Orthodox Truth

Tuesday of the 1st Week of Luke

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Today’s Gospel reading is the genealogy of Our Lord according to S. Luke:

At that time: Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph, Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge,Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda, Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri, Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er, Which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim, Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David, Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson, Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda, Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor, Which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala, Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech, Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan, Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.   – Luke 3:23 – 4:1

When we get to the genealogies in Holy Scripture, either in Genesis or in the Gospels – the beginning of St. Matthew’s Gospel and here in St. Luke – we may be tempted just to skip over them, thinking, “These names are exotic and difficult, and I am not sure why they are here, anyway.” It may be difficult to derive a spiritual lesson of some sort, and we move on.   But this of course, we should not do. The Holy Spirit told the inspired writers to write down these genealogies, and the same Holy Spirit inspired the Church to appoint the genealogies in both St. Matthew and St. Luke to be read at the Divine Liturgy every year. There must be a reason.

We acquire grace through reading Holy Scripture, and especially the Gospels, whether we think we are deriving a clear meaning from them or not. When we read Scripture, we should read aloud, at a measured pace – not too fast, not too slow – and let the words sink in.   Every word of Holy Scripture is invested with infinite divine power, and the very experience of reading it will change our hearts, confirm us in faith, and bring peace to our souls.

Another thing to remember is that when we read Holy Scripture piously and reverently, especially when we do not understand what we are reading (or why it is there), we are making an act of faith in God’s wisdom, which placed these very words before us, for our salvation.   This small effort, made in Church or made in our private prayers, is an act of quiet militancy against the skeptical and materialistic views of “scientific” Biblical critics, who are always reducing God’s Word to a random product of cultural evolution. There is nothing random or evolutionary about Holy Scripture. Every word was put there at a specific point in history by a specific man specifically inspired by God, Who determined this from all eternity in infinite wisdom. Compared to the endlessly flowing, fresh and pure river of God’s wisdom, the prattling of the critics is a cup of polluted water. From which do we wish to drink?

The genealogies, by the way, do have profound theological meaning.   Here St. Luke, by taking the genealogy of the Lord back to Adam, is saying that Jesus is the new Adam, Who in his sinless but actual human nature restores man to the communion with God that he lost in Paradise. Both evangelists who record the genealogy of Jesus – Matthew and Luke – are also demonstrating that Jesus Christ really is a man like us, with human ancestors. This was necessary to counter the Docetist heresy, which taught that Christ only appeared to be human but really was not.  By showing that Christ was descended from King David, they were demonstrating that He was of the line from which the Messiah was supposed to come.  There is no end to the theology concealed in the Scriptures, even the most seemingly routine or obscure passages.

Let us resolve firmly to drink the pure water of God’s Holy Word every day!   May His Word, purer than gold and sweeter than the honeycomb, enliven us and strengthen us always!

Friday of the 13th Week of Matthew 

The reading from the Holy Gospel today is Mark 4: 1-9 

Listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/episode/how-to-bear-fruit-friday-of-the-13th-week-of-matthew–62042467

At that time:  Jesus began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

St. Theophan the Recluse states confidently that each of us can become the good ground that bears fruit, and he tells us how to do it:  

“Behold, there went out a sower to sow.”  Since the time that this sower went out to sow, He has not ceased to sow. In the beginning He sowed personally, then through the Apostles and at last through Divine Scripture and divinely-wise teachers. To this day the word of God’s truth is being sown everywhere. Just be prepared to show yourself as good ground and you will be sown without fail.  God will raise up what has been sown. How do you make yourself into good ground? With attention and study of the Word of God, sympathy and love toward it, and readiness to immediately carry out what you learn. With such a mindset, not a single word will lie on the surface of your soul, but all will pass within. Uniting there with the elements of the spirit which are native to it, it will take root and sprout. Being nourished then—from above through spiritual inspirations, and from below through good desires and labors—it will grow into a tree, give flower and fruit. God Himself arranged everything around us this way, and this is why we cannot but be amazed at our fruitlessness. But all of this is due to our inattentiveness and carelessness. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 182 

Becoming the good ground that bears fruit is our path to salvation.   If we want to live with God forever, we have to become that good ground.   And, behold, here a saint gives us a short to-do list, in plain language, on how to do it:  “…attention and study of the Word of God, sympathy and love toward it, and readiness to immediately carry out what you learn.” 

The “Word of God” in this context means, in the strict sense, the Holy Scriptures, but in the broader sense it also includes all of the teachings of the Church found in the Holy Fathers, the decisions of the Councils, the Lives of the Saints, the approved catechisms and sermons of the saints on the the doctrines of the Church and on ascetical striving,  the inner life of prayer, and so forth – in short, everything that can be called “spiritual reading.”    We have to be attentive and studious towards spiritual reading;  we have to acquire sympathy and love towards it; we have to be prompt in carrying out what our reading teaches us and inspires us to do.   If this happens, we will become the good ground; if it does not, we won’t.  Either way, there will be eternal consequences.  

