Orthodox Truth

II Lent Wednesday – Proverbs 5:15 – 6:3

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[My son,] 15 Drink waters out of thine own vessels, and out of thine own springing wells. 16 Let not waters out of thy fountain be spilt by thee, but let thy waters go into thy streets. 17 Let them be only thine own, and let no stranger partake with thee. 18 Let thy fountain of water be truly thine own; and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. 19 Let thy loving doe and thy graceful foal company with thee, and let her be considered thine own, and be with thee at all times; for ravished with her love thou shalt be greatly increased. 20 Be not intimate with a strange woman, neither fold thyself in the arms of a woman not thine own. 21 For the ways of a man are before the eyes of God, and he looks on all his paths. 22 Iniquities ensnare a man, and every one is bound in the chains of his own sins. 23 Such a man dies with the uninstructed; and he is cast forth from the abundance of his own substance, and has perished through folly. 6:1 My son, if thou become surety for thy friend, thou shalt deliver thine hand to an enemy. 2 For a man’s own lips become a strong snare to him, and he is caught with the lips of his own mouth. 3 My son, do what I command thee, and deliver thyself; for on thy friend’s account thou art come into the power of evil men: faint not, but stir up even thy friend for whom thou art become surety. 

St. John Chrysostom, following the favored method of the Antiochene school of Scripture interpretation, derives a practical moral lesson from verses fifteen through twenty.  They speak about marriage: they exhort the man to be happy with his wife and to be faithful to her.  

Here is what he says about verse 15: 

“Drink water from your own pitchers,” where there is enjoyment and security.  It is a proverb, and would be better expressed, “Enjoy your own wife”; as Paul put it, “Do not deprive one another, except by mutual consent,” and again, “…to avoid fornication, let each man have his own wife (I Corinthians, chapter seven). 

The saint is talking straight here, as did St. Paul:  One fundamental reason to get married is to avoid fornication.  St. Paul recognizes that women, too, have this temptation, which is why the entire verse finishes with the words, “…and let every woman have her own husband.”  

St. John Chrysostom, however, does not see marriage in purely negative terms, only as a way to avoid sin.  He takes for granted that there is enjoyment in marriage, and he says that this enjoyment is pure:  

“Let they loving doe and thy graceful foal company with thee…” Note how he urges him to form close ties with his partner, showing the purity of the enjoyment by mention of the animal, and by mention of the foal presenting his wife as skittish and desirable.  

But of course there will be many temptations to separate, and so the sacred author of Proverbs immediately adds, “…and let her be considered thine own, and be with thee at all times; for ravished with her love thou shalt be greatly increased.”   Chrysostom comments, 

…And since he knows there are many causes of friction between them, he proceeds to mention the bond of love between them as secure and unbreakable, visualizing it as indestructible.  

Marriage, then, is a strong protection against leading an immoral life, its natural enjoyments are considered pure, and divine law decrees it to be permanent.  

“Well, what about us?” The lifelong celibates and monastics may be asking at this point.   “Do these verses have nothing to say to us, too?”  Well, they do have something to say to you, according to various other Holy Fathers, who interpret the verses in a more figurative way.   St. Ambrose of Milan, for example, says that the image of “thine own vessels” and “thine own springing wells” in verse fifteen refers to the pursuit of the spiritual life within one’s own soul.  In other words, do not look for happiness outside of oneself, but within oneself:  

Bear fruit for your own joy and delight. In yourself lies the sweetness of your charm, from you does it blossom, in you it sojourns, within you it rests, in your own self you must search for the jubilant quality of your conscience.  For that reason he [Solomon] says, “Drink water out of your own cistern and the streams of your own well.”  – from the Six Days of Creation of St. Ambrose

St. Cyril of Jerusalem says that the cisterns and wells of Christians are the Holy Scriptures.  In other words, do not run after secular wisdom, but seek your happiness in God’s wisdom: 

Let us return to the sacred Scriptures and “drink water from our own cisterns and running water from our own wells.”  Let us drink of the living water, “springing up unto life everlasting.” …not visible rivers merely watering the earth with its thorns and trees, but enlightening souls. – from the Catechetical Lectures 

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, O Christ Thou Wisdom of God, enlighten us always and give us delight in the inexhaustible delights of Thy love, revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Amen. 

II Lent Tuesday – Proverbs 5: 1-15

1 My son, attend to my wisdom, and apply thine ear to my words; 2 that thou mayest keep good understanding, and the discretion of my lips gives thee a charge. Give no heed to a worthless woman; 3 for honey drops from the lips of a harlot, who for a season pleases thy palate: 4 but afterwards thou wilt find her more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword. 5 For the feet of folly lead those who deal with her down to the grave with death; and her steps are not established. 6 For she goes not upon the paths of life; but her ways are slippery, and not easily known. 7 Now then, my son, hear me, and make not my words of none effect. 8 Remove thy way far from her; draw not near to the doors of her house: 9 lest thou give away thy life to others, and thy substance to the merciless: 10 lest strangers be filled with thy strength, and thy labours come into the houses of strangers; 11 And thou repent at last, when the flesh of thy body is consumed, 12 and thou shalt say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart avoided reproofs! 13 I heard not the voice of him that instructed me, and taught me, neither did I apply mine ear. 14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. 15 Drink waters out of thine own vessels, and out of thine own springing wells. 

