Category: Mercy

In the Desert of the Heart By Paul Kingnorth

For see, you were inside, and I was outside, but I sought you there. Unlovely, I rushed without thinking among the things of beauty you made. You were with me, but I was not with you.’

St Augustine of Hippo

Sometimes it is difficult for me to write anything, because all I want to do is to be quiet. I have wanted this for years, and sometimes I achieve it, but it is fleeting. Maybe less fleeting by the year, though. Maybe the pull is growing, and the will and the ability. Growing slowly, like moss on a stone.

‘If anyone wants to learn the will of God’ said the Russian Orthodox priest Father Alexander Men, in one of his Lenten sermons¹, ‘let him seek silence.’ Christians have known this forever. They have fled to deserts and caves, monasteries and sketes. They have taken up residence on the tops of pillars and in the boles of hollow trees. They knew that the voice of God was both still and small² and could only be heard in silence, would only settle in a peaceful heart. 

Silence – or at least, quiet; peace – is the natural environment of the Spirit of God, it seems, and we live in the world which appears purposefully designed to make this a great struggle. The roar of traffic, the planes crossing the skies, the hum of the electric wires, the black rectangles in our pockets which fragment our attention, stimulate our passions and take us anywhere but the place where we stand. Whatever the world is it makes silence, or even quiet, almost an impossibility. That means we cannot hear God. And when we cannot hear God, we are lost.

Most of us will never get the opportunity to live in the bole of a hollow tree, and probably wouldn’t much like it if we did. But it is possible to be distracted by outward appearances. If you live in the middle of a city, a desert or a forest may seem an attractive haven of peace, but of course it is possible to flee to the wilderness and take your restless, neurotic, world-tangled heart with you. Probably it is quite common. Silence, a peaceful heart, the landing strip of the Holy Spirit, is not achieved simply by fleeing external noise, though this certainly helps. Most of the noise comes from within.

Last Sunday was the second Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church. Each Lenten Sunday is built around a different theme, usually around one of the Church Fathers or a story from the Gospels, each designed to take us deeper into what is sometimes called the ‘bright sadness’ of the Lenten descent. The second Sunday is dedicated to the memory of St Gregory Palamas, the fourteenth-century monk who is celebrated in the Orthodox Church for his defence of the spiritual tradition of ‘hesychasm’, which today forms the core of the contemplative spirituality of the Christian East. 

Hesychasm is one of those Greek words often encountered in Christian Orthodoxy which has no direct English translation; it is usually rendered as ‘stillness’. Hesychastic prayer is the pursuit of inner stillness, not for its own sake, but because this is the opening move of the entire purpose of Orthodox Christian spirituality, which is to seek theosis. This is another one of those Greek words, usually translated as ‘union with God.’ Theosis, according to the hesychasts, is achieved in silence, through solitary prayer and living, the aim of which is to offer up a peaceful heart for the Holy Spirit to dwell within. ‘The Holy Spirit is extremely meek,” wrote the Coptic monk Matthew the Poor. ‘He finds no rest in cries and confusion, or in a heart that is cruel, unjust, wrathful, irascible, or proud.’³ Hesychasm seeks to create the conditions for the Spirit to settle in our hearts; something He can only do if our hearts are at peace. 

St Gregory Palamas is celebrated for the intellectual battle he waged in the early 1300s with an Italian Orthodox monk named Barlaam, who had visited Mount Athos, seen the practice of hesychasm at first hand and been scandalised by it. Barlaam, it is said, had been trained in the Western Scholastic tradition, and was horrified by what today he might call the ‘woo’ of Eastern Christian mysticism. He nicknamed the hesychasts omphaloscopoi, our third Greek word of the day, which translates as ‘navel gazers’. Barlaam thought that the hesychasts were deluded and blasphemous; a position I still hear occasionally today from some Protestants. St Gregory took him on, and his defence of hesychasm won the day in the East. In the process, he helped cement its place at the heart of Orthodox spirituality, where it remains today.

The practice most commonly associated with the hesychastic tradition is that of the Jesus Prayer, which all Orthodox Christians – and plenty of non-Orthodox ones for that matter – are familiar with, and which many of us practice daily, either in the boles of trees or in suburban homes before work or after dinner. It is not, of course, necessary to live in a desert or on Mount Athos to pursue inner silence, though again it may help. It is probably not true that it can be found as easily in the midst of a megacity as it can in a forest, at least for most of us: the temptations, and the distractions, are simply greater, which is why people flee in the first place. Still, the principle is clear, and is much enunciated by the Fathers of the Christian Church: the Spirit of God will only settle in a peaceful heart. Outer peace makes it easier to achieve inner peace, but it doesn’t create it. Inner peace is achievable in central London, just as neurotic self-obsession is possible in a desert cave. 

This subject has obsessed me for years: the subject of silence, of stillness. I once wrote a book about the need to pursue it, and the difficulty of pursuing it as a writer. That book, Savage Gods, was a work of neurotic self-obsession if ever there was one, but it worried away at a question that had grown in me for years. It first arose, I think, when I began practicing Chan Buddhism at the age of forty: a practice which turned out to be a gateway drug to Eastern Christianity, just as soon as I was able to ask Christ to open the gate for me. Buddhism, like hesychasm, begins with the search for inner stillness, which it sees as a necessary precursor to understanding the delusions we tend to call ‘reality.’ This is entirely in accordance with Christian teaching, and indeed with modern understandings of human psychology. 

The thing is, once you begin to examine those delusions, you see that one of the most pernicious is the construction of a self-identity. This is necessary to survive in the world, probably, but soon enough it becomes a yoke around the neck. This construction labelled ‘Paul Kingsnorth’, for example, now has a public reputation as a writer with certain opinions and a particular history. His future work, and indeed his income, is in some way reliant on keeping this fiction going. It is not a ‘fiction’ in the sense of it being a deliberate falsehood, but it is a construction, which means it is a story, which means that the actual me has ended up stuck inside it, as well do with our stories in the end. 

Things are particularly bad for this ‘Paul Kingsnorth’ character, because he makes his living writing articles like this one. Not only does he need to do this to eat, but more existentially, he has written for so long that he now sees the world almost entirely through the lens of the written word. Even if he wasn’t getting paid to write things down, he would be writing them down anyway, which would just continue to encrust the artificial world around the artificial self, and make it harder to escape from both.

Whether we are writers or not, we create these personal fictions we call ‘identities’, and the older we get, the harder it is for that simple, primal stillness which is the precursor to true prayer to break back through. Back when I practiced Buddhism, I remember seeing with crystal clarity, at a level far deeper than the intellect, that if I wanted to progress spiritually I had to stop pumping out all these words. This was not because language itself was inherently bad – it is hardly avoidable – but because of something at once fuzzier and clearer, which even now I find it hard to explain. It was that words were part of the fiction of the world. It was so clear then – and it remains clear now – that spiritual progress, that work of theosis, requires us to drop all of our illusions. To smash through the cement of words and concepts and identities and opinions. To see ourselves naked before God. To make ourselves simple again.

Jesus, in more than one of the Gospels, talks about children, and what they have to teach us. In Luke’s Gospel⁴, when the disciples attempt to shoo away groups of parents who want him to bless their babies, Jesus rounds on them. ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them’, he says, ‘for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’

In Matthew’s Gospel, meanwhile, the disciples are jostling amongst themselves to achieve Jesus’s favour – or perhaps they are just anxious for some clear guidance. ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ they ask Him.⁵ In response, Jesus calls a child over to them. ‘Truly I tell you,’ he says, ‘unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’

The ‘kingdom of heaven’, then, belongs to those who ‘become like little children’. In fact, unless we ‘change’, and learn to ‘receive the kingdom of God like a little child’, we will ‘never enter it.’ Jesus says this twice, and very emphatically. What does it mean?

Simplify, I think. To become childlike means to return again to the state in which God created us. To drop those self-created ‘personalities’. Children do not have strong opinions about the world. They do not – yet – have self-created egos which will trap them. They tend to move through the world wide-eyed, and to accept its magic. To become like a child is also to become like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, a pair of striking images which Jesus uses elsewhere to urge his followers away from complexity and towards simplicity;⁶ away from words and towards experience; away from noise and towards silence. 

I have been struck repeatedly over the years by the fact that some of my favourite Christian saints were ‘uneducated’ people, in the world’s terms. The holiest of them, those who practiced straightforward Christian love with no frills, so often seem to have barely attended school. Some of them could barely read. I don’t think this is a coincidence. 

In his little book Do You Know Yourself?⁷, a collection of talks on Christianity and psychology, the late Fr Symeon Kragiopoulos, a Greek Bishop with a reputation as a ‘profound anatomist of the soul’, anatomises those of us who have what he calls ‘complications’ within: a description which I would guess applies to most modern people, and perhaps most pre-modern ones as well. ‘Someone who has complications within him, who has been blocked internally … can’t live the spiritual life,’ he writes, starkly. 

