cassianus

[cassianus]

From a sermon by Saint Peter Damian, bishop

Invincibly defended by the banner of the Cross

Dear brothers, our joy in today’s feast is heightened by our joy in the glory of Easter, just as the splendour of a precious jewel enhances the beauty of its gold setting.

Saint George was a man who abandoned one army for another: he gave up the rank of tribune to enlist as a soldier for Christ. Eager to encounter the enemy, he first stripped away his worldly wealth by giving all he had to the poor. Then, free and unencumbered, bearing the shield of faith, he plunged into the thick of the battle, an ardent soldier for Christ.

Clearly what he did serves to teach us a valuable lesson: if we are afraid to strip ourselves of our worldly possessions, then we are unfit to make a strong defence of the faith.

As for Saint George, he was consumed with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Armed with the invincible standard of the cross, he did battle with an evil king and acquitted himself so well that, in vanquishing the king, he overcame the prince of all wicked spirits, and encouraged other soldiers of Christ to perform brave deeds in his cause.

Of course, the supreme invisible arbiter was there, who sometimes permits evil men to prevail so that his will may be accomplished. And although he surrendered the body of his martyr into the hands of murderers, yet he continued to take care of his soul, which was supported by the unshakeable defence of its faith.

Dear brothers, let us not only admire the courage of this fighter in heaven’s army but follow his example. Let us be inspired to strive for the reward of heavenly glory, keeping in mind his example, so that we will not be swayed from our path, though the world seduce us with its smiles or try to terrify us with naked threats of its trials and tribulations.

We must now cleanse ourselves, as Saint Paul tells us, from all defilement of body and spirit, so that one day we too may deserve to enter that temple of blessedness to which we now aspire.

Anyone who wishes to offer himself to God in the tent of Christ, which is the Church, must first bathe in the spring of holy baptism; then he must put on the various garments of the virtues. As it says in the Scriptures: Let your priests be clothed in justice. He who is reborn in baptism is a new man. He may no longer wear the things that signify mortality. He has discarded the old self and must put on the new. He must live continually renewed in his commitment to a holy sojourn in this world.

Truly we must be cleansed of the stains of our past sins and be resplendent in the virtue of our new way of life. Then we can be confident of celebrating Easter worthily and of truly following the example of the blessed martyrs.

[cassianus]

The desert invites only those who have seen, at the most elementary level of their existence, that they are called to enter the mystery of their own hearts. The mystery’s name is love. Anchorites are those who from the very beginning realize that their only chance to understand themselves is to enter into a deep relationship with a loved one. So, why do they want to be alone? Is it not an absurdity?

Here we come to a crucial point of the Christian eremitic calling that needs to be explained. For a hermit, the desert is not a god able to serve his private aims, as lofty as they may be. He does not choose his solitude just for its own sake, because in that way he would consciously descend into an abyss. By choosing solitude a Christian takes the side of the mysterious and deep dimension of life which has been revealed in Christ’s Cross. And what has been shown in the Cross is the mystery of love of the Trinity, the mystery of forgiveness and mercy. The Cross points to the direction and final aim of the Christian way of life. In any case, the Christian’s final destination is a community of love.

Therefore, the stretch of the desert means the stretch of the Cross’s arms, the place of self-sacrifice, and the gift of oneself. A spiritually mature person enters the silence and solitude only because he loves and desires to be loved more and more – firstly by God and then by every other human being. The human heart needs solitude and silence because they provide the right perspective for revealing gradually the mystery of life – the mystery of joy and sadness, pain and hope. Solitude turns out to be the path leading us to the truth about God and the truth about ourselves. So there is no trustworthy testimony to the Christian life, there is no authentic friendship, compassion, empathy, or spiritual openness to love, without the experience of sacred solitude and silence.

The Eremitic Life

Fr. C. Wencel

[cassianus]

I return once more to Simone Weil who draws us ever deeper into the mysteries of divine love and the experience of affliction. She does not shy away from exploring the dimensions of both and as one continues to read a trembling comes upon the soul as the vision of reality she seeks to express comes into clearer view. Weil relentlessly pursues the great enigma of life that is profound and fierce - the Love of the Cross - a Love that both wounds and heals.

“The great enigma of human life is not suffering but affliction. It is not surprising that the innocent are killed, tortured, driven from their country, made destitute or reduced to slavery, imprisoned in camps or cells, since there are criminals to perform such actions. It is not surprising either that disease is the cause of long sufferings, which paralyse life and make it into an image of death, since nature is at the mercy of the blind play of mechanical necessities. But it is surprising that God should have given affliction the power to seize the very souls of the innocent and to take possession of them as their sovereign lord. At the very best, he who is branded by affliction will only keep half his soul.

As for those who have been struck by one of those blows which leave a being struggling on the ground like a half crushed worm, they have no words to express what is happening to them. Among the people they meet, those who have never had contact with affliction in its true sense can have no idea of what it is, even though they may have suffered a great deal. Affliction is something specific and impossible to describe in any other terms, like the sounds of which nothing can convey the slightest idea to anyone who is deaf and dumb. And as for those who have themselves been mutilated by affliction, they are in no state to help anyone at all, and they are almost incapable of even wishing to do so. Thus compassion for the afflicted is an impossibility. When it is really found we have a more astounding miracle than walking on water, healing the sick, or even raising the dead.

Affliction constrained Christ to implore that he might be spared; to seek consolation from man; to believe he was forsaken by the Father. It forced a just man to cry out against God; a just man as perfect as human nature can be; more so, perhaps, if Job is less a historical character than a figure of Christ. ‘He laughs at the affliction of the innocent! This is not blasphemy but a genuine cry of anguish. The Book of Job is a pure marvel of truth and authenticity from beginning to end. As regards affliction, all that departs from this model is more or less stained with falsehood.

Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time, more absent than a dead man, more absent that light in the utter darkness of a cell. A kind of horror submerges the whole soul. During this absence there is nothing to love. What is terrible is that if, in this darkness where there is nothing to love, the soul ceases to love, God’s absence becomes final. The soul has to go on loving in the emptiness, or at least to go on wanting to love, though it may only be with an infinitesimal part of itself. Then, one day, God will come to show himself to this soul and to reveal the beauty of the world to it, as in the case of Job. But if the soul stops loving it falls, even in this life, into something which is almost equivalent to hell. That is why those who plunge men into affliction before they are prepared to receive it, kill their souls. On the other hand in a time such as ours, where affliction is hanging over us all, help given to souls is only effective if it goes far enough really to prepare them for affliction. That is no small thing.

Affliction hardens and discourages us because, like a red hot iron, it stamps the soul to its very depths with the scorn, the disgust and even the self-hatred and sense of guilt and defilement which crime logically should produce but actually does not. Evil dwells in the heart of the criminal without being felt there. It is felt in the heart of the man who is afflicted and innocent. Everything happens as though the state of soul suitable for criminals had been separated from crime and attached to affliction; and it even seems to be in proportion to the innocence of those who are afflicted.

If Job cries out that he is innocent in such despairing accents, it is because he himself is beginning not to believe in it, it is because his soul within him is taking the side of his friends. He implores God himself to bear witness, because he no longer hears the testimony of his own conscience; it is no longer anything but an abstract, lifeless memory for him.

Men have the same carnal nature as animals. If a hen is hurt, the others rush upon it, attacking it with their beaks. This phenomenon is as automatic as gravitation. Our senses attach all the scorn, all the revulsion, all the hatred which our reason attaches to crime, to affliction. Except for those whose whole soul is inhabited by Christ, everybody despises the afflicted to some extent, although. practically no one is conscious of it.

