Orthodox Truth

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My son: He that keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps his soul from trouble. 24 A bold and self-willed and insolent man is called a pest: and he that remembers injuries is a transgressor. 25 Desires kill the sluggard; for his hands do not choose to do anything. 26 An ungodly man entertains evil desires all the day: but the righteous is unsparingly merciful and compassionate. 27 The sacrifices of the ungodly are abomination to the Lord, for they offer them wickedly. 28 A false witness shall perish; but an obedient man will speak cautiously. 29 An ungodly man impudently withstands with his face; but the upright man himself understands his ways. 30 There is no wisdom, there is no courage, there is no counsel against the ungodly. 31 A horse is prepared for the day of battle; but help is of the Lord. 22:1 A fair name is better than much wealth, and good favour is above silver and gold. 2 The rich and the poor meet together; but the Lord made them both. 3 An intelligent man seeing a bad man severely punished is himself instructed, but fools pass by and are punished. 4 The fear of the Lord is the offspring of wisdom, and wealth, and glory, and life. 

In verse 26, when the sacred author writes, “An ungodly man entertains evil desires all the day,” the expression “all the day” signifies not only all the hours of a given day but also the span of one’s entire life.  Abba Evagrius, in commenting on this expression – as found again in Proverbs 23:17 – explains it thus: 

It belongs to angels never to have evil desires; it is human sometimes to have evil desires and other times not to have them; it belongs to demons always to have evil desires.  The expression “all the day” signifies the entire life.  So also, “continue in the fear of the Lord all the day (Proverbs 23:17)” applies to the whole life. –  Scholia on Proverbs 

Human beings, then, are not entirely good nor entirely wicked:  they go back and forth. We experience this, at least in our thoughts, every hour of every day.   God has provided the grace-filled life of repentance in the Church so that, during the span of his lifetime, the repentant Christian may tend more and more to good desires and less and less to evil desires each single day of the entire “day” of one’s life, until the Lord sees that the soul has become ripe for Paradise.   

We are tempted, however, by the thought that, seeing no improvement in ourselves, our repentance is in vain.   We must combat this thought by the understanding that the Lord does not allow us to see our improvement, lest we become complacent about our spiritual state, imagine that we have attained our salvation already, despise others as not as “advanced” as we, and be found trapped in demonic pride at the time of death.   We must simply abide in humility and constant self-reproach, but cheerfully, trusting in the Lord for our salvation.   

To combat the evil desires that arise in our hearts “all the day,” we must practice the constant remembrance of God, and the chief weapon in this warfare is the Prayer of Jesus, which is indispensable in retaining the grace that we receive in Holy Communion.  The course of our lives becomes intertwined with, identified with, the action of this Prayer within, and by it God both reveals the evil desires that arise in our hearts and at the same time destroys them.   Yet we do not see our progress but only more evil desires!   In a strange way, nevertheless, the Lord grants us a firm hope in our salvation.   

In his beautiful treatise on the Jesus Prayer, a new confessor of the Catacomb Church in Russia,  Archbishop Antoniy Golynskiy-Mikhaylovskiy,  explains the matter thus: 

The penitent does not notice that the Prayer is bearing fruit in him.  The Grace of God arranges this imperceptibly for his benefit because of man’s conceit.  The penitent prays; however, it seems to him that he is not advancing but is going backwards.  He keeps praying, but it seems to him that he is not making any progress.   Thoughts repeatedly banish his prayer, and consequently their pernicious character becomes increasingly evident.  This struggle compels him to begin to humble himself.   He has no recourse except to surrender to the will of God, which is exactly what he needs at this juncture. – On the Prayer of Jesus and Divine Grace, p. 31.  

Humility and surrender to the will of God!   This is what we need above all, every day of the day of this life, and especially at this holy season, as we prepare to glorify the Son of God Who was obedient to death, death on a cross, for our salvation.   Let us hasten to renew our warfare in prayer, combatting evil thoughts at every moment, so that we may worthily glorify Him Who, in His dread struggle in prayer in the Garden, on the night before He died, said to the Father, “Thy will be done,” and went forth to the world-saving exploit of the Cross.  

For the Lord Hath Spoken

The Lenten Readings from Esaias 

VI Lent Wednesday – Esaias 58: 1-11

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Thus saith the Lord:  1 Cry aloud, and spare not; lift up thy voice as with a trumpet, and declare to my people their sins, and to the house of Jacob their iniquities. 2 They seek me day by day, and desire to know my ways, as a people that had done righteousness, and had not forsaken the judgment of their God: they now ask of me righteous judgment, and desire to draw nigh to God, 3 saying, Why have we fasted, and thou regardest not? why have we afflicted our souls, and thou didst not know it?  Nay, in the days of your fasts ye find your pleasures, and all them that are under your power ye wound. 4 If ye fast for quarrels and strifes, and smite the lowly with your fists, wherefore do ye fast to me as ye do this day, so that your voice may be heard in crying? 5 I have not chosen this fast, nor such a day for a man to afflict his soul; neither though thou shouldest bend down thy neck as a ring, and spread under thee sackcloth and ashes, neither thus shall ye call a fast acceptable. 6 I have not chosen such a fast, saith the Lord; but do thou loose every burden of iniquity, do thou untie the knots of hard bargains, set the bruised free, and cancel every unjust account. 7 Break thy bread to the hungry, and lead the unsheltered poor to thy house: if thou seest one naked, clothe him, and thou shalt not disregard the relations of thine own seed.  8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall speedily spring forth: and thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of God shall compass thee. 9 Then shalt thou cry, and God shall hearken to thee; while thou art yet speaking he will say, Behold, I am here. If thou remove from thee the band, and the stretching forth of the hands, and murmuring speech; 10 and if thou give bread to the hungry from thy heart, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light spring up in darkness, and thy darkness shall be as noon-day: 11 and thy God shall be with thee continually, and thou shalt be satisfied according as thy soul desires; and thy bones shall be made fat, and shall be as a well-watered garden, and as a fountain from which the water has not failed. – Esaias 58: 1-11 

