Orthodox Truth

Thursday of the 4th Week of St. Luke

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In today’s Gospel, Herod exhibits the vain curiosity of those who want to talk religion but do not want to live according to the demands of truth:

At that time: Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him: and he was perplexed, because that it was said of some, that John was risen from the dead; And of some, that Elias had appeared; and of others, that one of the old prophets was risen again. And Herod said, John have I beheaded: but who is this, of whom I hear such things? And he desired to see him. And the apostles, when they were returned, told him all that they had done. And he took them, and went aside privately into a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida. And the people, when they knew it, followed him: and he received them, and spake unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of healing. – Luke 9: 7-11

St. Theophan the Recluse comments on the mindset of Herod:

Hearing about the works of Christ the Savior, Herod said, “John have I beheaded; but Who is this?” And he desired to see Him. He desired to see Him and sought an opportunity for this, but was not made worthy, because he sought not unto faith and salvation, but out of empty curiosity. Inquisitiveness is the tickling of the mind. Truth is not dear to inquisitiveness, but news is, especially sensational news. That is why it is not satisfied with the truth itself, but seeks something extraordinary in it. When it has contrived something extraordinary, it stops there and attracts other people to it.   – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 227

There is a great difference between the desire for truth and empty curiosity. The desire for truth is a profound longing planted in the soul by God, and it is inseparable from the longing for justice, for the good, for doing God’s will: I seek the truth because knowing truth is a moral imperative.  I seek the truth because remaining ignorant of truth is a sin, is displeasing to God, is a socio-pathological state which hurts my neighbor, destroys my soul, and imperils my eternal destiny.  Knowing truth is what God made my mind for: it is pleasing to Him and enables me to love Him and love my neighbor as well as to attain my earthly purpose and my eternal happiness.

Pilate’s retort to Truth Incarnate when He stood before him – “What is truth?” (i.e., one cannot know the truth, truth is relative) – excuses the speaker from the task of being human.   Judas knew Who Christ was and betrayed Him. Pilate does not even get around to betraying Christ, because he does not even bother to find out Who He is.   Judas goes out with a bang, Pilate with a whimper – the result is the same.

Today everyone excuses his own and everyone else’s ignorance: no one is going to hell because, well, “He does not know any better.”   Everyone has forgotten that there is such a thing as culpable ignorance, the guilty ignorance chosen by the man who does not care to find the truth, or, having an inkling of the truth, does not want to follow it up.   The same person may be like Herod in today’s reading – he may actually enjoy talking religion. This usually entails his pontificating about things he knows very little about, concluding that all truth claims have more or less the same value, and that he has the moral and intellectual high ground because he is a relativist.   A sorry spectacle: A man who has made himself stupid on purpose in order to avoid the pain of intellectual, spiritual, and moral struggle. He prides himself on having a permanently open mind, but the problem with having an always-open mind is like that of having an always-open mouth: unless you close it on something, you will starve.

How can we flee the vain curiosity we see in Herod and attain the love of truth we see in the saints?   Here are three steps we can take:

First: Pray earnestly for the love of the truth, for ourselves and for others.   We should weep over the indifference to truth we see everywhere, for the vacuity and idiocy of 99% of contemporary thought, speech, and writing.   We need to become interior martyrs for truth, with constant suffering over the darkness of men’s minds.   We should hurt over it. We need to pray for this grace.

Second: Stop being information junkies. Remember: information is not truth; it’s just stuff. Today’s information technology has enabled an entire way of life based on distraction, which is fatal to coherent thought, much less accurate rational and intuitive philosophy and theology, and therefore our first step has to lie in radically disciplining our use of the Internet.  Look at it this way: “Alright, my work may require x amount of time on the Internet. Beyond that, I will be on it x amount of time at y time of day.   I will use it to find things I need or talk to people I need to talk to, but I will not live in it.   The real world is the visible world around me and the invisible world of the soul. I will choose to spend my time in the real world as much as possible.”     The Internet is not the real world; at best it simulates the real world, and the accuracy of the simulation is questionable. It is a tool we use, not an alternative universe to move into because we do not like the world we live in. It is understandable that Orthodox Christians who are isolated and spiritually lonely will use this powerful tool to communicate with the like-minded (and even to listen to talks like this one!), but it’s all too easy to leave a healthy and refreshing conversation or video and then, click, in less than a second you are looking at images or words that are poison for the soul. We must beware.  Always make your Cross before you go on the Internet.   Always have an icon nearby that you can look at periodically, to help you guard your mind. 

Third: Spend time reading books. I know that this sounds radical, perhaps even subversive, but I highly recommend it. Pick one good book of Orthodox spiritual reading and another good book about something real – serious history or literature or science, etc. – and put in x hours (or minutes…just get started!) reading them.

At one point in their lives, both Herod and Pilate had Truth Incarnate standing before them, and they could not see, because they did not care. Let us care to the point where it hurts and cry out to the Lord to enlighten our darkness.

