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How does the parable of the Prodigal Son illustrate God’s goal for us and our purpose?

I find this passage from Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex (disciple of Saint Sophrony of Essex) full of great wisdom and guidance for us as we prepare ourselves this week for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son.

This passage is an extract from his book ’Hidden Man Of The Heart’. Perhaps, this provides some solid ground to a question raised in yesterday’s class…. what is my purpose; why am I here … in the context of this parable. This article may also remind us all of the essential humility that even with a parable which we believe we are quite familiar ; we can humbly accept that ’we realize we know but a little’ and find much to learn.

Within this passage , you will also see how the themes of our hearts, exile, and shame are woven powerfully together into this explanation and exploration of the Prodigal Son.

The Mystery Of Man’s Heart (Extract from Hidden Man of the Heart)

All the ordinances of the undefiled Church are offered to the world for the sole purpose of dis­covering the ‘deep heart’,[1] the centre of man’s hypo­s­tasis. According to the Holy Scriptures, God has fashioned every heart in a special way, and each heart is His goal, a place wherein He desires to abide that He may mani­fest Himself.

Since the kingdom of God is within us,[2] the heart is the battlefield of our salvation, and all ascetic effort is aimed at cleansing it of all filthiness, and preserving it pure before the Lord. ‘Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life’, exhorts Solomon, the wise king of Israel.[3] These paths of life pass through man’s heart, and therefore the unquenchable desire of all who ceaselessly seek the Face of the living God is that their heart, once deadened by sin, may be rekindled by His grace.

The heart is the true ‘temple’ of man’s meeting with the Lord. Man’s heart ‘seeketh knowledge’[4] both intellectual and divine, and knows no rest until the Lord of glory comes and abides therein. On His part God, Who is ‘a jealous God’,[5] will not settle for a mere portion of the heart. In the Old Testament we hear His voice crying out, ‘My son, give Me thy heart’;[6] and in the New Testament He commands: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.’[7] He is the one Who has fashioned the heart of every man in a unique and unrepeatable way, though no heart can contain Him fully because ‘God is greater than our heart’.[8] Nevertheless, when man succeeds in turning his whole heart to God, then God Himself begets it by the incorruptible seed of His word, seals it with His wondrous Name and makes it shine with His perpetual and charis­matic presence. He makes it a temple of His Divinity, a temple not made by hands, able to reflect His ‘shape’ and to hearken unto His ‘voice’ and ‘bear’ His Name.[9] In a word, man then fulfils the purpose of his life, the reason for his coming into the transient existence of this world.

The great tragedy of our time lies in the fact that we live, speak, think, and even pray to God, outside our heart, outside our Father’s house. And truly our Father’s house is our heart, the place where ‘the spirit of glory and of God’[10] would find repose, that Christ may ‘be formed in us’.[11]Indeed, only then can we be made whole, and become hypostases in the image of the true and perfect Hypostasis, the Son and Word of God, Who created us and redeemed us by the precious Blood of His ineffable sacrifice.

Yet, as long as we are held captive by our passions, which distract our mind from our heart and lure it into the ever-changing and vain world of natural and created things, thus depriving us of all spiritual strength, we will not know the new birth from on High that makes us children of God and gods by grace. In fact, in one way or another, we are all ‘prodigal sons’ of our Father in heaven, because, as the Scriptures testify, ‘All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.’[12] Sin has separated our mind from the life-giving contemplation of God and led it into a ‘far country’.[13] In this ‘far country’ we have been deprived of the honour of our Father’s embrace and, in feeding swine, we have been made subject to demons. We gave ourselves over to dis­honourable passions and the dreadful famine of sin, which then established itself by force, becoming the law of our mem­bers. But now we must come out of this godless hell and return to our Father’s house, so as to uproot the law of sin that is within us and allow the law of Christ’s command­ments to dwell in our heart. For the only path leading out of the torments of hell to the everlasting joy of the Kingdom is that of the divine commandments: with our whole being we are to love God and our neighbour with a heart that is free of all sin.

