Know Thyself

Blessed is the man who knows his own weakness....
St. Isaac the Syrian

The ancient Greek saying, "know thyself," has been attributed to at least twelve ancient authors. In its original sense, learning to know oneself was a spiritual odyssey leading to the knowledge of God. Unfortunately, nowadays "know thyself" is often reduced, perhaps for the sake of building self esteem, to "know what thou art good at," or "know thy gift," or in a religious context, "know thy ministry." It seems that the most important thing nowadays is that everyone feel that they are important, that they are good at something; and that this feeling of confidence and importance is what makes human beings healthy.

The Orthodox Church fathers and mothers, however, see things very differently. They see self esteem as the problem, not the solution. They consider that so long as one has high self esteem, one can not really begin to experience humility, which is the chief attribute of God--at least it is the chief attribute of God demonstrated in Christ's condescension to become human--and it is the beginning or foundation of the ladder of virtues leading to Christlikeness.

According to St. Isaac the Syrian, "so long as the heart is not humbled, it cannot cease from wandering." And this wandering of the heart is, in my experience, the most common cause of wandering away from God--in my thoughts and in my actions. My heart wanders, so my mind wanders; and because my mind wanders I find myself doing and saying things that offend my neighbors and loved ones and put a kind of wall between my conscience and God. God seems far away, not because God has moved, but because I in my mind and heart and actions have wandered away.

Knowing one's weakness, according to St. Isaac, leads one to pay attention, to be watchful. Because I know I am weak in a certain area (in that I quickly judge other people, for example), I become watchful. I know that I easily judge others, often before I realize that I am doing it, so I watch myself closely. And this careful watching of the self lest I fall into the same trap that I always fall into, St. Isaac says, "treasures up watchfulness" which delivers a person "from the laxity that dims knowledge [of self and of God]." In this patristic pattern, it is not the overcoming of weaknesses that helps us grow in our relationship with God and love of neighbor (although that is a gradual byproduct of growth in godliness). It is rather our increasing watchfulness as we become more and more aware of our weaknesses that makes us aware of the Grace of God in our life, increasing our experiential knowledge of God and love of neighbor.  

As a priest, I often find that some people are ashamed to come to confession because they have nothing to confess except what they always confess: "I'm still struggling to control my anger" or "I still battle with lustful thoughts" or "I still judge others quickly and harshly" and there are many other possible regular, besetting sins (BTW, I am not referring to anyone in particular; these are general categories and examples). It seems that we have been bitten by our culture's self-esteem bug. We think that the goal of life Christian life is to get to the place where we no longer know of any weaknesses. We wrongly think that the goal is to become strong, to come to the place where we know our strengths, our gifts, our ministries, and what we have to offer. We think the goal is to no longer be aware of any weaknesses. Such a state is death, not life. It is delusion, satanic delusion. Satan was the one who saw only his gifts, and becoming puffed up in pride thought they were his own. Seeing our weakness is our salvation.

When we read the lives of the saints we notice that the most holy are also the ones who know most deeply their sin, their weaknesses. St. Paul said, "When I am weak, then I am strong." It is in the deep knowledge of our weakness, of our utter dependence of God, that we really come to know God. It is the beginning of humility, which is the beginning of godly virtues. It is the narrow path, the door, of our salvation.  Truly blessed are the poor in spirit, those who know their weakness.

Spiritual Nearsightedness

The troparia to the Holy Trinity said in the Morning Prayers begins the third verse with these words: "Suddenly the Judge will come, and the deeds of each will be revealed."

The mirror in which we see God reflected and reflecting our deeds is only seen darkly before the Judge comes. (Please note that this same mirror is showing us God and showing us ourselves.) But in this life, we can only see darkly, then we will see face to face. This is the reason why, on the one hand, like St. Paul we cannot judge even ourselves (at least not very well) before the End when the Judge comes.  And, on the other hand, we are taught by the Church to have a constant cry of "Lord Have Mercy" on our lips and in our heart, because of all that we don't see and all that we choose not to see will be revealed.  

Because now we make judgements in such darkness, in a mirror twisted and dull, pot marked and cracked, we can easily see as just what we want to see as just and call distortion what we don't want to see as just. Or as has been often said, we find what we look for. Consequently too much introspection, especially without spiritual guidance, leads to delusion and depression or delusion and overweening arrogance. In our pride we think we should be able to fix ourselves up. But we are like a nearly blind person trying to paint a room: there is just too much we don't see.  

However, it is not as though we are completely blind. We see many of the big things. We see enough to repent, to have an idea of what is probably good and right, and we are pretty certain that some things in our lives are selfish and hurtful. We see enough to repent; yet we also see not enough to live in willful delusion. Reality is not forced on us. Even death can be a time when we refuse reality. Our culture has found a way of denying death by no longer having funerals, only "the celebration of a life."  But death is nevertheless the doorway into the heavenly reality. At death there is no denying reality: then we will see face to face. Then the deeds of each will be revealed.

And so we pray continually: Lord have mercy. Accepting that all thoughts and intentions and words and deeds will be revealed produces humility.  And this makes us more like Christ.  Knowing how poorly we see now, we show mercy to our nearsighted neighbours, knowing ourselves what it is to be nearsighted.  And this too makes us more like Christ.

Judging Ourselves

We will not be punished or condemned in the age to be because we have sinned, since we were given a mutable and unstable nature.  But we will be punished if, after sinning, we did not repent and turn from our evil ways to the Lord; for we have been given the power to repent, as well as the time in which to do so.  Only through repentance shall we receive God's mercy, and not its opposite, his passionate anger.  Not that God is angry with us; he is angry with evil.  Indeed, the Divine is beyond passion and vengefulness, though we speak of it as reflecting, like a mirror, our actions and dispositions, giving to each of us whatever we deserve.

St. Theogonostos, "On the Practice of the Virtues" sec. 47, Philokalia vol. 2

This little passage from the sayings of St. Theogonostos points out some of the tensions in an Orthodox Christian understanding of judgement in the age to come.  

Of importance is the fact that there is punishment or judgement, but it is not because we have sinned; rather it is because we have not repented.  And it should be noted that we may indeed speak of God's "passionate anger" with evil, never with any creature, but only with the perversion, which is what evil is: the twisting of what is good.  But even then, God is beyond passion.  When we speak of God's anger or of God's vengefulness, we are only reflecting ourselves.  Thus, one Orthodox way of thinking about the judgement of the age to come is to face ourselves as judge, or rather to see God as reflecting in a mirror our actions and dispositions, thus each of us receiving what we have given.

