This week we face the challenge in the mirror of who Adam is for us and to us. The homilies and reflections I’ve chosen are ones that remind us of a theme we’ve been exploring before … that the judgments of ourselves, our neighbors and God get in the way of His mercy. And is there anything needed more today than His mercy?
Adam’s sin was certainly disobedience but these reflections suggest that his response to his disobedience … his dishonesty in not accepting the reality of his disobedience, his fear that he would be punished and his encounter with shame, his judgement that he should blame Eve and even blame God for giving him Eve , his decision to hide from God instead of to seek God out … that his response to protect what was false and hide from what was true is the ’condition of heart’ that lead Adam away from God. And so it is with us … with the prodigal in us, with the elder son in us, with the Pharisee in us … all real and undeniable in us … truly a mirror of who we are. Our Lenten preparation hopefully now leaves us in the place of humility that Father Thomas Hopko so beautifully describes as ’seeing reality as it is in God’ and with this humility as the ’mother of virtues’ we need as we begin our journey in Lent.
However, this Sunday also moves us from this mirror of our exile to a communal and very tangible expression of reconciliation and forgiveness. Father Alexander Schmemann once again provides us some very useful and practical guidance for why forgiveness is so essential to what we are about to begin in Lent on this Forgiveness Sunday.
This week , I’d also like us to discuss the Lenten ’Prayer of St. Ephraim’ and the wisdom of Archbishop’s Kailistos’s Ware guidance on fasting.
Although we won’t have time to go further than these readings, this week a lot of supplemental information was shared that may be useful and relevant to where we find ourselves. These additional articles include:
St. Silouan is important Orthodox Saint of the 20th century canonized in 1987. His life was chronicled by his disciple Sophrony who himself was also recently canonized on November 27th 2019. Saint’s Sophrony’s book, “Wisdom From Mt. Athos; The Writings of St. Silouan 1866-1938’ contains a very powerful poem entitled ’Adam’s Lament’. This poem mystically captures the heart of both of this Sunday’s themes of the clarity and realism of ’Adam’s Exile from Paradise’ as well as the essential of reconciliation for repentance in ’Forgiveness Sunday’. It also poignantly relates Adam’s plight to our own. The hymns we’ve been singing in Pre-Lent of our exile in a foreign land (Psalm 137) and our desperate need for the “open doors of repentance’ really come alive in the context of this poem. The poem is further amplified by the fact that St. Silouan was barely literate and yet empowered by the Holy Spirit became such a prolific and inspiring writer.
Arvo Pärt is a world renown composer from Estonia who has found ways to incorporate his deep spiritual journey in Orthodoxy into his incredibly creative accomplishments in choral and symphonic composition. He was so impacted by St. Silouan’s poem ’Adam’s Lament’ that he made it into a composition that has been well received critically in the 21st century. You can hear it performed by the Canadian performing artists Soundstream below.
Here is what Avro said about this poem in the liner notes of the recording of ‘Adam’s Lament’. You can read a review of this here.
For the holy man Silouan of Mount Athos, the name Adam is like a collective term which comprises humankind in its entirety and each individual person alike, irrespective of time, epochs, social strata and confession. But who is this banished Adam? We could say that he is all of us who bear his legacy. And this “Total Adam” has been suffering and lamenting for thousands of years on earth. Adam himself, our primal father, foresaw the human tragedy and experienced it as his personal guilt. He has suffered all human cataclysms, unto the depths of despair.
Holy Silouan’s writings have great poetic, expressive power; their central message is Love – Love and Humility. All of his texts, everything he wanted to accomplish with his life was concerned with the issue of humility. Yet the true meaning of the term is difficult to apprehend – like marble, its beauty radiates from its depths.
Avro Pärt – ECM Recording Liner Notes
Adam’s Lament composed by Avro Pärt performed by Soundstreams in 2009
Adam’s Lament By St. Silouan the Athonite
Adam, father of all mankind, in paradise knew the sweetness of the love of God; and so when for his sin he was driven forth from the garden of Eden, and was widowed of the love of God, he suffered grievously and lamented with a great moan. And the whole desert rang with his lamentations, for his soul was racked as he thought, ‘I have distressed my beloved God’. He sorrowed less after paradise and the beauty thereof; for he sorrowed that he was bereft of the love of God, which insatiably, at every instant, draws the soul to Him.
In the same way the soul which has known God through the Holy Spirit, but has afterwards lost grace experiences the torment that Adam suffered. There is an aching and a deep regret in the soul that has grieved the beloved Lord.
Adam pined on earth, and wept bitterly, and the earth was not pleasing to him. He was heartsick for God, and this was his cry:
My soul wearies for the Lord, and I seek Him in tears.
How should I not seek Him?
When I was with Him my soul was glad and at rest, and the enemy could not come nigh me;
But now the spirit of evil has gained power over me, harassing and oppressing my soul,
So that I weary for the Lord even unto death,
And my spirit strains to God, and there is naught on earth can make me glad,
Nor can my soul take comfort in any thing, but longs once more to see the Lord, that her hunger may be appeased.
I cannot forget Him for a single moment, and my soul languishes after Him,
and from the multitude of my afflictions I lift up my voice and cry:
‘Have mercy upon me, O God. Have mercy on Thy fallen creature.’
Thus did Adam lament, and the tears steamed down his face on to his beard, on to the ground beneath his feet, and the whole desert heard the sound of his moaning. The beasts and the birds were hushed in grief; while Adam wept because peace and love were lost to all men on account of his sin.
Adam knew great grief when he was banished from paradise, but when he saw his son Abel slain by Cain his brother, Adam’s grief was even heavier. His soul was heavy, and he lamented and thought:
Peoples and nations will descend from me, and multiply, and suffering will be their lot, and they will live in enmity and seek to slay one another.
And his sorrow stretched wide as the sea, and only the soul that has come to know the Lord and the magnitude of His love for us can understand.
I, too, have lost grace and call with Adam:
Be merciful unto me, O Lord! Bestow on me the spirit of humility and love.
O love of the Lord! He who has known Thee seeks Thee, tireless, day and night, crying with a loud voice:
“I pine for Thee, O Lord, and seek Thee in tears.
How should I not seek Thee?
Thou didst give me to know Thee by the Holy Spirit,
And in her knowing of God my soul is drawn to seek Thee in tears.”
Adam wept:
The desert cannot pleasure me; nor the high mountains, nor meadow nor forest, nor the singing of birds.
I have no pleasure in any thing.
My soul sorrows with a great sorrow:
I have grieved God.
And were the Lord to set me down in paradise again,
There, too, would I sorrow and weep – ‘O why did I grieve my beloved God?’
The soul of Adam fell sick when he was exiled from paradise, and many were the tears he shed in his distress. Likewise every soul that has known the Lord yearns for Him, and cries:
Where art Thou, O Lord? Where art Thou, my Light?
Why hast Thou hidden Thy face from me?
Long is it since my soul beheld Thee,
And she wearies after Thee and seeks Thee in tears.
Where is my Lord?
Why is it that my soul sees Him not?
What hinders Him from dwelling in me?
This hinders Him: Christ-like humility and love for my enemies art not in me.
God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe.
Adam walked the earth, weeping from his heart’s manifold ills, while the thoughts of his mind were on God; and when his body grew faint, and he could no longer shed tears, still his spirit burned with longing for God, for he could not forget paradise and the beauty thereof; but even more was it the power of His love which caused the soul of Adam to reach out towards God.
I write of thee, O Adam:
But thou art witness, my feeble understanding cannot fathom thy longing after God,
Nor how thou didst carry the burden of repentance.
O Adam, thou dost see how I, thy child, suffer here on earth.
Small is the fire within me, and the flame of my love flickers low.
O Adam, sing unto us the song of the Lord,
That my soul may rejoice in the Lord
And be moved to praise and glorify Him as the Cherubim and Seraphim praise Him in the heavens
And all the hosts of heavenly angels sing to Him the thrice-holy hymn.
O Adam, our father, sing unto us the Lord’s song,
That the whole earth may hear
And all thy sons may lift their minds to God and delight in the strains of the heavenly anthem,
And forget their sorrows on earth.
The Holy Spirit is love and sweetness for the soul, mind and body. And those who have come to know God by the Holy Spirit stretch upward day and night, insatiable, to the living God, for the love of God is very sweet. But when the soul loses grace her tears flow as she seeks the Holy Spirit anew.