As we draw near to the Great Week of the Lord’s Passion and the Day of the Radiant Resurrection, let us recall that there are three great themes found in the hymnody of these holiest days of the year:  First, there is of course, the historical and soteriological theme: the commemoration of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, which occurred in time 2,000 years ago, but whose true meaning lie outside of time, in the eternity of the Heavenly Kingdom.   Thus there is also the eschatological theme of Holy Week:  frequently we hear the call to watchfulness, as we await the return in glory of Him Whom we saw glorified first in His Extreme Humility for our salvation.   Third, there is the moral and ascetical theme: frequently we hear exhortations to live in newness of life, to show forth in our thoughts, words, and deeds the fruits of the Lord’s great redemptive work for us, as we make use of the grace that His Passion has won for us in order to become fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Today’s reading from Prophet Esaias emphasizes the moral theme of our conversion from the old way of life characterized by selfishness to the new way of life characterized by grace-filled charity, which is the highest of the virtues.   The men of Old Israel whom the prophet reproves here are proud of their outward fasting, but lack charity to their neighbor.  We must constantly recall – even now at the end of the Great Fast, as we did at the beginning – that fasting is not an end in itself.  It is an instrument for the acquisition of virtue.    

St. John Cassian writes, 

You see, then, that fasting is by no means considered an essential good by the Lord, inasmuch as it does not become good and pleasing to God by itself but in conjunction with other works. …By reason of accessory circumstances it might be considered not only vain but even hateful, as the Lord says, “When they fast, I will not hear their prayers.”  – Conferences

St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his commentary on this passage, addresses the well-known problem of outward piety coupled with inner corruption, a theme we have constantly recurred to since the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee: 

There were those among them who received a reputation for piety but behaved shamefully without being noticed, decorating themselves on the outside and gaining a reputation of gentleness.  They undertook fasts and made prayers, thinking that through this they could turn aside God’s anger.  …Here they learn what their sins are and that they must turn from these if they want to be rewarded by God and become worthy of His sparing them. – St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Isaiah

It is not likely that someone reading this commentary at this moment is a wealthy, hardhearted  oligarch oppressing the poor, of the kind whom the prophet excoriates in today’s passage from his writings.   All of us, however, must extend the mercy that we are capable of to those around us, starting with our immediate family, our friends, our fellow Church members, and our co-workers.    This can begin most simply, by our bridling our irritation and practicing quietness of spirit, cheerfulness, and kindness to the person in front of us.   St. Jerome, a notably fierce faster in his own right, nevertheless reproves one of his correspondents for thinking himself better than his brother for fasting more strictly, though he is angry and quarrelsome, while the other is cheerful and gracious:  

If you have fasted two or three days [i.e., keep absolute fastswith no food or drink for days at a time], do not think yourself better than others who do not fast [i.e., those who do not keep absolute fasts but who eat fasting food in moderation]. You fast and are angry; the other eats and wears a smiling face.  You work off your irritation and hunger in quarrels.   He uses food in moderation and gives God thanks.  – St. Jerome, Letter 22

Let us give the last word today to St. Isaac the Syrian, who gets to the heart of the matter, as usual, by reminding us that all of our sacrifices must be directed to the destruction of the idolatry of our logismoi – our thoughts – and our self-will:  

You offer your own wills as whole burnt offerings to idols; and to the wretched thoughts, that you reckon in yourselves as gods, you daily sacrifice your free will, a thing more precious than all incense, which you ought rather to consecrate to Me by your good works and your purity of conscience. – St. Isaac the Syrian, Sixth Ascetical Homily 

Let each of us, then, make a short list of the good works that we can by God’s grace accomplish in the sacred days lying before us, prepare for the cleansing of our conscience by a sincere and thorough confession of our sins, and greet the Lord in His saving Passion with purity of heart. 

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My son:  17 The paths of life turn aside from evil; and the ways of righteousness are length of life. He that receives instruction shall be in prosperity; and he that regards reproofs shall be made wise. He that keeps his ways, preserves his own soul; and he that loves his life will spare his mouth.  18 Pride goes before destruction, and folly before a fall. 19 Better is a meek-spirited man with lowliness, than one who divides spoils with the proud. 20 He who is skillful in business finds good: but he that trusts in God is most blessed. 21 Men call the wise and understanding evil: but they that are pleasing in speech shall hear more. 22 Understanding is a fountain of life to its possessors; but the instruction of fools is evil.  23 The heart of the wise will discern the things which proceed from his own mouth; and on his lips he will wear knowledge. 24 Good words are honeycombs, and the sweetness thereof is a healing of the soul. 25 There are ways that seem to be right to a man, but the end of them looks to the depth of hell. 26 A man who labours, labours for himself, and drives from him his own ruin. 27 But the perverse bears destruction upon his own mouth: a foolish man digs up evil for himself, and treasures fire on his own lips. 28 A perverse man spreads mischief, and will kindle a torch of deceit with mischiefs; and he separates friends. 29 A transgressor tries to ensnare friends, and  leads them in ways that are not good.  30 And the man that fixes his eyes devises perverse things, and marks out with his lips all evil: he is a furnace of wickedness. 31 Old age is a crown of honour, but it is found in the ways of righteousness. 32 A man slow to anger is better than a strong man; and he that governs his temper better than he that takes a city. 33 All evils come upon the ungodly into their bosoms; but all righteous things come of the Lord.  17:1 Better is a morsel with pleasure in peace, than a house full of many good things and unjust sacrifices, with strife. 2 A wise servant shall have rule over foolish masters, and shall divide portions among brethren. 3 As silver and gold are tried in a furnace, so are choice hearts with the Lord. 4 A bad man hearkens to the tongue of transgressors: but a righteous man attends not to false lips. 5 He that laughs at the poor provokes him that made him; and he that rejoices at the destruction of another shall not be held guiltless: but he that has compassion shall find mercy.  6 Children’s children are the crown of old men; and their fathers are the glory of children. The faithful man has the whole world full of wealth; but the faithless not even a farthing. 7 Faithful lips will not suit a fool; nor lying lips a just man. 8 Instruction is to them that use it a gracious reward; and whithersoever it may turn, it shall prosper. 9 He that conceals injuries seeks love; but he that hates to hide them separates friends and kindred. 10 A threat breaks down the heart of a wise man; but a fool, though scourged, understands not. 11 Every bad man stirs up strifes: but the Lord will send out against him an unmerciful messenger.  12 Care may befall a man of understanding; but fools will meditate evils. 13 Whoso rewards evil for good, evil shall not be removed from his house. 14 Rightful rule gives power to words; but sedition and strife precede poverty. 15 He that pronounces the unjust just, and the just unjust, is unclean and abominable with God. 16 Why has the fool wealth? for a senseless man will not be able to purchase wisdom. He that exalts his own house seeks ruin; and he that turns aside from instruction shall fall into mischief. 17 Have thou a friend for every time, and let brethren be useful in distress; for on this account are they born.  