Today’s and tomorrow’s readings contrast the life of sexual promiscuity with the life of faithful marriage. Today the loving father warns his son against betraying his wife and destroying himself by wasting his substance upon harlots, and, beginning with the last verse of today’s reading and continuing tomorrow, he will extol the joys of married love.  Of course, we can apply his admonitions in the other direction too, warning our daughters against the allurements of immoral men.  

St. John Chrysostom contrasts the honeyed speech of the harlot, which conceals destruction, with the plain and hard commands of God, which grant life, and he warns, “Don’t even give this kind of temptation a thought – once you get trapped, you may well not escape!”   Here is what he says:   

“Give no heed to a worthless woman; for honey drops from the lips of an adulterous woman…sparing her no thought or no glance; they trust not only in their bodily charms, but much more in their speech. Security lies particularly in not being ensnared from the outset; it is difficult for anyone who is ensnared to escape…She normally hides what is deadly and proffers what is attractive so as to ensnare him.  God, by contrast, is not like that: far from it…He conceals what is pleasant and proposes what is laborious.”  

God is so strict about our use of the sexual function because its misuse destroys everything that makes life worthwhile.   On the one hand, the procreative power is Godlike – it gives us the ability to bring forth life itself and is therefore among God’s greatest gifts.  On the other hand, it is so easy to fall into a sinful use of it, and it is so pleasurable – at least at first – that it ensnares countless souls in a straitjacket cycle of all-consuming destructive behavior. One of the Optina Elders says that at the tollhouses the demon of fornication will triumph over all the rest, as having destroyed the most people and brought them down to hell.   

I have not actually counted them, but it seems to me that after the canons relating to Church administration and the behavior of the clergy, the canons relating to sins of the flesh are the most numerous in Church law.  The proponents of the sexual revolution say that sexuality is messed up because the Church made so many rules about it.  The reality is that the Church made so many rules about it because sexuality was already messed up.   

I am not, in general, for burning books, but I think that I might vote for burning 99% of the books about this topic that have been written in the past 100 years, including the well-meaning “Christian” books.   The truth of the matter is that we talk too much about it, due to the constant bombardment of both the openly evil and the purportedly wholesome discussion about it.  The only solution to the sexual revolution is a counter-revolution in which we return to strictly traditional mores, one of which is that this topic is something rarely spoken of even in private, and spoken of in public only to adults, simply and shortly, without too much analysis, and with a view to traditional moral admonition. And when spoken of, it must be dealt with in plain words, cheerfully but forcefully, and then put aside.  Children should not even know this particular human activity exists until it is time for their bodies to change, at which point their parents will teach them the truth about it. Within a few years after that, they need to become monks or get married, and stay in the schema or stay married to the same person till they die.  That’s about it.  The current approach is not working, and the old approach did.  If we do not make this radical change in our approach to life, all the counseling and analysis and the rest of the blah-blah about sex, even from “Christian” writers and counselors, will not do us any good. By now experience should have proved this to us. 

Young parents, attend to this wisdom, put behind you whatever mistakes you made – forget about them! – and rear up your children in the way which they should go!   Happiness awaits. 

II Lent Monday – Proverbs 3:34 – 4:22

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The Lord resists the proud; but he gives grace to the humble. 35 The wise shall inherit glory; but the ungodly have exalted their own dishonour.  4:1 Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. 2 For I give you a good gift; forsake ye not my law. 3 For I also was a son obedient to my father, and loved in the sight of my mother: 4 who spoke and instructed me, saying, Let our speech be fixed in thine heart, keep our commandments, forget them not: 5 and do not neglect the speech of my mouth. 6 And forsake her not, and she shall cleave to thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. 7 In all that you acquire, acquire her.  8 Secure her, and she shall exalt thee: honour her, that she may embrace thee; 9 that she may give unto thy head a crown of graces, and may cover thee with a crown of delight. 10 Hear, my son, and receive my words; and the years of thy life shall be increased, that the resources of thy life may be many. 11 For I teach thee the ways of wisdom; and I cause thee to go in right paths. 12 For when thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not be distressed. 13 Take hold of my instruction; let it not go, —but keep it for thyself for thy life. 14 Go not in the ways of the ungodly, neither covet the ways of transgressors. 15 In whatever place they shall pitch their camp, go not thither; but turn from them, and pass away. 16 For they cannot sleep, unless they have done evil: their sleep is taken away, and they rest not. 17 For these live upon the bread of ungodliness, and are drunken with wine of transgression. 18 But the ways of the righteous shine like light; they go on and shine, until the day be fully come. 19 But the ways of the ungodly are dark; they know not how they stumble. 20 My son, attend to my speech; and apply thine ear to my words: 21 that thy fountains may not fail thee; keep them in thine heart. 22 For they are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh. 

Verse seven, “In all that you acquire, acquire her [that is, wisdom]”, is missing from most manuscripts of the Septuagint.   St. John Chrysostom, however, must have been familiar with a version of the Greek Old Testament that preserved this verse, because he expounds its meaning in his commentary.  Here is what he says:  

“In all that you acquire, acquire her.” What is the meaning of In all:  in gold and silver? In a house? And how is wisdom to be acquired in these things?  They can be acquired along with her.  Do you want to be rich?  Be rich along with her.  Do you want to be married?  Be married along with her.  Do you want to build a house? Build it along with her.  This is what Paul also says, “Whether you eat or do anything else, do all for the glory of God (I Corinthians 10:31).” Do nothing without fear of God.  