‘The harm that has happened to humanity,’ he goes on to say, ‘and particularly to contemporary humanity – that is, to us – it’s so great that in our effort to disentangle the complications that exist inside us we tangle them up even more.’ Humans, he says, begin life with ‘this blue sky in their souls, this clear heaven, this purity and holiness.’ In the beginning we are children, as Jesus tells his disciples to be again. But we complicate everything as we grow, with our stories, with our egotistic scrabbling, with all the stuff of life from which there is no escape. We build necessary shells to protect ourselves, and ‘the heaven of [our] souls is clouded and darkened.’ This is what it means to be ‘Fallen.’ 

What can help us, then? Christianity we say – if we are Christians, that is – but Fr Symeon is not convinced. ‘I’d dare to say that even Christianity is getting tangled up inside us and is itself getting mixed up,’ he says. Those of us who call ourselves ‘Christians’ do not have the simple, childlike souls we are called to embrace. ‘In the final analysis,’ he says, ‘while a person is Christian, while he believes in the Gospel, while he believes in Jesus Christ, while he confesses and receives communion, he is blocked.’ The blockage comes from the fact that so many of us are influenced more by ‘the spirit of western Christianity, which we perhaps call Christian civilisation, than by the Christianity of the Gospel and the Fathers, by that Christianity that really redeems a human being, that cleanses man and releases him from all those parasites and from all those pitfalls and makes it pure and clean.’

All of which, I suppose, takes us back to where we started: the silence. I have just written 2,500 words of noise to try and get at the matter of silence, and of course have not achieved it, because it is not achieved this way. Lent is a strange journey of deepening: I have learned this very slowly over the years. I am far from being any kind of ascetic, and my Lenten discipline regularly disappoints me, but even so, something seems to happen every year. This year, I have not wanted to say much for weeks. Even when I write, I write about silence. Something is calling me away. I am still not sure where to go, or how.

It took me a long time as a Christian to even begin to understand that much of the work, at least for beginners, is simply in shutting up. There is no point in worrying about whether you are silent or childlike or holy enough, or in trying to make yourself some kind of holy ascetic through force of will. Force of will doesn’t get you that far. You can run off to the forest or the desert if you like: some people are called to that life and some people are not. But we are all called to make a desert of our hearts. The Holy Spirit will alight there, we are told, when it finds a peace to welcome it. 

However, we do it, so much of the work, I think now, is struggling to allow silence a place to grow. When we do that, much of our overcomplicated, worldly nonsense just falls away, even if only for a second. The cement cracks, our stories shatter, and we begin to see how to walk away from ourselves. In the silence, perhaps we discover how to be children again.

Father Symeon should have the last word, I think, because I have written too many already:

‘Spiritual work happens secretly in the heart. Externally, let everything else threaten us. Like the sea: The wind blows, waves rise. But deep down it’s all quiet, peaceful, serene.

This is how a man who trusts in God lives. There might be a wild rage out there, but deep down nothing hinders the soul from having a mystical communion with God, a mystical love for God. Quietly and mystically, in a special way that the heart perceives, the Lord is whispering: “Don’t be afraid. I am here. Keep walking this path. Keep loving me, keep believing in me, keep following me”.

It’s not enough to suffer myriad things in life. When, though, you believe in God and accept all these – whatever it is that happens to you – gladly, for the love of God, God will make a saint out of you.’⁸

1

Fr Men’s Lenten homilies are collected in Awake To Life, published in 1996 by Oakwood Publications, California

2

1 Kings 19:12

3

Quoted from Guidelines For Prayer by Matthew the Poor, St Macarius Press, 2021

4

Luke 18:15

5

Matthew 18:1 – 5

6

Matthew 6:26 – 34

7

Published by Divine Ascent Press, California, in 2010.

8

‘Christians of Comfort.’ https://www.orthodoxpath.org/spiritual-life/christians-of-comfort/

u were inside, and I was outside, but I sought you there. Unlovely, I rushed without thinking among the things of beauty you made. You were with me, but I was not with you.’

St Augustine of Hippo

Sometimes it is difficult for me to write anything, because all I want to do is to be quiet. I have wanted this for years, and sometimes I achieve it, but it is fleeting. Maybe less fleeting by the year, though. Maybe the pull is growing, and the will and the ability. Growing slowly, like moss on a stone.

‘If anyone wants to learn the will of God’ said the Russian Orthodox priest Father Alexander Men, in one of his Lenten sermons¹, ‘let him seek silence.’ Christians have known this forever. They have fled to deserts and caves, monasteries and sketes. They have taken up residence on the tops of pillars and in the boles of hollow trees. They knew that the voice of God was both still and small² and could only be heard in silence, would only settle in a peaceful heart. 

Silence – or at least, quiet; peace – is the natural environment of the Spirit of God, it seems, and we live in the world which appears purposefully designed to make this a great struggle. The roar of traffic, the planes crossing the skies, the hum of the electric wires, the black rectangles in our pockets which fragment our attention, stimulate our passions and take us anywhere but the place where we stand. Whatever the world is it makes silence, or even quiet, almost an impossibility. That means we cannot hear God. And when we cannot hear God, we are lost.

Most of us will never get the opportunity to live in the bole of a hollow tree, and probably wouldn’t much like it if we did. But it is possible to be distracted by outward appearances. If you live in the middle of a city, a desert or a forest may seem an attractive haven of peace, but of course it is possible to flee to the wilderness and take your restless, neurotic, world-tangled heart with you. Probably it is quite common. Silence, a peaceful heart, the landing strip of the Holy Spirit, is not achieved simply by fleeing external noise, though this certainly helps. Most of the noise comes from within.

Last Sunday was the second Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church. Each Lenten Sunday is built around a different theme, usually around one of the Church Fathers or a story from the Gospels, each designed to take us deeper into what is sometimes called the ‘bright sadness’ of the Lenten descent. The second Sunday is dedicated to the memory of St Gregory Palamas, the fourteenth-century monk who is celebrated in the Orthodox Church for his defence of the spiritual tradition of ‘hesychasm’, which today forms the core of the contemplative spirituality of the Christian East. 

Hesychasm is one of those Greek words often encountered in Christian Orthodoxy which has no direct English translation; it is usually rendered as ‘stillness’. Hesychastic prayer is the pursuit of inner stillness, not for its own sake, but because this is the opening move of the entire purpose of Orthodox Christian spirituality, which is to seek theosis. This is another one of those Greek words, usually translated as ‘union with God.’ Theosis, according to the hesychasts, is achieved in silence, through solitary prayer and living, the aim of which is to offer up a peaceful heart for the Holy Spirit to dwell within. ‘The Holy Spirit is extremely meek,” wrote the Coptic monk Matthew the Poor. ‘He finds no rest in cries and confusion, or in a heart that is cruel, unjust, wrathful, irascible, or proud.’³ Hesychasm seeks to create the conditions for the Spirit to settle in our hearts; something He can only do if our hearts are at peace. 

St Gregory Palamas is celebrated for the intellectual battle he waged in the early 1300s with an Italian Orthodox monk named Barlaam, who had visited Mount Athos, seen the practice of hesychasm at first hand and been scandalised by it. Barlaam, it is said, had been trained in the Western Scholastic tradition, and was horrified by what today he might call the ‘woo’ of Eastern Christian mysticism. He nicknamed the hesychasts omphaloscopoi, our third Greek word of the day, which translates as ‘navel gazers’. Barlaam thought that the hesychasts were deluded and blasphemous; a position I still hear occasionally today from some Protestants. St Gregory took him on, and his defence of hesychasm won the day in the East. In the process, he helped cement its place at the heart of Orthodox spirituality, where it remains today.

The practice most commonly associated with the hesychastic tradition is that of the Jesus Prayer, which all Orthodox Christians – and plenty of non-Orthodox ones for that matter – are familiar with, and which many of us practice daily, either in the boles of trees or in suburban homes before work or after dinner. It is not, of course, necessary to live in a desert or on Mount Athos to pursue inner silence, though again it may help. It is probably not true that it can be found as easily in the midst of a megacity as it can in a forest, at least for most of us: the temptations, and the distractions, are simply greater, which is why people flee in the first place. Still, the principle is clear, and is much enunciated by the Fathers of the Christian Church: the Spirit of God will only settle in a peaceful heart. Outer peace makes it easier to achieve inner peace, but it doesn’t create it. Inner peace is achievable in central London, just as neurotic self-obsession is possible in a desert cave. 

This subject has obsessed me for years: the subject of silence, of stillness. I once wrote a book about the need to pursue it, and the difficulty of pursuing it as a writer. That book, Savage Gods, was a work of neurotic self-obsession if ever there was one, but it worried away at a question that had grown in me for years. It first arose, I think, when I began practicing Chan Buddhism at the age of forty: a practice which turned out to be a gateway drug to Eastern Christianity, just as soon as I was able to ask Christ to open the gate for me. Buddhism, like hesychasm, begins with the search for inner stillness, which it sees as a necessary precursor to understanding the delusions we tend to call ‘reality.’ This is entirely in accordance with Christian teaching, and indeed with modern understandings of human psychology. 