Such a view of the judgement of the age to come certainly rings true in the light of many of the sayings of Jesus: the parable of the rich man and Lazarus comes immediately to mind.  Sayings such as, "give and it will be given unto you" and "with the same measure you give it will be rendered unto you" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" all these and similar words lend a certain ring of truth to St. Theogonostos' words.  

This may be one of the reasons why Orthodox Church fathers and mothers stress so often the importance of not judging others (after all, it was Jesus who said, "Judge not, lest you be judged," etc.).  Instead of judging others, which generally leads to some sort of condemnation of those we judge, it is better to seek and offer mercy.  We should look at everyone as we would want God to look at us on the Last Day.  It may indeed be that how we look at others today will be the mirror in which we will see God's judgement reflecting on us on the Last Day.

It's Good Not To Know Why

I tried more than once in my life to practice the Prayer of Jesus Christ.  I did not succeed.

Fr. George Calciu

I am working my way slowly through Father George Calciu: Interviews, Homilies and Talks. I was surprised when I ran across the statement above.  My surprise came from the fact that some of the things Fr. George does say about the Jesus Prayer earlier in the book proved to be very helpful and encouraging for me. He spoke of the meaning of breathing a certain way when saying the Prayer: Breathe in while mentally saying, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God"; and breathe out while saying "have mercy on me the sinner." This practice, he says, fills us with Christ with every breath and offers to God both our sin and our petition for mercy with every breath. I found this very encouraging (but I have not been able to practice it for more than a minute or two at a time).  

Fr. George also talks about how the Jesus Prayer saved him from insanity during interrogations and torture. He speaks of the Prayer being a shield for him that kept his mind in order during terrible ordeals. However, God did not give him Light (the uncreated Light of Mt. Tabor) through the Jesus prayer--neither did he ask for this Light. Fr. George says that in his attempts to practice the Jesus Prayer he would progress to a point of darkness--a darkness full of God--but a Darkness he did not have the courage to enter. And when he did "jump" to enter the Darkness, he found himself "at the beginning of the Prayer."  And so, Fr. George concludes, Christ had "censored" him from progressing any further in the Prayer.

It is not that Fr. George did not see with his physical eyes the Uncreated Light of Mt. Tabor. Twice while he was in prison he experiences this Light. The first time is during his first imprisonment when on Pascha morning he is filled with such joy that he says to his brutal guard, "Christ is risen!" And to his surprise his guard responds, "He is risen indeed." At that moment, Fr. George, "little by little" ,saw himself full of Light: "The board against the wall in my cell was shining like the sun; everything in my cell was full of Light. I cannot explain in words the happiness that invaded me then.... In a short time this Light disappeared, but the happiness lasted for many hours." And from that point on, his guard was a changed person and no longer beat prisoners.  

The second time Fr. George experiences the Uncreated Light in prison is after having survived for several weeks in a cell with two murderers who were instructed to kill him, but for for some unknown reason didn't. Fr. George gets up the courage one day to ask them to let him celebrate a Divine Liturgy in the cell; and they consent. "This is what happened: When I turned to them after receiving Communion, I saw them on their knees and surrounded by the Light.... God just opened my eyes to see this Light, and they were surrounded by it. I noticed that the whole cell was full of Light....This Light transformed their souls! Not my prayers or my serving at the Holy Liturgy.  God transformed their souls by pouring this Uncreated Light upon them. By this Light we were able to love one another, to pray and to feel that we had something in common.... I don't know if they realized the presence of the Light that I saw in the cell, but this Light operated in their souls and transformed them into my brothers. The Energy of Jesus Christ changed them from criminals into, perhaps, saints."

And so with all of the suffering and Grace manifest in his life, why doesn't Fr. George "succeed" in saying the Prayer? Fr. George doesn't know. I certainly don't know. God knows.

Not knowing is a good thing. It is good not to know why, and to be at peace not knowing. It is good not to know why our lives are one way and not another, and to be at peace not knowing. It is good not to know why God seems to be near us at some times and not at others, and to be at peace not knowing.

I am not Fr. George Calciu or Elder Porphyrios or Mother Gavrila or Fr. Arseny or Archimandrite Sophrony. I can read their lives and their words and be inspired, but I cannot be them. Their experiences will not save me: I must struggle with my experience--whatever it is or isn't. Their experiences may illumine mine somewhat, and their words may enlighten me somewhat, but I must encounter God and my sin and my place in the world myself. Not by myself. All of the Saints and Angels and my beloved Fathers and Mothers and Brothers and Sisters are with me. Nevertheless, they cannot live my life for me, nor can I live theirs. Only Christ has lived my life, and now I must live His--as me.

Unequal Distribution

[God] has, though, apportioned to His free and rational creatures unequally in order [1] that their understanding and their freedom [free choices] might be clearly seen; [2] that men might realize their dependence on one another; [3] and that they might, by their wise use of what God has lent them, work toward their own salvation and that of their brethren.

St. Nicholai Velimirovic, Homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost.

Note that God has lent human beings all that they seem to possess.  Even the air we breathe.  Naked we come into the world, naked we leave; it is a gift from God always to remember this.

Jesus Driving Out The Money Managers

The cover of the October issue of Common Ground caught my attention as I was waiting for Bonnie at the airport last night.  It intrigues me, the thought of Jesus driving out the money changers applied to Wall Street or Bay Street or any financial district for that matter.  On the one hand, the Church teaches us that those with wealth are called to be stewards responsible to God, managing resources for the good of all.  After all, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.  And in as much as the earth is full of the Glory of God, we might even say that those who selfishly use resources that are for the good of all and who ignore the Glory of God, especially the Glory of God manifest in the creatures created in His image; we might even say that the image of Jesus driving out the money changers from the temple could also be applied to Jesus driving out the selfish money managers from...well from wherever they are.

As much as this image intrigues me and is, I think, worthy of serious reflection, I must confess that I also understand that the application is also seriously flawed at some levels.  That is, selfish, secular, people accumulating wealth for selfish purposes in a system that claims to be based on nothing less than the personal accumulation of wealth is one thing.  And selfish, religious people accumulating wealth for selfish purposes in a system that claims to represent God and proclaims God's love for all human beings, that's another thing.  The contexts are very different, and yet one cannot help seeing connections.  One cannot help seeing applications.

