| But the gospel of Jesus Christ is and has always been an offense and scandal to the world. If Christians in America have fooled ourselves into believing the Christian calling is neatly compatible with our inherited way of life, we have been greatly deceived. The witness of the lives of monks striving to preserve the genuine apostolic, Christian life should appear to us as an oasis in a harsh and barren desert—if we are striving to see with the eyes of eternity rather than with the eyes of this world that is dying and passing away ( 1 John 2:17 ; 1 Cor. 7:31 ). St. Justin Popvich writes: The supreme rule of the Orthodox philosophy of society is: we must not adapt Christ the Theanthropos to the spirit of the times, but adapt the spirit of the times to Christ’s eternity, Christ’s theanthropy. And it is precisely the monastic life that appears as a beacon of light from this eternal perspective. While married life in the world necessarily differs in certain respects from monastic life, we ought not think that the differences are such that life in the world is one of lenience and laxity, while the monastics are called to strictness. Both callings are a call to strictness of life, but with some necessary differences. For a Christian husband in the world his primary, daily spiritual responsibilities are love and service to his wife and children, while a monks’ commitments are to his elders and brothers (or sisters, in the case of female monastics) at the monastery. The Christian in the world has a home and possessions as are necessary for living in the world, while a monk has neither. And there are perhaps some other essential differences, but the fundamental Christian calling is the same for both. St. Symeon the New Theologian has words that should encourage those of us in the world striving to live a genuinely Christian life: [L]iving in the city does not hinder us from practising the commandments of God as long as we are zealous and vigilant, and solitude and retirement from the world are useless if we are slack and careless. |
| In this way, the Jesus Prayer is a prayer in words; but because the words are few and simple, and because the same words are repeated over and over again – because, moreover, the mind of the one who prays is to be stripped of images and thoughts – it is a prayer that leads us through words into silence, initiating us into hesychia or inner stillness of the heart. The use of the Jesus Prayer seems at first to have been somewhat restricted. It is mentioned by Sinaite authors in the 7th to 9th centuries, such as John Klimakos and Hesychios of Batos. But there are no references to it in Maximos the Confessor (ca. 580–662) or in the authentic works of Symeon the New Theologian (959–1022), although texts relating to it occur in the 11th-century anthology Evergetinos. It comes to greater prominence in the late 13th and 14th centuries, through Athonite writers such as Nikiphoros the Hesychast, Gregory of Sinai, and Gregory Palamas, and through the Constantinopolitan monks Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos. In these authors there are two important developments: 1 The recitation of the Jesus Prayer is seen as leading to a vision of divine light, which is regarded as identical with the light that shone from Christ at his transfiguration upon Mount Tabor. 2 A psychosomatic technique is recommended when reciting the prayer, which may in fact be more ancient than the 14th century (there are possible allusions in Coptic sources of the 7th-8th centuries). The technique involves three elements: (a) a specific bodily posture (sitting on a low stool, with head and shoulders bowed); (b) regulation of the rhythm of the breathing; (c) inner concentration upon the place of the heart. There are parallels to all this in Yoga and among the Sufis. But this bodily method is no more than an optional accessory and does not constitute the essence of the Jesus Prayer. Another external aid is the use of a prayer rope (Greek: komvoschoinion; Russian: tchotki), usually made of knotted cord or wool, although it can be of beads or leather. This is not mentioned in the 14th- century Greek sources, but it can be seen in icons of saints from the 16th and 17th centuries. |
| So the cause of iniquity, as stated by the prophet Ezekial, is hidden in self-admiration. By the way, I remind the reader about why God created this world, as one Church father, St. Symeon the New Theologian, wrote: God, that is, perfect Love, cannot admire Himself because God creates this world in order to give His love to creation. But let us return to the third chapter of Genesis. We read that the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. Why was it a serpent? We imagine today a serpent as some sort of slithering reptile, and regard it with contempt. During the time before the fall it was different. The serpent was actually beautiful in appearance. I’ll make another slight digression. We often hear that there is much in common between Islam and Orthodoxy. However, Islam has a completely different picture of the fall into sin. Incidentally, according to the Koran, when people fell away from the Creator, they repented. Then it is totally perplexing why the Lord cast them out of paradise. This is a question for the Koran. And Islam describes the fall thus: The devil did not enter immediately into the serpent—first he, the devil, according to Islam, wanted to enter into a peacock because a peacock has those round eyes on its feathers and these are supposedly emeralds. The devil approached the peacock but the peacock refused him, saying, “No, I won’t be your body. You can’t enter into me. Let’s go find someone else.” And they went, as one of the hadiths (Islamic tradition) states, to the serpent, and the serpent consented. It’s interesting how in this hadith the serpent is described: the same in appearance as he is today, only large and resembling a boa constrictor. But he had feet, and his gait resembled that of a camel. This is how he came up to the first people to tempt them. This is a rather comical picture for us to imagine—a snake with the legs and humps of a camel. But that is how it is described in the Islamic hadiths. However, we are reading the Book of Genesis. |