But the man who has not known God through the Holy Spirit cannot seek Him with tears, and his soul is ever harrowed by the passions; his mind is on earthly things. Contemplation is not for him, and he cannot come to know Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is made known through the Holy Spirit.
Adam knew God in paradise, and after his fall sought Him in tears.
O Adam, our father, tell us, thy sons, of the Lord.
Thy soul didst know God on earth,
Knew paradise too, and the sweetness and gladness thereof,
And now thou livest in heaven and dost behold the glory of the Lord.
Tell of how our Lord is glorified for His sufferings.
Speak to us of the songs that are sung in heaven, how sweet they are,
For they are sung in the Holy Spirit.
Tell us of the glory of the Lord, of His great mercy and how He loveth His creature.
Tell us of the Most Holy Mother of God, how she is magnified in the heavens,
And the hymns that call her blessed.
Tell us how the Saints rejoice there, radiant with grace.
Tell us how they love the Lord, and in what humility they stand before God.
O Adam, comfort and cheer our troubled souls.
Speak to us of the things thou dost behold in heaven.
Why art thou silent?
Lo, the whole earth is in travail.
Art thou so filled with the love of God that thou canst not think of us?
Or thou beholdest the Mother of God in glory, and canst not tear thyself from the sight,
And wouldst not bestow a word of tenderness on us who sorrow,
That we might forget the affliction there on earth?
O Adam, our father, thou dost see the wretchedness of thy sons on earth. Why then art thou silent?
And Adam speaks:
My children, leave me in peace.
I cannot wrench myself from the love of God to speak with you.
My soul is wounded with love of the Lord and rejoices in His beauty.
How should I remember the earth?
Those who live before the Face of the Most High cannot think on earthly things.
O Adam, our father, thou hast forsaken us, thine orphans, though misery is our portion here on earth.
Tell us what we may do to be pleasing to God?
Look upon thy children scattered over the face of the earth, our minds scattered too.
Many have forgotten God.
They live in darkness and journey to the abysses of hell.
Trouble me not. I see the Mother of God in glory –
How can I tear myself away to speak with you?
I see the holy Prophets and Apostles, and all they are in the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God.
I walk in the gardens of paradise, and everywhere behold the glory of the Lord.
For the Lord is in me and hath made me like unto Himself.
O Adam, yet we are they children!
Tell us in our tribulation how we may inherit paradise,
That we too, like thee, may behold the glory of the Lord.
Our souls long for the Lord, while thou dost live in heaven and rejoice in the glory of the Lord.
We beseech thee – comfort us.
Why cry ye out to me, my children?
The Lord loveth you and hath given you commandments.
Be faithful to them, love one another, and ye shall find rest in God.
Let not an hour pass without ye repent of your transgressions,
That ye may be ready to meet the Lord.
The Lord said: ‘I love them that love me, and glorify them that glorify me.’
O Adam, pray for us, thy children. Our souls are sad from many sorrows.
O Adam, our father, thou dwellest in heaven and dost behold the Lord seated in glory
On the right hand of God the Father.
Thou dost see the Cherubim and Seraphim and all the Saints
And thou dost hear celestial songs whose sweetness maketh thy soul forgetful of the earth.
But we here on earth are sad, and e weary greatly after God.
There is little fire within us with which to love the Lord ardently.
Inspire us, what must we do to gain paradise?
Adam makes answer:
Leave me in peace, my children, for from sweetness of the love of God I cannot think about the earth.
O Adam, our souls are weary, and we are heavy-laden with sorrow.
Speak a word of comfort to us.
Sing to us from the songs thou hearest in heaven,
That the whole earth may hear and men forget their afflictions.
O Adam, we are very sad.
Leave me in peace. The time of my tribulation is past.
From the beauty of paradise and the sweetness of the Holy Spirit I can no longer be mindful of the earth.
But this I tell you:
The Lord loveth you, and do you live in love and be obedient to those in authority over you.
Humble your hearts, and the Spirit of God will live in you.
He cometh softly into the soul and giveth her peace,
And bearth wordless witness to salvation.
Sing to God in love and lowliness of Spirit, for the Lord rejoiceth therein.
O Adam, our father, what are we to do?
We sing but love and humility are not in us.
Repent before the Lord, and entreat of Him.
He loveth man and will give all things.
I too repented deeply and sorrowed much that I had grieved God,
And that peace and love were lost on earth because of my sin.
My tears ran down my face. My breast was wet with my tears, and the earth under my feet;
And the desert heard the sound of my moaning.
You cannot apprehend my sorrow, nor how I lamented for God and for paradise.
In paradise was I joyful and glad: the Spirit of God rejoiced me, and suffering was a strange to me.
But when I was driven forth from paradise cold and hunger began to torment me;
The beasts and the birds that were gentle and had loved me turned into wild things
And were afraid and ran from me.
Evil thoughts goaded me.
The sun and the wind scorched me.
The rain fell on me.
I was plagued by sickness and all the afflictions of the earth.
But I endured all things, trusting steadfastly in God.
Do ye, then, bear the travail of repentance.
Greet tribulation. Wear down your bodies. Humble yourselves
And love your enemies,
That the Holy Spirit may take up His abode in you,
And then shall ye know and attain the kingdom of heaven.
But come not nigh me:
Now from love of God have I forgotten the earth and all that therein is.
Forgotten even is the paradise I lost, for I behold the glory of the Lord
And the glory of the Saints whom the light of God’s countenance maketh radiant as the Lord Himself.
O Adam, sing unto us a heavenly song,
That the whole earth may hearken and delight in the peace of love towards God.
We would hear those songs:
Sweet are they for they are sung in the Holy Spirit.
Adam lost the earthly paradise and sought it weeping. But the Lord through His love on the Cross gave Adam another paradise, fairer than the old – a paradise in heave where shines the Light of the Holy Trinity.
What shall we render unto the Lord for His love to us?
In the Orthodox Church, the last Sunday before Great Lent – the day on which, at Vespers, Lent is liturgically announced and inaugurated – is called Forgiveness Sunday.
On the morning of that Sunday, at the Divine Liturgy, we hear the words of Christ:
“If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses…”
Mark 6: 14-15
Then, after Vespers – after hearing the announcement of Lent in the Great Prokeimenon: “Turn not away Thy face from Thy child for I am afflicted! Hear me speedily! Draw near unto my soul and deliver it!” [and] after making our entrance into Lenten worship, with its special memories, with the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, with its prostrations – we ask forgiveness from each other, we perform the rite of forgiveness and reconciliation. And as we approach each other with words of reconciliation, the choir intones the Paschal hymns, filling the church with the anticipation of Paschal joy.
What is the meaning of this rite? Why is it that the Church wants us to begin Lenten season with forgiveness and reconciliation? These questions are in order because for too many people, Lent means primarily, and almost exclusively, a change of diet, the compliance with ecclesiastical regulations concerning fasting. They understand fasting as an end in itself, as a “good deed” required by God and carrying in itself its merit and its reward. But, the Church spares no effort in revealing to us that fasting is but a means, one among many, towards a higher goal: the spiritual renewal of man, his return to God, true repentance and, therefore, true reconciliation. The Church spares no effort in warning us against a hypocritical and pharisaic fasting, against the reduction of religion to mere external obligations. As a Lenten hymn says: “In vain do you rejoice in no eating, O soul! For you abstain from food, but from passions you are not purified. If you persevere in sin, you will perform a useless fast.”
Now, forgiveness stands at the very center of Christian faith and of Christian life because Christianity itself is, above all, the religion of forgiveness. God forgives us, and His forgiveness is in Christ, His Son, Whom He sends to us, so that by sharing in His humanity we may share in His love and be truly reconciled with God.Indeed, Christianity has no other content but love. And it is primarily the renewal of that love, a return to it, a growth in it, that we seek in Great Lent, in fasting and prayer, in the entire spirit and the entire effort of that season. Thus, truly forgiveness is both the beginning of, and the proper condition for the Lenten season.
