Orthodox Truth

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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!

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/theophanyeve

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!

1 January OS – The Circumcision of Our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ; St. Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesaria in Cappadocia

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Though the liturgical New Year is on September 1st, the civil New Year for centuries has been on January 1st.   Today is the civil New Year according to the Orthodox calendar, and on this occasion St. Theophan the Recluse reflects on how we should begin another year of service to the Lord:

Since New Year’s Day is the beginning of the days of the year, we ought to gather in our soul those thoughts, feelings, and dispositions that would direct our affairs throughout the year in a Christian way. We will find these the moment we bring to mind the meaning of New Year’s Day in the spiritual life. In the spiritual life, New Year’s Day is when one who has been living carelessly becomes zealous about salvation and pleasing God. When one makes this resolution, then all is rebuilt afresh both internally and externally, upon new beginnings – the old passes away and all is new. If you have this, renew it; if not acquire it – and for you this will be a New Year’s Day.

 A worthy celebration of the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord and of the commemoration of St. Basil the Great is also connected with this. The essence of the change we have mentioned is that a person begins from this moment to live solely for his salvation, for God; whereas previously he lived exclusively for himself, preparing destruction for himself. Now he abandons former habits, all comforts, and all in which he found pleasure. He cuts off passions and lustful dispositions and takes on works of strict self-denial. Such a change precisely represents that which, according to the Apostle, the circumcision of the heart should be. The celebration of the Circumcision of the Lord reminds us of this and obligates us to do it, while St. Basil the Great provides us with an example to follow. So all the themes which crowd our consciousness on New Year’s Day come together into one – our inner renewal through the circumcision of the heart. If it pleases the Lord to give someone this mind-set on New Year’s Day – that is, not only to think in such a way, but also to bring all of this into his life – he will celebrate New Year’s Day in a most perfect Christian manner, and will prepare for a Christian passage of the whole year. On the subsequent New Year’s Day he will have only to renew and enliven what he has now taken on. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 25-26

The saint sums up the theme of today in one expression: “circumcision of the heart.” In today’s reading from the Apostolos for the Feast of the Circumcision, St. Paul speaks of this:

Brethren: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. – Colossians 2: 8-12

 In the fleshly circumcision He received on the eighth day of His birth, Our Lord fulfilled the Old Covenant and made way for the New: not a circumcision according to the flesh, but of the heart, of the spirit.   This had always been the real meaning of circumcision anyway, even in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people of the Old Israel,  “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked (Deut. 10:16).” And again, “… the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live (Deut. 30:6).” Later, the Holy Prophet Jeremias warns the people of Judea and Jerusalem, “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doing (Jeremiah 4:4).” In other words, mere physical circumcision was never sufficient to make a man the Lord’s true servant. Throughout the Old Testament, we see the Lord commanding, begging, persuading: “Serve Me with all your heart.”

In Acts 15, we read how the Holy Spirit inspired the first council ever held in the Church, the council of the Holy Apostles in Jerusalem, to abrogate the obligation of physical circumcision for the Gentile converts to the Faith.   The Church had a new and far greater initiation into the life of grace: Holy Baptism, which was not for men only but for women as well. But the image and true meaning of the old circumcision still remain: We must cut away our fleshly passions, which enslave us and prevent spiritual life, and we must be totally dedicated to God in body and in soul.   The baptismal grace is always there, but it does not energize in us unless we cooperate. Thus in his meditations for today, St. Theophan exhorts us to examine our lives and to re-dedicate ourselves to doing the Lord’s holy will with all our hearts.

On this day also the Lord received His name, the name above every name, the Name of JESUS, which the archangel had foretold to the Holy Virgin and commanded to be given to the Child by St. Joseph at His circumcision.   We can regard this day, then, also as the day on which the Lord Jesus gives us His name as an invincible weapon against the enemies who fight against us, and re-dedicate ourselves to the Prayer of Jesus.   This is an essential weapon in our struggle to acquire the true circumcision of the heart.

On this day also the Lord Jesus shed His Precious Blood for the first time, foreshadowing His divine Passion for our salvation.   One drop of this Blood is more precious than the whole universe, and yet He did not hesitate to mount the Cross and shed all of His Blood for us. How can we not desire to return such love with all our hearts?

This profound Feast of the Lord coincides by God’s Providence with the day on which St. Basil the Great departed this earthly life at the age of 49, having been a baptized Christian for less than 20 years and a bishop for less than ten.   In those few years, he fought ceaselessly for the Orthodox Faith against the Arians, Eunomians and other heretics, struggled constantly for the unity of the Church in the East, established monasteries and hospices for the poor, rooted out corruption in the clergy, ordained many worthy bishops and priests, wrote commentaries on Holy Scripture and composed divine services, and, in short, became the perfect model of the bishop, combining the life of intense prayer and extreme fasting with ceaseless activity for the salvation of souls. And throughout this time, he was almost constantly ill: at one point, according to one of his letters, he had a fever continuously for 50 days.   By the age of 45, he had lost all of his teeth. At age 49, utterly worn out by a life of total self-denial, he reposed in the Lord.

As he was dying, did he see “success” crowning his life? By no means.   Many heresies and schisms were still tearing the Eastern Church apart: reposing in 379, he did not live to see the triumph of the Orthodox Faith with the accession of the Emperor Theodosius the Great and the Second Ecumenical Council in 381.   But what was important to him was that he reposed in the grace of Christ, in repentance, in the secure knowledge that he had done everything possible, with all his strength and every last breath, to do God’s holy will. What more could any of us ask for?  