| Each one of us passes through different states. Sometimes we are on Thabor, and sometimes we find ourselves on Golgotha. Sometimes the presence of God is so palpable and clear that we would like these minutes never to end, to last forever. But sometimes God, as it were, withdraws from us, leaving us in darkness, alone with ourselves, with our problems and sins. But in such moments it is especially important to remember His presence and that He enlightens our human darkness from within with His divine light. The divine light that was revealed to the disciples on Thabor was not a material light that shone “like the sun,” but was the Uncreated Light, it was God Himself, the very presence of God, the energy of God – the divine action, a visitation from above, in which the glory of God is revealed to man. And this light shone not only on the disciple on Thabor, but also revealed itself to many people, many saints, including St. Gregory Palamas and St. Symeon the New Theologian. And among our contemporaries there are people who have beheld the divine light. The Elder Archimandrite Sophrony of blessed memory was repeatedly found worthy of witnessing the divine light, which was for him not only a revelation of God’s glory, but transfigured him from within. But why does the Lord visit us with His divine light? Not just to flash forth brightly, then quickly disappear, leaving us in the darkness. The Lord visits us so that, having beheld His light, we might because permeated by it, that our whole life might change, that there might take place with us that of which the Lord Himself spoke: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father Which is in Heaven (Matthew 5:16). The divine light visits us to transfigure not only everything around us, but our own lives as well, that we might change, and that the light of God might begin to spread to other people through us. It is for this reason that the Church celebrates the Lord’s Transfiguration, that it might become our own transfiguration, that the doors to the contemplation of the divine light might open to us, too – the contemplation of which so many have been found worthy over the past centuries. But in order that the light not be consumed by our human, sinful darkness, we must live in accordance with the Gospel, so that through our good deeds, through our whole countenance, people might recognize Christ. After all, people judge Christ and Christianity first of all by us, believers, members of the Church. There live around us no small number of people who might have long ago come to the Church if they had not encountered Christians on their life’s path who were not worthy of this lofty calling and who, instead of emitting Divine light and radiance, exuded the stench of sinful passions. |
| Christians must receive Holy Communion on a regular basis. It is the most powerful way of expressing to God our thanks for His redemptive sacrifice “for us men and for our salvation.” By abstaining from the Body and Blood of Christ, a Christian demonstrates that he is no longer a member of the Body of Christ. Christ the Savior Cathedral, Moscow Without Christ, there is no salvation. Christians are called not only to work toward their salvation, but to Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect … (Matthew 5:48), a goal that is accomplished through frequent participation in the Divine Mysteries of Christ, the source of life and spiritual strength for the Faithful. The Orthodox Church’s use of leavened bread is rich in symbolism. St Mark of Ephesus emphasized (in the disputes at the Council of Florence in 1439), that the action of yeast on the dough bore witness to the presence in bread of “the fullness of life,” and that it symbolized the confluence of two natures, the Divine and the human, in the one person of our Lord Jesus Christ. The use of unleavened bread was considered a manifestation of Monophysitism, a heresy that confessed that there was but one nature, the Divine, in Christ. St. Mark considered unleavened bread to be “lifeless,” or a “dead sacrifice,” unfit for Divine service. Photo: D. Afrin The Resurrected Lord, always present in the Divine Liturgy, through His transubstantiation (merging the Divine and human natures) makes it possible for us, mortal and fallen away from God, to partake of His Divine life. According to St. Nicetas, a contemporary of St. Symeon the New Theologian and one of the authors of the Philokalia, “partaking in the nature common to us [the physical], we are also able to partake of the Divine nature contained in the Eucharist.” To put it another way, “…as we lack a Divine nature in ourselves, we are unable to become partakers of it, unless we partake of it through Christ, who united it [the Divine] to that of which we are able to partake—namely human nature…” ( Break the Holy Bread, Master , by Priest Sergei Sveshnikov). |
