Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ascetical work; Orthodox asceticism; prayer of the heart; spiritual warfare; monastic life; Eastern Orthodox spirituality; repentance; Ignatius Brianchaninov; Religion & Spirituality; Christianity / Orthodox; Christian Living / Spiritual Growth
Description: St Ignatius Brianchaninov gathered the work of a lifetime into this first volume of his Ascetic Experiences — essays, homilies, and meditations set down as an archimandrite in answer to the questions of monks and devout laypeople. He treats monasticism as the science of sciences and teaches it from Scripture and the Fathers rather than from theory. Grave chapters on repentance, prayer, and the passions stand beside lyrical readings of a winter garden, a graveside, and the sea, each pressed to yield its lesson for the soul.

Ascetic Experiences, Volume One

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Святитель Игнатий (Брянчанинов). Полное собрание творений. — СПб., 1865–1886 (дореволюционное издание, переизд.).

Cover: The Quiet Abode by Isaac Levitan (Russian, 1860–1900), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:asketicheskie_opyty_1:en:1

Introduction

The Author

Ignatius Brianchaninov was born in 1807 into the old landed nobility of the Russian province of Vologda, on the family estate of Pokrovskoe. In baptism he was named Demetrius, and by the reckoning of his family the child was itself an answer to prayer, born to a devout mother after years of childlessness. He grew up quiet and inward, drawn early to church services and to spiritual reading, and marked from boyhood by the seriousness of temperament that would shape the whole of his life.

At fifteen he was sent to the capital and enrolled in the Imperial School of Military Engineers in Saint Petersburg, then among the most demanding institutions in the empire. He excelled there, graduating at the head of his class and standing at the threshold of a brilliant career in the service of the state. But the studies that most engaged him lay outside the curriculum. In these years the young officer read widely in the Scriptures and the writings of the ascetic Fathers, kept company with monks and pilgrims, and came under the influence of the elders of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The interior conviction grew in him that the engineering and military future laid out before him was not the one to which he was called. Against the wishes of his family and to the disappointment of his patrons at court, he resigned his commission to seek the monastic life.

The path was not smooth. He spent several difficult years moving among monasteries and under the direction of various elders, in poor health and often in poverty, before he was clothed as a monk in 1831 and given the name Ignatius. Ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood followed. His gifts were quickly recognized. In 1833, while still a young man, he was raised to the dignity of archimandrite and set over the Saint Sergius Hermitage near Saint Petersburg, a monastery that had fallen into decline and that he was charged with restoring. He governed it for nearly a quarter of a century. It was here, in the demanding double labor of administering a community close to the capital and directing the souls who sought him out, that the writings gathered in the present volume were composed.

In 1857 he was consecrated bishop of the Caucasus and the Black Sea coast—a vast, newly organized, and unsettled diocese on the empire’s southern frontier—and set about the ordinary and unglamorous work of a reforming pastor: ordering the divine services, raising the education and the common life of the clergy, and attending to the schools. The labor told on a constitution already worn by years of ascetic effort and by serious illness. After only about four years he asked to be released, and in 1861 he withdrew to the Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery in the Kostroma region, on the Volga. There he spent his last years in seclusion, reviewing and completing his written work and preparing his collected writings for the press. He died on the thirtieth of April, 1867.

More than a century later, in 1988—the year the Russian Church kept the millennium of the baptism of Rus—he was formally numbered among the saints, and he is now commemorated on the thirtieth of April, the day of his repose. He belongs, in the Church’s memory, among that remarkable company of nineteenth-century Russian spiritual teachers, alongside the elders of Optina and figures such as Theophan the Recluse, through whom the ancient monastic and Philokalic tradition of the Christian East was recovered, translated, and pressed home to the conscience of a modern age. That he was a Russian Orthodox bishop and is a canonized saint of that Church is a plain fact of his biography. What has carried his name far beyond the boundaries of his own communion is something wider: he is one of the surest guides the modern world possesses to the interior life of prayer, repentance, and self-knowledge that stands at the heart of the whole Christian ascetic inheritance.

The Work: Occasion & Purpose

Ascetic Experiences (Аскетические опыты) is Ignatius Brianchaninov’s central work, and the book offered here is its first volume. Its Russian title — opyty, “experiences” or “trials,” in the sense of things tested and proved—is deliberate and worth pausing over. This is not a systematic treatise on the spiritual life, laid out from first principles. It is a gathering of separate pieces, more than fifty in this volume alone, written at different times and for different occasions across the author’s long years as an archimandrite. Most of them arose, as he tells us himself in the preface, in answer to questions of the inner life put to him by the monks and devout laypeople who were under his spiritual direction. They are, in the most exact sense, the record of things learned and confirmed in the actual practice of the ascetic struggle, set down by one who had passed through them.

Toward the end of his life, conscious that his earthly course was nearing its close, Ignatius gathered these scattered writings into one. He gives two reasons for doing so. The first was practical and pastoral: many of the pieces had already spread in manuscript copies, and in the copying they had accumulated errors that he wished to correct at the source. The second reason he states in the language of stewardship. He regarded himself as bound to render to Christian society an account of what he had seen—an account of the monastic and interior life “as it appears in the holy tradition” of the Church, and as he had been permitted to behold it in certain living representatives of that tradition in his own day. So he reviewed, corrected, supplemented, and arranged the whole, and saw it into print at Saint Petersburg in 1865, as the opening volume of the collected works published during his own lifetime.

The occasion, then, is a lifetime’s spiritual direction distilled and set in order at its end; the purpose is unmistakably practical. Ignatius writes for people who actually intend to pray, to repent, and to struggle against their passions, and he writes to tell them the truth about what that undertaking involves. The governing concern of the volume, announced in its very first pages, is stated with great clarity. The distinguishing mark of monastic life in more recent times, he observes—following Saint Nilus of Sora and the later Fathers—is that the seeker can no longer count on being guided by living, God-inspired teachers, for such vessels of grace have become extremely rare. The one who would advance in the spiritual life must therefore be guided above all by Holy Scripture and by the writings of the Fathers, read rightly and applied to present conditions. To explain this necessity, and to serve as exactly such a guide, is the aim that runs through the whole book. It is a work written out of a keen and sober sense of its own historical moment: a manual of the ancient interior tradition, deliberately framed for readers who no longer have easy access to the living masters who once transmitted it face to face.

Argument & Structure

The volume opens with the author’s own brief preface, which sets out the governing thought just described, and it closes, in the manner of the Fathers, with a personal lament over the writer’s own poverty of soul. Between these two frames it moves, without rigid system, across the whole territory of the interior life. The reader should not look for a single continuous argument advancing chapter by chapter. What holds the pieces together is a shared center of gravity, and, moving between them, an unmistakable unity of voice and vision.

The book proceeds in two registers, and the interplay between them is one of its distinctive features. In the first register stand the sustained doctrinal essays. These are the load-bearing pillars of the volume: extended meditations on following Christ and on the renunciation the following requires; on repentance, which for Ignatius names the abiding disposition of the Christian soul rather than a single act; on the reading of the Gospel and on the reading of the Fathers, together with a companion warning against books that carry false teaching; on the love of neighbor and the love of God; on fasting; on the eight principal passions and the virtues set against them; and, at length and with great care, on prayer and above all on the Jesus Prayer. To these are joined more discursive treatments of humility, patience, purity, the Gospel commandments and Beatitudes, the Christian’s proper relation to his own passions, and the nature and calling of monasticism itself.

In the second register are the short lyrical meditations, and they give the book much of its unexpected beauty. Ignatius had the eye of a contemplative for the ordinary things before him, and again and again he reads the visible world for what it can teach the soul. A garden in winter, a bare tree against the window of his cell, a cemetery, the sea, the setting sun, dew on the grass, the changing of a season—each becomes an occasion for reflection on mortality, providence, and the life to come. These pieces are brief, unguarded, and often deeply moving, and they stand among the doctrinal essays as another way of saying the same thing, never as ornament. What the essays argue, the meditations see.

Running beneath both registers are a small number of convictions that surface everywhere and bind the volume into a whole. First is the reality of the fall and its reach: for Ignatius, sin reaches past isolated wrong acts into the very faculties of the soul, a corruption soaked into what he calls “carnal reasoning,” so that the whole of the natural mind and will must be renounced and remade. Second is the primacy of repentance and self-knowledge; the ascetic path begins in the honest sight of one’s own condition, never in exalted states. Third is the centrality of prayer, and specifically of the Jesus Prayer—the constant, attentive invocation of the name of the Lord Jesus—as the ordinary means by which the mind is gathered, guarded, and united to the heart. And fourth is the insistence, everywhere present, that this whole way must be walked under the guidance of Scripture and the Fathers rather than by private inspiration or the untested promptings of the heart. The long essays on prayer are especially insistent that the beginner must proceed with humility and caution, seeking repentance and attention rather than visions or consolations, lest the ardor of the untutored soul be turned by self-deception into spiritual harm.

Theological & Spiritual Significance

The lasting importance of Ascetic Experiences lies in what it accomplishes for the reader living long after the age of the great desert masters. Ignatius Brianchaninov stands within an unbroken tradition—the ascetic and contemplative inheritance of the Christian East, running from the fathers of the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts through John Cassian, John of the Ladder, the Sinai and Athonite teachers of watchfulness, and the Philokalic writers, down to Saint Nilus of Sora and the elders of his own century. His achievement is to have transmitted that tradition whole, tested against his own experience and made intelligible and practicable for readers of the modern world, adding no new doctrine of his own. He is, in effect, a bridge: he read the Fathers with the closest attention, absorbed their teaching in his own long struggle, and then set it down in a language his contemporaries—and ours—could understand and use.

Two features give his teaching its particular value. The first is its unusual candor about the conditions of the spiritual life in a later age. Ignatius does not pretend that the reader stands where the early monks stood. He is frank that living spirit-bearing guides have grown scarce, that the surrounding culture is distracted and unbelieving, and that the seeker must therefore lean the more heavily on the written tradition and proceed with corresponding humility and care. This realism keeps his counsel free of both nostalgia and presumption. He never counsels the reader to imitate outwardly the extraordinary feats of the ancients; he counsels instead the patient, hidden work of repentance, attention, and obedience to the Gospel that is possible in any age and any circumstance.

The second is his sober, cautionary teaching on prayer, and here his contribution is most distinctive. The essays on the Jesus Prayer are among the fullest and most balanced treatments of the subject in modern spiritual literature. Ignatius sets the invocation of the name of Jesus at the very heart of the interior life, yet he surrounds it with careful warnings. He is wary of every technique or ambition that would seek exalted experiences ahead of repentance; he insists that the foundation is humility and the honest acknowledgment of one’s own sinfulness; and he teaches, with the whole tradition of watchfulness behind him, that the mind must descend into the heart and be united to it, but only in God’s time and by God’s grace, never by the soul’s own forcing. This guarding of the beginner against spiritual delusion—the counterfeit of true prayer—is one of the enduring gifts of the book.

Beyond these particulars, the volume engages the perennial questions of the interior life in a way that reaches well past the bounds of any one confession. What does it cost to follow Christ in earnest? What is the relation of the will to grace, of ascetic labor to divine gift? How is the fallen mind to be healed, and by what means is the heart to be gathered from its dispersion and turned toward God? How is the ordinary Christian, living in the world and not the desert, to take up genuinely the life of prayer and repentance? On all of these, Ignatius speaks with an authority born of experience rather than speculation, and with a directness that any reader seeking the interior life—of whatever Christian tradition—will recognize as addressed to the real conditions of the soul.

Reception & Influence

Within a generation of his death, Ignatius Brianchaninov was recognized as one of the foremost spiritual writers of the Russian Church, and his collected works became a standard of ascetic reading. His glorification in 1988 set the seal of the Church on a reputation that his readers had long since accorded him. In the century that followed, and with the wider dissemination of his writings in translation, that reputation has spread far beyond his own communion. The Arena, his counsel to those beginning the monastic life, and On Death, drawn from the later volumes of the same collected works, have found readers across the Christian world; but it is Ascetic Experiences that remains the fullest expression of his mind. Together with the writings of Theophan the Recluse and the recorded counsels of the Optina elders, his work is now widely regarded as a principal channel by which the classic ascetic and Philokalic tradition of the Christian East has reached modern readers—a body of teaching valued as living instruction in prayer and repentance rather than as a historical curiosity.

The Text & This Edition

This edition presents Ascetic Experiences, Volume One, in a fresh modern English translation rendered from the Russian. The author himself prepared and published the work in Russian at Saint Petersburg in 1865, arranging the collected pieces and correcting the text with his own hand near the end of his life; the present translation is made from that public-domain Russian text as preserved in the collected works. It is an English-only edition, complete in itself, and is not laid out as a parallel or bilingual text against the Russian.

A few conventions of this edition may be noted. In keeping with the practice observed throughout this series, the author is named as the Church has always received him—Ignatius Brianchaninov, with his title of sanctity recorded in its proper place—and those who have carried his words into English are credited as translators, never as authors. The English aims at a dignified but genuinely contemporary register, readable without being slack, so that the force and gravity of the original come through to a reader today. The many passages of Scripture that Ignatius quotes, which in his own text stand in Church Slavonic, are given here in a faithful modern rendering consonant with the Slavonic he cites, rather than being conformed to any one familiar English version; his citations follow the Greek Septuagint numbering of the Psalms that he himself used. The author’s own titles for the several pieces are kept, and his own arrangement of them is preserved, so that the reader meets the volume in the order and under the headings that Ignatius gave it. Where the length of the longer essays required it, they have been divided into parts for ease of reading, without alteration to the text itself.

Suggestions for Reading

The newcomer need not read this volume straight through from front to back, and may find it more rewarding not to. The book was assembled from separate pieces, and it can be entered at many points. A reader wishing to take the measure of Ignatius might begin with the opening essay, “On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ,” and with “On Repentance,” which together lay the foundation on which everything else rests. From there the essays “On Reading the Gospel” and “On Reading the Holy Fathers” open the door to his understanding of how the spiritual life is to be learned and guided. Those drawn to the prayer of the heart should come to the long treatments of prayer and the Jesus Prayer only after this groundwork, and should read them in the cautionary spirit in which they were written—as counsel for a patient and humble beginning, not as a set of techniques for rapid attainment. Throughout, the short lyrical meditations—the winter garden, the seashore, the cemetery, the tree before the cell window—may be read as places of rest between the weightier essays; brief as they are, they often carry the book’s teaching most memorably. Above all, this is a book to be read slowly and in small portions, and returned to. It was written for practice rather than survey, and it gives most to the reader who is willing to sit with a single page until it has done its work.

Preface

The reader who is familiar with the tradition of the Orthodox Eastern Church will readily perceive that the Experiences offered here for his attention present the teaching of the holy Fathers concerning the science of sciences, concerning monasticism—a teaching applied to the demands of the present day.[1] The principal feature that distinguishes the life of ancient monasticism from that of more recent times consists in this: that those who took the monastic vow in the first centuries of Christianity were guided by God-inspired teachers, whereas now—as the Venerable Nil Sorsky notes, in agreement with other later Fathers—those in monastic life must be guided above all by Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers, owing to the extreme scarcity of living vessels of Divine grace. The explanation of this tendency and of the necessity for it forms the central thought of the Experiences throughout their entire extent.