Wednesday of the 4th Week of St. Luke

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In today’s Gospel, the disciples have a close brush with death and experience their complete dependence on the Master:

At that time: Jesus went into a ship with his disciples: and he said unto them, Let us go over unto the other side of the lake. And they launched forth. But as they sailed he fell asleep: and there came down a storm of wind on the lake; and they were filled with water, and were in jeopardy. And they came to him, and awoke him, saying, Master, master, we perish. Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there was a calm. And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him. – Luke 8: 22-25

St. Theophan the Recluse takes the disciples’ experience as a reminder that we should daily and hourly remember death:

When they boarded the ship to sail to the other side of the lake, did the Apostles think that they would meet with a tempest and expose their lives to danger? Meanwhile, a tempest suddenly arose and they did not expect to remain alive. Such is the path of our life! You do not know how or from where danger will sweep in, capable of destroying us. Air, water, fire, beasts, man, a bird, a house – in a word, everything around us – could suddenly be transformed into a weapon for our death. From this comes a law: live in such a way that every minute you are ready to meet death, and fearlessly enter into its realm. This minute you are alive, but who knows whether you will be alive the next? Keep yourself according to this thought. Do everything you have to, according to the routines of your life, but in no way forget that you could immediately move to a land from which there is no return. Not remembering this will not postpone the appointed hour, and deliberately banishing this crucial change from your thoughts will not lessen the eternal meaning of what will happen after it. Commit your life and everything in it into God’s hands. Spend hour after hour with the thought that each hour is the last. From this the number of empty pleasures will decrease, while at death this deprivation will be immeasurably recompensed with a joy that has no equal among the joys of life. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 226-227

Recall that all of our spiritual problems come from pride, the primordial delusion that we are in charge of everything, that we are the makers of our own existence, and that somehow we can preserve ourselves indefinitely if only we are clever and powerful enough.   We forget that we have a Creator, that we are entirely contingent beings, and that without His upholding us in existence we would return immediately to the abyss of non-being from which we came. Were you born 15, 45, 75, or perhaps 105 years ago?  That number of years plus nine months is all that separates you from the realm of absolute non-existence. Now put that number of years next to the 7,500+ years since the Creation. Put 7,500 years next to the immeasurably vast aeons of the angelic universe. Put that next to eternity.   Think about it.

One mark of the spiritual poverty of contemporary Christianity is that the most fundamental spiritual exercises known to our forebears, including the unlettered ones, have become utterly foreign to us.   One of these essential practices is the constant remembrance of death.   For the Christian, this does not produce gloom and depression but rather the opposite: joy, spiritual freedom, and hope in the life to come; not, however, without sobriety regarding one’s spiritual state and constantly striving in repentance, abiding in humble self-reproach.

The constant remembrance of death, yoked with a pure conscience, opens the inexhaustible wellspring of courage, a virtue noticeably absent from Christian life today.   Everyone grows calculating and cold, holding something back; it is rare to see the childlike, self-forgetting zeal of the martyrs and ascetics of old, to see a David dancing before the Ark or a Peter impulsively setting out to walk on the water. Our fathers of old were kings, warriors, monks, scholars, artists, craftsmen, and rugged men of the wilderness and of the soil, while we have become gadget minders, money-counters, clock-punchers, paper-pushers, and screen-watchers. This cosseted artificial life creates an illusion of comfort and even immortality. We forget that only a life lived as an adventure full of risk is worth living; we forget that the final adventure of death awaits every man, whether he be hero or coward. We shall die nonetheless.

We cannot change our circumstances, at least not much. But we can change ourselves. Let us be warriors of the spirit, forgetting our absurd, egotistical demands for guaranteed security, comfort, and entertainment, and setting out on the beautiful adventure of knights errant for Christ.   Remembering death at every moment, let us scorn the illusion of happiness promised by the usurious elite to their technocratic hirelings and their slaves, the mindless thumb-suckers and hollow men of the New Normal, and let us freely confess our Faith, practice the virtues, and rejoice in being regarded as fools by the world.   We have nothing permanent to lose, except for an eternity in hell with Satan and his angels. We have everything permanent to gain: eternal rejoicing at the victory banquet of our Mighty Warrior and Victorious King.

To Him be the glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto ages of ages.  Amen. 

Tuesday of the 4th Week of St. Luke

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In today’s Gospel, we see the holy women who accompanied the Lord in His preaching journeys ministering to Him “…of their substance.”

And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, And Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance. – Luke 8: 1-3

“…of their substance” means that the material resources they helped Christ with – time and work, food, clothing, money, etc. – were things that they themselves really needed for their families and for themselves, not surplus, not what was left over after their needs were met.   They were making real sacrifices. After they had met Christ, their priorities became radically different from before, and they put caring for Him and enabling Him to spread the Gospel over other priorities.

The Lord Jesus was of the tribe of Judah, not of the tribe of Levi, who, being the priests of the Mosaic covenant, were supported by tithes from the other tribes, which freed them to perform the complex and time-consuming duties of the Old Testament worship. Until His Baptism in the Jordan and beginning His preaching at age 30, the Lord had earned His living like everyone else, working in the family trade – recall, the people in Nazareth knew Him as “Joseph the carpenter’s son.” When He began preaching, however, He left all earthly work behind completely and dedicated Himself entirely to announcing the Gospel, the coming of the Kingdom of God. When He called His disciples, both men and women, it compelled them so powerfully that they realized that they either had to drop everything and preach the Gospel, like the Apostles, or support those who were doing so “…of their substance.” By their material sacrifice, they were enabling the spread of the Kingdom of God and would thereby inherit that Kingdom.