This law of sensibility also holds good with regard to ourselves. In the case of someone in affliction, all the scorn, revulsion and hatred are turned inwards. They penetrate to the centre of the soul and from there colour the whole universe with their poisoned light. Supernatural love, if it has survived, can prevent this second result from coming about, but not the first. The first is of the very essence of affliction; there is no affliction without it.

‘Christ…being made a curse for us.’ It was not only the body of Christ, hanging on the wood, which was accursed, it was his whole soul also. In the same way every innocent being in his affliction feels himself accursed. This even goes on being true for those who have been in affliction and have come out of it, through a change in their fortunes; that is to say if the affliction ate deeply enough into them.

Another effect of affliction is, little by little, to make the soul its accomplice, by injecting a poison of inertia into it. In anyone who has suffered affliction for a long enough time there is a complicity with regard to his own affliction. This complicity impedes all the efforts he might make to improve his lot; it goes so far as to prevent him from seeking a way of deliverance, sometimes even to the point of preventing him from wishing for deliverance. Then he is established in affliction, and people might think he was satisfied. Further, this complicity may even induce him to shun the means of deliverance. In such cases it veils itself with excuses which are often ridiculous. Even a person who has come through his affliction will still have something left in him which impels him to plunge into it again, if it has bitten deeply and for ever into the substance of his soul. It is as though affliction had established itself in him like a parasite and were directing him to suit its own purposes. Sometimes this impulse triumphs over all the movements of the soul towards happiness. If the affliction has been ended as a result of some kindness, it may take the form of hatred for the benefactor; such is the cause of certain apparently inexplicable acts of savage ingratitude. It is sometimes easy to deliver an unhappy man from his present distress, but it is difficult to set him free from his past affliction. Only God can do it. And even the grace of God itself cannot cure irremediably wounded nature here below. The glorified body of Christ bore the marks of the nails and spear.

One can only accept the existence of affliction by considering it as a distance. God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.

This tearing apart, over which supreme love places the bond of supreme union, echoes perpetually across the universe in the midst of the silence, like two notes, separate yet melting into one, like pure and heart-rending harmony. This is the Word of God. The whole creation is nothing but its vibration. When human music in its greatest purity pierces our soul, this is what we hear through it. When we have learnt to hear the silence, this is what we grasp more distinctly through it. Those who persevere in love hear this note from the very lowest depths into which affliction has thrust them. From that moment they can no longer have any doubt.

Men struck down by affliction are at the foot of the Cross, almost at the greatest possible distance from God. It must not be thought that sin is a greater distance. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.

As for us men, our misery gives us the infinitely precious privilege of sharing in this distance placed between the Son and his Father. This distance is only separation, however, for those who love. For those who love, separation, although painful, is a good, because it is love. Even the distress of the abandoned Christ is a good. There cannot be a greater good for us on earth than to share in it. God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the Cross is our only hope. ‘No forest bears such a tree, with such blossom, such foliage and such fruit.

When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: ‘It is the trade which is entering his body.’ Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of creation to God which are entering our body. After that how can we fail to bless with tenderest gratitude the Love which sends us this gift?

Joy and suffering are two equally precious gifts which must both of them be savoured to the full, each one in its purity without trying to mix them. Through joy, the beauty of the world penetrates our soul. Through suffering it penetrates our body. We could no more become friends of God through joy alone than one becomes a ship’s captain by studying books on navigation. The body plays a part in all apprenticeships. On the plane of physical sensibility, suffering alone gives us contact with that necessity which constitutes the order of the world, for pleasure does not involve an impression of necessity. It is a higher kind of sensibility which is capable of recognising a necessity in joy, and that only indirectly through a sense of beauty. In order that our being should one day become wholly sensitive in every part to this obedience which is the substance of matter, in order that a new sense should be formed in us which enables us to hear the universe as the vibration of the word of God, the transforming power of suffering and of joy are equally indispensable. When either of them comes to us we have to we have to open the very centre of our soul to it, just as a woman opens her door to messengers from her loved one. What does it matter to a lover if the messenger be polite or rough, so long as he gives her a message?

But affliction is not suffering. Affliction is something quite distinct from a method of God’s teaching.

The infinity of space and time separates us from God. How are we to seek for him? How are we to go towards him? Even if we were to walk for hundreds of years, we should do no more than go round and round the world. Even in an aeroplane we could not do anything else. We are incapable of progressing vertically. We cannot take a step towards the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.

Over the infinity of space and time, the infinitely more infinite love of God comes to possess us. He comes at his own time. We have the power to consent to receive him or to refuse. If we remain deaf, he comes back again and again like a beggar, but also, like a beggar, one day he stops coming. If we consent, God puts a little seed in us and he goes away again. From that moment God has no more to do; neither have we, except to wait. We only have not to regret the consent we gave him, the nuptial yes. It is not as easy as it seems, for the growth of the seed within us is painful. Moreover from the very fact that we accept this growth, we cannot avoid destroying whatever gets in its way, pulling up the weeds, cutting the couch-grass, and unfortunately the couch-grass is part of our very flesh, so that this gardening amounts to a violent operation. On the whole, however, the seed grows of itself. A day comes when the soul belongs to God, when it not only consents to love but when truly and effectively it loves. Then in its turn it must cross the universe to go to God. The soul does not love like a creature with created love. The love within it is divine, uncreated; for it is the love of God for God which is passing through it. God alone is capable of loving God. We can only consent to give up our own feelings so as to allow free passage in our soul for this love. That is the meaning of denying oneself. We are created for this consent, and for this alone.

Divine Love crossed the infinity of space and time to come from God to us. But how can it repeat the journey in the opposite direction, starting from a finite creature? When the seed of divine love placed in us has grown and become a tree, how can we, we who bear it, take it back to its origin? How can we make the journey which God made when he came to us, in the opposite direction? How can we cross infinite distance?

It seems impossible, but there is a way—a way with which we are familiar. We know quite well in what likeness this tree is made, this tree which has grown within us, this most beautiful tree where the birds of the air come and perch. We know what is the most beautiful of all trees. ‘No forest bears its equal.’ Something still a little more frightful than a gibbet—that is the most beautiful of all trees. It was the seed of this tree that God placed within us, without our knowing what seed it was. If we had known, we should not have said yes at the first moment. It is this tree which has grown within us and which has become ineradicable. Only a betrayal could uproot it.

When we hit a nail with a hammer, the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into the point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and the head of the nail were infinitely big it would be just the same. The point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied.

Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul and social degradation, all at the same time, constitutes the nail. The point is applied at the very centre of the soul. The head of the nail is all the necessity which spreads throughout the totality of space and time.

Affliction is a marvel of divine technique. It is a simple and ingenious device which introduces into the soul of a finite creature the immensity of force, blind, brutal and cold. The infinite distance which separates God from the creature is entirely concentrated into one point to pierce the soul in its centre.

The man to whom such a thing happens has no part in the operation. He struggles like a butterfly which is pinned alive into an album. But through all the horror he can continue to want to love. There is nothing impossible in that, no obstacle, one might almost say no difficulty. For the greatest suffering, so long as it does not cause fainting, does not touch the part of the soul which consents to a right direction.

It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls into despair at the first onslaught of affliction.

He whose soul remains ever turned in the direction of God while the nail pierces it, finds himself nailed on to the very centre of the universe. It is the true centre, it is not in the middle, it is beyond space and time, it is God. In a dimension which does not belong to space, which is not time, which is indeed quite a different dimension, this nail has pierced a hole through all creation, through the thickness of the screen which separates the soul from God.

In this marvellous dimension, the soul, without leaving the place and the instant where the body to which it is united is situated, can cross the totality of space and time and come into the very presence of God.

It is at the intersection of creation and its Creator. This point of intersection is the point of intersection of the branches of the Cross.

Saint Paul was perhaps thinking about things of this kind when he said: ‘That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.’