The good news is that the Holy Scriptures, and pre-eminently the Holy Gospels, are invested with divine, infinite, and self-acting power.   And, in that they illustrate the Gospel with inspired accuracy, according to the mind of the Church,  the writings of the saints and approved teachers of the Church also share in this power.  We don’t – we can’t – force ourselves to feel the power in these words; we force ourselves simply to be regular in our habit of reading and to fight vigorously against distraction, paying attention to what we are reading. The words themselves do and will act upon us, often without our knowing it.  

Perceptible spiritual feeling – the warmth of that sympathy and love for God’s Word that St. Theophan refers to – comes with time and patience, as a gift of grace and according to God’s will and perfect knowledge of what is good for us at what time.  We must be patient, and all good gifts that we need for our salvation will be given in time.  

When those precious moments occur in which we are given a genuine spiritual insight during our daily reading, we must cherish this holy thought  – think of it throughout the day and as we go to bed at night, repeating it to ourselves mentally, until the heart is drawn to the thought.  And we must ask the Lord to show us how to put it into action, with zeal according to knowledge, so that we do not act in a self-willed fashion.  He will not disappoint us.    It may be the action of prayer; it may be the action of hating a bad habit and fighting it; it may be the action of practicing an active virtue in showing love to our neighbor in a concrete way.    

The Almighty God and Lord of all is thinking about me this very moment, desiring me with all of His divine desire, and willing eagerly to give me every spiritual insight needed for my salvation.   What am I waiting for?  

Thursday of the 13th Week of Matthew 

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-sin-that-cannot-be-forgiven-thursday-of-the-13th-week-of-matthew–62041700

In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ teaches about the sin that cannot be forgiven:

The Lord said: Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation: Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit. There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.  – Mark 3: 28-35

What is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Since it is the sin that cannot be forgiven, we should be very eager to find out what it is and to flee it by all means.

St. Theophan the Recluse, quoting a standard Orthodox catechism of his day, relates the following answers: “Great or excessive hope in God’s grace; despair or lack of hope in God’s compassion; contradicting manifest and confirmed truth, and rejection of the Orthodox Christian Faith… (Orthodox Confession, part 3, question 38).”   – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 181

Let us examine these sins one by one.

The first two ways of sinning against the Holy Spirit are related: they are the opposites of each other.   A Christian lives between hope and fear: hope in God’s mercy and fear of God’s judgment. If we lose the fear of God, we will say, “Oh, God forgives, God forgives” carelessly, assuming that anything we do will be forgiven no matter what, and we will live as if God’s judgment does not exist. This is excessive hope in His mercy, taking it for granted. This attitude is typical among certain Protestant sects as part of their teaching, but each of us can consciously or unconsciously adopt this attitude and thereby give up any efforts at repentance.   “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” says the Scripture. We must live in Godly fear and have an intense hatred of sin, revulsion to sin. To adopt a careless attitude about one’s sins and to presume on God’s forgiveness makes forgiveness impossible, because one is not repenting. This is a form of the sin against the Holy Spirit. To combat this, we must ask God for a healthy hatred of sin, for the desire to please Him and do His holy will, and for constant remembrance of death and God’s judgment.

The opposite of this excessive hope is excessive grief over sin, as if God cannot forgive us. To fall into despair and give up all hope is spiritual suicide. This comes from intense pride, a pride so great that we believe that our sin is greater than God Himself.   We must pray daily for true humility, in order to accept completely, with all our hearts, that God alone is the source of our life, while everything that is from us, including sin, is something finite and subject to God’s sovereignty and omnipotence.  There is nothing more powerful than God’s love. There is nothing He cannot overcome. Despair is a denial of God’s love, of His omnipotence, and of His sovereignty over His creation.   It is the ultimate fruit of listening to the lies of the master accuser and liar, Satan. When dark thoughts of hopelessness assail us, we must go into action immediately with prayer, reading psalms, prostrations, and thanksgiving and praise to God.   We should chant Church hymns and psalms that we know, since singing spiritual songs is a great help against despondency. We must run to confession and carefully confess all of our sins in detail, with compunction, since often depression and despair arise from unconfessed sins.  We should also apply ourselves assiduously to productive work, and manual labor especially, which acts very powerfully to drive away despondency.

