Humility – Page 4 – St John’s Adult Education

On the subject of the Paralyzed Man – Homily by St. Gregory Palamas

Taken from The Homilies of St. Gregory Palamas Vol. 2, compiled by Christopher Veniamin. Homily 29 “On the subject of the Paralyzed Man who, according to Matthew the Evangelist, was healed in Capernaum. Also on Godly Sorrow”

The scribes and Pharisees, Greeks and Jews, are doubtful about the power and grace of Holy Baptism in which we believe, and ask, “Who can forgive sins?” (Mark 2:7). But we whose souls and bodies used to be paralyzed through sensual pleasures and passions, and incapable of doing anything good, hear the Lord saying to each of us, as to that paralyzed man, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thy house” (Matt. 9:6). Strengthened by the grace and power of Holy Baptism within us, we become vigorous and active in virtue, and bring into subjection our mental and physical capabilities and those material things which ought to be subservient to them, but which formerly overpowered us. We then go wherever pleases God and ourselves and, as far as we can, move to our real home, the eternal heavenly mansions. Those who see us ordering our lives in this godly way, marvel and glorify God, Who has given such power and authority to those who believe in Him (cf. Matt. 9:8), that they have their citizenship in heaven while still living on earth. But when we sin after being baptized, although the grace and power of Baptism remain because of the Giver’s love for mankind, the soul’s health and purity depart.

That is why we who are sinners need to be sorrowful and downcast again over our former sins, and to prostrate ourselves anew in repentance, that we may hear once more in a mysterious fashion those words to the paralyzed man, “Son, be of good cheer”, receive forgiveness and have joy in exchange for our grief. For this kind of sorrow is that spiritual honey which we suck from the barren rock, according to the Scriptural allusion, “They sucked honey out of the rock” (Deut. 32: 13 LXX). As Paul says, “That Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). Do not be surprised that I refer to sorrow as honey. This is what Paul meant when he said, “Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of (2 Cor. 7: 10). When someone with an injured tongue is offered honey, it seems to sting, but when his wounds are healed he realizes that honey is sweet. Similarly, when the fear of God touches perceptive souls through the preaching of the Gospel, it brings sorrow, as they are still covered in sin’s wounds. But once they have rid themselves of these through repentance, they receive the Gospel’s joy instead. As the Savior says, “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (John 16:20). Which sorrow? The sorrow the Lord’s disciples felt at being deprived of their Master and Teacher; the suffering Peter experienced when he denied Christ; the grief of every godly person who repents of his transgressions and his slothful lack of virtue. On falling into sins we should accuse only ourselves and no one else. When Adam broke the commandment, putting the blame on Eve did not help him, nor was it any use for her to accuse the serpent (Gen. 3:12-13). God put us in charge of ourselves, and our souls have been granted absolute authority over the passions, so nothing can prevail over us and force us.

This, then, is godly sorrow that brings salvation: to blame only ourselves, nobody else, for what we do wrong, to grieve over ourselves, and to be reconciled with God through confession of our sins and painful remorse over them.

Finding Our True Selves in Christ

I thought this article which we used way back in 2013 when now Father Innocent (Neal) was leading a class on a book about the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas entitled ‘Passions and Virtues’ might be very relevant to our class this Sunday. This reflection may help us uncover that we have been looking for self knowledge when what is really required is ‘to seek first His Kingdom’. Perhaps , this deepens this theme of humility we’ve been exploring from our first week together. It may also help us more deeply understand why St. John Chrysostom says ‘humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue”.

“Reflections” C.S. Lewis Institute September 2011

Many people today are seeking to know who they really are, but they are going about it in the wrong way. Only Jesus Christ can help us discover and become who we are meant to be. In his conclusion to Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis gives us the answer:

The more we get what we now call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of “little Christs,” all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to “be myself” without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call “Myself” becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call “My wishes” become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils…
Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most “natural” men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.
But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away “blindly” so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about; you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking at Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.1

Giving ourselves wholly to Christ is the only way to discover who we are, the only way to become who Christ means us to be, the only way to experience his riches in this life and the only way to fulfill the purpose for which he made us. It may seem frightening, but once you do it, your only regret will be that you didn’t do it sooner.

C.S. Lewis Institute September 2011

1 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Touchstone, 1996), pp 190-191.

St Gregory Palamas – 2nd Sunday of Lent

By Abbot Seraphim Holy Cross Monastery Wayne, WV

St. Gregory was born in Constantinople in 1296. His father, who reposed when Gregory was only seven years old, enjoyed a prominent position in the Imperial Court as a member of the Senate and a Councilor of the Royal Court. He was entrusted by the Emperor to be the tutor of his grandson, who came to be the next emperor. Despite his father’s repose, St. Gregory enjoyed a privileged youth growing up near the Emperor and being educated by the most gifted philosophers and theologians of the time.

