St. Gregory Palamas: Three Kinds of Poverty

“The first [kind of poverty] is to lack life’s necessities and [it] depends on one’s [lack of] income and resources. It stands as the opposite extreme to wealth…. Then there is physical poverty, when the body withers away because of an extremely frugal diet or lack of food [or mental or bodily sickness]…. Another type of poverty is the soul’s moderation and restraint. This is our soul’s spiritual humility, the opposite of which is pride…. The first two types of poverty, financial and physical, are both worthily regarded as blessed, if they are accompanied by a humble attitude in the soul. If, on the other hand, they are divorced from humility and linked with pride, they are truly full of wretchedness. A person can be needy or in a poor bodily state either voluntarily or against his will. If he is involuntarily poor, he lacks humility, that good disposition which repentance brings to the soul, and [that person] does not bear with courage the deprivation that has befallen him against his will. He complains against God and attacks His perfectly just providence as unfair….That is why the Lord says, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ referring to those who, on account of their inner humility of soul, embrace the poverty that results from physical self-control, and count freedom from possessions as more desirable than all riches. If such people involuntarily suffer some lack, through patience and thanksgiving they voluntarily turn it to their advantage. To such as these, then, is the kingdom of heaven. Let us strive, brethren, after this kind of poverty, that we may gain the heavenly kingdom. And if we prefer not to become poor in this way, let us at least share in the poverty of others by giving alms and contributing some of our possessions. Let us make friends by the mammon of unrighteousness, through what we have over and above our needs, while in this present life, that when we depart hence they may receive us into everlasting habitations (cf. Luke 16:9).”

Theophany

What we now celebrate as two feasts, Christmas and Theophany (Epiphany in the West), was originally celebrated as one feast on January 6^th. By the time of St. John Chrysostom (late 4^th century) the Church had already separated the feasts creating a twelve-day festal season. But in one of his homilies on the Theophany, St. John points out that there are actually two Theophanies. The word “Theophany” means the “appearance of God.”

The first Theophany is what we now celebrate as the Nativity of Christ, or Christmas. Here God is revealed as man. Of course the Incarnation had taken place nine months earlier, on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25^th. The Incarnation of God came secretly, in prayer, and was an event only known by Mary. Her holy life of prayer and silence teaches us that God always comes to us secretly, grows within us mysteriously, and is only gradually made know. After Mary, the first to know about the Incarnation was another unborn infant, St. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, who leapt in his mother’s womb at the greeting of Mary, who had now been carrying the Incarnate God for less than three months. St. John’s mother, Elizabeth, heard from Mary the great news of the Annunciation, but except for her, no one else knew that God was about to appear on earth as a man. Not even Joseph, Mary’s husband, knew until shortly before the birth when an angel appeared to him in a dream.

Nine months after the Annunciation, the first Theophany occurs; and in keeping with God’s manner of revelation throughout the ages, it is a quiet affair. The Angels know. A handful of shepherds are invited. Three wise men journey from afar. But no one else knows. God appears and no one notices. This too is God’s plan: A few of the poor will hear angels and follow; a few of the wise will diligently seek Him. But most will not see God, even if His pregnant Mother knocks on the door of their inn. Times have not changed much since then.

However, when the time was right, when everything was prepared, Jesus’ cousin John starts preaching repentance in the wilderness. Hundreds, maybe thousands, come out to hear him and repent of their sins and be baptized in the Jordan River. John the Forerunner prepares the way, gathers the crowds, stirs up anticipation: “Who,” the crowds all wonder,” is this coming one, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire?” It is in this very public context that the second Theophany occurs. A Man walks through the crowd, a Man like all other men: outwardly indistinguishable. But John knows who this really is. His identity had been revealed to John from the womb.

Now the time is right for everyone to know. Now the heavens open and the Spirit descends as a dove and the voice of the Father proclaims: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” On this day the Incarnation of God, the appearance of God on earth as a man, is proclaimed to all. No longer a secret, the God-man is revealed even to the demons. This is why Jesus’ first task after his public Theophany is to go into the desert to endure the devil’s worst, only to emerge forty days later, strengthened by angels, and leaving the demons scrambling to find a way to destroy Him. But this too is a part of God’s plan, yet neither the demons nor men nor even the angels of heaven know this yet.