Those with minds much greater than mine have struggled to find a satisfactory way to understand the Christian dilemma of being in the world but not of it.  How does a Christian manage stock portfolios?  How does a Christian fire a lazy employee?  How does a Christian enforce the laws of the land?  There are no easy answers, and lots of complicated and convoluted ones (that don't work very well either).  It is a painful tension.  It is like living in the mud and trying to keep clean: even the cleanest of us is very dirty.  

What should we do?  I think the advice of John the Baptist is probably the most useful: To the tax collectors he said, do not collect more than is appointed; and to the soldiers/police he said, do not falsely accuse and be content with your wages.  Once we think we can do this, then we can begin to work on something else John the Baptist said: "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."

How To Love Your Neighbour

Love your neighbour in the following way: Do not get angry with him and do not bear resentment or a grudge against him.  Do not allow yourself to say to your neighbour any reproachful, abusive, sarcastic or caustic words.  Maintain peace with him as far as possible.  Humble yourself in his presence.  Do not try to have your revenge on him either directly or indirectly.  Whenever possible, yield to him.  Get out of the habit of arguing and quarrelling, and reject it as a sign of pride and self-love.  Speak well of those who speak evil of you.  Pay good for evil.  Pray for those who cause you various offences, wrongs, temptations, persecutions.  Whatever you do, on no account condemn anyone; do not even try to judge whether a person is good or bad, but keep your eyes on that one evil person for whom you must give an account before God--yourself.

Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, The Arena

Flexibility in Finding a Prayer Rule

The works of those who live according to God are the following: one man strikes his head all day long [I don't know what this is referring to], and does this instead of the hours of his services.  Another joins together the set number of his prayers by preserving in continual prostrations.  Another replaces the services by copious tears, and this suffices him, because it seems better to him than anything else.  Another is zealous in the meditation of his understanding and limits his appointed rule to this.  Another torments his soul with hunger to the extent that he cannot perform the services.  Another makes his service unceasing by continuing in ardent study of the Psalms.  Another passes his time in reading, and so kindles his heart.  Another is taken captive as he comprehends the divine meaning of the divine Scripture.  Another is restrained from his customary study and is held by silence in his astonishment at the wonders of the verses.

St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 6

St. Isaac points out to us that it is normal for each person to find a warm heart and grace-giving prayer in different activities.  People often confide in me that they find their prayer rule to be little more than an exercise they force themselves to do.  There is no life in it for them.  When people tell me this, assuming that they have persisted in the rule for a while, I suggest that they find a different rule.  One's prayer rule should be life-giving, not life-draining.  

Certainly, we must all force ourselves to pray to a certain extent--especially at the beginning.  But if prayers do not blossom forth into prayer, into communion with God; then probably it is time to change your prayer rule.

Mystery

Mystery in the Orthodox Church does not refer to something unknown that could be known through study or sleuthing.  Mystery refers to the interaction with or knowledge of that which defies human language or logic or categories because it transcends them.  For example, liturgical encounters with God that in the western Church are referred to as sacraments, in the Orthodox Church are referred to as Mysteries.  They are Mysteries because God is encountered.  There is no human speech, nor human logic, nor human conceptualization that can capsulize or circumscribe the divine, or the divine-human encounter. 

This is one of the reasons why I am not very good at the theology game.  I believe it was St. Gregory of Nyssa who said of his contemplation of the Holy Trinity that as soon as he began to see the Three-ness of God, the One-ness of God over came him.  And as he contemplated the One-ness of God, the Three persons pressed in upon him.  I have a similar problem on a much smaller scale.  Having nothing like the great mind or the holiness of St. Gregory, I never contemplate God: I don't even know where to begin.  I do, however, contemplate more mundane aspects of the Christian experience and find myself struggling with Mystery in matters that many find straight forward.  

Wealth and poverty, for example.  There are as many easy answers calling for voluntary poverty as there are easy arguments for the godly stewardship of wealth.  Violence and nonviolence: just about everyone who cares about this matter has their own slam-dunk argument to justify their position.  Then there are the theories of heaven and hell, the Second Coming of Christ, and the limits of the Church (that is, to what extent does the Church of Christ extend beyond the boundaries of the visible Orthodox Church?)

Every argument is full of truths, and yet does not encompass all of the truth.  When I think about the limits of the Church, I remember "The Wind blows where it will."  And as my vision opens to embrace widely, I remember "he who is not with Me scatters abroad."  When I consider the apparent necessity of violence in the world, I remember, "love your enemies" and "turn the other cheek."  And when I resolve to reject all violence, I remember, "[the civil authority] does not bear the sword in vain," and "all discipline is painful."  What I have grabbed in my left hand slips away as I attend to my right hand.

I have found peace in accepting that the ends do not necessarily meet--at least not in a way my mind can grasp.  I have found peace in accepting the Mystery that most of the Christian life is not about having the correct argument, the right concept, or the neat conceptual package.  Christian life is mostly about life.  It is not about what one ought to do if....  It is about what one is doing right now.  It is about learning to attend to the Grace of God in each moment, the Holy Spirit giving us words to speak, or silence to keep; strength to act or patience to endure.

The Limits of Cheek Turning

Jesus commanded us that if someone strikes us on one cheek, we should turn and offer him the other.  I must confess that for me this is a beautiful and difficult word.  It is a beautiful word when no one is striking me or threatening to strike me.  It is a difficult word when a haughty striker stands before me.

Today is the feast of St. Demetrius the Myrrh Streaming.  He was the military commander of Thessalonica under the Emperor Maximian at the turn of the fourth century.  Although commanded to persecute Christians, St. Demetrius rather preached Christ openly.  Eventually, he is thrown into prison and run through with lances.  However, before his martyrdom, St. Demetrius gave his young disciple St. Nestor a blessing to kill a certain gladiator named Lyaeus.

Lyaeus was a huge man, the emperor's personal gladiator.  Lyaeus fought on a raised platform surrounded by up-turned spears imbedded in the ground.  Whoever lost the fight was thrown onto the spears to writhe before the crowd as he slowly died.  Because no one wanted to fight Lyaeus, Christians who had been rounded up and thrown into prison were forced to "fight" him for the entertainment of the emperor and the crowds.  St. Nestor, who was not in prison, wanted to stop this barbarism, so he approach St. Demetrius to receive his blessing to fight and kill Lyaeus.