One may ask, however: Why should I perform this rite when I have no “enemies”? Why should I ask forgiveness from people who have done nothing to me, and whom I hardly know? To ask these questions is to misunderstand the Orthodox teaching concerning forgiveness. It is true, that open enmity, personal hatred, real animosity may be absent from our life, though if we experience them, it may be easier for us to repent, for these feelings openly contradict Divine commandments. But, the Church reveals to us that there are much subtler ways of offending Divine Love. These are indifference, selfishness, lack of interest in other people, of any real concern for them—in short, that wall which we usually erect around ourselves, thinking that by being “polite” and “friendly” we fulfill God’s commandments. The rite of forgiveness is so important precisely because it makes us realize – be it only for one minute – that our entire relationship to other men is wrong, makes us experience that encounter of one child of God with another, of one person created by God with another, makes us feel that mutual “recognition” which is so terribly lacking in our cold and dehumanized world.
On that unique day, listening to the joyful Paschal hymns, we are called to make a spiritual discovery: to taste of another mode of life and relationship with people, of life whose essence is love. We can discover that always and everywhere Christ, the Divine Love Himself, stands in the midst of us, transforming our mutual alienation into brotherhood. As l advance towards the other, as the other comes to me – we begin to realize that it is Christ Who brings us together by His love for both of us.
And because we make this discovery – and because this discovery is that of the Kingdom of God itself: the Kingdom of Peace and Love, of reconciliation with God and, in Him, with all that exists – we hear the hymns of that Feast, which once a year, “opens to us the doors of Paradise.”
We know why we shall fast and pray, what we shall seek during the long Lenten pilgrimage. Forgiveness Sunday: the day on which we acquire the power to make our fasting – true fasting; our effort – true effort; our reconciliation with God – true reconciliation.
For, although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torment. And further, each of them has chosen for himself the coming glory…. Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam.
2 Baruch 54:15, 19
“Each of us has become our own Adam.” Each of us has run away from God, each of us has repeated the sin of choosing death rather than life. To each of us, God gives us an opportunity for repentance, calling out, “Where are you? Come back!” (Gen. 3:9).
And in that same sense, each of us is the prodigal son. God waits patiently for our return, eagerly watching the road (Luke 15:20). Like the prodigal son, the only person we can ultimately find responsibility for our sins is…ourselves.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s reflection on this parable in Great Lent: Journey to Pascha beautifully relates the self-inflicted sufferings of the younger brother to each and every person, as we have all, to some degree, traded the freedom of our Father’s home for slavery in exile.
It is easy indeed to confess that I have not fasted on prescribed days, or missed my prayers, or become angry. It is quite a different thing, however, to realize suddenly that I have defiled my spiritual beauty, that I am far away from my real home, my real life, and that something precious and pure and beautiful has been hopelessly broken in the very texture of my existence. Yet this, and only this, is repentance, and therefore it is also a deep desire to return, to go back, to recover that lost home.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha, pp. 21-22
The hymns for the feast likewise make the connection to my own life: I am the prodigal son.
I, a wretched man, hide my face in shame: I have squandered the riches my Father gave to me; I went to live with senseless beasts; I sought their food and hungered, for I had not enough to eat. I will arise, I will return to my compassionate Father; He will accept my tears, as I kneel before Him, crying: “In Thy tender love for all men, receive me as one of Thy servants and save me!”
“Glory” verse at the Aposticha at Great Vespers, Tone 6
The parable of the Prodigal Son shows us the importance of personal responsibility for our sins—how owning up to our failings, truly repenting from the depths of our heart, is the first step toward reunification with our loving Father.
What this return to God demands, therefore, is the courage to face our sins, to own up for our mistakes and not to blame other people or our circumstances. Courage with humility—”I recognize that I’ve wounded myself, and now it’s time to come clean.”
We spend so much time trying to convince ourselves that we’re OK, that we’re not so bad, that other people are worse, that it’s someone else’s fault; all of these thoughts are barriers to repentance, barriers to the reaching the deep place of the soul, where our real person lives, deep below our personas, self-justifications, and excuses.
Each of us has become our own Adam.
Each of us has become our own prodigal son.
But each of us also has an opportunity to return to God, today, while there is still time.
Below is a powerful, short homily on the ’expulsion of Adam from Paradise’ that raises a crucial question for me to be asking of myself today. Am I using the Sacrament of Confession to accept my sinfulness in repentance or do I find myself avoiding confession through blaming, self justification and fear? We may find that his meditation on Adam’s response has a lot to teach us about where we stand and what we need to consider doing differently.
In addition to this short homily, I am also adding a portion of an excerpt entitled ’On Spiritual Rebirth’ from Chapter 8 Archimandrite Aimilianos’s outstanding book ’The Way of the Spirit’ that inspired this short homily. This particular chapter does a deep dive on a 4th century homily from St. Macarius. If you interested in learning more about St. Macarius, check out ’Pseudo-Macarius…the Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter’. This book includes homily 30 that was a key source for this chapter in Archimandrite Aimiliano’s book.
Expulsion of Adam from Paradise
Father Ted Bobosh
In the long history of Christianity, many insightful meditations have been offered giving Adam voice to explain his free choice and to lament the loss of Paradise after sinning against God and being expelled from God’s hand-planted Garden of Eden. Below is a modern meditation from Archimandrite Aimilianos who has Adam fearfully explaining himself, ignoring the merciful nature of the God whom Adam knew from the beginning.
“And so it was with Adam: ‘I’m over here, hiding, because I was afraid to see you, because I have sinned. I’m afraid that you wouldn’t accept my excuses; that You’d say it was all my fault. I was afraid that you would no longer acknowledge me as Your child.’
To be sure, Adam’s desire to justify himself, the various excuses he contemplated, were the signs of certain death. And this is why St. Makarios says: ‘When Adam fell away from God, he died spirtually,’ Seeking to justify himself, Adam condemned himself to life without God. Until then, the damage wasn’t fully done; the blow could have been blunted, the tradgedy averted. This was the critical moment which we all must face, when it becomes clear whether we’ll choose God or our self. As a general rule, we choose our self. Every day we repeat the sin of Adam. He fell when he opened his soul to the poison of the serpent, but there was still hope that he might turn and embrace God.
He could have raised his arms to God and cried: ‘God, I am your voice, your self-expression; I am your creation, your child, and I have sinned. Bend down and hold me; save me before I perish completely!’ Instead, he said, in effect: ‘What do You want, God? Have you come here to judge me?’” (Archimandrite Aimilianos, The Way of the Spirit, p 239)
Interestingly in the Gospels, it is the demons who have nothing but fear for Christ; they are terrified that He is there to judge them, yet they do not repent. For example in Mark 1:24, the demons possessing the man cry out:
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”
Adam feared God and God’s judgment, yet it did not bring him to repentance, to seek reconciliation with God. Instead, Adam blames Eve and God for his sin and fails to ask the merciful God for forgiveness and reconciliation.
Also in the various versions of the Gospel lesson of the Gadarene swine and the demoniacs (Mt 8:28-34; Mk 5:1-20; Lk 8:26-39), the demons squeal in fear that Christ is there to torment them before the Judgment Day, yet they do not seek to be reconciled to God. So too in Archimandrite Aimilianos’ meditation, Adam fears God’s judgment, yet fails to seek reconciliation with the merciful Lord.
So often many want a just God who punishes sinners, yet so seldom do we willingly seek God in confession. We believe sinners should fear God like the demons, yet what we should be doing is offering all an example by our own repentance.
Below is powerful excerpt from Chapter 8 of Archimandrite Aimilianos’s book ’The Way of the Spirit’. As we prepare ourselves for Lent on the upcoming Sunday of Expulsion of Adam from Paradise, we have the essential of our need to become more conscious of our dependance on God’s Mercy.
On Spiritual Rebirth – Excerpts from Chapter 8 – The Way of the Spirit
“The Lord died for the sake of all, and now He calls all to life. And this life is a heavenly, spiritual rebirth, without which no soul can live, as the Lord Himself said: Unless a man is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God (Jn 3.3)”
St. Makarios the Egyptian , Homily 30.3
We have been reading from the Spiritual Homilies of St. Makarios the Egyptian, and reflecting on his doctrine of spiritual rebirth. 1 In one place, we read that Christ is like a painter, who “depicts the image of the heavenly man in the hearts of those who look to him in faith.” In another place, we saw how this heavenly image is illumined by the divine energies, and we spoke about how the ineffable light of the Holy Spirit dwells within us, making God a tangible reality in our souls. We heard how “the body receives life from the soul, and the soul receives life from the Spirit, so that the body lives through the soul, and the soul lives in God through the Spirit. “A person who is complete in this way is a “bearer” of the divine image, indeed a bearer of God Himself.