Today’s economy is tough on people who are honest and do not buy into the corruption at the top of the “food chain” or the welfare dependency at the bottom.   The government and corporate crooks who run the rigged game of contemporary society are making sure that it will be increasingly difficult to get ahead or even tread water without prostituting yourself to something inherently evil, so that honest and God-fearing people will be tempted to despair.   In this setting, it is tempting to give up making material sacrifices for the mission of the Church, because we feel that we face an uncertain material future and therefore cannot spend on anything extra.

The reality, however, is that the Church is not the extra thing – it is the most essential thing. It has become obvious that from now on serious Christians will be increasingly marginalized in the rat race.   So, who wants to be a rat, anyway?   We may as well radicalize our priorities and life choices, and go for the crown of a pure confession and a Gospel life.   St. Paul says in Philippians 3:14: ” I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”   Let us press forward with him, through the prayers of the Holy Myrrhbearing Women who served the Lord and of all the saints.

10 October OS – Venerable Fathers of Optina

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Today, the tenth of October on the Orthodox calendar, is the feast of the Venerable Fathers of Optina, a golden chain of God-bearing elders who flourished in Optina Monastery in Russia from the early 19th century until the monastery was closed by the atheist revolutionaries in 1928.   They are saints newly revealed for the consolation and edification of the universal Church of the latter times, and by their prayers and holy teaching we can learn to travel the path of humility and the hidden life in Christ, in order to tread the extremely narrow way, difficult to discern, leading us to salvation in this period of the Church’s history, when spiritual delusion is everywhere, those who are publicized as God-bearing elders are not, and those who are genuine spiritual guides hide themselves and offer counsel with reluctance, knowing their own capacity for delusion. We are thrown back upon the expedient of reading books and leading a life of mutual counsel and support, the way of life that St. Ignaty Brianchaninov, a spiritual offspring of Optina Elder Leonid, recommends as the safe path in these latter days. In such a situation, the lives and counsels of very recent true elders is a precious treasure.

The reading from the Holy Gospel for Matins of a monastic saint, read today in those churches celebrating services for the Optina fathers, is Matthew 11: 27-30.

The Lord said to His disciples: All things are given unto Me by My Father. And no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from Me that I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid, in his commentary on St. Matthew, answers the question, “What is the yoke of Christ?” thus:

The yoke of Christ is humility and meekness. For he who humbles himself before all men has rest and remains untroubled; but he who is vainglorious and arrogant is ever encompassed by troubles as he does not wish to be less than anyone but is always thinking how to be esteemed more highly and how to defeat his enemies. Therefore the yoke of Christ, which is humility, is light, for it is easier for our lowly nature to be humbled than to be exalted. But all the commandments of Christ are also called a yoke, and they are light because of the reward to come, even though for a time they appear heavy. – The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, by Blessed Theophylact (Chrysostom Press 1992)

The yoke of Christ, then, can be understood as being humility and can also be understood as being the commandments of the Gospel.   The two, of course, are intimately related: We attempt to carry out the Gospel commands, and we find that by our own power we cannot. This realization brings on a deeper understanding of ourselves – that we are dust and ashes, that all is given by God and we have nothing of ourselves – and thereby to humility. Once we give up the heavy burden of the illusion of self-sufficiency and take on ourselves the light yoke of humility, all goes well.   There will be many external trials and temptations – indeed these normally increase for those who attempt to follow the Gospel – but within we are at peace.

When reading the counsels of the Optina elders, one is struck by the constantly recurring themes of humbling oneself, giving up one’s self-will, and total reliance on God. These men had the prophetic spirit, and they knew that terrible times lay ahead for the Church.   They knew that only the most profound humility would carry the faithful through the trials that were shortly to befall. Their entire century-long ministry can be seen as a catechesis preparing an entire people for martyrdom.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the Optina fathers, a word of counsel from the Elder Nikon, a confessor for the Faith persecuted by the Bolsheviks as well as a monastic saint (he died prematurely from the sufferings of imprisonment and exile, in 1931, at the age of 43):

One must always pray that the Lord will show him the way…Let us pray to the Lord that He will save us and will come to our aid in times of sorrow and need. I see no other refuge or hope. Human solutions are vain and mistaken. When you have to endure something which is very difficult, but you know that it is not of your own will, you receive moral relief and peace of soul. May God’s will be done! May the Lord not discredit our faith and devotion to His will. Our only hope is in God. He is our firm foundation, for everything else is unsure. You absolutely do not know where it might be better, where it might be worse, or what to expect. May God’s will be done! Our work is to preserve ourselves in the faith, and to keep ourselves from every sin, and entrust everything else to God.   – Living Without Hypocrisy, Spiritual Counsels of the Holy Elders of Optina (Holy Trinity Monastery 2005)

“Our work is to preserve ourselves in the faith, and to keep ourselves from every sin, and entrust everything else to God.”

Amen.