St. Demetrius gave St. Nestor his blessing, and told him that he would succeed, but that he would also have to surrender his life.  The next day, St. Nestor appeared in the arena as a volunteer to fight Lyaeus, whom he defeated and threw onto the spears.  Emperor Maximian was so upset by the death of his favourite gladiator, that when he found out that St. Nestor had defeated him "in the name of the God of Demetrius," he had St. Nestor decapitated by the sword.

There is a tension that Christians always live with.  On the one hand, we must turn the other cheek.  On the other hand, it sometimes seems that it is righteous to smite the cheek of someone in order to protect others.  What is the line?  Do you forebear to defend yourself but take violent action to help others?  Is a "just war" possible?  Is there a distinction between personal violence and state-sponsored violence?  Does God sometimes call us to use a lesser violence to avoid a greater violence?  If so, does that make the lesser violence somehow righteous?   My intuition tells me it doesn't.  

Actually, I don't think this tension can be resolved in a formula (just war theory, for example), but wiser and holier men than I have tried to offer one.  In my Orthodox Christian experience--the last eighteen years of my life--I have gone from being somewhat hawkish to being quite dovish.  And yet it is easy for me to be a dove in Canada, since no one is taking my stuff, no one is threatening my safety, no one is attacking my children.  However, I say this not to justify violence in protecting one's stuff, or in self defence or even necessarily in the defence of children.  I say this only to stress that it is easier to be a dove when there is very little real temptation to be a hawk.  

I have my limits.  I would like to think that I would not use violence to protect my stuff.  And on a good day, I might even be able to trust God and not use violence to defend myself--on a good day only, mind you, on most days I'd quickly lose my temper and go down biting, kicking and scratching.  But at this point, I think I would consider it God's will for me to do what ever I could to protect others, especially if the others are defenceless and vulnerable and I could immediately do something to protect them.  But this raises all sorts of other problems.  Again, what are the limits?  Where are the lines?  I don't know.  

When I pray, "lead us not into temptation," one of the temptations I am praying to avoid is this temptation: the temptation to use violence, to take matters into my own hands.  I don't know what I would do.  I cannot predict or control the future.  I can, however, today pray "lead us not into temptation."  And perhaps if I keep praying this prayer, God will have mercy.  God will have mercy and the temptation will never come; or if it comes, he will provide a way of escape so that I may bear it according to His will (1 Cor. 10:13).

Good Guys and Bad Guys

I’m reading an unpublished novel.  It is historical fiction set in the 1950s or 60s in the first all English language Russian Orthodox Church in America.  It is a story full of intrigues and dark spiritual forces working through evil men who want to manipulate the Orthodox Church to serve their personal thirst for authority and wealth.  The main character of the story is a hard-working, godly and humble priest who has risked everything to get this all English language Church off the ground and running.  However, once running and very successful, “St. Vladimir’s” becomes the target of greedy men, clergy, who want to suck up the wealth and prestige of the community to satisfy their greed and further their personal ambition.  I am only half way through, which is further than I get through most pre-publication novels I review.  I may even finish it.

However, something bothers me.  Although the novel is well written and is set in an interesting Orthodox Church world, it still somehow boils down to a good guy versus bad guy story in which the bad guys are demonized (both literally and metaphorically).  This bothers me.  It bothers me because, in my experience, the real demon is not out there in someone else, but it is experienced in me as the desire to see the demon out there in someone else. That is, the devil (diabolos, literally, the one who throws or accuses) at work to destroy the Church is found not so much in the weaknesses of the clergy or the laity but in the accusations they throw at one another.

Much of what is wrong with the Church and the world, I think, has less to do with the devil than it has to do with human weakness and immaturity.  People--and I chief among them--are lazy, confused, fearful, lustful, and generally mostly just watching out for Number One.  No wonder churches flounder and institutions of all kinds ferment corruption.  We are screwing things up pretty well on our own, we don’t need much help from the devil.

But the devil does help, but not in ways we usually suspect.  Frank Peretti’s novels (This  Present Darkness, etc.) in many ways typify how we suspect the devil and the demons work in this world: pretty much the way we would if we had their abilities and limitations  (as the novels imagine them) and wanted to manipulate others.  The demonic, as it is commonly imagined, is organized like a human army that is out there attacking true believers and true faith.  We fight those demons by praying “hard” against them and resisting the demons’ human accomplices--who also happen to be our enemies. I think this scenario is terribly flawed, even demonically flawed.

Jesus told us to love our enemies and to pray for (not against) those who despitefully use us.  Yes, St. Peter tells us to resist the devil (1Peter 5:9), but the context makes it pretty clear that resisting the devil means to suffer with patience, to remain sober and vigilant in prayer and to humble oneself, “casting all of your care upon [God] for He cares for you.”  We resist the devil by casting our cares upon God, not casting accusations agains one another.

And this brings me back to this novel I am reading.  The main character is so far doing an excellent job casting his cares upon God and not accusing others, but his companions are not doing so well.  The narrator keeps telling the reader of the almost monolithic evil of some of the characters, encouraging the reader to see them bad guys only, as one dimensional, demonized villains who must be resisted by “hard” prayer and intrigues as deceitful as their own that are plotted by secondary characters (on the good guy’s side).  I guess the lesson is supposed to be that deceit isn’t a bad thing when the good guys deceive.  

Certainly Church life is messy.  All of life is messy.  But the devil’s work in the Church probably has almost nothing to do with clear good guys and bad guys and almost everything to do with encouraging us to think there are, thus through accusation becoming like him (like it?).  The devil is an accuser and a liar; and in as much as we also accuse others and practice deceit--even for a good cause--we may find that we are acting much more like the devil than that other person on whom we’ve focused our accusation.

Preaching on Hell

I will be convicted at the dread judgement without accusers,

And condemned without witnesses;

For the book of my conscience will be opened,

And my hidden works revealed.

O God: Before you examine my actions in the presence of all creation,

Be merciful to me and save me.

Octoechos, Tone 3, Monday Matins, Sessional Hymns (of repentance)

On Sunday I preached a homily on hell.  It appeared like the people were a little nervous at the beginning.  Heck, I was nervous.

It seems to me that whenever we think about the afterlife, we must remember that we are talking about a mystery. We are talking about a reality that cannot be accurately portrayed in the language and concepts of our fallen reality. Consequently, in the scriptures and among the Church Fathers, one will find all sorts of descriptions, warnings and encouragements.  There are descriptions of judgement and hell in the scripture and among the Church Fathers that sound as extreme as some T.V. hell-fire preachers. There are also descriptions of God's love and desire that all human beings be saved both in the scripture and among the Fathers, which sound universalist--and may indeed be universalist.  

