In his marvelous book, ‘The Way of the Spirit – Reflections on Life In God’ , we have an outstanding homily (Chapter 10) given by Archimandrite Aimilanianos at this time of beginning our preparation for Lent. It is powerful and quite simple in its message of how essential our humility is to allowing God to find us and to reveal Himself to us. I’ve dramatically shortened this homily but hopefully captured much of the essence of his message that was delivered on February 23rd, 1986.
Revelation & Knowledge of God in Humility Homily
Today is the beginning of the Triodion, which is one of the most significant days in the life of the Church. 1 Today we cross a threshold. Today a shift occurs, the atmosphere changes, and all the essential elements are transformed. And all of this happens in order to prepare us for the greatest and most wonderful period of the year: Great Lent. The Triodion opens up a door which leads directly to heaven. The Triodion is an enchanting meadow, where Christ is the shepherd, and God feeds His spiritual flock. 2
As we heard in the Matins service this morning, Christ enters the life of the Church with a special mission, ”teaching us, by parables, to correct our lives”. What does it mean to ”correct our life”? It means to clarify your position with respect to God and the Church. It means to get to know God better, and to establish a relationship with Him that you won’t abandon. Are we going to live with God, or, in the end, go our separate ways? Nobody gets married in order to get divorced, but divorces often happen The same thing occurs with God.
Today we heard the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee (Lk 18:10-14). It speaks of humility. I won’t repeat the story to you now, because you all know it perfectly well. But within the larger meaning of the parable, there’s something I’d like you to take careful note of. The Pharisee thought he knew God. He believed that he and God were friends. He was, however, mistaken in this belief, and it was rather the other man, the Publican, who was God’s friend.
The Pharisee thought he knew God, but he didn’t. It’s not that easy to know God. But because he faithfully observed the outward rules of religion, he was under the false impression that God was somehow in his debt, that God owed him something. God for him was a kind of accountant, keeping a set of books showing what people owed him and what he owed them. But it’s not like that.
The moment the Pharisee said, I’m not like those other people (Lk18:11), he cut himself off from God. Why? Because God is humble, and since the Pharisee felt no need for humility, it follows that he felt no need for God. He knew the law, and the traditions of his faith, but he did not know God.
The Publican, on the other hand, had no illusions about himself. He was sunk up to his neck in the swamp of his sins. And yet, even though he was awash in the slime of his transgressions, what did he say to God? Be merciful to me a sinner (Lk 18.13). And at that moment, in his sinful, suffering, disconsolate heart, he felt certain that he was justified, thanks to his humility and the frank acknowledgement of his sinfulness. As the Lord tells us, he went down to his house justified (Lk 18.14), which means that God recognized and received him. As a sinner he had been living in darkness, but his humility brought him into the light of paradise and granted him communion with God. 5
Next Sunday, we shall hear another wonderful parable: the story of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11-32), which also speaks of humility and our return to God. This parable reveals that God is our Heavenly Father, and the founder, builder, and Lord of the Church, into which he welcomes all who approach him with compunction, and who ultimately choose God over the things of the world.
On the third Sunday, we will hear the parable about the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgement (Mt 25:31-46). This parable present us with a vision of Christ enthroned in His glory, and reveals to us that He does not judge us by human standards of justice, but rather by the measure of our humility. For in his own humility, Christ has concealed Himself in the person of the poor, and only those with the spirit of humility are able to stoop down and minister to Him.
Thereafter we come to the last Sunday before Lent, called Cheese-Fare Sunday. Having reached the end of this preliminary period of preparation, we begin again at the beginning, with a review of history; the God of humility invites us to return, not simply to paradise, but into the very kingdom of heaven.
In each of these Gospel stories, we find the answers to our deepest questions: Who is God? What is God? How is God revealed? To whom does God reveal Himself? These are universal human questions, and thus they are our questions too, and so our theme today is how God is revealed and made known to us.
The Son of God does not come in symbols, or in clouds or still breezes. Instead, He removed his garments of light (cf. Ps 103.2) and clothed Himself in the garments of human nature. Long ago, God made man a little god. Now, God Himself becomes man, and this is beyond anything that man could ever have imagined or hoped for.
Until God become man, He built bridges, so that He might cross over to us, and we to Him. Now He abolishes all distances, removes all boundaries, and comes to dwell with us forever. Unable to endure the loss of His creation, He sets aside His unspeakable glory and humbles Himself, definitively taking on our condition. 15
And His whole life was an ongoing self-abasement, an unending self-emptying, from the moment of His conception until His death and burial and beyond. In the extreme humility of His descent, God did not stop at the clouds. Neither did His journey end on earth. He went all the way to hell. In His extreme humility, He descends to the extremity of man’s damnation, and stretches forth His hands to those sitting in the darkness and the shadow of death (cf. Lk 1.79). In stretching forth His hands, He embraces all: those who loved Him, and those who hated Him; those who stood by Him throughout His life, and those who denied Him. He extends His open hands to all, so that anyone who wants can take hold of Him, and He will pull them out of Hell. 16 Lower than this, there is no place for man or God to go.