The thing is, once you begin to examine those delusions, you see that one of the most pernicious is the construction of a self-identity. This is necessary to survive in the world, probably, but soon enough it becomes a yoke around the neck. This construction labelled ‘Paul Kingsnorth’, for example, now has a public reputation as a writer with certain opinions and a particular history. His future work, and indeed his income, is in some way reliant on keeping this fiction going. It is not a ‘fiction’ in the sense of it being a deliberate falsehood, but it is a construction, which means it is a story, which means that the actual me has ended up stuck inside it, as well do with our stories in the end. 

Things are particularly bad for this ‘Paul Kingsnorth’ character, because he makes his living writing articles like this one. Not only does he need to do this to eat, but more existentially, he has written for so long that he now sees the world almost entirely through the lens of the written word. Even if he wasn’t getting paid to write things down, he would be writing them down anyway, which would just continue to encrust the artificial world around the artificial self, and make it harder to escape from both.

Whether we are writers or not, we create these personal fictions we call ‘identities’, and the older we get, the harder it is for that simple, primal stillness which is the precursor to true prayer to break back through. Back when I practiced Buddhism, I remember seeing with crystal clarity, at a level far deeper than the intellect, that if I wanted to progress spiritually I had to stop pumping out all these words. This was not because language itself was inherently bad – it is hardly avoidable – but because of something at once fuzzier and clearer, which even now I find it hard to explain. It was that words were part of the fiction of the world. It was so clear then – and it remains clear now – that spiritual progress, that work of theosis, requires us to drop all of our illusions. To smash through the cement of words and concepts and identities and opinions. To see ourselves naked before God. To make ourselves simple again.

Jesus, in more than one of the Gospels, talks about children, and what they have to teach us. In Luke’s Gospel⁴, when the disciples attempt to shoo away groups of parents who want him to bless their babies, Jesus rounds on them. ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them’, he says, ‘for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’

In Matthew’s Gospel, meanwhile, the disciples are jostling amongst themselves to achieve Jesus’s favour – or perhaps they are just anxious for some clear guidance. ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ they ask Him.⁵ In response, Jesus calls a child over to them. ‘Truly I tell you,’ he says, ‘unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’

The ‘kingdom of heaven’, then, belongs to those who ‘become like little children’. In fact, unless we ‘change’, and learn to ‘receive the kingdom of God like a little child’, we will ‘never enter it.’ Jesus says this twice, and very emphatically. What does it mean?

Simplify, I think. To become childlike means to return again to the state in which God created us. To drop those self-created ‘personalities’. Children do not have strong opinions about the world. They do not – yet – have self-created egos which will trap them. They tend to move through the world wide-eyed, and to accept its magic. To become like a child is also to become like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, a pair of striking images which Jesus uses elsewhere to urge his followers away from complexity and towards simplicity;⁶ away from words and towards experience; away from noise and towards silence. 

I have been struck repeatedly over the years by the fact that some of my favourite Christian saints were ‘uneducated’ people, in the world’s terms. The holiest of them, those who practiced straightforward Christian love with no frills, so often seem to have barely attended school. Some of them could barely read. I don’t think this is a coincidence. 

In his little book Do You Know Yourself?⁷, a collection of talks on Christianity and psychology, the late Fr Symeon Kragiopoulos, a Greek Bishop with a reputation as a ‘profound anatomist of the soul’, anatomises those of us who have what he calls ‘complications’ within: a description which I would guess applies to most modern people, and perhaps most pre-modern ones as well. ‘Someone who has complications within him, who has been blocked internally … can’t live the spiritual life,’ he writes, starkly. 

‘The harm that has happened to humanity,’ he goes on to say, ‘and particularly to contemporary humanity – that is, to us – it’s so great that in our effort to disentangle the complications that exist inside us we tangle them up even more.’ Humans, he says, begin life with ‘this blue sky in their souls, this clear heaven, this purity and holiness.’ In the beginning we are children, as Jesus tells his disciples to be again. But we complicate everything as we grow, with our stories, with our egotistic scrabbling, with all the stuff of life from which there is no escape. We build necessary shells to protect ourselves, and ‘the heaven of [our] souls is clouded and darkened.’ This is what it means to be ‘Fallen.’ 

What can help us, then? Christianity we say – if we are Christians, that is – but Fr Symeon is not convinced. ‘I’d dare to say that even Christianity is getting tangled up inside us and is itself getting mixed up,’ he says. Those of us who call ourselves ‘Christians’ do not have the simple, childlike souls we are called to embrace. ‘In the final analysis,’ he says, ‘while a person is Christian, while he believes in the Gospel, while he believes in Jesus Christ, while he confesses and receives communion, he is blocked.’ The blockage comes from the fact that so many of us are influenced more by ‘the spirit of western Christianity, which we perhaps call Christian civilisation, than by the Christianity of the Gospel and the Fathers, by that Christianity that really redeems a human being, that cleanses man and releases him from all those parasites and from all those pitfalls and makes it pure and clean.’

All of which, I suppose, takes us back to where we started: the silence. I have just written 2,500 words of noise to try and get at the matter of silence, and of course have not achieved it, because it is not achieved this way. Lent is a strange journey of deepening: I have learned this very slowly over the years. I am far from being any kind of ascetic, and my Lenten discipline regularly disappoints me, but even so, something seems to happen every year. This year, I have not wanted to say much for weeks. Even when I write, I write about silence. Something is calling me away. I am still not sure where to go, or how.

It took me a long time as a Christian to even begin to understand that much of the work, at least for beginners, is simply in shutting up. There is no point in worrying about whether you are silent or childlike or holy enough, or in trying to make yourself some kind of holy ascetic through force of will. Force of will doesn’t get you that far. You can run off to the forest or the desert if you like: some people are called to that life and some people are not. But we are all called to make a desert of our hearts. The Holy Spirit will alight there, we are told, when it finds a peace to welcome it. 

However, we do it, so much of the work, I think now, is struggling to allow silence a place to grow. When we do that, much of our overcomplicated, worldly nonsense just falls away, even if only for a second. The cement cracks, our stories shatter, and we begin to see how to walk away from ourselves. In the silence, perhaps we discover how to be children again.

Father Symeon should have the last word, I think, because I have written too many already:

‘Spiritual work happens secretly in the heart. Externally, let everything else threaten us. Like the sea: The wind blows, waves rise. But deep down it’s all quiet, peaceful, serene.

This is how a man who trusts in God lives. There might be a wild rage out there, but deep down nothing hinders the soul from having a mystical communion with God, a mystical love for God. Quietly and mystically, in a special way that the heart perceives, the Lord is whispering: “Don’t be afraid. I am here. Keep walking this path. Keep loving me, keep believing in me, keep following me”.

It’s not enough to suffer myriad things in life. When, though, you believe in God and accept all these – whatever it is that happens to you – gladly, for the love of God, God will make a saint out of you.’⁸

If you appreciated this piece of writing, please consider a subscription or a one-off donation. It will allow me to keep offering these words for free, and will help those unable to pay. Thank you!

Make a donation

1

Fr Men’s Lenten homilies are collected in Awake To Life, published in 1996 by Oakwood Publications, California

2

1 Kings 19:12

3

Quoted from Guidelines For Prayer by Matthew the Poor, St Macarius Press, 2021

4

Luke 18:15

5

Matthew 18:1 – 5

6

Matthew 6:26 – 34

7

Published by Divine Ascent Press, California, in 2010.

8

‘Christians of Comfort.’ https://www.orthodoxpath.org/spiritual-life/christians-of-comfort/

St. Augustine Quotations

In his homily last Sunday, Father Gabe talked about the importance of St. Augustine of Hippo. I thought this compilation of some of his most well known quotes organized into broad topics might be a good way of helping us more deeply connect to this great saint.

Life and Wisdom

“Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity”.

“Patience is the companion of wisdom”.

“It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels”.

“Become what you are not yet.”

“In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty”. 

“Free curiosity is a greater encouragement to learning than frightened compulsion.” (Conf 1,14)

Love and Character

To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement”.

“It matters not as much how much you know, but how much you love.”

“You can judge how much progress you are making by the degree to which you prefer the common good to your own individual interests”.

“Love has hands to help others”.

“Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”.

“If you are to be filled with what is good, then you must pour out what is evil”.

“The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works”

Humility

“Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.”

“Let us, you and I lay aside all arrogance. Let neither of us pretend to have found the truth. Let us seek it as something unknown to both of us. Then we may seek it with love and sincerity, when neither of us has the rashness or presumption to believe that we already possess it.”

“I watch over you by virtue of my office, but I also wish to be watched over by you. I am a pastor for you, under the Pastor. From that position I address you as one who teaches, but with you I am a disciple in the school of the one Master”.