The Lives of the Elders Moses and Joseph of Optina in English are published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery.  The Lives of all of the other Elders are available in English from St. Herman Press.  

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Wednesday of the 3rd Week of St. Luke

In today’s Gospel, the Lord exhorts us to match our actions to our confession of Faith in Him:

The Lord said: And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great. Now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the people, he entered into Capernaum. – Luke 6:46-7:1

If you are a sincere Orthodox Christian trying somehow to have a conscious spiritual life, these words are always hovering around you, and there is always (one hopes!) at least a slight twinge of conscience.   We know we do not fulfill Our Lord’s commandments, and yet we continue to say, “Lord, Lord.”   How can we place the house of our soul more firmly on the rock of His commandments?

The first thing to remember is that we must not stop saying, “Lord, Lord,” even though our the disposition of our hearts and our outward deeds do not live up to our words. We have to keep confessing our Faith in Jesus as our Lord and God. If you say, “I do not want to live with the tension of this inconsistency which borders on hypocrisy; I cannot fulfill the Lord’s commandments and therefore I shall give up calling Him my Lord,” this does not overcome your moral failure but, on the contrary, canonizes it. It is an act of cowardice, not nobility, to give up striving because one daily fails. It is an act of courage, not hypocrisy, to repent every day and keep trying.

So here we are, still crying out “Lord, Lord,” and yet imperfectly and unsteadily fulfilling His commandments. What to do? St. Theophan the Recluse, with his unerring sense of the essential, zeroes in on the problem, which is the conversion of the heart:

“Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” Why do they call Him Lord, but do not do the Lord’s will – that is, why do they not acknowledge His lordship in their works? Because they only call with their tongue, and not with their heart. If their heart were to utter, “Lord, Thou art my Lord,” then complete readiness would abide therein to submit to the One Whom they confess as their Lord. But since this is not the case, their deeds do not match their tongues; whereas, deeds always match the heart. Well, what then – is there no use in calling “Lord, Lord”? No, that’s not it. But it is necessary to make the external word match the inner word, which is the feeling and disposition of the heart. Sit and reflect upon the Lord and upon yourself; what is the Lord and what are you? Think about what the Lord has done and still does for you, why you live, and how it will end. You will immediately come to the conviction that there is no other way than steadfastly to fulfill the Lord’s entire will. There is no other path for us. This conviction gives birth to a readiness to fulfill in deed what is expressed by the word “Lord.” With such readiness a need for help from above will be awakened, and from it the prayer: “Lord, Lord! Help me and give me strength to walk in Thy will.” And this call will be pleasing to the Lord.” – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 221

In these few words St. Theophan has laid out for us a simple and do-able plan that will lead to our salvation:

1. Sit for a bit and reflect on Who God is and who you are. Think about all that He has done for you: He brought you into existence; without Him you would not exist.   He became a man and died for you.
2. You will realize quickly that you depend on Him for everything, that you owe Him everything, and that you must do exactly what He wants at all times, or you will perish.
3. Cry out to Him and beg Him for help to know and to do His will.

The saint concludes, “And this call will be pleasing to the Lord.” In other words, by the very act of asking Him to help us do His will, we are already doing His will. We are acknowledging His lordship over our lives, admitting our inability to do His will, showing our utter dependence on Him, and fulfilling His commandment to pray and ask Him for that which we need. We have begun to pray from the heart, which is man’s essential function, and therefore at one stroke we have begun to do God’s will in the most essential way.

If we keep at it, then little by little our actions will match our words, because now our words will be coming from the heart and therefore our own created energies will be focused on what needs to be done instead of being scattered in the pursuit of myriad inessentials, and we will simultaneously and directly be invoking the power of God, and therefore His divine and uncreated energies will accomplish what our poor strength cannot do.

Here indeed is in brief a program for the Christian life.

Thursday of the 2nd Week of St. Luke

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In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ bequeaths to us His divinely authoritative example of keeping vigil at night in prayer: 

And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles; Simon (whom he also named Peter), and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotes, And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor. And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; And they that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed.

And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all. – Luke 6: 12 – 19 

Following His all-night vigil, the Lord uses His day profitably, making all-wise decisions in His choice of the great twelve apostles, healing the sick, and exorcising demons.   As God, of course He has infinite divine power to perform these actions.   But He performs  them also as the New Adam, demonstrating to us that His saints, conformed to His likeness, receive this same power to perform the deeds of God.  Indeed, in His sublime discourse on the night before He died, Christ tells the disciples that they will perform even greater miracles than He: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father (John 14: 12).”  By going unto His Father in the Ascension and sending down the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, the Lord enabled them, and enables the saints of every generation, to multiply indefinitely and innumerably His mighty works upon earth.   But in order to do this, they must by grace be conformed to His likeness, through the ascetical, liturgical, and mysteriological life of the Church, animated by the All-Holy Spirit.  One key ingredient of this life is keeping vigil at night in prayer.   