Thus a person “acting under the influence of the heavenly fire”—by which he means the Holy Spirit (cf. Mt 3.11; Lk 3.16; Acts 2.3)—“ ceases to be led about by his passions and the demons.” In the same way that “iron takes on all the qualities of fire, once it’s been placed in a furnace, so too does man, under the power of the Holy Spirit, take on the qualities of God.” 2 Whenever the Holy Spirit takes “man upon his wings, and elevates him above all things, nothing evil can lay hold of him; no demon, or evil thought, or temptation, or anything else at all, can draw near to him or touch him.”
In this way, the “new Israel,” consisting of these God-bearing souls, is “far above the old Israel, whose footsteps were confined to the bottom of the sea and the river (cf. Ex 14.22; Josh 3.14-17).But being freed from the brine and brackishness of life, the true children of God walk above the sea of bitterness, through which glide evil powers. “And they are able to do this because “both their souls and their bodies have become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit,” and these three together make a complete human being.
Let us now continue with our reading of the text:
“On the day that Adam fell, God appeared, walking in paradise (Gen 3.8), and when He saw Adam, He wept, and said: ‘What is this that I see? I created you in My image, placed you in paradise, and gave you every blessing; what, then, is this evil thing you have chosen?’” The fall of Adam, the first human being, causes God to weep. Of course we know that God does not weep: this is a human, anthropomorphic way of expressing God’s concern for fallen man, the creation of His hands. The same is true concerning God’s initial surprise and subsequent question: “What is this strange thing I see? What is this evil thing you have chosen?” As if to say: “Where on earth did you find such a thing, and why did you choose to make it your own? I placed you in paradise (Gen 2.8), where evil did not exist. Everything was exceedingly good (Gen 1.31). How then, could this have happened? It seems impossible, absurd. It’s as if I said to you: ‘Here are pure, angelic souls: choose one for a companion,’ and you stretch forth your hand and select a foul demon’.” And so God weeps. He is at a loss to understand what happened. With tears in His eyes, He looks upon Adam and wonders aloud: “From what glory have you fallen, and with what shame have you clothed yourself? The leaves that cover you now, and the coats of skin you’ll put on later (cf. Gen 3.7, 21), are these not the symbols of your shame?” Indeed, they represent the fall itself, and the garment of sin in which Adam clothed himself. 3
“I raised you up to great glory, I made you a son of God, I made you the king of creation, I made you a perfect creature in order for you to become a perfect god. How was it, then, that you were able to turn away from the gift of glory, choosing instead to purchase disgrace? How were you able to clothe yourself in the vile garments of shame? I created you as a being of pure light, and now you are all darkness! I, God, your creator, am Light; My essence is light, My energy is light, and in My light I bathed and clothed you, what, then, is this darkness that now enshrouds you?”
What a terrible thing sin is! How unspeakably tragic is the fall of man! And the same thing happens to us when we quench the fire of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Thess 5.19); when we cease being bearers of the Spirit and are overtaken by the darkness of our passions, stumbling into the mud of corruption, and much else besides.
“When Adam fell into sin, he fell away from God and died spiritually. “Do you understand what he’s saying? The life of God is the life of the Holy Spirit within us. When Adam fell, he separated himself from the Spirit, and thereby lost God, and died a spiritual death. 4 The light drained from his body, and he was filled with darkness. He was suddenly deformed, disfigured, ugly, and vile. And thus God said to him: Adam, where are you? (Gen 3.9).
We can say that God’s lament, His tears, and His anxiety over the fate of His missing son, are all things which, in a sense, happened before he put this question to Adam. They are events in the life of God that occur during God’s search for fallen man. With the glorious light of His countenance, God searches the house of paradise for the lost coin, which bears His sovereign image (cf. Lk 15.8), and as He does so He cries out in hope: Adam, where are you? The response God was longing to hear was this: “Here I am, Father, waiting for You, because I have sinned; but I know that You are still my Maker and my God.” But what did Adam say? I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid, and so I hidmyself. The woman whom You gave to be with me, she deceived me (Gen 3.10, 12).
Do you understand what Adam is saying? “I am no longer looking for God, but only to justify myself.” Instead of hearkening to God, Who had called out to him, Adam has turned inward, so that God becomes a frightening, external force: I heard the sound of You, and I was afraid. And what is he afraid of? He is afraid of the truth about himself, afraid that God will not accept his self-justifying explanation of what happened. And what explanation was this? That God Himself was to blame for what happened! Because that is what Adam meant when he said, “the woman whom You gave me, she deceived me, and thus this is all Your fault, God.” 5
And this is the appalling sin that we commit every day: we seek to justify ourselves before God and those around us. We are ready to blame God in order to save our own life, to preserve ourselves in our state of sin (Mt 16.25). But when David sinned, he said: Against You only have I sinned, and done this evil before You, so that You may be justified in Your words, and prevail when You are judged (Ps 50.6). But we do not care to see God, or anyone else, justified: only ourselves. Indeed nearly all that we say, think, and do, including our seemingly selfless “good deeds,” are essentially attempts to justify ourselves, and thereby sustain our egos in their fallen condition. That’s what Adam did, and that’s what we do, as true children of our fallen father.
But once Adam had spoken in this way, there was no longer any possibility for communion between him and God. And that is also what has happened to us. Cut off from God, severed from the light, we are but miserable little creatures, crawling around on the earth like ants, stealing into the dark holes of our passions and petty self-interest, which are more suffocating than any ant-hole, which for the ants are palaces. And all of this has happened because, like Adam, we are infatuated with our selves and have no interest in looking to God.
And this happens every day. Suppose you have words with another nun, and after a few minutes, you learn that the elder wants to see you. Right away you think: “Hmm. She’s told him we’ve had words. But I’ll tell him what really happened!” At that moment, you fall away from God. You’re thinking only about your self; you’re concerned only to justify your actions, to preserve yourself in your state of sin. For you, God becomes whatever it is you’re thinking about at that moment.
Suppose a farmer sees hail falling on his fields. Where will his thoughts be? On his fields. Or suppose a man who loves his wife sees a beautiful dress. Where will his thoughts go? To his wife, to give her a present. Every one thinks about that which is dear to him. In such moments, your true love is revealed, your treasure, your God (cf. Mt 6.21).
And so it was with Adam: “I’m over here, hiding, because I was afraid to see you, because I’ve sinned. I’m afraid that you wouldn’t accept my excuses; that You’d say it was all my fault. I was afraid that you would no longer acknowledge me as Your child.” To be sure, Adam’s desire to justify himself, the various excuses he contemplated, were the signs of certain death. And this is why St. Makarios says: “When Adam fell away from God, he died spiritually.” Seeking to justify himself, Adam condemned himself to life without God.
Until then, the damage wasn’t fully done; the blow could have been blunted, the tragedy averted. This was the critical moment, which we all must face, when it becomes clear whether we’ll choose God or our self. As a general rule, we choose our self. Every day we repeat the sin of Adam. He fell when he opened his soul to the poison of the serpent, but there was still hope that he might turn and embrace God. He could have raised his arms to God and cried: “God, I am your voice, your self-expression; I am your creation, your child, and I have sinned. Bend down and hold me; save me before I perish completely!” Instead, he said, in effect: “What do You want, God? Have you come here to judge me?”
St. Makarios says that “Adam fell away from God” to indicate that Adam himself chose sin; of his own volition he departed from God, the source of life. And when he did, death covered him like a shroud. At this, “God wept, the angels wept, all the heavenly powers wept, and the earth and all its creatures lamented the death of Adam. “And as they wept, they said to him: “Adam, why were you thinking only of yourself, and not your Father? Why did you try to justify yourself? Why did you answer in the way that you did, instead of turning to God?”
After this, St. Makarios tells us that “all creatures saw the king who had been given to them.” The sky, the earth, the animals, and all the angels and heavenly powers, had been placed under a king. Who? Man. Yes, man was made king even of the angelic powers, because whereas they are ministering spirits, sent forth to serve (Heb 1.14), man was created a king, according to the image of God (Gen 1.26).
