by Father James Lloyd, CSP

Since I was a mere stripling of fifteen or so, I have been delighted with Hilaire¹ Belloc’s little ditty: Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine/ there’s dancing and laughter and good red wine/ at least I have always found it so/ Benedicamus Domino. My delight stems, I think, from my deep seated Catholic sense of the essential goodness of the material and its intended synthesis with the spiritual. I believe that both matter and spirit are basically good. My Scriptural background does clearly indicate that God looked upon what He had done and said “It is very good.” (Gen.1, 31). This certainly includes “matter”, that which we call the material.

Catholics believe that evil often surfaces, not from the material itself, but from the misuse and misdirection of “things” thus differing from the plan of the Creator. The dour, grim, unsmiling deviation which one sometimes finds in neurotic Catholics (and certainly in those other religions which doggedly chase witches, drunks and gamblers who smoke) is hardly within our real tradition. It is not alcohol, betting, sex or food, per se, which are intrinsically evil. It is the way we use them which causes departure from the Lord. Drunkenness, gluttony, avarice, lust, covetousness are all offenses before God, caused not by things but by the perverse will of the human being. However and obviously, there is a profound tendency in all of us to misuse the gifts of the earth.

In theological circles this tendency is called “Original sin.” An adult spiritual life, seeking healthy balance, contains and controls such a tendency. The Blessed Apostle Paul recommends a little wine for the sake of the stomach. We teach that Sexual love between a husband and wife is holy and righteously to be enjoyed. This is Incarnational Theology or the role of the physical in the Great Plan of God. Limited betting at the Racetrack, if it does no injustice to others, can be a legitimate form of recreation and appropriate enjoyment. Eating while essential for the survival of the human being, can be a source of exquisite pleasure, enjoyment and, I argue, holiness.

With such a Catholic/Belloc conscience and a healthy stomach, I enjoy and relish (I hope appropriately), eating, especially at eventide, in restaurants of almost any stripe: Italian, Spanish, French, American, Portuguese, Chinese, Irish, Turkish, Moroccan, Mexican and others. Eating in restaurants for me usually is a fulfilling and delightful experience. To be with good friends whose conversation and company I enjoy while savoring fresh, well prepared food in a charming spot — pampered by waiters, preferably with European accents and manners — this suffuses me with a warm and expansive gratitude. Gratitude to Whom? That’s easy. To the Lord God Himself. Such eating brings me closer to God rather than the opposite.

When I am enjoying a pungent dish of escargots with good friends, I can easily overlook what otherwise might be a source of annoyance (or even uncharity) for me. The guys who eat with their baseball caps on or the screaming babies whose parents seem unconcerned, or the loudmouth who spouts ignorant slurs on my Church, are all “ignorable” in the flush of my God-given enjoyment. I think this applies even to the Hot Shot who wears his cap backwards with the peak scratching the nape of his neck! When a glass of red wine courses through my veins, when my friends and I publicly ask God’s blessing on our fun and companionship, when I eat good food, when I feel the excitement of open and spirited conversation, my being is drawn to the loving Father, Who is God, for providing such bounty to my life. Recently, at a charming Italian restaurant in New York’s Theatre district, I had a wonderful dinner with a Catholic family. We laughed and shouted and reached Cloud 9. We kidded with the waiters. We drank wine. We ate heartily. We all held hands in a circle and acknowledged Our Lord and Master to the surprise and, I suspect, the envy, of other diners. This was Community and the fusion of the spiritual and the material at its best! This was also the Catholicism of which Belloc writes.

It was the heretical Manicheans who saw Matter as intrinsically evil, not authentic Catholics. But how many good and intelligent persons have been seduced by this and similar errors! It was so with the great St. Augustine and the brilliant Rene Descartes with his Cartesian “split” between the spiritual and the material!! Both were misled to such a philosophic false extreme.

The Catholic Church has always, as a Church, respected the material. There are innumerable blessings of the “physical”. Note the blessings for crops, animals, automobiles, marriage beds, airplanes, corpses, and all appropriate² material things. We have the blessing “Ad Omnia” — for Everything. I consider the great Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady to be a triumphant validation of the “material.” So holy was her body that it was not allowed by the Father to decompose. In fact, it is a Catholic belief that all dead bodies will rise again on the last day. How is that for esteeming the physical dimension of us!

The Catholic Church promotes the beautiful with unbelievably gorgeous Churches and Cathedrals, with music that lifts the soul, with paintings and sculpture, with poetry, and with liturgy which features incense, color and choreographed movement. All of it uses the physical, the material. While there have been the extremists certainly in other religions who despise matter and who lust to destroy religious art, we have had some misled Catholics who have ranted also in Christ’s own Church. We have this periodic rise of Catholic extremists who shout for “getting back to basics” while grimly missing the warmth and richness of Belloc’s Catholicism.

I remember an analogous reference to extremism by William Langland in his work Piers Plowman when he wrote of certain Jansenist nuns who “….are pure as angels but proud as devils…” Clearly, imbalance is always a danger in the spiritual and emotional life. Chastity is a jewel for loving God and, at the same time, highly congenial, not antithetical, to appropriate enjoyment in life.

I recall the wonderful book, “Keys of the Kingdom” by the Scottish physician author, A.J.Cronin. The central character, Fr. Andrew Chisolm, enthuses with his little nephew about the beautiful bounty of God in filling the lake with so many fishes for people to enjoy eating. It does appear that regardless of extreme vegetarian stances, it is the Will of the Great God that we should be delighted with Dover Sole, Red Snapper and Irish Salmon. Who would dare dispute with Jesus Who, as God, cooked fish for his followers obviously encouraging others to do likewise?

I certainly won’t but I fully intend to enthuse about my Lord. I will sing His praises and thank Him now and hopefully for all eternity. I will continue to link my pollo scarparliello with my Faith while I trumpet the Catholic insight about Matter. Viva Belloc and his notion of “wherever the Catholic sun doth shine.”

New York City. Aug. 20, 2006

Notes

1. Sometimes he called himself “Hillary” after a great saint. I prefer for esthetic reasons to use Hilaire since the other resonates an unpleasant note relative to a political figure.
2. I note that in the First World War the Pope refused to bless armaments which are clearly meant to destroy.

Father James Lloyd is a retired Roman Catholic priest. He blogs at frjameslloyd.blogspot.com

At the time of acute self-consciousness at the birth of adulthood, when the soul is still innocent and open, has not been hardened, and the world is a big apple with possibilities that are seemingly limitless, and relationships can seem to be so perfect and so easily perfect, and the soul has been just awakened to the intense sense of personhood, self-hood, and asks (for the first and sometimes only time in one’s life) the question of who he is and why he’s here, the soul is wide open and seeks to go beyond itself. The person feels deeply and intensely, having not yet learned to block and hide these feelings which later prove too painful, and he longs to share this feeling, this self-awareness, this intensity, this pain with others, and to feel what others feel, especially those who are going through the same thing. Everything is poured out freely, sometimes too freely, and there is no attempt to guard one’s inner world from being trampled on. The child who has never been hit by a car, if he is not told of the dangers, will have no fear of walking into a busy street.

However, when the person gets older, as time passes, the perfect “soul-mate” relationships which began so intensely, like a wondrous blossoming flower, become disappointing because there was nothing higher to hold them together; and the seemingly limitless possibilities which present themselves in youth become smaller, one possibility closing itself off after another once one goes further on a certain path (for each person can only take one path at a time). And then occurs what has formerly been feared and rejected – a layer forms on top of the raw person, a protective coating; and it cannot be helped, for pure vulnerability is too painful. All this explains why the youth of today fear so much to get old, why they will do anything to prevent it. Many young people, even if they have exposed themselves to rottenness in their search for reality and intensity, if they get out of it in time, are still good, innocent kids, because in a backwards and self-contradictory way, they have been striving to preserve innocence.

This also explains why the lyrics of many contemporary musicians, when they are young and first start out, are so poignant and direct, while later lyrics of the same people become increasingly obscure, to the point that those listeners who have practically lived on the earlier songs can get less and less from the later ones.

(An Attempt at an Answer)

At the time of acute self-consciousness and the awareness of the eternal question “Why,” the person must be able to direct that self-awareness and painful yearning to something higher than himself — to God, Who became flesh and suffered as we do. It is not enough to pour this painful yearning out to another person — that may help for a time, but it is not enough for eternity. The human soul seeks perfection, and there is nothing perfect except God. Other human beings, even if they seem perfect at first, always turn out to be imperfect, and that can be a great source of disillusionment to idealistic youth. A human being can be a vehicle to reach the end (God), and almost always such a human being is needed, but that person cannot be seen as an end in himself. However, in our post-modern age, when youth have been denied a knowledge of God, the perfection is usually at first sought in one or (usually) several human beings, or in unworthy lesser vehicles such as wealth, beauty, or fame. Again, one must turn one’s painful feelings of self-knowledge and longing to go outside oneself — to God, for only He has the infinite love to meet them. We know God through this very pain.

“Remembrance of God is pain of heart endured in the spirit of devotion, but he who forgets God becomes self-indulgent and insensitive.”
— Mark the Ascetic

“No one achieved anything without pain of heart.”
— Elders Barsanuphius and John.

The inward pain and intensity experienced in adolescence is not only good, but is even vital for the future development of the soul, its drawing closer to God. It is a moment of truth, and that is why it is so important that these strong feelings – that “all or nothing,” “I won’t settled for second-best” feeling of God-given youthful idealism — be quickly channeled to Him who is not “second-best,” who is the Ultimate. If this would happen, more youth of today would turn to monasticism — which is the “all or nothing” life, not settling for second-best, but giving up everything for a higher end: the Kingdom not of this world. But there must be strength and backbone in young people to keep alive the flame of their idealistic yearning when all kinds of worldly tares attempt to choke out the newly sprouted seeds.

If one channels one’s pain, self-awareness, etc., upwards, there is possibility for endless growth in the spirit. However, if one keeps it flowing on a horizontal level it will lead to stagnation, despair, or “selling out.” Even if one can keep it going, always trying to be intense and real, if there is nothing else than that he will just keep going around in circles, not getting anywhere. Life cannot be imbued with meaning simply by the attempt to live it intensely. Being intense and “having a real emotion” is not the ultimate answer — it is a partial answer, for it is only a means and not an end. The answer — the Truth — is God Who was nailed to the Cross, to whom may the youth of today turn in their pain of heart — so that they will not grow up just into boring worldly adults but into Saints, growing into the likeness of God, and will continue growing not just into middle or old age, but throughout eternity, all the while still preserving their innocence.

All popular attempts not to “sell out” to the jaded “adult” world have failed, because they are still part of the one big “sell out:” the “sell-out” of man to this world, and the abandonment of the radically otherworldly revelation of the Crucified God for the sake of worldly Christianity, false spiritual paths, materialism, hedonism, or nihilism.

“Christ is the only exit from this world. All other exits — sexual rapture, political utopia, economic independence —  are but blind alleys in which rot the corpses of the many who have tried them.”
— Fr. Seraphim Rose

The nature of things is an important question to ask — or should I say an a priori question. For once we are able to state what is the nature of things then the answers to many questions framed by the nature of things will also begin to be apparent. All of this is another way of saying that questions have a way of determining answers. So what is the nature of things? More specifically, what is the nature of things such that Christians believe humanity needs salvation? (Non-Christians will already feel co-opted but I write as a Christian — can’t be helped).

I want to state briefly several things which seem to me to be of importance about the nature of things in this regard.

1. It is the nature of things that man does not have a legal problem with God. That is to say, the nature of our problem is not forensic. The universe is not a law-court.
2. It is the nature of things that Christ did not come to make bad men good, but to make dead men live. This is to say that the nature of our problem is not moral but existential or ontological. We have a problem that is rooted in the very nature of our existence, not in our behavior. We behave badly because of a prior problem. Good behavior will not correct the problem.
3. It is the nature of things that human beings were created to live through communion with God. We were not created to live as self-sufficient individuals marked largely by our capacity for choice and decision. To restate this: we are creatures of communion, not creatures of consumption.

So much for the nature of things. (I’ll do my best to leave behind the syllogisms and return to my usual form of writing.)

Much of my experience as an American Christian has been an encounter with people who do not see mankind’s problem as existential or ontological — but rather as moral. They have seen that we behave badly and thought that the primary task of the Church (following whatever event was considered “necessary” for salvation) was to help influence people to be “good.” Thus I recall a Sunday School teacher who in my pre-school years (as well as a first-grade teacher who attempted the same) urging me and my classmates to “take the pledge.” That is, that we would agree not to smoke tobacco or drink alcohol before age 21. The assumption seemed to be that if we waited that long then we would likely never begin. In at least one of those cases an actual document was proffered. For the life of me I cannot remember whether I signed or not. The main reason I cannot remember was that the issues involved seemed unimportant to me at the time. Virtually every adult in my life smoked. And I was not generally familiar with many men who did not drink. Thus my teachers were asking me to sign a document saying that I thought my father and my grandfather were not good men. I think I did not sign. If I did, then I lied and broke the pledge at a frightfully early age.

My later experience has proven the weakness of the assumptions held by the teachers of my youth. Smoking wasn’t so much right or wrong as it was addicting and deadly. I smoked for 20 years and give thanks to God for the grace he gave me to quit. I feel stupid as I look back at the actions of those 20 years, but not necessarily “bad.” By the same token, I have known quite a few alcoholics (some of them blood relatives) and have generally found them to be about as moral as anyone else and sometimes moreso. I have also seen the destruction wrought by the abuse of alcohol. But I have seen similar destruction in families who never drank and the continuation of destruction in families where alcohol had been removed. Drinking can have serious consequences, but not drinking is not the same thing as curing the problem.

I had a far more profound experience, indeed a series of experiences, when I was ten years old — experiences that made a much deeper impression and framed the questions that burned in my soul about the nature of things.

The first experience was the murder of an aunt. She was 45 and a darling of the family. Everyone loved her. Her murder was simply a matter of “random” chance — she was in the wrong place at the wrong time or simply in a convenient place for a man who meant to do great harm to someone. No deep mystery, just a brutal death. The same year another aunt died as a result of a multi-year battle with lupus (an auto-immune disease). And to add to these things, my 10th year was also the year of Kennedy’s assassination. Thus when the year was done it seemed to me that death was an important question — even the important question.

It probably says that I was marked by experiences that were unusual for a middle-class white boy in the early 60’s. It also meant that when I later read Dostoevsky in my late teens, I was hooked.

The nature of things is that people die — and not only do they die — but death, already at work in them from the moment of their birth, is the primary issue. The failure of humanity is not to be found or understood in a purely moral context. We are notcreatures of choice and decision. How and why we choose is a very complex process that we ourselves do not understand. We can make a “decision” for Jesus only to discover that little has changed. It is also possible to find ourselves caught in a chain of decisions that bring us to the brink of despair without knowing quite how we got there. Though there are clearly problems with our choosing and deciding, the problem is far deeper.

One of the earliest Christian treatments of the human problem, hence the “nature of things,” is to be found in St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. He makes it quite clear that the root problem of humanity is to be found in the process of death. Not only are we all slowly moving towards some inevitable demise, the process of death (decay, corruption) is already at work in us. In Athanasius’ imagery, it is as though we are falling back towards our origins in the dust of the earth. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

And thus it is that when he writes of the work of Christ it is clearly in terms of our deliverance from death (not just deliverance from the consequences of our bodily dissolution and its separation from the soul but the whole process of death itself.)

This is frequently the language of the New Testament as well. St. Paul will write: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Or even on a more “moral” note he will caution us to “put to death the deeds of the body.”

The importance of these distinctions (moral versus existential) is in how we treat our present predicament. If the problem is primarily moral then it makes sense to live life in the hortatory mode, constantly urging others to be good, to “take the pledge,” or make good choices. If, on the other hand, our problem is rooted in the very nature of our existence then it is that existence that has to be addressed. And again, the New Testament, as well as the Tradition of the Church, turns our attention in this direction. Having been created for union with God, we will not be able to live in any proper way without that union. Thus our Baptism unites us to the death and resurrection of Christ, making possible a proper existence. Living that proper existence will not be done by merely trying to control our decisions and choices, but by consciously and unconsciously working to maintain our union with God. We are told “greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” Thus our victory, and the hope of our victory is “Christ within you, the hope of glory.”

And so if we will live in such communion we will struggle to pray, not as a moral duty, but as the very means of our existence. We pray, we fast, we give alms, we confess, we commune, not in order to be better people, but because if we neglect these things we will die. And the death will be slow and marked by the increasing dissolution of who and what we are.

In over 25 years of ministry, I have consistently found this model of understanding to better describe what I encounter and what I live on a day to day basis. In the past ten years of my life as an Orthodox Christian, I have found this account of things not only to continue to describe reality better — but also to be in conformity with the Fathers. It is a strong case for Christian Tradition that it actually describes reality as we experience it better than the more modern accounts developed in the past four hundred years or so. Imagine. People understood life a thousand years ago such that they continue to describe the existential reality of modern man. Some things do not change — except by the grace of God and His infinite mercy.

Teva: First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time for this interview and sharing your thoughts with the readers of The St. Nina Quarterly. You are originally from Kansas and came to Boston to pursue graduate studies in education at Harvard University. While in Boston, you were received into the Orthodox Church. Would you tell us about your journey to the Church – what attracted you to Orthodoxy.

Sister Aemiliane: I knew nothing about Orthodoxy growing up. I was friends with Mary Ford, now a professor at St. Tikhon’s [Orthodox Seminary in South Canaan, Penn.] who was the first person to tell me about Orthodoxy. She was studying theology and literature at that time and was able to explain some things to me about the difference in theology – what Orthodox theology is and what the West says theology is.

Orthodox theology seemed to me so obviously more adequate, natural, and just… true. There were other things that I didn’t understand, didn’t like, or was repelled by, but one thing that I understood was that these people knew about prayer. They knew about the connection between the mind and the body. Those were enough to interest me. I still had an attract/repel relationship with the Church. I had to turn inside out in order to enter the Church.