The return journey from this remote and inhospitable land is not an easy one, and there is no hunger more fearful than that of a heart laid waste by sin. Those in whom the heart is full of the consolation of incorruptible grace can endure all external deprivations and afflictions, trans­form­ing them into a feast of spiritual joy; but the famine in a hardened heart lacking divine consolation is a comfort­less torment. There is no greater misfortune than that of an in­sensible and petrified heart that is unable to distinguish be­tween the luminous Way of God’s Providence and the gloomy confusion of the ways of this world. On the other hand, throughout history there have been men whose hearts were filled with grace. These chosen vessels were enlight­ened by the spirit of prophecy, and were therefore able to dis­tinguish between Divine Light and the darkness of this world.

No matter how daunting and difficult the struggle of purifying the heart may be, nothing should deter us from this undertaking. We have on our side the ineffable good­ness of a God Who has made man’s heart His personal con­cern and goal. In the Book of Job, we read the following aston­ishing words: ‘What is man, that thou shouldest mag­nify him? And that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment…Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself?’[14] We sense God, Who is incomprehensible, pursuing man’s heart: ‘Be­hold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.’[15] He knocks at the door of our heart, but He also encourages us to knock at the door of His mercy: ‘Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’[16] When the two doors that are God’s goodness and man’s heart open, then the greatest miracle of our existence occurs: man’s heart is united with the Spirit of the Lord, God feasting with the sons of men.

From the few thoughts we have mentioned, we now begin to see how precious it is to stand before God with our whole heart as we pour it out before Him. We also begin to understand how vital is the task of discovering the heart, because this allows us to talk to God and our Father from the heart and to be heard by Him, and to give Him the right to perfect the work of our renewal and restoration to the original honour we enjoyed as His sons.

We deprive ourselves of the feast of God’s consolation not only when we hand ourselves over to the corruption of sin, feeding swine in a far country, but also when we contend in a negligent way. ‘Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully,’ warns the Prophet Jeremiah.[17] In the feed­ing of swine, it is the devil, our enemy, who gives us work which is accursed. But if we do the Lord’s work half-heartedly, we put ourselves under a curse, though we may be dwelling in the house of the Lord. For God will not toler­ate division in man’s heart; He is pleased only when man speaks to Him with all his heart and does His work joyfully: ‘God loveth a cheerful giver,’ says the Apostle.[18] He wants our whole heart to be turned and de­voted to Him, and He then fills it with the bounties of His goodness and the gifts of His com­passion. He ‘sows bounti­fully’[19] but He expects the same from us.

As long as man is under the dominion of sin and death, being given over to the power of evil, he becomes in­creas­ingly selfish. In his pride and despair, and being separated from God Who is good, he struggles to survive, but the only thing he gains is a heavier curse upon his head and even greater desolation. But however much he may be cor­rupted by the famine of sin, the primal gift of his having been created in God’s ‘image and likeness’ remains irrevoc­able and indelible. Thus, he always carries within him the possibility of a rising out of the kingdom of darkness and into to the kingdom of light and life. This occurs when he ‘comes to himself’ and in pain of soul confesses, ‘I perish with hunger.’[20]

When fallen man ‘comes to himself’ and turns to God, ‘it is time for the Lord to work’, as we say at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy; in pain, man then enters his own heart, which is the greatest honour reserved by God for man. God knows that He can now seriously con­verse with him, and is attentive to him, for when man enters his heart he speaks to God with knowledge of his true state, for which he now feels responsible. Indeed, man’s whole struggle is waged in order to convince God that he is His child, His very own, and when he has con­vinced Him, then he will hear in his heart those great words of the Gospel, ‘All that I have is thine.’[21] And the moment he convinces God that he is His, God makes the waterfalls of His com­passion to flow, and God’s life be­comes his life. This is the good pleasure of God’s original design in that it is for this that He created man. God then says to the one who has succeeded in persuading Him that he is His, ‘All My life, O man, is thy life.’ Then the Lord, Who is God by nature, grants man His own life, and man becomes a god by grace.