Excerpt From: Weil, Simone. “Waiting on God"

[cassianus]

But if you are caught fast in the noose of human knowledge, it is not improper for me to say that it would be easier for you to be loosed from fetters of iron than from this. You will never be far from the snares and bonds of delusion, nor will you ever be able to have boldness and confidence before the Lord; at every moment you will walk the edge of a sword, and by no means will you be able to escape sorrow. Take refuge in weakness and simplicity, that you may live acceptably before God and be without care. For just as a shadow follows a body, so also does mercy follow humility. If, then, you wish to pass your life in these things, by no means encourage your feeble deliberations. Even if all ills and evils and dangers should surround and frighten you, give no heed to them, neither take them into account.

St. Isaac the Syrian

[cassianus]

“In St. Isaac the Syrian, I have encountered someone like no other. Even among the Fathers, East and West, whom I have engaged over these past thirty years, Isaac stands alone; which admittedly is to say a lot. When I first picked up his Ascetical Homilies and heard them described thus: "If all the writings of the desert fathers which teach us concerning watchfulness and prayer were lost and the writings of Abba Isaac the Syrian alone survived, they would suffice to teach one from the beginning to end concerning the life of stillness and prayer. They are the Alpha and Omega of the life of watchfulness and interior prayer, and alone suffice to guide one from his first steps to perfection," I was certainly intrigued but thought it simply to be hyperbole. Of all the the Fathers we have studied in groups at the Oratory, St. Isaac (unfamiliar in name and stature) garnered the least amount of interest; especially in comparison to the somewhat better known Cassian and Climacus. His style of writing was certainly different from the others; not Conferences or Steps but rather Homilies. They were exhortative, meant to set the heart afire for the love of God; not simply to be read or studied but to be received as a calling as sure and as strong as the Lord's "Follow Me". As true homilies, they arose from a heart that had experienced that call and had found his life turned upside down; only then to discover true Life.

After a year passed, with the homilies being read aloud and verbatim in our small group, the image of St. Isaac became clearer and with it his writings more and more compelling. The thought would echo following each group that "after hearing this there was no going back to looking at one's life as before." To do so one would have to live in complete denial - would have to silence the conscience. Uneasiness with oneself and one's life is the necessary prelude to conversion. St. Isaac at every turn anticipates such unease and resistance, expecting that it would arise and gently yet persistently beckons the listener to move ever forward. Now the words of another describing St. Isaac no longer seemed hyperbolic: "Isaac is the mirror. There you will behold yourself. The mirror is so that we may see if we have any shortcoming, any smudge on our face, in order to remove it, to cleanse ourselves..... In Abba Isaac you will behold your thoughts, what they are thinking. Your feet, where they are going. Your eyes, if they have light and see. There you will find many sure and unerring ways in order to be helped."

Indeed, St. Isaac the Syrian was like no other. However, it was in the reflections of Archimandrite Vasileios, Abbot of Iveron Monastery on Mount Athos, that I finally found one who captured the full extent of the extraordinary nature of the man, the Saint, I have come to revere beyond all expectation. Here was one through whom the hitherto unknown and untouched was revealed.”

"The best is of everything the measure." Man is the measure - the holy person. And St. Isaac is a measure for man, for life and art and action.

Look at where he is! The way he lives! The way he writes! What poetry, what philosophy, what psychology he produces! Look at the way he acts, the way he keeps silence, the way he moves and the way he remains still! Is it possible to judge people by the yardstick of St. Isaac? Is he not a great man, supremely great, unique? Is it not unfair or impertinent to compare everyone else - ordinary people like us - with figures of this stature? I would have no hesitation in answering: NO. If he were someone who had been very active in a particular field, or who had some altogether exceptional natural gifts by which he astonished all mankind, then it would not be right to take him as a yardstick to judge and compare other people. But something different is goin on here: this Abba is supremely great and supremely human. He is at once grand and affable. In his presence, the great feel insignificant and the small take courage and feel able to function.

He does not flatter the one, nor does he despise the other. He is not ignorant of anyone's sufferings, their propensities or sorrows. He himself is a complete whole. A mature fruit of the Spirit, which shows its maturity by its color, aroma, softness and taste.

St. Isaac the Syrian is humane, humble. He understands, he has a deep knowledge of the weaknesses of the suffering world. He is not some stern judge or merciless inquisitor. He knows all about our weaknesses and our poverty; he shares in our nature and - at the same time - partakes in the joy and consolation of the age to come.

He does not argue with anyone. He provides opportunities and waits. He speaks the truths and leaves it to work within us.

Great as he is, he respects those who are small, who are humble. He respects their struggles and their confessions, even more than they themselves do, given that they all live to a greater or lesser extent within the realm of corruption, rivalry, jealousy, and of the effort to go beyond all this.

The Abba does not tell you, by his life and by his writings, “Abandon your struggle”. He does not reject your efforts. He does not deny you the joy that comes from them. He wants to liberate you from the cycle of corruption: to break down the dam that blocks your progress, and push you out onto the fathomless waters of the mystery of life.

He can see that you are closing yourself up. You imprison your inner person which thirsts for freedom. You are stymieing your development, narrowing the horizons of your life, depriving yourself of the openings towards new expansion- the deaths and resurrections - which dignify man and the endless and eternal grace that come to you.

As you follow St. Isaac faithfully, you go deeper into man. And every person enters into you. All together you go forward as brothers towards the new creation; you are able to breathe, in the still air of unfettered freedom. Together you undergo increase without end and ceaseless extension, even as you are humbled, as you “contract”, and you sacrifice yourselves for what is greatest.

It is possible, however, for man to be grafted into an everlasting tree. He can become a “branch of the vine of life“. His ascesis can be linked with another ascesis. He can be baptized in his entirety. He can offer himself, he can die, as true lovers of Truth seek to do. And as he dies and is buried with Jesus in His death, he can be raised up with Him into a new life.

The journey, the extension, the ascent does not stop at some point. You keep on advancing. You divest yourself of the desire to project yourself. You abandon defensiveness. Everything does you good. You are concerned with something else. You avoid things human, and you find human beings. You attain to silence. And your words and your life speak in a different way.

If you are demanding in your life, you can come into contact with St. Isaac. He will initiate you into hidden mysteries. He will meet you where you yourself stop. He will take you by the hand when you feel you cannot go any higher. He will help you make progress along your own path. He will reveal to you - you will see and experience yourself - that kingdom of God which is to come is given to human beings even from today.

And St. Isaac remains a criterion and a measure for this life and the next, for your conduct, for action and contemplation, for dealing with every happiness or disaster, for concealing and revealing, for silence and speech.

When you come back to St. Isaac after some experience, after coming into contact with a different logic, a different character, ethos or even speech, the impression is always the same: at every point, in every subject - he gets full marks. There is no other yardstick more stable, so as to give you a genuine standard for judging everything: human behavior, philosophy of life, use of time, progress from the temporary to the eternal, strictness and leniency. . .

How is it that he does not have a single loose phrase! There is not a single appearance he makes, a way he deals with something, the nature of criticism, that would not leave you in awe! Here we have the offspring of a good and blessed hour. A fruit that is ripe, that attracts and satisfies every hunger. An understanding that embraces all the world. A weeping that softens the heart. A figure that inspires every character. A blessing that extends to every occupation and path that a person might choose to take: the musician finds harmony. The philosopher, wisdom. The anthropologist and psychiatrist, the fullness of their science. The revolutionary finds strength. The hesychast, guidance. The old person, understanding and companionship. The young person, wind for his sails to adventure onto the most open and stormy of seas and even beyond. The father, a teacher in how to behave to his children. The husband, guidance in living with his wife. The mother, infinite love, delicacy and tenderness. Someone on the point of death finds consolation. Someone embroiled in difficulties finds a way out. The prisoner serving life finds absolute freedom of movement and living. The patient incurably sick finds divine visitation and is taken up, with his whole body, into a place, a realm and a way of life where everything is transformed into an outpouring of tears of gratitude.