The articles of which my book is composed were written at different times and for different reasons—chiefly in response to ascetic questions that arose among communities of monks and of God-loving laypeople who were in spiritual communication with me. As I bring my earthly pilgrimage to its close, I have considered it my duty to review, correct, supplement, gather into one whole, and publish in print all the articles written by me in the rank of archimandrite.[2] I have considered this my duty for two reasons: first, because many of the articles had spread in manuscript copies with greater or lesser errors; and second, because I regard myself as obliged to render to Christian society an account of my sojourn in the Promised Land that flows with spiritual gifts and blessings—an account of the monastic life as it appears in the holy tradition of the Orthodox Eastern Church, and as Divine Providence has permitted me to behold it in certain of its living representatives.

It remains for me to ask of my readers indulgence for my poverty of understanding, and to beg their prayers for my poor soul.

[1] The Venerable Cassian of Rome. Homily on the Sketic Fathers and on Discernment. The Philokalia, part 4.

[2] Saint John of Damascus, toward the end of his life, withdrew to the lavra of the Venerable Sava and gathered together all that he had written throughout his life, carefully reviewed and corrected it, so as to give his works the greatest possible precision. Such was the course taken by a man filled with Divine grace—and all the more obligatory, therefore, was this manner of proceeding for the compiler of the Ascetic Experiences. The Menaion Reader, December 4. Life of Saint John of Damascus.

On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ

On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

“If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me” (Jn 12:26), said the Lord. Every Christian, by the vows pronounced at holy baptism, has taken upon himself the obligation to be a slave and servant of the Lord Jesus Christ: every Christian without exception must follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Having called Himself the Shepherd of the sheep, the Lord said that “the sheep hear the voice” of this Shepherd, “and the sheep follow Him, because they know His voice” (Jn 10:3–4). The voice of Christ is His teaching; the voice of Christ is the Gospel; the walking in Christ’s footsteps along the way of earthly pilgrimage is an activity wholly directed according to His commandments.

To follow Christ, one must know His voice. Study the Gospel, and you will be able to follow Christ in your life.

Whoever, having been born according to the flesh, enters into “new birth” (Tit 3:5) through holy baptism, and preserves the state bestowed by baptism through a life lived according to the Gospel, shall “be saved”. He shall “enter” the God-pleasing arena of earthly life through spiritual birth, and shall “go out” of that arena through a blessed death, and in eternity shall “find pasture” (Jn 10:9)—eternal, most abundant, most sweet, and spiritual.

“If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. And if anyone serves Me, My Father will honor him” (Jn 12:26). Where was the Lord when He spoke these words? In His humanity, united with His Divinity, He was in the midst of human beings, on earth, in the valley of their exile and sufferings, while abiding in His Divinity also where He had been from the beginningless beginning. “The Word was with God” (Jn 1:1) and in God. This Word announced concerning Himself: “the Father is in Me, and I in Him” (Jn 10:38). There the follower of Christ also attains: “whoever confesses” with lips, heart, and deeds, “that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” (1Jn 4:15).

“If anyone serves Me, My Father will honor him: to the one who overcomes” the world and sin, who follows Me in earthly life, “I will grant” in eternal life “to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Rev 3:21).

Renunciation of the world precedes the following after Christ. The second has no place in the soul if the first has not been accomplished within it beforehand. “Whoever desires”, said the Lord, “to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his soul will lose it; but whoever loses his soul for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it” (Mk 8:34–35). “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own soul also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple” (Lk 14:26–27).

Many approach the Lord—few resolve to follow Him. Many read the Gospel, finding delight and rapture in the height and holiness of its teaching—few resolve to direct their conduct by the rules that the Gospel prescribes. The Lord, to all who approach Him and desire to be united with Him, declares: “If anyone comes to Me” and does not renounce the world and himself, “he cannot be My disciple”.

“This is a hard saying”—even those who outwardly appeared to be His followers and were counted as His disciples said this of the Saviour’s teaching—“who can listen to it?” (Jn 6:60). So does carnal reasoning judge the word of God from its own wretched disposition. The word of God is “life” (Jn 6:63)—eternal life, essential life. By this word is slain “carnal reasoning” (Rom 8:6), which is born of eternal death and sustains eternal death in human beings. For those who are being destroyed by carnal reasoning and who willingly choose to perish by it, the word of God “is foolishness”. But it “is the power of God to those who are being saved” (1 Cor 1:18).

Sin has become so deeply our own through the fall that all the properties and all the movements of the soul are saturated with it. The rejection of sin, which has become kindred to the soul, has become the rejection of the soul itself. Such a rejection of the soul is necessary for the soul’s salvation. The rejection of human nature, defiled by sin, is necessary in order to receive human nature renewed by Christ. One empties a vessel of all its food when that food has been poisoned; the vessel is carefully washed clean, and only then is food placed in it that is fit to be used. Food that has been poisoned by venom is rightly called venom itself.

To follow Christ, we must first renounce our own reason and our own will. Both the reason and the will of fallen human nature are entirely corrupted by sin; they can never be reconciled with the reason and will of God. He who renounces his own reason becomes capable of receiving the reason of God; he who renounces the fulfillment of his own will becomes capable of fulfilling the will of God.

To follow Christ, “let us take up our cross”. The taking up of one’s cross is the name given to willing, reverent submission to the judgment of God in all the sorrows that are sent and permitted by Divine Providence. Murmuring and indignation at sorrows and afflictions is a renunciation of the cross. Only one who has “taken up his cross” can follow Christ: one who is submissive to the will of God and who humbly acknowledges himself deserving of judgment, condemnation, and punishment.

The Lord, who has commanded us to practice self-denial, to renounce the world, and to bear our cross, gives us the strength to fulfil His commandment. One who has resolved to fulfil this commandment and strives to do so immediately perceives its necessity. The teaching that seemed harsh from a superficial and mistaken perspective rooted in carnal reasoning proves to be the most reasonable, most filled with goodness: it calls the perishing back to salvation, the slain to life, and those buried in hell to heaven.

Those who do not resolve to practice voluntary self-denial and renunciation of the world are compelled to do both by force. When pitiless, irresistible death arrives, they part with everything to which they were attached; their self-denial extends even to casting off the very body and leaving it on the earth as food for worms and decay.

Self-love and attachment to the temporal and vain are fruits of self-deception, of blindness, of the soul’s death. Self-love is a perverted love of oneself—a love that is foolish and ruinous. The self-loving person, attached to the vain and transient, to sinful pleasures, is an enemy to himself. He is a self-murderer: thinking to love and indulge himself, he in truth hates and destroys himself, killing himself with eternal death.

Let us take stock of ourselves—we who are distracted, bewildered, deceived by vanity! Let us come to our senses—we who are intoxicated with vanity, deprived by it of right self-perception! Let us examine the testimonies that are constantly being enacted before our eyes. What is being accomplished before us will inevitably be accomplished over us as well.

He who devoted his whole life to acquiring honors—did he take them with him into eternity? Did he not leave behind his resounding titles, his decorations, all the splendor with which he had surrounded himself? Did he not enter eternity as nothing more than a man, with his deeds and the qualities acquired during his earthly life?

He who devoted his life to acquiring wealth—who amassed great quantities of money, acquired vast tracts of land as his possession, established various institutions yielding abundant income, lived in palaces gleaming with gold and marble, rode in magnificent carriages and on fine horses—did he take any of this into eternity? No! He left it all on earth, content for his final bodily need with the smallest plot of ground, which all the dead alike require and which satisfies them all alike.

He who spent his earthly life in fleshly amusements and pleasures, who passed his time with friends in games and diversions, who feasted at sumptuous tables—is at last removed by sheer necessity from his accustomed way of life. The time of old age and infirmity arrives, and after it the hour of the soul’s separation from the body. Then one understands—too late—that service to whims and passions is self-deception, that a life lived for the flesh and for sin is a life without meaning.

The striving after earthly advancement—how strange, how monstrous it is! It seeks with a frenzy. Scarcely has it found something than what is found loses its value, and the seeking is renewed with fresh force. It is never content with what is present: it lives only for the future, it thirsts only for what it does not have. The objects of desire lure the seeker’s heart with the illusion and hope of satisfaction; deceived, perpetually deceived, he chases after them throughout the whole arena of earthly life, until unexpected death snatches him away. How and by what can one explain this seeking, which deals with all people like a heartless betrayer, yet holds sway over all, carrying everyone away?—There is implanted in our souls a striving toward infinite goods. But we have fallen, and the heart, blinded by the fall, seeks in time and on earth what exists in eternity and in heaven.

The fate that has overtaken my fathers and brothers will overtake me as well. They have died: I too shall die. I shall leave my cell, leaving in it my books and my garments and my writing table, at which I have spent many hours; I shall leave all that I needed or thought I needed during earthly life. My body will be carried out of these cells in which I dwell as if in an anteroom to another life and another land; my body will be carried out and committed to the earth, which served as the beginning for the human body. The very same fate will overtake you as well, brothers, who read these lines. You too will die: you will leave all that is earthly on earth; you will enter eternity as souls alone.

The soul of a person acquires qualities corresponding to its activity. Just as objects are reflected in a mirror placed before them, so the soul is stamped with impressions corresponding to its occupations and deeds, corresponding to its surroundings. In an insensible mirror the images disappear when the objects are removed from before it; in a rational soul the impressions remain. They can be effaced and replaced by others, but this requires both effort and time. The impressions that constitute the soul’s possession at the hour of its death remain its possession forever, serving as the pledge of either its eternal blessedness or its eternal misery.

“You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24), said the Saviour to fallen human beings, laying bare before them the condition into which they have been brought by the fall—as a physician discloses to a patient the condition into which illness has brought him, a condition the patient himself cannot comprehend. Because of our soul’s disorder, timely self-denial and renunciation of the world are necessary for our salvation. “No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other” (Mt 6:24).

Experience constantly confirms the truth of that view of the moral infirmity of human beings which the all-holy Physician expressed in the words we have cited—words spoken with decisive clarity: the satisfaction of vain and sinful desires is always followed by being swept away by them; being swept away is followed by captivity and death to all things spiritual. Those who permitted themselves to follow their own desires and carnal reasoning were swept away by them and made subject to them; they forgot God and eternity, wasted their earthly life in vain, and perished with eternal perdition.

It is impossible to fulfil one’s own will and the will of God at the same time: the fulfilment of the former defiles the fulfilment of the latter and renders it unacceptable. Thus fragrant, precious myrrh loses its worth from the slightest admixture of foulness. Only then, God declares through the great Prophet, “shall you eat the good of the land”, when you willingly “obey Me. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Is 1:19–20).

It is impossible to obtain the mind of God while remaining in carnal reasoning. “Carnal reasoning”, said the Apostle, “is death… Carnal reasoning is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be” (Rom 8:6–7). What is carnal reasoning? It is a cast of mind that arose from the condition into which the fall brought human beings—directing them to act on earth as though they would remain there forever, magnifying all that is corruptible and temporal, belittling God and everything pertaining to the pleasing of God, and robbing human beings of their salvation.

Let us renounce our souls, by the testament of the Saviour, in order to gain our souls! Let us voluntarily renounce the corrupt condition into which they were brought by their voluntary renunciation of God, in order to receive from God the holy condition of human nature renewed by God made man! Our own will—and the will of the demons, to which our will became subject and with which it has merged—let us replace with the will of God, declared to us in the Gospel; carnal reasoning, common to fallen spirits and fallen human beings alike, let us replace with the mind of God that shines forth from the Gospel.

Let us renounce our possessions, so as to acquire the capacity to follow our Lord Jesus Christ! The renunciation of possessions is accomplished on the basis of a right understanding of them. The right understanding of material property is provided by the Gospel (Lk 16:1–31); and once it is provided, the human mind cannot but acknowledge its full rightness. Earthly property is not our own, as those who have never thought about this matter mistakenly suppose: if it were, it would always be, and would remain forever, our own. It passes from hand to hand, and thereby testifies of itself that it is given only for a time. The property belongs to God; a human being is only a temporary steward of it. A faithful steward carries out precisely the will of the one who entrusted the administration to him. And we, in managing the material goods entrusted to us for a time, let us endeavor to manage them according to the will of God. Let us not use them as a means of satisfying our whims and passions, as a means of our eternal ruin; let us use them for the benefit of humanity, which is in such great need and suffers so greatly—let us use them as a means of our own salvation. Those who seek Christian perfection wholly abandon earthly possessions (Mt 19:16–30); those who desire salvation must give what alms they are able (Lk 11:41), and refrain from the abuse of wealth.

Let us renounce love of glory and love of honors! Let us not pursue distinctions and rank, employing for their acquisition unlawful and degrading means—means entailing the trampling of God’s law, conscience, and the good of our neighbors. Such means are most commonly employed by seekers of earthly greatness in their pursuit of it. One infected and carried away by vainglory, that insatiable seeker of human praise, is incapable of faith in Christ: “How can you believe”, Christ said to the ambitious men of His own day, “who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?” (Jn 5:44). If Divine Providence has granted us earthly might and power, let us become through them benefactors of humanity. Let us reject the vile poison so dangerous to the human spirit—the foolish and contemptible egotism that transforms those infected by it into beasts and demons, making such people scourges of humanity and evil-doers to themselves.

Let us love the will of God above all things; let us prefer it to everything; let us hate with a devout and God-pleasing hatred all that is contrary to it. When our nature, corrupted by sin, rises up against the evangelical teaching, let us express our hatred of that nature by rejecting its desires and demands. The more decisive the expression of hatred, the more decisive will be the victory over sin and over the nature in which sin has dominion; and the more rapid and lasting will be our spiritual progress.

When those who are close to us by the flesh attempt to draw us away from following the will of God, let us show them the holy hatred that lambs show toward wolves—lambs who do not transform themselves into wolves and do not defend themselves from wolves with teeth.[1] Holy hatred toward one’s neighbors consists in remaining faithful to God, in refusing to consent to the sinful will of other people—even if those people are one’s closest relatives—in magnanimously enduring the offenses they inflict, in praying for their salvation; but in no wise consists in slander or in actions akin to slander, through which the hatred of fallen nature—a hatred that is contrary to God—finds expression.

“Do not think”, said the Saviour, “that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Mt 10:34–35). “I have come”—Saint John of the Ladder explains these words of the Lord—“to set apart” those who love God from those who love the world; the carnal from the spiritual; those who love glory from those who are humble-minded: “God is pleased by division and separation, when it is accomplished for love of Him.”[2]

The Prophet called the earth the place of his “sojourning” (Ps 118:54), and called himself a sojourner and stranger upon it: “I am a stranger with You”, he said in his prayer to God, “and a pilgrim, as all my fathers were” (Ps 38:13). An evident, palpable truth! A truth forgotten by human beings despite its very evidence! I am a “pilgrim” on earth: I entered it by birth; I shall depart by death. I am a “sojourner” on earth: I was removed to it from paradise, where I had defiled and disfigured myself by sin. I shall be removed from the earth as well, from this temporary exile in which my God has placed me so that I might come to my senses, be cleansed from sinfulness, and become once more capable of dwelling in paradise. For stubborn and final incorrigibility I must be cast down forever into the prisons of hell. I am a “stranger” on earth: my pilgrimage begins at the cradle and ends at the grave; I journey through the stages of life from childhood to old age, I journey through varied circumstances and conditions of earthly existence. I am a “sojourner and stranger, as all my fathers were”. My fathers were sojourners and strangers on earth: having entered it by birth, they departed from its face by death. There were no exceptions: no human being remained on earth forever. I too shall go. I am already beginning my departure, diminishing in strength, submitting to old age. I shall go, I shall go from here, by the immutable law and mighty ordinance of my Creator and God.