Unless we receive the grace of the monastic vocation, we must live our Christian faith in the world, and that means that a young man, in particular, is morally obligated to cultivate godly ambitions for various temporal achievements in order to do his duty to God and neighbor:  a good education, the acquisition of useful skills for supporting a family, the acquisition of a suitable wife and the begetting of children, the acquisition of property, the habit of correct speech, clothing himself in a way suitable to his station in society, eschewing the adolescent mind and acquiring adult tastes in hobbies, the arts and music, and so forth.  The Christian, however, does not pursue these goals for the sake of gratifying his ego, but for the service of God and neighbor, and all that he does, he does with the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom.   The Book of Needs (Euchologion, Trebnik) is replete with prayers for the blessing of the most mundane objects and activities.   This is one thing that separates Orthodox Christianity from Gnosticism:   Our faith involves doing, not just thinking.   We are to transform and adorn God’s creation through activity and industry, and offer it back to God.   Our Lord Himself teaches us this in His Parable of the Talents. 

Those who translate the Prayer of St. Ephraim into English mislead the unwary worshipper when they render the Greek philarchia (lyubonachalie in Slavonic) as “ambition.”  The original does not mean “ambition” in a general sense, but only in the specific sense of “ambition for power over others.”  It literally means “love of rule,”  “love of being in charge” – in other words, being power hungry, wanting to lord it over other people in order to gratify the ego. This, obviously, is a sin, but there are many godly ambitions that are not sins.   Preachers and writers do the faithful a disservice when they preach an effeminate Christianity that discourages ambition in general, for without ambition, we become passive vegetables, zombies, drones – we live on an infantile level, mere consumers of what others have worked to provide.  Such a life is not worth living.  It means disgrace in this world and damnation in the next.  

To understand this better, let us recall that there are three powers of the soul:  the logos, the thinking power;  thymos,  the incensive power – that is, drive, ambition, our “get up and go”; and epithymia – the desiring power.    In respect to the cardinal virtues, God expects us to cultivate all three powers in their appropriate directions.  He expects us to use our minds for the exercise of prudence;  He expects us to bend our ambitionto the exercise of courage; and He expects us to train our desires in the exercise of temperance.    When we exercise all three properly and thereby acquire prudence, courage, and temperance, we arrive at justice, which is the state of being in right relationship to God, man, creation, and ourselves. 

Ambition, then, is related to courage, and courage, ultimately, to the theological virtue of Hope.  Today we see a lot of hopeless young people, most of whom do not even know that they are hopeless, because they do not know what to hope for or that they should hope for anything.  Their thymos has been either destroyed or misdirected by the consumer culture, by the sexual revolution, by various addictions, and by economic oppression.   A critical mass of Christian young men – including Orthodox Christian young men – in particular, have become satisfied to be consumers and not producers.  They are content to be drones. This is disastrous, of course, because in God’s plan for society, faithful men must be the leaders, lest malicious men and denatured women fill the vacuum of power.  Faithful men must be the guardians, lest the women and children become prey to evildoers.   Faithful men must be the providers, lest their women be forced into the man’s world of aggression and competition, where they become hardened and  lose that particular gift that women have from God, to give sweetness, nurture, and comfort to their men and to their children, to create Paradise in the home. 

Young Orthodox married people who are starting your families:  You are the men and women of the hour.  This is your moment.  You have an historic opportunity to reverse all this degeneracy by training your boys to be real men and your girls to be real women.  Each sex has its own peculiar vocation, its peculiar set of worthy ambitions in which to exercise its thymos.  When properly and joyfully taught, boys and girls exult to run the appropriate race set before them.  They acquire courage and hope, and they know that life is good. 

O Lord and Master of my life, give me Thy servant that good ambition to exercise my incensive power as Thou willest, to acquire courage to run the race of this life, and to receive the grace of hope in the life to come.  Amen.  

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I Lent Friday – Proverbs 3: 19-34

19 God by wisdom founded the earth, and by prudence he prepared the heavens. 20 By understanding were the depths broken up, and the clouds dropped water. 21 My son, let them not pass from thee, but keep my counsel and understanding: 22 that thy soul may live, and that there may be grace round thy neck; and it shall be health to thy flesh, and safety to thy bones: 23 that thou mayest go confidently in peace in all thy ways, and that thy foot may not stumble. 24 For if thou rest, thou shalt be undismayed; and if thou sleep, thou shalt slumber sweetly. 25 And thou shalt not be afraid of alarm coming upon thee, neither of approaching attacks of ungodly men. 26 For the Lord shall be over all thy ways, and shall establish thy foot that thou be not moved. 27 Forbear not to do good to the poor, whensoever thy hand may have power to help him. 28 Say not, Come back another time, to-morrow I will give; while thou art able to do him good: for thou knowest not what the next day will bring forth. 29 Devise not evil against thy friend, living near thee and trusting in thee. 30 Be not ready to quarrel with a man without a cause, lest he do thee some harm. 31 Procure not the reproaches of bad men, neither do thou covet their ways. 32 For every transgressor is unclean before the Lord; neither does he sit among the righteous. 33 The curse of God is in the houses of the ungodly; but the habitations of the just are blessed. 34 The Lord resists the proud; but he gives grace to the humble. 