Interiority

“Return to yourself. Withdraw from all the din. Look inside yourself to find a pleasant, private corner in your consciousness…” (Sermon 52,22)

“Always examine yourselves without self-deception, without flattery, without buttering yourselves up. After all, there is nobody inside you before whom you need feel ashamed, or whom you need to impress. There is someone there, but one who is pleased with humility. Let Him test you. And you, too, test yourself.” (Sermon 169.18)

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you. For see, you were within and I was without, and I sought you out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things you have made. You were with me, but I was not with you.” (Confessions 10,27,38)

“When teachers have explained, using words, all those subjects which they profess to teach, even the science of virtue and wisdom, then the ones we call pupils consider within themselves whether what they have heard is true. This they do by gazing attentively at that interior truth, so far as they are able. Then it is that they learn, when within themselves they discover that what has been taught is true…” (The Teacher 14.45

“You are closer to me than I am to myself.”

“Let me know myself that I may know You.” (Soliloquies 2,1,1)

Community

“Honour God in each other.” (Rule 1,8)

“Before all else, beloved, love God and then your neighbour, for these are the chief commandments given to us.” (Rule 1,1)

“God does not demand much of you. He asks back what he gave you, and from him you take what is enough for you. The excesses of the rich are the necessities of the poor. When you possess more than you need, you possess what belongs to others.” (On Psalm 147.12)

“Friendship should not be bounded by narrow limits…. It extends beyond those to whom we owe affection and love, even to enemies, for whom we are commanded to pray. There is no one in the human race to whom we do not owe love, even if not out of mutual love, at least on account of our sharing in a common nature.” (Letter 130.13)

“I admit that when I am wearied by the scandals of the world, I abandon my whole self to the love of friends. I find rest in their love and I can stop worrying, for God is in that person to whom I abandon myself and with whom I feel secure and find rest. Their friendship eases my fear, fear about the incertitude of tomorrow that stems from human fragility…”(Letter 73:10)

‘In an orchestra there are many different instruments. But all are tuned so carefully and played in harmony that the audience only hears one melody. This must be our ideal: to be one orchestra for the Lord.’ (On Psalm 150,8)

Restless Search for Truth

“You have made us for Yourself, O Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” (Confessions 1,1)

Truth conquers and “the victory of truth is love.” (Sermon 358,1) 

“Let our searching be such that we can be sure of finding and let our finding be such that we may go on searching.” (The Trinity 9.1,1)

We “understand in order to believe; we believe in order to understand.” (Sermon 43.9)

“Every illness of the soul finds its medicine in the Scriptures.”

“Accordingly, dear reader, whenever you are as certain about something as I am go forward with me; whenever you stick equally fast seek with me; whenever you notice that you have gone wrong come back to me; or that I have, call me back to you.” (The Trinity 1,5,1)

Ongoing Conversion

“It is necessary for a person to let themselves be seized by the Word and change their life.” 

“You can judge how much progress you are making by the degree to which you prefer the common good to your own individual interests.” (Rule 5,2) 

“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.” 

“When the truth is eagerly sought, finding it produces greater enjoyment. Found, it is sought again with renewed desire.” (The Trinity 15,2,2) 

“As pilgrims on the way, sing in hope, but keep on marching. Are we making progress in good works, in true faith, in right living? 

‘‘Bad time, troubled times’, these people say. Let our lives be good, and the times will be good. We make our times; as we are, so are the times.” (Sermon 80,8) 

Teaching and Education

“Teach that students may become their own teacher. Let us feed our pupils with the right food so that time will come when they will be able to provide their own food.” (Serm.155,3,3)

“The first subject students learn is the teacher. Teachers offer themselves for imitation. This is the essence of what people call teaching.” (De musica 1,6)

“Let our searching be such that we can be sure of finding, and let our finding be such that we may go on searching.” (De Trin.9.1,1)

“Take care of your body as if you were going to live forever; and take care of your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.”

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”

“God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail.”

“A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.”

“God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.”

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”

“If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”

“Let us leave a little room for reflection and room too, for silence.”

Nativity Class #6 – The Cross Of Righteous Suffering – Victory Of The Cross By St. Dumitru Stăniloae

In our final Nativity class as we draw close to the birth of Christ, it is good for us to remember how even Christ’s birth reflects this cross of the righteous suffering. Perhaps you, like me, might be tempted to believe that if I’m trying to do the right thing with God … why is this so hard … why wasn’t there room at the inn … why did even finding a place to lay His head become a struggle? So often my life in Christ is complicated by the doubts of my expectations and desires. And, if I’m honest, placing myself on His throne … playing God by imposing my will … instead of accepting His and trusting that as I participate in His will I deepen an experience of God He desires that unites me to Him and reflects His Goodness. Perhaps in the final class, we need to be reminded of the question of the condition of my heart and St. Dumitru’s explanation of God’s purpose for us:

The fathers emphasized the goodness of God as the motive behind creation … God created all things in order that they might share in his Love, that is, full communion with God … the Good, as scripture testifies, produced everything and is the ultimately perfect Cause… God created the world for the sake of humanity, that the world be led towards the purpose of full communion with Him … only humans in a conscious way can rejoice more and more in the love of God and become God’s partners … The world serves this movement of raising ourselves to our ultimate meaning of achieving our fullness in communion with the personal God. All things impose on us a responsibility before God and before the world itself, and it is by the exercise of this responsibility that we increase in our communion with God and with our fellow human beings.

The Experience of God – Vol 2: The World: Creation & Deification (p.17-18) By Dumitru Staniloae

There is a transcendent mystery to our life in Christ .. one that forces us out of the comfort zone of our own understanding. And our life in Christ will reflect this cross if we live it with the daily willingness he is very clear will be presented to us:

If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me 

Luke 9:23

Let’s have St. Dumitru use the life of Job to help us more deeply understand this cross of righteous suffering from his booklet ‘Victory of the Cross’ we’ve studied through Nativity.

In the end it is God alone who can explain the sufferings of the righteous, and he does it through the many questions which he asks Job, all of which draw Job’s attention to the Giver of gifts. God in effect says to Job, ‘All my gifts are wonderful, but the intention of their wonder is to reveal the infinite wisdom and greatness of the one who gives them all’.

Then Job answered the Lord and said: I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withheld from thee … I have uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not … I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

Job 42: 1-3; 5-6

This means to say that up until this moment Job had always thought of God in much the same terms in which others had spoken of him; now he begins to understand God himself, beyond all his gifts, the Giver of everything. In order to gain this supreme treasure he had for a while to lose all his possessions. He lost the respect of others, he lost his health, his wealth—all things—in order to see God in all his greatness and wisdom and marvellous nature. In losing all things he did not doubt God and thus he came to see the apophatic, inexpressible character of God who is beyond all human understanding. He saw God in a higher way than is possible merely through his gifts. He saw him immediately through his suffering.

The believer continually needs to make abstraction of the things of this world, needs to put the things of this world into brackets of forgetfulness, in order to think of God who is above all human understanding. But sometimes it is necessary that God himself should intervene in order to throw into relief the little value of the things of this world in comparison with God, their transitory, passing nature in contrast to the eternity of God, in order to show us more clearly God’s infinite transcendence of his gifts and his ineffable presence with us. In such cases it seems to us that God himself abandons us. This is because sometimes we become so attached to things that we can no longer see God. Sometimes we make so close a link between God and the things which he gives, that we identify God with these things and totally forget God in himself, and then if God no longer shows his interest in us by giving us gifts it seems to us that he has abandoned us. For this reason the cross often seems to us a sign of our being abandoned by God. But it can also happen that God does really withdraw himself from our vision in order to prove and strengthen the tenacity of our love for him. Even our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross had this feeling of complete abandonment by God. But even the Lord Jesus never weakened in his love for God.

In reality, God never abandons us in whatever situation we find ourselves. It is possible that he may disappear for a time, for a moment, from our horizon, from our understanding. But the God whom we habitually think of in terms of creation will then appear to us in the true greatness of his glory which is indefinable and inexpressible in human thoughts and words. This is why in the Song of Songs it is said that sometimes God hides himself, and then again reveals himself in a higher and more glorious way:

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me, to whom I said: Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth. I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house and into the chamber of her who conceived me. (Song of Songs 3: 1- 4)

It is only then that we enter into a relationship with God which is truly personal, a relationship which is above all created things. This relationship with God is one no longer dominated by material images. Our ideas about things and about the gifts which God gives altogether disappear in the light of God himself. Thus purified we give ourselves wholly to God; and we are raised into the dialogue of love exclusively with him. Then we feel that God is infinitely greater than all his gifts and all his creatures, and that in this relationship with him we are raised to a different spiritual level at which we regain in him all that we had lost.