Following these studies, St. Gregory left for the Holy Mountain and became a monk. At the same time, his mother and two of his sisters also went to convents in Thessaloniki. In 1325, St. Gregory was ordained a hieromonk. In 1335 he was chosen as Abbot of the Esphigmenou Monastery but afterward stepped down and pursued the hesychastic life until he was asked to defend the Athonite monks against the charges launched by Barlaam the Calabrian. This conflict has commonly been termed the Hesychast Controversy. Later, he was ordained Archbishop of Thessaloniki. During this period, he was sent to Constantinople where the Turks captured him. After having been ransomed, he spent all his time with his flock in Thessaloniki during which period we have a significant portion of the homilies he delivered. He reposed on November 14, 1359. Nine years after his death, he was canonized and placed on the official calendar of the Hagia Sophia.

In his introductory work on the saint, Professor Papademetriou writes,

[Saint Gregory] Palamas did not construct a theological or philosophical system, nor was he a teacher writing academic theology. He was himself a man of prayer – a theologian who devoted himself to prayer, and when the Church was attacked, he was called upon to use his talents to defend it.[i]

Central to the controversy which St. Gregory was involved in is the question “What is the aim of the Christian life?” In its simplest answer, we can say, it is theosis which is the Greek word, usually translated into English as deification. It is a word that expresses the union of the Christian to God.

Further emphasizing this union, Fr. Dumitru Staniloae writes, “Orthodox spirituality aims at the perfection of the faithful in Christ. This perfection can’t be obtained except by participation in His divine-human life. Therefore the goal of Orthodox spirituality is the perfection of the believer by his union with Christ.”[ii]

This word cannot be rendered adequately in any modern language and can appear difficult to understand. Yet the term is used and defined when we read the Fathers of the Church, past and the present.

It is found in the writings of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons and, a hundred years later, in the works of St. Athanasius the Great. St. Irenaeus wrote, “the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”[iii] In the letter to Adelphium, St. Athanasius writes: “For He [i.e., God] has become Man, that He might deify us in Himself”[iv]and in his work entitled On the Incarnation he says, “For He [i.e., the Word] was made man that we might be made God.”[v]

This union with God is not to be confused with an absorption into God in a pantheistic sense like a drop of water into the ocean. Nor is it to be confused with a human relationship wherein is a union between those who love each other. Instead, this union with God is brought about by the grace of God which transforms and deifies man. It is not a by-product of intellection or virtue. As Saint Gregory writes,

Through grace God in His entirety penetrates the saints in their entirety, and the saints in their entirety penetrate God entirely, exchanging the whole of Him for themselves, and acquiring Him alone as the reward of their ascent towards Him; for He embraces them as the soul embraces the body, enabling them to be in Him as His own members.[vi]

God is the Creator and we the created. Some describe this distance as God being “holy” and “other” than us, but He is not entirely so because He still communicates Himself to us in a manner that imparts His life to us. St. Gregory describes this with the analogy of the sun. For us humans, the sun is out of reach, yet we experience the sun’s rays, its solar energy, and heat. In this same way, we are unable to grasp God’s essence, but we can experience Him through His energies. The experience of God in this way and the transformation that it brings about is called theosis-deification. In the words of Professor Papademetriou, “This does not mean that we become God but are instead filled with his energies such as love and grace. As the energy of the sun is in the plants as chlorophyll, yet the plant does not become the sun, in the same way, we participate in the divine energies, and our person is filled with God’s uncreated energies, and we attain theosis…”[vii]

This union with God is not a “manner of speaking” or something symbolical as though we appear perfect or “justified” without actually being so. Rather, as Metropolitan Kallistos writes, “Our theosis is in no sense merely symbolical or metaphorical: it is a genuine and specific reality, a pure gift of grace experienced even in this present life.”[viii] Moreover, it is this experience of God that is central to the Christian life. As Fr. Georges notes, “The ultimate purpose of St. Gregory’s theological teaching was to defend the reality of Christian experience. Salvation is more than forgiveness. It is a genuine renewal of man.”[ix]

How does this happen? Although this transformation is not apparent in the body because of bodily weakness, and the death, yet in regards to the soul, it begins in Baptism, as St. Gregory writes,

This bodily renewal is seen now through faith and hope rather than with our eyes, not being reality yet. The soul’s renewal, on the other hand, begins… with holy baptism through the remission of sins and is nourished and grows through righteousness in faith. The soul is continually renewed in the knowledge of God and the virtues associated with this knowledge, and will reach perfection in the future contemplation of God face to face. Now, however, it sees through a glass darkly.[x]

In his sixteenth homily, St. Gregory describes this transformation noting that it is “complex.” He writes,

