it took me to focus my mind on page after page of text with no pictures. I was sixteen when I read my first book (with no pictures!). The book was Brother Andrew's God's Smuggler, and the stories were so engaging that I made it all the way through to the end--a feat I did not repeat until college, and still not often. I became a great skimmer and guesser through college and grad school--which served me well in most courses, but resulted in C-'s in lit classes ("You need to make more use of the text in your analysis," the prof would write under my C-.  How could I?  I hadn't read much of it).

But somewhere in my late twenties and early thirties I forced myself to start reading. Part of it had to do with work. I was teaching composition and I had no idea what I was doing: I read everything on the subject that I could get my hands on. Part of it had to do with the fact that we had to homeschool our children. Just because I didn't read didn't mean I wanted my kids to be ignorant. I had to read to know what to have my kids read (and to my surprise I discovered that classics are generally called that because they are well worth reading). And part of it had to do with my spiritual search. Although I met many wise and helpful guides along the way, there were no spiritual fathers. My spiritual fathers were found in old books, old books that eventually led me to the Orthodox Christian Church. 

And now in my fifties I can't stop reading.

What's my point? My point is this: the discipline and struggle of the spiritual life and ascetic discipline is not much different from any other worthwhile activity in life. Once you make yourself do something long enough for it to become a habit, it comes to have meaning for you that you had never imagined. Or to use the words of St. Isaac, "there is born a zeal beyond measure," "from activity that demands violence."

Les Miserables

Bonnie and I saw Les Miserables (the film) last night.  It was almost a spiritual experience for me.  Why isn’t everyone who sees that film in Church the following Sunday?  Light shines in darkness.  I have not read the novel, but based on the plot of the movie, this film should be considered Christian propaganda, an evangelistic tool, a proclamation of the Gospel.

[Spoiler Alert! Skip the next four paragraphs to avoid the summary]

An absolutely miserable man, Jean Valjean, who has vowed to hate and never forgive is changed through the Christ-like kindness of a priest.  Valjean assumes a new identity and eventually becomes a successful businessman and mayor.  When his nemesis, Javert, a police officer obsessed with the law, tells him that another man has been caught and will go to prison in his stead, Valjean goes to court and confesses that he, the mayor, is actually the convict.  No one believes him, except Javert.

Meanwhile a single mother, Fantine--played convincingly by Anne Hathaway--unjustly loses her job in Valjean’s factory and in her desperation to continue to support her daughter, sells everything (including her body) to send support to the corrupt inn keepers who are caring for her.  Valjean learns of Fantine’s plight and on her deathbed vows to raise her daughter as his own.  Over the next ten years, Valjean raises Cosette as his own daughter even as he must flee from place to place hiding from Javert.

Cosette eventually falls in love with a wealthy young man, Marius, who is involved in an attempted revolution.  Valjean learns of this love and joins the revolutionaries in an attempt to save Marius’ life.  While he is among the revolutionaries, he discovers that Javert has been captured by them and convinces the revolutionaries to allow him to “deal with him.”  However, Valjean refuses to take vengeance on Javert, and rather lets him go with no strings attached--he makes no deal with Javert.  It is merely an act of mercy, something Javert does not understand.

Valjean is able to save the wounded Marius by escaping through the sewers, but is confronted again by Javert who is unable himself now to kill the criminal who saved his life.  Once Marius recovers, Valjean leaves Cosette in his care and flees to a monestary to die alone so that his past will not bring any scandal to Marius and Cosette’s new life together.

Wow.  Now if that is not Christ-like, self sacrificial love, I don’t know what is.

So why aren’t the Churches packed?

Well one reason, perhaps, is that what people see in Churches generally looks very little like sacrificial love.  Most of us in the Church are what I imagine the character Valjean would have been like in the early days of his conversion: convinced that God’s love is real, but an absolute mess himself, confused and not sure what to do.  After his conversion, the huge turning point in Valjean’s life, the the point at which is revealed whether the Grace shown him would die in him or be shown to another, is eight years later when Valjean has to sacrifice everything to try to save a poor wretch who has been falsely accused of being him.  Would Valjean give up everything to save an innocent man?  Yes.  Grace does not die in him, the “talent” is not buried.  However, Christian life is not just one cross and that’s it.  St. John Chrysostom said that if God saves you from death on one cross, it is only so that you can bear others.  And Valjean goes on courageously bearing the crosses that fall to him.