The Christian who has the love of God in him and who thus has love for every person—that love which is an imperishable and inexhaustible reality—feels a greater joy than all the joys which the things of this world can procure, a greater joy than his own existence lived as an isolated individual could ever give him. This is the fact which the righteous discover in their suffering. This cross is given to a man in order that he himself may come to discover God at another level, at an apophatic depth, but also in order to show to other men that there are those who can be attached to God in this way even when all their possessions are taken from them, and even when God himself seems to disappear from their view.

The Cross as the Mystery of Love

The mystery of the cross of the just is the mystery of love between men as eternal persons, the mystery of love for God, and also of the love which above all things must be affirmed amongst men. Truly to love a person means to love them for themselves even when they no longer give us anything, when they no longer seem to have goodwill towards us, even when they seem to show us an incomprehensible coldness or hostility which is altogether contrary to the goodness which they showed to us earlier, even when it seems that the other person has abandoned us even to death. For if we remain firm in our love towards others despite their incomprehensible hardness towards us, we make a true proof of love, of the love which we have for them. This is the love which God himself forms in us and which does indeed raise us from death. When love confronts even death, then it conquers death itself.

He who accepts the death which God gives, with the declaration of love on his lips, gives a supreme proof of a love which will never fail, a love which is given to the person himself and not to his gifts. It is in this supreme love for God that we find the mystery of the cross which is carried by the just, of whom God has given the perfect example in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the earthly suffering which he underwent for the love of God. The Son of God in becoming man accepted the cross first of all to show his love for men, despite their hatred and incomprehension of him which were to be the cause of his death in this world. But then by his death on the cross he has given us the example of a man in whom love for God has resisted to the end, even to being given up to death.

…The world has value only in so far as through it we see and receive the revelations and the energies of the person of God who in himself, in his essence, cannot be described, but whose energies are already at work in all creation and will be fully revealed in the transfigured world of the age to come. Until the last day God is at work in this world, leading it towards its resurrection, above all by means of the cross.

Thus the cross is the sign and the means of the salvation of the world. All the world is a gift of God, and by the cross all the world has to be transcended in God. Only in Christ is this meaning of the cross fully revealed. In the cross of Christ the salvation of the world is founded, and the salvation of the whole cosmos, because by the cross the tendency of the whole cosmos to transcend itself in God is accomplished. One cannot conceive of a world which is not saved, a world which would always remain in suffering, enclosed in itself, a world in which the cross would not fully fulfil the destiny of the world. Suffering would have no meaning at all unless it was leading the world towards its salvation in God. The hell of an eternal suffering is no longer ‘a world’, properly speaking, but simply fragments detached from the world without meaning and without solidarity amongst themselves, shadowy, phantasmagoric fragments of the world. In hell suffering is eternal and would finally swallow up the gift. In the kingdom of God the world has been transfigured by the cross through which God himself is finally revealed and glorified.

Father Gabe’s Rich Young Ruler Homily December 1st 2024 Audio & Transcript

Father Gabe’s Rich Young Ruler Homily 12-1-2024

So, we all try really, really hard to avoid the uncomfortable truth of this story.

So, in the interest of time, let’s get right to it.

This story is not simply a diatribe against having wealth. We are all wealthy. Some of us with money, most of us not with money. But with something, we all have wealth. St. John Chrysostom, the Golden Mouth, tells us that giving away possessions is the least of Christ’s instructions in this passage. Indeed, for some people, giving up all their possessions is actually a great relief and would not actually be all that difficult for them.

The true message of this story cuts much deeper. So, that message is this.

Every single one of us, without exception, possesses something or some things that we value more highly than the kingdom of heaven. Things for which we would be willing to abandon God. And by abandoning God, I don’t mean that we become open enemies of God. But rather that we willingly choose something or someone else, something or someone other than God, with which or with whom to become unified.

If we were in the place of the rich young ruler and Jesus asked us to give away or give up X in order to draw closer to Him, we too would walk away sorrowfully, but willingly.

God does not want to see us make this horrible trade.

So, this story is begging us for our own sakes to figure out what X is in each of our lives. So, this thing or things, this could be people, places, goals, expectations, pursuits of respect, honor, glory. This certainly happens within the church as well.  This will be different for each one of us, and they may likely shift over time.

I remember myself, my earliest thing that I wouldn’t give up to follow God, was to be famous in a band. It was going to happen. I know it doesn’t happen to most people, but it was going to happen for me. My intentions were pure. I just wanted to make beautiful music. No, no; I wanted to be famous. I wanted to have glory. Riches would come along with that. And I wasn’t willing to give that up until it became very clear that this was not going to happen.

So, I then started a company and tried to make all of those same things happen through the company. And it did, sort of. And then God makes that seem hollow and fleeting.

And oftentimes we have to go through it. We have to learn the hard way. The things that we think we should unify ourselves with will actually destroy us. And usually it takes them destroying us in some way for us to realize that God asked us to trade up long ago.

And so at its core, this gospel is a good, true fatherly exhortation to wisely spend our limited time and energy in the pursuit of true freedom.

God is here leading us to become like He is, to become completely unbound by anything, completely free and completely happy. This prospect terrifies most of us because it means becoming an entirely different creature, which is not an easy process. It’s a really big deal.

And thus God is very, very patient with us.

But be that as it may be, out of true love, God always keeps this transformative task directly before us. We must find the courage which without His help is impossible. We must find the courage to let go of the things that we would trade for the Kingdom of Heaven. To let go of the corruptible things that we would choose to unify with instead of unifying with God.

We have to remember, if we choose to unify with that which corrupts and decays, then we also corrupt and decay. Simple math. If we choose to unify with that which is eternal and divine, then we too become eternal and divine.

This is the cross. And crosses really hurt. But they bring us into union with God. This is salvation.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Cross and God’s Revelation of Its Meaning – Victory Of The Cross By Father Dumitru Stăniloae

This is a 2nd extract from a powerful booklet entitled ‘The Victory Of The Cross’ written by the well known 20th century Romanian Orthodox priest and scholar Father Dumitru Stăniloae. You can find the 1st extract from his booklet here.

In the end it is God alone who can explain the sufferings of the righteous, and he does it through the many questions which he asks Job, all of which draw Job’s attention to the Giver of gifts. God in effect says to Job, ‘All my gifts are wonderful, but the intention of their wonder is to reveal the infinite wisdom and greatness of the one who gives them all’.

Then Job answered the Lord and said: I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withheld from thee … I have uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not … I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

Job 42: 1-3; 5-6

This means to say that up until this moment Job had always thought of God in much the same terms in which others had spoken of him; now he begins to understand God himself, beyond all his gifts, the Giver of everything. In order to gain this supreme treasure he had for a while to lose all his possessions. He lost the respect of others, he lost his health, his wealth—all things—in order to see God in all his greatness and wisdom and marvellous nature. In losing all things he did not doubt God and thus he came to see the apophatic, inexpressible character of God who is beyond all human understanding. He saw God in a higher way than is possible merely through his gifts. He saw him immediately through his suffering.

The believer continually needs to make abstraction of the things of this world, needs to put the things of this world into brackets of forgetfulness, in order to think of God who is above all human understanding. But sometimes it is necessary that God himself should intervene in order to throw into relief the little value of the things of this world in comparison with God, their transitory, passing nature in contrast to the eternity of God, in order to show us more clearly God’s infinite transcendence of his gifts and his ineffable presence with us. In such cases it seems to us that God himself abandons us. This is because sometimes we become so attached to things that we can no longer see God. Sometimes we make so close a link between God and the things which he gives, that we identify God with these things and totally forget God in himself, and then if God no longer shows his interest in us by giving us gifts it seems to us that he has abandoned us. For this reason the cross often seems to us a sign of our being abandoned by God. But it can also happen that God does really withdraw himself from our vision in order to prove and strengthen the tenacity of our love for him. Even our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross had this feeling of complete abandonment by God. But even the Lord Jesus never weakened in his love for God.

In reality, God never abandons us in whatever situation we find ourselves. It is possible that he may disappear for a time, for a moment, from our horizon, from our understanding. But the God whom we habitually think of in terms of creation will then appear to us in the true greatness of his glory which is indefinable and inexpressible in human thoughts and words. This is why in the Song of Songs it is said that sometimes God hides himself, and then again reveals himself in a higher and more glorious way:

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me, to whom I said: Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth. I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house and into the chamber of her who conceived me. (Song of Songs 3: 1- 4)

It is only then that we enter into a relationship with God which is truly personal, a relationship which is above all created things. This relationship with God is one no longer dominated by material images. Our ideas about things and about the gifts which God gives altogether disappear in the light of God himself. Thus purified we give ourselves wholly to God; and we are raised into the dialogue of love exclusively with him. Then we feel that God is infinitely greater than all his gifts and all his creatures, and that in this relationship with him we are raised to a different spiritual level at which we regain in him all that we had lost.

The Christian who has the love of God in him and who thus has love for every person—that love which is an imperishable and inexhaustible reality—feels a greater joy than all the joys which the things of this world can procure, a greater joy than his own existence lived as an isolated individual could ever give him. This is the fact which the righteous discover in their suffering. This cross is given to a man in order that he himself may come to discover God at another level, at an apophatic depth, but also in order to show to other men that there are those who can be attached to God in this way even when all their possessions are taken from them, and even when God himself seems to disappear from their view.