In the Gospel of St Luke we are told that the prodigal son ‘came to himself’ and said, ‘I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.’[22] This is a wondrous moment, a momentous event in the spiritual world. Suffering, affliction, and the menacing famine of the ‘far country’ compel man to look within himself. But a single movement of divine grace is enough to convert the energy of his misfortune into great boldness, and he is enabled to see his heart and all the dead­ness from which he is suffering. Now, with prophetic know­ledge, he boldly confesses that ‘his days are consumed in vanity’.[23] In pain of soul, he discovers that his whole life until then consists of a series of failures and betrayals of God’s commandments, and that he has done no good deed upon earth which can withstand the unbearable gaze of the Eternal Judge. He sees his plight and, like the much-afflicted Job, cries out, ‘Hades is my house.’[24]

With such a lamentation of despair and, thirsting only for God’s blessed eternity, man can then turn his whole being towards the living Lord. He can cry from the depth of his heart to Him Who ‘has power of life and death: who leads to the gates of hell, and brings up again’.[25] This is the turning point in our life, for God the Saviour then begins His work of refashioning man.

When man falls into sin his mind moves in an outward direction and loses itself in created things, but when, con­scious of his perdition, he comes to himself seeking sal­vation, he then moves inward as he searches for the way back to the heart. Finally, when all his being is gathered in the unity of his mind and heart, there is a third kind of movement in which he turns his whole being over to God the Father. Man’s spirit must pass through this threefold circular motion in order to reach perfection.

During the first stage, man lives and acts outside his heart and entertains proud thoughts and considers vain things. In fact, he is in a state of delusion. His heart is dark­ened and void of understanding. In his fallen condition, he prefers to worship and serve ‘the creature more than the Creator’.[26] Because he lives without his heart, he has no dis­cern­ment and is ‘ignorant of [Satan’s] devices’.[27] As the Old Testament wisely observes: ‘The fool hath no heart to get wis­dom’,[28] and because his heart is not the basis of his exist­ence, man remains inexperienced and unfruitful, ‘beat­ing the air’.[29] He is unable to walk steadily in the way of the Lord and is characterised by instability and double-minded­ness.

In the second stage, man ‘comes to himself’, and he begins to have humble thoughts that attract grace and make his heart sensitive. Humble thoughts also enlighten his mind; they are born within himself, and they help him in dis­cerning and accepting only those things that strengthen the heart, so that it stays unshakeable in its resolution to be pleasing to God both in life and in death. During the first stage, man surrenders to a vicious circle of destructive thoughts, whilst in the second, inspired by Christ’s word, he is led along a chain of thoughts, each deeper than the last: from faith he is led to more perfect faith, from hope to firmer hope, from grace to greater grace and from love of God to an ever greater measure of love. ‘We know’, as the Apostle Paul says, ‘that all things work to­gether for good to them that love God.’[30] Indeed, this entry ‘into oneself’ and the discovery of the heart are the work of divine grace. And when man heeds God’s call and co-oper­ates with the grace that is bestowed on him, this grace summons and strengthens all his being.

When the grace of mindfulness of death becomes active, man not only sees that all his days have been consumed in vanity, that everything until now has been a failure, and that he has betrayed God all his life, but he realises that death threatens to blot out all that his con­science has hitherto em­braced, even God. He is now con­vinced that his spirit has need of eternity and that no created thing, neither angel nor man, can help him. This provokes him to seek freedom from every created thing and every passionate attachment. And if he then believes in Christ’s word and turns to Him, then it is easy for him to find his heart because he is be­coming a free being. His faith is salutary, for he now acknow­ledges that Christ is the ‘rewarder of them that diligently seek him’,[31] that is, he believes that Christ is the eternal and almighty Lord Who has come to save the world and will come again to judge the whole world with justice. He has entrusted himself to ‘the law of faith’,[32] and begins to be­lieve in hope against hope,[33] pinning everything on the mercy of God the Saviour. Such true faith can be seen in the Canaanite woman, who received the Lord’s instruction as a dog receives food from its master, and she followed Him freely and steadfastly. As far as she was concerned, God re­mained righteous and forever blessed whether He were to rebuke her or praise her. Faith like this receives the ap­proval of adoption because it grows out of love and humi­l­ity, ever attracting divine grace which opens and quickens the heart.