T.: Can you elaborate on that?

S.A.: I had all the fashionable feminist conceptions of my age, education, and culture. I found that these very much restricted what I was able even to see and hear in the Church. For instance, I was offended by the thought that only men can be priests and, walking into a church, I didn’t even see that the Panagia [all holy, Mary] was the biggest thing in the Church. She is the first thing we see. On the iconostasis both Christ and the Panagia are present and are the same size. Anyone else is smaller and farther away. She is beside Christ. I didn’t hear the prayers in which you cannot end a prayer without saying, “… remembering our Most Holy Lady&hellp;” You can’t even say a prayer without calling the Panagia to mind. But I didn’t hear that. I was so busy with my ideas about what it would mean if women were suppressed or honored or whatever.

Another blindness had to do not only with my constructs but with the Church itself – what it is like in America . I was all busy with the fact that women can’t go in the altar, when the fact is that no one can go in the altar unless they have a reason and a blessing to do so. When I was in the Holy Land on a pilgrimage, I noticed that the Panagia’s tomb is the altar of a church. The pilgrims are passing by – in it, in front of it, through it, kissing it. When it comes time for the Liturgy, that stops for the brief time of the service, and then it continues [after the service.] You go to the tomb of Christ and the tomb itself is the table of preparation – the piece of stone that was sealing the tomb is the altar. The pilgrims are passing in and venerating the tomb of Christ, and the rock becomes the altar during the Liturgy. In Bethlehem, the altar is built over the star that is embedded in the floor of the place of the Nativity. There is no iconostasis. I was in the cave for the Christmas Liturgy right in with the star – there was nothing between me and it. Pilgrims enter, venerate the star, falling on their faces, and then grab onto the altar table to pull themselves up. My trip to the Holy Land radically changed my whole experience of everything.

From the Holy Land I went to Greece, where I visited my first women’s monastery (there were almost none in America at that time). In a women’s monastery, not only do the nuns serve in the altar, but you see the nuns taking the blessing of the abbess – as well as lay people, men and women. Even priests and monks take the blessing of the abbess or nuns. I then began to realize that all this stuff that I had in my head [regarding hierarchy and patriarchy] was not applicable. And was in large part blown out of proportion by the unnatural state of the Church in America, made up almost entirely of parishes with very few, if any, monasteries.

This is quite in addition to the fact that when speaking of power issues with Christ and the Holy Spirit we have everything upside down. The beatitudes are the reversal of all the categories and of all secular ambitions, values, and interpretations of what good is and what power is, what strength is; the secular and political assumptions of what is important are all upside down.

In addition, although already in the Orthodox Church at the time, I didn’t receive all the sensations that I had expected from what I thought was a hierarchical, liturgical church. I think that was also because of the way the space is used in an Orthodox church. Everything is included. Icons are everywhere – behind you, in front of you, to the side, above you. The incense is everywhere. You don’t have a linear or vertical perception of things.

T.: In the summer of 1981, two walkways collapsed at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, killing 114 people and injuring many others. You were severely injured when you were trapped by the fallen beams and debris. I was actually in Boston that summer (prior to relocating to the area) and I remember praying for someone named, Melanie [Sister Aemiliane]. I didn’t think I would ever meet you in person.

Would you tell us about that experience and your subsequent recovery?

S.A.: I had a burst fracture of the third lumbar vertebra. My spinal cord was badly twisted and crushed with pieces of bone sticking in it. The initial X-rays compelled the X-ray technicians to jump up and down in amazement when they saw that I had sensation, because the X-rays showed a huge piece of bone right where the spinal cord is, indicating that my spinal cord was almost undoubtedly severed. It wasn’t, but I was paralyzed from the waist down. I had a bunch of ribs broken, a compound fracture of the ankle, my lung collapsed….

T.: And yet, here you are today.

S.A.: The first part of recovery was being extracted from the rubble. Many people died who were not hurt as badly as I was, because they couldn’t get them out in time. (This is what is happening now in Turkey and Athens [The recent earthquakes in these areas]. There are people who are experiencing what it is to be buried alive or just crushed and killed.) It was impossible for others to get to me. And it was impossible for me to be extracted in time to survive.

T.: Do you remember that?

S.A.: Yes, I do – in detail. I remember that I was crushed – bent over with my face between my knees. I couldn’t move anything except my right hand slightly from side to side. There was not enough room even to breathe – there were sixty tons on top of me. My knees broke my ribs. At some point my sister pulled on my right hand but couldn’t move me. Then, at some point I spoke to my guardian angel: “Where are you?” I felt my right hand clasped, without pulling, and then I was out. I was lying on my back, totally free of the rubble. Someone I did not recognize was holding me and told me that I would be OK. No one remembers seeing this person.

T.: This experience must have affected your life in many ways. How did it affect your spiritual life?

S.A.: The fact of the virgin birth, in which Christ came out of the womb without destroying virginity, without pain. The fact of the Resurrection, in which He rose from the tomb without moving the rock. It was sealed until the angel moved it away. The fact of the experience of the disciples when they were in the upper room and the doors were shut, but Christ came in – not as a spirit or as a metaphor or phantom, but in His flesh. He ate and drank. The disciples stuck their fingers in His wounds. This was all made very real to me. This is not because I am something. It is because of the prayer of holy persons who have purified their hearts by incredible commitment, by scathing honesty before their father confessor, themselves, and God, by humbling themselves to the extreme and becoming like Christ – full of Christ. It is nothing more than a witness to that – to the power of prayer, the power of the love of God, which is resurrection and life. It is the fact of the resurrection.

T.: How did you decide to follow the monastic way of life?

S.A.: Although I didn’t think about it at the time logically, the whole of my life was as broken as my back. The whole of my life was as paralyzed as my body. 114 people were killed. So what matters after that? What could bear that much meaning? What could express or feel that much, as to include a connection forever with all those people, all those souls? Only living for them and for everyone. At that point, my studies lost whatever meaning they had. I got well. I could do anything – marry, have a career. A year after the accident, if you just saw me, you wouldn’t have been able to tell [that I had been so seriously injured]. The doctors are still totally mystified about it and they openly admit it. They had told my parents that I might not live, but if I lived, I would never walk. And then I received Holy Communion on the eighth day [after the accident], and I moved my whole left foot. So they said, “We don’t know, maybe she will walk, but it will be a year in the hospital with braces and canes.” I left after three months – with a body brace, but with no braces on my legs, and with two canes. So my doctor in Kansas City said and still says that, “We never could explain you, we can’t and that is it.” So, I could do anything, but I didn’t care enough about any career to give myself to it. Nothing in the secular life meant enough to me. In that moment no doctor, no scientist, no social worker, no psychologist, no member of my family, no loved one, no friend – nothing – could help me; all the technology in the world wasn’t enough to have saved me. And the others died.

Nine months later I was still in great need after all that had happened and with everything black in front of me. I came to Holy Cross [Seminary in Brookline , Mass. ] for confession with a Hieromonk from Holy Mountain, Fr. Dionysios (He had been invited to the seminary by Archbishop Iakovos during all of Great Lent to offer guidance to the students and faculty). I am still eating the spiritual bread he gave me at that moment. Some months later, he sent me a picture of his Elder, Archimandrite Aemilianos, Abbot of Simonos Petras Monastery, Mt. Athos. I was totally shocked. I recognized his likeness as the one who pulled me out from under the tons of debris after the accident. Then I knew. What saved me was the prayer of the Elder Aemilianos – someone who was on the other side of the world in his monastery without ever having set foot in America, in the flesh. There was no reason why he should or could know me. I had heard of him and his spiritual son, my Elder, Dionysios, but had no idea I could ever meet them. After that, I found out that the day of the accident was his namesday – 18 July, the feast day of St. Aemilianos the martyr. So it became clear to me in my very blood and broken bones, without this being at all, ever, an analytical thought, that the prayer of a pure – purified! – heart is the most powerful thing in the cosmos.

By the way, on the old calendar, on the Holy Mountain, it was 5 July, which is the feast day of St. Athanasios the Athonite, the father of cenobitic [communal] monasticism on Mount Athos in the tenth century. Many times we do an all-night vigil on 5 July to celebrate this feast. At the beginning we start reading about the life of St. Athanasios. Every year we only get part way through. By that time that part is finished in Orthros, or (if we are reading it during the meal) the meal is finished. I had never read the end. The “end” of the story is that St. Athanasios the Athonite was killed by the collapse of a new building.

I then saw the icon of the guardian angel (here, in Boston, at the Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration), on which is written a prayer from Compline that says, “Take me by my wretched and outstretched hand….”

When the structure of things is wrong or increasingly inadequate, the only hope is to break it all apart and then it can be restructured – a new creation. Gerontas [Elder] Aemilianos said to me sometime much later that God prepares and provides in the life of every person a “Hyatt” that is the bridge to the new life.

T.: You first joined a large monastery in Greece, Ormilia, a sister monastery to one on Mount Athos - under the spiritual direction of the Elder Aemilianos. You were in a new country with a different culture and language. Would you tell us of your experience living and praying in that environment?

S.A.: Yes. It was paradise. It’s true that it was hard work. It was work to learn Greek and everything else. But Gerontas Aemilianos said to me, “Exile is a very heavy work.” You can become a monk or a nun without undertaking exile. Becoming a stranger in terms of country and culture is not necessarily part of it. But it is in some cases. So he said, xeniteia, exile, is a very heavy work. So then, when I sometimes felt tired, I thought, “Well of course I am tired, it’s natural, it is a very heavy work.” He saved me in this way, as in many other ways.

T.: You are now part of a new, international women’s monastery outside of Athens in Thebes – the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The community includes women from many different parts of the world – Romania, Russia, Britain, South Africa, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Greece, and the United States. In what ways do the various cultural backgrounds of the community influence your lives together?

S.A.: It is Pentecost all the time – we have a continual feast of Pentecost. The different languages make it abundantly clear that communication is not absolutely dependent on language nor is miscommunication largely a matter language. It has mainly to do with the clarity of heart, the honesty, the humility, and the sacrifice of the people involved in the communication.

T.: Do you learn things from them because they come from so many different backgrounds?

S.A.: All the time – every day, every month. It is like a mosaic. There is such beauty and such possibilities, such talent, such strengths that are cultural and these all come together. It sounds like a stereotype, but our Abbess is German and she is a very good administrator. She has a mind “like a computer,” but she has a heart and spirit first. So when you see this kind of strength, which is common from her culture, when you put this kind of power under and at the disposal of and at the direction of the spirit and of obedience and of a humble heart, then you have an incredible thing. It is not just being an administrator. If this power is at the service of the heart, then you have miracles happening all the time. In our monastery it is impossible to go on our natural charisms, because the thing wouldn’t hold together for five minutes. But if someone is there in the Holy Spirit, humbling herself and repenting all the time for her sins, which are the things that divide one from the other people and make it impossible for us to live together, then the whole thing turns into something divine.

T.: Are there advantages to being a monastic in an Orthodox country?

S.A.: Oh, yes. The simple people from the village teach us what we are and who we are by their expectations, by their holy hearts, by their faith, which is just mind-boggling, by their humility, by their gratitude – especially since so many of us are converts from Western countries who have not grown up in the Church. When you hear the immediate reactions and incredible sensitivity, from someone who may not even be a college graduate – in order to orient what I want to say according to the assumptions and values of western culture – then you say, “Wow!” You realize that this is from this culture of prayer, the courtesy, the kindness, the sensitivity which is from centuries of life in the Church. There is a spontaneous piety totally without affectation. For example, I remember my mind being blown away as a convert when I was in a village in Greece at the very beginning and I was walking along the street and an adolescent boy was coming around the corner on his bicycle. He was steering with his left hand and making the sign of the cross with his right hand because he was going around the church. It was totally natural with every motion baptized with grace.

T.: Based on your experience in helping to build a new monastery in Greece , what advice do you have for establishing and building up monastic communities in the U.S. (or other non-majority Orthodox countries)?

S.A.: This is a burning issue. I think Fr. Sophrony (a great elder from England, a saint – holy monastic of our time who very much loved both my geronta, Dionysios and his geronta, Aemilianos) said to me (although I didn’t have enough experience to even formulate the question at the time), “The Orthodox monastery is organically related to its surroundings, and so,” he said, “the very same Tradition – the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church – when it is in a Western, non-Orthodox country, will look very different and its forms will seem very different than in a traditional Orthodox country – in order to be the same. In order to be that same genuine Orthodox monasticism.”

When he said this to me, I didn’t have any idea where to connect this or where to apply it.

Now at that time Fr. Sophrony was already going on ninety years old and frail. In addition, it was winter. I was sent to him by my Elder and he knew that and accepted me, and when he finished counseling me he said, “Now we are going to go to my cell and we are going to walk like this (arm and arm). This way, if anyone sees us they will hesitate to approach.”

I didn’t find anything strange in that. I was very honored and happy because when you are near someone who is holy you feel very happy. We set off. As we were going along. I said, “Can you give me an example of what you just said, about how Orthodox Monasticism is different in a non-Orthodox country?”

And he says to me, with a slightly indignant – as in “Obviously!” – and emphatic tone, “Well! In Greece we could never walk like this.” At that time, I had never been to Greece . It is true. It is just unthinkable. And what this means to me now, in relation to your question, is that you can’t take a Greek or Russian monastery and just put it lock, stock and barrel someplace else. The meaning of Fr. Sophrony’s words is very, very powerful. If you have a carbon copy from one context placed in a different context, then almost by that very fact, you are deforming the Tradition. I realize that that may be taken as an extremely radical thing to say. But it means that the rare virtue of diakrisis, discretion, is necessary. You can be an actual saint and yet not happen to have that particular virtue, as far as I understand. Yet only with this virtue can it be distinguished in the Holy Spirit what must be rejected, what can and must be baptized, what corresponds to and serves and expresses living Tradition.

T.: As a monastic, what do you see as some of the important issues facing women in the Church today?

S.A.: In the Holy Land, for instance, it becomes clear that to be a Christian is more and more like it was in the beginning to be a Christian. I think what we have to realize is that Christianity is counter-cultural. It is radically different. It is a continual change of mind. It is continual repentance, a continual sobriety which challenges even the most fashionable and almost universally accepted presuppositions and values of our cultures and times. Everything around is not necessarily able to be incorporated into the life of the Spirit. We are a little flock – a dynamic leaven. The Lord says to us, “Fear not little flock.” We have to not be afraid to be different, not afraid to be looked down on, misunderstood, and even be ridiculed or suffer for being different.

T.: Once again, I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts, experiences, and feelings with our readers. You have given us much to reflect upon.

Interview: 12 September 1999. Published in the St. Nina Quarterly, Volume 3, No. 4.

The Walla Walla Roastery serves more than a good cup of coffee.

Thomas Reese and Mary Senter in coffee shop

An icon of the Virgin Mary hanging on the wall in the kitchen reminds the brother and sister who own the coffee shop that their role in life is to serve people. Co-owners Thomas Reese and Mary Senter invite conversations with and among staff and customers, foster interest in coffee growers and their countries, and help coffee drinkers raise funds for nonprofits.

Integrating their family legacy of service and their Orthodox faith, which they adopted as adults, these siblings’ influence extends beyond the doors of their business.

As the coffee shop grew, Thomas and Mary dreamed of expanding it into an environment that fostered conversations among members of the community. They consider it part of their job to encourage people to share views on faith and justice as they converse about life and community events.

Thomas and Mary describe their business as part of “the third wave of coffee.”  The first wave viewed coffee only for the sake of consumption.    The second wave focused on creating specialty coffees for enjoyment.  The third wave appreciates coffees for the unique attributes they offer, for their countries of origin and for the farms that produce them.

When considering which coffees to purchase, Thomas and Mary consider how those in charge of coffee plantations treat their workers and how they sustain the land. Thomas describes a model coffee farm as one that leaves an inheritance for its grandchildren.

While the business sells some fair-trade certified coffee, the owners see a need to update the current system.  The two have learned that although some smaller farms benefit from the current fair-trade system, other legitimate, larger farms are unable to receive the fair-trade certification.
Working closely with their broker and researching the farms for themselves helps them honor what they consider the original standards of fair trade.

“The goal is to allow the consumer to pay more for a good cup of coffee so the money in turn will return to the grower,” Thomas said.

From the beginning in 2001, Mary has handled public relations for the business, which has included developing initiatives that benefit nonprofit organizations.

Beginning as a wholesale operation in Thomas’ garage, the co-owners spent many hours roasting beans shipped from places as far away as Indonesia and Ethiopia. During this time, Thomas and Mary began helping businesses, churches and institutions to select their own beans and roasts to create signature coffee blends.

Two of the nonprofits that have benefited are the Cambodia Project and The Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship.  In both cases, the roastery has named unique blends of coffee for them.
Thomas and Mary have donated $1 for every pound of the named blends they have sold to the nonprofits designated.

The Cambodia Project began shortly after Mary and her husband Brian adopted their daughter, Ruth, from Cambodia.  A representative of American Assistance for Cambodia suggested a partnership. In response, Thomas and Mary created their Ratanakiri Blend and Corky’s Blend. The benefit project with those blends lasted until 2007.

“It seemed natural to me to work on the Cambodian coffee project as a way to give back a little to the birth-country of our daughter,” said Mary.

Children of Mary and Brian

Along with Ruth and two sons by birth, Mary and Brian have adopted two daughters from Ethiopia, where the roastery also has coffee ties.

The Krista Foundation Benefit features the Global Citizen blend of coffee.  It began after Aaron Ausland, the late Krista Hunt Ausland’s husband, came to the roastery several years ago. He told how the Krista Foundation began in Spokane after Krista died at age 25 in a bus accident while she and Aaron worked in Bolivia as community developers.

His story also drew Mary’s interest because she knew Krista’s parents, Jim and Linda Hunt, who taught at Whitworth when she was a student there. The Hunts helped establish the foundation in their daughter’s name. The foundation seeks to empower young Christian adults to embrace service as a way of life, become active and imaginative citizens, promote stewardship of creation and commit to think globally and act locally.