“Contradicting manifest and confirmed truth” leads ultimately to “…rejection of the Orthodox Christian Faith.” If one stubbornly rejects the teaching of the Church, one loses the saving effect of one’s baptism, even if one does not formally renounce one’s identity as an Orthodox Christian. How many times do we hear, “Oh, yes, I am Orthodox, but, you know, I think the Church is wrong about such-and-such,” or “I just cannot accept such-and-such that the Church teaches because it just does not seem right to me,” and so forth.   To deny Truth is to separate the soul from grace, to kill the soul. If one chooses to kill one’s own soul, God does not force us to be forgiven. Holy Tradition is not a cafeteria from which we choose the items we like, in order to make up our own lunch tray of tasty religious beliefs, leaving off the dishes we find unpalatable. We must wholeheartedly embrace all that the Church teaches.

Let us open our minds and hearts to the Faith. We do not have to understand everything .  We cannot understand everything.  We certainly may and should ask questions, in order to deepen our knowledge and strengthen our commitment to the Faith. But we must do this with the predisposition to be obedient and docile to the Church, to be her loving child, not her critic, accuser, and judge.

May the All-Holy Spirit, sent by the Lord Jesus Christ to lead us into all truth, open our minds and hearts to all the saving truths of our Holy Faith, give us the grace of the fear of God coupled with all-daring hope in His mercy, and guide us securely on the path of salvation, right up to our last hour.   Believing wholeheartedly, repenting humbly, and hoping in God with childlike trust, may we find Paradise. May He bring us all together to life everlasting.

Wednesday of the 13th Week of Matthew

Listen to an audio podcast of this commentary at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt13wed_1

In today’s Gospel, we see both the Lord’s friends and His enemies stating that He is possessed.

At that time, the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself. And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils. And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end. No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. – Mark 3: 20-27

This passage reveals that during His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus Christ had friends who were not His disciples.   They were simply His friends, the relatives and neighbors among whom He had lived during the time before His three-year mission for the salvation of the human race. Perhaps these friends were among the people who, in another place, the Evangelist records as saying, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” or, in other words, “Is this not just another ordinary fellow like ourselves?” Their saying that “he is beside Himself” means, according to St. Theophylact, that they believed He was possessed with a demon.   Being His friends, though uncomprehending ones, they say this out of concern for His welfare. They think of Him as a victim of evil. Being His enemies, the scribes from Jerusalem say the same thing out of malice. They call Him a servant of evil.

Does not the same thing occur to us Orthodox Christians?   We have friends and relatives, both non-Orthodox and nominal Orthodox (or even those who claim to be pious!), who try to dissuade us from a Gospel mindset, an otherworldly life, because they believe that it is bad for us, something evil.   It interferes with having a “good life,” and being our friends they want us to have a “good life.”   They think that we are victims of evil. We have enemies who hate the Faith and claim that we are not mere victims but active servants of evil.   Which kind of person, one wonders, does the greater harm to us? Often, perhaps, it is our friends, because we are more inclined to listen to them.

Here is a rule of thumb you can count on: Most human beings – the overwhelming majority (99.9%?), including the overwhelming majority of baptized Orthodox – are, to a greater or lesser extent, in delusion (plani in Greek, prelest in Slavonic). Most are not seeing strange visions or doing obviously crazy things (though that sort of thing is certainly on the rise these days).  Most have garden-variety prelest; that is, they are fundamentally mistaken most of the time about what is really going on outside of them and inside of them.   This includes us. The difference between them and us (God willing there be a difference!), is that we know we are mistaken but we are working on it. We are crying out day and night, “O Lord, deliver me from delusion!”  We frequently repeat the favorite prayer of St. Gregory Palamas:  “O Lord, enlighten my darkness!” 

If we, who are Orthodox – and moreover trying to do something about our delusion – are nonetheless frequently mistaken about what is going on, what about all the other people out there? In other words, why should we listen to them?   I do not mean that they cannot teach us how to grow vegetables or drive a car or do algebra. I mean that they cannot give direction to our lives. They cannot advise us as to what it is all about. Let us not be swayed when they claim that we are out of our minds.   Of course we are, but we know the way back into our minds, and we are trying to go there.   They too are out of their minds, but they do not know the way back in, and they cannot show it to us.

O Lord, only Truth and only Way, deliver us from delusion, heal our fragmented minds and divided wills, and keep us on the straight path to Thee, Who art our only Life! Amen.

Monday of the 12th Week of Matthew

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/episode/repent-ye-and-believe-the-gospel-monday-of-the-12th-week-of-matthew–56541204

The reading from the Holy Gospel today is Mark 1: 9-15.

And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him. Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

Today we begin reading from the Gospel According to St. Mark, the shortest and most direct of the four Gospels.  (It is still the season of St. Matthew, because we are still reading from St. Matthew on Saturdays and Sundays, but during the week we have begun reading St. Mark.)