Congratulations, we have arrived at the final weekday of Clean Week.   Let’s take a break from St. John Chrysostom today and learn from two Latin Fathers, St. Ambrose and St. Jerome. Since today is a bookend, so to speak, for the week, we’ll talk about the two bookend verses in today’s passage, nineteen and thirty four.  The former teaches a theological truth, and the latter gives us a moral instruction. 

“God by wisdom founded the earth…” St. Ambrose of Milan, upholding the Nicene confession of the homoousios, the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, states that this verse means that God the Father created the universe along with the Son.  The saint begins by referring to Hebrews 1:10, in which St. Paul calls the Son “Lord” and the creator of the earth and the heavens: 

Paul declares that it was said of the Son, “And Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands.”   Whether, therefore, the Son made the heavens, as also the apostle would have it understood, while He Himself certainly did not alone spread out the heavens without the Father; or as it stands in the book of Proverbs, “God by wisdom founded the earth, and by prudence He prepared the heavens,” it is proved that neither the Father made the heavens alone without the Son, nor yet the Son without the Father. (On the Christian Faith).  

We see here again the universal teaching of the Scriptures and the Fathers that the Wisdom of God is the Son, one of the Holy Trinity.   When we are united to Christ, the more we acquire the mind of Christ, the more we understand not only Who God is, but the meaning of everything.   This is why we are able to chant in the dismissal hymn of St. Basil the Great, that “…thou hast made manifest the nature of created things…”  Both St. Basil and St. Ambrose wrote a Hexameron, a commentary on the Six Days of Creation in Genesis.  Because they had acquired the mind of Christ, because they were so closely united in spirit to the Logos and Sophia of God, they were able to teach accurately about that which the Father created according to His Logos by the power of the Holy Spirit.    There is no true knowledge, no true science, regarding the created universe, apart from the knowledge of God.   Atheist science is a contradiction in terms. If someone tells you, “Follow the science” just reply:  “I do.  I follow Christ.”  

Verse thirty four is, or should be, well known to all of us:  “The Lord resists the proud; but He gives grace to the humble.”    St. Jerome, who often openly confessed his own struggles with  his intellectual pride, says the following:  

Candidly, I say, to you, God hates all sin without exception:  lying, perjury, theft, robbery, adultery, fornication; and if anyone should be caught in any of these acts, he would not be able to raise his eyes, and we would look upon him as one accursed.  Yet, the proud man commits a far worse sin than adultery, and still we continue to converse with him.  The fornicator may say, “My flesh overcame me; youth was too much for me.”  I am not advocating that you yield to such a sin, for God hates that as well as any other; but, in comparing evils, I maintain that whatever other wrong a many may commit, theft, for example, he can always find an excuse for it.  What excuse does he give?  “I committed the theft because I was in need, I was dying from hunger, I was sick.”  What can the proud man say?  Realize how evil pride is from the very fact that there is no excuse for it…I am saying all this lest you consider pride a trifling sin.  What, in fact, does the Apostle say?  “…lest [being lifted up with pride] he fall into the condemnation of the devil (I Timothy 3:6).”  The one who is puffed up with his own importance falls into the judgment of the devil. (Homily on Obedience). 

The only sin for which there is no excuse, and we all have it!  That is awful.  Pride, simply put, is the irrational conviction of the heart that I am the source of my own existence – I am, in short, God.    This is the sin of Lucifer, which is why it incurs the condemnation of the devil.   Every human being is born with this, because we get it from our First Parents.   Pride entered their hearts when they accepted the lie of the devil, and we are all born with this heart damage, for this damage is inherently a part of our psychosomatic inheritance from Adam and Eve.  There is no denying this primordial doom of our fallen existence.  Faith and baptism free us from it, and a life of repentance maintains this freedom.  When we are not repenting, we fall back into it.  So we had better keep on repenting, or we will incur the condemnation of the devil.  

The best advice I have seen for fighting pride is given by the author of Unseen Warfare in chapter two, which is entitled “One should never believe in oneself or trust oneself in anything.”  The author offers a lifesaving insight, which is that not only are we proud, but we don’t understand how proud we are; we don’t see it.   So we have to ask to see it first, before we can even ask to get rid of it:  

…if you wish to receive [the consciousness of your human weakness], you must first implant in yourself the conviction that not only have you no such consciousness of yourself, but that you cannot acquire it by your own efforts; then standing daringly before Almighty God, in the firm belief that in His great loving kindness He will grant you this knowledge of yourself when and how He Himself knows, do not let the slightest doubt creep in that you will actually receive it. 

So let us celebrate the end of the First Week of Great Lent by begging God, confidently, to grant us this great grace, the grace of humility, for “The Lord resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.” Amen. 

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I Lent Thursday – Proverbs 3: 1-18

1 My son, forget not my laws; but let thine heart keep my words: 2 for length of existence, and years of life, and peace, shall they add to thee. 3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; but bind them about thy neck: 4 so shalt thou find favour: and do thou provide things honest in the sight of the Lord, and of men. 5 Trust in God with all thine heart; and be not exalted in thine own wisdom. 6 In all thy ways acquaint thyself with her, that she may rightly direct thy paths. 7 Be not wise in thine own conceit; but fear God, and depart from all evil. 8 Then shall there be health to thy body, and good keeping to thy bones.  9 Honour the Lord with thy just labours, and give him the first of thy fruits of righteousness: 10 that thy storehouses may be completely filled with corn, and that thy presses may burst forth with wine. 11 My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 12 for whom the Lord loves, he rebukes, and scourges every son whom he receives. 13 Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who knows prudence. 14 For it is better to traffic for her, than for treasures of gold and silver. 15 And she is more valuable than precious stones: no evil thing shall resist her: she is well known to all that approach her, and no precious thing is equal to her in value. 16 For length of existence and years of life are in her right hand; and in her left hand are wealth and glory: out of her mouth proceeds righteousness, and she carries law and mercy upon her tongue. 17 Her ways are good ways, and all her paths are peaceful. 18 She is a tree of life to all that lay hold upon her; and she is a secure help to all that stay themselves on her, as on the Lord. 