Having grown up in Walla Walla, Thomas and Mary experienced a secure, happy childhood with their parents and other siblings, Daniel and David.  The Reese children grew up in a Presbyterian home with their father practicing law and their mother creating a hospitable home for them and for struggling children they took in.

“Mom always had an open door.  Often we had others living with us,” Mary said.

Thomas’ journey into Orthodox faith led him from Portland to Alaska and back to Walla Walla.
Shortly after Thomas graduated from Walla Walla High School in 1980, he moved to Portland, lived an alternative lifestyle involving skateboarding and punk rock music, and became caught up in destructive habits and drug abuse.

Realizing his need for a change, he moved to Anchorage in 1988. He believes Alaska’s untamed, diverse lands opened him to a new understanding of the meaning of life.

“During this point, God came to me, and I changed,” he said.

Along with inspiration from nature, Thomas found friends who were different from any he had met before. Connected by their Orthodox faith, the group influenced him to adopt the Orthodox tradition.

“In my hour of need, they were just there,” he said.

Free of drug addiction and filled with the joy of his new faith, Thomas met his wife Elizabeth at St. John’s Orthodox Cathedral in Eagle River. They married in 1990. Today they have six children, aged two to 16.

In 1996, after working with TransAlaska Pipelines for several years, Thomas and the assistant priest of his church began the Holy Cross House ministry. For five years, he, Elizabeth and their first two children cared for 20 young people, assisting with administrative tasks, cooking and mentoring.

Thomas also helped counsel young people who struggled with drug problems, as he had. He believed he had a responsibility to be available to others.

Seeing her brother’s transformation, Mary attended worship with him in Alaska.  She was drawn by the liturgy and “a faith that seemed ‘real.’”  She returned to Walla Walla and became involved in St. Silouan Orthodox Church, which met in a private home until 2003 when they moved into a church building.

Other family members, impressed with Thomas’ transformation, also converted: brothers, David, who now lives in Yakima, and Daniel, formerly a Presbyterian minister and now assistant priest at St. Silouan, and their mother. Their father remains Presbyterian. Thomas joined St. Silouan when he and his family returned to Walla Walla in 2000, seeking a new vocation.

Feeling limited by a lack of formal education, he sought purposeful work. After much discussion, he invited Mary to be his business partner and open the Walla Walla Roastery. In 2006 they moved the roastery to its current location near the Walla Walla airport.

While Thomas and Mary consider participation at St. Silouan Orthodox Church a vital part of their lives, they attempt to live out their faith every day at the Walla Walla Roastery. Thomas said he and Mary are open to sharing their faith without pushing it on people. He says he likes to mix with various groups, just as Christ spent time with more than one group of people.

“We just try to be Christians and reach out to people,” he said.

Being in the kitchen, the icon of the Virgin Mary, Thomas added, is more for them than their customers.  It reminds them to integrate their faith into their work.

For information, call 526-3211.

Copyright © November 2008 – The Fig Tree

Article and interview by Chris Parish
originally appeared in What Is Enlightenment magazine

In the following article and interview we meet a living example of purity in spiritual authority. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain, a church that sees itself as proceeding in an unbroken lineage from the earliest days of Christianity. Having split from the Western church in 1054, Eastern Orthodoxy today has over 170 million followers and, with Russia’s new openness to religion, is growing in size and influence. For many years, Metropolitan Anthony’s sermons have been broadcast by BBC radio and television, and he is well known in Europe and Russia as “the voice and face of Orthodoxy.” Central to Orthodox Christianity is the hesychast tradition, the esoteric practice of silent contemplation under the direction of a staretz, or spiritual father. This tradition is said to go back to the early saints and Christian contemplatives known as the Desert Fathers. Metropolitan Anthony is himself a contemplative as well as a spiritual father to many. Through his books and talks, he has brought prayer and spirituality to life for innumerable others. While fulfilling the responsibilities of a patriarch in the Church organization, Metropolitan Anthony sees union with the Divine and manifesting this union in the world as his foremost task. His humility and single-minded seriousness of purpose shine through in this portrait of a rare and extraordinary human being.

It’s Sunday morning. As I approach the Russian Orthodox Church, which looks small and unimposing amid the stately Georgian architecture of affluent Knightsbridge in Central London, I am wondering what it will be like to meet Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and a man regarded by many as nothing less than a modern-day saint. In a time when organized religion seems to have fallen into disrepute and spiritual authorities in general are regarded with suspicion and mistrust, what is it that attracts this man’s parishioners to Christian Orthodoxy, and why do they and so many others hold him in such high esteem? As I pause before the pale stone front of his church, it excites me to realize that I am about to find out.

After entering through the heavy wooden door, it takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light within. But then what strikes me is just how many people are here for today’s service-hundreds, and they’re all standing. I’m surprised to see that there are hardly any chairs, though I find out later that this is the norm for services in the Orthodox Church. The atmosphere is rich with the smell of incense and the beautiful voices of an unaccompanied choir. The walls and pillars are covered with golden icons depicting the Orthodox tradition’s pantheon of saints. Candlelight shimmers in the darkness, reflected by the gold of the icons. A feeling of devotion is palpable as people pray, kneeling periodically on the bare wooden floor, or deep in contemplation, offer a candle and kiss the icons unselfconsciously. Partly in Russian and partly in English, the service lasts for a good two and a half hours, by the end of which I can hardly stand. But the people around me look as attentive as they did at the start.

The Orthodox Church is an Eastern branch of Christianity which has developed in near-total isolation from the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches of the West. Prayer has always been paramount in its tradition as a way of communion with God, and the extraordinary lives of its many saints through the centuries are testimony to its efficacy. In our time the Orthodox Church is increasingly attractive to many Western Christians who feel that it offers a depth of spiritual life not available to them in their own traditions. I’ve been told that recently an Anglican priest together with his entire congregation converted to Orthodoxy in this very church. The priest said during the ceremony that for him it was a homecoming.

Suddenly the congregation crowds expectantly to the front and an elderly archbishop with a gray beard and an ornate robe and mitre begins speaking in English. I know at once that this must be Metropolitan Anthony. As he leans on his staff, eyes closed and seemingly in meditation, his carefully chosen words emerge with a natural warmth and authority. His sermon is short, but his words command attention and have undeniable power and authenticity:

“People usually say that a heretic is someone who holds false and wrong views, but also I say a heretic is someone who doesn’t live what they preach. So let us examine ourselves. Why is it that people who meet us never notice that we are limbs of the risen Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit? Why? Each of us has got to give his own reply to this question. Let us, each of us, examine ourselves and be ready to answer before our own conscience, and do what is necessary to change our lives in such a way that people meeting us may look at us and say: ‘Such people we have never seen. There is something about them that we have never seen in anyone. What is it?’ And we could answer: ‘It is the life of Christ in us. We are His limbs. This is the life of the spirit in us. We are His temple.’ ”

Suddenly the service is over and the congregation begins to disperse. When the Metropolitan reappears after a few minutes, the robe and mitre are gone, replaced by a plain brown monk’s habit and a well-worn leather belt. People waylay him and ask with moving devotion for a quick word or a blessing for their babies. As he strides purposefully towards me, I realize how extraordinarily vigorous and solid he is for a man over eighty years old. He takes both my hands together in his and readily agrees to my request for an interview. Then he’s gone, disappearing out a side door. Although we’ve hardly spoken, I feel that I’ve just met with a fellow human being rather than with the representative of a powerful institution. Why this is so becomes clearer to me during another visit to the church to listen to the Metropolitan speak at the ordination of a new deacon:

“Let us therefore pray with him and surround him with care, with compassion, because we have sent him like a lamb among the wolves. The wolves are all the temptations that may come with new force to everyone who devotes his life to the service of God. It is also those people to whom he will be sent, of whom some will receive his words with gratitude and some will reject them with anger, because the message he is to bring is a message of total transparency, total surrender to God, and also of a heroic following of Him who has said to us: ‘I have given you an example to follow.’ ” Listening to this, I have the feeling that Metropolitan Anthony is speaking as much about himself as anyone else.

Returning a few weeks later at the time we’ve arranged for our interview, I’m surprised that it is the archbishop himself who heaves open the door to greet me. Seeing him again I realize that he is shorter than I had thought, his bearing and presence having given the impression of a man of larger physical stature. I follow him upstairs to the gallery, where we have to climb through all manner of boxes and old clothes-stored here for rummage sales-in order to get to the small space where he keeps a makeshift desk. Since the gallery is tiered and narrow, the seat he offers me is on a higher level than his own, so that I find myself looking down at the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and feeling slightly embarrassed by this reversal of protocol. He seems to have no secretary or office and appears indifferent to such material concerns. I notice that his monk’s habit is held together by a safety pin.

The Metropolitan is very welcoming, and although his gaze is steady and penetrating, his eyes often flicker with humor. I find him down to earth, completely natural and quick to laugh, and I sense in him a fearlessness that must come from having gone through the fire himself. Because he is so self-effacing, tending to downplay his knowledge and spiritual attainment, it is sometimes difficult to draw him out about his own inner life. He seems to prefer sharing stories and anecdotes reminiscent of the teaching stories of the Desert Fathers, the early Christian ascetics of the Egyptian desert among whom the Orthodox tradition originated. He relates with amusement that the posters announcing a seminar he once gave at Oxford made it clear that believers were not invited, because it is his experience that believers think they have all the answers and tend not to be open! Having read some of his books and listened to some of his BBC radio and television broadcasts, I know his talks and writings to be an extraordinary and universal testament to the fruits of the spiritual life. But he smiles with a certain relish as he confesses that he never went to theological college.

The son of a Russian diplomat, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh was born in 1914 and spent his early years in Russia and Persia. Because of the revolution, his family emigrated to France, where he eventually became a medical doctor in Paris. He recalls that his father was a powerful spiritual influence on him as he was growing up. Once, when he returned home late from a holiday, his father told him that he had been worried about him. “Did you think I’d had an accident?” he asked. But that wasn’t what his father was concerned about. “That would have meant nothing,” his father answered, “even if you had been killed. I thought you had lost your integrity.” This incident made a profound impression on him, and has stayed with him all his life.

During the Second World War, he served in the French Resistance as well as practicing medicine. Many of his anecdotes about the conditions which really test an individual’s devotion to truth and readiness for self-sacrifice are drawn from his experiences during the war. He took monastic vows secretly in 1943 and was ordained as a priest in 1948. Soon afterward he moved in order to serve his church in England, where he has lived ever since. He became an archbishop in 1962, and Metropolitan (which means bishop of a chief city, or metropolis) in 1966.

By the Metropolitan’s own account, he was “aggressively anti-church” during his teenage years in Paris, and did not believe in God. At a certain point, while at boarding school, it occurred to him that life would be unbearable if it had no meaning. He allotted himself one year in which to discover whether life did have any meaning. He decided that if at the end of that year he had found none, he would kill himself. Months went by and no meaning appeared. Then one day he was persuaded to attend a talk by a priest who had been invited to address a Russian youth group to which he belonged. He sat through the lecture reluctantly, finding himself disturbed and repelled by the picture of Christianity which the priest presented. Returning home, he read through one of the Gospels to see if it would confirm the negative impression the lecture had given him. As he read he suddenly became aware of a mysterious and overwhelming presence in the room. To his shock and surprise he knew without any doubt that this was Christ. This direct experience was, he says, the turning point of his life, and gave him a certainty which has never left him.

Man’s aim, the end and vocation set before him, is that through and beyond his own union with God, he should make this transcendent yet ever-present God (who enfolds and penetrates all, in whom we live and move and have our being, but who remains unknown to the world, unknowable indeed from without) interior and immanent in man and through man in the world; united with his creature indissolubly, though without confusion, distinct yet not alien, still himself, still personal, still God-yet closer to the soul than breathing itself…

Thus, as he embarks on his course, the Christian must make his peace with God, with his own conscience, with men and things; relinquish all care about himself, firmly purpose to forget himself, not to know himself, to kill in himself all greed, even for spiritual things, in order to know nothing but God alone… Henceforward the worshipper must free himself from the bondage of the world by unconditional obedience — joyful, total, humble, and immediate; he must in all simplicity seek God, without hiding any of his wretchedness, without founding any hope on himself, in this active self-abandonment to God which is the spirit of watchfulness in humility, in veneration, with a sincere will to be converted, ready to die rather than give up the search.

Metropolitan Anthony
from his introduction to The Way of a Pilgrim

Metropolitan Anthony: As in every walk of life, before you can walk independently you must be taught how to walk and in what direction. If you have someone who is more experienced than you are, knows perhaps more or better, it’s natural that you should learn to listen. And the point of obedience, which we always think of in terms of being like a little dog who is given commands and obeys them-it isn’t that at all. Obedience is a word that means listening. If you learn to listen to someone else, not only to the words he speaks but to the mood and meaning he tries to convey, you become freer of your self-centeredness, of your narrowness, and you become capable of listening not only to this man but to every person, and to the totality of life, and to God. Because unless you learn to listen to one person you cannot learn to listen. But on the other hand, it is not everyone who knows a little and can teach a great deal. If you find a great spiritual guide you are lucky, but they don’t grow like grass.

WIE: In the modern world there have been many people who’ve assumed the role of mentor or teacher and abused their power, so that people have become suspicious of genuine spiritual authority.

MA: One must learn at the same time to listen with openness, and never to renounce one’s right to say, “I cannot follow beyond this point.” Because otherwise you will obey the guidance of people who have no basis for guidance, who have no reason to guide you. It doesn’t mean you have a right to judge everyone, to say, “I know better.” But it means that you must be very sure that this person knows what the answer is to your question, to the question you are asking.

WIE: I read your beautiful introduction to The Way of a Pilgrim, the famous classic of Russian Orthodox spirituality. You wrote there about the importance of a relationship with a master who is well qualified to guide one on the way.

MA: Yes, but the master doesn’t always tell you, “You do this and you do that and you will arrive at such and such a point.” At times he’s an example to you, at times there is something in him that makes you follow. I remember how I found my spiritual father. I came to a church late for the service and I saw a man coming out. There was in him such serenity, such centeredness and light that I came up to him and said, “I don’t know who you are, but would you be my spiritual guide?” And afterwards he hardly ever gave me guidance, but I’m sure he prayed for me, and I found that I was like a little skiff tied by a long rope to a great boat. He was moving in that direction and I was moving behind him, but there was always this rope between us. I saw him once or twice a year, and whenever we met I discovered I had come to a point where he was. Not in the same degree, but like a little circle and a big circle: both are a circle, but there is a difference of size, of scale. Before he died he sent a note to me, “I know now what the mystery of contemplative silence is, I can now die.” And he was dead within three days.

WIE: He was obviously an important influence on you.

MA: Yes, but he must be ashamed of me now because I have not born fruit of what he was. But he is really an image for me.

WIE: Often people don’t like the idea of obedience to authority, but you are talking about being inspired by and following the example of another.

MA: If only people thought less in terms of drill and doing what they are told, but thought instead, “If I want to learn to play the piano, I must ask someone to direct every finger of mine.” The same is true about everything we want to learn. You cannot learn the piano by simply banging and hoping it will come out right.

WIE: For the Orthodox Christian and the Orthodox Christian path, what is the ideal goal or result for a human being?

MA: I think I would answer in a way that may sound very stupid: to become a real human being. Because habitually we are not real human beings, we are human animals. We develop our intellect, we have our emotions, we have a wavering will. This is not real harmony. This is not wholeness. The perfect wholeness to us is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The aim of the Christian life is to become disciples, people who learn from him, not only obedient in the sense of being well drilled but obedient in the sense of being able to listen deeply, to understand his thought, his heart, and to grow into the full measure of our humanity, which is His humanity.

WIE: What would it mean to grow into the full measure of one’s humanity, the full measure of Christ’s humanity?

MA: I think the ideal would be to love one’s neighbor with all one’s being-if necessary at the cost of one’s life-and to know and love God with all of one’s being, because it is His life and His love that finds perfect expression in us when we are sufficiently open.

Doing the will of God is a discipline in the best sense of the word. It is also a test of our loyalty, of our fidelity to Christ. It is by doing in every detail, at every moment, to the utmost of our power, as perfectly as we can, with the greatest moral integrity, using our intelligence, our imagination, our will, our skill, our experience, that we can gradually learn to be strictly, earnestly obedient to the Lord God. Unless we do this our discipleship is an illusion and all our life of discipline, when it is a set of self-imposed rules in which we delight, which makes us proud and self-satisfied, leaves us nowhere, because the essential momentum of our discipleship is the ability to reject our self, to allow the Lord Christ to be our mind, our will and our heart. Unless we renounce ourselves and accept his life in place of our life, unless we aim at what St. Paul defines as “it is no longer I but Christ who lives in me,” we shall never be either disciplined or disciples.

Metropolitan Anthony
from Living Prayer

Saint Silouan was born Simeon Ivanovich Antonov in 1866, of godly parents who came from the village of Sovsk in the Tambov region. At the age of twenty-seven he received the prayers of St. John of Kronstadt and came to the monastic region of Greece called Mt. Athos where he became a monk at the Russian monastery of St. Panteleimon, and was given the new name Silouan. An ardent ascetic, he received the grace of unceasing prayer and was granted to see Christ. After long years of spiritual trial, he acquired great humility and hesychia, inner stillness. He prayed and wept for the whole world as for himself, and he put the highest value on love for enemies. Thomas Merton has described Silouan as “the most authentic monk of the twentieth century.” St Silouan reposed on September 24, 1938.

He left behind his writings which were edited by his disciple and pupil, the Elder Sophrony. Father Sophrony has written a complete life of the Saint along with the record of Saint Silouan’s teachings in the book Saint Silouan the Athonite.

Saint Silouan on Love

The soul cannot know peace unless she prays for her enemies. The soul that has learned of God’s grace to pray, feels love and compassion for every created thing, and in particular for mankind, for whom the Lord suffered on the Cross, and His soul was heavy for every one of us.

The Lord taught me to love my enemies. Without the grace of God we cannot love our enemies. Only the Holy Spirit teaches love, and then even devils arouse our pity because they have fallen from good, and lost humility in God.