St. Mark, the disciple of St. Peter, wrote his Gospel for the Church at Rome, and the terse and concise character of this Gospel corresponds to the old Roman character: simple, direct, and to the point. Today, St. Mark briefly recounts the Lord’s baptism and temptation in the wilderness, and tells of the beginning of Christ’s preaching.  All in seven verses!

St. Mark’s brevity brings into relief a fact about all the Gospels.  They are not biographies of Jesus Christ; they simply proclaim Who He is. They contain only what we need to know, to believe, and to do in order to find salvation. We must read and hear these words (literally, physically read and hear them), make an act of faith in their truth, pray for understanding, resolve to live according to their demands, and repent for failing to do so. This must happen day after day, or we forget what a Christian is.

If we have been slack in reading the Gospel lately, this new beginning, with the shortest Gospel, at the beginning of a fast, is a good place to start again. We need to open the Gospel, stand or kneel in front of our icons, and read aloud the appointed daily passage or perhaps a whole chapter, going passage by passage or chapter by chapter, day by day. Read aloud, at a moderate pace. Struggle for attention. The Holy Spirit infuses the words of the Gospel with infinite divine power, and they are self-acting. If we read them and  struggle for attention, they will produce spiritual fruit.

Reading the Gospel itself is the first step, and the Holy Spirit will grant us understanding if we ask for it. If we desire to take another step and study the Gospels as well as read them, we should use a patristic or patristically inspired commentary. Though the commentaries of the ancient Fathers are the most complete, most of us need something shorter, and the normative short commentary is the explanation of the Gospels by St. Theophylact of Ochrid. Formerly these were available in four volumes from Chrysostom Press in House Springs, Missouri, but now they are being distributed by St. Herman Press. Here is a link to the page on the St. Herman Press site: https://www.sainthermanmonastery.com/category-s/1896.htm

The best guide to the Gospels by a recent author is the commentary by Archbishop Averky, available from Holy Trinity Monastery at http://bookstore.jordanville.org/9781942699002. Just reading a page every day from one or both of these commentaries will change us greatly for the good.

Fr. Seraphim Rose used to ask a question we should ask ourselves: “We know we are Orthodox, but are we Christians?” Of course, he did not mean that being Orthodox and being Christian are really two separate things: being Orthodox assumes being a Christian, and to be a Christian in the most accurate sense, to be in the Church, one must be Orthodox. He was using irony to make a point, that one can become fixated on discrete aspects of the Faith intended to help us live the Gospel while simultaneously disobeying the Gospel itself. If one’s mind is not immersed in the Gospel, and if one does not submit one’s will to the commandments of the Gospel, then the dogmas, canons, liturgical services, liturgical arts, domestic customs – the various manifestations of Church life – easily become idols, ends in themselves. Our understanding of them fragments, we alienate them from their true meaning and coherence in the light of the Gospel, and instead of using them as instruments for our salvation, we misunderstand and misuse them in such a way that their power – which is indeed great, whether to salvation or damnation – transforms us into Sadducees and Pharisees. Sadducees worship the liturgical cult and the clerical power structure. Pharisees worship the rules and the customs. Christians worship the Holy Trinity.

Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov writes in The Arena that God will judge us – both in the particular judgment after death and in the general judgment at the Second Coming – according to the commandments of the Gospel. This judgment determines our fate for all eternity. Let each of us hasten to make himself most intimate with this book by which he  shall be judged and daily compare to its demands the contents of that other book the Judge shall open on that Day, the book of each man’s heart. 

Wednesday of the Eleventh Week of Matthew

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt11wed

In the Gospel today, the Lord announces to the unbelieving Jews that God rejects them, because of their unbelief and hardness of heart despite all of His mercies to them:

The Lord said, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. – Matthew 23: 29-39

St. Theophan the Recluse applies this example to our spiritual life: God gives us numerous opportunities to repent and form a firm intention to please Him, but at some point, unknown to us, there can be a final turning away from Him and the loss of His grace, if we stubbornly refuse His call:

How many mercies the Lord revealed to Jerusalem (that is, to the Jews)! And, in the end, He was still forced to say, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” It is well known to all what the consequences of this were: the Jews are homeless to this day. [This was written in the 1880’s, long before the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel.] Does not a similar thing occur with the soul? The Lord cares for the soul and teaches it in every way. An obedient soul traverses the path indicated, but a disobedient soul remains in opposition to God’s calling. However, the Lord does not abandon even this soul, and uses every means to bring it to reason. If stubbornness increases, God’s influence increases. But there is a limit to everything. A soul becomes hardened, and the Lord, seeing that there is nothing more that can be done with this soul, abandons it to its fall, and it perishes like Pharaoh. Let anyone who is beset by passions learn from this the lesson that he cannot continue indulging himself indefinitely without punishment. Is it not time to abandon those passions – not just to deny oneself occasionally, but to decisively turn away? Indeed, no one can say when he will overstep the limit. Perhaps God’s long-suffering is just about to end.   – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 170-171