“They saw the king who had been given to them become a slave of evil powers.” He who had been given authority over all the angels, and was exalted over all heaven and earth, became the slave of a fallen angel. “Then his soul was cloaked in darkness, bitter and evil, for he was now the slave of darkness. He was the man who ‘fell among robbers’ and was ‘left for dead’ on the road ‘from Jerusalem to Jericho’ (Lk 10.30-37).” The man in the parable was Adam, although all of us, in our own way, retrace his steps, and fall victim to the same spiritual robbers. 6
“And Lazarus, whom the Lord raised from the dead, is also a symbol of Adam, for he was so rank with stench that no one could approach his tomb (cf. Jn 11.39). So when you hear of Lazarus, and of the man who fell among thieves, don’t let your mind wander off to the mountains. “That is, don’t let your mind wander off to the hill country of Bethany, where Lazarus lived, or to the hills of Judea, or to paradise with Adam, for that would be a mistake. Instead, “enter into your soul”—enter into your true self—“ because you too bear these same wounds, and this stench, and this darkness. That which befell Adam has befallen all of us, for we are all his children.”
The sin of Adam has affected all mankind, and is beyond any human cure. This is why St. Makarios at this point quotes from the prophet Isaiah: There is no soundness in them; but bruises and festering sores, which cannot be healed; it is not possible to apply a plaster, nor oil, nor bandages (Is 1.6). And this is why David says: There is no healing in my flesh (Ps 37.4). “I look at my flesh,” he says, “at my hands, my feet, my entire body, and all of it is sick; not a single part of me is healthy. And when I look at my soul, I see that it, too, is sick; black and blue with the bruises of sin. Then I look even deeper, to try and see the Holy Spirit, but my soul is empty, isolated, and dead.”
Isaiah says: There is no soundness in them, but bruises. Not just a bruise here and there; not just a little black and blue; not merely one festering sore, but an endless sore, because the whole of me is a bruise, the whole of me is festering: I am a massive, bleeding wound. It is not possible to apply plaster. Of course not: if I were to apply something soothing, such as a bit of plaster, or some ointment, or a strip of bandage, where would I put it? Here? There? But I’m inflamed all over, festering through and through. In any case, no amount of oil would be sufficient, nor could I obtain the necessary number of bandages, for we have been stricken with an incurable wound. 7
And let us ask ourselves this: how often do we realize that we’re in such a wretched state? Do we understand that our wound is fatal, and that there is no remedy for it, no cure? Do we realize this? Do we think about this? How often? When? And even if we don’t realize that there is no healing in our flesh, no soundness, at least we should know that, somewhere in our soul, there is a tiny wound, an imperfection. But we don’t even believe that. And even if, from time to time, we shed a little tear, and say “forgive me, Lord, I’m a sinner,” it’s a lie, an out and out lie. Why? Because when we say such things, it’s usually out of self-regard, or because our pride has been hurt, or our self-will frustrated, or because of some memory we’re clinging to, or something we’re after, or because of some failure we’ve experienced, or because of someone else’s success. That’s why we say we’re sinners and shed a tear or two, and not because we’re really thinking of God.
That’s the kind of liars and hypocrites we are when we supposedly repent. And when we set out to mourn over our sins, or commit ourselves to some other such practice, it’s nothing more than an effort to show God—as if He didn’t know!—that we are mighty, spiritual warriors. “See, God, I even shed tears.” And then a bit of squeezing around the eyes to get the tears rolling, just to be sure that God can see them.
For we have been stricken with an incurable wound of such proportions that only the Lord is able to heal it. With these words, St. Makarios is telling us that we, on our own, can do nothing (cf. Jn 15.5). God does everything. Your father, your mother, the abbess, they’ll all give you a little money, tell you to go shopping, and prepare dinner. But God doesn’t even ask you to do that much. He brings you the food, perfectly prepared, and says: “Keep the money.” And not only that, but He’ll even place it in your stomach, so you won’t tire from chewing! That’s how good God is!
Why, then, are you lacking in virtue? Why are you in the darkness, and not in the light? Why do you worry, and get sad and despair? Why do you care so much about your sin, your failure? What does it matter if you’ve got your health or not? What does it matter how people treat you? What does it matter if you’re rich or poor? What significance do those things have? Why should you worry about any of them, when, right now, at this very moment, God Himself is standing before you?
“And this is why He Himself came: because none of the ancients, not the Law itself nor any of the prophets, were able to bring healing. He alone, in virtue of becoming man, cured this incurable wound of the soul.” If you think you can do anything about this wound, you’re wrong. If you want to see what frauds we are, what hypocrites we are before God, examine yourself carefully when you fast, pray, keep vigil, and read your books; or when you perform some act of kindness, especially when you say “yes” to something which you really wanted to say “no” to. You feel as if you’ve achieved something, haven’t you? And you expect something in return for it, don’t you?
That’s the way we are. Our aim is always to prove that we’re somebody, or that we’ve achieved something which makes us better than everybody else. Do you see how sick we are? How deep the wound goes? “None of the ancients, not the Law itself, nor any of the prophets” could do a thing about it: but you, in your pride, are going to triumph, all by yourself. The truth, however, is that your heart, your mind, your wisdom, and all your virtue don’t amount to the husks that a pig eats (cf. Lk 15.16). But if you could be free of all that—free from your self!—and allow God into your life just once, that would be something! “
Let us then welcome God the Lord, the true healer, Who alone is able to heal our souls, having labored greatly for us.” He did all that was necessary in order to heal us, tiring Himself out (cf. Jn 4.6) as he descended into the grave, so that we might be freed from death and corruption. He suffered in order to free us from suffering; He died so that we might live; He redeemed us from our slavery so that He Himself could enter into our soul, and make it His dwelling.
Of all lenten hymns and prayers, one short prayer can be termed the lenten prayer. Tradition ascribes it to one of the great teachers of spiritual life – St. Ephraim the Syrian. Here is its text:
O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen
This prayer is read twice at the end of each lenten service Monday through Friday (not on Saturdays and Sundays for, as we shall see later, the services of these days do not follow the lenten pattern). At the first reading, a prostration follows each of the three petitions. Then we all bow twelve times saying: “O God, cleanse me a sinner.” The entire prayer is repeated with one final prostration at the end.
Why does this short and simple prayer occupy such an important position in the entire lenten worship? Because it enumerates in a unique way all the “negative” and “positive” elements of repentance and constitutes, so to speak, a “check list” for our individual lenten effort. This effort is aimed first at our liberation from some fundamental spiritual diseases which shape our life and make it virtually impossible for us even to start turning ourselves to God.
The basic disease is sloth. It is that strange laziness and passivity of our entire being which always pushes us “down” rather than “up” — which constantly convinces us that no change is possible and therefore desirable. It is in fact a deeply rooted cynicism which to every spiritual challenge responds “what for?” and makes our life one tremendous spiritual waste. It is the root of all sin because it poisons the spiritual energy at its very source.
The result of sloth is faint-heartedness. It is the state of despondency which all spiritual Fathers considered the greatest danger for the soul. Despondency is the impossibility for man to see anything good or positive; it is the reduction of everything to negativism and pessimism. It is truly a demonic power in us because the Devil is fundamentally a liar. He lies to man about God and about the world; he fills life with darkness and negation. Despondency is the suicide of the soul because when man is possessed by it he is absolutely unable to see the light and to desire it.
Lust of power! Strange as it may seem, it is precisely sloth and despondency that fill our life with lust of power. By vitiating the entire attitude toward life and making it meaningless and empty, they force us to seek compensation in, a radically wrong attitude toward other persons. If my life is not oriented toward God, not aimed at eternal values, it will inevitably become selfish and selfcentered and this means that all other beings will become means of my own self-satisfaction. If God is not the Lord and Master of my life, then I become my own lord and master — the absolute center of my own world, and I begin to evaluate everything in terms of my needs, my ideas, my desires, and my judgments. The lust of power is thus a fundamental depravity in my relationship to other beings, a search for their subordination to me. It is not necessarily expressed in the actual urge to command and to dominate “others.” It may result as well in indifference, contempt, lack of interest, consideration, and respect. It is indeed sloth and despondency directed this time at others; it completes spiritual suicide with spiritual murder.