The Cross as the Mystery of Love

The mystery of the cross of the just is the mystery of love between men as eternal persons, the mystery of love for God, and also of the love which above all things must be affirmed amongst men. Truly to love a person means to love them for themselves even when they no longer give us anything, when they no longer seem to have goodwill towards us, even when they seem to show us an incomprehensible coldness or hostility which is altogether contrary to the goodness which they showed to us earlier, even when it seems that the other person has abandoned us even to death. For if we remain firm in our love towards others despite their incomprehensible hardness towards us, we make a true proof of love, of the love which we have for them. This is the love which God himself forms in us and which does indeed raise us from death. When love confronts even death, then it conquers death itself.

He who accepts the death which God gives, with the declaration of love on his lips, gives a supreme proof of a love which will never fail, a love which is given to the person himself and not to his gifts. It is in this supreme love for God that we find the mystery of the cross which is carried by the just, of whom God has given the perfect example in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the earthly suffering which he underwent for the love of God. The Son of God in becoming man accepted the cross first of all to show his love for men, despite their hatred and incomprehension of him which were to be the cause of his death in this world. But then by his death on the cross he has given us the example of a man in whom love for God has resisted to the end, even to being given up to death.

In the case of Job we do not have this picture of a love for God which continues even to death, but we feel that this love could have been there unalterable to the end in Job. All the same, in the beginning Job did not understand the reason for his sufferings which in the end were to be a proof of his love for God. It is Christ who first saw the supreme and absolute value of the cross as a proof of love both of God and of men, love of a worth beyond all else. None the less, Job is the type of Christ, and his second and greater fortune is a type or symbol of the resurrection which the just man who accepts death from God will receive in the end.

Love which does not go so far as the love of Job went or, more clearly, as far as the love of Jesus Christ, is not true love but only conditional, a love conditional on things, that is to say a love of oneself and not a true love of others. It does not reveal the true, infinitely greater worth of persons than of any other created things or the eternal basis of their worth in the personal reality of God. In true love a man should transcend himself, go beyond himself, and the supreme act of this transcendence is fulfilled in love for God, who is the Transcendent One.

It is is doubtless true and right that persons reveal their love for one another by their gifts, and this is also true in God’s relationship with men. In this sense we cannot think of the cross without the world as God’s gift. But on the other side we cannot think of the world without the cross. The cross makes this world transparent for God. The cross shows that the world is God’s gift, and as such is a lower and lesser reality than God himself. The cross is the sign of God as a person who is above all his gifts. But it is also the sign of a perfect relationship between God and man. In this sense the cross is specially the sign of the Son of Man in whom this relationship has been perfectly realised. The cross is the sign of the Son of God become man, the sign which he prints on the world by his solidarity with the world.

Without the cross man would be in danger of considering this world as the ultimate reality. Without the cross he would no longer see the world as God’s gift. Without the cross the Son of God incarnate would have simply confirmed the image of the world as it is now as the final reality, and strictly speaking he could have been neither God nor God incarnate. The cross completes the fragmentary meaning of this world which has meaning when it is seen as a gift which has its value, but only a relative and not an absolute value. The cross reveals the destiny of the world as it is drawn towards its transfiguration in God by Christ. For this reason at the end of this stage of the world this sign, ‘the sign of the Son of Man’, will be revealed in the heavens above all the world, as a light, as a meaning, as a destiny which illumines the whole history of man (Matt. 24: 30).

In this way the cross prophetically points to the eschatological, the final destiny of the world. For this reason we associate the sign of the cross with the Holy Trinity, with the Kingdom of God. This is the reason why in the Orthodox Liturgy the cross is printed on the loaf which is used in the Eucharist, bread being at once the sign of God’s gift and of man’s work, the existential expression of the whole of man’s life in this world offered to God. With this sign of the cross the Church blesses, and before all their actions Christians make the sign of the cross in order to dedicate them to God. With this sign the priest blesses the water of Baptism, and also the holy water with which he sprinkles the house, the fields and the whole world in which the Christian lives and works—all is covered with the sign of the cross.

The world has value only in so far as through it we see and receive the revelations and the energies of the person of God who in himself, in his essence, cannot be described, but whose energies are already at work in all creation and will be fully revealed in the transfigured world of the age to come. Until the last day God is at work in this world, leading it towards its resurrection, above all by means of the cross.

Thus the cross is the sign and the means of the salvation of the world. All the world is a gift of God, and by the cross all the world has to be transcended in God. Only in Christ is this meaning of the cross fully revealed. In the cross of Christ the salvation of the world is founded, and the salvation of the whole cosmos, because by the cross the tendency of the whole cosmos to transcend itself in God is accomplished. One cannot conceive of a world which is not saved, a world which would always remain in suffering, enclosed in itself, a world in which the cross would not fully fulfil the destiny of the world. Suffering would have no meaning at all unless it was leading the world towards its salvation in God. The hell of an eternal suffering is no longer ‘a world’, properly speaking, but simply fragments detached from the world without meaning and without solidarity amongst themselves, shadowy, phantasmagoric fragments of the world. In hell suffering is eternal and would finally swallow up the gift. In the kingdom of God the world has been transfigured by the cross through which God himself is finally revealed and glorified.

Temple Of The Foolish Rich Man – Homily by Father Phillip LeMasters

Have you ever thought about the similarities and differences between barns and temples? Usually when we think of barns, we think simply of places to house farm animals or to store crops.  We normally do not think of them as having much spiritual significance. The rich man in today’s gospel lesson thought of his barns only in terms of his business, which was so successful that he looked forward simply to relaxing, eating, drinking, and enjoying himself.  Unfortunately, he did so to the point of making his possessions an idol.  He was rich in things of the world, but poor towards God.  He was ultimately a fool, for he based his life on what was temporary and lost his own soul.  His barn became a temple only to himself. 

We live in a culture that constantly tempts us to follow this man’s bad example. More so than any previous generation, we are bombarded with advertising and other messages telling us that the good life is found in what we can buy. Whether it is cell phones, clothing, cars, houses, entertainment, food, or medicines, the message is the same: Happiness comes from buying the latest new product. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, this message is particularly strong. We do not have to become Scrooges, however. It is one thing to give reasonable gifts to our loved ones in celebration of the Savior’s birth, but it is quite another to turn this holy time of year into an idolatrous orgy of materialism that obscures the very reason for the season.

We are not really near Christmas yet, as Advent just began on November 15. Today, as we continue to celebrate the ForeFeast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, we are reminded of the importance of preparing to receive Christ at His birth. Instead of looking for fulfillment in barns and the money they produce, we should follow her into the temple. Sts. Joachim and Anna took their young daughter to the temple in Jerusalem, where she grew up in prayer and purity in preparation to become the living temple of God when she consented to the message of the Archangel Gabriel to become the mother of the God-Man Jesus Christ. The Theotokos was not prepared for her uniquely glorious role by a life focused on making as much money as possible, acquiring the most fashionable and expensive products, or simply pleasing herself. No, she became unbelievably rich toward God by focusing on the one thing needful, by a life focused on hearing the word of God and keeping it.

In ways appropriate to our own life circumstances, God calls each of us to do the same thing. And before we start making excuses, we need to recognize that what St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians applies to us also: “[Y]ou are no longer strangers and sojourners, but…fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in Whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in Whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” In other words, to be a Christian is to be a temple, for the Holy Spirit dwells in us both personally and collectively. The only way to become a better temple is to follow the example of the Theotokos in deliberate, intentional practices that make us rich toward God, that open ourselves to the healing and transformation of our souls that Christ has brought to the world. We must participate personally in His holiness if we want to welcome Him anew into our lives at Christmas.

The rich fool became wealthy by investing himself entirely in his business to the neglect of everything else. In contrast, the Theotokos invested herself so fully in the Lord that she was able to fulfill the most exalted, blessed, and difficult calling of all time as the Virgin Mother of the Savior. In order for us to follow her example by becoming better temples of Christ, we also have to invest ourselves in holiness. The hard truth is that holiness does not happen by accident, especially in a culture that worships at the altar of pleasure, power, and possessions. So much in our world shapes us every day a bit more like the rich fool in our gospel lesson, regardless of how much or how little money we have. Many of us are addicted to electronic screens on phones, computers, and televisions. What we see and hear through virtually all forms of entertainment encourages us to think and act as though our horizons extend no further than a barn. In other words, the measure of our lives becomes what we possess, what we can buy, and whatever pleasure or distraction we can find on our own terms with food, drink, sex, or anything else. We think of ourselves as isolated individuals free to seek happiness however it suits us. No wonder that there is so much divorce, abortion, sexual immorality, and disregard for the poor, sick, and aged in our society. Investing our lives in these ways is a form of idolatry, of offering ourselves to false gods that can neither save nor satisfy us. The barn of the rich fool was also a temple, a pagan temple in which he basically worshiped himself. If we are not careful, we will become just like him by laying up treasures for ourselves according to the dominant standards of our culture and shut ourselves out of the new life that Christ has brought to the world.