There is a starting point and perfection, and an intermediate stage in between. The grace of baptism, which is called the washing of regeneration, inaugurates this action in us, providing remission of all our sins and of the guilt of the curse. Perfection will come with the resurrection of life for which believers hope, and the promise of the age to come. The intermediate stage is life according to Christ’s gospel, by which the godly person is nourished, grows, and is renewed, making progress day by day in the knowledge of God, righteousness, and sanctification. Gradually he reduces and cuts away his eagerness for things below, and transfers his longing from what is visible, physical and temporary to what is invisible, spiritual and eternal.[xi]

In another work, St. Gregory, referring to the keeping of the Lord’s commandments, writes:

For the Lord has promised to manifest Himself to the man who keeps [His commandments], a manifestation He calls His indwelling and that of the Father, saying, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make our abode wth him, and “I will manifest Myself to him.”[xii]

In this way, God’s presence within a person is not related to his intelligence. Rather, it is through the fulfillment of the commandments. For St. Gregory, the fulfillment of the commandments has no other result than the purification of the passions and, according to God’s promise, only this keeping of the commandments will procure the presence, the indwelling, and manifestation of God.[xiii]

Fathers, brothers, sisters although our theosis is a great mystery and its magnitude towers over our understanding, yet St. Gregory tells us simply keep the commandments and God will unite you to Himself.THROUGH THE PRAYERS OF SAINT GREGORY, LORD JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, HAVE MERCY ON US. AMEN.

[i] Papademetriou, George C. Introduction to St. Gregory Palamas (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2004), 42.

[ii] Orthodox Spirituality (South Canaan: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2003), 21.

[iii] St. Irenaeus of Lyons, “Against Heresies” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus; Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Roberts, A. and Donaldson, J. (Peabody, Hendrickson Publishing, 1999) 1:526ff.

[iv] St. Athanasius the Great, “Ad Adelphium” in Athanasius: Select Works and Letters ; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Schaff, P. and Wace, H. (Peabody, Hendrickson Publishing, 1999) 4:576f.

[v] St. Athanasius the Great, “Incarnation of the Word” in Athanasius: Select Works and Letters ; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Schaff, P. and Wace, H. (Peabody, Hendrickson Publishing, 1999) 4:65ff.

[vi] Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, Philip, and Ware, Kallistos eds. & trans. “The declaration of the Holy Mountain in Defence of Those who Devoutly Practise a Life of Stillness” in The Philokalia (London: Faber&Faber, 1995), 4:421.

[vii] Introduction., 42-43.

[viii] Palmer, G.E.H.,Sherrard,Philip, and Ware, Kallistos eds. & trans. The Philokalia (London: Faber&Faber, 1995), 4:292.

[ix]“St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers”

[x] “Homily Sixteen” in Saint Gregory Palama: The Homilies, C. Veniamin, ed & trans (Dalton: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2014), 131.

[xi] The Saving Work of Christ: Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas. Christopher Veniamin, ed. (Waymart: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2008), 97.

[xii] The Triads, Meyendorff, John ed. and Gendle, Nicholas trans. (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1983), 61.

[xiii] The Triads, 59.

Become a Living Icon: Homily for Sunday of Orthodoxy

By Father Phillip LeMaster

At the end of Liturgy today, we will parade around the church carrying our icons in celebration of the Sunday of Orthodoxy, which commemorates the restoration of icons to the church after the period of iconoclasm many centuries ago. We do so because Icons are not mere works of decorative art to us; they are windows to heaven which remind us that the Son of God really has become one of us, with a visible human body, and that we are called to become like the saints whose images are portrayed in them. For we are all icons of God, created in His image and likeness. Jesus Christ is the new Adam Who has restored and healed every dimension of our fallen humanity, and brought us into the very life of the Holy Trinity. It may help us to think of Lent as a time to make ourselves better icons of the Lord.

When we recall the great saints of the Old Testament mentioned in today’s reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews, we are humbled by their faithfulness, obedience, and humility. But even they “did not receive the promise, God provided something better for us that they should not be made perfect apart from us.” As hard as it is to believe, we have been blessed beyond them, for God’s promises in Jesus Christ were not fulfilled in their lifetimes; they hoped for what they did not receive, but their lives were still icons of faithful anticipation of the Messiah.

We live many generations after the New Testament saints Peter, Andrew, and Nathanael encountered Jesus Christ. And the Lord’s promise to Nathanael, “you shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man,” is the fulfillment of all the hopes and dreams of the Old Testament. In Jesus Christ, humanity and God are united; no longer shut out of paradise, we are raised to the life of the Heavenly Kingdom by our Lord. Our destiny is not for the dust and decay of the tomb, but for life everlasting because of His glorious third-day resurrection.