This passage is so rich and so beautiful, one hesitates to choose which verses about which to speak.   But let us try.  

“My son, forget not my laws; but let thine heart keep my words.”   There are two ways we can understand the word “heart” as used here.  One is simple:  it means the mind.  Recall that in the Scriptural understanding of human nature, the heart is not the seat of the emotions, but of the mind.   (The seat of your emotions is your gut, your bowels).   “Forget not my laws / let thine heart keep my words” is a synthetic parallelism:  that is, he is saying the same thing twice.  He is saying, “Memorize what I tell you and do not forget it.”   

The malicious atheists who have been purposely destroying education for the past seventy years have convinced teachers and parents that memorizing things is not necessary, that forcing a child to memorize poetry and names and dates and multiplication tables and so forth “stifles creativity.” The opposite is true, of course:  If they are taught properly, children love to memorize things, and if they have not received and internalized the genuine treasures of our received culture on which to base their own creations, the stuff they produce is actually uncreative and boring, no matter how much a parent or teacher may praise it in order not to hurt their feelings. 

We need to apply this insight to spiritual life.   If we want to learn how to pray, we need to memorize prayers and spiritual texts, so that, to use the apt expression of St. Ignaty Brianchaninov, they become the “exact property and possession of the soul.”  The sacred texts cannot remain something outside of ourselves, something in a book somewhere (or, worse, on a website!).   Sacred words have to become part of us.  Our minds are made for this, and, though the power of memorization fades as we grow older, the struggle to memorize remains one of great benefit; it is one way of staying young!  One resolve we can make for Lent is to pick a psalm or Scripture passage or prayer from the prayer book or service books, and memorize it.  And Lent is forty days long – perhaps we have time to memorize two, or three, or several!  They will become a part of us, and they will always be ready at hand when we need them, even if we do not have the book.  That may come in handy one day if someone puts us in prison for being a Christian and denies us any books.

The deeper understanding of the word “heart”  goes beyond the obvious faculties of the mind like memory, imagination, and discursive reason; it signifies the spiritual intellect, the faculty of higher intuitive and synthetic understanding that grasps spiritual realities directly.  Our First Parents deadened this highest human power when they fell through sin, and they passed this deadness on to us.  In the Old Testament, only rare souls like the prophets were given grace to ascend to this higher level of understanding, and then only dimly, seeing as in a mirror, which is why all of their theological expressions are in figures and types.  In the New Testament dispensation, the grace of Baptism enlivens this power once more, and we can use it, if only we do not damage ourselves permanently with un-repented sins.  This is the subject of the Holy Fathers’ entire science of the spiritual life, involving the cleansing from the passions and the ascent to spiritual knowledge. 

No matter how much we study or pray, however, we will not grow better but rather worse if our new attainments make us conceited.  Verse seven says, “Be not wise in thine own conceit; but fear God and depart from all evil.”  St. John Chrysostom writes, “ [St.] Paul makes the same recommendation, as does Isaiah: ‘Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever by their own standards.’ As Scripture says, ‘Do not justify yourself,’ and Christ says ‘In all you do, say, “We are unprofitable servants.”’ Likewise, in the case of this virtue as well, do not convince yourself that you are wise, but that you have need of others and of help from God. Nothing is worse than a person’s thinking he is sufficient to himself.  This way leads to ignorance; such people cannot bear to learn from anyone, they are conceited and feel superior to everyone else.” 

Notice the second half of the verse:  “…fear God and depart from all evil.”   Someone who really fears God strenuously fights the delusion that he knows everything;  he is terrified of such an idea and flees it like fire, because it is an insult to God; it is a blasphemy.  The more one grows in the fear of God, the more one knows that one actually knows very little.   And, far from being depressing, this thought becomes consoling, for it means that there is so much yet to learn, which is exciting, and it also means that you are not responsible for knowing everything, which is a tremendous relief.  

May Christ the Wisdom of God grant us the grace to implant His law deep in our hearts, and may He deliver us from the conceit that we are wise.   Even Socrates discovered that God only is wise (see the Apology).  Surely we Christians can do as well as that old pagan did.  