We cannot control the larger trends of our society, but we can control what we do each day. During this Nativity Fast, no matter the circumstances of our lives, we can all take steps to live more faithfully as members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone. In other words, we can intentionally reject corrupting influences and live in ways that serve our calling to become better living temples of the Lord. Yes, we can stop obsessing about our barns and enter into the temple of the one true God.

The first step is to set aside time for prayer. If we do not pray every day, we should not be surprised that it is hard to pray in Church or that we find only frustration in trying to resist temptation or to know God’s peace in our lives.  We also need to read the Bible.  If we fill our minds with everything but the Holy Scriptures and the lives of the Saints, we should not be surprised that worry, fear, and unholy thoughts dominate us.  Fasting is also crucial.  If we do not fast or otherwise practice self-denial, we should not be surprised when self-centered desires for pleasure routinely get the better of us and make us their slaves.  We should also share with the poor.  If we do not give generously of our time and resources to others in need, we should not be surprised when selfishness alienates us from God, our neighbors, and even our loved ones. This is also a time for humble confession and repentance.   If we refuse to acknowledge and turn from our  sins, we should not be surprised when we are overcome by guilt and fall into despair about leading a faithful life.  No, the Theotokos did not wander into the temple by accident and we will not follow her into a life of holiness unless we intentionally reorient ourselves toward Him.

None of us will do that perfectly, but we must all take the steps we are capable of taking in order to turn our barns into temples. Remember that the infant Christ was born in a barn, which by virtue of His presence became a temple. The same will be true of our distracted, broken lives when—with the fear of God and faith and love—we open ourselves to the One Who comes to save us at Christmas. The Theotokos prepared to receive the Savior by attending to the one thing needful, to hearing and keeping His word. In the world as we know it, that takes deliberate effort, but it remains the only way to be rich toward God. And that is why Christ is born at Christmas, to bring us into His blessed, holy, and divine life which is more marvelous than anything we can possibly imagine. As the Lord said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Humble Repentance or Paralyzing Guilt – Homily Fifth Sunday of Lent

By Father Philip LeMasters

            Whenever we experience guilt and shame because of something we have done wrong, we need to ask ourselves a question.  Do we feel that way because we are sorrowful that we have disobeyed God or because we cannot stand being less than perfect in our own eyes or those of others?  The first kind of humiliation is spiritually beneficial and may lead to repentance, but the second kind is simply a form of pride that easily paralyzes us in obsessive despair. At this point in our lives, most of us probably experience some mixture of these two types of shame.  As we grow closer to Christ, the first must increase and the second must decrease.

When we wonder if there is hope for the healing of our souls in this way, we should remember St. Mary of Egypt. She stands as a brilliant icon of how to repent from even the most shameful sins. Mary experienced a healthy form of guilt when her eyes were opened to how depraved she had become through her life of addiction to perverse sexual pleasure.  Through the intercessions and guidance of the Theotokos, she venerated the Holy Cross at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and received Communion on her way to decades of ascetical struggle in the desert. When the monk Zosima stumbled upon her almost 50 years later, he was amazed at her holiness.  He saw this holy woman walk on water and rise up off the ground in prayer, but like all the saints she knew only her own sins and perpetual need for the Lord’s mercy.

Perhaps what makes St. Mary of Egypt’s story such a beautiful icon of true repentance is that she was genuinely humble before God.  She was not sorrowful for her sin out of a sense of wounded pride, obsessive self-centered guilt, or fear of what others thought of her.  Instead, she said earnestly to the Theotokos “Be my faithful witness before your Son that I will never again defile my body by the impurity of fornication, but as soon as I have seen the Tree of the Cross I will renounce the world and its temptations and will go wherever you will lead me.”  And she did precisely that, abandoning all that she had known for the long and difficult journey that led to the healing of her soul.  Her focus was completely on doing whatever it took to reorient her life toward God, to purify her desires so that she would find true fulfillment in Him.

Today the Orthodox Church calls us all to follow her example of repentance, regardless of the details of how we have sinned in thought, word, and deed. By commemorating a notorious sex addict who became a great saint, we proclaim that no sin is so shameful that we cannot repent of it.  An honest look at our lives, as we should all take during Lent, dredges up shame and regret in various forms.  St. Mary of Egypt reminds us to accept humbly the truth about our failings as we confess our sins, call for the Lord’s mercy, and do what is necessary to find healing.  Her example reminds us not to be paralyzed by prideful obsessions that block us from being freed from slavery to our passions.  Even her depraved way of life did not exclude St. Mary of Egypt from acquiring remarkable holiness.  If she did not let a perverse form of pride deter her from finding salvation, then no one should be ashamed to kneel before Christ in humility. The Savior did not reject her and He will not reject us when we come to Him as she did.

In today’s gospel text, James and John related to Christ in a very different way, for they wanted the best positions of power when He came into His Kingdom.  The Lord challenged their prideful delusions by reminding the disciples that humility, not self-exalation, is the way to life eternal.  He said “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”  How shocking that today we celebrate honest, humble repentance from a woman with a truly scandalous past while some of the men closest to Christ in His earthly ministry think only of getting worldly power for themselves.

Perhaps the key difference is that St. Mary of Egypt got over obsession with herself.  Instead of assuming that she was “damaged goods” for whom there was no hope, she humbly died to self by taking up her cross.  Indeed, her repentance began in the context of venerating the Holy Cross at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  The rest of her journey required profound faith, sacrifice, and courage. To undo with God’s help the harm that she had done to herself through years of debauchery must have been incredibly difficult.  But sustained by the Lord’s mercy and the intercessions of the Theotokos, that is precisely what she did over the remaining decades of her life.

Today, so near the end of Lent and only a week from Palm Sunday, we see that this is the path we must take also.  In order to follow it, we must not be paralyzed in prideful shame about anything we have said, thought, done, or otherwise experienced or participated in at any point in our lives.  Instead, we must have the brutal honesty and deep humility of St. Mary of Egypt, a woman with a revolting past who became a shining beacon of holiness.  That is how she found healing for her soul and it is how we will find healing for ours also. The good news of this season is that the Lord makes such blessedness possible for us all through His Cross, His descent into Hades, and His glorious resurrection on the third day.  But in order to participate in the great mystery of His salvation, we too must get over our pride, accept His mercy, and actually repent.  If St. Mary of Egypt could do that with her personal history, we can too.

Great Lent And The Mystery of the Cross & Resurrection – Short Reflection

By Archimandrite Zacharias from his book ’At The Doors of Holy Lent’

Great Lent is a taste of death in the Name of God, for the sake of our reconciliation with Him, for the sake of His commandment. The little death that that beast, our ego, endures through fasting, through voluntarily bearing shame in the mystery of confession, by shedding streams of wretched tears for our dire poverty and inability to render mighty love unto the Lord; this death places us on the path of Him Who said: ‘I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.’(Rev 1:17-18). This begets in the heart the faith that, ‘If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.’ (Rom 6:8-9). Then on the night of the Resurrection, we sing with boldness the hymn: ‘Yesterday, O Christ, I was buried with Thee and today I rise again with Thy rising. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee: do Thou Thyself glorify me, O Saviour, in thy kingdom.’ Our minor taste of death leavens in the heart and, upon hearing the good news of the Resurrection of Christ, it becomes an explosion of joy, initiating us into the mystery of His descent into hell and ascension above the Heavens.

The Church is preoccupied with only one matter: the Cross and Resurrection of Christ. Saint Paul was consumed by the desire to set forth before his disciples the image of Jesus Christ, ‘and Him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2). In other words, his concern was to impart to them the knowledge of the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, knowing that whosoever walks the way of the Cross will also enter into the presence of the Risen Lord. The Church institutes as a commandment that we should go through this period with spiritual tension for the renewal of our life. She travails to see her children assimilated through obedience into the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.

Putting All of the Fifth Week of Lent Together – Father Thomas Hopko

At the end of the fifth week of Great Lent, and very particularly on the fifth Sunday, the Orthodox Church has all of its members and faithful Christians contemplating a very beloved and well-known person in Christian history for ancient Christians, and that is a woman named Mary of Egypt. On the matins of the Thursday of the fifth week, there is a penitential canon of St. Andrew of Crete that is read. That particular service, which is a long type of penitential vigil, is often called in Orthodox popular piety “the vigil of Mary of Egypt.” It’s kind of an identification with Mary. In Slavonic, it’s called Marii bodrstvovaniye, the standing with Mary in penance before God. Indeed, in that canon, with all the penitential verses, there are verses that ask Mary of Egypt to intercede for us, to pray for us, as part of the penitential canon. St. Andrew of Crete, the author, is also asked, but particularly Mary of Egypt.