However, when we try to reduce heaven and hell to easily understood talking points that can be used to make other points, I think we err greatly. It is much like trying to speak of God and only focusing on the three-ness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To focus on the three-ness is to err on the one-ness. To reduce the three-ness to an easily conceived metaphor is to do violence to the lack of division in God. Similarly, to push too hard on God's undivided nature is to err in regard to the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is a mystery: several irreconcilable, seemingly opposing aspects of God are revealed to us.  And how could it be any other way?  A God that we could conceive is no God at all.

I think the same thing is true about the afterlife. St. Paul says that when he was caught up into the Third Heaven, he heard inexpressible words that were unlawful to utter. What he heard could not be expressed in words and concepts of the fallen creation. When Jesus talks about the final judgement, he uses parables: a shepherd dividing sheep and goats, a rich man tormented after an affluent life while a beggar is comforted, wise virgins who acquired extra oil (virtues? grace? good works?) were accepted into the bridal chamber while those without extra oil were shut out. Jesus speaks of burning and worms and weeping and gnashing of teeth--all of which is and has been experienced by almost all human beings at times of great suffering though out the ages. What does all this mean when applied to the afterlife, when time and space as we know it will not exist? We don't know.

What do we know?  We know that there is and will be a judgement--the Church's creed tells us this much. We know that something called hell/hades, or Gehenna, or Tuataras, or the abyss has something to do with it--but we don't know exactly what, except for a few parables, metaphors and allegories: enough to motivate us to avoid it. And enough to motivate us to pray that everyone may avoid it. We also know for sure that God is love. We know that mercy triumphs over justice.  We know that God wills that all human beings be saved. And we know from the prayers the Church teaches us to pray that we are to hope for and pray for the salvation of the whole creation. And most importantly, we know that Christ has broken the bonds of hell through His resurrection. How exactly these seemingly contradictory revealed truths fit together is unknown to us.  

Maybe Paul knew in the Third Heaven. Certainly there are theories.  But theories are only theories. We don't know for sure. As far as I am concerned, generally speaking, I have not found it helpful to try to literalize biblical metaphors of either heaven or hell. Heaven is a party, a wedding supper. Hell is a place or condition of regret, of unfulfilled longing, of loneliness. And most of us have already in small ways experienced a little heaven and hell in this life. I think these actual experiences tell us more about the afterlife than fanciful accounts of horned creatures with pitchforks or winged creatures flying about in long robes. The judgement of the age to come will be no surprise. It will be only a revelation of what is already in our hearts. This is what the Monday morning hymn cited above is telling us.

Hellbound? First Impressions

I just got back from Hellbound?  I have to say that I was expecting much less.  I was expecting a sort of anti-Evangelical, maybe even sarcastic poke at one traditional Christian view of hell that is, conveniently, very easy to poke.  However, I was pleasantly treated to a balanced presentation.  Yes, there were screaming and angry street evangelists glorying in the damnation of everyone but themselves.  Yes, there were scenes of a "satanic" metal concert. And yes, there was even an exorcist who bases his understanding of hell on what Jesus says in the bible and "what the demons have told me."  However, there were also thoughtful Evangelicals providing a rational defence for "eternal, conscious, torment" in hell.  There were also thoughtful Evangelicals (and at least a couple of Orthodox and one Catholic) presenting a universalist view.

I was particularly pleased that the film pointed out that most universalists do not hold that there is no hell.  Rather, they hold that hell is an experience or process or something of the sort that is not greater than God.  Further, I was also glad that both the main Orthodox source and Catholic source argue that universalism is not a dogma, but rather a hope.  In the end, only God knows.  But we can hope, and indeed the prayers of the Church teach us to hope in God's mercy and love.

Finally, I think the strongest point the movie makes is not that universalism is right and eternal, conscious torment in hell is wrong.  The strongest point the film makes is that different opinions on the matter of afterlife have existed in the Church throughout history, and these differences have been tolerated and should be tolerated today.

I encourage everyone to see this film.  It will make you think.

Some Thoughts on God's Foreknowledge

God's foreknowledge is a mystery.  It is a mystery like God Himself, the Trinity, one in essence and undivided.  As soon as I think I am wrapping my brain around the threeness of God, I am confronted with the oneness.  And when I am confident in God's oneness, I cannot avoid the threeness.

God's Foreknowledge means at least two things to me.  First, it means that God is outside time and space as we know it.  The theological word for that is "transcendence."  Since God is transcendent, God sees the end from the beginning.  God already knows what's going to happen (but for God there is no "already" or "going to," because God sees the whole history of every person as though it were laid out on a singe page before Him).  Words like "already" and "going to" are words of our human experience in time.  Time is a great thing; it is a gift from God.  Time allows us to grow, to change.  God is already complete.  God doesn't change, we do.

Secondly, God is also in time, encouraging us to grow, to grow into His Image.  God was in time historically through the Incarnation, but God has been in time from the beginning by the Holy Spirit.  This nearness of God in time and space is called "immanence."  In the western theological tradition, immanence and transcendence have been played off each other, as though both were not fully possible at the same time (Oops, time, there's that word again).  But God is both outside and inside time.  In God's dealings with us, in God's nurturing us to growth in godliness, God is not at all limited in knowledge or resources.  God is never taken by surprise; and God is always present in every time, place and situation--no matter how surprising or miserable or pleasing or frightening the situation is to us.

Some in the western tradition have tried to "demystify" this mystery with a version of predestination that reduces the divine-human relationship to mechanical playing out of predetermined movements.  This is not the Orthodox faith.  The Christian God is much bigger than that.  In the Orthodox Christian understanding, there is a genuine synergy between God and man in which God draws, but does not coerce; and in which man acts, but does not control.  Human freedom (to use the classical term) is real, yet God's foreknowledge encompasses even real human freedom.