I imagine that many people who see this film wish they could encounter real Christianity.  They wish there really were men like the priest who initially showed Valjean kindness, really men like Valjean who change from being a man full of hate to being a man who lived a life of self-sacrificing love.  They wish that the possibility of such love were real.

And yet, I imagine that they probably don’t wish too hard or too long for such a reality.  They don’t wish hard and long enough themselves to sacrifice much.  Like many of us in the Church, the non-Churched who watch this film may appreciate the beautiful ideal portrayed through the plot--call it good, call it virtue, call it true--but they themselves are not ready to give very much, to sacrifice their comfort, and certainly not to jeopardize their illusion of control over their life and destiny.  And this unwillingness does not even make us weep.

That’s probably the saddest part.  The worst thing is not to fail, to fail to live up to our own standards, our own plainly stated standards of what is good, right and true.  The worst thing is not to be sad that we fail.  I’m not talking about the sadness of shame or even guilt, not the sadness of “I could have done better if I tried harder.”  Such sadness is often merely a form of pride coated with regret and sprinkled with self-pity.  No, the sadness I’m talking about is the sadness of the moral cripple, the spiritual epileptic, the one who has tried and failed, who knows that only God in His mercy can save no matter how hard he tries.  Trying is necessary, but not sufficient.  

But even this, even trying, we eventually come to know is also a matter of Grace.  

We live in a fallen world.  That there is so much evil in the world should not surprise us.  We need only look into our own souls to see why so much evil is around us--it comes from within us.  However, that there is any light, that there is any kindness, that love is possible at all, this should surprise us.  That some kindness, some gentleness, some generosity and goodness is there, does shine in this messy, messy world, this should give us pause.  This should give us pause to consider that perhaps God still saves.  Perhaps saintliness is still possible--in some modest form.  Perhaps I too may be healed, if only a little, of my own moral stumbling and spiritual epilepsy.  

We Keep Walking

The exodus is a central metaphor of the Christian experience. In the feast of the Theophany that we have just completed, multiple references liken the baptism of Jesus to the exodus of Israel through the Red Sea. St. Paul says our baptism is a participation in Christ's death and resurrection. Christ's death itself is referred to as His exodus when he speaks with Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration. In a sense, our entire life and death as Christians is a participation in an exodus: a leaving of one place and going to another.

This leaving and going is sometimes manifest in physical actions or change, as in our physical death or in deeds and words led by the Spirit and motivated by love. However, the inner exodus, the change from darkness to light, from self-centred to other-focused, from passion-driven to peaceful rest, this is the change, the exodus, that transfigures us. And just as the biblical exodus was hindered by Pharaoh and his horsemen, so our inner exodus is hindered.

It is essential to recognize that unlike the external, historical exodus of the Israelites four and a half millennia ago, the exodus of our transfiguration is not hindered by enemies outside us. The biblical exodus is a type; it is a pattern, a schematic.  It is a type that has passed through the lens of Christ.  What was outward has become inward, or as St. Paul puts it, "first the natural, then the spiritual."

The enemies that hinder our transfiguration, our movement from passion to peace, these enemies are inside us. Those who are around us may incite certain fears, passions or other enemies within us, but those around us are not our enemies. Our Kingdom is not of this world. Otherwise, Jesus said, we would fight. Fighting is always a sign that we are striving for the wrong kingdom. Our Kingdom is not of this world.

And yet we have enemies, enemies that are too strong for us. How do we defeat these internal foes, these fears and false selves that lust and push and scream so forcefully inside us that we often cannot find our true selves, our peaceful core resting in the Presence of Christ? How do we defeat these foes?