He is in a place where no one else is. And yet he finds everyone, in harmony. And everyone unfailingly regards him as their own person, the only one who understands them with delicacy and tact. He heals their passions, he gives them courage, he “slaughters” them with his utter compassion.

Suppose some person or people fell down dead, wounded by something that other people said or did, albeit unintentionally: this Abba forgives things that are unforgivable to most people. He is familiar with the inconceivable. He soothes the pain of murderers. He raises up the life of those who have been killed. He gives light to the blind. He gives feet to the lame and makes hardened criminals act like children, innocent, guileless and unformed.

How does this happen? It was a gift bestowed on him because he received directly the blessing of the whole Godhead in the Trinity, because the auspicious time came when, through humility, he offered everything forever to the One and Only. And the One gave him the eternity of blessing in all his being for evermore.

It seems that when he was born, he was baptized. He was baptized indeed into the death of Jesus. And he pursued a way of life that surpasses life and death.

And when he died, this man full of holiness and above measure, he himself passed into life in its completeness in a different manner. You do not know whether his presence was more vivid when he was living this temporary life, or whether his help and support for all is more active now that he has left history and his life in the flesh - now that, in perceptible terms, he has gone away from us all.

His life has been extended through death. His intellect has been illumined through Grace; his body is filled with the life that transcends the whole world. He has discovered a different basis for support; a different manner of conduct; a different way of perceiving assurance; a different love of truth; a different Truth - an incomprehensible and ineffable truth, which is identified with mercy. And this state, this logic, this ethos, this freedom, this delicacy, this undaunted fearlessness, have shaped and formed his entire being, his way of life and his existence.

So in him "before" and "after" are not separated. The same applies to strictness and leniency; to speech and silence, immobility and movement, life and death, truth and love, light and darkness, struggle and stillness. This is because in his entirety, with the whole body of his existence, he has attained to a state above existence. He has advanced to the point where everything ceases: activity, struggle, prayer, freedom. Everything that he loved, that he aimed for and achieved, has been superseded. It has all passed into another realm and way of life, one that is strange, inaccessible to man. And that which is inaccessible and unattainable - for man - has taken St. Isaac himself, with all his wares, to that place.

He vanished, was lost. And he found himself in a different manner, in perpetuity; he was there even for those who had not been looking for him, who had not known him, who had never be interested in his life, his words, and his interests.

Even if many people were not interested, St. Isaac was interested. And because he wore himself out, shared himself, broke himself to pieces, he found himself in a different way; he was given a self by the One and Only.

And now, it is this self risen from the dead, found after it was lost, the self over which "death has no more dominion", that he has scattered and continues to scatter, like a blessing of charity and a wealth of understanding for all. From no one does he ask anything for himself, wishing only for others to act freely, hoping in Christ Jesus. And for them to know that if at some time they find themselves at a point where there road is ending, their daylight is fading, where loneliness overwhelms them . . . then they should not go to pieces. They should be patient for a while. They should wait. And a door will open; an open road will stretch before them; light that knows no evening will rise; and the cosmic chaos which through loneliness pierced their being will be filled with a presence of love, of charity. Something unrevealed and unknown to them will be revealed.

They will hear things unheard, they will touch things intangible. They will be at ease. And they themselves will go on in a different way, as different people, continuing their endless journey which is nothing other than He who is the most holy Passover and endless extension.

Archimandrite Vasileios

Abbot of Iveron Monastery, Mount Athos

[cassianus]

God does not grant a great gift without a great trial. In His wisdom, which is beyond the understanding of His creatures, God has ordained that gifts be bestowed in proportion to temptations. You may comprehend, therefore, from the difficult aflictions which befall you through God's providence, the degree of the gift your soul has received from His majesty. And in proportion to the affliction, consolation is given.

The trials that are inflicted by the paternal rod for the soul's progress and growth, and wherein she may be trained, are the following: sloth; oppressiveness of the body; enfeeblement of the limbs; despondency; confusion of mind; bodily pains; temporary loss of hope; darkening of thoughts; absence of help from men; scarcity of bodily necessities: and the like. By these temptations a man's soul feels herself lonely and defenseless, his heart is deadened and filled with humility, and he is trained thereby to come to yearn for his Creator. Yet divine providence proportions these trials to the strength and needs of those who suffer them. In them are mingled both consolation and griefs, light and darkness, wars and aid. In short, they straiten and enlarge. This is the sign of the increase of God's help.

St. Isaac the Syrian

[cassianus]

Thus says the Lord:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man

and makes flesh his strength,

whose heart turns away from the Lord.

He is like a shrub in the desert,

and shall not see any good come.

He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,

in an uninhabited salt land.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose trust is the Lord.

He is like a tree planted by water,

that sends out its roots by the stream,

and does not fear when heat comes,

for its leaves remain green,

and is not anxious in the year of drought,

for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately sick;

who can understand it?

“I the Lord search the heart

and test the mind,

to give every man according to his ways,

according to the fruit of his deeds.”

Jeremiah 17:5-10

[cassianus]

When the soul dwells in the abundance of its natural fruits, it then sings with a somewhat louder voice and desires to pray aloud; but when the soul is endowed with the energy of the Holy Spirit, then it sings with total gratitude and sweetness, praying with the whole heart. In the first instance, there follows a warm joy, whereas in the second, spiritual tears, and after these a certain internal joyfulness, which creates in the heart the love of silence

That is, the mind is warmed by that which is imprinted on the soul, and various sweet thoughts, which evoke tears, are made to enter into the heart. From all of this, one can indeed behold implanted in the soil of the heart the seeds of prayerful tears, which, however, occasion joy in the hope of reaping. Thus, when we are overcome by a great affliction, we should sing with a slightly subdued voice, striking the chords of the soul with the hope of joy, until that heavy cloud is dispersed by the zephyr of our melody.

The Evergetinos

from St. Diadochus

[cassianus]

No one tells you anything? No one communicates anything to you? Bless the Lord! He prevents your interior from cluttering, and covers problems. Love with gratitude those carry your worries for you. Aid them with your smiling docility. Accept your “carefree state.“ God has established you in solitude, he himself to be your sole worry. It is His will that He be the only bread of your soul. Do not consent to strain your ears, not even to the “gossip” of the community. Only pray for those who are in difficulty; exhort them, if the opportunity presents itself, to love the cross of Christ. Human consolations do nothing but weaken souls. Do not easily speak or receive things in confidence. Do you think that someone else will understand better than Jesus?

A Carthusian

[cassianus]

Ascetic Heart: Reflections on the Way of Self-Sacrifice

Written by Anonymous.

A boy once approached his father, ‘Old man, why do you fast?’ The father stood silent, bringing heart and mind together, and then:

‘Beloved boy, I fast to know what it is I lack.

For day by day I sit in abundance, and

all is well before me;

I want not, I suffer not, and I

lack but that for which I invent a need.

But my heart is empty of true joy,

filled, yet overflowing with dry waters.

There is no room left for love.

I have no needs, and so my needs are never met,

no longings, and so my desires are never fulfilled.

Where all the fruits of the earth could dwell, I have

filled the house with dust and clouds;

It is full, so I am content—

But it is empty, and so I weep.

‘Thus I fast, beloved, to know the

dust in which I dwell.

I take not from that which I might take,

for in its absence I am left empty,

and what is empty stands ready to be

filled.

I turn from what I love, for my love is barren,

and by it I curse the earth.