Learning to trust God, to trust the foreknowledge of God is a lot of what the Christian life is about.  In this sense, I am using the word foreknowledge as almost synonymous with providence.  There is a technical difference between these two words, but, I think experientially, that doesn't matter.  St. Isaac the Syrian says that "when grace is abundant in a man," his "mind gives him assurance" that "there is no human being who is not under His providence."  But "when lack of faith is planted in a man's heart," then "trust in God is not present in anything he does, nor is God's providence for man taken into consideration, but such a man is continually waylaid" by unexpected turns of events.  The chief repentance of many of us, it seems, is to uproot this lack of faith that has somehow been planted in our hearts.  However, really only the Grace of God can do this, and God only grants Grace to those who want it.  Thus, in seeing our inner and outer turmoil when things don't go as we planned, we learn to pray not :"Lord, change the circumstances to fit my plan."  But rather we learn to pray, "Lord, have mercy.  Lord, grant me the Grace to trust in you."

This, I think, is one of the early lessons in faith and prayer--one I'm still working on.

With a little experience trusting the faithfulness of God, we can learn to trust that God is at work in all the varied circumstances of our life and the lives of everyone in the world to draw us and them to Himself, to save us all.  We can even learn to trust God in the midst of tragedy.  For example, St. John Chrysostom's last words as he was dying of exposure and exhaustion being driven as a prisoner into exile were, "Glory to God for all things." Even his suffering he understood to be part of God's loving providence to save not only him but also the whole world, making up in his own flesh what is lacking in the suffering of Christ (c.f. Colossians 1: 24).  St. Isaac puts it this way: "Therefore, beloved, have in your mind God's providence...as some excellent medicine...."  

Very few of us have made it to St. John's level of sanctity, yet.  But this is why we must learn to trust God in the small things now.  We must acquire the Grace of God (or acquire the Holy Spirit, as St. Seraphim of Sarov put it) while we can.  This, I think, is the whole point of Christ's parable of the wise and foolish virgins.  We need to learn to gather the oil when we don't need it, so that when we need it, it is there.  Or to put it another way, seeking the Grace of God in circumstances that merely annoy or distress us shows God that we really want His Grace, we really want Him.  Then when overwhelming circumstances overtake us (as they eventually do everyone), God's Grace will be supplied sufficiently for us because we want it.  That is, we want Grace, we want God, not just a change in circumstance.

The Poverty of Falling Trees

If a tree falls in your front yard, and no one hears it, do you still have to cut it up and haul it away?

Somehow, philosophical conundrums lose their profundity when you are no longer dealing with hypothetical trees.

While I was cutting up and hauling away said philosophical tree yesterday and today, I was thinking about the words of St. Isaac the Syrian: "This is why you must surrender all things to God's foreknowledge, and not believe that there is anything in this life unchanging."  Watch out for the double negative there.  He is saying that everything changes.

We spend our few years in this life in a world that changes.  And while there is some small amount of predictability in these changes (night to day, summer to winter, the gradual failure of our bodies with age), a good deal of the change we experience is sudden.  Trees fall for no apparent reason.  People suddenly leave or enter (or reenter) the sphere of our life.  Men and women ignorantly or intentionally abuse and oppress one another leading to sudden outbreaks of violence, even war.  Opportunistic diseases or blights of various kinds are ever waiting in the wings for a chance to destroy.  Life changes.

Surrendering to the foreknowledge of God is no easy matter.  It is in many respects one of the major spiritual works of our lives.  What makes this surrendering particularly difficult is that life is not completely arbitrary.  The universe does seem to function with a certain predictability--sort of, most of the time.  Of course if you look too closely  or at the really big picture, the laws of nature as we generally encounter them do not apply.   And then there are the accidents and the unknown variables and the consequences of human stupidity, foolishness, greed and spite.  It is sort of like English grammar: there are rules, but they are complicated, with lots of exceptions and with regional variants.  

If our life were more apparently arbitrary, then perhaps it would be easier to trust in God.  This is probably why the poor--according to St. James and others--are strong in faith.  The poorer people are, the fewer resources they are able to manipulate to create predictability, or an illusion of predictability.  Thus the poor are much more exposed to the raw unpredictability of life and are in a sense pushed toward surrendering to the foreknowledge of God.  I am not saying that all poor people have great faith (or any faith at all, for that matter).  I am saying that it is easier for the poor to have faith, just as Jesus said that it is more difficult for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

But poverty is not a fixed commodity.  That is, one can be cash poor, but resource rich.  One can be rich in knowledge or authority, yet have nothing to eat.  One can be lacking in honour or respect, yet have abundant material resources.  And one can live on the street and eat from other people's garbage, yet have a deep abiding relationship with God; while another has almost limitless resources at his or her disposal, yet frequently doubts even God's existence.  There are many ways we are poor.

It seems the lesson that we must learn again and again is the first lesson: blessed are the poor in spirit.  When trees fall in my front yard and I don't know how I will deal with it, I am blessed, if I will trust in the gracious foreknowledge of God.  When I don't know where my next meal, or bus fare, or month's rent will come from, I am blessed, if I will trust in the gracious foreknowledge of God.  And when I pray to God whom I'm not sure is there, and when I serve and love in silence because I don't know what to say, and when I am kind and generous and merciful not to receive a reward (for I'm not even sure such a reward exists), then I am blessed, if I will trust in the gracious foreknowledge of God.

The problem with poverty is that we can so easily see everyone else's.  It is our own deep poverty that we find so hard to see.

Prayer: Walking the Trail

This last weekend, I led a retreat on prayer.  I wanted the retreat to be about the experience of prayer, not the theory of prayer or someone’s ideas about prayer.  However, my personal experience of prayer is quite puny, at least compared to what I read of the experience of others.  Therefore, I entitled the retreat, “Prayer For Beginners,” thinking that by choosing that title I’d keep everyone’s expectations low and I would feel more comfortable saying things like, “Well, I have read about such experiences, but I really have no idea what they are referring to because I have never experienced it myself.”   

In fact, one of the points I wanted to make about prayer and reading about prayer is that different writers often use different words to refer to the same experience, the same spiritual psychology, if you will.  I have found that I have read some writers and understood very little, only to reread them five or ten years later and understood much more.  And here I do not mean “understood” in the sense of intellectually categorize.  I mean understood in the sense of knowing what the author is talking about--knowing in my knower, as my foster mother used to say.  Having this shared experiential knowledge, I could say things like, “What St. Theophan means when he says ‘heart’ in a particular passage is (I think) equivalent to what St. Maximus means when he says ‘intellect’ in the common English translation of the Philokalia.