I'd like to suggest that we look to the type of the Exodus, which is also our baptism, the same water that is our death and resurrection. I'd like to suggest that the water (which, by the way, is always plural in the original languages) is the world--life in this fallen world with all of its death-dealing tragedies, inequities, injustices, and forces that rust, decompose and corrupt. This is the water, the Red Sea, we must pass through to get to the Promised Land, to renew the image of God within us, to be transfigured and become full of Light. Just as the Red Sea was a barrier for the people Israel as they fled both from Egypt and to the Promised Land, a barrier impossible to cross, for if a man submerges himself into the water, he will die. Just as this deadly barrier blocked Israel's way, so too the circumstances of our lives block our deification, they seem to strangle us, to suffocate us, to keep us from making any progress in the spiritual life.

And yet we are not dead. A dead man no longer struggles. A dead man does not know that he is being resisted, that there is something to resist, that there is a light, a hope, a promise to lean toward, to seek, to flee to. No we are not dead. We are surrounded by water, but we are not drowned. We are in the midst of a miracle. God has parted the sea of this world for us--otherwise we would have no awareness of God whatsoever. God has given us a hope. God has given us a promise, a vision, a foretaste of something better to come (something much, much better).

But the sea is right there. We can reach out and touch it. We can see the monsters of the deep swimming so threateningly nearby. And all of Pharaoh's army, the voices and urges and fears that sometimes scream inside us, they are on our heels. We hear their threats, we feel the fear. Our minds play tricks on us--"Ah, for the leeks and fishpots of Egypt!" We find ourselves longing for the very things we hate, the very things we don't want. What do we do?

We keep walking. We set the promise firmly before our eyes. We call to remembrance "our most blessed and glorious Lady, Theotokos and every virgin Mary, with all the Saints." We forget what is behind and press on to what is ahead. We endure the cross of the passage of this transient age, we despise the shame--we don't think it worthy to be compared to the joy, the promise, set before us.  

The crucified and resurrected Christ had scars in his hands and feet and side. We too will have our scars. None of us makes it through the passage of this life without mistakes, serious mistakes, these cause the wounds--some self inflicted, some inflicted by others. And yet He who promised, He who has parted the sea of this age for us, He it is that heals even the broken hearted. He who was crucified and bears those wounds, now healed in His resurrected body, is not put off by our wounds. We have nothing to fear, there is no shame, only wounds, wounds that will be healed.

And so we keep walking. And as we walk, we learn. We try again. We get advice. We pray. And we keep walking.

Faith in the Trenches of Love

Faith is the evidence of unseen things.  This is what the New Testament tells us.  It's the opposite of "seeing is believing."  It's not-seeing is believing.  We so much want to see, but to see is to no longer have faith.

We suffer in faith because we are assailed by doubt. In fact, it is only those who believe that experience doubt. Those with no faith have nothing to doubt. But those who believe also suffer doubt. They suffer because they must live in the tension of what they believe together with what they see (or don't see). There is a cultural myth that true faith is blind, blind to the obvious reality, blind to what is seen. However this is not so. Those with faith--real faith, not delusion--see as clearly as everyone else the realities of life, the practical circumstances, the hard facts of the matter. And yet there is something else, something more, something that evidences what is unseen: and that something is faith.

After the passing of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, quite a big deal was made in the media about her personal journal and letters in which she expressed the doubts she wrestled with. It seemed to me to be a kind of media feeding frenzy. There was sort of a rejoicing that if Mother Theresa struggled with doubt, then her faith wasn't strong and thus faith had little to do with her life of compassion. However, faith is not measured by the absence of doubt. Faith is measured by faithfulness, by obedience, by what we do in spite of all that resists us.

Faith can grow. The church teaches us that faith grows, it can be cultivated. Certainly there are better and worse soils for faith, people seem to have different natural FQs (faith quotients). Nonetheless, just as other abilities can be trained and cultivated, faith also can be trained and cultivated. St. Isaac the Syrian suggest this rule: "To refrain from glancing here and there with your eyes, but always to look steadily on what lies before you."  Faith will grow as we learn to attend to what is before us, as we attend to our own struggles, and not to the struggles of those around us. And while on the one hand this is a good rule to avoid busybodiness, on the other hand this is a kind of revelation of a spiritual economy: the best conditions for the growth of personal faith require a kind of pulling away from others. There is a kind of tension between love and faith.