What does the sacred author mean by the second half of verse 17:6, “The faithful man has the whole world full of wealth; but the faithless not even a farthing?”  Frequently our experience is the opposite:  The man that takes the path of the Gospel, as commanded by Christ, experiences poverty and hardship, while the worldly man has an easy life with plenty of material abundance.   Here is what St. John Cassian says on the subject: 

Instead of the pleasure that a person has in possessing one field and house, he who has passed over into the adoption of the children of God (Ephesians 1:5), will enjoy a hundred times more all the riches that belong to the eternal Father and that he will possess as his own, and in imitation of the true Son he will proclaim by disposition and by virtue, “All that the Father has is mine (John 16:15).”  No longer occupied with the criminal concern of distraction and worry, but secure and happy, he will enter everywhere as it were into his property, and every day he will hear it said to him by the apostle, “All things are yours, whether the world or things present or things to come (I Corinthians 3:22).” And by Solomon, The faithful man has the whole world full of wealth (Proverbs 17:6b).”  – St. John Cassian, Conferences

The wealth of the rich but faithless man is an illusion, in two senses:  First, everything he thinks he owns really belongs to God.  Second, it’s all going to be lost to him at the time of his death.  He will take nothing to the grave.    Lying on his deathbed, after a lifetime of chasing shadows, he will experience the words of Holy Scripture at the core of his being:  “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” but he will not be able to get that lifetime back.  It has been wasted on chasing that which is insubstantial and temporary, and even this illusory gain will now be taken away. 

The poverty of the poor yet faithful man is also an illusion, but one that often tempts him to despondency and loss of hope in God.   When he plunges himself into prayer, however, and discovers the riches of prayer in his heart, he looks out on God’s creation with new eyes, realizing that it all belongs to God, and, because he is a child of God, that it all belongs to him.   That he can control and use so little of it now for his earthly needs and those of his family is a temporary condition allowed by God, in order to call him to deeper faith and hope, and to illumine his mind to see the inner meaning of his fellow creatures: that their ultimate purpose is not to satisfy the desires of man, but to give glory to their Creator.  This thought gives freedom and consolation, and he thinks, “Yes, it is all so beautiful, and that makes me happy.  Certainly I can last one day more, trusting in the loving God Who will always provide for me and being joyful in the contemplation of the beauties of created things, which lift me up to contemplation of His infinite beauty and perfection.”   

St. Clement of Alexandria, commenting on the first half of the same verse, says this: 

“Children’s children are the crown of old men; and their fathers are the glory of children,” it is said.  Our glory is the Father of all, and the crown of the whole Church is Christ. – St. Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educator 

Amen. 

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My son: 15 The simple believes every word: but the prudent man betakes himself to after-thought. 16 A wise man fears, and departs from evil; but the fool trusts in himself, and joins himself with the transgressor. 17 A passionate man acts inconsiderately; but a sensible man bears up under many things. 18 Fools shall have mischief for their portion; but the prudent shall take fast hold of understanding. 19 Evil men shall fall before the good; and the ungodly shall attend at the gates of the righteous. 20 Friends will hate poor friends; but the friends of the rich are many. 21 He that dishonours the needy sins: but he that has pity on the poor is most blessed. 22 They that go astray devise evils: but the good devise mercy and truth. The framers of evil do not understand mercy and truth: but compassion and faithfulness are with the framers of good. 23 With every one who is careful there is abundance: but the pleasure-taking and indolent shall be in want. 24 A prudent man is the crown of the wise: but the occupation of fools is evil. 25 A faithful witness shall deliver a soul from evil: but a deceitful man kindles falsehoods. 26 In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and he leaves his children a support. 

The word “simple” in verse fifteen does not refer to the holy simplicity of the saint who believes in God without doubting and receives the Kingdom of God into his heart with the childlike innocence praised by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel. Here, rather, by a “simple” man the sacred author means a simpleton, a fool.  St. John Chrysostom, commenting on this verse, says briefly, “Surely it is typical of folly to believe everything.”  It is well said that someone who stops believing in the true God will believe anything else, no matter how ridiculous. Naïveté and credulity are not small sins in a grown man, for he is responsible for seeking the truth earnestly and praying for wisdom daily, in order to carry out with prudence the tasks assigned him in life by God. People today have forgotten – or have never been told – that they will answer to God for their culpable ignorance.   Those who refuse to undertake serious study about the most serious things – how to attain eternal happiness in the next life and  how to carry out the duties imposed on them by God in this life – will answer to God for the waste of the minds He gave them and the perversion of their wills that logically followed upon their ignorance. 

In order to have time and energy to study the sacred truths of our Faith, as well as serious works on secular topics, we have to stop wasting time distracting ourselves with silly things like sports, video entertainment, mindless chatter on social media, and all the nonsense on the Internet and television about current events.   Remember, the so-called news is not serious; it is theater cynically manufactured to retard your intellectual and moral development by trapping you in ignorance and gratifying your passions.  The pronouncements of high government officials and media “experts” are not even meant to be taken seriously:  they are theater scripts written by nihilists – that is, products of our universities – who do not believe in God and who believe themselves both wise and virtuous for denying the existence of the real, objectively knowable, and permanent essences of created things.  Thus nothing they say means anything, because they are unable to intend to say anything that means anything. The first step to wisdom, therefore, would be to refuse to discuss the Thing that everyone else began discussing instantly today when they were informed by such blind and hopeless idiots that This Thing is now the One Important Thing rather than That other One Important Thing they were discussing yesterday. 