| So, not leaving the world in our body, we should be free from a worldly spirit to some degree. St. Symeon the New Theologian tells us that, “The world is neither silver nor gold, nor horses, nor mules, nor food, nor wine, nor bread. It is neither house, nor fields, nor vineyards, nor country homes. What is it? Sin, addiction to things, and passions.” If it is “the world which lies in evil,” then you can run, but you won’t get anywhere. And the words of the wise better expose the sin living in man than those of others. The words of the wise put everything in its proper place, and give an exact value to those radiant forgeries that we ourselves are inclined to call virtues. Climacus, for example, writes that zealous devotion in the world most often feeds upon vanity, as if upon some dirty and hidden runoff. It’s impossible to know anything about the spirit of a man, so long as he lives among people. A worldly analogy for such words can be the song advising, “Take some friends to the mountains.” 2 Any situation, carrying a risk or unusual heaviness, that demands a sacrifice and brotherly cohesion and does not promise a reward of flowers and medals, shows who is who. “There you will understand, who is who,” the song says. And the words of the saint: “I have seen how in the world they planted many different plants of the virtues, which were watered by vainglory as by an underground sewage pipe, and were hoed by ostentation, and for manure were heaped with praise. But when transplanted to a desert soil, inaccessible to people of the world and so not manured with the foul-smelling water of vanity, they withered at once.” 3 These are barbed words, such as is becoming of words of genuine wisdom. The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd (Ecc. 12:1). The horror of the final and righteous Judgment may be not so much in that we sinned, and sinned a lot, but in that even our best impulses and efforts were deeply poisoned by sin and are unworthy of blessed eternity. That’s where the real trouble is, and I don’t know where healing might come from, if not from those salted with the wisdom of words of spiritual experience. One of those having love in themselves said that the books of the saints are worthy of the same honor as the relics of the saints, and maybe even more. |
| I chronicled this journey on my blog Ascending Mt. Carmel , which, though it was started merely as being written for myself, gained a small but loyal following on the internet. Though wide-eyed and excited as a convert, it did not take me long to fall into intellectualism and pride. I came to Catholicism in the first days of my search very innocent. Though I did my fair share of perusing popular Catholic apologetics sites such as Catholic Answers, much of my knowledge of Catholicism came from hagiography and devotional writings, though it did not take me long to delve headlong into the scholastic theology of Aquinas and Anselm, the mystics such as Catherine of Siena and Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as the classic Catholic writings from the Counter-Reformation. Unfortunately, my life as a Catholic was one of despair and frustration. I became exhausted, and worn out from being in a state of spiritual fear and despair. I became increasingly bitter, angry and irritated at the state of Catholicism, and fell into pridefulness and judgmentalism towards others. Confessions (if one could find a time at a church when confessions were heard) began to feel more like deposits at a “sin bank” than actual healing, and this was augmented by my inherent anxiety that gave birth to a bad case of “scruples.” It was during this time that I encountered Orthodox Christianity for the first time via a work entitled The Way of a Pilgrim . It was a work that cut through to my heart, and in so doing, showed me such a simple and beautiful faith being lived out. I began to research the saints of the Orthodox Church after the schism between Rome and the other Patriarchates, and could not get enough of their writings, reading the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Symeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas, and St. John of Kronstadt. Ironically, I even prepared for my Catholic baptism by reading a work by St. Theophan the Recluse entitled Turning the Heart To God. As a Roman Catholic writer, it became increasingly awkward to live in the tension of loving the Orthodox Christian faith and its saints so much (even quoting them often more than the Catholic ones) and still being a Catholic. I eventually found myself no longer being able to relate much to specifically Roman Catholic writings, nor able to quote them with much interest. It was the Orthodox saints who spoke to my heart, who literally radiated the love of God to those around them that struck me. Orthodoxy had captured my heart, and I had to fight hard to not let my love of the Orthodox faith and the way it had helped my spiritual life utterly consume me. In Orthodoxy too, I did not have the same difficulties in understanding Church history, and things became clearer to me; as Fr. Artemy Vladimirov remarks, “In Orthodoxy, tradition is not a museum filled with interesting exhibits, but a stream you are to immerse yourself in.” |
| When Jesus tells the young man (Mat. 19:21) to sell all that he has and give it to the poor in order to be “perfect,” (τλειος), he is not speaking about legalism or vain law-keeping. Rather, this τλειος or becoming perfect is a way of telling both him and us to live up to the highest standard; to live up to our true likeness as images of God. In other words, to become like the God-Man himself, for this is our ultimate calling. The surest path towards this achievement is in self-sacrifice and living not for ourselves, but for others. A grape that has ripened is τλειος; it is perfect. It has achieved its highest calling in this life, and is ready for the next. When a person becomes ripe in faith, they are ripe for transfiguration; for μεταμρφωσις (metamorphosis). Transfiguration or metamorphosis refers also to a process we observe in nature, as when a caterpillar emerges from a cocoon as a mature butterfly. Given enough time—and once the proper process has taken place—the once-immature worm becomes a beautiful, transformed creature with wings to fly. Similarly, when a Christian devotes their energies to a more perfect union with God, this struggle and overcoming sin—this cooperation or synergy between the person and the energies of God (Phil. 2:12)—is what leads to our shining like the sun (Mat. 17:2). Just prior to his transfiguration on Mount Tabor, Christ tells his disciples that “some standing here … will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Mat. 