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I Lent Wednesday – Proverbs 2: 1-22

1 My son, if thou wilt receive the utterance of my commandment, and hide it with thee; 2 thine ear shall hearken to wisdom; thou shalt also apply thine heart to understanding, and shalt apply it to the instruction of thy son. 3 For it thou shalt call to wisdom, and utter thy voice for understanding; 4 and if thou shalt seek it as silver, and search diligently for it as for treasures; 5 then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. 6 For the Lord gives wisdom; and from his presence come knowledge and understanding, 7 and he treasures up salvation for them that walk uprightly: he will protect their way; 8 that he may guard the righteous ways: and he will preserve the way of them that fear him. 9 Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgement; and shalt direct all thy course aright. 10 For if wisdom shall come into thine understanding, and discernment shall seem pleasing to thy soul, 11 good counsel shall guard thee, and holy understanding shall keep thee; 12 to deliver thee from the evil way, and from the man that speaks nothing faithfully. 13 Alas for those who forsake right paths, to walk in ways of darkness; 14 who rejoice in evils, and delight in wicked perverseness; 15 whose paths are crooked, and their courses winding; 16 to remove thee far from the straight way, and to estrange thee from a righteous purpose. My son, let not evil counsel overtake thee, 17 of her who has forsaken the instruction of her youth, and forgotten the covenant of God. 18 For she has fixed her house near death, and guided her wheels near Hades with the giants. 19 None that go by her shall return, neither shall they take hold of right paths, for they are not apprehended of the years of life. 20 For had they gone in good paths, they would have found the paths of righteousness easy. 21 For the upright shall dwell in the earth, and the holy shall be left behind in it. 22 The paths of the ungodly shall perish out of the earth, and transgressors shall be driven away from it. 

Yesterday we spoke of our need to have courage in the midst of troubles and thereby acquire the virtue of hope.   Today the Lord encourages us, saying, “…he [the Lord] treasures up salvation for them that walk uprightly; he will protect their way; that he may guard the righteous ways: and he will preserve the way of them that fear him.”   St. John Chrysostom comments, “When God is the guard, there will be no fear. Fear God and you will have no other fear: just as those who do not fear Him have fear at every point, they need to fear everything.  It is therefore better to fear the master and not one’s fellow servants.”    

Just as those who do not believe in God will believe just about anything else, no matter how ridiculous, so also those who do not fear God will fear everything else, no matter how harmless:  for them life really is the predatory jungle of Darwinism, and everything and everyone is a potential enemy.   For the Christian, the opposite is the case:   Fearing God, he fears nothing else, and, far from imagining that everyone is an enemy, he regards even his actual enemies as his friends, for their hatred provides him with the secure path to salvation:  forgiveness and non-condemnation.  St. John Chrysostom remarks in another place that our enemies are not only our friends, but our best friends!  They teach us what we really are; the pain they cause us is a knife that cuts out from our hearts the corruption of vanity and egotism. 

Our fallen nature rebels against all this, of course.   Grace-filled courage in the midst of troubles and persecution is just that, a grace, and we have to ask for it.  If we really feared God, if we were always mindful of the hour of death and God’s righteous judgment, if we understood, even dimly, what Paradise is, and what hell is,  if we regarded ourselves as men already dead to this world since our Baptism, we would have invincible courage like the martyrs.  We would in fact become martyrs, that is, witnesses, to the Resurrection of Christ.  

The Lord is waiting to give us this good gift.  He desires to give the truly good things to those who ask Him, that is, the virtues, which will not perish at our death, which are in fact the only treasures acquired in this life that we will take with us to the grave.  Let us today implore Him earnestly for that true fear of the Lord which drives out all other fears, courage in the midst of temptations, forgiveness of our enemies, and invincible hope in our salvation. 

I Lent Tuesday – Proverbs 1: 20-33 

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Wisdom sings aloud in passages, and in the broad places speaks boldly. 21 And she makes proclamation on the top of the walls, and sits by the gates of princes; and at the gates of the city boldly says, 22 So long as the simple cleave to justice, they shall not be ashamed: but the foolish being lovers of haughtiness, having become ungodly have hated knowledge, and are become subject to reproofs. 23 Behold, I will bring forth to you the utterance of my breath, and I will instruct you in my speech.  24 Since I called, and ye did not hearken; and I spoke at length, and ye gave no heed; 25 but ye set at nought my counsels, and disregarded my reproofs; 26 therefore I also will laugh at your destruction; and I will rejoice against you when ruin comes upon you: 27 yea when dismay suddenly comes upon you, and your overthrow shall arrive like a tempest; and when tribulation and distress shall come upon you, or when ruin shall come upon you. 28 For it shall be that when ye call upon me, I will not hearken to you: wicked men shall seek me, but shall not find me. 29 For they hated wisdom, and did not choose the word of the Lord: 30 neither would they attend to my counsels, but derided my reproofs. 31 Therefore shall they eat the fruits of their own way, and shall be filled with their own ungodliness. 32 For because they wronged the simple, they shall be slain; and an inquisition shall ruin the ungodly. 33 But he that hearkens to me shall dwell in hope, and he shall be quiet, without fear from all evil. 

In this passage Wisdom personified reproaches the wicked who would not heed her counsels, and she foretells their downfall.   In the Old Testament, in which many mysteries are only partially revealed, the Wisdom of God is personified as a woman, a standard literary convention one encounters also in the wisdom literature of pagan antiquity.  But in the New Testament we learn that the Wisdom of the true God is none other than the Word of God Incarnate, Our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Paul says it plainly:  “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”  ( I Corinthians 1: 24).     Therefore, when we read the passages in Proverbs and the other Wisdom Books of the Old Testament in which Wisdom personified speaks, we know that it is actually Christ Who is speaking to us.   

It is Christ, then, Who here foretells the sudden and unexpected destruction of the wicked, who in their haughtiness and trust in themselves invite their ruin:  “…yea when dismay suddenly comes upon you, and your overthrow shall arrive like a tempest…”.  Everything is going well for them, or so they think, and then in a moment they lose everything.   St. John Chrysostom says that this passage should call to mind the Flood of Noah, when the wicked were living it up and imagining that nothing could go wrong, right up to the end.  