In Lent, we take small, humble, imperfect steps to open ourselves to this new life in Christ, to become better living icons—living images—of what it means for human beings to share in God’s salvation. The point of Lent is not to punish ourselves or simply to make us feel guilty, miserable, or deprived. Instead, the purpose of our spiritual exercises is to help us share more fully in the promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We want His holiness, love, mercy, and blessing to reshape every dimension of our lives, to be evident in how we go through the day, in how we treat others, in what we say, think, and feel.

And the more we grow in His image and likeness, the more we will become our true selves. Icons portray particular human beings whose lives have shown brightly with the holiness of God. The unbelievable truth is that, in Christ Jesus, we may do the same. No matter our age, health, occupation, family circumstances, personality quirks, or anything else, we too may become living, breathing manifestations of our Lord’s salvation when we open ourselves to His healing mercy through prayer, fasting, forgiveness, generosity to the needy, and all the various forms of spiritual nourishment given through the life of the Church.

There could be no greater optimism about us than what we proclaim on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. We not only carry icons, we are icons. We not only venerate icons, we are called to become living proof of what happens to a human being who enters into the eternal blessedness of God, even as we walk around our parish. Let this sink in: What the Old Testament saints hoped for, we possess. This Lent, let’s take Jesus Christ as His word, and prepare—with humility, persistence, and mindfulness- to “see the heaven open and angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” For that is the good news of our salvation.

Come To The Great Canon And Wake Up

Olivier Clément’s book ’The Song of Tears’ begins with this short, powerful chapter that compellingly illustrates how the Great Canon (like the Orthodox Funeral Service) helps awaken us to the reality of our lives. We so often suppress this reality in the busyness of our daily distractions. Awakening to ‘see the reality of our lives in God’ can help us identify these distortions. We are encouraged to embrace the ’mother of virtues’, humility in the Light of this reality. This chapter is full of references to the Great Canon that are italicized and referenced with a parenthesis noting which ode and the specific troparia/verse within that ode. So, the first reference (4:32) is the 4th ode verse 32 of the full version of the Great Canon done in the 5th week of Lent.

Awakening and the Fear of God – Chapter 1 ’The Song of Tears’ by Olivier Clément

Spiritual death, expressed as biological death, secretly eats away at our existence. Yet, by the very intensity of the anguish it provokes, it can set us on the path of awakening. The fickleness of time and the precariousness of an existence in which everything eludes us is something that is repeatedly emphasized by St Andrew of Crete in his Great Canon: The time of my life is short, filled with trouble and evil (4.32); The end draws near, my soul, the end draws near for the days of our life pass swiftly, as a dream, as a flower (4.11); My life is dead, it is petering out and my mind is wounded, my body has grown feeble, my spirit is sick, my speech has lost its power (9.10).

Thus we become aware of a fundamental emptiness and a sense of failure. St Andrew alludes several times to this background of anguish. Feelings of revulsion and yet a melancholic nostalgia take hold of us when we come to realize the hollowness of our preoccupations, the emptiness of the hustle and bustle and the many concerns and preoccupations in which we seek refuge so as to forget our finiteness. My days have vanished as the dream of one awaking (7.20); I speak boastfully, with boldness of heart, yet all to no purpose and in vain (4.33). That is to say, out of a laughable self-importance or, even more tritely, out of the dreary despondency that is so characteristic of our thoroughly nihilistic age. This is argia, the “sloth” or “idleness” spoken of in the prayer that is recited so frequently in Lent, the Prayer of St Ephraim: “O Lord and Master of my life, give me not a spirit of sloth . . .” Argia, say the ascetics of old, begets forgetfulness, one of the “giants” of sin: forgetfulness of God and thus of oneself and of the other in his mystery; forgetfulness of the truth about beings and things—a sort of sleepwalking filled with fantasies in which the soul, as it were, splinters, breaks up, splits into two. It is precisely this dipsychia, this double-mindedness that the Epistle of St James (1.8) describes as the major sin. In fragmenting, the soul falls prey to the demon whose name is Legion (Mk 5.9). The same night that falls perceptibly with the approach of death had long since begun to enshroud our life, rising from the cracks and the chaos: In night have I passed all my life; for the night of sin has covered me with darkness and thick mist (5.1). A layer of filth encrusts the soul, hardening the heart and rendering it heavy and insensitive: I have defiled my body, I have stained my spirit (392). We have a sense of foreboding that maleficent powers are on the look-out, and that in the shadows the Enemy lurks with his perverted intelligence. The Enemy—that deceiver, that beguiler, that separator: 1 Let me not become the possession and food of the enemy, we pray four times in Ode Four (4.32, 34, 35, 36).