St. Theophan the Recluse exhorts all of us, including those not living in monasteries, to undertake this God-pleasing labor:  

“And He continued all night in prayer to God.” Here is the foundation and beginning of Christian all-night Vigils. Prayerful ardor chases away sleep, and exhilaration of the spirit does not allow one to notice the passing of time. True men of prayer do not notice this; it seems to them that they had just begun to pray, and meanwhile day has already appeared. But until one reaches such perfection, he must take on the labour of vigils. Solitaries have borne this and bear it; cenobitic monastics have borne this and bear it; reverent and God-fearing laypeople have borne this and bear it. But though vigil comes with difficulty, its fruit remains in the soul, directly and constantly present—tranquility of soul and contrition, along with weakening and exhaustion of the body. It is a state very valuable for those who are zealous about prospering in the spirit! That is why in places where vigils are established (as on Mt. Athos), they do not want to give them up. Everyone realizes how difficult it is, but nobody has a desire to rescind this order, for the sake of the profit which the soul receives from vigils. Sleep, more than anything, relaxes and feeds the flesh; vigils, more than anything, humble it. One who has enough sleep is burdened by spiritual deeds and is cold towards them; he who is vigilant is quick in movement, like a gazelle, and burns in the spirit. If the flesh, like a slave, must be taught to be good, there is no better way to succeed in this than through frequent vigils. Here the flesh fully feels the power of the spirit over it, and learns to submit to it; while the spirit acquires the habit of reigning over the flesh. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 216 – 217 

It comforts us to know that even in our day there are monasteries where the monks or nuns rise long before dawn to chant the Midnight Office and Matins. Realizing what great benefit we derive from their prayers and being grateful for how much they struggle for our sake should motivate us to join them in their struggles, at least in our own little way.   Of course, we cannot advance from keeping no vigil at all to keeping long night vigils in prayer, but we can make a start by staying up later or getting up earlier to pray.  One could begin by sacrificing one-half hour of one’s sleep, either at the end or the beginning of the day, to keep watch with the Lord.  The quiet and dark of the night is exquisitely suited for prayer, and once one has begun to taste the joy of prayer at this time, one is indeed loathe ever to give it up, as St. Theophan says.  

Besides voluntary vigils, involuntary vigil forces itself on parents with small children, those who suffer from insomnia, and those whose work calls upon them either to work through the night or to be on call for the needs of others.   When we find ourselves in these situations, we can turn our sleeplessness to good use by prayer.   

There are at least two ways in which those living today especially benefit from keeping night vigil:  Relief from daily confusions and a healthy expectation of the coming of the Lord.   Our day is filled with confusion resulting from constant demands and sources of distraction, and this depresses and deadens the soul.    The peace and quiet of the night provide a time when we can put aside all the cares of the day and re-focus the soul on the One Thing Needed.   Night vigil also forms the soul in a correct understanding of and a vigilant attitude towards the end of one’s life, either at the hour of death or at the Second Coming of Christ. This provides a corrective to two spiritual diseases of our time: Avoidance of the reality of death and God’s judgment, which results in the failure to repent and prepare for death, and the prevalent confusion and agitation about the possible advent of Antichrist and the end of the world.  We keep vigil precisely because we consciously await the Lord’s coming in repentance, with understanding, and we hope that by a vigilant life we will inherit the joy of the five wise virgins of the Gospel.  

Most of us know the Bridegroom Troparion that we chant at Matins on the first three days of Holy Week.  Many, perhaps, do not know that we also recite it every weekday at the Midnight Office.   Its sobering words should accompany us throughout the year:  

Behold, the Bridegroom cometh in the middle of the night, and blessed is that servant whom He shall find watching; and again unworthy is he whom He shall find heedless.   Beware, therefore, O my soul, lest thou be borne down with sleep, lest thou be given up to death, and be shut out from the Kingdom.  But rather rouse thyself and cry:  Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou, O our God; through the Theotokos, have mercy on us. 

Amen. 

Wednesday of the Second Week of St. Luke

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The reading today for the Holy Gospel, according to the daily cycle, is Luke 5:33-39.

At that time, the Pharisees came to Jesus and said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink? And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

Fasting is good, of course – the Lord does not deny that. But there is a time for fasting, and a time for not fasting. During His time on earth, the disciples did not fast, for He was with them. After His Ascension, they began to fast, to keep watch for His Second Coming. And so we still do today.

St. Theophan the Recluse derives a general lesson for us: that all good works must be practiced with discretion, and in harmony with each other:

It is unbecoming for the children of the bridechamber to fast while the bridegroom is with them, said the Lord, and thus He pronounced the law that even with virtues and spiritual endeavors everything has its place and time. And this is so crucial that an untimely and inappropriate deed loses its value, either entirely, or in part. The Lord arranged everything in visible nature with measure, weight, and number. He also wants everything in the moral realm to be decent and in order (cf. I Cor. 14:40). Inner decency consists in a joining of each virtue with all the virtues in conjunction, or a harmony of virtues, so that none stand out needlessly, but all are in accord, like voices in a choir. Outward decency gives each deed its place, time, and other connections. When all of this is properly arranged, it is like a beautiful lady dressed in beautiful clothes. Virtue which is decent both inwardly and outwardly is desirable. It is Christian good sense that makes it this way. With elders it is discernment acquired through experience and the sensible examination of the Lives of the saints in the light of the word of God. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 215-216

How does one acquire discretion, the ability to make prudent choices and wisely to order the priorities and activities of one’s life?   Both in the specifically spiritual arena of our life – our prayers, fasting, preparing for confession and Holy Communion, Church attendance, etc. – and in our practical daily lives, we often experience that things are out of joint.   We do not know what to put first, second, and third. We start new projects or activities with enthusiasm and do not finish them.   We emphasize one aspect of life to the exclusion of others, and life becomes unbalanced. And so forth.