Finally, idle talk. Of all created beings, man alone has been endowed with the gift of speech. All Fathers see in it the very “seal” of the Divine Image in man because God Himself is revealed as Word (John, 1:1). But being the supreme gift, it is by the same token the supreme danger. Being the very expression of man, the means of his self-fulfillment, it is for this very reason the means of his fall and self-destruction, of betrayal and sin. The word saves and the word kills; the word inspires and the word poisons. The word is the means of Truth and it is the means of demonic Lie. Having an ultimate positive power, it has therefore a tremendous negative power. It truly creates positively or negatively. When deviated from its divine origin and purpose, the word becomes idle. It “enforces” sloth, despondency, and lust of power, and transforms life into hell. It becomes the very power of sin.
These four above are thus the negative “objects” of repentance. They are the obstacles to be removed. But God alone can remove them. Hence, the first part of the lenten prayer; this cry from the bottom of human helplessness. Then the prayer moves to the positive aims of repentance which also are four.
Chastity! If one does not reduce this term, as is so often and erroneously done, only to its sexual connotations, it is understood as the positive counterpart of sloth. The exact and full translation of the Greek sofrosini and the Russian tselomudryie ought to be whole-mindedness. Sloth is, first of all, dissipation, the brokenness of our vision and energy, the inability to see the whole. Its opposite then is precisely wholeness. If we usually mean by chastity the virtue opposed to sexual depravity, it is because the broken character of our existence is nowhere better manifested than in sexual lust — the alienation of the body from the life and control of the spirit. Christ restores wholeness in us and He does so by restoring in us the true scale of values by leading us back to God.
The first and wonderful fruit of this wholeness or chastity is humility. We already spoke of it. It is above everything else the victory of truth in us, the elimination of all lies in which we usually live. Humility alone is capable of truth, of seeing and accepting things as they are and therefore of seeing God’s majesty and goodness and love in everything. This is why we are told that God gives grace to the humble and resists the proud.
Chastity and humility are naturally followed by patience. The “natural” or “fallen” man is impatient, for being blind to himself he is quick to judge and to condemn others. Having but a broken, incomplete, and distorted knowledge of everything, he measures all things by his tastes and his ideas. Being indifferent to everyone except himself, he wants life to be successful right here and now. Patience, however, is truly a divine virtue. God is patient not because He is “indulgent,” but because He sees the depth of all that exists, because the inner reality of things, which in our blindness we do not see, is open to Him. The closer we come to God, the more patient we grow and the more we reflect that infinite respect for all beings which is the proper quality of God.
Finally, the crown and fruit of all virtues, of all growth and effort, is love — that love which, as we have already said, can be given by God alone-the gift which is the goal of all spiritual preparation and practice.
All this is summarized and brought together in the concluding petition of the lenten prayer in which we ask “to see my own errors and not to judge my brother.” For ultimately there is but one danger: pride. Pride is the source of evil, and all evil is pride. Yet it is not enough for me to see my own errors, for even this apparent virtue can be turned into pride. Spiritual writings are full of warnings against the subtle forms of pseudo-piety which, in reality, under the cover of humility and self-accusation can lead to a truly demonic pride. But when we “see our own errors” and “do not judge our brothers,” when, in other terms, chastity, humility, patience, and love are but one in us, then and only then the ultimate enemy–pride–will be destroyed in us.
After each petition of the prayer we make a prostration. Prostrations are not limited to the Prayer of St. Ephrem but constitute one of the distinctive characteristics of the entire lenten worship. Here, however, their meaning is disclosed best of all. In the long and difficult effort of spiritual recovery, the Church does not separate the soul from the body. The whole man has fallen away from God; the whole man is to be restored, the whole man is to return. The catastrophe of sin lies precisely in the victory of the flesh — the animal, the irrational, the lust in us — over the spiritual and the divine. But the body is glorious; the body is holy, so holy that God Himself “became flesh.”
Salvation and repentance then are not contempt for the body or neglect of it, but restoration of the body to its real function as the expression and the life of spirit, as the temple of the priceless human soul. Christian asceticism is a fight, not against but for the body. For this reason, the whole man – soul and body – repents. The body participates in the prayer of the soul just as the soul prays through and in the body. Prostrations, the “psycho-somatic” sign of repentance and humility, of adoration and obedience, are thus the lenten rite par excellence.
The primary aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our dependence upon God. If practiced seriously, the Lenten abstinence from food – particularly in the opening days – involves a considerable measure of real hunger, and also a feeling of tiredness and physical exhaustion. The purpose of this is to lead us in turn to a sense of inward brokenness and contrition; to bring us, that is, to the point where we appreciate the full force of Christ’s statement, ‘Without Me you can do nothing’ (John 15: 5). If we always take our fill of food and drink, we easily grow over-confident in our own abilities, acquiring a false sense of autonomy and self-sufficiency. The observance of a physical fast undermines this sinful complacency. Stripping from us the specious assurance of the Pharisee – who fasted, it is true, but not in the right spirit – Lenten abstinence gives us the saving self dissatisfaction of the Publican (Luke I 8: 10-1 3). Such is the function of the hunger and the tiredness: to make us ‘poor in spirit’, aware of our helplessness and of our dependence on God’s aid.
Yet it would be misleading to speak only of this element of weariness and hunger. Abstinence leads, not merely-to this, but also to a sense of lightness, wakefulness, freedom and joy. Even if the fast proves debilitating at first, afterwards we find that it enables us to sleep less, to think more clearly, and to work more decisively. As many doctors acknowledge, periodical fasts contribute to bodily hygiene. While involving genuine self-denial, fasting does not seek to do violence to our body but rather to restore it to health and equilibrium. Most of us in the Western world habitually eat more than we need. Fasting liberates our body from the burden of excessive weight and makes it a willing partner in the task of prayer, alert and responsive to the voice of the Spirit.
It will be noted that in common Orthodox usage the words ‘fasting’ and ‘abstinence’ are employed interchangeably. Prior to the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church made a clear distinction between the two terms: abstinence concerned the types of food eaten, irrespective of quantity, whereas fasting signified a limitation on the number of meals or on the amount of food that could be taken. Thus on certain days both abstinence and fasting were required; alternatively, the one might be prescribed but not the other. In the Orthodox Church a clear-cut distinction is not made between the two words. During Lent there is frequently a limitation on the number of meals eaten each day, 5but when a meal is permitted there is no restriction on the amount of food allowed. The Fathers simply state, as a guiding principle, that we should never eat to satiety but always rise from the table feeling that we could have taken more and that we are now ready for prayer.
If it is important not to overlook the physical requirements of fasting, it is even more important not to overlook its inward significance. Fasting is not a mere matter of diet. It is moral as well as physical. True fasting is to be converted in heart and will; it is to return to God, to come home like the Prodigal to our Father’s house. In the words of St. John Chrysostom, it means ‘abstinence not only from food but from sins’. ‘The fast’, he insists, ‘should be kept not by the mouth alone but also by the eye, the ear, the feet, the hands and all the members of the body’: the eye must abstain from impure sights, the ear from malicious gossip, the hands from acts of injustice. 6It is useless to fast from food, protests St. Basil, and yet to indulge in cruel criticism and slander: ‘You do not eat meat, but you devour your brother’ . 7The same point is made in the Triodion, especially during the first week of Lent:
As we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion. . .