Then, a first blessing is given: the “remembrance of death.” St John Climacus advises us — to make the constant thought of death our “spouse.” 2 In the sobering light of this “remembrance,” our conscience begins to awaken, regardless of our conditioning or our instinct for self-preservation. Solzhenitsyn3 has shown how the experience of the camps—where the remembrance of death was inescapable—can indeed awaken the conscience. I am convicted by the verdict of my own conscience, which is more compelling than all else in the world (4.14). For several of the Fathers—Dorotheus of Gaza, for example4—the conscience is like a divine spark. Thus man is judged from within, and with no possibility of appeal, by his own conscience. He then becomes aware not only that he “sits in darkness and the shadow of death” (Lk 1.79), but that in a certain sense he is in hell; for hell, as Origen said, is precisely the burning sensation caused by one’s own conscience. 5

There remains a certain persistent hunger. I am barren of the virtues of holiness; in my hunger I cry out (1.21). There remains a certain desire, though it has been disappointed for so long by the fantasies we have projected onto the wall of our finiteness. And so, the understanding and the heart begin to undergo change. This is the real meaning of metanoia, which is too often translated as “repentance” but which in fact signifies the transformation of our entire grasp of reality. We begin to shake off our torpor, our self-sufficiency, and that habit of perpetually justifying ourselves by condemning others. It is a return to one’s true self, which becomes a return to God and which manifests itself in confession: With boldness tell Christ of thy deeds and thoughts (4.12); Turn back, repent, uncover all that thou hast hidden. Say unto God, to whom all things are known: Thou alone knowest my secrets, O Savior; “have mercy on me,” as David sings, “according to thy mercy” (7.19).

As this awakening becomes more clearly defined, it brings with it a second blessing: the “fear of God.” This is an attitude that has become alien to many Christians today, probably because it happens to have been linked to a terrorist conception of God. Yet it is important to rediscover its deeper meaning, otherwise we risk remaining insensitive to the fundamental tone of the Great Canon. “The holy fathers place fear of God after faith in the order of virtue,” write Kallistos and Ignatius Xanthopoulos. 6 It is not fear that incites faith, as a terrorist approach to the mystery might well imply. Rather, it is faith that elicits fear—fear in the sense of a feeling of metaphysical dread or awe that wrests us from this world. One might mention here Heidegger’s analysis of angst in Being and Time. Angst, he argues, is caused by the awareness of our absorption into this world of futility, banality, and death. A world of “vanity,” says St Paul (Rom 8.20), in a sense that might be described not as ontological but as “non-ontological”: I have wasted the substance of my soul in riotous living (1.21). Angst causes man to distance himself from this world, sensing that “la vraie vie est ailleurs,” as Rimbaud puts it. 7 Yet such anxiety, when provoked simply by an intuition of nothingness, is insupportable; so man attempts to rid himself of it by exchanging it for various cares and fears. Always, adds Heidegger, a fear of something in the world, whereas angst proper is nothing other than our very awareness of being-in-the-world. It is noteworthy, he continues, that once such a feeling has passed, we are only too ready to say, “It was nothing”; for it was precisely this nothing that was causing us anxiety in the first place.

The “fear of God” takes up again this theme of fundamental angst, but now from within the perspective of our spiritual destiny. Thus the fear of identifying ourselves with the mortal way of the world, with the thirst for security whilst all escapes us, with the thirst for happiness whilst death stalks us—this fear now calls into question our spiritual responsibility. It is no longer a matter of simply discovering our closed finiteness, but an awareness of our sin as being a voluntary separation from God and neighbor, as a spiritual torpor, as entailing the risk that we might miss out on our eternal destiny: I have killed my conscience . . . making war upon the soul by my wicked actions (1.7).

It is a fear that implies the existence of a spiritual authority that transcends this world and before which man will be accountable for his destiny, or rather in the light of which his destiny will be judged and which can, from this point on, begin to judge itself. If men were orphans, alone in the world, if they did not have to render an account to anyone for their absorption into the world, their angst would be inexplicable. This outpouring of anguish—Give ear to the groaning of my soul (2.28)—only has meaning if said to Someone. It has no meaning unless it becomes “fear of God.” And whereas a fear of the world debilitates us and causes us to lose our footing more and more, the “fear of God,” born of a spiritual awakening and of faith, fortifies us, enables us to tear ourselves away from being captivated by “idols,” whether they be fears, passions, or cares. We begin to understand that letting ourselves be absorbed into the world results in our overlooking God. We begin to realize that we have stoned [our] body to death with [our] evil deeds, and killed [our] mind with [our] disordered longings (2.31) and that to care only for the outward adornment is to neglect that which is within—the tabernacle fashioned by God (2.19). Thus, between ourselves and the world, a certain distance is introduced. We can no longer bury ourselves in it because we now make sense of our destiny in a light that is not of this world. We understand that our being absorbed by the world risks compromising our eternal destiny, turning us away from God for ever. This fundamental angst that worries us points to a risk with everlasting consequences—the absence of God, hell. That the incarnate God has nevertheless come to seek us out, even in hell—that is something we shall discover later. We must first of all have a sense of what we have been saved from; or simply of the fact that we need to be saved!