New Year Thoughts

In 1993 Bill Murray starred in Ground Hog Day, a movie about a completely selfish weather broadcaster who spends a year trapped in the same day—Ground Hog Day. After repeating the same day several times, Phil (Murray) figures out that he can use the new knowledge he learns each day (names, personal information, and predictable actions) to manipulate people in the small town where Phil is trapped in order to indulge his selfish lusts. However, not everyone can be corrupted. After several weeks of repeated days spent gathering information in an attempt to deceive and seduce his beautiful and innocent weather show producer, Rita, and each evening ending with a cold slap in the face, Phil begins to look at his life more seriously. In the end, he learns that the only happiness in life is found in loving and giving to others. By repeating the same day over and over again, Phil finally learns the lesson that Jesus and even the Old Testament Law teaches: in loving our neighbor, we love ourselves.
When you think about it, Phil’s story is not very much different from everyone’s story. We are all trapped in a series of days. Although each day is not the same day, each day is pretty much the same. Each day begins by waking up, each day ends by falling asleep. We eat, we go to work, we talk to the same people almost every day. Cycles repeat. Summer, autumn, winter, spring; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…. As long as we are alive, we are all pretty much like Phil trapped in Ground Hog Day. We learn something new almost every day (about people, about things, about ourselves), but the question for us is the same as it is for Phil in the movie: “Are we learning our lesson?”
As we begin a new year and a new decade it is time to examine ourselves. Are we going to take what we have learned from the past and use it for our selfish advantage, or are we going to use what we have, what we know, and what we have gained to bless and encourage others? Are we going to learn from experience, repeated so many times in our past, that selfish desires lead us to frustration and we end up hurting the ones we love most? Now is a good time to change; and if you don’t think you can change on your own, now is a good time to get help to change. One thing is certain—and life experience has taught us this—if we continue to walk down that same dead end we have walked down so many times before, we will only end up with the same regrets and frustrations.
Christianity is the faith of new beginnings. Like Phil in Ground Hog Day, every day is a new chance, a chance to try again. Yesterday’s failures are nothing but lessons learnt, if I want to learn the lesson, if I am willing to grow and change. The Church has a name for this daily growth and change. It is called repentance. When we begin our days with morning prayers, we ask God for the strength to live the new day free from the sins and mistakes of the past. We ask God to help us live that day without sin—and we always live just one day at a time. For Christians, the dawning of a new day or the ringing in of a new year is another opportunity, as it says in the Liturgy, to commit ourselves, each other and our whole lives to Christ our God.

Wealth and Poverty

“I am poor and needy, O Lord, come to my aid,” says the Prophet and King David.

There is a kind of wealth that makes you arrogant and independent even if you do not have a cent. And there is a poverty that takes no notice of visible signs of wealth, for it sees them as only transient: tools to be used, responsibilities to be managed, tokens of the greater judgment that will fall on those who have received more. King David continually refers to himself as the poor and needy one. His visible wealth and power did not often blur his inner vision. David never forgot that he was the youngest son, who was not even counted worthy to be called in from the sheep-field when the famous Prophet Samuel paid the family a visit: David, the son who did the work of a hired servant, who was ready to confront the lion and the bear to protect his father’s sheep—considering his own life to be of little value when compared to his father’s flock. David, who would not stretch out his had to strike the Lord’s Anointed, even thought the insane King Saul was hunting him like an animal. David, who would not drink the water from the well of Bethlehem gotten for him at the risk of his men’s lives, but he poured it out to the Lord. This David remembered who he was and who God is, for he knew his poverty and only twice did he forget it.

The first time David forgets his poverty (2 Kingdoms [Samuel] 11) is after he had been established as king of Judah and Israel, after a particularly stunning victory over the then world power of Syria. The following spring, “at the time when kings go out to battle,” King David sent out Joab and his guards and all Israel to finish up the military campaign that was interrupted last year when the Syrians became involved. David stayed home. Perhaps he felt he was too important to go out to battle, now that the great army of the Syrians had been defeated. Maybe he felt that he deserved a rest. Maybe he just had other things to do—whatever his reason, at the time when kings go out to battle, King David stayed home. And staying home, David was bored, and being bored he gazed at a woman bathing, and then David, who once was willing to give his life to save his father’s flock, steals the one beloved lamb of Uriah, a low ranking commander in his army. To hide his sin, David uses his power, the power that God had given him to do good, David uses that same power to kill a faithful servant, a man better than he, a loyal man who willingly dies in the service of the Lord’s anointed.

The second time David forgets his poverty is when “Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel” (1 Chronicles 21). For David to count his men, like a rich man counting his gold coins, was a sin because there was no need: it had no purpose except to allow David to revel in his power. David forgot, for a moment, that the kingdom is the Lord’s, that military might came from God’s favor, not the strength of his arm—as David himself had said in his Psalms. Even Joab, a man not known for virtue or spiritual insight, warns David that this would be a sin, yet David’s authority as king prevailed—authority given to him for good not for evil, not so that he could revel in self-satisfied contentment.