Sobering words!   Some may object, however: “God’s mercy is without limits!   One can repent until death!” Of course it is absolutely true that God’s mercy is without limits, and, if a man come to his senses, and be in this life still, he can certainly repent. But note the condition: “…if a man come to his senses.” What St. Theophan is pointing out is that at some point before death a man may make a final turning away from God and never come back to his senses. God, for Whom there is no present, past, or future, and Who knows all things, withdraws His grace from such a person, knowing that he will never repent. This is what it means in Exodus when it says, “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”

We must, then, keep careful watch over the life of the soul and not take God’s long-suffering for granted. Criminal psychologists note that it is a mark of sociopaths that they have no gratitude whatsoever for the many times that others have forgiven their crimes, and they have no remorse. We can be sociopaths in regard to God, taking His mercy for granted and becoming hardened in heart.

Why does this occur?   Of course, there is the obvious explanation, that we cherish our sins and passions and do not want to give them up. But there is also another reason, that God is not real to us.  Even if we feel helpless to fight our sins, even if we feel what is, humanly speaking, an irresistible attraction to them, yet if we had a lively faith in God, and deeply desired to please Him while feeling at the same time that all of our hope is in Him and that without Him we can do nothing – then He would show His might and come to save us. Our enemies would vanish very quickly. But lively faith and the desire to please God arise from a living sense of His presence, that He is right here, close to us, that indeed He is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

How do we obtain this lively sense of His presence? We must go to Christ, our Incarnate God, a man like us in all things but sin, and pour out our hearts before Him. We must approach the mercy seat, His Cross, and throw ourselves entirely on His mercy. We must approach Him, cling to Him, and not let go until our hearts are softened, and we are set again on the path to salvation.

In his last testament to his spiritual children, the Elder Gabriel of Seven Lakes Monastery (+1915), gave very straightforward advice to those in spiritual trouble. What is remarkable is how simple are the actions that he recommends and yet what transcendent benefits he promises if one does them. I would like to reproduce this Testament in full, and I pray that those who read it will take it to heart. It is taken from pp. 234-235 of a book we should all read: The Love of God – the Life and Teachings of St. Gabriel of the Seven Lakes Monastery (St. Herman Press, 2016):

Elder Gabriel’s Testament to His Spiritual Children

            Soon, perhaps, I will die. I leave you an inheritance of great and inexhaustible riches. There is enough for everyone, only they must make profitable use of it and not doubt. Whoever is wise enough to make use of this inheritance will live without want.

One: When someone feels that he is a sinner, and can find no way out, let him shut himself alone in his cell and read the Canon and Akathist to Sweetest Jesus Christ, and his tears will be a comforting remedy for him.

Two: When someone finds himself amidst misfortunes of any kind, let him read the Supplicatory Canon to the Mother of God (“Distressed by many temptations…”), and all his misfortunes will pass without a trace, to the shame of those who assailed him.

Three: When someone needs inner illumination of soul, let him read the Seventeenth Kathisma [i.e., Psalm 118] with attention, and his inner eyes will be opened. The need to bring what is written in it to realization will follow. The need to cleanse the conscience more frequently in Confession and to communicate of the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ will arise. The virtue of compassion for others will be manifest, so that we will not scorn them but rather suffer for them and pray for them. Then, the inward fear of God will appear, in which the accomplishments of the Savior will be revealed to the inner eye of the soul – how He suffered for us and loved us. Grace-filled love for Him will appear with the power of the Holy Spirit, Who instructs us in every ascetic labor, teaching us how to accomplish them and endure. In our patience, we will perceive and sense in ourselves the coming of the Kingdom of God in His power, and we will reign together with the Lord and become holy.

            This world will not appear to us the way it is depicted to us now. However, we will not judge it, since Jesus Christ will judge it. But we will see the falsehood of the world and the sin that is in it. We will see righteousness too, but only in the Savior, and we will partake of it in Him alone.  

            Falsehood! We see it and yet we do not. False is this world with all its quickly passing deceptions, for all will pass away, never to return. But Christ’s truth shall endure unto the ages of ages. Amen.

                                                      – Schema-archimandrite Gabriel

By the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us.  Amen. 

Tuesday of the Eleventh Week of Matthew 

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In today’s Gospel, the Lord reproves the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, whose entire religion is a calculated method of pretense before the eyes of men, while their souls are filthy  within.   