I lie as an outcast before thy gate, O Savior. In my old age cast me not down empty into hell (1.13).

I have found myself stripped naked of God, of the eternal Kingdom and its joy, because of my sins (1.3).

Fear of God is the acceptance here and now of that krisis, that judgment by which, says St Symeon the New Theologian, we anticipate the Last Judgment and which enables us to pass beyond it: “In this present life when, through repentance, we enter freely into . . . the divine light, we find ourselves accused and under judgement; but, owing to the divine love and compassion the accusation and judgement is made in secret, in the depths of our soul, to purify us, that we may receive the pardon of our sins. . . . Those who in this life undergo such a judgement will have nothing to fear from another tribunal.” 8

In this way, say the Fathers—and the Great Canon as a whole progresses in this same direction—man passes little by little from impure fear to a fear that is pure. Impure fear is vanquished by humility, trust, and openness to the vastness of divine love. More exactly, it becomes this openness. On the other hand, as St Maximos the Confessor writes, “Fear that is pure . . . is always present even without remembrance of offences committed. Such fear will never cease to exist, because it is somehow rooted by God in creation and makes clear to everyone his awe-inspiring nature, which transcends all kingship and power.” 9

Notes

1Clément is alluding here to the etymology of the New Testament Greek term for the devil: dia-bolos.

2St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent 3.15. Translation: Ladder of Divine Ascent, C. Luibheid and N. Russell, trans. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), 87. (Section numbers within the steps appear in the English translation published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, MA; these are found in many Greek and Russian texts, and are provided to allow readers to navigate other versions of the work more easily.—Ed.)

3See Olivier Clément’s 1974 book on Solzhenitsyn: The Spirit of Solzhenitsyn, S. Fawcett and P. Burns, trans. (London & New York: Search Press/ Barnes & Noble, 1976).

4See Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses and Sayings, E. Wheeler, trans., Cistercian Studies 33 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2008).

5See Origen, On First Principles 2.10.4.

6Callistus and Ignatius of Xanthopoulos, Directions to Hesychasts 1

7. Translation in Writings from the Philokalia on the Prayer of the Heart, E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer, trans. (London: Faber & Faber, 1951), 190. 7Though Clément must have been aware that what Rimbaud actually wrote in Une saison en enfer (1873) was “La vraie vie est absente,” the misquotation is so well known and so often used that he naturally preferred not to amend it. Moreover, it is admirably suited to the present context.

8Quoted in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 233–34.

9St Maximos the Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium 10.5. Translation in On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios, Maximos Constas, trans. (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 118.

How Is The Humility of the Wise Thief and Harlot highlighted in the Great Canon

Olivier Clement has written a wonderful book entitled ’The Song of Tears’ entirely on the Great Canon. In Chapter 6 , he explores how the Great Canon promotes humility that he describes as ’the basis and crown of all virtues’. In the extract below from this chapter , you will find references to the Great Canon denoted with a parenthesis. The first number will indicate the ode or canticle that is involved and the second the specific troparia verse. This book is another reminder of the depth and majesty of this great work.

By Olivier Clement extracted from Chapter 6 Trust & Humility in ‘The Song of Tears’

It is with the good thief and the harlot that those Orthodox preparing to receive communion identify themselves, as the Prayers before Communion emphasize.

By becoming wholly a being of faith, existing only by his relationship with Christ, man frees himself from his various masks and his pride. He learns humility, which is the basis and crown of all virtue: I have passed my life in arrogance: make me humble and save me (4.4). The soul that is humble lives only by God’s mercy. The ladder of virtues is in fact a descent—a descent into humility, but then “he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk 18.14). A saint is simply a sinner who has become fully conscious of the fact, and who is thereby open to God’s grace. In the heroic days of desert asceticism, even the monks with the most abrupt of manners ended by recognizing that all that was needed was humility—in a way that heralds the “little way” of St Thérèse or St Silouan. Do not demand from me worthy fruits of repentance, for my strength has failed within me. Give me an ever-contrite heart and poverty of spirit, that I may offer these to thee as an acceptable sacrifice, O only Savior (9.33). In Step 5 of St John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent, there is the harrowing description of his visit to the separate monastery of serious penitents called “The Prison”—a voluntary gulag, as it were, for God. Yet it is noteworthy and significant that much later in his book (Step 25), he writes as follows: “In Scripture are the words, ‘I humbled myself, and the Lord hastened to rescue me’ (Ps 114.6); and these words are there instead of ‘I have fasted,’ ‘I have kept vigil,’ ‘I lay down on the bare earth.’”