Let us be persuaded that we are strangers on earth. Only from this persuasion can we make faultless reckoning and disposal of our earthly life; only from this persuasion can we give it the right direction, and employ it for the acquisition of blessed eternity rather than for empty and vain things, rather than for our own destruction. Our fall has blinded and continues to blind us! And we are compelled, by force, to persuade ourselves over a long period of time of the most evident truths, truths that by their very clarity stand in no need of persuasion.

When a traveler stops along his way at an inn, he pays no particular attention to that inn. Why should he, when he has taken shelter there for the briefest of times? He contents himself with what is strictly necessary; he is careful not to spend the money he will need for the continuation of his journey and for his maintenance in that great city to which he is traveling; he endures deficiencies and inconveniences with fortitude, knowing that they are the common lot of all who travel, and that undisturbed repose awaits him at the destination toward which he presses on. He does not attach his heart to any object in the inn, however attractive that object may appear. He does not lose time on extraneous occupations: he needs it for the completion of his arduous journey. He is continually absorbed in thought about the magnificent royal capital to which he is bound, about the considerable obstacles that must be overcome, about the means that might ease the journey, about the ambushes of brigands that lie in wait along the road, about the unhappy fate of those who did not manage to make that journey safely, and about the most blessed lot of those who completed it with the desired success. Having stayed the necessary time at the inn, he thanks the innkeeper for the hospitality shown him and, departing, forgets about the inn or remembers it only in passing, because his heart was cool toward it.

Let us acquire such a relation to the earth as well. Let us not squander foolishly the faculties of soul and body; let us not sacrifice them to vanity and corruption. Let us guard against attachment to the temporal and material, lest it prevent us from acquiring the eternal and heavenly. Let us guard against satisfying our insatiable and unappeasable whims, the gratification of which develops our fallen state and brings it to terrible dimensions. Let us guard against excess, contenting ourselves with only what is truly necessary. Let us direct all our attention to the life beyond the grave that awaits us, a life that has no end. Let us come to know God, who has commanded us to know Him and who grants this knowledge through His word and His grace. Let us become united to God during the course of earthly life. He has opened to us the most intimate union with Himself, and has appointed the span of earthly life as the time allotted for the accomplishment of this greatest of all works. There is no other time besides the time determined by earthly life in which this wondrous union can be accomplished: if it is not accomplished during this time, it will never be accomplished. Let us acquire the friendship of the heavenly citizens—the holy Angels and the saints who have departed this life—that they might receive us “into everlasting habitations” (Lk 16:9). Let us acquire knowledge of the fallen spirits—those fierce and cunning enemies of the human race—so as to avoid their snares and the prospect of dwelling with them in the flames of hell. Let the word of God be a lamp to our feet on the path of life (Ps 118:105). Let us glorify and give thanks to God for the abundant blessings with which our temporary refuge—the earth—is filled in satisfaction of our needs. With purity of mind let us penetrate the meaning of these blessings: they are faint images of eternal blessings. Eternal blessings are represented by them so faintly and inadequately as objects are represented by the shadows they cast. In granting us earthly blessings, God speaks to us in a hidden way: “O human beings! Your temporary refuge is furnished with manifold, innumerable blessings that captivate and delight both eye and heart, satisfying your needs to overflowing: conclude from this what blessings furnish your eternal dwelling. Understand the infinite, incomprehensible goodness of God toward you; and having honored earthly blessings with devout understanding and contemplation of them, do not act senselessly: do not enslave yourselves to them or destroy yourselves by them. Using them as much as is needed and proper, strive with all your might to acquire the blessings of heaven.”

Let us remove from ourselves all false teachings and the life lived according to them: the sheep of Christ “do not follow a stranger’s” voice, “but flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers” (Jn 10:5). Let us become thoroughly acquainted with the voice of Christ, so that we may recognize it at once when we hear it and follow His bidding at once. Having acquired in our spirit a sympathy for this voice, we shall acquire in our spirit an estrangement from the stranger’s voice, which is uttered by carnal reasoning in its manifold sounds. The moment we hear a stranger’s voice—let us flee, let us flee from it, after the manner of Christ’s sheep, who save themselves from a stranger’s voice by flight: by resolute inattention to it. Even to give it attention is dangerous: behind attention comes delusion, and behind delusion comes ruin. The fall of our first parents began with the first mother’s attention to the stranger’s voice.

[1] (Mt 10:16). See the life of the holy Great Martyr Barbara. The Menaion Reader, December 4.

[2] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 3.

On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 2)

Our Shepherd not only summons us with His voice, but also guides us by His manner of life: He “goes before” His sheep “and they follow Him” (Jn 10:4). He commanded us to renounce the world, to deny ourselves, to take up and bear our cross—and He himself accomplished all of this before our eyes. “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow in His steps” (1 Pet 2:21). He graciously consented to take on humanity—though of royal lineage, yet one that had descended in its standing to the rank of common people. His birth took place during the journeying of His most holy Mother, for whom no room was found among human dwellings. The birth came to pass in a cave where domestic animals were sheltered; a manger served as the cradle for the Newborn. Scarcely had the news of His birth spread than a conspiracy against His life was already formed. The Infant was already being hunted! The Infant was sought out for slaughter! The Infant fled through the desert into Egypt from a raging murderer! His boyhood the God-man spent in submission to His parents—His adoptive father and His natural Mother—showing by example humility to human beings who had perished through pride and the disobedience it produces. His adult years the Lord devoted to the preaching of the Gospel, journeying from city to city, from village to village, having no shelter of His own. His clothing was a tunic and a robe. While He was proclaiming salvation to human beings and pouring out Divine blessings upon them, human beings hated Him, plotted against His life, and more than once attempted to kill Him. At last they executed Him as a common criminal. He permitted them to commit the most terrible of crimes, for which their hearts thirsted, because He willed to deliver by the execution of the All-holy the fallen human race from the curse and from eternal punishment. Filled with suffering was the earthly life of the God-man; it ended with a death full of suffering. After the Lord, all the saints passed into blessed eternity, walking by a narrow and sorrowful path, renouncing the glory and pleasures of the world, restraining carnal desires through ascetic struggles, crucifying the spirit on the cross of Christ—which for the fallen human spirit is constituted by the commandments of the Gospel—enduring various deprivations, pursued by evil spirits, pursued by their brothers and sisters, other human beings. Let us follow Christ and the company of saints who walked after Him! The God-man, “having by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb 1:3). There He calls His followers: “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you” (Mt 25:34). Amen.

On Repentance

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel! Repent: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Mk 1:15, Mt 4:17). Such were the first words of the God-man’s preaching. These same words He continues to speak to us through the Gospel to this day.

When sin had greatly increased in the world, the all-powerful Physician descended into the world. He descended into the land of our exile, the land of our torments and sufferings that precede the eternal torment of hell, and proclaims deliverance, consolation, and healing to all human beings without exception. “Repent!”

The power of repentance is founded upon the power of God: the Physician is almighty—and the remedy He offers is almighty as well.

Then—during the time of His preaching on earth—the Lord called all who were sick with sin to be healed, and declared no sin to be beyond healing. And now He continues to call everyone, promising and granting forgiveness of every sin, healing of every sinful malady.

O pilgrims of earth! O all of you who are striding or being borne along the broad way, amid the incessant noise of earthly cares, diversions, and amusements, through flowers intermingled with sharp thorns, hastening along this way toward an end known to all and forgotten by all—toward the gloomy grave, toward an eternity still more gloomy and fearsome—stop! Shake off the enchantment of the world, which holds you perpetually in captivity! Give ear to what the Saviour announces to you; give proper attention to His words! “Repent, and believe in the Gospel”, He says to you; “repent: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

It is urgently necessary for you, earthly pilgrims, to give full attention to this essentially useful and saving exhortation: otherwise you will reach the grave, you will reach the threshold and the gates of eternity, without having acquired any right understanding either of eternity or of the duties of one who enters it—having prepared for yourselves nothing there but the just punishments for your sins. The gravest of sins is inattention to the words of the Saviour, contempt for the Saviour. “Repent!”

The path of earthly life is deceptive, full of illusions: to those who are beginning it, it appears an endless expanse filled with substance; to those who have traversed it, it seems a very brief path bordered by empty dreams. “Repent!”

Both glory and riches and all other corruptible acquisitions and advantages, on the gaining of which the blinded sinner spends his whole earthly life and all the powers of soul and body—all these he must leave at the moment when the garment of the soul—the body—is forcibly stripped away, when the soul is led by the pitiless angels before the judgment of the righteous God, a God unknown to it and disregarded by it. “Repent!”

People labor and hasten to enrich themselves with knowledge—but only with knowledge of little importance, suited merely for this present time, serving the satisfaction of the needs, comforts, and whims of earthly life. The knowledge and the work that are truly necessary—the only purpose for which earthly life has been granted us—namely, the knowledge of God and reconciliation with Him through the Redeemer—these we utterly despise. “Repent!”

Brothers! Let us look impartially, in the light of the Gospel, at our earthly life. It is insignificant! All its goods are taken away by death—and often much sooner than death, by various unforeseen circumstances. These corruptible, so quickly vanishing goods are not worthy to be called goods! They are, more accurately, deceptions and snares. Those who become entangled in these snares and bound by them are deprived of the true, eternal, heavenly, spiritual goods bestowed by faith in Christ and by following Him along the mysterious path of life according to the Gospel. “Repent!”

What terrible blindness is ours! How clearly does this blindness prove our fall! We see the deaths of our brothers; we know that death inevitably awaits us as well, and perhaps very soon, since no human being has ever remained on earth forever; we see that for many, even before death, earthly well-being fails them, and is often transformed into misfortune resembling a daily tasting of death. In spite of all this—the most vivid testimony of experience itself—we pursue only temporal goods as though they were permanent, as though they were eternal. On them alone is all our attention fixed! God is forgotten! The majestic and at the same time terrible eternity is forgotten! “Repent!”

All corruptible goods will fail us, brothers, they will inevitably fail us: the rich man’s riches will fail him, the famous man’s fame, the young man’s youth, the wise man’s wisdom. Only one eternal, essential good can a human being acquire during his earthly pilgrimage: true knowledge of God, and reconciliation and union with God, bestowed by Christ. But in order to receive these highest of goods, one must abandon a sinful life, one must come to hate it. “Repent!” “Repent!” What does it mean to repent? It means: to confess, to be sorry for one’s sins, to abandon one’s sins—answered a certain great holy Father when asked such a question—and no longer to return to them.[1] In this way many sinners have been transformed into saints, many lawbreakers into righteous persons. “Repent!” Cast away from yourselves not only manifest sins—murder, robbery, fornication, slander, lying—but also ruinous distractions and fleshly pleasures, criminal fantasies and lawless thoughts—all, all that the Gospel forbids. Wash away your former sinful life with tears of sincere repentance.

Do not say to yourself in despondency and spiritual weakness: “I have fallen into grave sins; I have acquired through long years of sinful life sinful habits: with time they have become as it were natural qualities, making repentance impossible for me.” These gloomy thoughts are suggested to you by your enemy, who is still unnoticed and not understood by you:[2] he knows the power of repentance, he fears lest repentance should wrest you from his power—and so he strives to turn you away from repentance, attributing weakness to God’s almighty remedy.[2]

The Establisher of repentance is your Creator, who made you from nothing. All the more easily can He re-create you, transform your heart: make a heart that loves God out of a heart that loves sin; make a heart that is pure, spiritual, and holy out of a heart that is sensual, carnal, malicious, and lustful.

Brothers! Let us come to know the ineffable love of God for the fallen human race. The Lord took on human nature so that, through the Incarnation, He might make it possible for Himself to receive the punishments deserved by human beings, and through the execution of the All-holy to redeem the guilty from punishment. What drew Him to us here, to earth, to the land of our exile? Was it our righteousness? No! What drew Him to us was the wretched condition into which our sinfulness had cast us.

Sinners! Let us take courage. For us—precisely for us—the Lord accomplished the great work of His Incarnation; upon our sicknesses He looked with an incomprehensible mercy. Let us cease to waver! Let us cease to despond and doubt! Let us approach repentance filled with faith, zeal, and gratitude, and through it be reconciled with God. “If a lawless man turns from all his sins which he has committed, and keeps all My statutes and does justice and righteousness, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; in the righteousness which he has done he shall live” (Ezek 18:21–22). Such is the promise God gives to the sinner, through the lips of His great prophet.

Let us correspond, in our feeble measure, to the great love the Lord has shown us—as creatures can correspond to the love of their Creator, and fallen creatures at that: let us repent! Let us repent not with lips alone; let us attest our repentance not merely by a few brief tears, not merely by outward participation in the Church’s worship and the fulfilment of Church observances—things with which the Pharisees were satisfied. Let us bring together with tears and outward piety the fruit worthy of repentance: let us exchange a sinful life for a life lived according to the Gospel.

“Why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek 18:31). Why do you perish, O Christians, by your sins to eternal death? Why is hell filled with you, as though the all-powerful repentance established in the Church of Christ did not exist? This infinitely gracious gift has been given to the house of Israel—to Christians—and at whatever moment of life, whatever the sins, it works with equal power: it cleanses every sin, saves everyone who turns to God, even in the last moments before death.

“Why will you die, O house of Israel?” Christians finally perish to eternal death because throughout the whole of their earthly life they occupy themselves solely with breaking the vows of baptism and solely with serving sin; they perish because they do not grant the slightest attention to the word of God, which proclaims repentance to them. In the very moments before death they are unable to avail themselves of the all-powerful force of repentance! They are unable to avail themselves of it because they have received no conception of Christianity, or have received a conception so inadequate and confused that it must be called rather complete ignorance than any form of knowledge.

“As I live, says the Lord”—as though compelled to reinforce His assurance before those who do not believe, and to rouse the attention of those who pay no heed—“As I live, says the Lord: I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live… Why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek 33:11).

God knew the weakness of human beings, and knew that even after baptism they would fall into sins: for this reason He established in His Church the sacrament of repentance, by which sins committed after baptism are cleansed. Repentance must accompany faith in Christ and precede baptism into Christ; and after baptism it corrects the violations of the obligations of one who has believed in Christ and been baptized into Christ.

When many from Jerusalem and all Judea gathered to John, the preacher of repentance, at the Jordan for baptism, they confessed their sins to him—they confessed them not, notes a certain holy Writer, because the holy Forerunner had any need to know the sins of those who came to him, but because for the solidity of their repentance it was necessary to join to the feelings of sorrow over having fallen into sin the confession of those sins.[3]

The soul that knows it is obliged to confess its sins—says the same holy Father—is held back from repeating its former sins by that very thought, as though by a bridle; whereas sins that have not been confessed, as though committed in darkness, are readily repeated.

Through the confession of sins the friendship with them is dissolved. Hatred of sin is a sign of true repentance—of the resolve to lead a virtuous life.