I beseech you, put this to the test. When a man affronts you or brings dishonor on your head, or takes what is yours, or persecutes the Church, pray to the Lord, saying: “O Lord, we are all Thy creatures. Have pity on Thy servants and turn their hearts to repentance,” and you will be aware of grace in your soul. To begin with, constrain your heart to love enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, will help you in all things, and experience itself will show you the way. But the man who thinks with malice of his enemies has not God’s love within him, and does not know God.

If you will pray for your enemies, peace will come to you; but when you can love your enemies – know that a great measure of the grace of God dwells in you, though I do not say perfect grace as yet, but sufficient for salvation. Whereas if you revile your enemies, it means there is an evil spirit living in you and bringing evil thoughts into your heart, for, in the words of the Lord, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts – or good thoughts.

The good man thinks to himself in this wise: Every one who has strayed from the truth brings destruction on himself and is therefore to be pitied. But of course the man who has not learned the love of the Holy Spirit will not pray for his enemies. The man who has learned love from the Holy Spirit sorrows all his life over those who are not saved, and sheds abundant tears for the people, and the grace of God gives him strength to love his enemies.

Understand me. It is so simple. People who do not know God, or who go against Him, are to be pitied; the heart sorrows for them and the eye weeps. Both paradise and torment are clearly visible to us: We know this through the Holy Spirit. And did not the Lord Himself say, “The kingdom of God is within you”? Thus eternal life has its beginning here in this life; and it is here that we sow the seeds of eternal torment. Where there is pride there cannot be grace, and if we lose grace we also lose both love of God and assurance in prayer. The soul is then tormented by evil thoughts and does not understand that she must humble herself and love her enemies, for there is no other way to please God.

The house in which St Silouan’s cell was located

What shall I render unto Thee, O Lord,
for that Thou hast poured such great mercy on my soul?
Grant, I beg Thee, that I may see my iniquities,

and ever weep before Thee,
for Thou art filled with love for humble souls,
and dost give them the grace of the Holy Spirit.

O merciful God, forgive me.
Thou seest how my soul is drawn to Thee, her Creator.
Thou hast wounded my soul with Thy love,

and she thirsts for Thee, and wearies without end,
and day and night, insatiable, reaches toward Thee,
and has no wish to look upon this world, though I do love it,
but above all I love Thee, my Creator,
and my soul longs after Thee.

The mlll in which St Silouan worked for many years

O my Creator, why have I, Thy little creature, grieved Thee so often?
Yet Thou hast not remembered my sins.

Glory be to the Lord God that He gave us His Only-begotten Son
for the sake of our salvation.
Glory be to the Only-begotten Son that He deigned
to be born of the Most Holy Virgin, and suffered for our salvation,

and gave us His Most Pure Body and Blood to eternal life,
and sent His Holy Spirit on the earth.

O Lord, grant me tears to shed for myself,
and for the whole universe,
that the nations may know Thee and live eternally with Thee.
O Lord, vouchsafe us the gift of Thy humble Holy Spirit,

that we may apprehend Thy glory.

From the Synaxarion

On this day we keep the memorial of our sacred father Silouan whom God inspired, who lived the monastic life upon the Holy Mountain in the Russian Monastery of the holy and great martyr Panteleimon, and who died godly in the Lord on the twenty-fourth day of September in the year of our salvation 1938.

Once, in this life, thou didst see Christ, O Saint;
And now thou beholdest Him face to face,
Not darkly as in a glass.
Thine earthly country delights that thou wast born in her;
Athos rejoices in the Spirit; for in thee she nurtured a saint;
And from that sylvan mountain heaven has now received thee.

Saint Silouan, that citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, was born of pious parents in the land of Russia in the village of Sovsk in the diocese of the Metropolitan of Tambov. He came into the world in the year of our Lord 1866, and from a young man was called to repentance by the all-praised Mother of God and ever-Virgin Mary.

When he had reached his twenty-seventh year, he renounced the things of this life, and, with the prayers of Saint John of Kronstadt to speed him on his way, he set forth for Greece and the illustrious Holy Mountain. Here, in the cloister of the holy great martyr and physician Panteleimon, he took upon him the yoke of the monastic life.

Thus he gave himself to God with all his soul, and in a brief while he not only received the gift of unceasing prayer from the most holy Mother of God, but was also granted ineffably to see the living Christ in the chapel of the holy prophet Elijah that was next to the monastery’s flour mill.

But this first grace was taken away, and the saint was constrained by anguish and great grief, and with God’s permission for fifteen years he was given over to manifold temptations of spiritual foes, and so he followed in the footsteps of Christ, having offered up prayers and strong supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save him from death (Heb. 5:7), being taught by God through a voice from above that gave him this commandment: Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not. This he observed as an infallible rule, and so ran the way of Antony, Macarius, Pœmen and Sisoës, and the other celebrated preceptors and fathers of the desert, to whose measure and spiritual gifts he also attained, and was manifested an apostolic and inspired teacher both living and after death.

The saint was wondrously meek and lowly in heart, a fervent advocate before God for the salvation of all, and unequalled among teachers: For he says that there is no surer proof that the divine Spirit dwells within us than that we love our enemies.

This blessed Saint Silouan passed over from death to life, full of spiritual days on the twenty-fourth day of September in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 1938: To Whom be glory and might forever and ever. Amen.

At his prayers and those of all Thy saints, O Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

Troparion: By prayer didst thou receive Christ for thy teacher in the way of humility; and the Spirit bare witness to salvation in thy heart; wherefore all peoples called unto hope rejoice this day of thy memorial. O sacred Father Silouan, pray unto Christ our God for the salvation of our souls.

Kontakion: In thine earthly life thou didst serve Christ, following in His steps; and now in heaven thou seest Him Whon thou didst love, and abidest with Him according to the promise. Wherefore, O Father Silouan, tteach us the path wherein thou didst walk.

O Holy Angel, who stand by my wretched soul and my passionate life: do not abandon me, a sinner, neither depart from me because of my lack of self-control. Leave no room for the evil demon to gain control of me through the violence of this mortal body. Strengthen my weak and feeble hand, and instruct me in the path of salvation. O holy Angel of God, the guardian and protector of my wretched soul and body: forgive all the sorrows I have caused you, every day of my life. If I have sinned in this past night, protect me during this day. Keep me from every adverse temptation, that I may not anger God by any sin. Pray to the Lord for me, that He may establish me in His fear and make me, His servant, worthy of His goodness. Amen.

My wife recently asked me, “Do you know the prayer to the Guardian Angel?” I admitted that I was familiar with the prayer but she said, “No. I mean have you learned it yet?” I admitted I had not (she memorizes things much more easily than I do – that’s my first excuse). But it turned my attention to this simple prayer, and to the remembrance of my guardian angel. In Orthodoxy, by prayer, an angel is specifically assigned to your life as part of the rite of Baptism. I’ve always liked that fact, and known that my angel watches over me.

Many people associate Guardian Angels with “getting out of a close one” or barely avoiding a wreck. While traveling in England this summer, we apparently ran a red light on a roundabout (they rarely have lights on roundabouts so we were unprepared). A car pulled out, and all of us in the car were completely convinced by our eyes that we must have hit this car. By visual report it is impossible that we did not hit this car – but there was no sound. There was a bit of a dirty look and the other car drove on. We got out just a short bit down the road to see if we had been hit or touched in any way. There was no evidence. Part of me wanted to go back and look for feathers, thinking surely that a Guardian Angel had been injured in the event (I don’t think that’s actually possible).

But there is great comfort in thoughts of my Guardian Angel. According the traditional teaching, though, the task of my Guardian Angel is not to make up for my lack in driving skills (although I did not drive in England) but to see me safely to the harbor of salvation. “Safe” is the same thing as “saved,” and that’s not over ’til it’s over.

Another prayer you will find written no where else. It was created by my son when he was four years old (that was almost 16 years ago). He had a small statue of St. Michael the Archangel beside his bed on his nightstand. He liked it so we bought it for him. It was a very manly Michael, with a great and terrible sword drawn, and the devil, stuck beneath one of Michael’s feet, writhing helplessly.

My son’s prayer (still a family favorite):

Dear St. Michael, guard my room.

Don’t let anything eat me or kill me.

Kill it with your sword. Kill it with your sword. Amen.

Now that’s a fine prayer, particularly for a four year-old. I’m not certain what made him think of things that would eat him, but when you’re four, it’s good to cover all possibilities. The prayer worked. He has been safe all these years. The only thing eaten in his room have been several tons of pizza.

I do not really understand the objections that Protestants have to such prayers. I’m told “there is only one mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.” Well, of course. But that sense of mediation is a meaning of the word that Christ alone could perform. No angel, no other creature can unite me to God. Only God become man is able to unite man to God.

But we’re talking about prayer, not union, per se. Can someone else pray for me? I hope so and the last time I checked, even Protestants are allowed to pray for me (please do). Can angels pray for me (yes they can and they do). Is it wrong to ask them to do so or thank them for it (certainly not). Can saints in heaven pray for me (the Bible says they do). Is it wrong to ask them (Holy Tradition says it is not). In the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Rich Man prays to “Father Abraham” to intercede with Lazarus for him. It is of no use in his case, but he was not rebuked for speaking to Abraham. Being told “No,” and being rebuked for even having the conversation are two very different things.

I give thanks to God for the dear fellowship of the saints. For those who pray for me that I have asked, and for the many who have prayed for me that I have known nothing about. I just know that part of the joy of being an Orthodox Christian is the fact that prayer is never a lonely thing. God is the “Lord of Hosts.” He is always surrounded by such a cloud of Angels, saints, etc. He cannot be approached “alone.” This great company of witnesses, as the book of Hebrews calls them, bears witness to my prayers before God, and hopefully improves greatly upon them. They see so much more clearly than I what I see. I see and know so little. Thank God someone is praying who knows. God knows, but it is His delight, in the utter humility of His nature, to share that knowledge and to invite us to pray.

May all the saints in heaven pray for you. May St. Michael pray for you and guard your room. May your Holy Guardian Angel pray for you and the saint whose name you bear. And may you know the great fellowship of heaven even here on earth. They are truly with us.

The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace—all things are there. (H.43.7)

St. Macarius

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn

+++

These quotes are among the best known (ancient and modern) Orthodox statements on the heart of man and reveal the fundamental character of our spiritual struggle. There is not even a hint in these statements of human beings having a “legal” standing before God or that the Church should have any concern with such notions.

Man, as a fallen creature, is better described as diseased or broken (St. Paul uses the term “corrupt” phthoros in the Greek). The corruption which St. Paul describes is again not a legal term (as “corrupt” often means in modern English usage) but refers instead to a corruption that is similar to the rotting of a dead body. Indeed it is death that is at work in us that manifests itself as sin in our lives. The death that is at work in us is our falling back towards non-existence, or nothingness, whence all of creation came. God alone is the Lord and Giver of Life and true existence is only found in communion with Him. That communion is made possible through Christ Who became what we are, that we might become like Him.

It is the heart, the very core of our existence, that the Fathers dwell on when they look at the work of sin and redemption in our lives. Thus Orthodoxy is extremely “realist” in its understanding of the spiritual life rather than being concerned with legal standing or “debts owed,” etc. It is possible to use such relational language in a metaphorical manner, but the truth of our problem is to be found in the very character of our existence: Is it being transformed into the image of Christ or is it falling deeper into corruption and death?

This concern for the reality of our existence changes the focus and understanding of every action of the Church. Thus in Baptism, the focus is our union with the death and resurrection of Christ and the Gift of the Holy Spirit given us in Holy Chrismation. St. Ignatius of Antioch (2nd century) referred to Holy Communion as the “medicine of immortality.” Penance (confession) is occasionally described by the fathers as a “second baptism,” meaning that it restores the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

A priest hearing confession listens intently for the state of the heart (if possible) rather than simply categorizing and subjecting to legal analysis what he hears. Indeed, it is considered a sin to judge someone whose confession you are hearing. As a good pastor, however, a priest must always be concerned with the state of the heart within any of those for whom he is responsible before God. He cannot change anyone’s heart, but with whatever skill God may have given him, he can counsel and nurture each soul towards the path of healing in the heart and, most importantly, he can pray constantly for his flock and for the heart of each of its members.

By the same token, it is important for every Christian to pay attention to his own heart. Christ makes this abundantly clear when he interiorizes the commandments on murder and adultery, warning:

You have heard that it was said to the men of old, `You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment… (Matt. 5:21-22)

And

You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5:27-28).

It is not that our outward actions do not matter, but that they are only manifestations of the state of the heart:

The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks (Luke 6:45).

Most of my writing in this blog (as well as my preaching and teaching in the Church) concentrates on this inner life. Learning to open our eyes to the source of our actions and the absolute need for the grace of the Holy Spirit in order to change our hearts is the most fundamental understanding in our daily life before God. There are a myriad of other things to think about in our faith, many of them serving as religious distractions from the essential work of repentance. It is easier to argue points of doctrine than to stand honestly before God in prayer or confession. Doctrine is important (what Orthodox priest would deny this?) but only as it makes Christ known to us. But the knowledge of Christ that saves is not the knowledge one gains as mere information – but rather the knowledge one gains inwardly as we repent, pray, forgive, and humble ourselves before God. The promise to us is that the “pure in heart shall see God.”

Doctrine is not known until it becomes united to the heart in a continual act of communion with God. Thus, if we are honest, we will profess ignorance and pray for true knowledge.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

A quote from St. Silouan:

The heart-stirrings of a good man are good; those of a wicked person are wicked; but everyone must learn how to cambat intrusive thoughts, and turn the bad into good. This is the mark of the soul that is well versed.

How does this come about, you will ask?

Here is the way of it: just as a man knows when he is cold or when he feels hot, so does the man who has experienced the Holy Spirit know when grace is in his soul, or when evil spirits approach.

The Lord gives the soul understanding to recognize His coming, and love Him and do His will. In the same way the soul recognizes thoughts which proceed from the enemy, not by their outward form but by their effect on her [the soul].

This is knowledge born of experience; and the man with no experience is easily duped by the enemy.

God grant us such true knowledge and the healing of our hearts.

Elder Porphyrios, an Athonite monk, was a spiritual father and confessor in the centre of Athens for over 30 years, helping thousands of people with his counselling and ministry. He is known as the monk who brought the Jesus Prayer to busy center of Athens, Omonia Square.

One should feel sorry for the person wounded by a criminal.

The author had asked the Elder about some apparent injustice he had suffered. Here he gives us the Elder’s answer:

“One day, ” he started to tell me, “you are walking quietly on your way and see your brother walking in front of you, also quietly, when at one point a crook jumps out in front of your brother from a side road and attacks him. He beats him, pulls his hair, wounds him and throws him down bleeding. Faced with a scene like that would you be angry with your brother or would you feel sorry for him?”

I was puzzled by the Elder’s questions and I asked him in turn: “How could I possibly be angry with my wounded brother, who fell victim to the criminal? The thought didn’t even cross my mind. Of course I would feel sorry for him and I would try to help him as much as I could.” “Well, then,” continued the Elder, “everyone who insults you, who hurts you, who slanders you, who does you an injustice in anyway whatsoever is a brother of yours who has fallen into the hands of some criminal demon. When you notice that your brother does you an injustice what should you do? You must feel very sorry for him, commiserate with him and entreat God warmly and silently both, to support you in that difficult time of trial, and to have mercy on your brother, who has fallen victim to the evildoer, the demon. Because if you don’t do that, but get angry with him instead, reacting to his attack with a counter attack, then the devil who is already on the nape of your brother’s neck will jump on to yours and dance with the both of you.”

I was amazed by the liveliness and the directness of the example. Once again the Elder had caught me without my “homework”, whereas others considered me to be well-read in matters of religion… The advice was obvious: the people who did me an injustice had fallen victim to the criminal devil, but I only saw the physical not the spiritual image. The result was that I got annoyed with them and the devil that was on the back of their necks also jumped on to mine, so all of us, victims and supposed victimisers would dance the demonic dance, in a group and without knowing it.

But the Elder’s example could apply to all interpersonal relations. It could function like a general spiritual rule. Not a day passed by without me remembering it, since that demonic dance as either a threat or a reality, would appear before every so often. Living in an age of tension and the spread of aggression of every kind, from the height of refinement to the depths of coarseness, I felt that the Elder’s message was a direct and timely wake-up call. Discernment and a prayer alarm were needed to confront evil. All my spiritually troubled friends, who heard this advice were impressed.

Correction not condemnation of the bad person.

The Elder proved himself to be an anatomist and healer of both the human soul and human spiritual relations. He said to me with regard to this “Our aim is not to condemn evil, but to correct it. A man can be lost through condemnation, but through understanding and help he will be saved. We must treat the sinner with love and respect his freedom. When a member of the family knocks a vase off the table and breaks it we usually get angry. If at that crucial moment, in a movement of spiritual elevation, we show understanding and we excuse the damage, we win both our soul and that of our brother’s. That is all our spiritual life: an elevating movement, from the annoyance that comes from egotism, to the understanding that comes from love.”

Bad thoughts are dangerous.

According to the Elder, this elevation began after earnest work. One day, when surrounded by thoughts of bitterness about some people who had criticized me unjustly, the Elder rang the alarm bells regarding my aggressive, as he put it, stance. I objected, saying that I had neither said nor done anything at all against my critics; I just had negative thought, which I hadn’t externalized and therefore I hadn’t hurt anybody. Then the Elder revealed one more secret of the spiritual battle to me, saying: “You shouldn’t get annoyed even internally about any unjust criticism of you whatsoever. It is bad. Evil starts from bad thoughts. When you get bitter and annoyed, even if only in thought, you ruin the spiritual atmosphere. You stop the Holy Spirit from working and you allow the devil to increase evil. You should always pray, love and forgive, rejecting each and every bad thought within you.”