I turn from what I love, that I may purify my loving,

and move from curse to blessing.

‘From my abundance I turn to want,

as the soldier leaves the comfort of home,

of family and love,

to know the barrenness of war.

For it is only amongst the fight, in the

torture of loss, in the fire of battle,

that lies are lost and the blind man

clearly sees.

In hunger of body and mind, I see

the vanity of food,

for I have loved food as food,

and have never been fed.

In weary, waking vigil I see

the vanity of sleep,

for I have embraced sleep as desire,

and have never found rest.

In sorrow, with eyes of tears I see

the vanity of pleasure,

for I have treasured happiness above all,

and have never known joy.

‘I fast, beloved child, to crush the wall

that is my self;

For I am not who I am, just as these passions

are not treasures of gold but of clay.

I fast to die, for it is not the living who are

raised, but the dead.

I fast to crucify my desires, for He who was

crucified was He who lived,

and He who conquered,

and He who lives forever.’

***

The ascetic mind is not one of stone, cold and darkened to the outside world. Too often, those who stand apart from the heavenly struggle see it thus, and thereby see it askew. To climb is not to descend, and to grow is not to die. Those who reject the world do so not out of hatred, not out of scorn for the creation into which they have been born, but out of most profound love. It takes a true love deeper than most will ever know, to consider the world with such fondness and thanksgiving that one is willing to let it go. Hope and faith must be of the profoundest sort, if ever they are to give birth to a heart willing to break away from creation, that it might one day be united more fully to it.

The ascetic heart knows the world, and knows that it is good. It can see the tranquil pond, the azure sky, the frail leaf, and catch in every glimpse the radiant shimmer of the Divine. In all things there is God.

The ascetic heart knows creation, and rejoices in its bounty. It sees the breath drawn in and out by all creatures, watches as they mingle together in the Creator’s hands. There is fawn, there is bird, there is beast, but all are life, and all life is in Christ.

The ascetic heart knows humanity. In its gentle sight there is no man, no woman—only brother and sister, father and mother, daughter and son. The family of human life is united together with a bond only this heart can truly see, and once it is seen, it is all that can be seen in man. That bond of communion, reflection of the Divine, is the nature of human being.

The ascetic heart knows itself, and knows that it is good. For all that may darken and stain its surface, the handiwork of a Craftsman is still beloved, and what was once made divine can only be sullied and perverted, but never wholly destroyed. The ascetic heart looks within, and knows of a great Beauty to be found inside its own walls.

Yet this same ascetic heart also knows of darkness. As much as it has rejoiced over its light and fullness, so much has it bewailed its void and emptiness. A brilliant light which cannot be seen suffers not always from its source, but rather from its surroundings—the ascetic heart is pure, but its purity is covered in shame. It is the unique gift of the ascetic to know this, and her divine blessing that such knowledge wells up tears of grief like none the world can call forth. To gaze deep within and see the Sun darkened with stains is to be pained in soul, to see nature perfected and destroyed at once and in the same breath. Unbridled joy and soul wrenching agony collide; and if their collision be perfect, the ascetic heart is born.

***

The boy approached his father, gently, ‘Old man, why do you sorrow?’ The old man softened his tears:

‘Beloved, my sorrow is my joy.

Where there is no weeping, there is

no rejoicing,

And he who has not sorrowed

has never known delight.

‘I sorrow for the darkness that

I see within,

for the depth of the divide I have

cast between my mind and my heart.

I sorrow, for I have become

a source of sorrow,

and if I do not weep

I shall never be healed.

‘What God has blessed, I have squandered,

and therefore all the mountains weep.

Shall I yet rejoice?

See me, an aged man of squandered days,

a vessel of life confined to death—

yet merry, at peace, rejoicing!

‘No, beloved, let us weep.

Let us know sorrow, for then

we know ourselves, then we see.

No more in ignorance, but in truth

let us walk,

acknowledging our woe,

weeping with the earth.

When its sorrow is our sorrow,

then the weight shall crush my bones

—and crushed, I shall be reborn.

‘Sorrow is the door, dear boy,

the door of joy pure and true.

With every tear we shed,

we rejoice more fully,

exist more wholly,

love more purely.’

And with this, the old man’s words ceased, his mouth was still. And as the tears brimmed within his eyes, his joy radiated as the sun.

***

How captive are we, we fallen children, to the pleasures and passions that rule our lives. How we treasure the chains which imprison us, bestowing upon them garlands and wreathes, adorning them as friends. We sit bound by our desires, a lamentable state, yet we rejoice, for our eyes are shut fast; and as in a dream we see our confinement as freedom, our chains as wings.

The ascetic heart knows the darkness of this cell that is our fallen state, the chill of the stone walls that barricade us as if in tombs while yet we walk alive. And this heart knows, too, the cunning poison that is our joy, when founded in these walls—a poison sweet as honey, that dries the blood even as it tickles the tongue. The ascetic heart knows the deep reality of bondage, of the lament of all creation when a human person is bound to death, and recognizes the truth of the chains that bind him. Yet for the ascetic, the chains lose their appeal, their draw—for he knows that only the yoke offered by Christ can lead upward, inward, forward to Life.

One might feel pity, when seeing the ascetic, for he whose heart is borne aloft to God is the very man whose tears flow more freely than most, who weeps in time of rejoicing and sorrows at the festivals of the day. Yet how absent from the need for pity is the man who knows the sorrow of the world, for it is only he who knows its joy! Only when the illusion of ‘life’ is seen for all its empty reality, can the space within one’s vision that so long it occupied be filled—at long last—with the vision of Truth.

The sorrow of the ascetic is not a hopeless sadness, but a hope-filled lament for all that is distant from God. It is the heart weeping for its loss, even in the same breath that it receives its gain, just as the father wept for his prodigal son even as the latter rushed with longing into his father’s arms. The tears wept in this divine sorrow are tears of purification, the divine waters of baptismal grace welling up anew from the depths of the heart, purifying flesh and soul as they ascend upward and outward, finally to fall to the waiting earth.

It is in sorrow that the ascetic heart finds the doorway to joy. A heart petrified so long by the dry passions and fleeting winds of worldly desires becomes hardened, parched, incapable of change or growth. It is this parched earth that the ascetic waters with her tears, pained at her heart’s barrenness, but stirred with profoundest joy at the knowledge that each drop of water transforms the very earth itself.

As sorrow gives rise to tears, so is the hardened heart softened. As the heart is softened, holiness is born. As holiness is born, so divine transformation occurs. And where God transforms life, there all joy and hope, love and peace are found. Thus does the ascetic sorrow, for in sorrow is the door to life.

***

The boy approached his father, sat and questioned, ‘Old man, why are you alone? Why your solitude?’ The elder sighed, his breath light as the sky:

‘All the world is one, beloved,

kept entire in the hand of God.

Solitude is an illusion,

a fleeting vision;

for when one is still

he is never alone.

‘And yet the world turns,

turns with haste toward its ends—

fleeting, fallen, manmade all.

And we, too, turn,

glancing here and there, with

vision rushed, blurred;

never one, but divided.

‘I am alone, beloved, for the sake

of our communion.

Only in solitude is stillness born,

only there is it nurtured—

that great gift by which we live.

Divine silence can be found but

when the heart is still:

alone in its quest,

alone with God.

Thus solitude brings quiet,

and quiet the stillness where

whispers cease,

and here, the voice of God.

‘Hear me well, dear boy:

my solitude is my communion;

alone, we are together.

In solitude I see Christ whole,

for I am wholly His.

By this vision I am transformed,

my eyes at last beholding Life,

and Life reviving the blood of my veins.

I am Adam, wailing alone before the gates.

I quiet my tears to hear God beside me

—and am healed.