If you have acquired a habit of sins, make confession of them more frequently—and you will soon be freed from your captivity to sin, and will follow the Lord Jesus Christ with lightness and joy.

He who constantly betrays his friends will find that his friends become his enemies and remove themselves from him as from a betrayer who seeks their certain ruin: he who confesses his sins will find that those sins depart from him, because sins are grounded and strengthened in the pride of fallen human nature, and cannot endure exposure and shame.

He who in hope of repentance allows himself to sin willfully and intentionally acts treacherously toward God. He who sins willfully and intentionally, relying on repentance, is struck by unexpected death, and the time he had planned to devote to virtue is not given to him.[4]

Through the sacrament of confession all sins committed in word, deed, and thought are definitively cleansed. In order to eradicate from the heart sinful habits that have taken deep root over a long period of time, time is needed, and a constant abiding in repentance. Constant repentance consists in constant contrition of spirit, in the struggle against the thoughts and feelings through which the sinful passion hidden in the heart manifests itself, in the restraining of the bodily senses and the belly, in humble prayer, and in frequent confession.

Brothers! Through willful sin we have lost the holy innocence that was untouched not only by sinful deeds but even by knowledge of evil—the innocence in whose spiritual radiance we appeared in being from the hands of our Creator. We have also lost that innocence which we received at our re-creation through baptism; we have stained our garments, whitened by the Redeemer, with various sins along life’s path. Only one water remains for our washing—the water of repentance. What will become of us if we neglect this washing as well? We shall be compelled to stand before God with souls disfigured by sin—and He will look with severity upon the defiled soul and condemn it to the fire of Gehenna.

“Wash yourselves”, God says to sinners, “make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes; cease from evil. Come now, and let us reason together.” How does this judgment of God—this judgment of repentance, to which God continually calls the sinner throughout the time of his earthly life—conclude? When a person acknowledges his sins and resolves on sincere repentance and amendment, God pronounces this verdict in His judgment with the sinner: “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow; though they are red like crimson, I will make them white as wool” (Is 1:16, 18).

But if a Christian shows contempt for this last, most merciful calling of God, then final destruction is proclaimed to him by God. “The goodness of God”, says the Apostle, “leads you to repentance” (Rom 2:4). God sees your transgressions: He looks with long-suffering upon the sins committed by you beneath His gaze, upon the chain of sins of which your whole life is composed; He awaits your repentance, while at the same time leaving to your own free will the choice of your salvation or your ruin. You abuse both the goodness and the long-suffering of God! There is no amendment in you! Your negligence grows stronger! Growing stronger in you is your contempt both for God and for your own eternal fate! You concern yourself only with multiplying your sins, adding new and doubled transgressions to your former ones! “In accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are storing up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God”, who will render “to each person according to his works: to those who by patient endurance in doing good seek glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who by contentiousness oppose the truth and obey unrighteousness, wrath and fury. Tribulation” eternal “and anguish” eternal “upon every human soul that does evil” (Rom 2:5–9). Amen.

[1] Pimen the Great. See The Sketic Patericon.

[2] The Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 7, Chapter 2.

[3] Saint John of the Ladder. Homily 4.

[4] Isaac the Syrian. Homily 90.

The Vision of Christ

Do you wish to see the Lord Jesus Christ?—“Come and see” (Jn 1:46), His Apostle says to you.

The Lord Jesus Christ gave a promise to abide with His disciples “until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). He is with them: in the holy Gospel and in the sacraments of the Church. (The holy Martyr Peter of Damascus says: “Christ is hidden in the Gospel. He who wishes to find Him must sell all his possessions and buy the Gospel, not merely to find Christ through reading, but to receive Him within himself through imitation of His life in the world.[1] He who seeks Christ, says Saint Maximus, must seek Him not outside but within himself—that is, to be in body and soul as Christ was: sinless, to the extent that is possible for a human being.”) He is not present to those who do not believe in the Gospel: they do not see Him, blinded as they are by unbelief.

Do you wish to hear Christ?—He speaks to you through the Gospel. Do not despise His saving voice: withdraw from a sinful life, and listen with attentiveness to the teaching of Christ, which is eternal life.

Do you wish Christ to appear to you? He teaches you how this may be obtained. “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (Jn 14:21).

You have been adopted as a child of God through the sacrament of holy baptism; you have entered into the most intimate union with God through the sacrament of holy communion: maintain the adoption, maintain the union. The purity and renewal brought by holy baptism, restore through repentance; and the union with God, nourish through a life according to the Gospel and through the most frequent possible reception of the holy Mysteries of Christ. “Abide in Me, and I in you” (Jn 15:4), said the Lord. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love” (Jn 15:10). “He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him” (Jn 6:56).

Guard yourself against the dreaming fantasy that might present to you an image of seeing the Lord Jesus Christ, of touching and embracing Him. This is the empty play of inflated, arrogant self-conceit! This is ruinous self-deception! (This form of self-deception is called “prelest” by the holy ascetic writers. Saint John Carpathios defines it thus: “Prelest is the feeding of the soul on vainglory and the vain puffing-up of the mind.”) Of this form of self-deception the holy Apostle Paul says:[2] “Let no one cheat you of your reward by a false humility and worship of angels, going into things he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his carnal mind” (Col 2:18). Saint Gregory of Sinai said: “Those who speak from their own thoughts, before they have been purified, have been deceived by the spirit of spiritual delusion.” To such persons apply the words of Proverbs: “I have seen a man who seemed wise in his own eyes—a fool has more hope than he” (Prov 26:12). Fulfil the commandments of the Lord—and in a wondrous manner you will see the Lord within yourself, in your own qualities. Thus did the holy Apostle Paul see the Lord within himself:[3] he required this vision of Christians; those who did not have it he called those who had not attained the state proper to Christians.

If you lead a sinful life, satisfy your passions, and at the same time think that you love the Lord Jesus Christ, then His own beloved disciple, who reclined upon His breast at the Last Supper, exposes your self-deception. He says: “He who says, I know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected” (1 Jn 2:4–5).

If you fulfil your own sinful will, and thereby violate the evangelical commandments, then the Lord Jesus Christ numbers you among those who do not love Him. “He who does not love Me”, He says, “does not keep My words” (Jn 14:24).

Do not rush recklessly, without first carefully examining your garments—in old, foul rags—to the marriage feast of the Son of God, to union with Him, though you are indeed invited to this feast, to which every Christian is invited. There are servants of this Master of the household who will bind your hands and feet and cast you into the outer darkness, far from God (Mt 22:11–13).

The servants to whose authority is surrendered the presumptuous person who has not been cleansed by repentance, who is puffed up with self-conceit and arrogance in his pursuit of love and other elevated spiritual states—are demons, the fallen angels. The outer darkness is the blindness of the human spirit, the state of passion and carnality. Sin and the fallen spirits hold sway in a person who is in this condition. He is deprived of moral freedom: his hands and feet are bound. The binding of hands and feet signifies the loss of the capacity for a life pleasing to God and for spiritual progress. In this condition are found all who are in self-deception. A person emerges from this woeful condition through the acknowledgment of his delusion, its rejection, and entrance upon the saving path of repentance.

The exit from self-deception is difficult. At the doors stands a guard; the doors are locked with heavy and strong bolts and bars; the seal of the infernal abyss has been set upon them. The bolts and bars are the pride of those in self-deception, hidden deep in the heart; their vainglory, which constitutes the primary motive of their activity; the hypocrisy and cunning by which pride and vainglory are concealed and disguised under the guise of good intentions, humility, and holiness. The unbreakable seal is the recognition of the actions of self-deception as actions of grace.

Can one who is in self-deception—in the domain of falsehood and deceit—be a fulfiller of the commandments of Christ, which are truth from Truth, from Christ? One who is in sympathy with falsehood, who takes delight in falsehood, who has made falsehood his own, who has been united with falsehood in spirit—can such a person have any sympathy for truth? No! He will hate it, and will become its frenzied enemy and persecutor.

What will be your state, unhappy dreamers who supposed that you had spent your earthly life in the embrace of God, when the verdict of the Saviour strikes you: “I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Mt 7:23).

My true friend in the Lord! Go to the Lord Jesus Christ, draw near to Him by the path of the evangelical commandments; through them come to know Him; by their fulfilment show and prove your love for the Lord Jesus. He Himself will reveal Himself to you—will reveal Himself on the day and hour known to Him alone. Together with this revelation He will pour into your heart an inexpressible love for Himself. Divine love is not something that belongs, as its own property, to fallen human beings: it is a gift of the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5), sent by God alone into vessels purified by repentance, into vessels of humility and purity.

Entrust yourself to the Lord, and not to yourself: this is far more reliable. He is your Creator. When you fell into the grievous fall, He took on humanity for your sake, gave Himself for you to execution, shed His blood for you, and bestowed His Divinity upon you: what more will He not do for you? Prepare yourself for His gifts through purifying yourself: this is your work. Amen.

[1] Saint Peter of Damascus, book one, article: “On the Fourth Vision”. The Philokalia, part 3.

[2] John of Carpathios, Chapter 49. The Philokalia, part 4.

[3] Saint Gregory, Chapter CXXVIII. The Philokalia, part 1.

On Reading the Gospel

When reading the Gospel, seek not pleasure, seek not rapture, seek not brilliant thoughts: seek to see infallibly the holy Truth.

Do not be content with fruitless reading of the Gospel alone; strive to fulfil its commandments, read it with your deeds. This is a book of life, and it must be read with one’s life.

Do not think it without cause that the most sacred of books, the Four Gospels, begins with the Gospel of Matthew and ends with the Gospel of John. Matthew teaches above all how to fulfil the will of God, and his instructions are especially fitting for those who are just beginning the path of God; John sets forth the manner of union between God and the human being renewed by the commandments—something accessible only to those who have made progress on the path of God.

When you open to read the book—the holy Gospel—remember that it will determine your eternal fate. By it we shall be judged, and according to our relation to it here on earth we shall receive as our portion either eternal blessedness or eternal punishment (Jn 12:48).

God has revealed His will to an insignificant speck of dust—to the human being! The book in which this great and all-holy will is set forth is in your hands. You can both receive and reject the will of your Creator and Saviour, as you please. Your eternal life and your eternal death are in your own hands: consider, then, how much caution and prudence you need. Do not gamble with your eternal destiny!

Pray in contrition of spirit to the Lord, that He might open your eyes to behold the wonders hidden in His law (Ps 118:18)—which is the Gospel. The eyes are opened—and there is seen the wondrous healing of the soul from sin, accomplished by the word of God. The healing of bodily ailments was only a proof of the healing of the soul—a proof for carnal people, for minds blinded by sensuality (Lk 5:24).

Read the Gospel with the utmost reverence and attentiveness. Count nothing in it as unimportant or unworthy of examination. Every iota of it emits a ray of life. Contempt for life is death.

When reading of the lepers, the paralyzed, the blind, the lame, and the possessed whom the Lord healed, reflect that your soul, bearing the manifold wounds of sin and held captive by demons, is like these sick persons. Learn from the Gospel to have faith that the Lord who healed them will heal you as well, if you assiduously beseech Him for your healing.

Acquire such a disposition of soul as to make yourself capable of receiving healing. Those who are capable of receiving it are those who acknowledge their own sinfulness and have resolved to leave it behind (Jn 9:39, 41). For the proud righteous man—that is, the sinner who does not see his own sinfulness—the Saviour is unnecessary and useless (Mt 9:13).

The perception of sins, the perception of the fall in which the whole human race is found, is a special gift of God. Ask this gift of Him, and the book of the Heavenly Physician—the Gospel—will become more accessible and understandable to you.

Strive that the Gospel be made one with your mind and heart, that your mind, so to speak, may swim in it and live in it: then your activity will readily become evangelical as well. This can be achieved through constant and reverent reading, through the study of the Gospel.

The Venerable Pachomius the Great, one of the most eminent of the ancient Fathers, knew the holy Gospel by heart, and by divine revelation reckoned it an obligatory duty for his disciples to learn it. In this way the Gospel accompanied them everywhere and constantly guided them.[1]

And today, why should not Christian educators adorn the memory of an innocent child with the Gospel, rather than cluttering it with the study of Aesop’s fables and other trifles?

What happiness, what wealth—to possess the Gospel in one’s memory! The upheavals and calamities that may befall us in the course of earthly life cannot be foreseen. The Gospel that belongs to the memory is read by the blind; it accompanies the prisoner into the dungeon; it speaks with the farmer on the field irrigated by his sweat; it guides the judge during the very session of court; it directs the merchant at the market; it consoles the sick person during weary sleeplessness and heavy solitude.

Do not dare to interpret the Gospel and the other books of Holy Scripture on your own. Scripture was uttered by the holy Prophets and Apostles—uttered not arbitrarily, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:21). How then is it not foolishness to interpret it arbitrarily?

The Holy Spirit, who uttered the word of God through the Prophets and Apostles, has interpreted it through the holy Fathers. Both the word of God and its interpretation are gifts of the Holy Spirit. Only this interpretation does the holy Orthodox Church receive! Only this interpretation do her true children receive!

He who explains the Gospel and all Scripture according to his own fancy thereby rejects the interpretation given by the holy Fathers, by the Holy Spirit. He who rejects the interpretation of Scripture by the Holy Spirit, beyond any doubt, rejects Holy Scripture itself.

And it comes to pass that the word of God, the word of salvation, becomes for its presumptuous interpreters a stench of death, a two-edged sword with which they slay themselves to eternal perdition (2 Pet 3:16, 2 Cor 2:15–16). By it they slew themselves to eternity: Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, and the other heretics who fell into blasphemy through arbitrary and presumptuous interpretation of Scripture.

“On whom will I look, but on the meek and quiet one who trembles at My words” (Is 66:2), says the Lord. Be such a one in relation to the Gospel and to the Lord present within it.

Abandon the sinful life, abandon earthly attachments and pleasures, deny your own soul—then the Gospel will become accessible and intelligible to you.

“He who hates his soul in this world”, said the Lord—the soul for which, since the fall, the love of sin has become as though natural, as though life itself—“will keep it for eternal life” (Jn 12:25).

For one who loves his own soul, for one who does not resolve on self-denial, the Gospel is closed: he reads the letter; but the word of life, as Spirit, remains behind an impenetrable veil for him. When the Lord was on earth in His most holy flesh, many saw Him and at the same time did not see Him. What profit is there when a person looks with bodily eyes—which he shares with the animals—but sees nothing with the eyes of the soul: with mind and heart? Even now many read the Gospel daily and at the same time have never read it, and do not know it at all.

The Gospel, said a certain Venerable desert-dweller, is read with a pure mind; it is understood in proportion to the degree to which its commandments are fulfilled in practice. But the exact and perfect unfolding of the Gospel within oneself cannot be acquired by one’s own efforts alone: it is a gift of Christ.[2]

The Holy Spirit, having taken up dwelling in a true and faithful servant of His, makes him both a perfect reader and a true fulfiller of the Gospel.

The Gospel is a portrayal of the qualities of the new man, who is “the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor 15:47). This new man is God by nature. His holy kindred—those human beings who believe in Him and have been transformed according to His image—He makes gods by grace.