However, I must also be quick to point out that much, but certainly not all, of the spiritual writings of the Orthodox Christian spiritual tradition are to some degree scalable, or I might even say qualitative.  That is, St. Isaac the Syrian, for example, might write about the spiritual experience hermits praying in the deserts (hermits whose spiritual heights I will never even see from afar, much less attain), yet the principles or the pattern or the schema of what he is describing is scalable down, way down, to the level of the experience of a beginner.  And thus as a beginner in prayer, I can begin to recognize the way.  I can begin to understand the experience of prayer: what to expect, how to struggle, how to begin to learn to discern, where to look for help, what not to trust in myself, and much more.

I referred to an example of this scalable wisdom from a very experienced spiritual writer to address a topic that came up several times over the weekend.  The topic was the experience of the withdrawal of Grace.  I referred to a short passage by Elder Sophrony, disciple of St. Silouan, from his book called On Prayer.  I will paraphrase the passage because I don’t have the book with me.  Elder Sophrony said that he has had, in prayer, the experience somewhat like the experience he had as an artist before he became a monk.  In depicting something beautiful, he would experience a moment when he felt he had gotten it right, when what he depicted on the canvas truly reflected the beauty he saw in his mind.  At that moment he felt such joy and a sense that everything would now be well, that he would be able to express on his canvas the beauty he saw in his mind.  However, soon he would be overcome with doubt, with fear that he could never convey the beauty he saw in his mind to the canvas before him.  Elder Sophrony likened this experience as an artist to his experience in prayer, to his experience of the Grace of God and the loss of Grace.  

Even a beginner at prayer, I think, can recognize this pattern, this experience.  Although most beginners have not experienced the overwhelming Grace of God that, for example, St. Silouan experienced, and neither the depths of hell at the withdrawal of Grace.  Nevertheless, I think most, even those just beginning to learn to pray, have experienced ups and downs.  Times when prayer seemed effortless, and times (perhaps extended times) when prayer seemed like a thirsty climb up a desert mountain.  Knowing that such highs and lows in prayer are common--even for experienced monks--I think helps us beginners.  We have the examples of those who have indeed climbed the heights before us, that water, that Grace, will be supplied, that if we keep climbing, and we learn to repent and humble ourselves, God will indeed come to us.  We are not the first to walk this trail.

What It Means To Be the True Church

I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

A reoccurring question of inquirers from an Protestant background is whether the Orthodox Church considers itself to be the only true church.  The short answer is an unequivocal yes.  But the longer answer requires a certain amount of explanation because what the inquirer means when he says "church" is usually not what the Church means when it refers to herself as church.  Perhaps one way to get at this longer answer is to consider what Jesus had to say about the Pharisees and the Samaritans in the Gospels.

In the Gospels, the orthodox believes were certainly the Pharisees.  Jesus says of them that they sit in Moses' seat and that they should be obeyed: "Do what they say," Jesus says, "but don't do what they do."  Furthermore, in His conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus is uncompromising: "You worship what you do not know, but we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews."  No compromise here.  The Jews, and particularly the most strict, most orthodox sect of the Jews, the Pharisees, these are the ones who know what they are doing when it comes to worship, these are the ones who sit in Moses's seat, these are the ones of whom and among whom salvation is.  But that doesn't at all mean that only Jews can be saved.  

In fact, it is particularly the Samaritans, this group of people who "worship what they do not know," whom Jesus seems to highlight as examples of people typifying what the Kingdom of God is like.  For example, of the ten leapers who are healed by Jesus, only the Samaritan among them returns to give thanks.  In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, it is not the Jewish leaders, not the priest and levite, who stop and help the wounded man.  Who helps the wounded man?  None other than the Samaritan--the one who doesn't know what he worships.  And the longest conversation of Jesus recorded in the Gospel is with a Samaritan woman, a woman of disrepute, a woman who didn't know what she worshiped, but who becomes a tireless evangelist for Christ, ultimately witnessing before Emperor Nero before her martyrdom.

In the Gospel we see that the Kingdom of God is not limited to the Jewish people ("the Wind blows where it will").  Nevertheless, "salvation is of the Jews."  The law and the covenants are of the Jews.  The very Word of God Himself is a Jew.  The "church in the wilderness" (Acts 7:38) is the Jewish people, the true church of the Old Covenant.

How can this be?  What is the Church that it should be called church?  The Church, and the Orthodox Church asserts that she and only she is this Church, is the repository of the true/correct teaching and true/correct worship of God.  However, everyone in the true Church is not necessarily a faithful follower of Christ.  And there are faithful followers of Christ who may be separated (by historical or geographical accident) from the true Church.  In fact, there may indeed be true and faithful followers of Christ who have rejected the true Church--because their only exposure to the Orthodox Church was to Orthodox Christians who were not faithful followers of Christ.  

Just as Jesus said of the Pharisees, that they sit in Moses's seat, so the Orthodox Church asserts at she sits as the bearer of the holy, catholic and apostolic teaching and the faithful, true worship of Christ.  Unfortunately, sometimes, it must be said of the some Orthodox Christians: "do what they say, not what they do."

The situation is comparable to the medical field.  One may have a perfect  understanding of the latest and best medical practices, but not follow them.  That is, a highly qualified doctor may also be completely lacking in bedside manner, motivated only by greed, and often drunk.  At the same time, there may be a person with only half a medical education, but motivated by love, full of empathy and attentive to the subtle bodily clues in her patients.  Now in the strictest sense, only the first doctor is "qualified" to practice medicine--never mind that she seldom actually cures anyone.  The second doctor--well, a quack really because she is not "qualified" to practice medicine--through her empathy and attention along with her not-quite-complete education cures almost everyone who comes to her.  The Pharisee who meets Jesus in the dark, leaves in the dark.  The Samaritan who doesn't quite know what she worships meets the Messiah and evangelizes her city.  

The Orthodox Church is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.  It is the field of wheat sown also with tares.  It is the field in which is buried the pearl.  It is the great net full of both good and bad fish.  The Holy Orthodox Church is where one will find true teaching and true worship, but one will also find lots of people who are less than true, who are struggling, or who are not even trying.  To say that the Holy Orthodox Church is the one true church is not to say that it is the perfect church.  Neither is it to say that those outside the Orthodox Church cannot find salvation.  Rather, to say that the Orthodox Church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic is to make a statement of fact, of history and of doctrine--not of soteriology.

The River of Fire: Is It Orthodox?

St. Cyprian: To Demetrian 24: “An ever-burning Gehenna and the punishment of being devoured by living flames will consume the condemned; nor will there be any way in which the tormented can ever have respite or be at an end. Souls along with their bodies will be preserved for suffering in unlimited agonies. . . . The grief at punishment will then be without the fruit of repentance; weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late will they believe in eternal punishment, who would not believe in eternal life.” 

