II Lent Monday – Proverbs 3:34 – 4:22
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The Lord resists the proud; but he gives grace to the humble. 35 The wise shall inherit glory; but the ungodly have exalted their own dishonour. 4:1 Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. 2 For I give you a good gift; forsake ye not my law. 3 For I also was a son obedient to my father, and loved in the sight of my mother: 4 who spoke and instructed me, saying, Let our speech be fixed in thine heart, keep our commandments, forget them not: 5 and do not neglect the speech of my mouth. 6 And forsake her not, and she shall cleave to thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. 7 In all that you acquire, acquire her. 8 Secure her, and she shall exalt thee: honour her, that she may embrace thee; 9 that she may give unto thy head a crown of graces, and may cover thee with a crown of delight. 10 Hear, my son, and receive my words; and the years of thy life shall be increased, that the resources of thy life may be many. 11 For I teach thee the ways of wisdom; and I cause thee to go in right paths. 12 For when thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not be distressed. 13 Take hold of my instruction; let it not go, —but keep it for thyself for thy life. 14 Go not in the ways of the ungodly, neither covet the ways of transgressors. 15 In whatever place they shall pitch their camp, go not thither; but turn from them, and pass away. 16 For they cannot sleep, unless they have done evil: their sleep is taken away, and they rest not. 17 For these live upon the bread of ungodliness, and are drunken with wine of transgression. 18 But the ways of the righteous shine like light; they go on and shine, until the day be fully come. 19 But the ways of the ungodly are dark; they know not how they stumble. 20 My son, attend to my speech; and apply thine ear to my words: 21 that thy fountains may not fail thee; keep them in thine heart. 22 For they are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh.
Verse seven, “In all that you acquire, acquire her [that is, wisdom]”, is missing from most manuscripts of the Septuagint. St. John Chrysostom, however, must have been familiar with a version of the Greek Old Testament that preserved this verse, because he expounds its meaning in his commentary. Here is what he says:
“In all that you acquire, acquire her.” What is the meaning of In all: in gold and silver? In a house? And how is wisdom to be acquired in these things? They can be acquired along with her. Do you want to be rich? Be rich along with her. Do you want to be married? Be married along with her. Do you want to build a house? Build it along with her. This is what Paul also says, “Whether you eat or do anything else, do all for the glory of God (I Corinthians 10:31).” Do nothing without fear of God.
Unless we receive the grace of the monastic vocation, we must live our Christian faith in the world, and that means that a young man, in particular, is morally obligated to cultivate godly ambitions for various temporal achievements in order to do his duty to God and neighbor: a good education, the acquisition of useful skills for supporting a family, the acquisition of a suitable wife and the begetting of children, the acquisition of property, the habit of correct speech, clothing himself in a way suitable to his station in society, eschewing the adolescent mind and acquiring adult tastes in hobbies, the arts and music, and so forth. The Christian, however, does not pursue these goals for the sake of gratifying his ego, but for the service of God and neighbor, and all that he does, he does with the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. The Book of Needs (Euchologion, Trebnik) is replete with prayers for the blessing of the most mundane objects and activities. This is one thing that separates Orthodox Christianity from Gnosticism: Our faith involves doing, not just thinking. We are to transform and adorn God’s creation through activity and industry, and offer it back to God. Our Lord Himself teaches us this in His Parable of the Talents.
Those who translate the Prayer of St. Ephraim into English mislead the unwary worshipper when they render the Greek philarchia (lyubonachalie in Slavonic) as “ambition.” The original does not mean “ambition” in a general sense, but only in the specific sense of “ambition for power over others.” It literally means “love of rule,” “love of being in charge” – in other words, being power hungry, wanting to lord it over other people in order to gratify the ego. This, obviously, is a sin, but there are many godly ambitions that are not sins. Preachers and writers do the faithful a disservice when they preach an effeminate Christianity that discourages ambition in general, for without ambition, we become passive vegetables, zombies, drones – we live on an infantile level, mere consumers of what others have worked to provide. Such a life is not worth living. It means disgrace in this world and damnation in the next.
To understand this better, let us recall that there are three powers of the soul: the logos, the thinking power; thymos, the incensive power – that is, drive, ambition, our “get up and go”; and epithymia – the desiring power. In respect to the cardinal virtues, God expects us to cultivate all three powers in their appropriate directions. He expects us to use our minds for the exercise of prudence; He expects us to bend our ambitionto the exercise of courage; and He expects us to train our desires in the exercise of temperance. When we exercise all three properly and thereby acquire prudence, courage, and temperance, we arrive at justice, which is the state of being in right relationship to God, man, creation, and ourselves.
Ambition, then, is related to courage, and courage, ultimately, to the theological virtue of Hope. Today we see a lot of hopeless young people, most of whom do not even know that they are hopeless, because they do not know what to hope for or that they should hope for anything. Their thymos has been either destroyed or misdirected by the consumer culture, by the sexual revolution, by various addictions, and by economic oppression. A critical mass of Christian young men – including Orthodox Christian young men – in particular, have become satisfied to be consumers and not producers. They are content to be drones. This is disastrous, of course, because in God’s plan for society, faithful men must be the leaders, lest malicious men and denatured women fill the vacuum of power. Faithful men must be the guardians, lest the women and children become prey to evildoers. Faithful men must be the providers, lest their women be forced into the man’s world of aggression and competition, where they become hardened and lose that particular gift that women have from God, to give sweetness, nurture, and comfort to their men and to their children, to create Paradise in the home.
Young Orthodox married people who are starting your families: You are the men and women of the hour. This is your moment. You have an historic opportunity to reverse all this degeneracy by training your boys to be real men and your girls to be real women. Each sex has its own peculiar vocation, its peculiar set of worthy ambitions in which to exercise its thymos. When properly and joyfully taught, boys and girls exult to run the appropriate race set before them. They acquire courage and hope, and they know that life is good.
O Lord and Master of my life, give me Thy servant that good ambition to exercise my incensive power as Thou willest, to acquire courage to run the race of this life, and to receive the grace of hope in the life to come. Amen.