When man believes and his spirit finds true contact with the Spirit of ‘Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead’[34] and Who lives and reigns forever, he is enlightened so that he can see his spiritual poverty and desolation. He also perceives that he is still far from eternal life, and this gives birth to great fear in him because he is now aware that God is absent from his life. Godly fear such as this strengthens man’s heart to resist sin and begets a firm resolve to prefer heavenly things to earthly things. His life begins to prove the truth of the words of Scripture: ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’[35] As man’s heart draws to itself the grace of God, this gift of fear humbles him, and pre­vents him from becoming overbold; that he ‘not think of himself more highly than he ought to think’,[36] and that he keep himself prudently within the limits of created being.

Another infallible means by which the believer finds his heart is in accepting shame for his sins in the sacrament of confession. Christ saved us by enduring the Cross of shame for our sakes. Similarly, when the believer comes out of the camp of this world,[37] he disregards its good opin­ion and judgment, taking upon himself the shame of his sins, and thereby acquiring a humble heart. The Lord re­ceives his sense of shame for his sins as a sacrifice of thanks­giving, and imparts to him the grace of His great Sacrifice on the Cross. This grace so purifies and renews his heart that he can then stand before God in a manner that is pleas­ing to Him.

I have not said much, but I hope it is clear that man’s principal work, which alone gives worth to his life, is the effort of discovering and purifying his ‘deep heart’, that it may be blessed with the indescribable contemplation of our God, Who is Holy.

Source: Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou), The hidden man of the heart, edition Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, Essex 2007, pp. 11-26.

NOTES 

1. Cf. Ps. 64:6., 2.Cf. Luke 17:21., 3. Prov. 4:23., 4. Prov. 15:14., 5. Exod. 34:15,6. Prov. 23:26., 7. Matt. 12:30., 8. 1 John 3:20., 9. Cf. John 5:37; Acts 9:15., 10. 1 Pet. 4:14., 11. Gal. 4:19., 12. Rom. 3:23. , 13. Luke 9:15. , 14. Job 7:17, 15. Rev. 3:20. , 16. Luke 11:9-10. , 17. Jer. 48:10. ,  18. 2 Cor. 9:7. , 19. Cf. 2 Cor. 9:6., 20. Luke 15:17.,21. Luke 15:31. , 22. Luke 15:18-19. , 23. Cf. Ps. 78:33. , 24. Cf. Job 17:13. , 25. Wisdom of Solomon 16:13. , 26. Rom. 1:25. , 27. 2 Cor. 2:11. , 28. Cf. Prov. 17:16. , 29. Cf. 1 Cor. 9:26., 30. Rom. 8:28. , 31. Heb. 11:6. , 32. Rom. 3:27. , 33. Cf. Rom. 4:18. , 34. 2 Tim. 2:8 , 35. Prov. 1:7 LXX. , 36. Rom. 12:3. , 37. Cf. Heb. 13:11-12.

Publican & Pharisee Class

In our class this week, we’ll focus on three basic areas shown below all related to this powerful week of the Publican & Pharisee. This Sunday we begin using the Triodion as we officially start preparing ourselves for Lent.

I.Reading and group reflections on this week’s key themes of our hearts, humility and pride (30 minutes)

Condition of our Hearts – Key Quotes Father Stephen Freeman Reflection

Humility – OCA Rainbow Series – Father Thomas Hopko

Pride & Self Reliance C.S. Lewis Father Phillip LeMaster

II. Key Quotes/Messages From Triodion (10 minutes)

Sunday of Publican & Pharisee Matins Service Selections

III. Matins Change – ‘Open the gates of repentance’ Hymn

YouTube of hymn with lyrics

What does the Triodion for this week Sunday of the Publican & Pharisee have to teach us?