A friend wrote me recently, "I'm  curious to know if the view of hell as a 'river of fire' is patristic. This view certainly resonates with me but I've come across a lot of patristic writing that seems to have a very western view of it as punishment. Can you clarify this at all." This friend included the quote from St. Cyprian cited above along with quotations from seven additional major Orthodox Church Fathers of the third through seventh centuries.  For what it is worth, here is my response:

Dear Friend,

When we talk about the experience after death, we have to keep in mind that we are talking about mystery. Certainly, if one already has a western view of the judgement of the next life, one would read these quotations and see in them an affirmation of what he or she already thinks. However, there are other Fathers who say different things and these very Fathers that you have quoted say different things in other places. It is not merely a matter of the Fathers having different opinions on the matter of what the judgement after death is like (although sometimes that may indeed be the case). What is more fundamentally the issue here is that we are talking about mystery. It has not been revealed clearly to the Church what shall be. Words like "punishment," "retribution," "penalty," "recompense," "suffering in unlimited agonies," and "being devoured by living flames," these are not descriptions of what the afterlife of the ungodly** will be in the same way that one might describe what it is like to visit the Queen. There are words to describe exactly what it is like to visit the Queen, because visiting the Queen, while uncommon, is not a mystery. Heaven and gehenna and all that has to do with the age to come is a mystery, and in as much as we must use the words and concepts of this age to describe the experiences of the age to come, we are only providing metaphors and parables, we are only pointing toward a mystery that is spiritually apprehended (and then only darkly) in this age, but that will be known fully in the age to come. This is why the same Father in the Church might use many different (sometimes seemingly contradictory) metaphors to talk about the Last Judgement and the experience of the ungodly in the age to come.  

The problem with the common western view of the suffering of the ungodly in hell is that it is part of the whole soteriological package of retributive justice. Hell is understood in this western scheme as a matter of satisfying God's justice through human suffering. If one already holds this view of God, then of course one would read the patristic passages you quote as buttressing their view of retributive punishment in hell. However, the Orthodox Church does not hold this view of God. In the Orthodox way of thinking, justice (which is certainly an attribute of God) is part of love and subservient to mercy: mercy triumphs over justice, St. James and several of the Prophets tell us. This, however, does not mean that the day of judgement will not be terrible. It will be terrible, in the old English sense: full of terror. The Liturgy does not call it the "fearsome day of Judgement" for no reason. And all of the terrible words and concepts that we can use from this age only begin to paint a picture of what that final reckoning will be.  

I think some people, when they encounter the river of fire metaphor, when they encounter the Orthodox idea that the fire of gehenna is nothing other than the presence of God, they think that Orthodox Christians don't believe in a hell-like experience in the afterlife. This is a misconception. Just about all of the terrible things that can be and have been said about hell could in one way or another metaphorically and allegorically point toward the actual mystery of the judgement of the ungodly in the age to come.  However, we must keep in mind that any words in this life describing the age to come are metaphorical, not literal. And we must keep in mind that whatever suffering anyone experiences in the age to come is not to satisfy God (not God's justice, nor Gods plan, nor God's calling).  Sins have been forgiven. That's not the issue. The sins of the whole world have been forgiven at the Cross.

Using words (as metaphors) that I find helpful to explain the suffering of the ungodly in the age to come, I would say that the suffering of the ungodly will be due to their exposure to Reality—the Reality about God, the Reality about ourselves, the Reality about the life we have lived. And what is going to cause so much burning, so much pain, is that we will not be able to avoid it. We will not be able to pretend. And it will be eternal; that is, life on earth as we have known it will be over, and nothing at that point can be changed, nothing can be repented of. Which is why the call to repentance now is such Good News. It is the Gospel: Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! This is why we must confess our sins ("confess" in Greek is homolegeo which means 'to say the same thing' as God says about a matter: e.g. I confess that losing my temper is sin—which is also what God says about it, which is reality).  

And as we live a life of repentance and confession, and as we are transformed to love with the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we come to actually live Christ's life. We begin to experience the judgement of God in prayer every day ("every morning I put to silence all of the wicked of the land" psalm 100/101: 8). The life of repentance and prayer is a life of self judgement ("judge yourselves lest you be judged," Jesus said). Those who take their Christian life seriously experience in this life a little bit of the age to come, a little bit of gehenna and a little bit of heaven. That's why the holy Fathers can speak of these things. But like St. Paul who said of his visit to the Third Heaven, that the words he heard there are "unutterable," so any experience of the age to come is unutterable in the language and concepts of this age. Nevertheless, love compels us to encourage and warn one another. The language of this age must be used, but only as a metaphor, as a pointer to what can only be known by direct experience.

** please note that I am using the word "ungodly" as a technical term referring to those who will experience the torment of gehenna in the age to come. I am intentionally not defining the term any further. Who the ungodly are in this life, I could not say. May God have mercy on all of us.

Prayers Becoming Prayer

Treat the words of the prayers you say so as to make them part of your emotions and bring them all of the intensity of your personal life.  But if the words we use in prayer are not made real by the way we live, they will be meaningless and lead to nowhere. They will be like a bow without a string. It is absolutely pointless to ask God for something that we ourselves are not prepared to do. If we say, "O God make me free from every temptation," while at the same time seeking every possible way of falling into temptation, hoping now that God is in control, that He will get us out of it, then we do not stand a chance. God gives us strength, but we must use it.
Paraphrased from Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom points out two very important aspects of life-giving prayer. The first is that we must make the words of the prayers into the words of our prayer. We must bring the words into ourselves, into our emotions and feelings. We must fill the words with meaning from within ourselves, our personal experience. There is an interaction between the meaning of the words, their denotations and connotations, and our own experience. This interaction makes the words of the prayers given by the Church, our own prayer.

The second aspect of life-giving prayer is engagement in real life. That is, when we treat God as a distant God who pull strings behind the scenes, without our cooperation, effort, will and determination, then it may be that our prayer life is not much different from a fantasy life. No wonder people abandon prayer--if their prayer life is not intimately engaged with, if it is not born out of, their real life.

Learning to pray is not unlike learning to read. It takes practice and it takes engagement. When we personally engage the prayers we are given and live a life of repentance, of actual striving to acquire virtue (striving to enter the rest, as it says in Hebrews), then prayers can become our prayer.