That is to say the Elder taught that our bad thoughts about one of our fellows on the one hand defiles our soul, and on the other, it can do harm to the other person. A bad thought sends out an evil power, which influences the other, as prayer helps him. Of course all this has to be understood correctly within the teaching of the Church about the existence of good and evil spirits and their work. The work of the evil ones is denigration, lying, commotion, dissension and so on, whereas for the good ones it is the service of those who are destined to inherit the Kingdom of God. A bad thought cannot be hidden. It affects the person we are thinking ugly thoughts about unfavourably towards us, even from a distance, even if the other person doesn’t consciously realize why he is opposed to us. We are obliged to be “pure in heart”, pure not only from evil works, but from bad and evil thoughts, especially from resentment and bitterness

Forgive people.

The Elder considered the last thing mentioned, forgiving whoever has harmed us, to be fundamental. He often repeated the verse of the prayer, “First be reconciled to those who grieve you.” And in confession he paid special attention to this spiritual sin of remembering the bad things that another has done to us and to hold malice, or bitterness, or animosity against him. He wanted our souls to be free from resentment, full of forgiveness and kindness.

Don’t ask to be loved.

Another day when I was upset because certain people didn’t respond to me with love, the Elder said, “Today, people ask to be loved and that is why they are disappointed. The right thing to do is not to care whether they love you or not at all, but rather, whether you love Christ and other people. This is the only way in which the soul is filled.”

Love everybody

The Elder’s love didn’t have limits, it was boundless. It extended to all of God’s children, to all people, both friends and enemies. He told me: “The crown of love towards our friends contains foreign bodies (reckoning, reciprocation, vainglory, sentimental weakness, passionate liking) while the crown of love towards enemies is pure.” He also said: “Our love in Christ ought to reach out everywhere, even to the hippies at Matala. I wanted to go there a lot, not to preach to them or to accuse them, but to live amongst them ‘without sin’ and let Christ’s love, which transfigures, speak for itself. I saw the hippies and I felt sorry for them. They were like ‘sheep without a shepherd.’”

On the matter of social relations he advised me: “You shouldn’t carry out your Christian struggle with sermons and debates, but with real secret love. When we contradict them, the others react negatively. When we love them, they are moved and we win them over. When we love we think that we are giving to other people, but really you are giving to yourself. Love requires sacrifice. To humbly sacrifice something that is ours, which really is God’s”

There’s a river flowing through the Scriptures. Ezekiel saw it welling up under the temple of God.

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and there was water, flowing from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the front of the temple faced east; the water was flowing from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar. He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he brought me and returned me to the bank of the river. When I returned, there, along the bank of the river, were very many trees on one side and the other. And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live. Along the bank of the river, on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine.” (Ezekiel 47:1-12, condensed)

Zechariah saw the river flowing on earth at Christ’s coming.

And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south. And in that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea; in both summer and winter it shall occur. (Zechariah 14:4,8,12-14)

John saw the same river at the end of time flowing from the throne of God.

And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22:1,2)

God Himself is the fountain of living waters.

“For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns — broken cisterns that can hold no water. Those who depart from Me Shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, The fountain of living waters. (Jeremiah 2:13)

God indwells the Christian and the river of life is to flow from His sanctified people, the Church.

Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?” … Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:10ff)

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive. (John 7:38,39a)

On the Judgment Day, John saw the waters as a sea.

Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes; and they had crowns of gold on their heads. And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal. (Rev 4:2-6a)

Daniel, seeing the same vision, described it quite differently. Until now the running river or calm, glassy sea has been described as life and healing. Now it’s a river of fire:

I watched till thrones were put in place, and the Ancient of Days was seated; His garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, its wheels a burning fire; a fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, and the books were opened. I watched then because of the sound of the pompous words which the horn was speaking; I watched till the beast was slain, and its body destroyed and given to the burning flame. (Daniel 7:9,10)

It’s the same river.

And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who have the victory over the beast, over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God. (Revelation 15:2)

John also saw this sea as fire:

Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone. (Revelation 19:20)

And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:9b-15)

In Zechariah’s vision, at the return of Christ the river flows on earth and judgment begins. Again, the flowing of the waters is associated with judgment on the wicked.

And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south. And in that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea; in both summer and winter it shall occur. And this shall be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, and their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths. It shall come to pass in that day that a great panic from the LORD will be among them. Everyone will seize the hand of his neighbor, and raise his hand against his neighbor’s hand. (Zechariah 14:4,8,12-14)

God does not change but we are all different. The experience of His presence is life and health and peace to some; and to others it is destruction and torment.

This is consistent with the God Who is called both the fountain of living waters, and also fire.

For the LORD your God is a consuming fire. (Deuteronomy 4:24, Hebrews 12:29)

David twice answers the question of who may abide in the presence of the God, the Consuming Fire:

LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill? He who walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart; he who does not backbite with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor does he take up a reproach against his friend. (Psalm 15:1-3)

Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. (Psalm 24:3,4)

In Isaiah’s vision the same answer is received – but to a very different question!

The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness has seized the hypocrites: “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, he who despises the gain of oppressions, who gestures with his hands, refusing bribes, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed, and shuts his eyes from seeing evil: He will dwell on high; his place of defense will be the fortress of rocks; bread will be given him, his water will be sure. Your eyes will see the King in His beauty; they will see the land that is very far off… But there the majestic LORD will be for us A place of broad rivers and streams (Isaiah 33:14ff)

It is the righteous who can dwell in the devouring fire with everlasting burnings.

Ezekiel’s lament for the “King of Tyre” (Satan in metaphor) refers to the place from which he was cast out as “the midst of the stones of fire.”

You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of stones of fire. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. By the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God; and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones. (Ezekiel 28:14-16)

It seems heaven and hell – paradise and destruction – are described in nearly identical terms.

If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there… Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike. (Psalm 139:8,12)

In the furnace, the three youths and the guards were exposed to the exact same conditions.

And they walked in the midst of the fire, praising God, and blessing the Lord… But the angel of the Lord came down into the oven together with Azarias [Daniel] and his fellows, and struck the flame of the fire out of the oven. And he made the midst of the furnace as it were a moist, blowing wind, so that the fire touched them not at all, neither hurt nor troubled them. (Song of the Three v.1,26-27)

To the guards it was destruction, while to Daniel and his companions the flames were dew and a refreshing breeze.

The Fathers on Hell:

St Isaac of Syria:

I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna, are scourged by the scourge of love. Nay, what is so bitter and vehement as the torment of love? …It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God… The power of love works in two ways: it torments sinners… Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability. (Ascetical Homilies 28, Page 141)

St Basil the Great:

‘The voice of the Lord divides the flame of fire.’ [David] says that this miracle happened to the Three Children in the fiery furnace. The fire in this case was divided into two, so that while it was burning those outside it, it was cooling the Children, as if they were under the shadow of a tree. In what follows he observes that the fire which had been prepared by God for the devil and his angels ‘is cut by the voice of the Lord.’ Fire has two properties, the burning and the illuminating energies, and that is why it burns and sheds light. Thus those suited to the fire will feel its burning quality and those suited to the light will feel the illuminating property of the fire. Therefore he finishes very expressively: ‘the voice of the Lord divides the flames of fire’ and in the dividing, the fire of hell is without light, and the light of peace remains unburnt. (On Psalm 28, PG 29:297A)

St Gregory Nazianzen:

Receive besides this the Resurrection, the Judgment and the Reward according to the righteous scales of God; and believe that this will be Light to those whose mind is purified (that is, God — seen and known) proportionate to their degree of purity, which we call the Kingdom of heaven; but to those who suffer from blindness of their ruling faculty, darkness, that is estrangement from God, proportionate to their blindness here. (Oration (40) on Holy Baptism 45, NPNF II 7:377)

St Gregory Nazianzen:

Wherefore we must purify ourselves first, and then approach this converse with the Pure; unless we would have the same experience as Israel, who could not endure the glory of the face of Moses, and therefore asked for a veil; or else would feel and say with Manoah “We are undone O wife, we have seen God,” although it was God only in his fancy; or like Peter would send Jesus out of the boat, as being ourselves unworthy of such a visit; and when I say Peter, I am speaking of the man who walked upon the waves; or like Paul would be stricken in eyes, as he was before he was cleansed from the guilt of his persecution, when he conversed with Him Whom he was persecuting–or rather with a short flash of That great Light; or like the Centurion would seek for healing, but would not, through a praiseworthy fear, receive the Healer into his house. Let each one of us also speak so, as long as he is still uncleansed, and is a Centurion still, commanding many in wickedness, and serving in the army of Caesar, the World-ruler of those who are being dragged down; “I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof.” But when he shall have looked upon Jesus, though he be little of stature like Zaccheus of old, and climb up on the top of the sycamore tree by mortifying his members which are upon the earth, and having risen above the body of humiliation, then he shall receive the Word, and it shall be said to him, This day is salvation come to this house. Then let him lay hold on the salvation, and bring forth fruit more perfectly, scattering and pouring forth rightly that which as a publican he wrongly gathered. For the same Word is on the one hand terrible through its nature to those who are unworthy, and on the other through its loving kindness can be received by those who are thus prepared, who have driven out the unclean and worldly spirit from their souls, and have swept and adorned their own souls by self-examination, and have not left them idle or without employment, so as again to be occupied with greater armament by the seven spirits of wickedness…” (Oration (39) on the Holy Lights 9-10, NPNF II 354-355)

St Gregory Nazianzen:

O Trinity, Whom I have been granted to worship and proclaim, Who will someday be known to all, to some through illumination, to others through punishment!” (On Peace 3, PG 35:1165B)

St Gregory Palamas:

He says: ‘He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire’, that is to say, with illumination and punishment, according to the disposition of each. (Homily 59, EPE 11, Page 498)

St Raphael of Optina:

The Kingdom of God begins here on earth, just as hell does – within us, that is, in the heart and soul of a man, by his way of life. Beyond the threshold of eternity both the one and the other only grow, infinitely, unto likeness to the angels or to the devils.

St John Climacus:

It is one thing frequently to keep watch over the heart, and another to supervise the heart by means of the mind, that ruler and high-priest that offers spiritual sacrifices to Christ. When the holy and super-celestial fire comes to dwell in the souls of the former, as says one of those who have received the title of Theologian, it burns them because they still lack purification, whereas it enlightens the latter according to the degree of their perfection. For one and the same fire is called both the fire which consumes and the light which illuminates.” (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 28:51)

St Theophan the Recluse:

The righteous will go into eternal life, but the satanized sinners into eternal torments, in communion with demons. Will these torments end? If satanism and becoming like satan should end, then the torments also can end…there is no hope either for men who become satanized by his influence [to change]. (quoted in Father Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, page 351)

St. Makarios of Egypt:

The heavenly fire of the divine nature, which Christians receive in this world, where it works within their hearts, this fire will work from outside, when the body is destroyed; it will restore again the disjointed limbs, and will bring to life the bodies which have decayed… (Spiritual Homilies 11:1, PG 34:544)

St Isaac of Syria:

Sin, Gehenna, and Death do not exist at all with God, for they are effects, not substances. Sin is the fruit of free will. There was a time when sin did not exist, and there will be a time when it will not exist. Gehenna is the fruit of sin… (Ascetical Homilies 27, Page 133)

St Isaac of Syria:

This is the aim of Love. Love’s chastisement is for correction, but it does not aim at retribution…But the man who considers God an avenger, presuming that he bears witness to His justice, the same accuses Him of being bereft of goodness. Far be it, that vengeance could ever be found in that Fountain of love and Ocean brimming with goodness! The aim of His design is the correction of men.” (Ascetical Homilies 48, Page 230)

St Isaac of Syria:

Do not call God just, for His justice is not manifest in the things concerning you. And if David calls Him just and upright, His Son revealed to us that He is good and kind. ‘He is good’, He says ‘to the evil and to the impious.’ How can you call God just when you come across the Scriptural passage on the wage given to the workers?…How can a man call God just when he comes across the passage on the prodigal son who wasted his wealth with riotous living, how for the compunction alone which he showed, the father ran and fell upon his neck and gave him authority over all his wealth?…Where, then, is God’s justice, for while we are sinners Christ died for us!” (Ascetical Homilies 51, Page 251)

Vladimir Lossky on St Symeon the new Theologian:

For according to St. Symeon, there are two judgments: one, in this life, the judgment to salvation; the other, after the end of the world, the judgment to condemnation ‘In this present life, when by repentance, we enter freely and of our own will into the divine light, we find ourselves accused and under judgment; but, owing to the divine love and compassion the accusation and judgment is made in secret, in the depths of our soul, to purify us, that we may receive the pardon of our sins. It is only God and ourselves who at that time will see the hidden depths of our hearts. Those who in this life undergo such a judgment will have nothing to fear from another tribunal. But for those who will not, in this life, enter into the light, that they may be accused and judged, for those who hate the light, the second coming of Christ will disclose the light which at present remains hidden, and will make manifest everything which has been concealed. Everything which today we hide, not wishing to reveal the depths of our hearts in repentance, will then be made open in the light, before the face of God; and the whole world, and what we really are will be made plain.’ At the second coming of Christ, all will be made fully conscious, in the power of the divine light. But this consciousness will not be one which opens up freely in grace, according to the divine will; it will be a consciousness coming, so to speak, from outside, and developing in persons against their will, a light being united to beings extraneously, that is to say, ‘outside grace,’ as St. Maximus has it. The love of God will be an intolerable torment for those who have not acquired it within themselves…The resurrection itself will reveal the inner condition of beings, as bodies will allow the secrets of the soul to shine through.” (Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Pages 233-234)

St Maximos the Confessor:

God , it is said, is the Sun of righteousness (cf. Mal. 4:2), and the rays of His supernal goodness shine down on all men alike. The soul is wax if it cleaves to God, but clay if it cleaves to matter. Which it does depends upon its own will and purpose. Clay hardens in the sun, while wax grows soft. Similarly, every soul that, despite God’s admonitions, deliberately cleaves to the material world, hardens like clay and drives itself to destruction, just as Pharaoh did (cf. Exod. 7:13). But every soul that cleaves to God is softened like wax and, receiving the impress and stamp of divine realities, it becomes “in spirit the dwelling-place of God” (Eph. 2:22). (First Century on Theology)

The wrath of God is the painful sensation we experience when we are being trained by Him. (Philokalia, Vol. II, p. 211)

St Theognostos:

Only through repentance shall we receive God’s mercy, and not its opposite, His anger. Not that God is angry with us: He is angry with evil. Indeed, the divine is beyond passion and vengefulness, though we speak of it as reflecting, like a mirror, our actions and dispositions, giving to each of us whatever we deserve. (Philokalia, Vol. II, p. 370)

Paper presented at the European Pentecostal/Charismatic Research Conference held in Prague on 10-14 September 1997

The Holy Spirit supplies all things:
He causes prophecies to spring up,
He sanctifies priests,
To the uninitiated He taught wisdom,
The fishermen He turned into theologians.
He holds in unity the whole structure of the Church.
— From an Orthodox hymn on the Feast of Pentecost

Solovetsk and Sunderland

Around the year 1890 an Anglican traveller from Sunderland, the Revd Alexander Boddy, Vicar of All Saints, Monkwearmouth, came as a pilgrim to the great Solovetsky Monastery on the White Sea in the far north of Russia. One thing in particular impressed him. It was a depiction of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost:¹

When, nearly two decades later, on the occasion of a famous visit from T.B. Barratt, there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Boddy’s Sunderland parish on 31 August 1907, is it not likely that this ’striking representation’ of Pentecost that he had seen in Russia was still vividly present in his memory? A formative event in the history of British Pentecostalism turns out in this way to have, as one of its sources, the iconography of an Orthodox monastic church.

This unexpected connection between Orthodox Christianity and the origins of the twentieth-century Pentecostal movement in Britain naturally leads us to ask: can we discover other links, on a more specifically theological level, between Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism? How far is the Christian East sympathetic to a ‘charismatic’ understanding of the spiritual life? At first sight it might appear that there is but little affinity. Orthodoxy, it might be said, is liturgical and hierarchic, whereas Pentecostalism is grounded upon the free and spontaneous action of the Spirit; Orthodoxy appeals to Holy Tradition, whereas Pentecostalism assigns primacy to personal experience.

Anyone, however, who searches more deeply will soon realize that stark contrasts of this kind are one-sided and misleading. In actual fact, many of the Greek Fathers insist with great emphasis upon the need for all baptized Christians to attain in their own personal experience a direct and conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit. No one can be a Christian at second-hand: such is the frequently repeated teaching of the Fathers. Holy Tradition does not signify merely the mechanical and exterior acceptance of truths formulated in the distant past, but it is in the words of the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky – nothing else than ‘the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church² here and now, at this present moment.

“The worst of all heresies”

The vital significance of the Holy Spirit for the Christian East will be apparent if we consider one of the outstanding mystical authors of the Middle Byzantine period, St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022). Each of us, he maintains, is called by God to experience the indwelling presence of the Spirit ‘ in a conscious and perceptible way’, with what he describes as the ’sensation of the heart’. It is not enough for us to possess the Spirit merely in an implicit manner:

Do not say, It is impossible to receive the Holy Spirit;
Do not say, It is possible to be saved without Him.
Do not say that one can possess Him without knowing it.
Do not say, God does not appear to us.
Do not say, People do not see the divine light,
Or else, It is impossible in these present times.
This is a thing never impossible, my friends,
But on the contrary altogether possible for those who wish.³

All the charismata available to Christians in the apostolic age, Symeon is passionately convinced, are equally available to Christians in our own day. To suggest otherwise is for Symeon the worst of all possible heresies, implying as it does that God has somehow deserted the Church. If the Gifts of the Spirit are not as evident in the Christian community of our own time as they are in the Book of Acts, there can be only one reason for this: the weakness of our faith.