In the Matins service for the Sunday of the Publican & Pharisee, we are invited yo see how pride keeps us stuck and separated from God and how humility can lead us to an ’amendment of life’ and thus a ’change of heart’.

Triodion – Matins Sunday of Publican & Pharisee

Through parables leading all mankind to amendment of life, Christ raises up the Publican from his abasement and humbles the Pharisee in his pride.

Let us make haste to follow the Pharisee in his virtues and to emulate the Publican in his humility, and let us hate what is wrong in each of them: foolish pride and the defilement of transgressions.

The crafty enemy lies in wait for the righteous and despoils them through vainglory, while he binds sinners fast in in the noose of despair. But let us emulate the Publican and hasten to escape from both these evils.

As the Publican, let us offer the Creator prayers for mercy. Let us avoid the ungrateful praying of the Pharisee and the boastful words with which he judged his neighbor, that we may gain God’s forgiveness and His light.

Matins Sunday of Publican & Pharisee Triodion p.102 -109

What is pride and how is it central to what separates us from God and each other?

Arguably , the C.S. Lewis classic Mere Christianity in Chapter 8 entitled ’The Great Sin’ captures the essence of how pride distorts our lives and denies us what we most need in coming to participate in this daily possibility of communion with God and each other.

Excerpts from Chapter 8 ’The Great Sin’ Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive—is competitive by its very nature—while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men into competition if they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different girls. But a proud man will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride.

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity—that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride—just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

Before leaving this subject I must guard against some possible misunderstandings:

We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity—as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble—delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are. I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off—getting rid of the false self, with all its ‘Look at me’ and ‘Aren’t I a good boy?’ and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.

A really humble man …will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all. If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

What are you relying on?

We live in a culture that idolizes individual power and self-reliance. We miss something very crucial if we approach our preparation for Lent without deepening our humility and dependence on Christ. This short extract from a homily by Father Phillip LeMaster may be helpful in identifying how this trap of self-reliance can manifest itself during Lent. It’s interesting that a central tenet of his homily is drawn from the short desperate prayer found in the Gospel of Mark which many of us can so deeply relate to … ‘I believe, help my unbelief’. Perhaps this prayer epitomizes this necessity of a relentless cycle of receiving from Him all that is good and then circling in our emptiness back to Him as the ‘treasury of good gifts’ and ‘giver of life’.

As we think about the condition of the hearts of the Publican and Pharisee, it’s useful to ask this question of what is the power source for how they are praying and living their lives. It seems clear that much of what was missing in the heart of the Pharisee is a ‘with God’ experience and realization of how dependent he is upon God for whatever manifestation of virtue appears in his life. The Pharisee was living in the delusion and distortion that he was the creator of these virtues and he was worshipping and praying to the small imaginary god of self and self reliance not the True and Triune God. And perhaps one of the greatest assets and aspirations of the Publican was the clarity in his heart that only in the humility of a ‘with God’ reliance could he be delivered from his darkness to Light.

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. 

Mark 9: 23 – 24

Father Phillip LeMaster

As we continue the Lenten journey, we must remember that this season is not about us and what we think we can achieve spiritually by relying on our own willpower or virtue to perform acts of religious devotion.  Spiritual disciplines are not exercises in self-reliance, as though we earn something from God by being diligent in performing them.  Instead, they are simply ways of helping us share more fully in the life of Christ as we grow in recognizing our sinfulness and opening ourselves to receive His healing mercy.  No amount of piety could conquer the power of death and make a path for us to participate personally in the eternal life of God by grace.  Only the God-Man, in His full Self-offering on the Cross, could do that. Lent is preparation to unite ourselves to Christ in His Passion, for “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.” He is the eternal High Priest Who “has gone as a forerunner on our behalf” into the Heavenly Tabernacle where He intercedes for us eternally (Rom. 8:34).