You who wallow in the foul and muddy swamp of sins and find pleasure in it! Lift up your heads, look upon the pure sky: that is your place! God grants you the dignity of gods; and you, rejecting this dignity, choose for yourselves another: the dignity of animals—and the most unclean at that. Come to your senses! Leave the foul-smelling swamp; cleanse yourselves through the confession of sins; wash yourselves with tears of repentance; adorn yourselves with tears of compunction; rise from the earth; ascend to heaven: the Gospel will lead you there. “While you have the light”—the Gospel, in which Christ is hidden—“believe in the light, that you may become sons of the Light”—of Christ (Jn 12:36).

[1] The Life of Pachomius the Great. Vies des Peres des deserts d’Orient par le R. P. Michel-Ange-Manin. Saint Tikhon of Voronezh also knew the Gospel by heart.

[2] The Venerable Mark the Ascetic, On the Spiritual Law, Chapter XXXII. The Philokalia, part 1.

On Reading the Holy Fathers

Conversation and the company of those close to us act very powerfully upon a person. Conversation and acquaintance with a scholar impart much learning; with a poet—many elevated thoughts and feelings; with a traveler—much knowledge of lands and peoples’ customs and ways. Evidently, then: conversation and acquaintance with the saints impart holiness. “With the devout you will show yourself devout, with the blameless man blameless, with the chosen you will show yourself chosen” (Ps 17:26–27).

From this very time, during the brief earthly life that Scripture has not even called a life but a pilgrimage, make acquaintance with the saints. You wish to belong in heaven to their company, to share their blessedness? From this very time enter into communion with them. When you depart from the tabernacle of the body, they will receive you among themselves as one they know, as a friend (Lk 16:9).

There is no closer acquaintance, no more intimate bond, than the bond of unity in thought, unity in feeling, and unity of purpose (1 Cor 1:10).

Where there is unity of mind, there is inevitably also unity of soul; there is inevitably one goal and equal success in reaching it.

Assimilate to yourself the thoughts and spirit of the holy Fathers through the reading of their writings. The holy Fathers attained the goal: salvation. You too will attain this goal by the natural course of things. As one who is of one mind and one soul with the holy Fathers, you will be saved.

Heaven has received the holy Fathers into its blessed embrace. By this it has testified that the thoughts, feelings, and deeds of the holy Fathers are well-pleasing to it. The holy Fathers have set forth their thoughts, their hearts, and the manner of their lives in their writings. Thus: what a sure guide to heaven—attested by heaven itself—are the writings of the Fathers.

The writings of the holy Fathers are all composed by the inspiration or under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Wondrous is their harmony; wondrous is their anointing! He who is guided by them has, beyond any doubt, the Holy Spirit as his guide.

All the waters of the earth flow into the ocean, and perhaps the ocean serves as the source for all the waters of the earth. The writings of the Fathers all converge in the Gospel; all tend toward teaching us the exact fulfilment of the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ; their source and their end alike is the holy Gospel.

The holy Fathers teach how to approach the Gospel, how to read it, how to understand it correctly, what promotes and what hinders its comprehension. Therefore, in the beginning, occupy yourself more with reading the holy Fathers. When they have taught you to read the Gospel: then above all else read the Gospel.

Do not consider sufficient for yourself the reading of the Gospel alone, without reading the holy Fathers! That is a proud and dangerous thought. Better to let the holy Fathers lead you to the Gospel as their beloved child, one who has received prior formation and education through their writings.

Many—indeed all—who have foolishly and arrogantly rejected the holy Fathers, who have approached the Gospel directly with blind presumption, with an impure mind and heart, have fallen into ruinous error. The Gospel has rejected them: it admits only the humble into its presence.

The reading of patristic writings is the parent and king of all virtues. From the reading of the patristic writings we learn the true understanding of Holy Scripture, right faith, life according to the evangelical commandments, the deep reverence that we must hold for the evangelical commandments—in a word, salvation and Christian perfection.

The reading of patristic writings, given the diminishment of Spirit-bearing teachers, has become the chief guide for those who desire to be saved and even to attain Christian perfection.[1]

The books of the holy Fathers, in the words of one of them, are like a mirror: gazing into them attentively and often, the soul can see all its own deficiencies.

Again—these books are like a rich collection of remedies: in them the soul can find a saving cure for each of its ailments.

Saint Epiphanius of Cyprus said: “A single glance at the sacred books stirs one to a devout life”16.[2]

The reading of the holy Fathers must be diligent, attentive, and unceasing: our invisible enemy, who “hates the voice of confirmation” (Prov. 11:15), hates it especially when that voice proceeds from the holy Fathers. This voice exposes the stratagems of our enemy, his cunning; it reveals his snares and his manner of working—and therefore the enemy arms himself against the reading of the Fathers with various proud and blasphemous thoughts, strives to cast the ascetic into vain preoccupations so as to draw him away from salutary reading, and assails him with despondency, tedium, and forgetfulness. From this warfare waged against the reading of the holy Fathers, we ought to conclude how saving for us is the weapon our enemy hates so intensely. The enemy strives with great effort to wrest it from our hands.

Let each person choose for himself reading from the Fathers suited to his way of life. Let the hermit read the Fathers who wrote on stillness; the monk living in a cenobitic community, the Fathers who wrote instructions for monastic communities; the Christian living in the midst of the world, the holy Fathers whose teachings are addressed to all of Christianity generally. Let each person, in whatever estate he may be, draw abundant instruction from the writings of the Fathers.

Reading appropriate to one’s way of life is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, you will fill yourself with thoughts that, though holy, cannot be put into practice, thoughts that stir up fruitless activity only in the imagination and in desire, while the works of piety befitting your way of life slip from your hands. It is not enough that you will become an unfruitful dreamer—your thoughts, being in constant contradiction with the sphere of your activities, will inevitably give birth in your heart to confusion, and in your conduct to uncertainty, both troublesome and harmful to yourself and to those near you. Through improper reading of Holy Scripture and of the holy Fathers, one may easily stray from the saving path into impassable thickets and deep chasms—and this has befallen many. Amen.

[1] Ven. Nil Sorsky. Rule.

[2] The Alphabetical Patericon.

On Avoiding the Reading of Books That Contain False Teaching

Once again I bring you, faithful son of the Eastern Church, a word of sincere and wholesome counsel. This word is not mine: it belongs to the holy Fathers. All my counsel comes from them.

Guard your mind and heart from the teaching of falsehood. Do not converse about Christianity with people infected by false ideas; do not read books about Christianity written by false teachers.

Truth is accompanied by the Holy Spirit: He is the Spirit of Truth. Falsehood is accompanied and abetted by the spirit of the devil, who is a lie and the father of lies.

Whoever reads the books of false teachers inevitably partakes of the evil, dark spirit of falsehood. Let this not seem strange or incredible to you: so affirm the luminaries of the Church—the holy Fathers. (“Let no one read”, said the holy martyr Peter of Damascus, “what does not serve to please God. But if one does happen to read something of that kind out of ignorance, let him strive quickly to blot it from his memory by reading the Divine Scriptures—and specifically those parts of them that most serve the salvation of his soul, according to the state he has attained… But books contrary to this, let him by no means read. What need is there to receive an unclean spirit in place of the Holy Spirit? Whoever trains himself in a given word acquires the character of that word, though this is not seen by the inexperienced as it is seen by those who have spiritual experience”.)17.[1]

If your mind and heart have been written on by nothing—let Truth and the Spirit write upon them the commandments of God and His spiritual teaching.

But if you have allowed the tablets of your soul to be written over and blotted with various concepts and impressions, without discerningly and cautiously considering who the writer is and what he writes, then cleanse what has been written by alien writers; cleanse it through repentance and the rejection of everything contrary to God.

Let the sole writer upon your tablets be the finger of God.

Prepare for this writer purity of mind and heart through a devout and chaste life: then, through your prayers and the reading of sacred books, the law of the Spirit will imperceptibly and mysteriously be inscribed upon the tablets of your soul.

You are permitted to read only those books on religion that have been written by the holy Fathers of the universal Eastern Church. This is what the Eastern Church requires of her children18.[2]

If, however, you reason otherwise and find the command of the Church less well-founded than your own reasoning and that of those who agree with you, then you are no longer a son of the Church but her judge.

Will you call me one-sided, insufficiently enlightened, a rigorist?—Leave me my one-sidedness and all my other shortcomings: with all these shortcomings I prefer to be obedient to the Eastern Church than, with all imagined perfections, to fancy myself wiser than she and thereby permit myself disobedience to her and separation from her. My voice will be welcome to the true children of the Eastern Church.

They know that whoever desires to receive heavenly wisdom must abandon his own earthly wisdom, however great it may be, renounce it, acknowledge it for what it truly is—“foolishness” (1 Cor. 3:19).

Earthly wisdom is enmity against God: it does not submit to the law of God and cannot do so (Rom. 8:7). Such has been its nature from the beginning; such it will remain to its end—when “the earth and all the works upon it”, and with them earthly wisdom, “shall be burned up” (2 Pet. 3:10).

The holy Church permits only those of her members whose minds and heartfelt feelings have been healed and enlightened by the Holy Spirit—those who can always distinguish evil, masquerading and cloaked as good, from true good—to read the books of false teachers.

The great servants of God, who had come to know the weakness common to all human beings, feared the poison of heresy and falsehood, and therefore fled with every possible diligence from conversations with those infected by false teaching and from reading heretical books19.[3] Having before their eyes the fall of the most learned Origen, of the contentious Arius, of the eloquent Nestorius, and of others who were rich in worldly wisdom yet perished through self-reliance and self-conceit, they sought salvation—and found it—in flight from false teaching and in exact obedience to the Church.

The Spirit-bearing holy pastors and teachers of the Church read the writings of blasphemous heretics, compelled to such reading by the urgent necessity of the entire Christian community. With powerful and spiritual words they exposed the errors and announced to all the children of the Church the hidden danger lurking in heretical writings, concealed behind magnificent titles of holiness and piety.

But you and I must guard ourselves from reading books composed by false teachers. The name “false teacher” belongs to everyone who does not belong to the Eastern Church—the one holy Church—yet has written about Christ, about the Christian faith and morality.

Tell me: how can every book possibly be permitted to you, when every book you read leads you wherever it wishes—persuading you to assent to all that it requires your assent to, and to reject all that it requires you to reject?

Experience proves how disastrous are the consequences of indiscriminate reading. How many utterly confused, mistaken, and Church-contradicting ideas about Christianity—ideas that condemn this holy teaching—can one encounter among the children of the Eastern Church, ideas absorbed through the reading of heretical books!

Do not take offense, my friend, at my warnings, prompted as they are by a desire for your true good. Will not a father, a mother, a good teacher fear for an innocent and inexperienced child who wants to wander freely into a room where, among provisions, there is much poison?

The death of the soul is more calamitous than the death of the body: the dead body will rise again, and bodily death often becomes the cause of life for the soul; whereas the soul slain by evil is a victim of eternal death. A single thought containing some form of blasphemy—subtle, entirely imperceptible to the uninitiated—can kill the soul.

There will come a time, the holy Apostle foretold, “when people will not endure sound teaching, but, following their own desires, will heap up teachers for themselves to tickle their ears; and they will turn their hearing away from the truth and wander off into fables” (2 Tim. 4:3–4).

Do not be seduced by the resounding title of a book that promises to impart Christian perfection to one who still needs the food of infants; do not be seduced by a splendid edition, by vivid force or beauty of style, nor by the fact that the writer is allegedly a saint who supposedly proved his sanctity by numerous miracles.

False teaching stops at no invention and no deception in order to give its fables the appearance of truth, and thereby more easily poison the soul with them.

False teaching is itself already a deception. The writer is deceived by it before the reader is (2 Tim. 3:13).

The mark of a book that is truly and essentially beneficial to the soul is a holy author—a member of the Eastern Church, approved and recognized by the holy Church. Amen.

[1] Peter of Damascus, Book One, the discourse on discernment. Philokalia, vol. 3.

[2] In the rite of the sacrament of confession it is prescribed to ask the penitent whether he reads heretical books. The Trebnik.

[3] Life of Pachomius. Patrologiae, Tomus LXXIII, cap. XLIV.

Truth and the Spirit

Do not be deceived by self-conceit, nor by the teaching of those deceived by self-conceit who, disregarding the truth of the Church and Divine Revelation, maintain that truth can speak within you without the sounds of speech, and guide you of itself by some indefinite and obscure operation. This is the teaching of falsehood and its adherents20.[1]

The marks of the teaching of falsehood are: obscurity, indefiniteness, illusion21 and the fantastical, sanguinary, and nervous pleasure that follows from it and is born of it.[2] This pleasure is produced by the subtle operation of vainglory and sensuality.

Fallen humanity approaches holy truth through faith; there is no other path to it. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God” (Rom. 10:17), the Apostle teaches us.

The “Word” of God is “truth” (Jn. 17:17); the Gospel “commandments” are “truth” (Ps. 118:86); “every man is a liar” (Ps. 115:2). All this is attested by Divine Scripture. How then do you expect to hear the voice of holy truth from one who is a liar?

Do you wish to hear it—to hear the spiritual voice of holy truth?—Learn to read the Gospel: from it you will hear truth, in it you will see truth. Truth will reveal to you your fall and the bonds of falsehood, the bonds of self-deception, by which the soul of every person not renewed by the Holy Spirit is invisibly bound.

You are ashamed to acknowledge, fallen and proud one, proud even in your fall, that you must seek truth outside yourself, that its entrance into your soul is through the hearing and the other bodily senses! But this is an incontestable truth, one that exposes how deep is our fall. So deep, so terrible is our fall that in order to draw us out of the ruinous abyss, God the Word assumed humanity, so that human beings might pass from being disciples of the devil and of lies to being disciples of God and of Truth, and through the Word and the Spirit of Truth might be freed from the bondage of sin and learn all truth22.[3]

We are so crude, so sensual, that it was needful for Holy Truth to be subjected to our bodily senses; not only the sounds of speech were needed, but also the healing of the sick, perceptible signs worked upon waters, trees, and loaves of bread—so that, persuaded by bodily eyes, we might be able to perceive Truth at all. So darkened are the eyes of our soul!

“Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe” (Jn. 4:48), the Lord reproved those sensual people who asked Him for bodily healing, not even suspecting that their souls were in an incomparably more terrible disease and therefore stood in incomparably greater need of healing and of the heavenly Physician than their bodies.

And a man confessed before the Lord that the signs seen with bodily eyes had led him to faith, had led him to vision with the mind. “We know”, he said to the Lord, “that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs… unless God is with him” (Jn. 3:2). And that man possessed earthly learning.

Many saw the Saviour with their eyes, saw His divine authority over all creation in the miracles He performed; many with their own ears heard His holy teaching and heard even the demons themselves testifying to Him—yet they did not know Him, came to hate Him, and went so far as to commit the most terrible of all crimes: deicide. So deep, so terrible is our fall, our blindness.

It would seem that a single chapter of the Gospel would suffice to know the God who speaks in it. “You have the words of eternal life”, our Lord and God, who appeared to us in the humble form of a man, “and we have believed and come to know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Jn. 6:68–69).

Truth itself declares: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn. 8:31–32). Study the Gospel, and genuine, holy truth will speak to you from it.

Truth can also speak within a person. But when? When, in the words of the Saviour, a person is clothed “with power from on high” (Lk. 24:49): “When he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth” (Jn. 16:13).