There are countless self-help books from secular writers about prioritizing, planning, and organizing. But what we need is deeper: the profound wisdom by which we know intuitively what to do and when to do it; to keep in mind always that which is most important; to be attentive and conscious in our daily activities and not to go on auto-pilot. If we are in order inwardly, whatever outward order needed will naturally arise.

The first step in acquiring discretion is the same as the first step in acquiring all spiritual gifts: We must ask for it!   Let us not fail each day to begin our day with prayer, and as part of our prayers, to ask the Lord to give us prudence, discernment, and practical wisdom to order our lives aright inwardly and outwardly. We must ask the Lord to show us the way, to give us the light of understanding His holy will, and the resolve to do His will come what may.

Another simple step is to write down our core duties, first spiritual duties and then practical ones, and ask if we are doing them.   Resolving to say 1000 Jesus Prayers on the prayer rope every day does not make sense if, so far, we have failed to say five minutes of morning prayers in the morning.   Resolving to help the poor in a faraway country does not make sense if we are not helping our relatives and our fellow parishioners. We need to make a short list of the ABC duties of our Orthodox life, resolve to fulfill them, and ask God’s help to do so.

Another simple step is to seek counsel.   There may be ways in which our life is out of balance, in which we are being imprudent, that we cannot see ourselves, but that others who love us and understand us can see. Let us not forget to seek counsel from our priest and from the one or two very trusted and close spiritual friends upon whom we can truly rely.

May Christ, the Wisdom of God, bestow upon us His divine understanding, so that our hearts will sense naturally what to do and when to do it, both inwardly and outwardly.

Tuesday of the 2nd Week of St. Luke

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In today’s Gospel, the Lord works a miracle – the healing of a leper – and then immediately withdraws into the wilderness for prayer:

At that time, when Jesus was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed. – Luke 5: 12-16

A wonderful thing about the four Gospels is their diversity in unity.   They are all testifying to the same reality – the coming of the God-Man into the world, His real historical presence, His miracles, His teaching, His death, resurrection, and ascension – but each Gospel has its own emphases and peculiarities. Divinely inspired, each one is yet intensely human, reflecting the peculiar gifts of soul of the real man who wrote it.   St. John’s Gospel, of course, is really different – it soars above the other three in its sublime theology and mystical content. The other three are called the Synoptic Gospels, because they see the events described with “one eye” or a “shared vision,” a “seeing together with” (synopsis); they are quite similar.   Yet each one of them has its own beauties and identifying characteristics.

St. Luke delights to record the memory of the Lord Jesus Christ at prayer, as he does, for example, at the end of today’s reading.   The most striking instance occurs in his account of the Transfiguration: “And it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering (Luke 9: 28-29).” As God, Jesus opens the eyes of Peter, James, and John to see the uncreated light of His Divinity shining through His holy Humanity. As a man, as the Man, the New Adam, this occurs while He is really and truly praying, praying as no man ever did before or since.

Christ really did pray while He was on earth. He prayed because He really was a man, and human beings pray. As a matter of fact, it is the pre-eminent and most important thing we do; it is what God made us for. As the New Adam, Our Lord is praying as a man, for He came not only to show us Who God really is, but He also came to show us what a human being really is. He made our First Parents to talk with Him in Paradise.   He came as a man to restore us to Paradise, so we could talk with Him forever.   What could be better than that?

The upshot of all this is that we need to take our prayer life seriously, more seriously than any other activity of our lives. How can we start or re-start our habit of daily prayer, if we have fallen off?   There are numerous good books out there: for exampe, one would do well to begin with the chapters on prayer in The Arena by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov and the chapters on prayer in Unseen Warfare, written by St. Theophan the Recluse.   In the shadow of these spiritual giants, I make bold to offer a little story from my own experience, given below.

HOW DO WE ACQUIRE THE HABIT OF DAILY PRAYER?

Prayer is the Essence of Christian Life

Prayer is the single most important activity of the Christian’s daily life, and it is also the one we neglect or resist the most. This is why:

Prayer is what God created us for; that is, He created us to be always in loving communion and communication with Him. The fundamental capacity for this prayerful communion was disabled by the sin of our first parents and this disability is passed on to every human being. Now, by means of Holy Baptism and the other Holy Mysteries, we receive the grace of God to acquire this saving, ongoing relationship with God. But the fallen nature is still fighting us, and the demons fight us, and the world fights us; prayer is the last thing they want us to do. So we struggle, even to pray for a short time.

We must, however, establish a daily habit of prayer, in order to have any kind of real relationship with God. But how? I wish to present a story from my own experience, in order to explain a simple yet powerful means to acquire the daily habit of prayer:

An Instructive Story: Learning How to Pray

I will never forget the night I learned how to establish a daily habit of prayer. It seems odd that it should come only after six years of being a priest, but there you are.