The healing of our souls is found by sharing in the life of Christ.  We will be able to unite ourselves to Him in holiness only when we know the weakness of our faith as we turn away from self-reliance and receive His mercy from the depths of our souls.  The disciplines of Lent are teachers of humility that should help us “commend ourselves and one another, and all our life, unto Christ our God.”  He accepted the imperfect faith of the father of the demon-possessed boy, and He will do the same with us if we come to Him in the same humble spirit.  Doing so is really the only way to prepare to follow the Savior to His Cross and empty tomb.

Why is humility the ’mother of all virtues’

“Humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue”

St. John Chrysostom

We begin our Triodion journey with the powerful and timeless example of the Publican’s humility and the Pharisee’s pride. We cannot manifest any of the virtues authentically without God. Without humility, we find ourselves isolated and alone without what we most need. With humility , we open the door of our hearts to the Triune God and our thirst for the true sustainability of the living water of His mercy and grace.

I love Father Thomas Hopko’s description of humility as “seeing reality as it is in God”. And in this reality , we can see each of our breaths as an unceasing reminder of our dependence and reliance on Him. In this deepening awareness and vision of His moment by moment grace that enlivens us ; we have a chance to see more clearly our ‘right size’ and become more open to the majesty of His.

We cannot authentically produce any virtue without this foundation of humility that allows this flow from God to us. The distortion of what we believe we are producing autonomously in good without Him is simply not real ; it is the vanity and ignorance of what we imagine. Our vanity and ignorance separate us from His Holy Spirit as the ‘giver of life’ who is ‘everywhere present and filling all things’. With this distortion of what we see as a reality without God, we ease God out (EGO) of our daily consciousness as well as the vision and experience of how we live our lives. We place ourselves in the center of our lives instead of God.

We can now see in our Church Fathers the ’inner coherence’ and great wisdom in placing the Publican and Pharisee as our first encounter in the Triodion. Whatever good we may experience in Lent will rely and depend upon its birth from this ‘mother’ of humility and our openness to be ’with God’ in the whatever of our lives.

The short extract below from Father Thomas Hopko also reminds us that Christ in his Triune relationship is our perfect model and demonstration of humility.

Volume IV – Spirituality … The Virtues … Humility by Father Thomas Hopko

In the Orthodox tradition, humility has often been called the “mother of all virtues,” and pride has been named “the cause of all sin.” The wise and honest person is the one who is humble.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor, than to divide the spoils with the proud.

A man’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will retain honor 

Proverbs 16.18, 16.19, 29.23

According to the Gospel, in the Song of the Virgin, the Lord scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts and exalts those who are humble and meek (cf. Lk 1.51–52). This is the exact teaching of Jesus.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Lk 14.11, 18.14, Prov 3.34).

Humility does not mean degradation or remorse. It does not mean effecting some sort of demeaning external behavior. It does not mean considering oneself as the most vile and loathsome of creatures. Christ Himself was humble and He did not do this. God Himself, according to the spiritual tradition of the Church, has perfect humility, and He certainly does not act in this way.

Genuine humility means to see reality as it actually is in God. It means to know oneself and others as known by God—a power, according to Saint Isaac, greater than that of raising the dead! The humble lay aside all vanity and conceit in the service of the least of God’s creatures, and consider no good act as beneath one’s dignity and honor. Humility is to know oneself, without the grace of God, as dust, sinful and dead.

God is humble because He cares about the least: the birds in the air, the grass in the fields, the worst of sinners (cf. Mt 6.25–30). Christ is humble because He associates with the lowly, becoming the slave of all in taking on Himself the sins of the world.

If I then, your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you (Jn 13.14–15).

You know that the rulers of the pagans lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mt 20.25–28).

All Christians are to follow the example of Christ in His divine humility. Saint Paul teaches:

Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2.3–11).

The exaltation of Jesus as a man depended entirely on His self-emptying humility. True greatness, divine greatness, is the ability to be the least and do the least with the absolute certitude that it is externally and divinely important, that it is an imitation of God Himself.