Orthodox Christian, know your dignity!   Almighty God your Creator has given you a mind to use for the study of His truth, both His truth directly revealed in the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church, and His truth indirectly revealed through the created order of existing things that are the legitimate subjects of the arts and sciences.  Do not lower yourself by occupying your hours with the false, the trivial, the superficial, and the absurd. Our Lord Himself told us to be wise as serpents as well as innocent as doves.   St. Paul writes,  “Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men (I Corinthians 14:20).” 

O Christ our Lord, Thou Eternal Wisdom of the Father, enlighten our minds with Thy truth, govern our wills according to Thy goodness, and direct our desires to the love of all those good things that are pleasing to Thine Eternal Father, Who is glorified with Thee and Thine All-Holy Spirit unto the ages.  Amen. 

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My son, 19 A righteous son is born for life: but the persecution of the ungodly ends in death. 20 Perverse ways are an abomination to the Lord: but all they that are blameless in their ways are acceptable to him. 21 He that unjustly strikes hands shall not be unpunished: but he that sows righteousness he shall receive a faithful reward. 22 As an ornament in a swine’s snout, so is beauty to a ill-minded women. 23 All the desire of the righteous is good: but the hope of the ungodly shall perish.  24 There are some who scatter their own, and make it more: and there are some also who gather, yet have less. 25 Every sincere soul is blessed: but a passionate man is not graceful. 26 May he that hoards corn leave it to the nation: but blessing be on the head of him that gives it. 27 He that devises good counsels seeks good favour: but as for him that seeks after evil, evil shall overtake him. 28 He that trusts in wealth shall fall; but he that helps righteous men shall rise. 29 He that deals not graciously with his own house shall inherit the wind; and the fool shall be servant to the wise man. 30 Out of the fruit of righteousness grows a tree of life; but the souls of transgressors are cut off before their time. 31 If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?  12:1 He that loves instruction loves sense, but he that hates reproofs is a fool. 2 He that has found favour with the Lord is made better; but a transgressor shall be passed over in silence. 3 A man shall not prosper by wickedness; but the roots of the righteous shall not be taken up. 4 A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband; but as a worm in wood, so a bad woman destroys her husband. 5 The thoughts of the righteous are true judgments; but ungodly men devise deceits.  6 The words of ungodly men are crafty; but the mouth of the upright shall deliver them. 

Verse eleven is one of the better known Proverbs, because of its wry humor, and because it rings so true to experience.  How often, indeed, have women who possessed physical beauty but were evil-minded (in the Septuagint kakophron), or just silly and empty-headed (in St. Jerome’s Latin version, fatua) – or both – destroyed the lives of their husbands and children by their swinish behavior!   

The Holy Fathers, however, do not rest content with the obvious meaning of the verse, that pious women should aim at exhibiting good will, sobriety, and prudence in their thinking and their conduct.  The Fathers raise the bar (as usual!) in order to apply this verse to God-loving souls, both men and women, who, despite their outward piety and striving after virtue, nonetheless keep giving in to their passions.  That’s us.  

St. John Cassian, in his Fourteenth Conference, “On Spiritual Knowledge,” quotes Abba Nesteros as follows:  

As for those who seem to have some semblance of knowledge yet do not abandon the sins of the flesh even when they apply themselves diligently to the reading and memorizing of Scripture, Proverbs has the following well-put statement: “The beauty of a woman of evil ways is like a golden ring in the snout of a pig.” What use is it for a man to possess the jewel of heaven’s words and to give himself over to that most precious loveliness of Scripture if he himself is stuck fast in muddied works and thoughts?   

St. Gregory of Nyssa applies this insight specifically to those who have consecrated their lives to God in virginity: 

Let eagerness for virginity be written down as the foundation for the life of virtue, but let there be built upon this foundation all the products of virtue.  If [virginity] is believed to be precious and befitting to God, as it is, but one’s whole life does not conform to it and is stained by the rest of the soul’s disorder, then this is “the golden ring in the swine’s snout” or the pearl trampled under the feet of the swine. – St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity 18 .   

This does not mean, however, that our profession of the Faith and outward piety are useless.  On the contrary, our orthodoxy – professing the the right faith – and striving after orthopraxis – right behavior – are absolutely essential, and through them God will save us, though we fall a thousand times a day.   But we must be willing to endure whatever tribulations He sends us for the cleansing of our passions, that we may obtain that purity of heart without which we will not see God.  

St. Peter quotes verse 31 of today’s reading in his First Epistle:  “If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear (I Peter 4:18) ?.”    St. Bede, commenting on this verse, says that even the righteous have countless falls due to our fallen nature, but they are saved through tribulations, while those outside the Church’s realm of grace do not even have the starting point for running the course of salvation:   

“If the righteous receives [retribution] on earth, how much more the wicked and sinner?”  This is to say clearly, “If the frailty of mortal life is so great that not even the righteous who are to be crowned in heaven pass through life without tribulations on account of the countless slips of our flawed nature, how much more do those who are cut off from heavenly grace await the certain outcome of their everlasting damnation? – The Venerable Bede, Commentary on I Peter 4:18 

Let us, then, accept with humility and gratitude whatever trials come our way, so that, purified of the passions through repentance, we may attain the heavenly kingdom. 

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Thus saith the Lord of hosts, As I have said, so it shall be: and as I have purposed, so the matter shall remain: 25 even to destroy the Assyrians upon my land, and upon my mountains: and they shall be for trampling; and their yoke shall be taken away from them, and their glory shall be taken away from their shoulders. 26 This is the purpose which the Lord has purposed upon the whole earth: and this the hand that is uplifted against all the nations. 27 For what the Holy God has purposed, who shall  frustrate? and who shall turn back his uplifted hand? 28 In the year in which king Achaz died this word came.  29 Rejoice not, all ye Philistines, because the yoke of him that smote you is broken: for out of the seed of the serpent shall come forth the young asps, and their young shall come forth flying serpents, 30 And the poor shall be fed by him, and poor men shall rest in peace: but he shall destroy thy seed with hunger, and shall destroy thy remnant. 31 Howl, ye gates of cities; let the cities be troubled and cry, even all the Philistines: for smoke is coming from the north, and there is no possibility of living. 32 And what shall the kings of the nations answer? That the Lord has founded Sion, and by him the poor of the people shall be saved. 