Let us observe a fast acceptable and pleasing to the Lord. True fasting is to put away all evil, To control the tongue, to forbear from anger, To abstain from lust, slander, falsehood and perjury. If we renounce these things, then is our fasting true and acceptable to God. Let us keep the Fast not only by refraining from food, But by becoming strangers to all the bodily passions. 8
The inner significance of fasting is best summed up in the triad: prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Divorced from prayer and from the reception of the holy sacraments, unaccompanied by acts of compassion, our fasting becomes pharisaical or even demonic. It leads, not to contrition and joyfulness, but to pride, inward tension and irritability. The link between prayer and fasting is rightly indicated by Father Alexander Elchaninov. A critic of fasting says to him: ‘Our work suffers and we become irritable. . . . I have never seen servants [in pre-revolutionary Russia] so bad tempered as during the last days of Holy Week. Clearly, fasting has a very bad effect on the nerves.’ To this Father Alexander replies: ‘You are quite right. . . . If it is not accompanied by prayer and an increased spiritual life, it merely leads to a heightened state of irritability. It is natural that servants who took their fasting seriously and who were forced to work hard during Lent, while not being allowed to go to church, were angry and irritable.’ 9
Fasting, then, is valueless or even harmful when not combined with prayer. In the Gospels the devil is cast out, not by fasting alone, but by ‘prayer and fasting’ (Matt. 17: 21 ; Mark 9: 29); and of the early Christians it is said, not simply that they fasted, but that they ‘fasted and prayed’ (Acts 13: 3; compare 14: 23). In both the Old and the New Testament fasting is seen, not as an end in itself, but as an aid to more intense and living prayer, as a preparation for decisive action or for direct encounter with God. Thus our Lord’s forty-day fast in the wilderness was the immediate preparation for His public ministry (Matt. 4: 1-11). When Moses fasted on Mount Sinai (Exod. 34: 28) and Elijah on Mount Horeb (3 [1] Kgs. 19: 8-12), the fast was in both cases linked with a theophany. The same connection between fasting and the vision of God is evident in the case of St. Peter (Acts 10: 9-17). He ‘went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour, and he became very hungry and wanted to eat; and it was in this state that he fell into a trance and heard the divine voice. Such is always the purpose of ascetic fasting – to enable us, as the Triodion puts it, to ‘draw near to the mountain of prayer’. 10
Prayer and fasting should in their turn be accompanied by almsgiving – by love for others expressed in practical form, by works of compassion and forgiveness. Eight days before the opening of the Lenten fast, on the Sunday of the Last Judgment, the appointed Gospel is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt. 25′: 31-46), reminding us that the criterion in the coming judgment will not be the strictness of our fasting but the amount of help that we have given to those in need. In the words of the Triodion:
Knowing the commandments of the Lord, let this be our way of life: Let us feed the hungry, let us give the thirsty drink, Let us clothe the naked, let us welcome strangers, Let us visit those in prison and the sick. Then the Judge of all the earth will say even to us: ‘Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you.’ 11
This stanza, it may be noted in passing, is a typical instance of the ‘evangelical’ character of the Orthodox service-books. In common with so many other texts in the Triodion, it is simply a paraphrase of the words of Holy Scripture. 12
It is no coincidence that on the very threshold of the Great Fast, at Vespers on the Sunday of Forgiveness, there is a special ceremony of mutual reconciliation: 13for without love towards others there can be no genuine fast. And this love for others should not be limited to formal gestures or to sentimental feelings, but should issue in specific acts of almsgiving. Such was the firm conviction of the early Church. The second-century Shepherd of Hermas insists that the money saved through fasting is to be given to the widow, the orphan and the poor. 14But almsgiving means more than this. It is to give not only our money but our time, not only what we have but what we are; it is to give a part of ourselves. When we hear the Triodion speak of almsgiving, the word should almost always be taken in this deeper sense. For the mere giving of money can often be a substitute and an evasion, a way of protecting ourselves from closer personal involvement with those in distress. On the other hand, to do nothing more than offer reassuring words of advice to someone crushed by urgent material anxieties is equally an evasion of our responsibilities (see Jas. 2: 16). Bearing in mind the unity already emphasized between man’s body and his soul, we seek to offer help on both the material and the spiritual levels at once.
‘When thou seest the naked, cover him; and hide not thyself from thine own flesh.’ The Eastern liturgical tradition, in common with that of the West, treats Isaiah 58: 3-8 as a basic Lenten text.
So we read in the Triodion:
While fasting with the body, brethren, let us also fast in spirit. Let us loose every bond of iniquity; Let us undo the knots of every contract made by violence; Let us tear up all unjust agreements; Let us give bread to the hungry And welcome to our house the poor who have no roof to cover them, That we may receive great mercy from Christ our God. 15
Always in our acts of abstinence we should keep in mind St. Paul’s admonition not to condemn others who fast less strictly: ‘Let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats’ (Rom. 14: 3). Equally, we remember Christ’s condemnation of outward display in prayer, fasting or almsgiving (Matt. 6: 1-18). Both these Scriptural passages are often recalled in the Triodion:
Consider well, my soul: dost thou fast? Then despise not thy neighbor. Dost thou abstain from food? Condemn not thy brother.
Come, let us cleanse ourselves by almsgiving and acts of mercy to the poor, Not sounding a trumpet or making a show of our charity. Let not our left hand know what our right hand is doing; Let not vainglory scatter the fruit of our almsgiving; But in secret let us call on Him that knows all secrets: Father, forgive us our trespasses, for Thou lovest mankind. 16
If we are to understand correctly the text of the Triodion and the spirituality that underlies it, there are five misconceptions about the Lenten fast against which we should guard. In the first place, the Lenten fast is not intended only for monks and nuns, but is enjoined on the whole Christian people. Nowhere do the Canons of the Ecumenical or Local Councils suggest that fasting is only for monks and not for the laity. By virtue of their Baptism, all Christians – whether married or under monastic vows – are Cross-bearers, following the same spiritual path. The exterior conditions in which they live out their Christianity display a wide variety, but in its inward essence the life is one. Just as the monk by his voluntary self-denial is seeking to affirm the intrinsic goodness and beauty of God’s creation, so also is each married Christian required to be in some measure an ascetic. The way of negation and the way of affirmation are interdependent, and every Christian is called to follow both ways at once.
In the second place, the Triodion should not be misconstrued in a Pelagian sense.If the Lenten texts are continually urging us to greater personal efforts, this should not be taken as implying that our progress depends solely upon the exertion of our own will. On the contrary, whatever we achieve in the Lenten fast is to be regarded as a free gift of grace from God. The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete leaves no doubt at all on this point:
I have no tears, no repentance, no compunction; But as God do Thou Thyself, O Saviour, bestow them on me. 17
In the third place, our fasting should not be self-willed but obedient. When we fast, we should not try to invent special rules for ourselves, but we should follow as faithfully as possible the accepted pattern set before us by Holy Tradition. This accepted pattern, expressing as it does the collective conscience of the People of God, possesses a hidden wisdom and balance not to be found in ingenious austerities devised by our own fantasy. Where it seems that the traditional regulations are not applicable to our personal situation, we should seek the counsel of our spiritual father – not in order legalistically to secure a ‘dispensation’ from him, but in order humbly with his help to discover what is the will of God for us. Above all, if we desire for ourselves not some relaxation but some piece of additional strictness, we should not embark upon it without our spiritual father’s blessing. Such has been the practice since the early centuries of the Church’s life:
Abba Antony said: ‘I know of monks who fell after much labor and lapsed into madness, because they trusted in their own work and neglected the commandment that says: “Ask your father, and he will tell you.'” (Deut. 32: 7)
Again he said: ‘So far as possible, for every step that a monk takes, for every drop of water that he drinks in his cell, he should consult the gerontes, in case he makes some mistake in this.’ 18
These words apply not only to monks but also to lay people living in the ‘world’, even though the latter may be bound by a less strict obedience to their spiritual father. If proud and willful, our fasting assumes a diabolical character, bringing us closer not to God but to Satan. Because fasting renders us sensitive to the realities of the spiritual world, it can be dangerously ambivalent: for there are evil spirits as well as good.