Symeon goes on to draw some startling conclusions from this. When asked, for example, whether lay monks, not ordained to the priesthood, have the power to ‘bind and loose’ that is to say, to hear confessions and to pronounce absolution he answers that there is one essential qualification, and one only, which empowers a person to act as confessor and to bestow forgiveness of sins; and that is the conscious awareness of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Monks who possess such awareness, even though not in holy orders, may confer absolution upon others; but anyone who lacks such awareness – even though he may be bishop or patriarch – should not attempt to do this.⁴

Symeon speaks also of a ’second baptism’, the baptism of tears, which is conferred on those who are ‘born from above’ through the Holy Spirit:

When someone suddenly lifts up his gaze and contemplates the nature of existing things in a way that he had never done before, then he is filled with amazement and sheds spontaneous tears without any sense of anguish. These tears purify him and wash him in a second baptism, that baptism of which our Lord speaks in the Gospels when He says, ‘if someone is not born through water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Again He says, ‘If someone is not born from above’ (cf. John 3:5,7). When He said ‘from above’, He signified being born from the Spirit.

Symeon even seems to consider the second baptism more important than the first; for he regards the first baptism – sacramental baptism through water – as no more than a type’ or foreshadowing, whereas the second baptism is to be seen as the truth’ or full reality: ‘The second baptism is no longer a type of the truth, but it is the truth itself.’ ⁵

How far is Symeon’s standpoint typical of Eastern Christendom? He himself warns his readers that he is a ‘frenzied’ or ‘manic zealot’:⁶ are his remarks, then, to be discounted as the ravings of an extremist? Let us compare Symeon with three other writers, all of whom emphasize the Holy Spirit, and all of whom are held in high esteem within the Orthodox spiritual Tradition: with St. Mark the Monk (Plate fourth or early fifth century), alias Mark the Hermit or Mark the Ascetic; with the author or authors of the Homilies attributed to St. Macarius of Egypt, but in fact of Syriac origin (late fourth century); and with St. John Climacus (c.570-c.649), author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a work which Orthodox monks are supposed to reread each Lent.

Three Questions

In assessing how these different writers understand baptism ‘with the Holy Spirit and fire’ (Luke 3:16), let us ask three more specific questions:

1. Must the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit be always a conscious indwelling, or can there be an indwelling of the Paraclete which is unconscious yet nonetheless real?
2. What is the relationship between sacramental baptism that is to say, water baptism – and ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire’? Is the ’second baptism’ in the Spirit to be seen as something radically new, conferring a fresh grace distinct from that of water baptism, or is the ’second baptism’ essentially the reaffirmation and fulfilment of the first – not a fresh grace but the realization and manifestation of the grace already received in our sacramental baptism with water?
3. What outward experiences – tongues, tears and the like – accompany and express our attainment of a conscious awareness of the Spirit?

Any answers that we propose need to be offered with diffidence and humility, for it is hard to contain within verbal formulae the living dynamism of the Spirit. Pointing as He does always to Christ and not to Himself (John 15:26; 16:13-14), He remains elusive and hidden so far as His own personhood is concerned. He is ‘everywhere present and filling all things’, to use the words of a familiar Orthodox prayer, but we do not see His face. Symeon the New Theologian emphasizes this mysterious character of the Paraclete in an Invocation to the Holy Spirit which precedes the collection of his Hymns. ‘Hidden mystery’, he calls the Spirit, treasure without name … reality beyond all words … person beyond all understanding’; and he continues: ‘Come, for Your name fills our hearts with longing and is ever on our lips; yet who You are and what Your nature is, we cannot say or know.’ ⁷

Let us display, then, an apophatic reticence in all that we assert concerning the free and sovereign Spirit, who is like the wind that ‘blows where it chooses: and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where goes’ (John 3:8).

St. Mark the Monk: from ’secret’ to ‘active’ presence

Little known in the West, Mark’s writings have always been popular in the Christian East. They are included in the first volume of that classic collection of Orthodox spiritual texts The Philokalia; in the Byzantine period there was even a monastic adage, ‘Sell everything and buy Mark’. Reacting against the Messalians (an ascetic movement originating in fourth-century Syria), Mark insists in trenchant terms upon the completeness of baptism. He is speaking, of course, about sacramental baptism:

However far someone may advance in faith, however great the good he has attained … he never discovers, nor can he ever discover, anything more than what he has already received secretly through  baptism…. Christ, being perfect God, has bestowed upon the baptized the perfect grace of the Spirit. We for our part cannot possibly add to that grace, but it is revealed and manifests itself increasingly, the more we fulfil the commandments …. Whatever, then, we offer to Christ after our regeneration was already hidden within us and came originally from Him.

Mark ends – for he is strongly Pauline in spirit – with a quotation from Romans 11:35 – 36: ‘Who has first given a gift to God, so as to receive a gift in return? For from Him… are all things.⁸

Baptism, according to the Monk’s teaching, confers upon us a total purification from all sin, both original and personal; it liberates us from all ’slavery’, restoring the primal integrity of our free will as creatures formed in God’s image; and at the same time, through our immersion in the baptismal font, Christ and Holy Spirit take up their abode within us, entering into what Mark terms ‘the innermost and uncontaminated chamber of the heart’, the innermost and untroubled shrine of the heart where the winds of evil spirits so not blow’.⁹

At this point Mark makes a crucial distinction, summed up in the two Greek adverbs m u s t i k v V meaning ‘mystically’ or ’secretly’, and e n e r g u v V , meaning ‘actively’. Initially, at sacramental baptism -and Mark seems to envisage primarily the situation of infant baptism – the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is given to us ’secretly’, in such a way that we are not at first consciously aware of it. We only become ‘actively’ conscious of this presence if we acquire a living faith, expressed through our practice of the divine commandments. In this way baptism plants within us a hidden seed of perfection, but it rests with us – assisted always by God’s grace – to make that seed grow, so that it bears conscious and palpable fruit. While we cannot “add* to the completeness of baptism, God nevertheless awaits a response on our part; and if we fail to make that response, although the Spirit will still continue to be present ’secretly’ in our heart, we shall not feel His presence ‘actively’ within us, nor experience His fruits with full conscious awareness.

Such is Mark’s map of the Christian pilgrimage. Our starling-point is the presence of baptismal grace within us ’secretly’ and unconsciously; our end-point is the revelation of that grace ‘actively’, with what he terms ‘full assurance (p l h r o j o r i a ) and sensation (a i s q h s i V )’. As he states:

‘Everyone baptized in the Orthodox manner has received secretly the fullness of grace; but he gains assurance of this grace only to the extent that he actively observes the commandments.’ ¹⁰

Our spiritual programme can therefore be summed up in the maxim ‘Become what you are’. We are already, from the moment of our sacramental baptism as infants , ‘Spirit-bearers’ in an implicit and unconscious manner. Our aim is therefore to acquire conscious experience – several times Mark uses the Greek term p e i r a – of Him who already dwells within us:

‘All these mysteries we have received at our baptism, but we are not aware of them. When, however, we condemn ourselves for our lack of faith, and sincerely express our belief in Christ by performing all the commandments, then we shall acquire experience within ourselves of all the things that I have mentioned; and we shall confess that holy baptism is indeed complete and that the grace of Christ is invisibly hidden within us; but it awaits our obedience and our fulfilment of the commandments.’ ¹¹

We are now in position to assess the answers which Mark offers to our three questions.

1. It is abundantly clear that Mark allows for an indwelling presence of the Spirit that is unconscious yet nonetheless real. Such, in his view, is precisely the position of those who have been baptized in infancy. They receive a genuine indwelling of the Paraclete, and this ’secret’ indwelling will never be altogether lost, however careless or sinful their subsequent lives may be; as Mark puts it, ‘Grace never ceases to help us in a secret way. ^l2 At the same time Mark regards this ’secret’ presence as no more than an initial starting-point; and he clearly affirms that the vocation of every baptised Christian without exception is to advance from this to a conscious awareness of the Spirit.
2. In Mark’s view, this conscious awareness of Spirit experienced ‘actively’ and ‘with full assurance and sensation’ is in no sense a new grace, distinct from the grace conferred in water baptism, but it is nothing else than the full ‘revelation’ of the baptismal grace conferred upon us at the outset. The baptized Christian ‘never discovers, nor can he ever discover, anything more than what he has already received secretly through baptism’. Everything is contained implicitly in the initial charisma of baptism.
3. As to the outward experiences which accompany this conscious awareness of the indwelling Spirit, Mark is reticent. He does not speak about visions, dreams, trances and ecstasy.

Nowhere have I found in his writings anything that could be interpreted as a reference to speaking with tongues. His allusions to tears are infrequent; so far from exalting the gift of tears, he warns us, ‘Do not grow conceited if you shed tears when you pray.’¹³ He does indeed believe that our aim is to experience consciously the energies of the Spirit’ and to reach the state above nature’, where the intellect (n o u V ) ‘discovers the fruits of the Holy Spirit of which the Apostle spoke: love, joy, peace and the rest’ (cf. Gal. 5:22).¹⁴ But he does not specify what precise form these ‘energies’ and ‘fruits’ are to take.

When interpreting an author such as Mark, it is helpful to make a distinction between ‘experience’ (in the singular) and experiences’ (in the plural). There are surely many Christians who feel able to say in all humility, ‘I know God personally’, without being able to point to any single event such as a vision, a voice, or a concentrated ‘conversion crisis’ of the kind undergone by St. Paul, St. Augustine, Pascal or John Wesley. Personal experience of the Spirit permeates their whole life, existing as a total awareness, without necessarily being crystallized in the form of particular ‘experiences’. When Mark and other Greek Fathers refer to our conscious awareness of the ‘energies’ or ‘fruits’ of the Spirit, they may well have in view an all-embracing ‘experience’ of this kind, rather than any specific and separate ‘experiences’.

The Macarian Homilies: light, tears and ecstasy

The Homilies attributed to Macarius are better known in the West than are the writings of Mark the Monk: John Wesley, for example, was an enthusiastic reader of the Homilies, characteristically observing in his diary for 30 July 1736, ‘I read Macarius and sang.’ Whereas Mark is evidently an opponent of Messalianism, the Homilies are commonly regarded as a Messalian or semi-Messalian work. But in fact, when Mark and the Homilies are carefully compared, their respective theologies of baptism turn out to be not so very different. It is true that the best-known group of Macarian texts, the collection of the Fifty Spiritual Homilies (known as Collection II or Collection H), is largely silent about sacramental baptism; but there are a number of important references to it in the other main groups, Collection I (B) and III (C).

In agreement with Mark, the Macarian Homilies see sacramental baptism as the foundation of all Christian life: ‘Our baptism is true for us and valid, and it is the source from which we receive the life of the Spirit.’ ¹⁵

The Homilies concur with Mark in insisting furthermore upon the completeness of baptism: ‘In possessing the pledge of baptism, you possess the talent’ in its completeness, but if you fail to work with it, you yourself will remain incomplete; and not only that, but you will be deprived of it.’ ¹⁶

Mark would not have said, ‘you will be deprived of if, for he believes that the gift of baptismal grace can never be wholly lost. But otherwise the two authors agree: baptism is ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’, but in order to experience the full effects of the sacrament, we need to ‘work’ with the initial charisma of baptism by fulfilling the commandments.

Once more in agreement with Mark, the Macarian writings state that the gift of the Holy Spirit is conferred ‘from the Moment of baptism’.¹⁷ Just as Mark envisages a progress from baptismal grace present ’secretly’ to baptismal grace experienced ‘actively’, so likewise the Homilies maintain that the indwelling presence of the Spirit, conferred at baptism, is something of which we ere initially unconscious. The Spirit’s working is at first so slight that the baptized person is ignorant of His activity:

‘Initially divine grace exists within a person in such a subtle way that he is unaware of its presence and does not understand [that it is within him]…. But if we persist and advance in all the virtues, struggling with full exertion, then baptism will increase in power and will be revealed in us, making us perfect through its own grace.’ ¹⁸

This, as we have noted, is exactly Mark’s teaching: through our fulfilment of the commandments and our ascetic struggles, the hidden grace of baptism is gradually ‘revealed’ in its full power.

At the outset, then, so the Homilies affirm, the Spirit is present ‘invisibly’, but if we persevere on the path of Christian obedience we shall gradually come to experience His presence with power and assurance’:

‘In His own wisdom the heavenly Physician bestows the heavenly bread – that is to say, the power of the Spirit invisibly through the holy mystery of the “washing of rebirth’ (Titus 3:5) and of the Body of Christ; and through the “word of consolation’ (Heb. 13:22) in the Scriptures He nourishes and warms the damaged soul that is still subject to the passions and that is not yet capable of experiencing the energy of the Spirit with power and assurance, whether on account of its childishness or because of its lack of faith and its carelessness. Every soul, on receiving the remission of sins in holy baptism according to the measure of its faith, participates in the energy of grace: one receives it with power and assurance, another with weaker energy of grace …. Thus the grace of the Spirit bestowed in baptism seeks to overshadow each person in abundance and to grant to each more speedily the perfection of divine power, but the degree to which someone shares in this grace depends on the measure of that person’s faith and piety.’ ¹⁹

This is less clear and coherent than the treatment that we find in Mark; also the Homilies seem to envisage adult baptism whereas Mark thinks primarily in terms of infant baptism. But there is no fundamental discrepancy between the two authors. Both agree that there is a progressive advance from an unconscious presence of the baptismal gift of the Spirit to a conscious awareness of the baptismal gift “with full assurance and sensation’ (a phrase used by the Homilies as well as by Mark).

How, then, do the Macarian Homilies answer our three questions?

1. The Homilies clearly assert that, in certain cases at any rate, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit conferred at baptism is at first unconscious: He is present within us ‘invisibly, in such a way that we are ‘unaware’ of Him. At the same time, however, it is the vocation of every baptized Christian to advance from unconsciousness to conscious awareness, so that we experience this gift of the Spirit ‘with full assurance and sensation’. Here the Homilies, like Mark the Monk, rely heavily upon the language of feeling. Sometimes the Homilies describe this higher stage of conscious awareness as ‘baptism with fire and the Spirit’,²⁰ a phrase nowhere found in Mark’s writings.
2. This ‘baptism with fire and the Spirit’ does not, however, connote a new and distinct gift of the Spirit, but according to the Homilies it is nothing else than the developed and conscious awareness of the gift of the Spirit inherent in water baptism. As with Mark, it is water baptism that constitutes the ’source’ of all our life in the Spirit.
3. lf the Homilies and Mark prove thus far to be in substantial agreement, in their respective answers to the third question there is a significant difference between them. The Homilies emphasize various outward experiences that accompany the conscious awareness of the Spirit, in a way that Mark does not. Macarius speaks, for example, about a vision of divine light received by the spiritual aspirant,²¹! and about his illumination by ‘non-material and divine fire’.²² These Macarian texts concerning light and fire had an important influence upon the mystical theology of the fourteenth-century Byzantine Hesychasts, and they were taken up in particular by St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). The Homilies also attach more importance than Mark does to the gift of tears. Only if we ‘weep’ shall we experience the ‘power” of the Spirit:
   ‘If anyone is naked because he lacks the divine and heavenly garment which is the power of the Spirit… let him weep and beseech the Lord that he may receive the spiritual garment from heaven.’ ²³

Unlike Mark, the Homilies speak explicitly about trance-like and ecstatic experiences:

Sometimes a person when praying has fallen into a kind of trance (e c t a s i V ) and has found himself standing in church before the sanctuary; and three loaves of bread were offered to him, leavened with oil…

There have been other occasions, Macarius continues, when the impact of a vision of inner light has proved so devastating that a person loses normal self-control:

Swallowed up in the sweetness of contemplation, he was no longer master of himself, but became like a fool and a barbarian towards this world, so overwhelmed was he by the excessive love and sweetness of the hidden mysteries that were being revealed to him. ²⁴

There is no parallel in Mark’s writings to this kind of language.

There is even a possible allusion in one Homily to speaking with tongues. Recalling the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, Macarius says: As for the apostles, they cried out willy-nilly. Just as a flute, when air is blown through it, gives out the sound that the flute-player wants, so it is also with the apostles and those who resemble them. When they were ‘born from above’ (John 3:3,7) and received the Paraclete Spirit, the Spirit spoke in them as He wanted.²⁵

The reference here to those who ‘resemble’ the apostles suggests that the speaking with tongues on the day of Pentecost has been continued in later ages of the Church. But this is an isolated passage which has no exact parallel elsewhere in Macarian corpus, and so it would be unwise to base too much upon it.

Counterbalancing this passage on Pentecost, there are other occasions when the Homilies condemn the use of ‘unseemly and confused cries’ during times of prayer. Probably the author has in mind certain ‘enthusiasts’ among the more extreme Messalians:

Those who draw near to the Lord ought to make their prayers in quietness and peace and great tranquillity, not with unseemly and confused cries …. There are some who during prayer make use of unseemly cries, as if relying on their own bodily strength, not realizing how their thoughts deceive them, and thinking that they can achieve perfect success by their own strength. ²⁶

Yet even if the Homilies do not in fact provide clear support for glossolalia, it is evident that their author (or authors) expected the conscious experience of the Spirit to be marked by other external expressions, such as tears and ecstatic visions.

St. John Climacus: the baptism of tears

The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus, abbot of Sinai, provides relatively little material to help us in answering our questions. Although The Ladder contains a few (but not very many) references to baptism, and also a few (but not very many) references to the Holy Spirit, nowhere are these two themes – the gift of baptism and the grace of the Spirit – mentioned together in the same passage. It is clear from numerous statements in The Ladder that Climacus attaches great importance to personal experience, but he does not develop the point in explicit detail.

There are, however, two passages in The Ladder that are significant for our present purpose. First, Climacus indicates that there is a direct connection between the gift of the Spirit and obedience to a spiritual father or mother:

If you are constantly upbraided by your director and yet acquire greater faith in him and love for him, then you may be sure that the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in your soul and the power of the Most High has overshadowed you. ²⁷

To some contemporary Christians there might seem to be a contradiction between, on the one hand, strict obedience to a spiritual guide and, on the other, the personal experience of freedom in the Holy Spirit. But this is not the way in which Orthodoxy views the matter. On the contrary, it is precisely through obedience that we learn freedom. The role of the spiritual guide or ’soul friend’ (Celtic amchara) is not to act as a substitute for the Spirit, but it is specifically through our relationship with our guide that we are helped to attain personal awareness of the Spirit’s presence. So far from discouraging a direct contact with the Spirit, our guide seeks to open the door for us; to vary the metaphor, he or she aims to be transparent.