St. Basil the Great makes clear the difference between the fleshly Israel, that is, the Israel of the Old Testament, and the spiritual Israel, the New Testament Church.  Both Israels understand that the historical reference of the prophecy is to the destruction of the Assyrian empire at the end of the 7th century B.C.   But the fleshly Israel, those who rejected and killed their Messiah, Jesus Christ, cling to the idea that prophecies such as this foretell and validate their domination over all the other nations on earth, the Assyrians being only one historical example thereof. The New Testament Church, the true Israel, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, understands that events such as these constitute not a license from God to dominate and destroy nations not our own, but rather are an image of the spiritual life, in which we are called to throw off the foreign yoke of the demons and to attain true spiritual freedom.   Here is what St. Basil writes:   

“The fleshly Israel assumes that the message of the prophet is about the land deemed by them to be God’s, and about the earthly mountains of the physical Judaea; and that Israel will carry off Assyria captive, imposing on them the yoke of slavery.  But as for ourselves, who are risen with Christ and seek those things which are above (Col. 3:1), we designate the “land” as the good heart, according to what we were taught by the Lord Himself, Who says, But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty (Matt. 13:23).  Consequently, the “mountain of God” on which the Assyrians “shall be for trampling” is called the man who has grown great in good works and excels others in both word and knowledge  In such a man the enemies shall become for trampling.”  

The “Assyrians,” then are the demons, the invisible enemies of our salvation, their “yoke” is our enslavement to them because of our passions and sins, but we trample on them by the power of Christ, when we throw off sin and take on His light yoke, the yoke of repentance. 

Yesterday, on the Sunday of the Veneration of the Precious Cross, we arrived at the halfway point of Great Lent.  On Wednesday we shall have arrived at the halfway point to Holy Pascha.  Let us raise the Cross on high, as the invincible banner of our victory over the spiritual Assyrians who war against us, and by the power of Our victorious Lord cast off everything that hinders our repentance, that we may glorify His Resurrection in purity of heart. 

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Thus saith the Lord: 19 And if ye be willing, and hearken to me, ye shall eat the good of the land: 20 but if ye be not willing, nor hearken to me, a sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken this. 21 How has the faithful city Sion, once full of judgement, become a harlot! wherein righteousness lodged, but now murderers. 22 Your silver is worthless, thy wine merchants mix the wine with water. 23 Thy princes are rebellious, companions of thieves, loving bribes, seeking after rewards; not pleading for orphans, and not heeding the cause of widows. 24 Therefore thus saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, Woe to the mighty men of Israel; for my wrath shall not cease against mine adversaries, and I will execute judgement on mine enemies. 25 And I will bring my hand upon thee, and purge thee completely, and I will destroy the rebellious, and will take away from thee all transgressors. 26 And I will establish thy judges as before, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: and afterward thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the faithful mother-city of Sion. 27 For her captives shall be saved with judgement, and with mercy. 28 And the transgressors and the sinners shall be crushed together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be utterly consumed. 29 For they shall be ashamed of their idols, which they delighted in, and they are made ashamed of the gardens which they coveted. 30 For they shall be as a turpentine tree that has cast its leaves, and as a garden that has no water. 31 And their strength shall be as a thread of tow, and their works as sparks, and the transgressors and the sinners shall be burnt up together, and there shall be none to quench them.  

2:1 The word which came to Esaias the son of Amos concerning Judea, and concerning Jerusalem. 2 For in the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be glorious, and the house of God shall be on the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall come to it. 3 And many nations shall go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will tell us his way, and we will walk in it: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. 

St. Basil the Great, guided by the same Holy Spirit who inspired the prophet, sees three levels of meaning in a single verse, verse 21:  How has the faithful city Sion, once full of judgement, become a harlot! wherein righteousness lodged, but now murderers.  

1. This verse is a prophecy that the murder of the Savior would take place in Jerusalem. St. Basil writes, “To what time do these charges refer, if not to that in which the city becoming ‘an evil and adulterous generation’, murdered the Righteousness that stooped from heaven and rested in her – Christ the Lord.”   

In the time of the prophet Esaias, in the time of the Savior, and unto our own time, the city of Jerusalem, and the Holy Land of which she is the center, have never ceased to be the center of all history, for in Jerusalem the central act of all history – the saving Passion and life-giving Resurrection of the Lord – took place;  in Jerusalem the Antichrist will have his throne, and to the Mount of Olives above Jerusalem the true Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead. 

In our own time, “…the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not…(Rev. 3:9)” have transgressed the express will of God by defying His sentence of exile for their judicial murder of the God-Man, and they have established a false Israel in the land taken away by God Himself from their fathers for their sin of deicide.    We must face this reality soberly, and we must read it carefully as one of the “signs of the times” which Our Savior commands us to observe.   Surely it has apocalyptic significance, though we do not claim to understand its implications completely. We must, on the one hand, reject the heretical Judaizing and Zionist ideology adopted by certain heterodox Christian groups, but on the other hand we must eschew the sinful Jew-hatred of the neopagan false “Right” and false “Left.”  We must not get caught up in the deceptive dialectic between these two false alternatives that has been engineered by the demons and their human agents.    We do not define ourselves as Zionists or anti-Zionists:  we are Orthodox Christians.  We follow not a party or an ideology, but only our Master Christ, Who desires “that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.”   Our Savior wept over Jerusalem as He approached His saving Passion for our salvation.  Let us weep as well, and pray for the grace to love with His divine love, to desire with His divine desire that none be lost, but that all men – Jew and Gentile – may be saved.   Only the utmost purity of heart, characterized by the highest theological virtue – charity – will keep us safe from the wrath to come. 