In the fourth place, paradoxical though it may seem, the period of Lent is a time not of gloom but of joyfulness. It is true that fasting brings us to repentance and to grief for sin, but this penitent grief, in the vivid phrase of St. John Climacus, is a ‘joy-creating sorrow’ . 19The Triodion deliberately mentions both tears and gladness in a single sentence:
Grant me tears falling as the rain from heaven,O Christ, As I keep this joyful day of the Fast. 20
It is remarkable how frequently the themes of joy and light recur in the texts for the first day of Lent:
With joy let us enter upon the beginning of the Fast. Let us not be of sad countenance. . . . Let us joyfully begin the all-hallowed season of abstinence; And let us shine with the bright radiance of the holy commandments. . . All mortal life is but one day, so it is said, To those who labor with love. There are forty days in the Fast; Let us keep them all with joy. 21
The season of Lent, it should be noted, falls not in midwinter when the countryside is frozen and dead, but in spring when all things are returning to life. The English word ‘Lent’ originally had the meaning ‘springtime’; and in a text of fundamental importance the Triodion likewise describes the Great Fast as ‘springtime’:
The springtime of the Fast has dawned, The flower of repentance has begun to open. O brethren, let us cleanse ourselves from all impurity And sing to the Giver of Light: Glory be to Thee, who alone lovest mankind. 22
Lent signifies not winter but spring, not darkness but light, not death but renewed vitality. Certainly it has its somber aspect, with the repeated prostrations at the weekday services, with the dark vestments of the priest, with the hymns sung to a subdued chant, full of compunction. In the Christian Empire of Byzantium theatres were closed and public spectacles forbidden during Lent; 23and even today weddings are forbidden in the seven weeks of the fast. 24Yet these elements of austerity should not blind us to the fact that the fast is not a burden, not a punishment, but a gift of God’s grace:
Come,O ye people, and today let us accept The grace of the Fast as a gift from God. 25
Fifthly and finally, our Lenten abstinence does not imply a rejection of God’s creation. As St. Paul insists, ‘Nothing is unclean in itself’ (Rom. 14: 14). All that God has made is ‘very good’ (Gen. I: 31): to fast is not to deny this intrinsic goodness but to reaffirm it. ‘To the pure all things are pure’ (Titus I: I S), and so at the Messianic banquet in the Kingdom of heaven there will be no need for fasting and ascetic self-denial. But, living as we do in a fallen world, and suffering as we do from the consequences of sin, both original and personal, we are not pure; and so we have need of fasting. Evil resides not in created things as such but in our attitude towards them, that is, in our will. The purpose of fasting, then, is not to repudiate the divine creation but to cleanse our will. During the fast we deny our bodily impulses – for example, our spontaneous appetite for food and drink – not because these impulses are in themselves evil, but because they have been disordered by sin and require to be purified through self-discipline. In this way, asceticism is a fight not against but for the body; the aim of fasting is to purge the body from alien defilement and to render it spiritual. By rejecting what is sinful in our will, we do not destroy the God-created body but restore it to its true balance and freedom. In Father Sergei Bulgakov’s phrase, we kill the flesh in order to acquire a body.
But in rendering the body spiritual, we do not thereby dematerialize it, depriving it of its character as a physical entity. The ‘spiritual’ is not to be equated with the non-material, neither is the ‘fleshly’ or carnal to be equated with the bodily. In St. Paul’s usage, ‘flesh’ denotes the totality of man, soul and body together, in so far as he is fallen and separated from God; and in the same way ‘spirit’ denotes the totality of man, soul and body together, in so far as he is redeemed and divinized by grace. 26Thus the soul as well as the body can become carnal and fleshly, and the body as well as the soul can become spiritual. When St. Paul enumerates the ‘works of the flesh’ (Gal. 5: 19-21), he includes such things as sedition, heresy and envy, which involve the soul much more than the body. In making our body spiritual, then, the Lenten fast does not suppress the physical aspect of our human nature, but makes our materiality once more as God intended it to be.
This has been extracted from the full article that replicates what is in the Triodion.
As we prepare for the Sunday of Last Judgment, we are presented with another opportunity to more fully commit to the ’change of heart’ (i.e metanoia) of repentance. The reflection below can be a powerful reminder that our real goal is to deepen our reliance on God’s mercy for the ’renewal’ (Romans 12:2) of abandoning false paths and returning to our true home in Him. There we find His mercy is sufficient.
If we’re wondering where to start, perhaps the simplicity and undercurrent of the Jesus Prayer throughout the day is a way to soften our hearts to His healing presence
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me , a sinner
What is the criteria for God’s judgement – Excerpt from homily for Sunday of Last Judgement by Abbot Seraphim Holy Cross Monastery
This is the real criterion of judgment, that we be merciful, as our heavenly Father is merciful (cf. Lk. 6:36). Then Christ will come, and He will recognize us as truly His own. All the Apostles make this clear: as St. Paul says, though I give my body to be burned and have not love, I am nothing (Cf. 1 Cor. 13:2-3); or St. John when he says, If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar (1 Jn. 4:20); or again in St. James, If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding, ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? (Jam. 2:15-16).
In God’s great condescension and compassion, He identifies Himself with these poor brethren, saying, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Mt. 25:40); just as it says in another place, he is not ashamed to call them brethren (Heb. 2:11), having made Himself like unto them, partaking of flesh and blood, living a life on earth in poverty and obscurity, personally undergoing all the vagaries of our mortal existence. Thus, He accepts a good deed done to any person at all as done unto Him; and even a deed as small as providing a cup of cold water He promises will not go unrewarded (cf. Mt. 10:42).
Seeing then that we have such a plentiful field for performing God-pleasing deeds, and that they do not require anything exceptional or impossible from us, but only a sensitive and loving heart, how will we not justly be condemned at the appearing of the God Who is love, if we ourselves are found bereft of that love? If we are thus found, the shame of being near Him, and beholding His face, full of the terrible beauty of holiness, will be more unbearable for us than outer darkness and gnashing of teeth; His presence will burn us hotter than any lake of fire. He does not drive us away out of petty anger, but merely gives us what we ourselves have been preparing our whole life long: for he shall have judgment without mercy that hath shown no mercy (Jam. 2:13).
But what about those who themselves are poor, naked or sick; or those of us who have chosen the monastic life, and no longer have the material things needed to help alleviate our brother’s suffering? Listen to St. Mark the Monk, who says, “you don’t have money, but you do have free will and the will to act.” So let us give of what we do have. Is your brother sick and ailing from some infirmity? Visit him at least with your prayers. Is he imprisoned in the dungeon of despondency? Come to him with a kind, encouraging word. Are his faults naked and exposed to your sight? Clothe him with your good thoughts. Is he a stranger because he offended you in some way? Take him in with your forgiveness. In these ways, anyone can perform the deeds necessary for salvation; and truly, these things are better than material alms, just as the soul is better than the body.
So, let us be sobered by reflection on God’s judgment, but let us not despair of God’s mercy: for mercy rejoiceth against judgment (Jam. 2:13). And it is precisely a heart that is merciful like His that He seeks of us at His judgment. Let us make this our aim in the coming season of fasting; because food does not commend us to God (1 Cor. 8:8), as we hear in today’s epistle. The impending struggle of the Fast is only a means to a higher end, a powerful tool that the Church places in our hand, so that we can harrow the stony ground of our hearts, covered with the tares of self-love, and thus acquire a heart of mercy which in the sight of God is of great price (1 Pet. 3:4). Having achieved this end with God’s help, may we also be found worthy to stand on His right hand at the Last Day, and behold unashamed the face of Jesus Christ when He returns in glory.
In our prior classes , we discussed the topic of shame. I thought it might be useful to further explore this. Below is a short Q&A that looks at this topic in the context of the Sacrament of Confession:
Question: In taking the steps which you have presented to us, the most difficult thing, I think, is to overcome the fear of shame. This is what I try to do in my parish. People will not come to confession although their souls are burdened and things are driving them crazy, because they cannot overcome the shame to admit their sins. How do you lead people in this direction?
Answer: I think that the strength to bear shame is a gift from God. When I was a young and inexperienced spiritual father, Elder (i.e now Saint) Sophrony told me to encourage the young people to confess precisely the things of which they are ashamed, for if they learn to do so, shame is transformed into strength against the passions, and they will overcome sin. This is precisely what occurred in the person of Zacchaeus. He bore shame voluntarily, and the Lord, Who was on His way to Jerusalem in order to suffer the Cross of shame, saw Zacchaeus bearing shame for His sake and recognized in him a kindred spirit. Zacchaeus had put himself prophetically in the way of the Christ, in the way of the Cross, and in a prophetic way the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ was activated in the heart of Zacchaeus. His heart was enlarged and he was able to enter into the power of faith. Christ has saved us through the Cross of shame, so when we suffer shame for His sake He considers this as gratitude, and in return He transmits to us His grace which regenerates our life.
This is exactly what happens in confession. Those who confess sincerely and take upon themselves the shame for their sins are regenerated. But those who shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Nothing special, the usual things…’ they do not bear any shame, their heart remains unmoved, and they hardly receive any benefit. But those who, with shame and a contrite heart, strip their souls naked before God and before another mortal, ‘of like passions’ (Acts 14:15) with them—that shame of theirs really finds the heart, humbles it and brings it to the surface. This then, opens the heart to receive the grace of regeneration, of consolation. We see this in the life of many that come to us: the greater the shame they bear with contrition, accusing themselves before God, the greater the grace they receive to amend their lives and make a new beginning.
St John’s Adult Education 