‘Thus my solitude, thus am I alone:

to know the depth of Christ within

and heal all that is without.

For when in solitude I come to know God,

I am united to Him in love,

united to Him who fills all,

And my solitude becomes my communion,

as alone I embrace the world.’

***

The call to retreat is mystical. There is divine grace even in the pin-prick voice of the inspired conscience, which through its love for the way of the Cross takes note of the desert, there sees a palace, and calls with longing for its transformation into home. It is the voice which called Christ into the sands of Judea, Anthony into the dunes of Egypt, Saba into the valleys of Palestine, and every human person into the desert of his own life. With echoes of the voice of God, this chord within the human soul seeks retreat, departure from the ways of extravagance and ease, and builds within the heart the desire for battle in the solitude of the sand.

Who has lived and not at some time heard—however faintly—this call? In the busiest moments, in the most absorbed, who has not felt the inexplicable desire for solitude, for a place of silence and peace in which to make sense of the world’s stage? Perhaps but for a fleeting instant, yet this desire is truly felt, and that instant can change the soul. There is crisis, for in the infinite smallness of that single moment, the great magnitude of life is felt, and a sense of distance formed.

It is the gift of the ascetic heart to live in this moment, to cultivate the seed of so precious an instant into the fruit of a whole life changed, woven to the garment of Christ. In this heart the moment of the call is extended to the span of life, for the call is sweet, and the heart knows that such an invitation cannot but be heeded. Love answers Love, for it is the One who is the essence of love whose voice has pierced the soul.

Thus is born the desire for retreat. Yes, to retreat is to flee, but the ascetic flees the world not to abandon it, rather to embrace it. It is not that she hates the world that the ascetic runs, but because she loves it too dearly to be captive to it falsely. To love the world in sin is to shame both the lover and the loved, to deny the holiness of both. Retreat becomes the means for purification, for sanctification, that holy may meet holy, and in purity embrace at last.

Solitude becomes communion, true communion, for our unity as brother and sister is naught but for our union with Christ, and this is in us all most fallen. Fragmented, torn from Christ and ourselves, we can never be whole. The family of humanity is a great and marvelous image formed after the nature of a puzzle with pieces intertwined, embracing. But if each piece will not itself be one, then the puzzle may never be fit. Thus the ascetic plunges into solitude, departure, for here the broken self is healed. Here distractions falls before the gates of contemplation, and fallen being finds reality in communion with the Maker of all. Here, alone, the thread is re-spun, strengthened, purified, brightened, that it may be woven as never before into the fabric of humanity.

Christ will be all in all, and all in Him must be one. But community without self is illusory, finite. The ascetic sees this, and in the vision sees response in flight. Alone, alone in the solitude of prayer, does he join the world at last.

***

The boy knelt at his father’s knees, ‘Dear man, how do you pray?’ The old man sighed a gentle sigh, smiling in his eyes. All questions came to this. Here the great meeting place of life, and of its nature the elder spoke:

‘Beloved, prayer is life,

and apart from it is only darkness.

It is the breath of the soul which yearns for God,

joining with His breath,

becoming one.

Prayer is the only light by which men can see,

the only vision they are called to adore,

for it is union with God

and in this union—everything.

‘Prayer is the quiet of a storm-tossed will,

an intellect guarded from the seas,

a mind centered upon God Most High.

It is stillness wrought in the midst of motion,

in which all that moves is God,

and with Him, all the world.

Prayer knows no words, if it is true,

for words belittle the presence of the Divine,

confound the conversation of Him who is all in all.

True prayer is beyond words,

transcending speech and thought,

communing with One who is greater than these,

Who works beyond them,

and in Whose presence they are no longer required.

Prayer is the stillness of the tongue,

of the mind, of the heart,

that God and these may come together

apart from words—one.

‘To pray, beloved, is to gather with Christ

at the shores of eternity;

To realize that these shores are within,

manifested in each human heart—

the infinite contained in the finite.

The One who came as Man and dwelt in a womb,

now dwells in the very heart of man.

Prayer is His energy, His activity,

vibrant in the human soul,

alive through His very Spirit,

stirring life to new heights

in the soul that has become quiet,

still enough to feel His breath.

‘We pray in our weakness, beloved,

for it makes us strong;

We pray in our strength,

for it makes us humble;

We pray in height and depth,

[cassianus]

A Lament for Sin

Weep over your sin: it is a spiritual ailment; it is death to your immortal soul; it deserves ceaseless, unending weeping and crying; let all tears flow for it, and sighing come forth without ceasing from the depths of your heart.

In profound humility I weep for all my sins, voluntary and involuntary, conscious and unconscious, covert and overt, great and little, committed by word and deed, in thought and intention, day and night, at every hour and minute of my life.

I weep over my pride and my ambition, my self love and my boastfulness; I weep over my fits of anger, irritation, excessive shouting, swearing, quarreling and cursing;

I weep for having criticized, censured, gossiped, slandered, and defamed, for my wrath, enmity, hatred, envy, jealousy, vengeance and rancor;

I weep over my indulgences in lust, impure thoughts and evil inclinations; covetousness, gluttony, drunkenness, and sloth;

I weep for having talked idly, used foul language, blasphemed, derided, joked, ridiculed, mocked, enjoyed empty gaiety, singing, dancing and every pleasure to excess;

I weep over my self indulgence, cupidity, love of money and miserliness, unmercifulness and cruelty;

I weep over my laziness, indolence, negligence, love of comfort, weakness, idleness, absent-mindedness, irresponsibility, inattention, love of sleep, for hours spent in idle pursuits, and for my lack of concentration in prayer and in Church, for not observing fasts and not doing charitable works.

I weep over my lack of faith, my doubting, my perplexity, my coldness, my indifference, my weakness and unfeelingness in what concerns the Holy Orthodox Faith, and over all my foul, cunning and reviling thoughts;

I weep over my exaggerated sorrow and grief, depression and despair, and over sins committed willingly.

I weep, but what tears can I find for a worthy and fitting way to weep for all the actions of my ill fated life; for my immeasurable and profound worthlessness? How can I reveal and expose in all its nakedness each one of my sins, great and small, voluntary and involuntary, conscious and unconscious, overt and covert, every hour and minute of sin? When and where shall I begin my penitential lament that will bear fitting fruit? Perhaps soon I may have to face the last hour of my life; my soul will be painfully sundered from my sinful and vile body; I shall have to stand before terrible demons and radiant angels, who will reveal and torment me with my sins; and I, in fear and trembling, will be unprepared and unable to give them an answer; the sight and sound of wailing demons, their violent and bold desire to drag me into the bottomless pit of Hell will fill my soul with confusion and terror. And then the angels of God will lead my poor soul to stand before God 's fearful seat of judgment. How will I answer the Immortal King, or how will I dare, sinner that I am, to look upon My Judge? Woe is me! have no good answer to make, for I have spent all my life in indolence and sin, all my hours and minutes in vain thoughts, desires and yearnings!

And how many times have I taken the Name of God in vain!

How often, lightly and freely, at times even boldly, insolently and shamelessly have I slandered others in anger; offended, irritated, mocked them!

How often have I been proud and vainglorious and boasted of good qualities that I do not possess and of deeds that I have not done!

How many times have I lied, deceived, been cunning or flattered, or been insincere and deceptive; how often have I been angry, intolerant and mean!

How many times have I ridiculed the sins of my brother, caused him grief overtly and covertly, mocked or gloated over his misdeeds, his faults or his misfortunes; how many times have I been hostile to him, in anger, hatred or envy!

How often have I laughed stupidly, mocked and derided, spoke without weighing my words, ignorantly and senselessly, and uttered a numberless quantity of cutting, poisonous, insolent, frivolous, vulgar, coarse, brazen words!