The Lord said, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.  Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.  Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup ad platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within are full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness.  Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.  – Matthew 23: 23-28 

The Lord’s great diatribe against these pretended spiritual guides of the Old Testament Church contains, first of all, a theological meaning:  The revelation of the Gospel is the true interpretation of the Old Testament, and rabbinical Judaism, of which the Pharisees of the time of Christ are the originators, is not the religion of the Old Testament;  it is, rather, a clever distortion thereof, a system of outward conduct that  fosters the most profound disorder within the soul.   St. Theophan the Recluse, however, in his commentary on this passage, explains its practical meaning for the spiritual life of the Christian.  He applies the Lord’s words to us, in order to warn us of the dangers of a purely outward religious life and to encourage us to develop the interior life of the soul:  

Cleanse the inner so the outer will be clean.  Our outward behavior in society is almost always proper – we fear the judgment of people and restrain ourselves. If we give ourselves over to vices outwardly, this is the end – it means that all shame is lost. But when one’s visible behavior is proper, the inner tenor of thoughts and feelings is not always proper.  Here complete freedom is given to pleasing oneself, which is satisfied outwardly to the degree that the eyes of men can bear it and as far as it can hide its works from human sight.  This is precisely what a whited sepulcher is.  Furthermore, inner uncleanness makes what is on the outside unclean.  Cleanse yourself inwardly, and then the exterior will become clean, and you will be entirely clean.  You will be made into a vessel that is fit for all the good uses of a householder.  One must marvel at how the inside remains neglected; after all, no one wants perdition.  Truly,  the enemy keeps such a soul in blindness – [he says] that there is no problem as long as there are no obvious sins, or he teaches the souls to put off what is important until tomorrow.  “Tomorrow we’ll work seriously on ourselves, as we ought; but now let my soul take some pleasure in passionate thoughts and dreams, if not deeds.”  Let us be on our guard that we do not grow old in such a frame of mind, lest correction become impossible for us, like teaching an old man new things.  – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 170 

It is easy to compare our outward conduct to that of the clueless degenerates who now surround us and conclude that we are doing pretty well in the eyes of God.  In the midst of the present moral chaos, good old fashioned bourgeois respectability seems a miracle of divine intervention, and it probably is.   But we are called to higher things, and the Lord is not satisfied with us until we give Him our hearts.  

Years ago, I was struck by another, related passage from Theophan the Recluse, which I came across in the anthology entitled The Art of Prayer by Igumen Chariton of Valaam.  I repent of not putting it into practice vigorously and consistently, but now, as always, is the time to start.  The saint here teaches that the spiritual father should not wait until his spiritual children have shown regularity in outward prayer rules before teaching them about the interior life of the Jesus Prayer and constant inward attentiveness. Rather he should do this right away, both because the latter is more essential and because without it the former does not bear fruit. Worse, it actually hardens the soul against purity and holiness; it produces the soul of a Pharisee. Here is a section of that passage:  

Gather yourself together in the heart, and there practice secret meditation.  By this means, with the help of God’s grace, the spirit of zeal will be maintained in its true character – burning sometimes less and sometimes more brightly.  Secret meditation sets our feet on the path of inner prayer, which is the most direct road to salvation [emphasis mine].  We may leave all else and turn only to this work, and all will be well.  Conversely, if we fulfill all other duties and neglect this one task we shall bear no fruit. 

He who does not turn within and look to this spiritual task will make no progress.   It would be true to say that this task is extremely difficult, especially at the beginning, but on the other hand it is direct and fruitful in result.  A spiritual father should therefore introduce the practice of inner prayer among his spiritual children as early as possible, and confirm them in its use.  It is even possible to start them in this before any exterior observances, or together with them; in any case it is essential not to leave it until too late.  This is because the very seed of spiritual growth lies in this inner turning to God.  The Art of Prayer, 1997 ed. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, pp. 77-78

To begin is simple:  Set aside ten minutes a day to stand or kneel or sit, alone before your icons, and say the Prayer of Jesus, aloud but quietly, at a moderate pace, and struggle for attention.   As many times as your mind wanders, force it back to the words of the prayer.  Throughout the day, say the prayer mentally as much as possible.   At the end of the day, review your thoughts, words, and deeds of the day, ask God’s forgiveness for your failings, and then go to sleep saying the Jesus Prayer.  As soon as you wake up, start saying it again.   

Do not worry about how to proceed. Prayer teaches itself. If we are faithful, the Lord will give abundant grace, and He will come to dwell in our hearts.   

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us, and save us.  Amen.  