In light of God’s descent, everything has changed. When the highest entered the lowest, when God entered the realm of hell, everything there was turned upside down. The Devil was defeated. Death yielded to life. Darkness was swallowed up by light. Fallen man ascended into heaven. In union with Christ, human nature now sits on the throne of God, being filled with the Holy Spirit. God has descended, and reduced Himself for our sake, while redeemed humanity has become a great mass, exalted, so high as to surpass heaven itself. In his sermon on humility, St. Basil says that “from a state of nothingness, man has expanded into the heavens.” 17 And all of this can be ours, if only we humble ourselves.
But to commune truly with the humble God, we must be humble. This is why Christ says: He who humbles himself will be exalted (Mt 23.12). What does exalted mean here? It means that such a person will attain to the knowledge of God. It doesn’t mean being glorified in some abstract way, or being established in a comfortable place in heaven, still less does it mean that men will honor and praise us. It means that the Holy Spirit will reveal all things to our hearts, as long as we humble ourselves and bow our heads to God.
In the person of Christ, we can see that humility is a quality of God, a feature of His hypostasis. God is not God if He is not humble. And neither can I be like god unless I am humble. Indeed, without humility, I’ll become a demon. Humility must therefore be a condition of my being. I must embrace humility, knowing that, when I live in humility, I live in God.
What is humility? It is, as we have been saying, the life of God, the form of divine life, and we see this clearly in the life of Christ, who descended from heaven to extreme lowliness. In everything that concerns Him we find lessons of humility. He was born in a cave, and placed not in a crib but in a trough. He grew up in the house of a poor carpenter. He was subject to His mother and Joseph. He was taught, and applied Himself to lessons He did not need to learn. He accepted baptism from the hands of John His servant. When He was slandered and arrested and threatened with death, He did not make use of His marvelous powers (Mt 26.53). He subjected Himself to temporal authority. He was brought before the high priest as if he were a common criminal, and then led to the governor. He silently bore insults and false accusations, and in silence He submitted to His sentence, although with one word He could have refuted the false witnesses. He was spat upon by the lowest and vilest of men. He surrendered Himself to death on the cross, the most shameful form of death known to man. From His birth to the end of His life, He displayed humility in all things. 18 And this is why St. Isaac the Syrian says that “humility is the raiment of divinity.” 19
Following the example of Christ, humility is the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian life, and the foundation for our relation with God. The more humble we are, the more God will reveal Himself to us. And the more we know about God, the more humble we become. We need all the virtues, but without humility they achieve nothing. Even fasting, prayer, and love itself can do nothing without humility. But when prayer and fasting are joined with humility, we become the companion of God, and enter the divine environment in such a way that, as we’ve said, we become gods ourselves.
We must not seek to know God, or anything else from or about God. We must rather humble ourselves. God will then come to us and give us that which we desire. If you don’t humbly acknowledge your spiritual poverty, you won’t be able to ask God to give you the treasures of His grace. But through humility and prayer, God pours out the riches of His knowledge, granting us communion in His own life.
But rather than being filled with the knowledge of God, we normally live with a void at the center of our existence. There is a hole in our heart, into which crawl all the cares and worries of life. We work ourselves to exhaustion in pursuit of success and happiness. We struggle to improve our position in society, to attend the right schools, and move in the right kinds of circles. But the void within us is always on the increase. Nothing in the world can fill it, because it can only be filled by God.
But we mustn’t despair, because despair itself is a sign of pride, and thus will take us even further away from the humble God. Avoid that road. Resist temptation, struggle, take up your cross, and God will come and find you, wherever you are. As He did to Adam, He’ll ask you where you are, what’s happened, and extend His hand to you. You will awake from your state of spiritual confusion, and you’ll see Him wishing to draw you toward greater knowledge of Him.
Then, the empty place within you will become like the ark of the covenant. It will become a holy place in which God will dwell. Though your heart was a tomb in which Christ was dead, it will now be filled with light, with angels sitting on either side of it, as the resurrected Christ comes to meet you. For your part, you need to endure a little darkness, and struggle against temptations; to hold fast when you feel like despairing. But don’t despair. God will come.
Another problem we have is that we tire easily. When it comes to worldly pursuits, our energy knows no bounds, but we grow weary very quickly when God is concerned. Those who chase after wealth or glory never tire of doing so. Others pursue sensual pleasures, tirelessly chasing after sin. But even the thought of running after God leaves us feeling fatigued. We get tired, and then we forget, and then we’re led astray by the world. But then something happens to make us think of God, and so we make promises and resolutions, but, after a little while, forget all about them, and so it goes round and round. But think about the material things you’re chasing after and accumulating in great piles: they’re all banal, fleeting, and utterly without meaning.
If you are able to see this, then sink the eyes of your soul deep into your heart—be it ever so twisted and perverted—and ask God to take over. Hovering over the chaos of your life, God will shine His light (cf. Gen 1.3), and the abyss of hell that was in you will be transformed into heaven. God is humble, and will not shrink from entering into your sinful heart in order to rescue you from sin. That’s God! And only God can do this. No one and nothing else in this world can raise you from your state of death. There is no other cure for your wound, no other remedy for what ails you. In whatever you do, choose the path of humility, and God will glorify you. In that way, you will travel on a safe and sure road, having angels as your companions, and quickly arrive at the house of God. Christ will acknowledge you as His own disciple, and shall grant you His peace, for He says: Learn from me, because I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls (Mt 11.29).
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