It is indeed a rare man who is not led astray by prosperity.   This is why the Lord mercifully allows His chosen ones to endure troubles in this life, in order to bring us to our senses and encourage our repentance in this life, so that we do not go unprepared into the next life, so that death does not come as an unexpected calamity, but as a longed-for release from present troubles into the true life, the life of the age to come.  

The final verse of today’s passage gives us the key to living with our troubles as a Christian should.  If we listen to the Lord, we will dwell in hope. Hope is the Theological Virtue that corresponds to the Cardinal Virtue of fortitude (courage).   We will probably have troubles to the end of our lives, but if we live courageously, with absolute trust in God – with hope – the troubles do not signify to us that God has rejected us, but rather the opposite:  that He accepts our repentance.  The verse does not mean that for the faithful there will be no evils, but that the grace of hope gives us freedom from the fear of evils, and that we will live in quietness, that is, with peace of heart, which is the beginning of heaven on earth, a pledge of the joy that is to come.    As St. Isaac the Syrian says, “Stillness is the mystery of the age to come.”   

O Lord Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, give us the courage  to do Thy will in the midst of troubles, the grace to hope in Thee always, and Thy peace in our hearts, which the world cannot give and the world cannot take away.  Amen.  

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I Lent Monday – Proverbs 1: 1 – 20 

1The Proverbs of Solomon son of David, who reigned in Israel; 2 to know wisdom and instruction, and to perceive words of understanding; 3 to receive also hard saying, and to understand true justice, and how to direct judgement; 4 that he might give subtlety to the simple, and to the young man discernment and understanding. 5 For by the hearing of these a wise man will be wiser, and man of understanding will gain direction; 6 and will understand a parable, and a dark speech; the saying of the wise also, and riddles. 

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and there is good understanding to all that practise it: and piety toward God is the beginning of discernment; but the ungodly will set at nought wisdom and instruction. 8 Hear, my son, the instruction of thy father, and reject not the rules of thy mother. 9 For thou shalt receive for thine head a crown of graces, and a chain of gold round thy neck. 

10 My son, let not ungodly men lead thee astray, neither consent thou to them. 11 If they should exhort thee, saying, Come with us, partake in blood, and let us unjustly hide the just man in the earth: 12 and let us swallow him alive, as Hades would, and remove the memorial of him from the earth: 13 let us seize on his valuable property, and let us fill our houses with spoils: 14 but do thou cast in thy lot with us, and let us all provide a common purse, and let us have one pouch: 15 go not in the way with them, but turn aside thy foot from their paths: 16 17 for nets are not without cause spread for birds. 18 For they that are concerned in murder store up evils for themselves; and the overthrow of transgressors is evil. 19 These are the ways of all that perform lawless deeds; for by ungodliness they destroy their own life. 

20 Wisdom sings aloud in passages, and in the broad places speaks boldly . 

So here we are at the beginning of Great Lent, and we begin reading Proverbs, or – if we are so blessed as to have Vespers in our parish church – listening to them in Church, or perhaps listening to them as an audio recording.   It is a genre we are not used to, but if we persist in reading, and especially if we read the proverbs for ourselves out loud, they begin to acquire a deep attraction, and we start to enjoy it.    St. John Chrysostom says that Solomon “…renders the material amenable by introducing charm in proverbial form, since lack of clarity normally stimulates the soul.”  In other words, the way the author writes is mysteriously attractive, but the meaning is just a little beyond our reach, which arouses our curiosity, and then we make the effort of stretching a bit to understand it, which is more pleasant and exciting than simply being told something straight out.   All good teachers, as well as poets and novelists, understand this dynamic.   So, to repeat, just stick with it, and you will start to enjoy it.  And you do not have to understand all of it.  It will soak in.   

Verse seven is one of the best known in all Scripture:  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  There are people who claim that they just love God without ever fearing Him, but, unless they have gone through the entire course of spiritual life and have attained the level of St. Anthony the Great, who after many years of superhuman struggle famously said, “I now no longer fear God, but I love Him,” they are kidding themselves.   Verse seven concludes with “…the ungodly will set at nought wisdom and instruction.”   Chrysostom comments that it is impious people who do not like the idea that they must fear God, and this proves the truth of the saying that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.   Only freethinkers and immoral people say, “Oh, you don’t have to fear God…’LUV is all you need’ (as the Beatles song goes).”  No saint, no person who actually did love God, ever said such a thing.   

So what does it mean to fear God?   It is fashionable to look down on those who openly show a primordial, animal fear of God, like the worldly Russian aristocrats who would say disdainfully, “When the lightning strikes, the peasant makes the Sign of the Cross.”   But such know-it-alls have forgotten that we are animals, or, rather, that we are part animal, part angel, and that our animal side is – if we are honest – the part we are most in touch with.   We are all afraid to suffer and to die, and we are all afraid – deep down – that God is going to punish us in some brutal, unpleasant way for something we did, unless we are either very holy on the one hand or total sociopaths on the other hand. So it is all right to start there, but of course we cannot stay there, because we are called to something higher, according to the angelic side of our nature, which is to fear God with childlike trust and reverence as a child fears a loving father, to acquire longing for His loving presence, and to shed warm yet consoling tears over our sins.   