The fact is that humility assimilates us to that of God himself, to his voluntary humiliation, his great kenosis of love: “Learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Mt 11.29). The revelation of God’s own humility touches the proud heart of man, breaks it, and transforms it into a “heart of flesh” (Ezek 36.26). “Let us eagerly follow the ways of Jesus the Savior and his humility, if we desire to attain the everlasting tabernacle of joy and to dwell in the land of the living.” For trust and humility help us become poor in spirit, and it is those who possess nothing whom God can pervade with his joy. Take pity on me, as David sings, and restore to me thy joy (7.18).

The Great Canon’s Call For Us To Return To Our True Home

By Father Lawrence Farley

Every year during Lent we invite into our churches a great pastor, St. Andrew of Crete, and listen while he leads us in a meditation on sin and repentance. That is, we listen while his Great Canon is chanted, and in response we reply over and over again, “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!” Some things in this long poetic work might strike some moderns as a bit jarring, if not downright pathological—all this self-flagellation over our sins, this torrent of anguish and self-abhorrence. Is all this really necessary? Is it even healthy?

A quick and superficial perusal of the text might leave us wondering. “There has never been a sin or act or vice in life that I have not committed, O Saviour. I have sinned in mind, word, and choice, in purpose, will and action, as no one else has ever done.” “I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned against You. Be merciful to me. For there is no one who has sinned among men whom I have not surpassed by my sins.” “From my youth, O Christ I have rejected Your commandments. I have passed my whole life without caring or thinking, a slave of my passions. Therefore, O Saviour, I cry to You: at least in the end save me!” Isn’t all this self-condemnation a bit much? And how accurate is it? Are all those people standing about in church for hours on end in Lent really as bad as all that?

Such questions miss the point of the Great Canon. The long meditation from the pen of St. Andrew is not offered as an individual’s personal confession of sin. It is not intended to be the sort of thing one shares with a psychiatrist while lying on his couch, or with one’s confessor while standing before the Cross. It is not intended as autobiography, but as medicine. Like some medicines, it might seem a little severe, and even taste bitter. But it is exactly the medicine that we need, however it might taste.

The disease the medicine is intended to cure is the one now afflicting large segments of our modern secular population—that of careless and serene self-righteousness. We far too easily fall into the assumption that we are pretty sensational spiritually, and that we have racked up an impressive score. We soon enough become blind to our true spiritual state. We can see others’ sins clearly enough, especially when they sin against us, but our own failings often seem to elude us.

I remember this kind of delusional approach being expressed on the radio one afternoon. A lady was being interviewed about her life and her life choices, and she said that she really couldn’t bring herself to regret anything she had ever done, because all her actions combined to make her the person she was today. Quite the confession! Really—she couldn’t bring herself to regret anything? Ever in all her life? Speaking personally, I can find plenty of things I regret doing, saying, and thinking in the last twenty-four hours, never mind all my life. The interviewed lady seems to reflect a culture in the last stages of the “I’m Okay; You’re Okay” disease. We are just fine spiritually, and we can’t bring ourselves to regret anything we have done.

Into this den of insanity and illness comes St. Andrew of Crete, bearing just the right medicine. We need to hear him, to listen to our conscience afresh, and to submissively receive its inner rebuke. Something inside of us is indeed broken and dark, diseased and dying. By confessing the brokenness, by admitting to the darkness, we can begin to separate ourselves from them, and to find healing and soundness of mind and peace. The World with its lies shouts at us every day, all day long, without ceasing. We need a rival voice, the voice of sanity, a voice calling us home. We need St. Andrew and his Great Canon. Maybe that is why he is so welcome in our churches every Lent.

Full Article

Can reflecting on an individual ode (of the Great Canon) be useful?

Last night we had our first encounter of Lent with the Great Canon of St. Andrew. Let’s examine just one of the nine odes we heard in more depth. Specifically, let’s add the Biblical verses (both Old and New Testament) that support the troparia written by St. Andrew. We’ll just examine and reflect on the 2nd ode.

My hope is that this may strengthen the connection between what we’ve heard and its scriptural support in a way that deepens our acceptance and response to his continual call for repentance while also reminding us of God’s acceptance of us … when we approach Him with the truth of how dependent we are upon His mercy and Grace.

Clean Monday Night 2nd Canon – Great Canon of St. Andrew

He is my Helper and Protector, and has become my salvation. This is my God and I will glorify Him. My father’s God and I will exalt Him. For gloriously has He been glorified. (Exodus 15:2,1; Psalm 117:14)

The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him
Exodus 15:2 , 1

The Lord is my strength and my song , and He is become my salvation
Psalm 117:14

Attend, O heaven, and I will speak; O earth, give ear to a voice repenting to God and singing praises to Him.