True humility for the sinful man is to know that indeed, according to one’s own possibilities and gifts, each one is truly the first and greatest of sinners (cf. 1 Tim 1.15), for each one has sinned in his own way “like no other man” (Saint Andrew of Crete, 7th c., Penitential Canon). The truly humble person is the one who, confessing his sins, is “faithful over little,” and doing so, is exalted by the Lord and is “set over much.” Only such a person will “enter into the joy of his Master” (Mt 25.14–23, Lk 19.17).

What do I truly treasure?

Our actions, attitudes, and awareness have a lot to teach us about what we honestly treasure in the depths of our hearts. I find this article by Father Stephen Freeman entitled ’The Treasures of the Heart’ very helpful as I enter this Pre-Lenten period and desire to see more clearly, with God’s help, the truth of what lies within me. I’ve created a slightly shortened extract of the full article below. I hope this may help you reflect and gain some clarity about this important question that we can ask and perhaps even answer right now today.

The Treasures of the Heart – Father Stephen Freeman

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. 

Matthew 12:34-35

Christ’s teaching on the heart points to it as the very center of our life. He does not describe it as inherently good or inherently bad. It is inherently central. It is that place in the core of our existence from which all words and actions flow. And so Christ tells us simply that if the treasure of our heart is good – it will be evidenced by the good things we say and do – and, conversely, if the treasure of our heart is evil – it, too, will be evidenced by the evil things we say and do. What we should take from this is the realization that we are daily laying up treasure (good or evil) in the heart.

I recently gave some thought to St. Macarius’ saying on the treasures of the heart – that we find dragons and lions, poisonous beasts, etc., and that we find God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace. My thoughts stayed with his imagery as I walked myself through the day. It was obvious that over the course of the day I myself added to the treasures of my heart – and to some extent – others added to that treasure as well.

One image that came to me was travel on our busy freeways. In East Tennessee it seems that our interstate highway system is in a constant state of “under construction.” At times traffic is heavy, too fast, and frightening (especially if you add in cell-phone usage and the like as we zip along at freeway speeds). The image that came to mind was of cars barreling down the highway with dragons and lions and poisonous beasts pouring out the windows as travelers cursed one another on their daily commute. “Road rage” is a common phenomenon all across the nation. I wondered how we would react if we could actually see the “treasures” of our heart pouring out of our cars.

The same image could be applied across the whole of the day. For we are either bringing forth good out of the treasure of a good heart or pouring out dragons from the treasure of an evil heart.

There was an additional thought. The nature of the heart’s treasure is their inexhaustibility. When we pour forth our treasure we do not see its decrease. Quite the opposite – dragons begat dragons. And in the same way, every act of kindness of mercy does not diminish the kindness and mercy of our heart but multiplies them. Kindness begats kindness.

And so it is that over the course of every day we not only nurture the treasure of our own heart (for good or ill), we also add, or attempt to add, to the treasures of those around us. Some of the poisonous beasts that I find within my heart have been dwelling there a long time – placed there even when I was a child.

And so a significant question for all of us (daily) is: what treasure do I share with others?

Meditating on such imagery should also drive us deeper into repentance (not guilt, but repentance). What am I doing with the beasts that inhabit my heart? Frequent confession – telling the truth about the state of my heart is important. But equally important (perhaps more so) is the attention we should give to the good treasures that are so lacking. Every act of kindness and mercy, every effort towards forgiveness of everyone for everything, does not exhaust the heart but stores up good treasures in the presence of the good God. Avoiding evil is an effort not to do something. I always find that such efforts alone are very weak indeed. The man who is busy being kind cannot be busy being evil. One of the powers of goodness is that it actually has substance rather than absence. And so St. Paul exhorts us, “Overcome evil by doing good” (Romans 12:21).

Dragons depart ….

What is the condition of my heart?

As we begin our Pre-Lent Adult Education this Sunday , I thought it might be useful to raise questions which may be very relevant to our preparation process for Lent. This week’s upcoming Sunday of the Publican & Pharisee can stimulate lots of these opportunities for self reflection about where we stand in relation to pride and humility.