My spiritual father then was an elderly and somewhat austere Russian bishop who had the reputation for eating priests for dinner. I had decided that I needed whipping into shape and therefore asked him to take me on. Since he lived several states away, we agreed that I would write him my confessions in letters, and, after reading them, he would call me on the telephone. What follows is the story of his response to my first confession.

Several troubling sins had never ceased bothering me, despite being confessed here and there to various priests. I had never actually laid them all out to a single confessor at one time and therefore thought it worth the try to tell them all to Vladika. I wrote the letter with great trepidation – I knew his scary reputation and expected that he would give me a good thrashing, either for the sins themselves or for not trusting in God’s forgiveness and thus confessing anew previously confessed sins. When the phone rang that night and my wife called down, “Dear, it’s Vladika ________!” I trudged to our home telephone like a condemned man to the scaffold.

His voice came on, very soft. I will not attempt to reproduce his actual speech here, only the content of what he said. Imagine a calm, grandfatherly voice with a soft Russian accent, speaking with the precision of an Oxford don.

“ Ah, is this Fr. Steven?”

“ Yes, Vladika. Bless.”

“ Fr. Steven, I have read your letter very carefully,” (He would! I thought), “and I want to teach you something.”

Teach me something? What? I thought he was calling to strip me naked, crush me, and throw the remains to the beasts of the field and the birds of the air.

“ I want to teach you how to find consolation in prayer.”

At the time, my only feeling was one of overwhelming relief. Later, I realized that it was one of the chief moments in my life. This was a man who meant business. He did not moralize, did not criticize, did not justify this and condemn that. He taught me what I needed to do in order not only not to sin, but also not even want to sin. If the Lord Jesus dwells in the heart through prayer, we are in Paradise, and we do not want to leave.

What did he teach me?

“ The Holy Fathers, and most recently the Optina Elders, teach us that the secret to consolation in prayer is regularity and the struggle for attention. How long is your evening prayer rule?”

“ A half-hour, Vladika.”

“ Too long.”

Too long! I thought, astounded. What kind of a bishop is this?

“ You wander in your thoughts and finish your rule only with difficulty. You actually omit it many evenings and go to bed without prayer. You make no progress. Is this not so?”

“ Yes, Vladika.”

“ I want you to do exactly what I say and do not deviate.”

“ Yes, Vladika.”

“ The important thing is not how many prayers you read or which prayers you read, but the amount of time that you pray every day, that you always devote this amount of time every day without fail, and that you struggle for attention. I want you to start with ten minutes – no more, no less. Set an alarm clock or timer for ten minutes, so that you do not have to look at the clock. Read the appointed evening prayers or the Psalter or an akathist. When the timer goes off, stop. While you are reading, your mind will wander, perhaps five to ten times per minute. Each time, you must force your mind back to the words of the prayers. You must do this without fail.”

“ Yes, Vladika.”

“ As time goes on, if you are regular in performing this rule, and if you struggle for attention, you will naturally gain stability in performing it, and you will gradually desire to add time to your prayer. When you desire to keep praying, keep praying as long as you wish that day, but do not yet add the time to your rule. When you feel this desire daily for several weeks, then you may add another five minutes to your rule. Once you add time, however, you must never subtract it. This is why the desire must be tested, not obeyed immediately. After awhile, your prayer time will grow, you will perceive that this prayer is a great consolation, and you will never want to give it up. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Vladika.”

That was it.

My experience before and after this great event in my life is that people who are wavering and confused in their faith are not praying regularly or properly. Their souls are confused because the light of the soul, the noetic mirror of the spiritual intellect, is darkened, and this darkness is darkness indeed. A person in this state will wander forever in the labyrinth of opinion, attraction, and emotion, never finding rest. He will eventually compromise, distort, or lose his faith, because he has no inner experience corresponding to that faith’s dogmatic and moral teachings. On the other hand, one who is praying regularly and in the right manner receives great firmness in his faith, stability of life, and inner calmness. He has a firm foundation for the activities of daily life and for the struggle for salvation.

If prayer is right, everything is right, for prayer will let nothing go wrong.

Saturday of the 14th week of Matthew

In today’s Gospel, the Lord instructs his disciples concerning the humility and service that are the hallmarks of a true Christian:

Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. – Matthew 23: 1-12

St. Theophan the Recluse comments, “As the Lord tells us, greatness is measured not by birth, not by power, not by the measure of abilities and resources, but by the ability to provide good for others.” Paradoxically, when we forget about ourselves and are concerned only to please God and to serve others, we become our true selves. This is true greatness: to become that which God intends one to be.  Usually this occurs in obscurity:  very few men who are great in the eyes of the world have saved their souls. 

One of the few movies to come out of Hollywood that inspire admiration for genuine virtue is A Man for All Seasons, which – to emphasize how much things have changed in the past 50 years – actually won the Academy Award for best picture in 1966. The playwright and screenplay writer, Robert Bolt, did not aim at portraying the protagonist, Sir Thomas More, as a Roman Catholic saint – Bolt was not a believer – but simply as a courageous man who had the integrity to suffer for his convictions.  And it is not only More’s final sacrifice that conveys the moral message of the play: Several scenes and dialogues that lead up to the final crisis provide a short dramatized catechism in fundamental human integrity. 