The second and more important passage in The Ladder concerns the gift of tears. Climacus, as Symeon the New Theologian was later to do, regards this as a second baptism, which is to be placed on an even higher level than the first baptism in sacramental water:

The tears that come after baptism are greater than baptism itself, though it may seem rash to say so. Baptism washes off those evils that were previously within us, whereas the sins committed after baptism are washed away by tears. The baptism received by us as children we have all defiled, but we cleanse it anew with our tears. If God in His love for the human race had not given us tears, those being saved would be few indeed and hard to find.²⁸

This is relevant to the third of our questions. What outward signs accompany direct experience of the Spirit? Climacus says nothing about speaking with tongues, but he attaches deep value to the charisma of spiritual tears. The gift of tears is also strongly emphasized by Climacus’s contemporary, St. Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian).²⁹

St. Symeon the New Theologian: ‘he cries and shouts’

Let us now return to the author with whom we started, St. Symeon the New Theologian. How far do his answers to our three questions correspond to those found in Mark the Monk and the Macarian Homilies?

(i) It might seem at first sight that Symeon excludes the possibility of an inner presence of the Spirit that is unconscious yet real; for) in a passage already cited, he states unambiguously, ‘Do not say that one can possess Him without knowing it.³⁰ Taken literally, these words suggest that Symeon identifies the reality of grace with the conscious awareness of it. This is often regarded as a typically ‘Messalian’ deviation (although what the Messalians actually believed is notoriously difficult to establish). In fact, however, there are other passages in Symeon which imply that he did not in fact endorse such an extreme position. More than once he definitely allows for an unconscious working of grace:

Let us seek Christ, with whom we have been clothed through holy baptism (cf. Gal. 3:27). Yet we have been stripped of Him through our evil deeds; for, although in our infancy we were sanctified without being aware of it (a n a i s q h t v V ), yet in our youth we defiled ourselves. ³¹

As it is written, ‘He who endures to the end will be saved’ (Matt. 10:22). Not only will he be saved, but he will receive help – at first, without being aware of it, then with conscious awareness, and soon afterwards with the illumination that comes from Almighty God. ³²

When the fear of God leads someone to cut off his own will, God grants him His will, without the person knowing it, in a way that he does not perceive. ³³

Symeon – more than Mark the Monk, more even than the Macarian Homilies - attaches crucial importance to the attainment, by every Christian without exception, of a direct, conscious awareness of the Spirit; and this may sometimes lead him to exaggerated statements. But, as the passages quoted above clearly indicate, he does not altogether exclude an unconscious presence of Christ and the Spirit. He too, in common with Mark and Macarius, envisages a progress from a ’secret’ to an ‘active’ indwelling.

(ii) Does Symeon also agree with Mark and Macarius in regarding ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’, not as a new grace, but as the ‘revelation’ and fulfilment of water baptism? It has to be admitted that his answer is less clear than that of his two predecessors. As we have seen, he asserts that water baptism is no more than a type’, while the second baptism of tears is the truth’.³⁴ He even suggests, in words that I find disturbing, that not all the baptized receive Christ:

Let no one say, ‘ I have received and I possess Christ from the moment of holy baptism.’ Such a person should recognize that it is not all the baptized that’ receive Christ through baptism, but only those who are strong in faith and in perfect knowledge.³⁵

Perhaps Symeon’s point here is that none of us should rest satisfied with a purely external and mechanical appeal to our baptism; we have to live out its effects. But in that case it would have been clearer if he had said, as Mark does: ‘We receive Christ in baptism, but we only become aware of Him if we fulfil the commandments.’

In general, however, Symeon affirms categorically that baptism confers forgiveness of sins, total liberation from tyranny, and the indwelling presence of the Spirit. To use his own words:

Descending from on high our Master through His own death destroyed the sentence of death against us. He entirely destroyed the condemnation that we inherited from the transgression of our first father, and through holy baptism He completely delivers us from it, regenerating and refashioning us; and He places us in this’ world altogether free and no longer subject to the tyranny of the enemy, honouring us with our original power of voluntary choice. ³⁶

You renewed me through the holy baptism that fashioned me anew, adorning me with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁷

Through divine baptism we become children and heirs of God, we are clothed with God Himself, we become His limbs, and we receive the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell within us, which is the royal seal…. All these things, and other things yet greater than these, are given to the baptized immediately from the moment of divine baptism. ³⁸

After a careful assessment of the evidence, Archimandrite Athanasios Hatzopoulos concludes:

When Symeon speaks of Baptism in the Spirit, he means the grace of the renewal of sacramental Baptism. It is the same grace of the Spirit that makes water-Baptism a sacrament, which in turn makes possible the gradual renewal of the image…. The grace man receives in Baptism, which promotes his spiritual growth, acts as a starting-point in which the end is present in the beginning. ³⁹

In the last resort, then, Symeon concurs with Mark and Macarius in regarding ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’ – the second baptism of tears – as the full realization of sacramental baptism, not as a new and different grace. But it has to be confessed that here Symeon constitutes a borderline case.

(iii) Like Macarius, but unlike Mark, the New Theologian speaks in some detail about the outward experiences that accompany a full conscious awareness of the Spirit. First of all, he lays great emphasis upon the gift of tears: the second baptism is precisely ‘a baptism of tears’. Here he appeals explicitly to John Climacus. Secondly, he assigns a central place in his mystical theology to the vision of divine light. This light, so he believes, is God Himself; Christ may sometimes speak to us from the light, although His bodily form is not seen m the vision. Thirdly, he describes ecstatic phenomena which have obvious parallels in modem Pentecostalism:

A person who has within him the light of the most Holy Spirit, unable to endure it, falls prostrate upon the ground; and he cries out and shouts in terror and great fear, for he sees and experiences something that surpasses nature, thought and imagination. He becomes as one whose entrails have been set ablaze: devoured by fire and unable to bear the scorching flame, he is beside himself, and he cannot control himself at all. And though he sheds unceasing tears that bring him some relief, the fire of his longing is kindled to yet fiercer flames. Then he weeps more abundantly and, washed by the flood of his tears, he shines as lightning with an- ever-increasing brilliance. When he is entirely aflame and becomes as light, then is fulfilled the saying, ‘God is joined in unity with gods and is known by them. ⁴⁰

It is not surprising that Symeon’s writings are popular among contemporary Orthodox who have come under the influence of the charismatic movement.

In conclusion, then, we may claim to have found a large measure of convergence between our Patristic witnesses:

1. All agree that it is possible to possess the Holy Spirit within oneself, without being conscious of His presence.
2. All agree that the ’second baptism’ – the baptism of tears or ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’ – is an extension and fulfilment of the first baptism bestowed sacramentally with water. ‘Spirit baptism’ is not to be seen as conferring an entirely new grace, different from that conferred through “water baptism’.
3. Some Eastern Christian authors, such as Mark the Monk, are reticent in describing the outward signs that may accompany conscious awareness of the Spirit. Others, such as Macarius and Symeon, enter into much fuller detail, referring in particular to the gift of tears, the vision of divine light and even on occasion to something that resembles the modem experience of speaking with tongues. But their allusions to this last are very infrequent.

Of these three points, the second will surely prove of crucial importance in any future Orthodox-Pentecostal dialogue.

Footnotes

1. Alexander A. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims: being an account of a sojourn in the White See Monastery and a journey by the old trade route from the Arctic See to Moscow (London, no date [ca.1931), p.181.1 am grateful to Dr. David N. Collins, of the University of Leeds, for drawing my attention to this passage.

2. In the Image and Likeness of God (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood 1974), p.152.

3. Hymn 27:125-32.

4. See Kallistos Ware, Tradition and Personal Experience in Later Byzantine Theology', Eastern Churches Review 3:2 (1970), pp.131-41, especially pp. 135-9.

5. Practical and Theological Chapters 1:35-36.

6. Catechesis 21:139-40.

7. Sources Chretiennes 156 (Paris 1969), p. 151.

8. On Baptism (PG [= J.P. Migne, Patrotogia Graeca] 65:1028BC). It is somewhat surprising that Mark, while speaking at length about baptism, says very little about the eucharist.

9. On Baptism (,PG 65:996C, 1016D).

10. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 85 (PG 65:944A).

11. On Baptism (PG 65:993C).

12. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 56 (PG 65:937D).

13. On the Spiritual Law 12 (PG 65:908A).

14. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 57, 83 (PG 65:940A, 941 CD).

15. B43:6.

16. C28:3.

17. Great Letter (ed. Wemer Jaeger), p.236, line 8.

18. B43:6.

19. B 25:2, §§2-4.

20. H 26:23; 27:17; 32:4; 47:1; etc. •

21. See, for example, H 1-8,10.

22. H 25:9-10.

23. H20:1.

24. H 8:3.

25. C 15:4.

26. H 6:4.

27. Ladder, Step 4 (PG 88:725D).

28. Ladder, Step 7 (PG 88-.804B).

29. See his Ascetical Homilies 14 and 37 (35), tr. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston 1984), pp.82-83, 174: cited in Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood 1995), p.101.

30. See note 3.

31. Catechesis 2:139-42.

32. Catechesis 26:63-66.

33. Practical and Theological Chapters 3:76.

34. See note 5.

35. Ethical Discourse 10:323-6.

36. Catechesis 5:381-6.

37. Thanksgiving 2:17-18.

38. Letter on Confession 3 (ed. Kari Holl), p.111, line 26 – p.112, line 6.

39. Athanasios Hatzopoulos, Two Outstanding Cases in Byzantine Spirituality (Thessaloniki 1991), pp.135,137.

40. Practical and Theological Chapters 3:21. The final phrase is from St. Gregory of Nazianzus.

I don’t like the category “spirituality.” It sounds so external. It sounds so optional. It isn’t a concept I find in the first millennium, or anywhere in Eastern Christianity. As far as I can tell, what people today mean by “spirituality” is what St. Paul meant by “life in Christ.”

This is a transformation that every Christian is supposed to be experiencing, because we are all “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). As we partake of the life of Christ and discipline ourselves, seeking to assimilate that life, it affects both our souls and bodies. His light spreads within us like fire spreading through a lump of coal, and so we become Christ-bearers to the world. This is such an essential, foundational element of life in Christ that to extract it and label it seems to deaden it.

Early Christians did not talk about “spirituality,” much less varieties of spirituality, appropriate to this or that kind of personality, or ethnic background, or gender. Not only is that unhelpful, I don’t think it’s even possible to set up such divisions. Each one of us is participating in the light of the One Christ, so in one sense “spirituality” is exactly the same for everyone, because Christ is one. But each one of us is the only human being God ever made who is exactly us, so we will radiate that light back out again just a bit differently than any other saint.

So although the unity of Christ means there is only one possible “spirituality,” in another sense there are as many different “spiritualities” as the billions of people who live and who have lived. But an in-between that imagines that there are different styles appropriate to this or that sub-group, speaks of nothing so much as our culture’s reflexive love of shopping.

The thing about contemporary “spirituality” that annoys me the most is its capacity for narcissism. Focusing on spirituality instead of on the Lord makes you stop halfway down the hallway and think about yourself. That obviously delays your progress. It can be a temptation to consumerism – “Gee, centering prayer didn’t work, I think I’ll try Ignatian meditation.” And it can be a temptation to self-adornment, by suggesting that being spiritual makes you superior to other people, makes you more “interesting” or “deep.” What appears to be very intentional involvement with spiritual things, can actually be simply the taking up a new beauty regimen.

We can say, as in Christ’s parable of the wheat and tares, “An enemy has done this.” It is a strategy of the Evil One to take a good impulse and twist it backward into self-regard.

The term “spirituality” is troublesome because it reifies something that ought to go unnoticed. When you start taking an exaggerated interest in your breathing is when your breathing starts going wrong. Our sole focus should be on the compelling beauty of our Lord, and what moves us forward is only our desire for him. So my advice is: don’t seek an improved spirituality, or even a better prayer life. Just seek the Lord Jesus Christ, and keep your eyes on him.

Originally published in “Gifted For Leadership,” January 2007.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon every soul, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common… Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

When I became a Christian in 1980, I was living with a Roman Catholic family and attending a Jesuit high school. I attended Mass and religion classes, but on the whole I was underwhelmed by Christianity as it was presented. I was growing more and more hungry for God, but the religion I saw seemed more irrelevant and sentimental than genuine or powerful. So when I came to faith in Christ, I didn’t join any church at all. I’d seen church. Not interested.

It was over a year later that I was invited to a friend’s Evangelical church, and began attending regularly. Unlike the bored crowds I’d seen at Mass, these Pentecostals knew how to celebrate! I already knew how to enjoy a concert – dance to the music, wave your arms in the air, sing along, get lost in the good feeling – so I already knew how to join in a Pentecostal worship service. I loved it; here was a community characterized by enthusiasm and love for Christ, and motivated by concern for the souls of the world.

I worked with evangelistic teams in jails and street ministry, and later I moved to Washington State with the goal of training for overseas missionary work. That goal was never fulfilled, but I continued to be involved in ministry, visiting nursing homes, preaching and volunteering at the local rescue mission, and later teaching Sunday school and serving on the worship team. When I had the opportunity to attend Bible school, it seemed a natural next step.

In school we were encouraged to search the Scriptures and question everything until we found it in the Bible. Some of what I was taught I rejected; most I accepted. Every Protestant has to judge for himself what he will believe. If you’d asked, I’d have said my acceptance or rejection of any doctrine or practice was always based on the text of Scripture. What I would have meant was: based on the norms of evangelical interpretation of Scripture. After all, nobody can read without interpreting. The text of Scripture doesn’t interpret itself without our involvement. Otherwise no one would ever disagree on the meaning of “Eat My body, drink My blood” or “you must be born again.”

So I rejected notions like the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and baptism as a sacrament — and for that matter the very idea of sacraments. I was taught that since the New Testament doesn’t specify the office of the episcopate as separate from the presbytery, then there’s no warrant for any kind of authority structure besides a board of elders or pastors. (The earliest Christians were all democratic, of course.)

While studying the history of Christianity, we examined the history recounted in the book of Acts and then spent a very brief time reading excerpts from the “Early Fathers” — the Christian writers from the first, second and third centuries. The brief passages we read were selected and presented without context, to convince us that the worship and beliefs of the earliest Christians were just like ours. After our quick visit with the early Fathers we fast-forwarded over the “dark ages” so as to concentrate on the Protestant Reformation.

I couldn’t have told you in detail what those early Fathers taught, but I could pin them down by name and century. The “To The Reader” preface in the 1611 King James Bible was full of quotes labeled “Irenaeus”, “Tertullian”, “Cyril of Jerusalem” – and now I had a little historical data to attach to each of those names. Sadly, though, we never spent much time reading those Fathers’ writings in context. What did stick with me from those summaries of the Fathers was the emphasis on being in Christ. The idea was planted in me that, if Christ united creation to Himself in His Incarnation, then our life’s goal must be to participate in His Life, like branches in the Vine, partaking of the divine nature, being transformed by the renewing of our minds. I was sure that Christ must be able not only to save us from hell (sin’s consequence) but actually to save us from sin.

In Evangelical Protestantism there was certainly room for that belief — but there was no concrete “therefore do this” to work out that kind of a vision of salvation. Instead, we taught people to pray a prayer, “get saved”, and then go get other sinners saved.

Over time I saw churches buy into one program after another, designed to mobilize believers to share their faith, and to “disciple” the people who responded. But while I participated in many evangelistic events over the years — rallies, revivals, concerts, street evangelism — and saw a lot of genuine desire to bring people to Christ, I became dissatisfied with the proportionately small amount of time and effort that went into what was called “follow-up.” Even the name “follow-up” reveals the underlying assumption that the primary task has been accomplished when a nonbeliever makes a confession of faith in Christ. All that’s left (all!) is the lifetime task of uniting him to the people of God, teaching him who his Savior is, and instilling in him a whole new lifestyle. We believed the Great Commission was addressed to us, but all our effort seemed to be going into helping people start their Christian walk; we were much less successful in teaching Christians concrete, realistic ways to live out a life that increases in grace, wisdom, and holiness. I rarely ever heard any practical, useful teaching on just how to make war on the desires of the flesh so as not to be dragged away by lustful greed and crass American consumerism. Too often, new Christians were told little more than to “read your Bible and pray.” Hardly what Christ meant by “Go make disciples”!

When emphasis was given to accountability or concrete disciplines that might help a Christian persevere to the end and so be saved, there were often complaints that we were majoring on minors, getting distracted from evangelism, engaging in manipulation — and above all, that we were doing something different from standard Pentecostal practice.

Particularly frustrating was the fact that we had to invent or try out discipleship programs, since our independent-minded Protestant history had not provided us with any kind of historical disciplines. How, exactly, do we teach our new believers even basic disciplines like prayer, Bible reading, almsgiving, fasting, accountability or self-denial? What concrete, specific steps have been proven over time to develop these very basic disciplines? We hadn’t received anything like that from the early Church; outside of the Scriptures themselves, we lived as though nothing of the early Christian life had survived from those long-ago saints until today.

Our ideas of how to accomplish discipleship were all only decades old, because we really had no history. We zealously defended the faith of our fathers as we understood it, but our vision of “normal Christianity” really stretched back only about a hundred years.

In the mid 1990’s our church started a Vietnamese mission congregation. When they invited me to be their pastor, I took very seriously the responsibility to present the word of God as it is, not merely my beliefs about it; and I knew that God’s people need to worship Him acceptably. Beginning to realize the lack of historical depth or context to my Christianity, I began reading more widely, looking for wisdom and inspiration in the writings of the people who were the ancestors of our Pentecostal tradition: the great American and Welsh revivalists, the Salvation Army, the Keswick “deeper life” writers, the Pietists, the Puritans.