2. St. Basil also writes that verse 21 contains a lesson for our spiritual life:  The city of Jerusalem which betrayed the Lord is an image of the soul whose unbelief leads to the sin of fornication.  He says,  “One must note that unbelief is the mother of fornication.  For who that believes that God is everywhere and is present in everything that happens, attends to each action and observes the designs of our hearts, can admit a wicked thought or accomplish evil?   But people hasten to unholy actions when they assume either that God does not perceive them, or that He does not care about what happens.”  

Here St. Basil defines “unbelief” as assuming that God does not perceive our evil actions or that He does not care.   This kind of unbelief is practical atheism, which has the same outcome as theoretical atheism:  spiritual death.   Very few people are theoretical atheists; most people say that they believe in God after some fashion.  But because of our extreme worldliness, very few – sad to say, very few Orthodox Christians! – have a lively sense of God’s presence, the conviction of the mind and heart that He is watching our every action, hears our every word, and knows our every thought.  Great Lent provides us with the ideal opportunity to escape this deadly state of insensibility and return to a life of conscious repentance, characterized by the fear of God and careful watchfulness over ourselves.  We have so many instruments of repentance ready at hand:  fasting, prayer, spiritual reading, acts of mercy, the amazing compunctionate services of Great Lent and Holy Week, confession and Holy Communion.   Let us hasten to make good use of them before it is too late! 

3.   St. Basil also explains that this verse foretells that teachers of heresy will come, who will murder the souls of the faithful and tear them away from the New Sion – the New Testament Church – creating  false churches that have fallen away from the true Faith to become spiritual harlots : 

“Yet it is said sometime also about the Church (God forbid that this should be said about our Church!): How has the faithful city Sion become a harlot? when, rejecting the teaching of truth to which she was married from the very beginning according to the tradition of the Fathers who presented her a chaste virgin to one husband (II Cor. 11:2), she accepts the many and various seeds of doctrine from those who have defiled the sacredness of the sacraments and scatter abroad the tenets of impiety to the corruption of souls. It will then be justly said of her: How has the faithful city Sion become a harlot? For the holy angels, who are entrusted with the patronage of Churches, who have knowledge of the past and have the present in full view, will ask of them: How has the faithful city become a harlot?  And because of her fornication she has assembled murderers, murderers not of bodies but of souls, men who through deceit and guile deprive of life those who are more simple; these men inflict mortal wounds upon souls with the word, as if with some sword, for they have been honed to plausibility by means of the wisdom of the world”.  

The true Church, of course, will always exist in her original virginal purity of doctrine and action, but many local churches have fallen and are now falling into the state of spiritual adultery through accepting the plausible excuses of false teachers who teach not the wisdom of Christ, but rather teach the wisdom of this world.  Plausible deniability is the stock in trade of the current leaders of “official Orthodoxy” who fall again and again into spiritual whoredom through the apostasy of ecumenism, and yet always have a new plausible explanation ready to hand, as to why their manifest and unrepentant heresy does not deprive them – and thereby their clergy and laity – of the grace of the Holy Spirit.   

Let the reader beware.   

14 January OS: Leave-taking of Theophany 2025 – the Temptation of Christ

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At that time: Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. – Luke 4: 1-15

The Lord Jesus came and took our flesh to do for us, as one of us, what we could not do for ourselves, so that a Man could fix what Man had broken. God did not write man off and forget about him after the Fall, nor did He wave a magic wand and make everything all right. He neither abandoned us to our (deserved) fate nor did He give us a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. He came among us as one of us and said, “Alright, now roll up your sleeves and follow Me; we have work to do.” God’s righteous decree of death and hell upon sinful man could not be overturned without overturning the universe, indeed without denying Who God Is, for God is perfect Justice, and yet God’s will to save man was unchanged and unchangeable, for God is perfect Mercy. Therefore God Himself came and did for us what we could not do for ourselves.

He fulfilled that which we could not fulfill: the Law.

He endured that which we could not endure: the totality of all the sufferings caused by sin, when He took upon Himself the sins and sufferings of all the men that ever have lived and ever will live to the end of the world, suffering in His most pure soul at every moment of His earthly life, and then making a total Holocaust of Himself, body and soul, in His unspeakable and incomprehensible sufferings in the Sacrifice of the Cross.

He conquered that which we could not conquer – sin, death, the devil, and hell.

Thus both Justice and Mercy have been fulfilled in the one God-Man, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus fulfilled are the words of David in the psalm that we read every day at the Ninth Hour, three in the afternoon, the hour of the death of the Lord on that first Great Friday: “Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other (Psalm 84:10 LXX).”

In today’s Gospel we see the God-Man in a critical phase of His campaign on earth, the battle which the New Adam wins easily by absolutely rejecting Satan’s temptation to sin. Here the Lord reverses the foolish weakness of our First Parents, who listened to the serpent’s lies and thus fell into his clutches. There is not a single moment of hesitation here, not the trace of a nanosecond of thinking over the choice being offered. He does not give the tempter the time of day.

To follow Our Lord as His disciples, we have to do the same thing. The Holy Fathers teach us that temptation and the fall into sin occur in several stages. The first stage is called the “provocation” (prosvoli in Greek, prilog in Slavonic), the initial thought of a sin that occurs to us apart from our own will, either from the demons or the outside world or something involuntary within ourselves (memory, imagination, random thought processes, bodily sensations, etc.). At this point, there is no sin involved, only the temptation. This is the point at which we have to reject the thought absolutely – not give it the time of day. We have to say “No!” immediately and turn to prayer right away, asking God and our Guardian Angel and God’s saints to come to our aid. They will come, and come swiftly, if only we turn to them.

By the constant habit of rejecting sinful suggestions, we acquire firmness of mind and heart, and we can “go from strength to strength,” growing in the Holy Spirit into the spiritual stature the Lord desires for us. By doing the opposite, by playing with the temptations offered us, sometimes we fall and sometimes we do not. When we fall, we can get up and repent, but this is not Plan A. Plan A is to not think about sinning for one second. When we play games with this, we cloud our minds and weaken our wills, and life becomes one long and often depressing struggle, an exhausting trail of ups and downs. By God’s grace, we can escape the consequences of our oft-repeated foolishness, but this makes everything a lot tougher, bringing our ultimate victory into doubt by tempting us to lose hope in the Lord’s mercy.