Those who love, those who are in the trenches of love, those whose lives are intertwined with others in the world--others with little or no faith, others suffering in darkness--for these it is difficult not to glance here and there, it is difficult to merely look steadily on what lies before them. And thus it is difficult to develop a faith that overcomes every doubt. No wonder Mother Theresa struggled so much: she loved so much.

Despite this tension, love and faith do meet. In saints like St. Seraphim of Sarov we see this. The pattern in Orthodox monasticism seems to be first a lifetime spent in single-minded devotion and prayer, a life spent steadily looking on what lies before you. And then at the end, for a few, there is a season of public giving away. I say "public" because there are others whose giving away is unseen. In this giving away, in this losing of oneself in the other, faith and love kiss. It is possible. It does happen.

However, those of us in the world are left with the encouragement of the saints, experiencing ourselves a Christian struggle that seems far, far away from this. We are encouraged by St. Seraphim's praying for a thousand nights on a rock, though we ourselves struggle to pray twenty minutes in our slippers. We are encouraged by St. Seraphim's clairvoyance, though we struggle even to know ourselves. And we are amazed by St. Seraphim's great love for all, the love of Christ flowing from a heart purified by a lifetime of prayer; while we struggle to love the few God has placed in our lives, also with the love of Christ, but flowing from a heart that has barely begun to be purified. And yet, it is still the same love. It is Christ's love.

And so this is the life of faith, the life of faith lived in love, lived in the midst of a broken, hurting, crying world. It is full of doubts and occasional brief moments of crystalline faith (the kind of moment when you wonder how you could have ever doubted). It is a life full of Christ's love, flowing from our confused and not-yet-purified hearts (a love of mixed motives, and awkward and sometimes misguided expression, but love nonetheless). It is the faith of Abraham, who went out not knowing where. It is the faith Ananias, who with fear obeyed the vision and laid hands on Saul that he might receive his sight. It is the faith of a father and mother who struggle to bring up their children in the Church even though it seems like years since they have really prayed, since they have felt a strong assurance of faith in their heart. This is faith in the trenches of love.

What Do We Do When The Lights Go Out?

What do we do when the lights go out?

So much of life is a roller coaster of ups and downs, sudden curves and unexpected jolts.  At times it can even seem pointless--a lot of drama going nowhere: around and around, up and down and back to where we began--only more exhausted.  Why does God seem so far away?

Saints in the Church have had this same experience.  They too did not understand their sufferings; their long, slow obediences, the darkness in their mind, the sluggishness of their heart. St. Isaac the Syrian (homily 16) says in his prayer to God: "I have not a mournful heart wherewith to seek Thee, I have no repentance, I have no compunction, which brings the children into their proper inheritance.  O Master, I have not a comforting tear.  My mind is darkened by the affairs of this life, and has no strength to look toward Thee with groaning.  My heart is grown cold from the multitude of temptations, and cannot warm herself with tears of love for Thee."

Even the saints struggle.  

In fact, this struggle--the fact that they did and do struggle--is much of what reveals them to be saints.  What can we do when there are no resources left in ourselves?  What can we do when the well is dry, when we don't even care, when our "mind is darkened by the affairs of this life and has no strength to look to Thee with groaning [and our] heart is grown cold from the multitude of temptations"?  What can we do?

We can do only what saints have always done.  We acknowledge the truth about our weakness and ask God to do for us what we cannot do ourselves.  St. Isaac continues his prayer: "But Thou, my Lord and God Jesus Christ, the Treasury of God gifts, grant me thorough repentance and a sorrowing heart, that with all my soul I may go forth to seek Thee.  For without Thee, I am a stranger to all that is good.... I have forsaken Thee, do not forsake me.  I have gone out from Thee, come out to seek me, and lead me up to Thy pasture, and numberer me among the sheep of Thy chosen flock..."

When we are empty, we offer even our emptiness to the One who is fullness, and beg for mercy, for grace, and for the light that shines in darkness.