Friday of the Tenth Week of St. Matthew

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In today’s Gospel, the Sadducees reveal their hypocrisy and spiritual bankruptcy by asking the Lord a non-question, in order to trip Him up:

The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him, Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.
Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also.
Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine. – Matthew 22: 23-33

More often than not it is the Pharisees that we see twisting Scripture to advance a pathological ideology and keep power in their own hands, even if if means, ultimately, killing the God-Man. Here, however, it is the Sadducees who are playing with Scripture and making up a contrived scenario, while pretending to be serious, in order to deny the reality of life after death and thereby justify their practical atheism. Strange to say, though they are the priestly party and have charge of the Temple worship, they do not believe in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection, or life after death. They are practical atheists who make a comfortable living by being in charge of a religious institution (sound familiar?). Knowing that the Lord Jesus preaches the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal life, they think they can make Him look silly. Instead, He turns the tables on them, and they look silly, which is what happens when integrity confronts hypocrisy.

For our part, we have to look at the poor old Sadducees and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” The siren song of practical atheism – living as if this life were all there is – threatens daily to hypnotize all of us, and we can always dig up a quote from some supposed authority – Bishop So-and-So, Elder So-and-So, Theologian Dr. So-and-So, etc. – to back up our own twisted reasoning based on some misunderstood fragment of Scripture or Tradition, in order to justify our lack of integrity.

How do we avoid being Sadducees and become – or stay – Christians? Let us undertake a short list:

Pray earnestly, daily, for the Lord to reveal to us the extent of our own blindness and proud self-reliance. To motivate this prayer, read chapters two, three, and four of Unseen Warfare, an essential volume for your Orthodox bookshelf which you should acquire if you do not own it already. The early chapters on the absolute necessity of giving up self-reliance and placing all of our hope in God could be re-read with profit frequently throughout the year.                                                                                                                                          

Read and re-read our recent trustworthy Orthodox writers in order to make sense of the kaleidoscopically fragmenting and re-forming ecclesiastical landscape. For example, we should read and periodically re-read the Sorrowful Epistles of St. Philaret the New Hiero-Confessor of the Russian Church Abroad – (http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/sorrow.aspx and http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/sorrow2.aspx) – and Archbishop Averky’s writings on the present church situation (see  http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/keepstep.aspx). What you will find with these men, instead of the Newspeak, obfuscation, coldness, and threats of the new Sadducees of ecclesiastical officialness, is the simplicity, clarity, and life-giving warmth of evangelical love.

Remember death daily. Today or tomorrow you will face death and God’s judgment. So live with integrity today. Speak the truth, be not afraid. The Lord loves you and desires your salvation more than you do. But you have to be loyal, and you must not lie to yourself. 

O Lord, the Truth and source of all truth, glory be to Thee! O Lord, give us the light and the strength to live in truth. Amen.

Thursday of the Tenth Week of St. Matthew

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-believing-mind-thursday-of-the-tenth-week-of-matthew–50949641

In the Gospel today, we see the chief priests and Pharisees refusing to repent and, instead, hardening their hearts against the Lord:

The Lord said to the Jews which came to Him: Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them.
But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet. – St.Matthew 21: 43-46

St. Theophan the Recluse remarks that the opposition to the Gospel is always irrational:

The chief priests and Pharisees perceived that the Lord was telling parables on their account, that He was opening their eyes so that they would see the truth. But what did they do with this? They thought about how to kill the Lord. If their common sense had not been distorted by their prejudice, then even if they could not believe, as the clarity of the instruction required, they would at least have carefully considered the truth of the Savior’s words. Their prejudice pushed them onto a crooked path, and they then proved to be God-killers. It has always been this way, and it is this way now. The Germans [i.e., the liberal Scripture scholars in the German universities], and our people who have become Germanized in their mentality, immediately cry out whenever they come across a miracle in the Gospels, “Not true, not true; this did not happen and could not happen, this needs to be crossed out.” Is not this the same as killing? Look through all the books of these clever men – in none of them will you find any indication as to why they think this way. Not one of them can say anything against what the Gospel truth proves, and not one cares to comprehend the arguments which sober-minded people use to convict their falseness; they only continue insisting that [what is written] could not be, and that is why they do not believe the Gospels. And you cannot do anything with them – they are ready to defy God Himself. –  Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 164-165

St. Theophan likens the blindness of the modern skeptic to the blindness of the Pharisees, and, indeed, it is the same, arising from the same cause: pride and hardness of heart. The materialist outlook, which the humanists and liberals call “rational,” is profoundly irrational, because it cannot explain the existence of mind itself, of knowledge itself. A person would only adopt such a philosophy from the primordial Luciferian urge to pretend to be god in spite of all evidence to the contrary. The offspring of the liberals, the nihilists, are at least honest to this extent: they not only admit but revel in their irrationality, and they not only admit but revel in the fact that the only possible outcome of their philosophy is total destruction.