Attend to me, O God my Savior, with Thy merciful eye, and accept my fervent confession. (Proverbs 15:3; Psalm 33:15)

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.
Proverbs 15:3

The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are opened unto their supplication.
Psalm 33:15

I have sinned above all men, I alone have sinned against Thee. But as God have compassion, O Savior, on Thy creature. (1 Tim. 1:15)

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
1 Timothy 1:15

Having formed by my pleasure-loving desires the deformity of my passions, I have marred the beauty of my mind.

A storm of passions besets me, O compassionate Lord. But stretch out Thy hand to me too, as to Peter. (Matthew 14:31)

And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
Matthew 14:31

I have stained the coat of my flesh, and soiled what is in Thy image and likeness, O Savior.

I have darkened the beauty of my soul with passionate pleasures, and my whole mind I have reduced wholly to mud.

I have torn my first garment which the Creator wove for me in the beginning, and therefore I am lying naked. (Genesis 3:21)

Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LordGod make coats of skins, and clothed them
Genesis 3:21

I have put on a torn coat, which the serpent wove for me by argument, and I am ashamed. (Genesis 3:4-5)

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Genesis 3:4 – 5

The tears of the harlot, O merciful Lord, I too offer to Thee. Be merciful to me, O Savior, in Thy compassion. (Luke 7:38; 18:13)

She stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
Luke 7:38 and Luke 18:13

I looked at the beauty of the tree, and my mind was seduced; and now I lie naked, and I am ashamed. (Genesis 3:7)

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
Genesis 3:7

All the demon-chiefs of the passions have plowed on my back, and long has their tyranny over me lasted. (Psalm 128:3)

The sinners wrought upon my back, they lengthened out their iniquity
Psalm 128:3

Beginning of Great Lent 2022

Archpastoral Message of
His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon

March 7, 2022

To the Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America,

Dear Beloved Children in the Lord,

As we stand at this moment, the threshold of Great Lent, with all turmoil and violence unfolding in the world, the Lenten fast comes like a spring breeze to refresh our souls. It is a time during which we take stock of our hearts, discard the unnecessary things of this world, refocus our spiritual vision, and bring our pains and griefs before God’s healing presence.

Even in the midst of everything we endure; a pandemic, social unrest, economic uncertainty, and now war in Ukraine, we must remember to always attend to doing good and becoming ever-brighter beacons of Christ’s light in this darkening world.

We hear this through the Prophet Isaiah, where the Lord tells us what distinguishes our true fast:

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the cords of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?” (Is 58:6)

In this turbulent moment, the Fast is a call to freedom as children of God through our spiritual discipline. In our time, there are many “bonds of wickedness” and “cords of the yoke” which Lent urges us to loose—but above all, the sins which bind our souls.

We also remember that Lent calls us to control not just our stomachs but our eyes, hands, feet, and mind. We avoid gluttony of food, but likewise we ought to avoid gluttony of all sorts: in recreation, media, or conversation with others. As the Scriptures tell us, “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things” (1 Cor 9:25).

This Lent, be especially on guard with social media, which too easily inflames our passions, devours our time, and devolves into the “foolish controversies” which Saint Paul warns us to avoid, “for they are unprofitable and futile” and only disturb our brothers and sisters in Christ (cf. Titus 3:9).

We are assured in the Letter to the Galatians that “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). With these words we fast with cheerful hearts, because it is in our self-denial that we find freedom in the Resurrection.

So as we take up the spiritual disciplines given to us by our Lord, I pray that it is with a spirit of renewed commitment and not with a spirit of gloominess. Nor should we, as Christ warns, “look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men” (Mt 6:16). Great Lent is our much needed time of refreshment of the heart and cleansing of the soul, so that we may more clearly perceive the light of Christ on Great and Holy Pascha.

When we each ask God to “open to me the gates of repentance” this Lent, remember that we do not fast to earn God’s love or to impress others around us. Over the next forty days we break the chains of sin and evil by controlling the things which control us—and so become free people. Let us run towards this freedom in the coming weeks.

Beloved children in the Lord, I conclude by directing you to keep in prayer those suffering in the calamity of war: the wounded, the grieving, and the displaced. Please also be of service to them in your charity and almsgiving this Lent. Remember also those who have been killed in this war. May God keep their memory eternal.

I humbly ask your forgiveness. May you have all the blessings of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ in your Lenten journey.

I remain sincerely yours in Christ,

+TIKHON
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada

Adam’s Expulsion From Paradise & Forgiveness Sunday Adult Education Class

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.

So our class readings this Sunday will include:

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:

Adam’s Lament – St. Silouan (Includes choral & symphonic from Avro Part)
Each of us has become our own Adam
Adam and Spiritual Rebirth
Triodion Cheese Week Themes