Here are two quotes … the first from a 4th century saint, St. Macarius of Eqypt and the second from a well known Nobel Prize winning Orthodox author of the 20th century, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Both are useful reminders that our spiritual battlefield today and every day lies within our own hearts:

And the heart itself is but a small vessel, yet there also are dragons and there are lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. And there are rough and uneven roads; there are precipices. But there is also God, also the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the Apostles, the treasures of grace—there are all things

St Macarius ‘50 Spiritual Homilies and Great Letter’ (Homily 43)

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ 

The Sunday of Zacchaeus – Homily by Father Alexander Schmemann

To prepare us for Great Lent, the Orthodox Church starts announcing its approach a full month before it actually begins. Lent is a time of repentance, and repentance is a re-examination, a re-appraisal, a deepening, a shaking upside down. Repentance is the sorrowful uncovering of one’s neglected, forgotten, soiled “inner” person. The first announcement of Lent, the first reminder, comes through a short Gospel story about an entirely unremarkable man, “small of stature,” whose occupation as a tax collector marked him, in that time and society, as greedy, cruel and dishonest. 

Zacchaeus wanted to see Christ; he wanted this so much that his desire attracted the attention of the Lord Jesus. Desire is the beginning of everything. As the Gospel says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). Everything in our life begins with desire, since what we desire is also what we love, what draws us from within, what we surrender to. We know that Zacchaeus loved money, and by his own admission we know that to get it he had no scruples about defrauding others. Zac­chaeus was rich and he loved riches, but within himself he discovered another desire, he wanted something else, and this desire became the pivotal moment of his life. 

This Gospel story poses a question to each of us: what do you love, what do you desire–not superficially, but deeply? “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” the New Testament says (Revelation 3:20). Do you hear this quiet knock? Desire. The soul taking a deep breath. The little man, Zacchaeus, with his eyes to the ground focusing on earthly desires, encounters Christ and now ceases to be little as his victory over himself begins. Here is the start, the first step from exterior to interior, toward that mysterious homeland which all human beings, unknown often to themselves, long for and desire.

Zacchaeus Homily Feb 4th – Prologue of Ohrid – St. Nikolai Velmirovich

“Today, salvation has come to this house” (St. Luke 19:9).

Thus it was spoken by the One Whose word is life and joy and restoration of the righteous. Just as the bleak forest clothes itself into greenery and flowers from the breath of spring, so does every man, regardless of how arid and darkened by sin, becomes fresh and youthful from the nearness of Christ. For the nearness of Christ is as the nearness of some life-giving and fragrant balsam which restores health, increases life, give fragrance to the soul, to the thoughts and to the words of man. In other words, distance from Christ means decay and death and His nearness means salvation and life.

“Today, salvation has come to this house” said the Lord upon entering the house of Zacchaeus the sinner. Christ was the salvation that came and Zacchaeus was the house into which He entered. Brethren, each one of us is a house in which sin dwells as long as Christ is distant and to which salvation comes when Christ approaches it. Nevertheless, will Christ approach my house and your house? That depends on us. Behold, He did not arbitrarily enter the house of the sinner Zacchaeus, rather He entered as a most desired guest. Zacchaeus of little stature climbed into a tree in order to see the Lord Jesus with his own eyes. Zacchaeus, therefore, sought him; Zacchaeus desired Him. We must also seek Him in order to find Him and desire Him in order that He would draw nearer to us and, with our spirit, to climb high in order to encounter His glance. Then He will visit our house as He visited the house of Zacchaeus* and with Him salvation will come.

Draw near to us O Lord, draw near and bring to us Your eternal salvation.
To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.
The Prologue from Ohrid: Lives of Saints by Saint Nikolai Velimirovič
http://livingorthodoxfaith.blogspot.gr/2009/12/prologue-february-4

*Later on, Zacchaeus followed the Apostle Peter who appointed him bishop of Caesarea in Palestine where he faithfully served the Gospel and died peacefully.