David, who usually sees himself as the poor and needy one, for a moment takes his eyes off his heart, where the shepherd boy still sang hymns to the God of the earth and the sky. The shepherd boy who now shepherds God’s rational sheep lifted his eyes from his heart and began to pay too much attention to the trappings around him. He forgot who he was and who God is and fell into sins that, because of his position, brought suffering and death to the very rational sheep he was given to shepherd. David’s sin with Bathsheba resulted in civil war and the death of four of his sons. The counting of Israel brought plague that wiped out thousands. Truly to those to whom more is given, more is required. When a very poor man sins, few others suffer but himself. When a powerful man sins, thousands may die.

When I read the words of David in the Psalms, I remember his life. I remember the importance of poverty, poverty of spirit. To be poor and needy has to do with a broken and contrite heart—not the house you live in or what you eat for dinner or what car you drive (or not). The poor man is the man who calls out to God night and day, who is small and despised in his own eyes, who has no sense of importance—but may have a strong sense of obligation and responsibility, responsibility for the things God has given him to manage and for the people God has given him to love. May God grant such poverty of spirit to us that regardless of our trappings, regardless of size of our wallet or our position in church or society, that regardless of what we do or do not have, we will be God’s poor and needy ones. For the strength of man is vain (empty) but those who fear the Lord will not be deprived of any good thing.

A Note to a Young Christian on Responsibility in Relationships

Now, I want to explain something to you. My goal is to help you become a good son/brother/friend without slipping into patterns of thought and response that do not help you or those you love. For the sake of your own psychological heath, it is probably a good idea not to be too concerned about how you feel about your mother (brother or friend) and what she does or doesn’t do, says or doesn’t say. She will not change (at least not due to your influence). Let me explain.

God is already at work with your Mum as much as your Mum will allow it. It is easy for children, friends or siblings, especially those with an over developed rescue reflex, to feel responsible—even when they tell themselves that they are not—to help make mother, friend, brother a better, or at least a less damaged, person. This is a trap. Motivated by feelings of guilt or responsibility, one ends up merely reinforcing their negative behavior and responses. Why? Because, at the heart of the problem, is your problem: pride. “Where’s the pride?” you may ask.

When we see the terrible suffering of those we love (and the suffering they inflict on others), it is hard for us to believe that God really cares, really is involved, really is doing all that is possible to help that person. It is hard for everyone to believe this, not just you. The martyrs are saints for the very reason that they trusted God when all outward circumstances indicated that God didn’t care. In the case of family/friendship dynamics, we also sometimes wonder where God is; and in our anxiety it is easy to adopt a role, to cast ourselves as a necessary person (maybe even the necessary person) in the salvation of another. This is where pride comes in.

Of course we are to pity our loved ones and be kind and generous (time, money, emotional support), but there is an important line in our hearts that we must not cross, or else the very Grace that is inherent in our loving actions is not only evaporated, but the “loving action” itself becomes merely an act in an ongoing play directed by past habit, our own hidden insecurities, and probably even a demon or two. And what is this line? It is the line of thinking that we and our actions will somehow change or influence this person. Such thinking comes from pride and leads only to frustration and unhealthy forms of co-dependency. God, and God only, can influence change in others, only God knows how to do it (that is, what will work best for this person), and (here’s the tough one) God is already doing and has already done all that is possible to influence this person toward salvation. If God uses us at all, it will be without our knowing it. Our acts of love and kindness are offered out of, well, love and kindness, not out of a hidden desire to change someone. Mother, friend or brother are who they are. You cannot change them. If you feel pity, frustration, responsibility, fear, hope, sadness, in your relationship with them, don’t take it too seriously. It doesn’t mean anything. When we feel strongly (whatever that feeling is) about someone, we offer that feeling to God—the only One who can do anything about it.

“Yes,” you may say, “but don’t we work together with God?” Yes we do, but what is our “work”? Our work is to become like the Mother of God, to offer ourselves, one another and our whole lives to Christ our God in prayer; and then to love, to be joyful, to be kind, to be generous, to be faithful, to be patient, to be good, and above all, to be at peace. This is our work. You might say, “That sounds artificial—if I really care about someone, I will try my best to really help him/her.” And I respond: “Watch out for pride!” Who can “really” help your mother/friend/brother? Who loves them much, much more than you ever can? Who really has the knowledge and ability to provide them with the help that they really need, not just what they seem to need? You know the answer.

In truth, once we have completely entrusted our loved ones to God in prayer, or are continually doing so, our actions may not change much, the difference will be in our hearts. In fact, letting go of a false sense of responsibility and guilt, you will be more full of Grace, less driven by impulse, and in the end may actually do or say something that God uses to turn around someone you love—but you won’t realize it, at least not until long afterward. At the time, you will just be offering them to God in your heart and being kind and patient and peaceful: just being a Christian.