At one point early in the story More is concerned that his young admirer Richard Rich will lose his soul by pursuing fame and power at the king’s court, and he tries to save him from the temptations of high office by offering him a position as a teacher at a new school which More has helped to found.  Rich is disappointed, knowing that More – at the time a member of the king’s Privy Council and soon to be Chancellor of England – could instead help him to find a place at court. Their exchange ends like this: 

More: Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.

Rich: If I was, who would know it?

More: You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.

“You; your pupils; your friends; God.”  In this age of instant pseudo-greatness via mass media, everyone wants to be a “star.”  Yet the reality is that truly great people are usually known only to God and a few others.  The exception is the few better-known saints, a handful out of all the saints who have lived. And how many people today even know about them?

How do we attain to this kind of greatness: the greatness of authentic charity and self-forgetfulness?   Let us begin by admitting that we often are not seeking God’s will but our own corrupt will.   Let us begin each day by praying, “O Lord, today let me do Thy holy will.”   Then we must admit that we do not see ourselves as we truly are. Let us pray, “O Lord, reveal to me my sins and failings; show me how ego-centric I really am.”   Let us practice self-forgetfulness through two great activities: gratitude to God and service to others. Ingratitude, the mark of an immature and selfish soul, leads inevitably to despondency, depression, and even despair.   Let us force ourselves to thank God constantly for all that He is, for all that He has done for us, and for every single circumstance of our lives, especially the unpleasant ones.   Let us seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit as to what service we must render to others and how we should render it, beginning with our obvious duties according to our state of life, and proceeding to service to the Church and to those around us, as God reveals to us in prayer and the circumstances of life, and as our father confessor blesses us.  There have been great saints who have saved a multitude of souls, but usually the number of people we ordinary Christians can honestly help without losing our own souls will be very few, and we shall not have to search them out; they will find us.

The ultimate goal of every Christian is to dwell forever in the light of the Holy Trinity. Complete self-giving, self-emptying, is an essential characteristic of the Persons of the Holy Trinity in Their relations with each other; thus God is Charity.   If we desire to belong to God, we have to empty ourselves, too.  We have to forget ourselves.

What freedom:  to be forgotten by the world and even by one’s own self!   This is when real life begins.

Friday of the 14th week of Matthew

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And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further? As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly.  And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat. And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. – Mark 5:22-24, 5:35 – 6:1

“And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat.”  Immediately after working this great miracle, the Lord  thinks of the child’s simple needs: give her something to eat.   He commands this simple thing just as He commanded her soul to return to her body.   For Him, both are equally easy.

Why did He tell the witnesses of this great wonder to tell no one what had happened? Obviously the word would get out: First century Galilee must have been a very small world, indeed. No doubt even the big people up in Jerusalem must have gotten word through the invisible gossip telegraph within the week. Of course, the Lord had His reasons: He always did and always does. He commanded silence regarding this miracle in order to give us an example of humility, that we should not seek the praise of men.

St. Theophan the Recluse comments as follows:

Having resurrected the daughter of Jairus, the Lord commanded her parents strictly, that no man should know it. Thus are we commanded: do not seek glory, and do not train your ear for human praise, even if your deeds are of such a nature that it is impossible to hide them. Do what the fear of God and your conscience urge you to do, and as to what people say, act as though it had never been said. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 187

We may often ask ourselves why we do not feel more peaceful, why we feel agitated or anxious so much of the time.   One reason is that we are always unsure of the approval of other people: “What do they think about me? Do they really love me? Do they think well of me? Are they saying bad things about me?” and so forth.   Because of our vanity – our false image of ourselves based on our own delusions and the opinions of other people – we have a restless, ceaseless hunger for praise, for approval, for the pat on the back, for the assurance that “I’m OK, You’re OK.”   Life turns into the endless search for that perfect mutual admiration society of “friends” who approve of each other and look down on those outside the group.

Peace comes only when we put aside all such concerns and follow those two completely reliable guides to action mentioned by St. Theophan: the fear of God and conscience.   One of the Desert Fathers said that one will have no peace until one realizes that in all the universe there is only one’s soul standing before God.   If we walk always in His presence, what need have we of the praise of men?   If we were really conscious of His presence, and really understood Who He is, and who we are, we would flee praise like fire.

Let us then, daily and frequently, beg the Lord, “Deliver me from vanity! Let me seek Thine approval alone!”   The generous Lord, Who is waiting to give the truly good things to those who ask Him, will no doubt hear our prayer in good time, and He will deliver us from this passion of vanity.   The world will look much different then, and we will begin to understand things as they really are. Losing one’s illusions is like pulling out a rotten tooth: it hurts while it is going on, but there is great relief afterwards.

O Lord, deliver us from vanity and all delusion! Grant us to know ourselves as we really are, to be grateful to Thee, and desire to please Thee alone! Give us the peace which Thou alone can give, and which the world cannot take away! Amen.