On this Sunday, it’s again kind of a paradox in Orthodox worship, because the focus is now all on Christ. You have that great celebration of the Theotokos with the Akathist on Saturday, and then you enter into the Lord’s Day, and you hear the gospel about Christ going up to Jerusalem and entering into his glory through his suffering. Then even on that Sunday also in the epistle reading, we’ll hear again about how Christ enters into the holy of holies in heaven, not of creation, the sanctuary of God, securing for us an eternal redemption, and that he’s led to offer his blood on the cross through the eternal Holy Spirit where he offers himself without blemish to God and we are encouraged to purify our consciences from dead works in order to serve the living God.

So we are focusing on Christ, but then, with that, you have this whole Sunday when on the one hand you have these marvelous hymns about the resurrection and the victory of Christ on that Sunday, and then you hear even more about this Mary of Egypt. And it’s a kind of a juxtaposition. It’s almost as if the Holy Spirit and God Almighty wants us to keep these two things together. As we focus on Christ and his victory and go up with him to Jerusalem, then we know that this is for everyone and that it is for the worst of sinners. Nobody is excluded, and you can never forget that when you think of Mary of Egypt.

Who was this Mary? It’s interesting that on that Thursday matins with that canon the entire Life of Mary of Egypt is read in church.

…Orthodox Christians in this ancient tradition are called to contemplate that Mary, to remember her. And what’s the point? What’s the point? Oh, there are probably so many, and maybe the points are different for every single person who hears that story, but there’s two points that are for sure. One is that, no matter how sinful we are, the Lord God Almighty forgives us. The other point is that repentance is not just an emotion. It’s not just some kind of magical act. When we repent, we have to purge out of ourselves all of the garbage and filth and slime that’s in us. We have to go through a purgation process before we can be illumined and deified. All that is evil in us has to go: it’s got to be scrubbed away; it’s got to be cut out by the word of God that’s a two-edged sword that cuts the bones and marrows, the sinews, as it says in [the] letter to the Hebrews, the heart of people.

Penance is a work. It is a work. It’s made possible by faith and grace, but it is the result of faith and grace. We know God, we believe in him, we accept his grace, and then that grace purifies us, but it’s not automatic. I can’t resist saying—maybe I shouldn’t on the radio—about how one of my friends would say, “We believe in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth; and the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit. We don’t believe in the Magician, the Mechanic, and the Fairy Godmother.” God is not a fairy godmother. He’s not a magician. He’s not a mechanic. There has to be a synergia between us and God. We have to accept that grace that cleanses us, that heals us, that power, and it’s got to happen, and it takes time. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes perseverance to the end. How often Jesus said, “Those who persevere to the end will be saved.” He says, “In hypomone, in patient endurance you will win your life,” and that repentance is a process; it’s not a momentary act.

Yes, Mary had her conversion experience. Yes, she knew the grace and the love of God at that moment, at that Holy Sepulcher. Yes, she knew that she was saved when she was allowed to enter and to venerate the tomb of Christ and receive the precious gifts of his broken body and spilled blood for the forgiveness of her sins, for the healing of her soul and her body and her passions and emotions and for the attaining of everlasting life. Yeah, that moment took place, and there are many such moments often in people’s lives. But then there is the result of that moment: the ongoing life in conformity to that moment. That’s what we see also in Mary of Egypt.

When I was the dean of St. Vladimir’s and the pastor of the chapel, and of course I was there for 30-some years, I always loved that fifth week of Lent. We had a practice at the seminary chapel that was, for me, at least, incredibly significant and marvelous. This is what it was: We would have those penitential services: the Presanctified on Wednesday with all those prostrations and those 24 additional penitential hymns—“O Lord, before I perish utterly, before I perish to the end, do thou save me, O Lord.” We would sing that canon of Andrew with Mary and keep that vigil on that Thursday. Honestly, we cut it down a bit. We were not monks and monastics there; we had our schedule to live, but we did it. We did it, yes. And then we sang the entire Akathist Hymn the next day, with all that marvelous celebration and veneration of the Theotokos with everything we could possibly think of put into our mouth to celebration the incarnation of the Son of God through her.

And when we sang that Akathist Hymn, we had a quite large icon of the Theotokos, Mother of God, with the Child, and we had it set in the middle of the church, and it was surrounded by flowers. It was decorated by beautiful flowers, and we would stand in front of that icon of the Theotokos, Mary, Mother of God. The deacons would be incensing and the whole church would be singing this marvelous Akathistos Hymn with all those wonderful words. Then we would celebration the Incarnation and Mary on that Saturday in the morning.

And then, on Saturday evening when we would come for the vespers and the matins and the Divine Liturgy of the fifth Sunday of Lent, in that same frame of flowers, on that same stand, the same analoy, in the middle of our same church, would be another icon: an icon of another Mary. Because we would remove the icon of the Theotokos and Child, and in that very same frame of flowers, on that very same stand, in the middle of our very same chapel, we would see Mary of Egypt. What a contrast that was! What an amazing thing it was, that on Saturday we’re glorifying and venerating the incarnation of the Son of God through the All-pure Virgin, of whom is more holy? The most holiest of mere human beings, Christ’s mother, Mary, holding in her arms the Holy One of God, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world. Holiness! Holiness like you cannot imagine! was in that icon in those flowers and in those songs.

And then in the same building, on the same stand, in the same flowers—was Mary of Egypt. And our icon showed her emaciated, sun-burnt, her hair frizzly white, and her face totally beautiful, and even similar to the face of the Theotokos in the iconography. Totally beautiful. And we knew that a nymphomaniac, sexually addicted harlot and even-worse-than-a-harlot human enters the same radiance and the same glory as the Mother of Christ and of all believers. Like Mary, she herself became more honorable than cherubim, more glorious than seraphim, because in Christ everyone who’s saved has that particular glory. We all are enthroned with Christ over all the angels—the twelve apostles sit on twelve thrones, judging the angels, it says in Scripture. We really are deified and enter into the glory of God. That is why Christ was born of a Virgin, and that’s why we venerate his mother so magnificently.

But on this day we know that the worst, the lowliest, the filthiest, the most addicted, the most impassioned, the most possessed, by faith and grace through that same Christ, by the intercessions of his mother and all the saints, can enter into that same glory. And Mary of Egypt tells us that. She shows us that. And then she begins herself to intercede for us poor sinners. Maybe some of us listening are sex-addicted ourselves and nymphos and whatever, controlled and on computers, looking at porno and whatever—but there’s hope for us. There’s hope for us. Mary of Egypt proves there’s hope for us.

But it’s not magic, it’s not mechanical; God is not a fairy godmother. There must be faith, grace accepted and lived out, and that purgation that leads to illumination that leads to glorification, leads to deification—can be ours. If it can be Mary of Egypt’s, then it can be ours. And how wonderful it was to go to church on Saturday of the fifth week and stand in front of that flower-decorated icon of the Theotokos and Child, and to come back again that same night and the next day and to see, in that same place, Mary of Egypt.

Why is the Great Canon done in its entirety in the 5th week of Lent

Remember to check out the Great Canon Resource Page as you prepare

By Fr. Sergei V. Bulgakov

At Matins on this day the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read in its entirety once a year, which was read in four parts on the first four days of the first week, and the Life of St. Mary of Egypt is read after the Sessional Hymn (Kathisma). According to this feature of the Thursday Matins it is called either the St. Andrew of Crete or the St. Mary of Egypt Thursday. 

In the Canon are collected and stated, all the exhortations to fasting and repentance, and the Holy Church repeats it now in its fullness to inspire us new strength for the successful end to Lent. “Since”, it is said in the Synaxarion, “the Holy Forty Day Lent is drawing near the end so that men should not become lazy, or more carelessly disposed to the spiritual efforts, or give up their abstinence altogether,” that this Great Canon is offered. It is “so long, and so well-composed, as to be sufficient to soften even the hardest soul, and to rouse it to resumption of the good, if only it is sung with a contrite heart and proper attention”. And the Church Typikon (Ustav) orders the Great Canon to be read and chanted slowly and “with a contrite heart and voice, making three prostrations at each Troparion”. 

For the same purpose of abstinence and strength, and attention to repentance is the reading of the Life of the Venerable Mary of Egypt. According to an explanation of the same Synaxarion, the Life of the Venerable Mary also “manifests infinite compunction and gives much encouragement to the fallen and sinners”, representing itself to us as a paradigm of true repentance, and an example of the unutterable mercy of God. It serves as the continuation of the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete and a transition to the order of the following Sunday. Reading the Canon of St. Andrew and Mary of Egypt on the Thursday of the Fifth Week was established from the time of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

Kontakion in Plagal of the Second Tone

My soul, my soul, arise. Why are you sleeping? The end is approaching, and you will be confounded. Awake, therefore, that you may be spared by Christ God, Who is everywhere present and fills all things.