Great Lent provides simple ways to acquire this better and more noble fear of God.  One is prostrations.  Either ask your father confessor for a rule of prostrations – a daily number – or simply read the Hours in the Horologion (or the little red book of the Hours available from Holy Transfiguration Monastery bookstore) and do the prostrations prescribed, or do the Prayer of St. Ephraim by itself several times a day,  with the prostrations indicated.   After awhile, the attitude of the soul conforms to the attitude of the body, and we start calming down physically, but also mentally and spiritually; we begin to have a sober attitude towards God, a godly fear springing from the knowledge of Who God is and who we are.   He is our Creator and we are creatures.  He is everything and we are (comparatively though not absolutely) nothing.   Our very existence depends every moment on His sovereign will.   And this gives us peace.  

Another simple thing we can all do is to make the Sign of the Cross more frequently outside the set times of prayer.    At the very least, we should make the Sign of the Cross when we awake in the morning and before we go to sleep at night, before and after we eat, before we leave the house, before we start the car, before we start any task, before we go into a meeting or conversation in which temptations may arise…in other words, before anything we do.   We should make the Sign of the Cross when seductive or unhappy or angry thoughts come to mind, when impure attractions stir in our bodies, when any  temptations arise.   This constant reminder that we live in the presence of God, that we walk before God, that He sees and hears every thought, every feeling, every action of ours at all times and every moment, will sober us down and teach us to rely on Him – will teach us that He is everything to us. This constant awareness leads to that godly fear which is the beginning of wisdom.  

Our dear Christ, the Wisdom, Word, and Power of God, give us the holy fear that will lead us finally to love of Thee, Our Creator, Redeemer, and Savior, our God.  Amen. 

The Beginning of Wisdom 

The Lenten Readings from Proverbs 

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Introduction 

In recent decades, translators have rendered into English a great deal of the Fathers’ profound literature on the interior activity of a Christian leading a carefully supervised ascetic life at a rather advanced level.  Though one cannot help being grateful for this great service to the Church, the ready availability of such writings may ensnare the unwary beginner in imagining that he can really make use of them to his profit, which entails a dubious proposition and possibly a dangerous undertaking.   This is probably the first time in Church history that terms like hesychasm and theosis are bandied about in the daily conversation of eager neophytes.   This should give us pause. 

The Holy Fathers’ preaching for beginners – ordinary believers like you and me – addresses different and more realistic concerns.  They knew that we cannot attain the Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love without first striving for the Cardinal Virtues of Temperance, Prudence, Justice, and Fortitude.    That greatest of preachers, St. John Chrysostom, fills entire bookshelves with his exhortations to fundamental moral living based on God’s revelation in Holy Scripture, and not the New Testament only, but the Old Testament as well.  

Our Holy Mother the Orthodox Church, in Her divine wisdom, chooses the Old Testament as our staple reading for Great Lent.  At the Sixth Hour, Esaias calls us to cast away our sins and return to the Lord, and he prophesies the coming of the Savior and His sufferings for our salvation.  At the first reading for Vespers, Genesis reveals to us the origin of the world,  the creation and true vocation of our race, our fall into sin, the promise of the Redeemer, God’s providential plan working its way through history in the struggles of His chosen holy patriarchs, and many prophetic types of the saving dispensation of the Incarnate Word Who was to come. At the second reading for Vespers, the wise Solomon, by way of teaching his son, at the same time instructs us also on how to get wisdom and virtue, in the Book of Proverbs. 

In the short daily essays that follow, the author hopes to offer his fellow beginners useful advice on putting Proverbs into practice.   The idea is to examine one or two verses from the daily reading and to say something true and useful about them, with help from the Holy Fathers, especially the great Chrysostom, the existence of whose commentary surviving solely in a single manuscript on the isle of Patmos was unknown to the Christian world for centuries, until being brought to our attention by a French scholar, Marcel Richard, only in 1959!  There are no accidents in God’s plan for us.   He made known His great preacher’s words on Proverbs in our time for our benefit.   Let us show our thanks by heeding these words and putting them into practice.  

When asked by a parishioner, “What should I do for Lent” the contemporary pastor is tempted to say, “Something, anything.”   The distractions and delusions of our present existence are so great that it seems a miracle to remember that Great Lent is actually going on.   The author invites the reader to this effort to benefit from Proverbs as one option for that “something, anything” the beleaguered soul may choose as his little special effort for this holy season.  If this helps to spur the reader to make that good change which sets us once again on the path of salvation, the author begs his prayers in recompense. 

Priest Steven Allen 

22 February/7 March 2022 A.D. 

Clean Monday

The finding of the precious Relics of the Martyrs at Eugenius

2 January OS 2022 – 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 here http://ibmgs.org/lives.html and a good short collection of his known sayings (the saint never wrote anything – what we have are recollections of his disciples, as is the case also with St. Cosmas Aitolos) here https://www.sainthermanmonastery.com/product-p/lrp1.htm .

In recent times, St. Seraphim has played a critical part in converting many non-Orthodox Christians to the Faith, including me. 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.”

St. Seraphim teaches that the goal of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, and at the end of this conversation, a visible epiphany of the saint’s attainment of this goal is granted to his disciple, Nicholas Motovilov. 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 toThy 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 find the conversation with Motovilov here: http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/wonderful.aspx)

Of course, the light that Motovilov saw is the light of Mt. Tabor, 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 emotion – even, or especially, those that take place in out-of-body experiences – are not spiritual, and are very 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 every day and 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 Spirit partakes of authentic holiness.

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