But if, before the manifest coming of the Holy Spirit—the portion of God’s saints—someone imagines he hears truth speaking within himself, he is merely flattering his own pride and deceiving himself; he more likely hears the voice of the one who spoke in paradise: “you will be like gods” (Gen. 3:5). And this voice seems to him the voice of truth!

To know truth from the Gospel and the holy Fathers, and through reading to partake of the Holy Spirit who dwells in the Gospel and the holy Fathers—this is a great blessing.

Of the higher blessing—the blessing of hearing truth from the Most Holy Spirit himself—I am not worthy! I am not capable of it! I am not capable of sustaining it and preserving it: my vessel is not ready, not finished, not made strong. The wine of the Spirit, if it were poured into me, would burst the vessel and would itself be spilled (Mt. 9:17), and therefore my all-gracious Lord, having compassion on my weakness, is long-suffering toward me (Lk. 18:7), and does not set before me the strong spiritual food (1 Cor. 3:2).

The centurion counted himself unworthy to receive the Lord into his house, but asked that the all-powerful word of the Lord might come into that house and heal his servant. It came; a sign was accomplished, the healing of the servant was accomplished. The Lord praised the faith and humility of the centurion (Mt. 8:8–13).

The children of Israel said to their holy leader and lawgiver—they said it from a right understanding of the majesty of God, an understanding from which is born in a person the awareness and recognition of human nothingness: “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest… we die” (Ex. 20:19). These humble and salutary words belong to every true Christian: by such a heartfelt conviction the Christian is preserved from the spiritual death with which pride and the presumption of the self-deceived strikes them down. In contrast to the true Christian, this spiritual Israelite, the self-deluded man cries out in ecstasy: “The children of Israel once said to Moses: speak to us and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, lest we die. Not so, Lord, not so I pray! Let not Moses speak to me, nor any other prophet:[4] speak You, Lord God, who give inspiration to all the prophets. You alone, without them, can instruct me fully”23.

He is unworthy of the Lord and unworthy of imitation who, covered in filth and impurity, yet through foolish, proud, and fantastical conceit imagines himself to be in the embrace of the Most Pure and Most Holy Lord, imagines he has the Lord within himself and converses with Him as with a friend24.[5]

“God is glorified in the council of the saints; he is great and terrible above all those around him” (Ps. 88:8), says Scripture; He is terrible even for the highest heavenly Powers. The six-winged Seraphim hover about His throne, and in ecstasy and awe at the majesty of God utter their ceaseless hymn of praise, covering their fiery faces with their fiery wings: the visionary Isaiah saw this (Is. 6). O man!—modestly cover yourself with humility.

It is enough—more than enough—if the Word of God, truth, enters the house of the soul through hearing or reading and heals the servant, that is, you, who are still in a childlike age with respect to Christ, even if in bodily age you are perhaps already adorned with gray hairs.

There is no other access to Truth! “How shall they believe”, says the Apostle, “in one of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without someone preaching? …faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God” (Rom. 10:14, 17). The living organs of the Holy Spirit have fallen silent: Scripture—uttered by the Holy Spirit—proclaims truth.

Faithful son of the Eastern Church! Hear a friendly and saving counsel. You wish to know thoroughly the way of God and to come by that way to eternal salvation?—Study holy truth in Holy Scripture, and above all in the New Testament, and in the writings of the holy Fathers. Purity of life is also absolutely necessary in this exercise: for only the pure in heart can behold God. Then, in due time, in the measure known and pleasing to God, you will become a disciple and intimate of holy Truth, and a partaker of the Holy Spirit—inseparable from it and imparted by it. Amen.

[1] Thomas à Kempis, “The Imitation of Jesus Christ”, Book I, ch. 3; Book III, ch. 2.

[2] It was said above that this is what the holy Fathers named a particular form of self-deception, and therefore we retain this name.

[3] Jn. 8:31; cf. Jn. 16:13.

[4] The Imitation, Book III, ch. 2.

[5] The Imitation, Book III, ch. 1.

On Love of Neighbor

On Love of Neighbor (Part 1)

What can be more beautiful, more delightful than love for one’s neighbor?

To love is blessedness; to hate is torment.

The whole law and the prophets are summed up in love for God and for one’s neighbor (Mt. 22:40).

Love for one’s neighbor is the path that leads to love for God: because Christ has graciously deigned to clothe himself mystically in every one of our neighbors, and in Christ—is God (1 Jn. 4:14, 15).

Do not suppose, most beloved brother, that the commandment of love for one’s neighbor is near to our fallen heart: the commandment is spiritual, while our heart has been seized by flesh and blood; the commandment is new, while our heart is old.

Our natural love has been damaged by the fall; it must be put to death—so Christ commands—and holy love for one’s neighbor, love in Christ, must be drawn from the Gospel.

The qualities of the new person must all be new; no old quality is fitting for him.

Love arising from the impulse of the blood and the feelings of the fleshly heart has no worth before the Gospel.

And what worth can it have, when in the heat of the blood it swears to lay down its life for the Lord, and a few hours later, when the blood has cooled, swears that it does not know him? (Mt. 26:33, 35, 74).

The Gospel rejects love that depends on the movement of the blood, on the feelings of the fleshly heart. It says: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Mt. 10:34–36).

The fall subjected the heart to the dominion of the blood and, through the blood, to the dominion of the prince of this world. The Gospel frees the heart from this captivity, from this compulsion, and brings it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit teaches us to love our neighbor in a holy manner.

Love kindled and nourished by the Holy Spirit is fire. By this fire the fire of natural, fleshly love, damaged by the fall, is extinguished25.[1]

“One who says it is possible to have both loves at once deceives himself”, said Saint John of the Ladder26.[2]

Into what a fall has our nature descended! A person who by nature is capable of loving his neighbor warmly must exert extraordinary effort on himself to love him as the Gospel commands.

The most ardent natural love is easily turned into revulsion, into irreconcilable hatred (2 Sam. 13:15).

Natural love has even expressed itself through the dagger.

In what wounds is our natural love! What a grievous wound upon it is inordinate attachment! A heart possessed by inordinate attachment is capable of every injustice and every lawlessness, as long as it can satisfy its ailing love.

“Deceitful scales are an abomination before the Lord, but a just weight is pleasing to him” (Prov. 11:1).

Natural love gives to its beloved only what is earthly; of what is heavenly it takes no thought.

It is at war with Heaven and the Holy Spirit: because the Spirit demands the crucifixion of the flesh.

It is at war with Heaven and the Holy Spirit: because it is under the governance of the evil spirit, the unclean and perished spirit.

Let us draw near to the Gospel, most beloved brother—let us look into this mirror! Looking into it, let us cast off the old garments with which the fall clothed us, and let us adorn ourselves with the new garment that God has prepared for us.

The new garment is Christ. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27).

The new garment is the Holy Spirit. “You will be clothed with power from on high” (Lk. 24:49), the Lord said of this garment.

Christians are clothed in the qualities of Christ through the operation of the all-good Spirit.

This clothing is possible for the Christian. “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:14), the Apostle says.

First, guided by the Gospel, cast away enmity, resentment, anger, judgment, and all that directly opposes love.

The Gospel commands us to pray for enemies, to bless those who curse us, to do good to those who hate us, and to forgive our neighbor whatever he may have done against us.

Strive, O you who wish to follow Christ, to fulfill all these commandments in actual deed.

It is quite insufficient merely to read the commands of the Gospel with pleasure and to marvel at the lofty morality they contain. Regrettably, many are satisfied with this.

When you set about fulfilling the commands of the Gospel, the rulers of your heart will resist that fulfillment with stubbornness. These rulers are: your own fleshly condition, in which you are subject to flesh and blood, and the fallen spirits, whose subject territory is the fleshly condition of man.

Fleshly thinking, its justice and the justice of the fallen spirits, will demand that you not demean your honor and other perishable advantages but defend them. Yet bear the invisible battle courageously, guided by the Gospel, guided by the Lord himself.

Sacrifice everything for the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments. Without such sacrifice you cannot be their fulfiller. The Lord said to his disciples: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself” (Mt. 16:24).

When the Lord is with you, hope for victory: the Lord cannot fail to be victorious.

Beg victory from the Lord; beg it through unceasing prayer and weeping. And unexpectedly the action of grace will come into your heart: you will suddenly feel the sweetest intoxication of spiritual love toward your enemies.

A further battle still awaits you! You must still be courageous! Look at the objects of your love: do you find them very pleasing? Is your heart very attached to them?—Renounce them.

This renunciation the Lord—the lawgiver of love—requires of you, not in order to deprive you of love and of the beloved, but so that, having rejected fleshly love defiled by the admixture of sin, you may become capable of receiving spiritual love, pure and holy—which is the highest blessedness.

One who has felt spiritual love will look with loathing upon fleshly love, as upon a hideous distortion of love.

How is one to renounce the objects of love that seem to have grown fast into the very heart?—Say of them to God: “They, O Lord, are Yours; and who am I? A weak creature of no account whatsoever”.

“Today I still wander upon the earth and can be of some use to those I love; tomorrow I may perhaps vanish from its face, and for them I am—nothing!”

“Whether I will it or not—death comes, other circumstances come, and they forcibly tear me away from those I counted mine, and they are no longer mine. In truth they were never really mine; there was some relation between me and them; deceived by this relation, I called them and recognized them as mine. If they were truly mine, they would forever remain my possession”.

“Creatures belong to the one Creator: He is their God and Lord. What is Yours, my Lord, I restore to You: I appropriated them to myself wrongly and in vain”.

For them it is more certain to belong to God. God is eternal, omnipresent, almighty, and boundlessly good. For one who is His, He is the most faithful and most reliable Helper and Protector.

God gives what is His to a person: and other people become his in a certain sense—for a time according to the flesh, and eternally according to the spirit—when God wills to grant this gift to a person.

[1] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily XV, ch. 3.

[2] Homily III, ch. 16.

On Love of Neighbor (Part 2)

True love for one’s neighbor is founded on faith in God: it exists—in God. “May they all be one”, declared the Saviour of the world to his Father, “as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us” (Jn. 17:21).

Humility and submission to God put fleshly love to death. This means: it lives by self-conceit and unbelief.

Do what you lawfully can that is beneficial for those you love; but always commend them to God, and your blind, fleshly, unthinking love will gradually be transformed into spiritual, rational, and holy love.

But if your love is an unlawful inordinate attachment, reject it as an abomination.

When your heart is not free—that is a sign of inordinate attachment.

When your heart is in captivity—that is a sign of a mindless and sinful passion.

Holy love is pure, free, wholly in God.

It is the operation of the Holy Spirit, working in the heart in proportion to its purification.

Having rejected enmity, having rejected inordinate attachments, having renounced fleshly love, acquire spiritual love; “turn away from evil and do good” (Ps. 33:15).

Render honor to your neighbor as the image of God—honor in your soul, invisible to others, manifest only to your own conscience. Let your outward activity correspond in a hidden way to the disposition of your soul.

Render honor to your neighbor without distinction of age, sex, or rank—and gradually holy love will begin to appear in your heart.

The cause of this holy love is not flesh and blood, not the attraction of the feelings—but God.

Those deprived of the glory of Christianity are not deprived of another glory received at creation: they are the image of God.

If the image of God were cast into the terrible flames of hell, even there I would be bound to honor it.

What is the flame, the hell, to me! The image of God is cast there by the judgment of God: my part is to preserve reverence for the image of God, and by doing so to preserve myself from hell.

To the blind, to the leper, to the one of unsound mind, to the nursing infant, to the criminal, to the pagan—I will show honor as to the image of God. What is it to you what their weaknesses and shortcomings are! Watch over yourself, lest you be found wanting in love.

In the Christian, render honor to Christ, who said for our instruction and will say again when our eternal lot is decided: “Whatever you did to the least of these brothers of mine, you did to me” (Mt. 25:40).

Keep this saying of the Gospel in memory in all your dealings with your neighbor, and you will become an intimate of love for your neighbor.

One who is an intimate of love for his neighbor enters through it into love for God.

But if you think that you love God, while an unfriendly disposition toward even a single person lives in your heart, you are in grievous self-deception.

“If anyone says”, declares Saint John the Theologian, “I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar… This commandment we have from him: that he who loves God should love his brother also” (1 Jn. 4:20–21).

The manifestation of spiritual love for one’s neighbor is the sign of the soul’s renewal by the Holy Spirit: “We know”, says the Theologian again, “that we have passed from death into life, because we love the brethren; whoever does not love his brother remains in death” (1 Jn. 3:14).

The perfection of Christianity is in perfect love for one’s neighbor.

Perfect love for one’s neighbor exists within love for God, for which there is no perfection and no end of advancement.

Advancement in love for God is without end: because “love” is the infinite “God” (1 Jn. 4:16). Love for one’s neighbor is the foundation in the building of love.

Beloved brother! Seek to unfold within yourself spiritual love for your neighbors: having entered into it, you will enter into love for God, into the gates of resurrection, into the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

On Love of God

Love God as He commanded that He be loved, and not as those self-deluded dreamers imagine they love Him.

Do not compose raptures for yourself; do not set your nerves in motion, do not inflame yourself with material fire, with the fire of your blood. The sacrifice acceptable to God is humility of heart and contrition of spirit. God turns away in wrath from a sacrifice offered with self-reliance and proud self-opinion, even if that sacrifice were a whole burnt-offering.

Pride sets the nerves in motion, heats the blood, stirs up fantasy, enlivens the life of the fall; humility calms the nerves, restrains the movement of the blood, destroys fantasy, puts to death the life of the fall, and enlivens the life in Christ Jesus.

“Obedience” before the Lord “is better than a good sacrifice, and submission than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15:22), the Prophet said to the king of Israel who had dared to offer God an improper sacrifice: when you desire to offer God the sacrifice of love, do not offer it willfully, out of unreflective impulse; offer it with humility, at the time and in the place commanded by the Lord.

The spiritual place in which alone spiritual sacrifices are commanded to be offered is humility27.[1]

The Lord marked with sure and exact signs the one who loves and the one who does not love. He said: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word… Whoever does not love me does not keep my words” (Jn. 14:23–24).

Do you wish to learn love for God? Keep yourself away from every deed, word, thought, and feeling forbidden by the Gospel. By your enmity toward sin—so hateful to the all-holy God—show and prove your love for God. Falls into sin that occur through weakness, heal at once through repentance; but better still, strive not to allow even these falls upon yourself by strict watchfulness over yourself.

Do you wish to learn the love of God? Study carefully the commandments of the Lord in the Gospel, and strive to fulfill them in very deed; strive to make the Gospel virtues into habits, into qualities of your own. It is the nature of one who loves to fulfill with precision the will of the beloved.

“I have loved Your commandments above gold and topaz; therefore I directed myself toward all Your commandments and hated every path of unrighteousness” (Ps. 118:127–128), says the Prophet. Such conduct is indispensable for preserving fidelity to God. Fidelity is the unconditional condition of love. Without this condition, love is broken.

By constant turning away from evil and by fulfilling the Gospel virtues—in which the whole moral teaching of the Gospel consists—we attain the love of God. By this same means we abide in love toward God: “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love” (Jn. 15:10), the Saviour declared.