How often, affected by beauty, have I fed my mind, my imagination and my heart with voluptuous sensations, and unnaturally satisfied the lusts of the flesh in fantasy! How often has my tongue uttered shameful, vulgar and blasphemous things about the desires of the flesh!

How often have I yearned for power and been gluttonous, satiating myself on delicacies, on tasty, varied and diverse foods and wines; because of intemperance and lack of self-control how often have I been filled past the point of satiety, lacked sobriety and been drunken, intemperate in food and drink, and broken the Holy Fasts!

How often, through selfishness, pride or false modesty, have I refused help and attention to those in need, been uncharitable, miserly, unsympathetic, mercenary and grasped at attention!

How often have I entered the House of God without fear and trembling, stood there in prayer, frivolous and absent-minded, and left it in the same spirit and disposition! And in prayer at home I have been just as cold and indifferent, praying little, lazily, and indolently, inattentively and impiously, and even completely omitting the appointed prayers!

And in general, how slothful I have been, weakened by indolence and inaction; how many hours of each day have I spent in sleep, how often have I enjoyed voluptuous thoughts in bed and defiled my flesh! How many hours have I spent in empty and futile pastimes and pleasures, in frivolous talk and speech, jokes and laughter, games and fun, and how much time have I wasted conclusively in chatter, and gossip, in criticizing others and reproaching them; how many hours have I spent in time-wasting and emptiness! What shall I answer to the Lord God for every hour and every minute of lost time? In truth, I have wasted my entire life in laziness.

How many times have I lost heart and despaired of my salvation and of God's mercy or through stupid habit, insensitivity, ignorance, insolence, shamelessness, and hardness sinned deliberately, willingly, in my right mind, in full awareness, in all goodwill, in both thought and intention, and in deed, and in this fashion trampled the blood of God 's covenant and crucified anew within myself the Son of God and cursed Him!

0 how terrible the punishment that I have drawn upon myself!

How is it that my eyes are not streaming with constant tears?.. If only my tears flowed from the cradle to the grave, at every hour and every minute of my tortured life! Who will now cool my head with water and fill the well of my tears and help me weep over my soul that I have cast into perdition?

My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me? Be it unto me according to Thy will, 0 Lord! If Thou wouldst grant me light, be Thou blessed; if Thou wouldst grant me darkness, be Thou equally blessed. If Thou wouldst destroy me together with my lawlessness, glory to Thy righteous judgment; and if Thou wouldst not destroy me together with my lawlessness, glory to Thy boundless mercy!

(St. Basil the Great)

[cassianus]

From the book addressed to Autolycus by Saint Theophilus of Antioch, bishop

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God

If you say, “Show me your God,” I will say to you, “Show me what kind of person you are, and I will show you my God.” Show me then whether the eyes of your mind can see, and the ears of your heart hear.

It is like this. Those who can see with the eyes of their bodies are aware of what is happening in this life on earth. They get to know things that are different from each other. They distinguish light and darkness, black and white, ugliness and beauty, elegance and inelegance, proportion and lack of proportion, excess and defect. The same is true of the sounds we hear: high or low or pleasant. So it is with the ears of our heart and the eyes of our mind in their capacity to hear or see God.

God is seen by those who have the capacity to see him, provided that they keep the eyes of their mind open. All have eyes, but some have eyes that are shrouded in darkness, unable to see the light of the sun. Because the blind cannot see it, it does not follow that the sun does not shine. The blind must trace the cause back to themselves and their eyes. In the same way, you have eyes in your mind that are shrouded in darkness because of your sins and evil deeds.

A person’s soul should be clean, like a mirror reflecting light. If there is rust on the mirror his face cannot be seen in it. In the same way, no one who has sin within him can see God.

But if you will you can be healed. Hand yourself over to the doctor, and he will open the eyes of your mind and heart. Who is to be the doctor? It is God, who heals and gives life through his Word and wisdom. Through his Word and wisdom he created the universe, for by his Word the heavens were established, and by his Spirit all their array. His wisdom is supreme. God by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding he arranged the heavens, by his knowledge the depths broke forth and the clouds poured out the dew.

If you understand this, and live in purity and holiness and justice, you may see God. But, before all, faith and the fear of God must take the first place in your heart, and then you will understand all this. When you have laid aside mortality and been clothed in immortality, then you will see God according to your merits. God raises up your flesh to immortality along with your soul, and then, once made immortal, you will see the immortal One, if you believe in him now.

[cassianus]

The question in every life: How to truthfully discern what is from God what is obedience to Him (Lord, what do You want from me?) and what is from "this world" (and from the one behind it)? Questions about one's calling. My own life is that of a churchman. But every year I feel more and more burdened-from weakness. Or is my real calling something different? I truly suffer from constantly asking myself this question. I live a double life-one consuming the other. Does God want this? Is this the condition of my salvation? When I ask this question, I have no answer. And I am 55!

What else is needed? Look—all of you who rush about in vain. Do not think that something else is needed. See the fight of light with darkness, the descent into death. It is at the same time the revelation of the power of evil and its destruction. That is where one would find the answer which everyone is seeking and often finding in pitiful idols. Lazarus and Palms: "Rejoice, and again I say rejoice..." at the very beginning of Holy Week and at the same time, the onslaught of darkness. ("I am deeply grieved, even to death..." and

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") and of light ("Now th Son of Man has been glorified and God has been glorified in Him...") up to the bright silence of Holy Saturday. Where else should one search for the solution to problems? Where else can one see, feel the only ray of light which illumines and solves everything?

What God reveals to people is unheard, impossible, and the tragedy consists of this deafness. And this revelation can no longer penetrate Western life without ripping it apart. What is revealed surpasses and therefore tears apart life-the gift of joy "which nobody will take away from you." Genuine Christianity is bound to disturb the heart with this tearing-that is the force of eschatology. But one does not feel it in these smooth ceremonies where everything is neat, right, but without eschatological "other worldliness." This is, maybe, the basic spiritual quality of any bourgeois state of mind. It is closed to the sense of tragedy to which the very existence of God condemns us.

I don't know. It's so difficult to express it, but I clearly feel that here is a different perception of life, and the bourgeois state (religious, theological, spiritual, pious, cultured, etc.) is blind to something essential in Christianity.

A. Schmemann

Journals

[cassianus]

The Temptation of Idols:

Today, I thought about it all: about the low level of church life, about fanaticism, lack of tolerance, the enslavement of so many people. A "New Middle Ages" is engulfing us in the sense of a new barbarian era. Many churchmen are choosing and, what is worse, love Ferapont.* He is easy to love because with him all is clear. Especially "clear" is the fact that all that is higher, more complex, more difficult to comprehend - all this is a temptation and has to be destroyed. We should have understood long ago that there is, in this world, religion without God, religion as a center of all idols that possess fallen man, religion that is the justification for these idols. Hence the eternal question: What to do?

If one remains in the system, one accepts it, albeit unwillingly, along with its methods. If one leaves—in the role of a prophet or an accuser-one slides into arrogance and pride. I feel constantly tortured and torn.

Transmission of experience:

Only when we write it down do we understand how much of our time is spent empty, how much fuss there is, not worthy of our attention, unimportant yet devouring our time and our hearts. All these days, in a state of total exhaustion as well as revulsion at the duties I need to be performing. . . .

But at the same time, when lecturing in the morning, I feel inspired again and again. I always have the feeling that something essential is being revealed to me while I lecture. It is as if someone else is lecturing for me!

It is clear that in Christianity, “the Good News" is of primary importance. Christ did not write. And all that is written—-the Bible, etc.-is the record of "experience"; not of individual experience, but supra-individual, precisely cosmic, ecclesial and escha-tological. It is a common mistake to think that education is on the level of ideas. No! It is always a transmission of experience. How much sadness, emptiness and banality there is in the game of academia and footnotes. People are not convinced by reasoning; either they catch fire or they do not.