Monastery and Orphanage

Here is a link to an award-winning Russian documentary movie (with subtitles in English) about a Ukrainian monastery, Holy Ascension, that also cares for 140 orphaned children, some with serious disabilities.  

http://youtu.be/FyV2P27EGZ0

I am truly amazed by this monastery, not that such a place is possible, but that it does indeed exist.  I am sure it is not perfect--if anyone looked closely, serious problems could be found.  What good is ever done in this world that does not involve the effort of broken human beings?  Nevertheless, because it is seemingly impossible to do uncontaminated good, should we therefore not make an effort?  Certainly not!  And if we make an effort, broken as we are, with God's help sometimes much good comes of it.  Much light shines in the darkness.

Please watch this film (about an hour long) and let it inspire you.  In spite of our weaknesses and brokenness, it is possible to love.  It is possible to be thankful.  It is possible to pray.  It is possible to give.  It is possible to be a little less selfish.

Fr. Michael

Is Humility Possible Today?

I'm still working my way through Everyday Saints. I recommended this book a few posts back.  Now about 4/5ths of the way through, my praise for the collection of stories has not dwindled.  However, I do not want to praise Everyday Saints in this post so much as I want to talk about humility: humility as it is evidenced in the life of one of the "everyday saints" Archimandrite Tikhon tells about.

In a set of stories called "His Eminence the Novice," Fr. Tikhon tells the life of, and of his experiences with, Bishop Basil Rodzyanko.  The bishop refers to himself as a novice monk because he was tonsured a monk only shortly before he was made a bishop.  This often happens when a married priest loses his wife and the Church needs a bishop.  Orthodox Bishops are chosen from among the monastics, so it has become the practice in many Orthodox jurisdictions, when the hierarchs want to consecrate a widowed priest a bishop, to tonsure him a monk shortly before making him a bishop.

Fr. Vladimir (Bishop Basil's name as a priest), took his tonsure (at the age of sixty-six) very seriously.  Therefore, he was troubled.  He said to his spiritual father that he understood poverty and chastity very well and willingly embraced them, but obedience would be difficult.  A little worried, his spiritual father asked him to clarify what he meant.

"Well I mean," Father Vladimir reasoned, "instead of starting me out as a simple monk, you're immediately making me a bishop.  In other words, instead of being a novice and obeying the commands of others, my job will mean that I'm the one who will have to command and make decisions.  How then do I fulfill the vow of obedience?  To whom will I be a novice?  Whom will I obey?"

His spiritual Father, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, after a moment's thought replied: "You will be in obedience to everyone and anyone whom you meet on your journey through life.  As long as that person's request will be within your power to grant it, and not in contradiction with the Scriptures."

Father Vladimir was very pleased by this commandment.

Others, however, were not very pleased with this commandment because once consecrated Bishop, Bishop Basil was a very difficult bishop to manage.  While obeying little old ladies and people on the street, he would often be very late to important meetings with important people.  He would find himself on long journeys to small churches, blessing houses or doing other smaller liturgical acts usually done by a junior priest--in obedience to the "anyone" who asked him.  

Fr. Tikhon, who sometimes traveled with Bishop Basil and witnessed first hand many of his adventures, reflects on the meaning of a life lived in obedience to anyone:

Gradually I began to grasp that it was through this humble vow of service and obedience, remaining a novice even upon attaining the rank of a senior cleric, that our sovereign Bishop Basil taught himself how to sensitively hear and to obey the will of God.  Because of this his entire life was nothing more nor less than one constant search for the knowledge of the will of God, one mysterious yet absolutely real conversation with our Saviour, in which He would speak to mankind not with words, but with the circumstances of this life, while granting unto His listeners the very greatest reward there is--a chance to be His instrument in this world.

In my opinion, this sort of humility lived regardless of one's position in life is evidence of saintliness in the world today.  St. Benedict in his Rule for monks says that obedience is the first step in the ladder of humility.  Even in today's world, humility is attainable.  Bishop Basil has proved it.  Humility will always be attainable so long as there is someone, anyone, to obey.