The perfection of love consists in union with God; growth in love is accompanied by an inexpressible spiritual consolation, delight, and illumination. But at the beginning of the ascetic struggle, the disciple of love must endure a fierce battle with himself, with his own deeply corrupted nature: the evil that became native to his nature through the fall has become for him a law that wars and rebels against the Law of God, against the law of holy love.

Love toward God is founded upon love for one’s neighbor. When resentment has been effaced from your heart, you are near to love. When your heart is overshadowed by a holy, grace-filled peace toward all of humanity, you are at the very doors of love.

But these doors are opened by the Holy Spirit alone. Love toward God is a gift of God in the person who has prepared himself to receive this gift through purity of heart, mind, and body. The degree of the gift corresponds to the degree of preparation, for God, even in His mercy, is just.

Love toward God is entirely spiritual: “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh” (Jn. 3:6): carnal love, being born of flesh and blood, has properties that are material and corruptible. It is inconstant, changeable: its fire is wholly dependent upon material substance.

When you hear from Scripture that our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29), that love is a fire, and when you feel within yourself the fire of natural love, do not suppose that these fires are one and the same. No![2] these fires are hostile to each other and extinguish one another. “Let us serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28–29).

Natural love—love in its fallen state—inflames the blood of a person, sets his nerves in motion, and stirs up fantasies; holy love cools the blood, calms both the soul and the body, draws the inner person toward prayerful silence, and plunges him into an intoxication of humility and spiritual sweetness.

Many ascetics, having mistaken natural love for Divine love, have inflamed their blood, and inflamed their fantasies along with it. The state of inflammation passes very easily into a state of ecstasy. Many have taken those who are in inflammation and ecstasy to be filled with grace and holiness, whereas they are in truth miserable victims of self-delusion.

There have been many such ascetics in the Western Church, ever since it fell into papism—which blasphemously ascribes Divine attributes to a human being and renders to a man the worship that belongs and is fitting to God alone. These ascetics wrote many books out of their inflamed condition, in which ecstatic self-delusion appeared to them as Divine love, in which their disordered imagination drew for them a multitude of visions that flattered their self-love and pride.

Son of the Eastern Church! Turn away from reading such books; turn away from following the teachings of the self-deluded. Guided by the Gospel and the holy Fathers of the true Church, ascend with humility to the spiritual height of Divine love by means of the practice of the commandments of Christ.

Know this firmly: love toward God is the supreme gift of the Holy Spirit, and a person can only prepare himself through purity and humility to receive this great gift, by which the mind, the heart, and the body are all transformed.

Labor is vain, fruitless, and even harmful when we seek to develop prematurely within ourselves the higher spiritual gifts: these are granted by the merciful God in His own time to those who fulfill the Gospel commandments constantly, patiently, and humbly. Amen.

[1] The Alphabetical Patericon. A saying of the Venerable Pimen the Great.

[2] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 3 and Homily 15.

On Fasting

On Fasting (Part 1)

The head of the virtues is prayer; their foundation is fasting.

Fasting is constant moderation in food with prudent discernment in one’s choice of it.

Proud man! You imagine so much and so loftily about your mind—yet it is in complete and unceasing dependence upon the stomach.

The law of fasting, though outwardly a law for the belly, is in its essence a law for the mind.

The mind—that sovereign within the human person—if it wishes to enter into the rights of its autocracy and to preserve them, must first of all submit to the law of fasting. Only then will it be constantly alert and clear; only then can it govern the desires of the heart and the body; only by constant watchfulness can it study the Gospel commandments and follow them. The foundation of the virtues is fasting.

To the newly created man, brought into paradise, a single commandment was given: the commandment concerning fasting. Undoubtedly this one commandment was given because it was sufficient to preserve the first-created man in his innocence.

The commandment said nothing about the quantity of food but forbade only a certain kind. Let those therefore be silent who recognize fasting only in the quantity of food and not in its quality. When they have delved into the practical study of fasting, they will see the significance of the quality of food.

So important is the commandment of fasting, proclaimed by God to man in paradise, that together with the commandment there was pronounced a threat of punishment for its transgression. The punishment consisted in striking mankind with eternal death.

Even now, sinful death continues to strike those who transgress the holy commandment of fasting. One who does not observe moderation and proper discernment in food cannot preserve chastity or purity, cannot bridle anger, gives himself over to sloth, despondency, and sorrow, becomes a slave to vainglory, and a dwelling place of pride—which the carnal state brings into a person, and which appears most clearly from a sumptuous and well-fed table.

The commandment of fasting has been renewed and confirmed by the Gospel. “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness” (Lk. 21:34), the Lord enjoined. Gluttony and drunkenness impart heaviness not only to the body but to the mind and heart as well—that is, they bring a person, in both soul and body, into a carnal state.

Fasting, on the contrary, leads the Christian into a spiritual state. One cleansed by fasting is humble in spirit, chaste, modest, silent, refined in the feelings of the heart and in his thoughts, light in body, capable of spiritual struggles and contemplations, and capable of receiving Divine grace.

The carnal person is entirely submerged in sinful pleasures. He is given over to sensual pleasure in body, heart, and mind alike; he is incapable not only of spiritual delight and of receiving Divine grace, but even of repentance. He is generally incapable of spiritual occupations: he is nailed to the earth, sunk in materiality—alive in body, yet dead in soul.

“Woe to you who are filled now, for you shall hunger!” (Lk. 6:25). Such is the utterance of the Word of God to those who transgress the commandment of holy fasting. What will you feed upon in eternity, when here you learned nothing but satiation with material foods and material pleasures, which do not exist in heaven? What will you feed upon in eternity, when you have not tasted a single heavenly good? How can you feed upon and delight in heavenly goods, when you have acquired no sympathy for them—when you have acquired only aversion?

The daily bread of Christians is Christ. Insatiable satiation with this bread is the saving fullness and delight to which all Christians are invited.

Feed yourself insatiably on the Word of God; feed yourself insatiably on the fulfillment of the commandments of Christ; feed yourself insatiably at the table “prepared in the presence of those who afflict” you, and drink deep of the “overflowing cup” (Ps. 22:5).

Where shall we begin, says Saint Macarius the Great, we who have never occupied ourselves with the examination of our own hearts?[1] Standing outside, let us knock with prayer and fasting, even as the Lord commanded: “Knock, and it shall be opened to you” (Mt. 7:7).

This ascetic struggle, which one of the greatest teachers of monasticism proposes to us, was the struggle of the holy Apostles. From within it they were counted worthy to hear the utterances of the Spirit. “As they were serving the Lord”, says the writer of their acts, “and fasting, the Holy Spirit said: Separate for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then, having fasted and prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them off” (Acts 13:2–3). From within the ascetic struggle in which fasting and prayer were joined together, the Spirit’s command was heard concerning the calling of the Gentiles to Christianity.

What a wondrous joining of fasting with prayer! Prayer is powerless when it is not founded upon fasting, and fasting is fruitless when prayer is not built upon it.[2]

Fasting detaches a person from the passions of the flesh, while prayer contends with the passions of the soul and, having conquered them, penetrates the whole composition of the person, purifies him; and into that purified rational temple it brings God.

Whoever sows without first tilling the soil destroys the seeds, and instead of wheat reaps thorns. So too, if we sow the seeds of prayer without having thinned the flesh, we shall bear the fruit of sin instead of righteousness. Prayer will be annihilated and plundered by various vain and corrupt thoughts and fantasies, and defiled by sensual feelings. Our flesh sprang from the earth, and if it is not cultivated like earth, it can never bring forth the fruit of righteousness.[3]

On the other hand, if someone tills the soil with great care and expense but leaves it unsown, it becomes thickly overgrown with weeds. So too, when the body is refined by fasting but the soul is not cultivated by prayer, reading, and humble-mindedness, then fasting becomes the parent of numerous weeds—the passions of the soul: pride of mind, vainglory, and contempt.[3]

What is the passion of gluttony and drunkenness? It is the natural desire for food and drink that has lost its proper measure, demanding far greater quantities and more varied qualities than are needed to sustain bodily life and strength—upon which excess nourishment acts contrary to its natural purpose, acting harmfully by weakening and destroying those very powers.

The desire for food is set right by a simple table and by abstinence from satiation and the pleasure of eating. First one must abandon satiation and the pleasure of eating: by this the appetite for food is sharpened and restored to its proper measure. And when the desire has become well-ordered, it is satisfied by plain food.

The desire for food satisfied by satiation and pleasure, on the contrary, becomes dulled. To stimulate it we resort to varied and tasty foods and drinks. The desire first appears to be satisfied; then it becomes more fastidious, and finally turns into a morbid passion seeking constant indulgence and satiation, remaining perpetually unsatisfied.

Intending to devote ourselves to the service of God, let us lay fasting as the foundation of our ascetic struggle. The essential quality of every foundation must be unshakeable firmness: otherwise no building can stand upon it, however solid the building may be in itself. And we must never, under any pretext whatsoever, permit ourselves to violate the fast by satiation, and above all by drunkenness.

The holy Fathers consider the best fast to be eating once a day without being fully satisfied. Such a fast does not weaken the body by prolonged hunger, nor burden it with excess food, and moreover preserves it capable of soul-saving activity. Such a fast presents no striking peculiarity, and therefore the one fasting has no occasion for vainglory—to which a person is so prone on account of virtue itself, especially when it is conspicuously displayed.

Whoever is occupied with bodily labors, or is so weak in body that he cannot be content with eating once a day, should eat twice. Fasting is for the sake of the person, not the person for the sake of fasting.

But at every partaking of food, whether rare or frequent, satiation is strictly forbidden: it renders a person incapable of spiritual struggles and opens the door to other carnal passions.

Immoderate fasting—that is, prolonged excessive abstinence from food—is not approved by the holy Fathers: from extreme abstinence and the exhaustion resulting from it, a person becomes incapable of spiritual struggles, often turns to gluttony, and often falls into the passion of self-exaltation and pride.

The quality of food is of very great importance. The forbidden fruit of paradise, though beautiful to look upon and pleasant to the taste, acted destructively upon the soul: it imparted to the soul the knowledge of good and evil, and thereby destroyed the innocence in which our forebears were created.

Even now food continues to exert a powerful influence on the soul, which is especially noticeable in the consumption of wine. This effect of food is grounded in its varied action upon the flesh and blood, and in the fact that its vapors and gases rise from the stomach to the brain and influence the mind.

For this reason all intoxicating drinks, especially those made from grain, are forbidden to the ascetic, as they deprive the mind of watchfulness and thus of victory in the mental warfare. A mind vanquished—especially by sensual thoughts, having taken pleasure in them—loses spiritual grace; what was gained by many and prolonged labors is lost in a matter of hours, or even minutes.

A monk must not use wine at all, said the Venerable Pimen the Great.[4] Every devout Christian who wishes to preserve his chastity and purity must follow this rule. The holy Fathers followed it, and if they did use wine, it was very rarely and with the greatest moderation.

Heating food must be banished from the table of one who practices temperance, as it arouses the passions of the body. Such are pepper, ginger, and other spices.

The most natural food—that which was appointed for man by the Creator immediately after creation—is food from the plant kingdom. God said to our forebears: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit of a seed-bearing tree—to you it shall be for food” (Gen. 1:29). The eating of flesh was not permitted until after the Flood (Gen. 9:3).

Plant-based food is the best for the ascetic. It least inflames the blood and least fattens the flesh; the vapors and gases that it releases and that rise to the brain affect it least; and finally it is the most healthful, as it produces the least mucus in the stomach. For these reasons, when it is consumed, purity and alertness of mind are preserved with special ease, and with them the mind’s authority over the whole person; when it is consumed, the passions act more weakly, and a person is more capable of engaging in the struggles of piety.

Fish dishes—especially those prepared from large sea fish—are of quite a different nature: they affect the brain more noticeably, fatten the body, inflame the blood, and fill the stomach with harmful mucus, especially when consumed frequently and regularly.

These effects are incomparably stronger from the consumption of meat: it fattens the flesh to an extreme degree, giving it a particular heaviness, inflames the blood, and its vapors and gases greatly burden the brain. For this reason it is not used at all by monks; it belongs to those who live in the midst of the world, always occupied with intense bodily labors. Yet even for them, its constant use is harmful.

What! will exclaim the would-be clever here: meat has been permitted to man by God, and do you forbid its use?—To this we reply with the words of the Apostle: “All things are lawful for me” (that is, all is permitted to me), “but not all things are profitable; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify” (1 Cor. 10:23). We abstain from eating meat not because we consider it unclean, but because it produces a particular heaviness throughout our whole constitution and impedes spiritual progress.

By her wise ordinances and statutes, the holy Church, having permitted Christians living in the midst of the world to consume meat, has not allowed its continuous use, but has divided the seasons of meat-eating with seasons of abstinence from meat—seasons in which the Christian becomes sober from his meat-eating. Such is the fruit of the fasts, which everyone who observes them can know by experience.

For those in the monastic life, the consumption of meat is forbidden; the use of dairy foods and eggs is permitted during the meat-eating seasons. During certain seasons and days the consumption of fish is permitted to them. But for most of the time they may use only plant-based food.

Plant-based food is used almost exclusively by the most fervent ascetics of piety—especially those who have sensed within themselves the movement of the Spirit of God (2 Cor. 6:17)—for the reasons already stated regarding its convenience, and because of its low cost.[5] For drink they use water alone, avoiding not only inflaming and intoxicating drinks, but also nourishing ones, such as all grain-based beverages.

The rules of fasting are established by the Church with the aim of assisting her children, as a guide for the whole Christian community. Along with this, each person is directed to examine himself with the help of an experienced and discerning spiritual father, and not to impose upon himself a fast exceeding his strength—for we repeat: fasting is for the sake of the person, not the person for the sake of fasting; the body must not be destroyed by the very food given to sustain it.

“If you restrain the belly, said Saint Basil the Great, you will enter paradise; but if you do not restrain it, you will become a prey of death.” By paradise here one must understand the grace-filled state of prayer, and by death the state of passion.[6] The grace-filled state of a person during his sojourn on earth is a pledge of his eternal blessedness in the heavenly Eden; the fall into the power of sin and into a state of spiritual deadness is a pledge of his fall into the abyss of hell for eternal torment. Amen.

[1] Homily 1, ch. 4.

[2] The Venerable Mark the Ascetic. Homily 8, on fasting and humility.

[3] Ibid.

[4] The Alphabetical Patericon.

[5] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 14, ch. XII.

[6] The Venerable Nil Sorsky. Homily 5. The thought of gluttony.

On Prayer: Article 1

On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)

It is natural for the poor to beg, and it is natural for man, impoverished by the fall, to pray.

Prayer is the turning of fallen and repentant man toward God. Prayer is the weeping of fallen and repentant man before God. Prayer is the outpouring of the heartfelt desires, supplications, and sighs of fallen man—slain by sin—before God.

The first manifestation, the first movement of repentance is the weeping of the heart. This is the prayerful voice of the heart, preceding the prayer of the mind. And soon the mind, drawn along by the prayer of the heart, begins to bring forth prayerful thoughts.

God is the sole source of all true goods. Prayer is the mother and head of all the virtues, as the means and state of communion between man and God.[1] It draws the virtues from the source of all good—God—and imparts them to the person who strives through prayer to abide in communion with God.