Yesterday, on television, terrible stories by former prisoners about torture in Vietnam. All these people seemed deeply marked and somehow illumined from inside. Christianity is destroyed not by bourgeoisie, capitalism or the army, but by rotten intellectualism, based on a firm trust in one's own importance. Where there is talk about "rights" there is no faith.

* Ferapont is the spiritual adversary of the Elder Zosima in Dostoevsky's novel The Brother Karamozov. He is an illiterate, rigid, demon-obsessed ascetic who condemns Zosima's spiritua teaching of humble love and joy.

A. Schmemann

Journals

[cassianus]

Of Theology and Theologians: The Science of the Saints and the Fruit and Method of Spiritual Healing

I have always been struck by the patristic understanding of the nature of theology. One of my earlier posts touched upon the necessity of “becoming theology”, stressing the need to assimilate the words and teaching of the scriptures and the fathers so that our very beings express their truth. Here, however, I would like to expand upon this notion and address more directly how the Fathers understood the idea of theology itself. In the glossary of the first volume of the Philokalia we are told that theology “denotes . . .more than the learning about God and religious doctrine acquired through academic study. It signifies active and conscious participation in or perception of the realities of the divine world. . . . To be a theologian in the full sense, therefore, presupposes the attainment of the state of stillness and dispassion, . . . of pure undistracted prayer and so requires gifts bestowed on but extremely few persons.” The present day idea of schools of theology where one pursues a degree abstracted from the absolute necessity of spiritual formation and the active pursuit of the life of holiness would have been completely foreign to the Fathers. The study of the patristic texts and particularly those of the hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia reveals that theology is both a fruit and a method of spiritual healing through which one is brought into communion with God.

To enlarge on what has been said we do well to look to the teaching of the Holy Fathers relating to theology and theologians. Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos in his work “Orthodox Psychotherapy” shows through the Fathers’ writings how theology is first and foremost a therapeutic science - principally a science that cures, that heals, the soul. He writes:

“I think that we should begin with St. Gregory Nazianzen. . . [He] writes that it is not for everyone to theologize, to speak about God, because the subject is not so cheap and low. This work is not for all men but ‘for those who have been examined and are passed masters in the vision of God and who have previously been purified in soul and body, or at the very least are being purified.’ Only those who have passed from praxis to theoria, from purification to illumination, can speak about God. And when is this? ‘It is when we are free from all external defilement or disturbance, and when that which rules within us is not confused with vexations or erring images.’ Therefore the saint advises: ‘For it is necessary to be truly at ease to know God.’

Neilos the Ascetic links theology with prayer . . . : ‘If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.’

St. John Climacus [writes]: ‘Total purity is the foundation for theology.’ ‘When a man’s senses are perfectly united to God, then what God has said is somehow mysteriously clarified. But where there is no union of this kind, then it is extremely difficult to speak about God.’ On the contrary, the man who does not actually know God speaks about Him only in ‘probabilities’. Indeed, according to patristic teaching it is very bad to speak in conjectures about God, because it leads a person to delusion. This saint knows how ‘ the theology of demons’ develops in us. In vainglorious hearts which have not previously been purified by the operation of the Holy Spirit, the unclean demons ‘give us lessons in the interpretation of scripture’. Therefore a slave of passion should not ‘dabble in theology.’

The saints lived a theology ‘written by the Spirit’. We find the same teaching in the works of St. Maximus the Confessor. When a person lives by practical philosophy, which is repentance and cleansing from passions, ‘he advances in moral understanding.’ When he experiences theoria, ‘he advances in spiritual knowledge.’ In the first case he can discriminate between virtues and vices; the second case, theoria, ‘leads the participant to the inner qualities of incorporeal and corporeal things.’

It must be emphasized that a theology that is not the result of purification, that is, of ‘praxis’, is demonic. According to St. Maximus, ‘knowledge without praxis is the demons’ theology.’

In the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas it is those who see God who are properly theologians, and theology is theoria. ‘For there is a knowledge about God and His doctrines, a theoria which we call theology. . . .’ Anyone who without knowledge and experience of matters of faith offers teaching about them ‘according to his own reasonings, trying with words to show the Good that transcends all words, has plainly lost all sense.’ And in his folly ‘he has become an enemy of God.’

Thus, Vlachos tells us, theology is not abstract knowledge or practice, like logic, mathematics, astronomy, or chemistry . . . . A theologian who is not acquainted with the methods of the enemy nor with perfection in Christ is not only unable to struggle against the enemy for his own perfection, but is also in no position to guide or heal others.”

[cassianus]

There is a great richness of forms of the spiritual life to be found within the bounds of Orthodoxy, but monasticism remains the most classical of all. Unlike western monasticism, however, that of the East does not include a multiplicity of different orders. This fact is explained by the conception of the monastic life, the aim of which can only be union with God in a complete renunciation of the life of this present world. If the secular clergy (married priests and deacons), or confraternities of laymen may occupy themselves with social work, or devote themselves to other outward activities, it is otherwise with the monks. The latter take the habit above all in order to apply themselves to prayer, to the interior life, in cloister or hermitage. Between a monastery of the common life and the solitude of an anchorite who carries on the traditions of the Desert Fathers there are many intermediate types of monastic institution. One could say broadly that eastern monasticism was exclusively contemplative, if the distinction between the two ways, active and contemplative, had in the East the same meaning as in the West. In fact, for an eastern monk the two ways are inseparable. The one cannot be exercised without the other, for the ascetic rule and the school of interior prayer receive the name of spiritual activity. If the monks occupy themselves from time to time with physical labours, it is above all with an ascetic end in view: the sooner to overcome their rebel nature, as well as to avoid idleness, enemy of the spiritual life. To attain to union with God, in the measure in which it is realizable here on earth, requires continual effort, or, more precisely, an unceasing vigil that the integrity of the inward man, ‘the union of heart and spirit’ (to use an expression of Orthodox asceticism), withstand all the assaults of the enemy: every irrational movement of our fallen nature. Human nature must undergo a change; it must be more and more transfigured by grace in the way of sanctification, which has a range which is not only spiritual but also bodily—and hence cosmic. The spiritual work of a monk living in community or a hermit withdrawn from the world retains all its worth for the entire universe even though it remain hidden from the sight of all.

Vladimir Lossky

[cassianus]

Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Our Savior.

Give me, Your servant, remorse and an enlightened heart, so that with an illuminated heart, sweet tears might come forth from a pure prayer, so that it would not require many of my tears for You to wipe out the account of my sins, and that on account of a short lamentation you would quench the fire set ablaze in me.

Because if, O Master, You permit me to weep here, then perhaps You will release me from the unquenchable fire.

I realize, O long-suffering and lover-of-mankind Lord, that each day and hour I greatly frustrate and anger You.

However Your long-suffering will do away with my enmity and rancor.

O Lord, Who loves good and Who is a God of mercy and benevolence, save me from the horrible polluted foe, who hourly binds and flogs my soul with wicked and polluted thoughts.

Unspeakable is Your strength, O Christ, because it rebuked the waves on the sea.

Let it rebuke him.

Let it render him impotent, and cast him far from Your servant.

Each day he redoubles his schemes against me and he moves quickly to take hold of my wretched mind and to pull me far from You and Your holy commandments.

O Master, O most compassionate Lord, hasten to send Your power and chase away from me, Your useless servant, this powerful serpent along with all his crafty and wicked thoughts, that I might, with integrity, praise You with your eternal Father and Your all-holy and good and life-bestowing Spirit, now and forever, and unto the ages of ages.

Amen. ​❦

St. Ephraim the Syrian