The Fathers’ exhortation to reject the sinful thought immediately, without thinking about it for one second, is tied to their exhortation to pray always, and especially to say the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner.” If the sweetest Name of Jesus Christ is always on our lips and in our minds and hearts, we will hate sin and never compromise with it.

St. Theophan the Recluse (who fittingly reposed on the feast of Theophany), illustrates this surefire method with a fitting metaphor:

What do we do when attacked by some criminal? We strike out at him and shout for help. Our cries are answered by the police, who then rescue us from danger. We must do the same in inner warfare with the passions. Filled with anger against them, call for assistance: Help me, O Lord! Jesus Christ, Son of God, save me! O God, make speed to save me! O Lord, make haste to help me! Having thus called on the Lord, do not allow your attention to wander from Him, do not let it turn to what is happening within you, but go on standing before the Lord and imploring His help. This will make the enemy run away as though pursued by flames.

Without entering into altercation with passionate thoughts, let us turn directly to God, with fear, devotion, and trust, surrendering ourselves to His influence. By doing this we already push everything passionate away from our mind’s eye, and look only at the Lord. Because we pay no attention to it, the passionate thought is cut off from the soul: it withdraws of its own accord if it has been aroused by some natural cause. But if the enemy is also present in it, he is struck down by the ray of inner light which comes from contemplation of the Lord. Thus as soon as the soul turns to God and appeals to Him, it is freed from the onslaught of passions. – The Art of Prayer, p. 219

Let us begin each day with the Name of Jesus on our lips, in our minds, and in our hearts, and let us carry this Name with us throughout our waking moments, falling asleep with it on our lips. Though a created human name, the Name of Jesus acquired infinite divine power when all the energies of the divine nature were communicated to every attribute of Our Lord’s sacred humanity in the Incarnation. The Lord, Who has already destroyed Satan’s power over us, will give us every good and perfect spiritual gift, and we will become invincible against the foes that strive against us.

O Lord, Who was baptized for our sake, and Who endured temptation as a man for our sake, glory be to Thee!

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5 January OS – The Eve of Theophany

On the Saturday before Theophany, and again, today, at the Royal Hours on the eve of the Feast, we read these words from St. Matthew:

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. – Matthew 3:1-6

Repentance is at the heart of the Gospel. Everything begins with it, and ultimately, at the end of a man’s earthly life, everything in this world ends with it: our hope is precisely to die in repentance.   Our life is, or should be, one of constant repentance. What then is it, and how can we attain it? How can we live a life of repentance?

The Greek word we translate by “repentance” is metanoia, which we need to translate as both “change of mind” and “change of heart” to capture the full meaning, since what the word means is “change of the nous,” the nous being the spiritual intellect, whose entire reality we cannot grasp unless we think of it as the mind joined to the heart. It is the center of one’s personality and existence, the real me. St. Macarius the Great says that when someone is truly living in grace, the soul becomes “all nous” – in other words, everything about the person becomes spiritual, even in this life.   This is the state that is called theosis.

Even – especially – the greatest saints never stop repenting, even when they are in theosis. How can this be? What do they have to repent of?  They keep repenting because they keep on turning their minds to God, and they keep weeping over their sins and the sins of the whole world, right up to their last breath.

It is in the light of this reality, of what a saint is and how a saint lives, that we can understand what repentance is: the constant turning of the mind and heart back to God, away from the ego (the false self), away from love of this world, and away from demonic thoughts.    The mind, captivated by the divine beauty, desires to think of God always and of His holy commandments, by which one lives, using one’s will and energy to inject one’s love of God into one’s daily activities. The heart, desiring God and longing to be united to Him, unites with the mind in prayer and in action, and puts warmth and life into the actions of the mind and the will.

When we hear, “Say your prayers! Fast! Do spiritual reading! Go to Confession! Prepare for Holy Communion!” and the rest of the whole list of do’s and don’ts that the Church’s preachers and teachers never tire – or, at least, should never tire – of repeating to us, it will help us to recall that these activities are not external badges of being good little boys and girls, so that others will approve of us.   They are indispensable means to attaining the purpose of our entire existence. We have to decide between heaven and hell; we have to decide if we wish to attain our purpose and live forever with God in endless growth in love for Him and for all people and all creation, or if we wish for our minds and hearts to revolve now and for eternity around the idol of the ego, an existence which can be named best and simply by that indispensable and old-fashioned word – hell.

So, for example, when we get up in the morning and say our prayers rather than indulging our fallen nature, we are not merely checking off an item on a list (though checklists are an excellent thing); we are taking a step towards a blessed eternity.   We have turned the mind to God. We have repented.

What then, is repentance? It is the constant turning of the mind and heart to God, and living our lives according to His commandments. How do we do it? Do what the Church says. As they say, it’s not rocket science.

May the prayers of the Holy Forerunner and Baptist John be with us, as we prepare to celebrate the Baptism of the Lord! May this great Mystery renew in us the desire to live according to our baptism and be truly pleasing to God Who is Manifest for our sake.   May we live in repentance.

O Lord Jesus, Our Incarnate God, baptized for our sake, glory be to Thee! 

2 January OS – Forefeast of Theophany; St. Sylvester, Pope of Rome; St. Seraphim, Wonderworker of Sarov

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Today, the second of January, is the day of the repose of a great saint of recent times, Seraphim of Sarov, who passed over into the heavenly kingdom on this day in 1833. You can obtain a good short hagiography of St. Seraphim by Constantine Cavarnos – Volume V of his “Modern Orthodox Saints” series –  from The Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek studies – here: http://ibmgs.org/lives.html,  and a good short collection of his known sayings from St. Herman Press – Volume I of their “Little Russian Philokalia” series – here: https://www.sainthermanmonastery.com/product-p/lrp1.htm . The saint did not leave any of his own writings, as far as we know – what we have are recollections of his disciples, as is the case also, for example, with St. Cosmas Aitolos and St. Herman of Alaska .