By the prayers of Great Basil, let us love the Lord with all our hearts and do His holy will. He will take care of the rest.

A blessed New Year to everyone!  

Friday of the Fourteenth Week of Luke

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In today’s reading from the Holy Gospel, the Lord teaches the disciples that only grace can overcome our passions and sins: 

The Lord said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible. Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.  And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid. –  Mark 10: 23-32

St. Theophan the Recluse reminds us that Our Lord’s solution for the problem of avarice is the solution to all of our problems: the influence of grace on the heart.   

Hearing the word of the Lord about the difficulty that the rich have in entering the Kingdom of God, the disciples thought, “Who then can be saved?”  In reply, the Lord said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.”  It impossible to renounce avarice without the influence of grace on the heart; it is impossible to cope with all the other predilections, with all the sin living in us and all of its fruits without God’s grace. God’s grace is given, according to faith in the Lord, in the Mysteries of the Holy Church. Hold tightly to the Holy Church of God and to all of its institutions, and the power of God, which helps to bring about every good, will always abide with you. But at the same time, always remember that these illuminating and life-giving institutions are a means and not the goal; that is why you should go through them only in order, through their influence, to enliven and nourish the grace-filled powers hidden in you, and then take up your work as a strong man, ready for every good deed. If you keep what you have received to yourself and not give it an outlet through good deeds, you will not be right; just like one is not right who shuns everything belonging to the Church. Incorrect zealots of piety make the very structure of a pious life subject to criticism; but this does not take the significance away from this structure, and does not justify philosophizers, who shun it only on these grounds. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 287 – 288 

As we approach the Great Feasts of the Nativity and Theophany, by which the Church glorifies the Incarnation of God the Word for our salvation, it is fitting to remember that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ in the world and the unfailing source of the grace that alone overcomes our passions and sins.  We must cling to Her with all our hearts if we wish to be saved.  

The main point St. Theophan is making in the passage we have quoted is that though the institutions of the Church are necessaryfor our salvation, which is why the saints have guarded them so fiercely in every generation, they are not an end in themselves.   When we make them an end in themselves, we imitate three parties within the Jewish nation of Our Lord’s time: we become either Sadducees, Pharisees, or political Zealots (like the Jews who revolted against the Romans):  Sadducees worship the power structure (papism), Pharisees worship the outward manifestations of piety in individuals (elderism), and political Zealots identify the Church’s interests completely with those of this or that national cause or political structure (ethno-idolatry).    There are fierce partisans in all three of these camps today, and they do, indeed, give piety a bad name;  they provide a handle for the self-righteous hypocrites of anti-Christianity to denounce the Church Herself.  All three groups start out with a fundamentally sound insight:   The papists (i.e., the patrarichate-or-jurisdiction worshippers) start out with the correct insight that the Church is indeed a visible institution with a God-established authority structure that normally should be revered and obeyed; the elder-worshippers start out with the correct insight that the holiness of the saints is a guarantee of their trustworthiness;  the ethno-idolaters start out with the correct insight that God is not a globalist – He purposely divided man into distinct races and nations, and it is a sin to eradicate these distinctions by indiscriminately mixing with strangers and prioritizing the stranger over one’s own.  But all three groups go off the rails by what Richard Weaver so aptly labeled “fragmentation and obsession”:  Each takes his particular insight as The One Thing Needed, obsesses on this fragment of reality,  and makes an ideology out of it.   Some truly confused people manifest all three delusions at the same time.  

The One Thing actually Needed is, of course, revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself in His instruction to Martha in the Gospel we read at the feasts of the Most Pure Mother of God:  “…Mary hath chosen that good part, and it shall not be taken away from her.”  The purpose of all of God’s economy, and therefore the purpose of all the Church’s divinely established structures, activities, and attributes, is the salvation of the soul enacted through the acquisition of purity of heart, enabled by grace.   When all is directed towards this, all goes well – not well, perhaps, in earthly terms, but well for eternity.  

In another place, St. Theophan links the reception of the Holy Mysteries directly to acquisition of prayer of the mind in the heart, which is the direct path to salvation:  

…This prayer is formed in the heart by the grace of the Holy Spirit.  He who turns to God and is sanctified by the sacraments, immediately receives feeling toward God within himself, which from this moment begins to lay the foundation in his heart for the ascent on high.  Provided he does not stifle it by something unworthy, this feeling will be kindled into flame, by time, perseverance, and labor…Because all [who receive the Holy Mysteries] have grace, only one thing is necessary: to give this grace free scope to act.  Grace receives free scope in so far as the ego is crushed and the passions uprooted.  The more our heart is purified the more lively becomes our feeling towards God.  And when the heart is fully purified, then this feeling of warmth towards God takes fire…Grace builds up everything, because grace is always present in the faithful.  Those who commit themselves irrevocably to grace, will pass under its guidance, and it shapes and forms them in a way known only to itself.  – quoted in The Art of Prayer, pp. 59 – 60.  

The institutional means of grace, therefore – the true doctrine and true way of life taught by the true Church,  and the true Holy Mysteries administered by the hierarchy of the true Church – exist to bring about the union of mind and heart in the soul, leading ultimately to a life totally under grace characterized by absolute purity of heart.   All of the titanic struggles against heresy and schism of all ages ultimately were – and are – fought to preserve the outward means to achieve this inward result.    If we always keep this in mind, and abide in humility, the Lord will grant us the graces of discernment and perseverance, in order that we may avoid the shipwreck of the soul and abide in the Ark of salvation.