16:28). The ascetic and life-giving journey is what leads to one’s experience of the kingdom of God and a trans-formative union with the Son of Man. Peter, James, and John can personally attest to this revelation of the kingdom. Others, such as St. Symeon the New Theologian have personally experienced transfiguration on this side of the resurrection. While not everyone will experience transfiguration (theosis) in this present, evil age, the calling and glory is nevertheless offered to all Christians without exception. Just as some grapes ripen before others, we may all experience the fullness of the kingdom in our own time, as we struggle from this life to the next; as we devote our lives and our efforts to the service of Christ and his kingdom. If we cooperate with the Holy Spirit, seeking to discern between both good and evil (Heb. 5:14), we will all become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). |
| These differences are serious (between the Orthodox and Roman Catholicism), but they do not discount our love for such people, nor does it hinder us in our prayers for their health, peace and salvation (as with all of the world). With all that being said, I will now interact briefly with a few of Jason’s points. Expressing his love for ”our eastern Christian brethren” (much appreciated!), Jason writes: The first issue is the attitude of many Orthodox toward the Catholic Church, which in my experience can be described as reactionary and overly suspicious. While the West views the Eastern Orthodox in a very sympathetic and conciliatory fashion, the East seem to view the West much in the same way that hardline Protestants might – as a bastion of error, as “papists”, heretics, the antichrist, and the like. It is truly saddening, but in my experience, I have found it to be somewhat true. Catholic saints such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Therese of Lisieux, and St. John of the Cross are viewed as heretical figures overcome by imagination in their spiritual lives, and tainted by “Romanism”. A truly sad thing, as the West views many of the great saints of Eastern Orthodoxy with admiration and a willingness to learn from their teachings. While such figures as Photios and Gregory Palamas may still be viewed in a negative light, they are venerated in Eastern Catholic rites as saints. Seraphim of Sarov, a truly remarkable and saintly figure, has become an object of much veneration and love amongst Catholics, and Catholic scholars are starting to truly acknowledge the profound writings and thought of such Eastern Orthodox saints as Symeon the New Theologian, Theophan the Recluse, Tikhon of Zadonsk, Nectarios of Aegina, Mother Maria Skobtsova, Nicodemus the Hagiorite, and many others. But the East does not return the favor, instead acknowledging the greatest saints of the West to be, at best, in error and whose salvation is also at best uncertain. This seems to be a fairly common objection (in my limited experience) from our Roman friends of the West. |
| Every day the Church places a number of saints before us as lights on our path to Christ. But do we familiarize ourselves with the lives and works of these saints? Do we pay attention to their hymns during Church? Do we strive to know them through prayer? Do we gratefully receive their blessings? Or do we ignore them and judge them based on our own reasoning and desires? It is far too easy to find fault in the lives and writings of the saints, and to judge them as artifacts of a by-gone era based on our hyper-critical scholasticism. But the saints are alive and they are still speaking to us today. We can know them intimately through prayer. Everyone should try to build a relationship with their patron saint, their guardian angel, and certainly the Theotokos, and any other saint you may have a connection with. We imitate them because they imitate Christ. As I said, this does not apply only to the saints of course. Each of us is called to have a spiritual father who cares for our soul. St. Paul teaches us many times to be obedient to those who have both earthly and spiritual authority over us. Obedience is blessed, and according to St. Silouan it is even a sacrament. By being obedient we learn to deny our own will which allows us to discern and do God’s will. St. Jesse commanded the river to follow him and it obeyed. Even nature responds to the man of God—how much more should we? And St. Jesse led the river to the monastery where life is dedicated to continual prayer. If we follow our spiritual fathers in obedience we will be led to a life of prayer and service to God. We imitate, and obey, those who imitate Christ. St. Symeon the New Theologian approaching God in prayer Christ calls us to pick up our crosses daily, St. John the Forerunner teaches us that we must decrease and Christ must increase, and St. Paul emphasizes that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. If we also are not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ then we have much we can learn from the saints who have gone before us, who carried their crosses, and decreased that Christ might increase. As Orthodox Christians we have the blessing of prayerfully approaching Christ in humility and giving our whole lives over to Him to experience the fullness of joy, peace and life. But this should not be attempted alone. We have united ourselves to the Body of Christ, and we are in this together, with those who are here today and all those who have gone before, who are also here with us today. That is what our icons tell us—that the high-calling in Christ is possible to achieve in this lifetime, and those who have found rest in Christ are present with us in the communion of His Body. Their icons, their hymns, and their writings lift up our hearts and minds to Christ Who is the source of all joy, peace, and life. Imitate those who imitate Christ. |
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