All of us, living as we are in an “unbelieving and perverse generation,” suffer temptations to doubt, at least now and then. We have available to us excellent works of apologetics to help us overcome this on the intellectual level. But more importantly, we must immerse ourselves in the Orthodox worldview by constant reading of Scripture, of the Lives of the Saints, and other authentic Orthodox sources; by prayer; and by being present, with attention, as at many divine services in Church as possible. Our minds have to swim, as it were, in the Orthodox spiritual and mental universe, because being convinced at one point by an intellectual argument does not give us sufficient strength to stay convinced.  Our minds are naturally attracted to what they are exposed to, and our hearts follow our minds. This is simply human nature.

Such an immersion in Orthodox sources rewards us immediately with clarity of the mind and lightening of the heart. In contrast to the heavy burden of worldly thoughts and worldly subject matter,  God’s truth is the light burden that gives rest to our souls. In contrast to the mental  hell of this world’s confusion, it is Paradise before Paradise.

The next time, then, you are burdened by the world and its “news,” instead of doing something useless and destructive (like surfing to the next website in order to become more confused, helpless, and angry), open the Holy Gospel, stand in your icon corner, and start reading aloud.   Read the Life of a saint that has helped you in the past. Grab your prayer rope, take a walk, and glorify God for His beautiful creation.   We have an entire spiritual universe open to us, wider than the heavens, which no one else has. We need to show our gratitude by choosing to live in it.

16 August OS – Afterfeast of the Dormition; Feast of the Icon of the Lord “Not Made by Hands”

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Today, the sixteenth of August, we honor the Holy Mandylion, the icon “Not Made by Hands.” Here is the account of the icon’s origin taken from the Prologue from Ochrid:

     At the time when our Lord preached the Good News and healed every illness and infirmity of men, there lived in the city of Edessa on the shore of the Euphrates Prince Abgar who was completely infected with leprosy. He heard of Christ, the Healer of every pain and disease and sent an artist, Ananias, to Palestine with a letter to Christ in which he begged the Lord to come to Edessa and to cure him of leprosy. In the event that the Lord was unable to come, the prince ordered Ananias to portray His likeness and to bring it to him, believing that this likeness would be able to restore his health. The Lord answered that He was unable to come, for the time of His passion was approaching. He took a towel, wiped His face and, on the towel, His All-pure face was perfectly pictured. The Lord gave this towel to Ananias with the message that the prince will be healed by it, but not entirely, and later on, He would send him a messenger who would erase the remainder of his disease. Receiving the towel, Prince Abgar kissed it and the leprosy completely fell from his body but a little of it remained on his face. Later, the Apostle Thaddaeus, preaching the Gospel, came to Abgar and secretly healed and baptized him. The prince then destroyed the idols which stood before the gates of the city and above the gates he placed the towel with the likeness of Christ attached to wood, framed in a gold frame and adorned with pearls. Also, the prince wrote beneath the icon on the gates: “O Christ God, no one will be ashamed who hopes in You.” Later, one of Abgar’s great grandsons restored idolatry and the bishop of Edessa came by night and walled up that icon over the gates. Centuries then passed. During the reign of Emperor Justinian, the Persian King Chozroes attacked Edessa and the city was in great hardship. It happened that Eulabius, the Bishop of Edessa, had a vision of the All-Holy Theotokos who revealed to him the mystery of the sealed wall and the forgotten icon. The icon was discovered and, by its power, the Persian army was defeated.

This miraculous image undoubtedly served as the model for all subsequent icons of the sacred face of the Lord. Thus our iconographic tradition is based on an accurate image that Christ Himself gave us: this is what Jesus Christ looks like. This is the face of the God-Man.

When Moses spoke with God on Mt. Sinai, he asked to see God’s glory. Here is God’s answer:

And [Moses] said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And [God] said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen. – Exodus 33: 18-23

“…for there shall no man see me, and live.” “…but my face shall not be seen.”   In the Old Testament, a chosen few, such as Moses and Elias, were graced with seeing God indistinctly, His “back parts.” If they had encountered God directly, they would have been struck dead.   In the Gospel, we see a multitude of sinful men not only enabled to see God’s face, but to touch Him, to hear Him, to eat with Him and speak with Him. According to His human nature, they were even allowed to murder Him. What more can God do to show that He loves us?

Whenever our faith is weak, whenever the circumstances of life press upon us and we feel alone and helpless, whenever our spiritual life has become something theoretical and abstract, without inner warmth, without life-giving power: Let us go before the Icon of the Face of the Lord and read the Akathist to Our Lord Jesus Christ with attention.   Let us ask God Who became Incarnate for us to renew in us holy zeal and the desire to do His will.   “If you love Me,” says the Lord, “keep my commandments.” And what is the first commandment? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.”

Christ gave us this most accurate image of His Holy Face as a lasting pledge of His love for us. May it be a means of our growing in love for Him.