In recent times, St. Seraphim has played a critical part in converting many non-Orthodox Christians to the Faith. His Conversation with Motovilov is a short summary of the entire spiritual life from the Orthodox point of view. It tells the potential convert, in a few thousand words, without saying so directly, why non-Orthodox Christians should leave Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and become Orthodox. For the pious cradle Orthodox, it might explain to you, in a few thousand words, “Yes, that is why I could never be anything but Orthodox, though I never thought about it in exactly this way.”

In this conversation with Nicholas Motovilov, St. Seraphim teaches that the goal of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, and at the end of the conversation, a visible epiphany of the saint’s attainment of this goal is granted to his disciple. Here is a portion of Motovilov’s description of what happened:

...Father Seraphim took me very firmly by the shoulders and said: “We are both in the Spirit of God now, my son. Why don’t you look at me?”

I replied: “I cannot look, Father, because your eyes are flashing like lightning. Your face has become brighter than the sun, and my eyes ache with pain.”

Father Seraphim said: “Don’t be alarmed, your Godliness! Now you yourself have become as bright as I am. You are now in the fullness of the Spirit of God yourself; otherwise you would not be able to see me as I am.”

Then, bending his head towards me, he whispered softly in my ear: “Thank the Lord God for His unutterable mercy to us! You saw that I did not even cross myself; and only in my heart I prayed mentally to the Lord God and said within myself: ‘Lord, grant him to see clearly with his bodily eyes that descent of Thy Spirit which Thou grantest to Thy servants when Thou art pleased to appear in the light of Thy magnificent glory.’ And you see, my son, the Lord instantly fulfilled the humble prayer of poor Seraphim. How then shall we not thank Him for this unspeakable gift to us both? Even to the greatest hermits, my son, the Lord God does not always show His mercy in this way. This grace of God, like a loving mother, has been pleased to comfort your contrite heart at the intercession of the Mother of God herself. But why, my son, do you not look me in the eyes? Just look, and don’t be afraid! The Lord is with us!”

After these words I glanced at his face and there came over me an even greater reverent awe. Imagine in the center of the sun, in the dazzling light of its midday rays, the face of a man talking to you. You see the movement of his lips and the changing expression of his eyes, you hear his voice, you feel someone holding your shoulders; yet you do not see his hands, you do not even see yourself or his figure, but only a blinding light spreading far around for several yards and illumining with its glaring sheen both the snow-blanket which covered the forest glade and the snow-flakes which besprinkled me and the great Elder. You can imagine the state I was in!

“How do you feel now?” Father Seraphim asked me.

“Extraordinarily well,” I said.

“But in what way? How exactly do you feel well?”

I answered: “I feel such calmness and peace in my soul that no words can express it.”

You can read the entire conversation with Motovilov in Volume I of “The Little Russian Philokalia.”   It is also available online at orthodoxinfo.com –  http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/wonderful.aspx

Of course, the light that Motovilov saw is the light of Mt. Tabor, the light of the Transfiguration. It is the uncreated light of God. What sets authentic, Orthodox, spiritual experience apart from false spiritual experience is precisely the reality that it is spiritual, properly speaking, that is, that it takes place in the realm of the spirit; it is above and other than a purely psychosomatic experience; it is from above, a gift of grace, and grace is the uncreated energy of God. This authentic spiritual experience occurs when, by the free gift of God, the spiritual intellect, the nous, is joined to the heart – that is, when un-deluded logos, thought, is united to a pure will and pure feeling – and a man becomes, in the words of St. Macarius the Great, “all spirit.”

Extraordinary psychic experiences, which take place in the realm of the fallen intellect, imagination, and emotions – even, or especially, those that take place in out-of-body experiences – are not spiritual, and they are dangerous, because they take place on the level of the fallen human nature and the fallen creation, which is under the rule of the prince of this world, the devil. Just as the Son of God came into this world once to break the devil’s chains from us and lift us up to heaven, so the Spirit of God comes today, at every day and every hour, to lift up above this world our baptized human organism, which by baptism now partakes of Christ’s death and resurrection, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit partakes of authentic holiness.

For this to happen, however, a man must confess the right faith and receive baptism. St. Seraphim explains it like this:

“And whoever lives and believes in Me shall not die for ever (Jn. 11:26).” He who has the grace of the Holy Spirit in reward for right faith in Christ, even if on account of human frailty his soul were to die from some sin or other, yet he will not die for ever, but he will be raised by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ Who takes away the sin of the world (Jn. 1:29) and freely gives grace upon grace. Of this grace, which was manifested to the whole world and to our human race by the God-Man, it is said in the Gospel: In Him was life, and the life was the light of men (Jn. 1:4); and further: And the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness did not overpower it (Jn. 1:5). This means that the grace of the Holy Spirit which is granted at Baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in spite of men’s falls into sin, in spite of the darkness surrounding our soul, nevertheless shines in the heart with the divine light (which has existed from time immemorial) of the inestimable merits of Christ. In the event of a sinner’s impenitence this light of Christ cries to the Father: ‘Abba, Father! Be not angry with this impenitence to the end (of his life)’. And then, at the sinner’s conversion to the way of repentance, it effaces completely all trace of past sin and clothes the former sinner once more in a robe of incorruption woven from the grace of the Holy Spirit, concerning the acquisition of which, as the aim of the Christian life, I have been speaking so long to your Godliness.

In another place in the same conversation, the saint says that this gift of being in the Spirit of God is available both to the monk and to the non-monastic, provided both are Orthodox. 

Let us, then take great consolation and hope from the words of our great saint of recent times! Though we sin a thousand times a day, yet we are Orthodox Christians, and we belong to Christ, Who has already bestowed upon us through baptism the indwelling grace of the Holy Spirit, which pleads for us even when we are in sin, which cries for us, “Abba, Father!” In one moment, the thief won Paradise. In one moment, like Nicholas Motovilov, we can be in the Spirit, by the merits of Christ and through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, St. Seraphim, and all the saints. It is the free gift of grace, ours for the asking. Let us cry out to the Lord day and night, in gratitude for the gift we have already received and with earnest desire for its increase within us.

Holy Father Seraphim, pray to God for us!