I visited friends’ churches — Presbyterian, Reformed, Episcopal, and others. Those visits impressed me with how many very different things are called “worship”. This is when I began the study that I had no idea would eventually lead me to Orthodoxy — a study to answer the question: What exactly is worship? In the Reformation, the altar was moved from the center of attention and the pulpit took first place, reflecting a fundamental shift in the definition of worship – from personal participation in Christ, to hearing a preached sermon. And in our modern Pentecostal tradition, the pulpit could be dispensed with entirely, as the guitars and drums took center stage and music became the defining feature of what we called worship.

Amid all those changes of focus and shifting meanings of the word “worship”, I had to wonder how much of what we do in church today is just a reflection of our transient culture? How much is authentic? What is common to the church’s experience of worship through history? I didn’t want to invest time and prayer into something that would be meaningless in a generation, or irrelevant outside my cultural context.

One week, in a home study group, as we were reading through Acts, I taught on Acts 2:42-47. That passage affected me deeply — the church was just being the church and the Lord was adding to their numbers those who were being saved. People were encountering Christian fellowship and being drawn into it — and in that environment they were meeting Christ. Communal worship, prayer, and mutual submission were the methods they used to make disciples. And when they expanded outside Judea, they continued to make disciples, with this same culturally-alien, ethnic Jewish variety of synagogue liturgy. (This was not a user-friendly, seeker-sensitive church!)

As we studied the end of Acts chapter 2, I grew increasingly frustrated. I knew this kind of congregational life and devotion must be key to establishing authentic Christian fellowship — but the New Testament just does not give a divine blueprint for building the Church! Paul and Peter, James and Jude assume the Church is already established and needs only their specific corrections. I could see that we modern folks were missing the mark; I decided I had to go back and re-read the documents of the early church. I still remembered the names of those early Christian Fathers of the first and second century — surely in their writings I’d find insights I could apply to our congregation. Unfortunately it wasn’t that simple.

Like most Protestants I knew, I had been taught that the early Church was just like us …but then after the first few centuries, the church began to go all weird and liturgical and hierarchical. And then when Constantine legalized Christianity, that was the last nail in the coffin: The church became virtually extinct for the next 1200 years, till the Protestant Reformation. I figured that if my reading stayed way back in the Church’s first century or two, before the time serious corruption could set in, I should be able to read the comments of men who had been taught by the Apostles, who wrote to churches the Apostles had pastored. They should shed some light on how our democratic, charismatic, nonsacramental congregation could live out the kind of life described in the book of Acts. Right?

To put it mildly, these writers shocked me. After only a little reading — Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and the Didache, for starters — it was evident that the early church, even in the late first century, practiced liturgical worship. To them this was the normal Christian life. I was unprepared for these second- and first-century writers to be discussing bishops and liturgy, and calling the “Eucharist” the body of Christ.

They didn’t just sit in a circle in their bluejeans and talk about Jesus; they practiced a liturgy they’d inherited from the synagogue, and they celebrated Communion – the Eucharist – gathered around a bishop and presbyters and deacons. By 150AD, Justin Martyr could describe the outline of the liturgy in order; and by the early 200’s Hippolytus wrote out the texts of the prayers everyone used. And the rest of the Christians around them thought this was nothing out of the ordinary! What these “early Christian Fathers” wrote was not refuted or destroyed, but rather preserved, copied, and distributed to the churches during the lifetime of the Apostles. Heretical writings were denounced and destroyed, but these writings were considered normal by Christians in John’s or Paul’s churches.

What did these early Christian Fathers have to say? Within a decade of John’s death, his disciple Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Church of Philadelphia:

If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God… Be eager, therefore, to keep one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup for union with His blood; one sanctuary; as there is one bishop, together with the presbytery and the deacons my fellow servants. So that, whatever you do, you do it in according to the will of God.

And a few years later, the Christian apologist Justin (later known as Justin Martyr) wrote regarding Christian worship:

And this food is called among us Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto new birth, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but… we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.

In fact, without exception, all the first- and second-century writers were starting to sound like they held an awfully “catholic” view of baptism, communion, and the church. Yet no one, even n the Protestant world, ever questioned the historicity of these ancient documents.

I read on from the earliest Fathers into the third and fourth centuries — Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil. Where was the break I was expecting? Where was the change from congregational democracy and unstructured charismatic worship, to liturgical, hierarchical religion? That change was nowhere to be found; instead, it looked more like the writers of the first and fourth centuries were all on the same page, all in the same Church. Of course there were variations of opinion, but all these ancient writers, from across the civilized world, shared the beliefs of those first-century teachers who’d written with the words of the Apostles still ringing in their ears. The writers after Constantine didn’t differ materially from those before; instead there was a real sense of harmony among all the ancient writers I read; and an increasing dissonance as I compared their ancient beliefs to what I was accustomed to preaching.

Virtually all my concepts of worship and church government were turning out to be modern innovations. Before 1500, who had ever heard of democratic church government? Symbolic crackers and grape juice? An invisible church independent of the original apostles? Baptism that doesn’t really do anything? Thousands of years and thousands of miles removed from the apostles who wrote Scripture, with Greek a foreign language at best, by the dim light of archaeology, speculation, and changing winds of scholarship, I was in no position to judge the interpretations and teachings of these earliest Christians, who had learned their doctrine directly from the apostles. I had to start letting them judge me.

I experimented with adding liturgical elements in our services; but the results were unsatisfying to say the least. The Vietnamese Christians knew how they were used to doing church, and while they’d humor me in my liturgical notions, they were not about to significantly change their practices at this late date. As I realized the centrality of the Eucharist in early Christianity, we emphasized Communion more, and I found myself preaching against doctrines I had taught not too many months before — and in increasing disagreement with the other teachers in the congregation.

I had always believed my job as a mission pastor was to work myself out of a job. I had already been working toward turning the Vietnamese mission over to Vietnamese leaders. So I was glad to hand over most of the task of preaching to the Vietnamese leaders. I didn’t have much choice; preaching had become terribly difficult. My “Thus Saith The Lord” had gone away, and I felt like a fraud. The doctrines I’d taught were internally consistent — but not faithful to what the earliest Christians believed.

It was especially disturbing, in attempting to preach the Gospel as the early Christians did, that the early Christians didn’t seem to believe that a “decision for Christ” was the same thing as “salvation.” They all taught that salvation was a lifelong process, not a transaction or a legal fiction, and “he who perseveres to the end will be saved.” I had long believed I had a message that would save the world; now after seeing the sadly temporary results of much of evangelical preaching and discipleship, I couldn’t preach a simplistic “Get saved” gospel any more. What was I supposed to invite people into? Ancient Christianity was all about the relationship of the member of the Church to Christ and His body; not about anybody’s “personal Savior.” Outsiders were invited to join the people of God, get aboard the ark, become a part of the body — not to individually “accept Christ” but to come and be accepted, healed, and sanctified in the community of believers.

Was there a place in the Assemblies of God for this kind of grace community to be found — or created? Could our congregation become a community I could invite someone to be immersed in and find the healing they need? I doubted it. Our modern Christianity was starting to look like something consisting primarily of words and ideas and unreal things that happen in a person’s head: Intellectual things like those derived from Bible study and sermon listening, or emotional things like born again experiences and charismatic events. Wasn’t there anything real, effectual, and tangible? Were justification, sanctification, and participation in the divine nature just concepts or “spiritual realities” unrelated to life as we live it, here and now? Nobody seemed to have an answer that they hadn’t just invented, or reconstructed out of Scriptural proof-texts pulled together in an attempt to guess what the apostles had meant. Unfortunately, the apostles were long dead and all we evangelicals had to work with was their letters.

About this time, I ran across a reference to “The Carpenter’s Company”, a Foursquare congregation that had converted en masse and become — get this — Eastern Orthodox. How bizarre! Aren’t the Orthodox just ethnic Catholics? What could possibly be attractive about that? I’d seen Catholicism, gone to Catholic school, lived with Catholic families… they may have started out with the Fathers, and kept some of the trappings of the original worship of the early Church, but their ever-evolving doctrines, military-style chain of command, and weird sentimental devotions didn’t look anything like the community Ignatius or Basil wrote about. Could these Foursquare folks have bought into a form of Catholicism? Following up on this incomprehensible conversion story provided a welcome distraction.

After reading a bit about Orthodoxy, I discovered that Orthodoxy and Catholicism are vastly different … and that these Orthodox people were way ahead of me! They had not only already thought of the ancient ideas I was trying on for size — they’d been working them out in detail, with all their implications, for a very long time. Suddenly my thinking didn’t seem so very “out there” at all; and evidently there were plenty of other Evangelicals coming to the same conclusions that Foursquare congregation did — and converting to Orthodoxy. As it turns out, it’s not uncommon lately for entire congregations to join the Orthodox Church. Congregations convert from a variety of backgrounds: Foursquare, Episcopal, Vineyard, and others. I even read about the “Evangelical Orthodox”, an entire Protestant denomination that joined the Orthodox Church in 1987.

These converts claimed they were finding in Orthodoxy a community devoted to the disciplines and worship of ancient Christianity — not by restoring or reinventing it, but by receiving it as it had been practiced since the days of Peter and Paul. (Quite a claim, if they could back it up!) As it turned out, outside of the Western Roman Empire, there were no “dark ages”, but an unbroken chain of literate, articulate theologians who never forgot their roots. As I read the Orthodox writers of the fifth, eighth, or twelfth centuries, I thought that they might be right — this was the same stream I’d been wading in while reading the early Fathers.

Discovering twentieth-century Orthodoxy was not entirely welcome. For all its warts I liked my denomination — there are some good men and women there, who sincerely love the Lord — and I loved the people I went to church with. I didn’t want to leave the church family I’d been part of for most of my Christian life. I made up my mind to incorporate the good parts of Orthodox spirituality into my life and stay what and where I was. Meanwhile, my curiosity got the best of me, I looked up an Orthodox church near me in Yakima, and took a Sunday off to go visit.

What can I say about Orthodox worship? It was reverent, intimate, repentant… alive with faith, strange yet oddly familiar. The liturgy had elements I recognized from the Catholic Mass and from popular “chant” CD’s, and it consisted mostly of praying a lot of Scripture. In fact they read and prayed more complete chapters of the Bible in a single service than I’d ever heard before in a church service. But what really struck me was how Jewish it was. The words of the prayers, the melodies the cantor used while chanting, the menorah up front — so many things reminded me of a synagogue service. (I already knew that Christian liturgy was adapted from first-century Jewish synagogue liturgy, but I hadn’t thought it would still be that way.) They hadn’t stopped offering prayers with incense; “Bow down” wasn’t a song lyric but a practical physical act; the women still wore head coverings; they still celebrated the body and blood of Christ — it seemed like they were out to practice all the verses I’d never highlighted in my Bible. This was very much not a modern American invention! I was hooked, and returned to visit Orthodox worship services again and again over the following months.

By contrast with the charismatic services I led every week, the Orthodox liturgies I attended were such a relief! There was no pressure to make every week fresh, unique and exciting. There’s not a lot of performance pressure on the cantor or clergy, because the whole church is the worship team. Personalities don’t affect the worship, and the prayers don’t depend on anyone’s subjective eloquence or how their week has gone. In the set form of the Liturgy was also, paradoxically, a sense of freedom I’d not experienced before: Because there are boundaries and the worshipers know what to expect, they are free to concentrate wholly on their common prayers. There’s no wondering what new thing the worship leader will ask us to do this week!

More important to me than the worship services was the fact that among Orthodox Christians, I’d found people who still practiced the same worship and disciplines described by Justin Martyr or Irenaeus or Hippolytus in the first or second century. They didn’t read a lot of Max Lucado or Dr. Dobson; instead they spent most of their time putting the earliest Christian writers’ advice into action. And I was vastly relieved to find out that they didn’t believe in purgatory, Mary as “co-redeemer”, indulgences, or infallible popes!

In mid 1998 I was introduced to an Orthodox church-planting team that had moved up from California to start an Orthodox community in Walla Walla. (These people were from the church that started out as the San Jose Vineyard and in the early 90′s wound up becoming St Stephen Orthodox Church.) They were doing all the things I promised myself I’d do if I ever was involved in starting another church. At the Vietnamese mission, we had started having services, and a church slowly coalesced and filled in the framework — but too many relationships were centered on the leaders. Before you start having services, you need to already be a church! There’s got to be a network of relationships and a common worship experience, a community, an environment where outsiders can come and encounter authentic fellowship and community. That’s what these church planters were doing. I began attending inquirers’ meetings in Walla Walla.

At the end of the year I found that I couldn’t remain in both worlds; I had to make a decision. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy.”

With mixed emotions, I resigned from ministry and membership in Calvary Assembly of God. It was painful to leave behind friends and family in Christ; but it was also a relief to at last be free to wholeheartedly participate in the historic faith and worship I’d been dabbling in for the previous two years. I moved to Walla Walla to join in the life of the Orthodox community there, and on August 14, 1999 I was received into the Orthodox Church.

When a person enters the Church, they often are given the name of some hero of the faith who has finished the race triumphantly. I’ve always been inordinately proud of my knowledge, so it’s appropriate that for a patron saint I felt moved to choose Silouan of Mt Athos. St Silouan, a simple monk and all but illiterate, was consulted by pilgrims who sought out his wisdom and teaching on humility, obedience, and love. His life challenged me so much that I specifically wanted him praying for me today.

So I became Orthodox. And lived happily ever after? Well. The jury’s still out on that. A few years isn’t long enough to make a serious dent in a lifetime’s immersion in Western thought and independent self-inventing religion. I do know that, for the first time in my life, I’ve experienced long-term consistency in prayer, and personal accountability on a deeper level than I’ve ever known.

And, incidentally, far from relaxing carefree in a new level of freedom from sin, I’ve become much more conscious of the rebellion, selfishness, and pride that underlie so much of my way of living and thinking. But (our culture’s pop psychology to the contrary) guilt is not a burden to be rolled away and ignored; guilt means we’ve sinned and have the opportunity to repent. Compunction is good news! The practical how-to of repentance and humility is the place where Orthodoxy begins to show up as something different from every religion I know.

It’s after having been exposed to Orthodox preaching and teaching for a little while that I’ve begin to realize that in my life I have heard (and preached!) far more sermons on what the text of Scripture meant, than on how, practically and concretely, to live a life that leads to experiencing salvation from sin here and now. It’s much more common in many churches to hear exposition on the Sermon on the Mount than to hear usable, practical counsel from that Sermon on how to live, now, in the Kingdom. I can’t count how many vague sermons I’ve heard on “living in the Spirit” which never included a shred of practical instruction on what to do. In two thousand years the Orthodox have had time to prove what works for training the spiritual athlete to run the race to win.

Asceticism for me has quit being a word to describe crazed masochists, and has become part of my personal vocabulary. In Greek, askesis refers to athletic disciplines — and that’s a very apt metaphor for a Christian life that denies our nation’s cult of immediate gratification and materialism. Instead of seeing fasting as a heroic way to impress God when I want something from Him, fasting has become a regular part of the normal Christian life. After all, Christ did say “They shall fast” and “When you fast” so self-denial is meant to be common to all Christians. When disciplines are received and obeyed they can lead to humility. Otherwise it’s just an exercise in self-will, where we independently decide what cross to carry, and we just feed our pride. It’s a challenge for me to submit to the wisdom of two millennia of Christians who Know What Works, instead of developing my own personal rule of prayer or devotion.

All that discipline, submission, and obedience is not the result of any desire to measure up to a standard that will make me acceptable to God. The fact is, we don’t need to measure up at all. God loves us as we are. Period. A friend of mine wrote in a recent letter:

Do we love Him? Fine, then: True Love doesn’t ask “what I need to do and how much I need to measure up.” True love simply does as much as it can, the max, and prays for the ability to do yet more. (“More Love to Thee, O Christ, More love to Thee!”)

What has surprised me in speaking with my Evangelical friends has been that often the Orthodox emphasis on active faith — obedience — comes across either as an attempt to earn God’s favor through works, or as “something extra”, something above and beyond what is needed for salvation. And that’s the biggest difference between the gospel I used to preach and the one I’m trying to live today. I’m not interested in identifying the minimum that’s “needed for salvation.” Given an infinite goal – transforming union with God – and given the foolishness, pride, and sin that still characterize me, I’m motivated to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.

And what ever happened to that vision of an Acts 2:42 church? It might be surprising when you look at the surface of incense and icons and ancient melodies, but the kind of community described in Acts is happening here. The Lord is adding continually those who are being saved. People encounter members of our community socially, get exposed to our way of life and of relating to one another (humility, mutual submission, prayer) and they are drawn by God to join us. Some of us are former Evangelicals, pastors, elders, what-have-you. But a number of our inquirers and catechumens are post-Christians who got burned out on church a long time ago, or normal people who have little church background at all. Many of them have never before seen an atmosphere where absolutes are proclaimed, yet nobody points a finger — instead, we confess that we’re a bunch of hypocrites and sinners and we pray constantly for mercy and the grace of repentance.

I lean toward this vision not of evangelism but of community even more strongly as I’m painfully aware that I’m far from the godly example I’d like an unbeliever or non-Orthodox inquirer to encounter. No message is more credible than the messenger. I have a little credibility with the few people who know me well; they may or may not trust me when I tell them about the claims of Christ. But when they encounter a healthy community of faith, they see proof that Christ is among us.

Maybe it’s fitting that I started this piece speaking of my own individual experience but ended up talking about the Church. The promises and commands of Christ and the apostles are almost always in the plural. And while we can sin as individuals, we will be saved as members of Christ or not at all.

Philip Silouan Thompson

“We, unwise and with the meagerness of our intelligence, with God’s help have written this as a reminder to myself and to others of similar mind… If there is anything found here not pleasing to God and not helpful to souls because of my foolishness and ignorance, let it be not so, but may the will of God perfect it and make it well-pleasing. I ask pardon or beg that, if anyone should find anything else more practical and useful, then let him do it and we shall be glad and rewarded. If anyone should find from these writings some help, let him pray for me a sinner that I may obtain mercy before God.”   — St. Nil Sorsky