The path to God is prayer. The measurement of the journey being traveled is the various states of prayer into which the one who prays rightly and persistently gradually enters.

Learn to pray to God rightly. Having learned to pray rightly, pray constantly—and you will readily inherit salvation. Salvation comes from God in His own time, with an undeniable inward assurance of itself, to one who prays rightly and persistently.

For prayer to be right, it must be offered from a heart filled with poverty of spirit—from a heart broken and humbled. All other states of the heart, until it is renewed by the Holy Spirit, recognize as what they truly are: unsuitable for a repentant sinner who beseeches God for the forgiveness of his sins and for liberation—as from a prison and chains—from enslavement to the passions.

By the Law of Moses, the Israelites were commanded to offer all their sacrifices only in the one place appointed by God. And by the spiritual law, one spiritual place has been appointed for Christians to offer all their sacrifices, and above all the sacrifice of sacrifices—prayer. That place is humility.[2]

God has no need of our prayers! He knows, even before we ask, what we require; He, the All-merciful, pours out abundant gifts even upon those who do not ask Him. We ourselves have need of prayer: it unites the person to God. Without prayer a person is a stranger to God, and the more he exercises himself in prayer, the more he draws near to God.

Prayer is a partaking of life. The abandonment of prayer brings invisible death to the soul.

What air is to the life of the body, the Holy Spirit is to the life of the soul. The soul breathes this holy, mysterious air by means of prayer.

When you rise from sleep, let your first thought be of God; offer to God the very first fruits of your thoughts, not yet stamped with any vain impression. When you go to sleep, when you prepare to plunge into this image of death, let your last thoughts be of eternity and of the God who reigns over it.

An angel revealed to a certain holy monk the following order of thoughts in prayer, pleasing to God: “The beginning of prayer should consist in the glorification of God, in thanksgiving to God for His countless benefactions; then we should offer to God a sincere confession of our sins, in contrition of spirit;[3] and in conclusion we may—but with the greatest humility—present to the Lord our petitions concerning our needs of soul and body, leaving with reverence the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of these petitions to His will.”

The primary cause of prayer is faith: “I believed, and therefore I spoke” (Ps. 115:1)—prayed to the merciful God, who was pleased to command me to pray and who gave the promise to attend to it.

“Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and it will be granted to you” (Mk. 11:24), the Lord proclaimed. And therefore, casting aside all doubt and faint-heartedness, abide persistently in prayer before the Lord, who commanded us to “always pray and not lose heart” (Lk. 18:1)—that is, not to fall into despondency from the constraint of prayer, which is especially at first burdensome and intolerable for a mind accustomed to wandering everywhere.

Blessed is the soul that ceaselessly knocks through prayer at the doors of God’s mercy, and ceaselessly wearies the Unwearied with complaints against its “adversary” (Lk.The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 7, ch. 11:18:3)—against the sin that oppresses it: it will rejoice in due time over its purity and its freedom from passion.

Sometimes our petition is heard immediately; at other times, in the words of the Saviour, “God bears long with us” (Lk. 18:7)—that is, He does not quickly fulfill what we ask: He sees that it is necessary to delay this fulfillment for a time for our humility, that we must grow weary, must see our weakness, which always manifests itself very sharply when we are left to ourselves.

Prayer, as a conversation with God, is itself a lofty good—often far greater than what a person is asking for—and the merciful God, not granting the petition, leaves the petitioner with his prayer, so that he may not lose it, may not abandon this higher good when he receives the good he has asked for, which is far lesser.

Petitions whose fulfillment would be accompanied by harmful consequences, God does not grant; nor does He grant those petitions that are contrary to His holy will, contrary to His wise and incomprehensible judgments.

Against the decree of God, the great Moses the God-seer prayed to be given entry into the Promised Land, and was not heard (Deut. 3:26); holy David prayed, intensifying his prayer with fasting, ashes, and tears, for the preservation of the life of his ailing son—but was not heard (2 Sam. 12:16–17). And when your own petition is not fulfilled by God, bow with reverence to the will of the all-holy God, who for reasons unknown to us has left your petition unfulfilled.

To the children of this world who ask God for earthly goods to satisfy their carnal desires, the holy Apostle James proclaims: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures” (Jas. 4:3).

When we desire to stand before an earthly king, we prepare for this with special care: we consider what disposition our heartfelt feelings should have in a conversation with him, lest we be carried away by some impulse of feeling into a word or gesture unpleasant to the king; we plan in advance what to say to him, so as to speak only what is pleasing and thereby incline him favorably toward us; we take care that even our outward appearance may attract his attention. How much more then must we make proper preparation when we desire to stand before the King of kings and to enter into conversation with Him through prayer.

“Man looks at the face, but God looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7); yet in a person, the disposition of the heart corresponds most closely to the position of his face, his outward bearing. And so, give your body the most reverent posture in prayer. Stand as one condemned, with head bowed, not daring to look up at heaven, with hands lowered or clasped behind you, as if bound with ropes—as prisoners seized at the scene of a crime are usually bound. Let the sound of your voice be the plaintive sound of weeping, a groan of one struck by a mortal weapon or tormented by a severe illness.

“God looks at the heart.” He sees our most hidden, most subtle thoughts and feelings; He sees all our past and all our future. God is everywhere present. And so stand in your prayer as though you were standing before God Himself. Indeed you are standing before Him! You stand before your Judge and absolute Sovereign, upon whom your lot in time and in eternity depends. Make use of your standing before Him to arrange your own well-being; do not allow this standing, through your unworthiness, to become the cause of temporal and eternal punishment for you. Intending to offer prayer to God, cast away all earthly thoughts and cares. Do not occupy yourself with thoughts that may come to you then, however important, brilliant, or necessary they may seem. Give what is God’s to God, and what is needed for temporal life you will have time to attend to in due course. It is impossible at one and the same time to serve God through prayer and to occupy the mind with extraneous thoughts and cares.

Before prayer, burn in your heart the incense of the fear of God and holy reverence: reflect that you have angered God with countless transgressions, which are plainer to Him than they are to your own conscience; endeavor to propitiate the Judge with humility. Take care! Do not arouse His displeasure by negligence and boldness: He desires that even the angelic Powers nearest to Him, the most pure, should stand before Him with all reverence and most holy fear (Ps. 88:8).

The garment of your soul must shine with the whiteness of simplicity. There must be nothing complex here! There must be no admixture of crafty thoughts and feelings of vainglory, hypocrisy, pretense, people-pleasing, pride of mind, or sensuality—those dark and foul-smelling stains with which the soul-garment of praying Pharisees is usually bespattered.

Instead of pearls and diamonds, instead of gold and silver, adorn yourself with chastity, humble-mindedness, the tears of meekness and spiritual understanding—and, before you have received these tears, with the tears of repentance; adorn yourself with the childlike, angelic guilelessness. This is precious adornment! When the King of kings beholds this adornment upon the soul, His merciful gaze is turned toward it.

Forgiveness of all offenses—all of them, without exception, even the most grievous—is an indispensable condition for success in prayer. “When you stand praying”, the Saviour commands, “forgive whatever you have against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mk. 11:25–26).[4] “The prayers of the resentful are seeds sown on stone”, said the Venerable Isaac the Syrian.

Moderate, prudent, and constant abstinence from food and drink makes the body light, purifies the mind, gives it alertness, and therefore also serves as a preparation for prayer. Intemperance of the belly makes the body heavy and dense, hardens the heart, darkens the mind with the multitude of vapors and gases rising from the stomach to the brain. Scarcely does one who is overfull or overfed stand up for prayer when drowsiness and sloth assail him, a multitude of coarse fantasies are drawn in his imagination, and his heart is incapable of coming to compunction.

As harmful as intemperance is, so too—or even more so—is immoderate fasting.[5] The weakness of body arising from eating too little does not allow one to perform the appointed number of prayers with the requisite force.

The quantity of prayer is determined for each person by his manner of life and the measure of his strength, both of soul and body. The two mites of the widow, which she brought to the temple and which constituted all her substance, proved on the scales of the righteous God to be greater than the considerable offerings of the rich from their abundance. Judge prayer in the same way: appoint for yourself a quantity of prayer in keeping with your strength, and remember the wise instruction of the great teacher of ascetics: “If you compel a weak body to works that exceed its strength, you thereby introduce darkness into your soul and bring it confusion, not benefit.”[6]

From one who is healthy and strong in constitution, a corresponding prayer is required. “Every prayer, said the same great Father, at which the body does not labor and the heart does not come to compunction, is considered an unripe fruit—for such prayer is without soul.”[7]

If you are occupied with public duties—or, if you are a monk, with your obediences—and have no opportunity to devote as much time to prayer as you would wish, do not be troubled by this: service performed lawfully and in good conscience prepares a person for fervent prayer and makes up for quantity with quality. Nothing so contributes to progress in prayer as a conscience satisfied by a life pleasing to God. The fulfillment of the Gospel commandments attunes the mind and heart to pure prayer filled with compunction, while true prayer directs one to think, feel, and act in accordance with the teachings of the Gospel.

Mercy toward one’s neighbors and humility before them, expressed in outward deeds and nourished within the soul, together with purity of heart—especially from thoughts and feelings of fornication—constitute the foundation and strength of prayer.[8] They are, as it were, the “wings” (Ps. 54:7) by which it soars to heaven. Without them, prayer cannot rise from the earth—that is, cannot emerge from carnal thinking: it is held back by that thinking as by a net or snare; it is troubled, defiled, and annihilated by it.

The soul of prayer is attentiveness.[9] As a body without a soul is dead, so prayer without attentiveness is dead. Prayer spoken without attentiveness becomes idle talk, and the one who prays thus is numbered among those who take the “name of God in vain.”

Speak the words of prayer without haste; do not allow the mind to wander everywhere, but confine it within the words of prayer.[10] This way is narrow and grievous for a mind accustomed to roaming freely through the universe; but this way leads to attentiveness. Whoever tastes the great good of attentiveness will love to constrain the mind on the path that leads to the blessed state of attentiveness.

Attentiveness is the initial gift of Divine grace, sent down to one who labors and patiently endures in the ascetic struggle of prayer.[11]

Grace-given attentiveness must be preceded by one’s own effort toward attentiveness: the latter must be an active witness to the sincere desire to receive the former. One’s own attentiveness is assailed by thoughts and fantasies, shaken by them; grace-given attentiveness is filled with firmness.

Forbid yourself the scattering of thoughts in prayer; learn to hate fantasizing; reject cares by the force of faith; strike the heart with the fear of God—and you will readily accustom yourself to attentiveness.

The mind that prays must be in a state that is entirely true. Fantasy—however enticing and seemly it may appear—being the mind’s own arbitrary composition, draws the mind out of the state of Divine truth and introduces it into a state of self-delusion and deceit; for this reason it is rejected in prayer.

During prayer the mind must be kept—and preserved with all diligence—free from images, rejecting all forms drawn in the faculty of imagination; for the mind in prayer stands before the invisible God, whom it is impossible to represent by any material image. Images, if the mind admits them in prayer, will become an impenetrable veil, a wall between the mind and God. “Those who in their prayers see nothing, see God”, said the Venerable Meletius the Confessor.[12]

If during your prayer there should appear to you in a sensory way, or take shape within you mentally, the form of Christ, or of an Angel, or of some Saint—in a word, any kind of image whatsoever—by no means accept this apparition as genuine, pay no attention to it, and do not enter into conversation with it.[13] Otherwise you will inevitably fall into delusion and the most grievous damage to the soul, as has befallen many. Man, before he has been renewed by the Holy Spirit, is incapable of communion with holy spirits. Being still in the domain of the fallen spirits, in captivity and servitude to them, he is capable of seeing only them—and they not infrequently, having noticed in him a high opinion of himself and self-delusion, appear to him in the guise of radiant Angels, even of Christ Himself, for the ruin of his soul.

Holy icons are received by the holy Church for the arousal of devout remembrances and feelings, and by no means for the arousal of fantasizing. Standing before the icon of the Saviour, stand as though before the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who is everywhere present in His Divinity and present through His icon in the place where it is situated. Standing before the icon of the Mother of God, stand as though before the Most Holy Virgin Herself; but keep your mind free from images: there is a world of difference between being in the presence of the Lord and standing before the Lord, or imagining the Lord. The sense of the Lord’s presence brings upon the soul a saving fear, introduces into it a saving feeling of reverence;[14] whereas imagining the Lord and His saints gives the mind a kind of materiality, leads it to a false and proud opinion of itself—and brings the soul into a false state, the state of self-delusion.

A lofty state—the sense of God’s presence! It keeps the mind from conversing with extraneous thoughts that assail prayer; because of it, the nothingness of man is abundantly felt; because of it, a special vigilance over oneself appears, which preserves a person from sins, even the most minute. The sense of God’s presence is acquired by attentive prayer. Reverent standing before holy icons also greatly contributes to its attainment.

The words of prayer, animated by attentiveness, penetrate deep into the soul, pierce and, so to speak, transfix the heart, and produce compunction in it. The words of prayer offered with distraction merely touch, as it were, the surface of the soul, producing no impression upon it.

[1] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Title of Homily 28. The Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Homily 3, ch. 1.

[2] According to the explanation of the Venerable Pimen the Great. The Alphabetical Patericon.

[3] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 28, ch. VII.

[4] Homily 89.

[5] Venerable Cassian. Homily on Discernment. The Philokalia, Part 4.

[6] St. Isaac the Syrian. Homily 85.

[7] Ibid. Homily 11.

[8] St. Isaac the Syrian. Homilies 56 and 57.

[9] Venerable Symeon the New Theologian. Homily on the Three Methods of Prayer. The Philokalia, Part 1.

[10] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 28, Chapter 17.

[11] Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopouloi. The Philokalia, Part 4, Chapter 24.

[12] The treatise “On Prayer” by this servant of God has been published in the book “Klasý” (Gleanings), issued by Optina Hermitage.

[13] Venerable Gregory of Sinai. On Spiritual Delusion, Chapters Most Profitable. The Philokalia, Part 1.

[14] Homily of Venerable Symeon on the Three Methods of Prayer.

On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

Attentiveness and compunction are recognized as gifts of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can still the waves of the mind as they race in all directions, said Saint John of the Ladder.[1] Another most blessed Father said: “When compunction is with us, God is with us.”[2]

One who has attained to constant attentiveness and compunction in his prayers has attained the state of the beatitudes named in the Gospel “poverty of spirit” and “weeping”. He has already broken many chains of the passions, has already caught the fragrance of spiritual freedom, already bears within his breast a pledge of salvation. Do not abandon the narrow paths of the true path of prayer—and you will attain to the sacred rest, the mystical Sabbath: on the Sabbath no earthly work is performed; struggle and ascetic labor are set aside; in blessed dispassion, without distraction, the soul stands before God in pure prayer and reposes in Him by faith in His boundless goodness and by submission to His all-holy will.

In one who struggles in prayer, progress in prayer first begins to manifest itself through a special action of attentiveness: from time to time it unexpectedly seizes the mind and encloses it in the words of prayer. Then it becomes far more constant and prolonged: the mind, as it were, cleaves to the words of prayer and is drawn by them toward union with the heart. Finally, compunction suddenly joins with attentiveness and makes the person a temple of prayer, a temple of God.

Offer to God quiet and humble prayers, not fervent and blazing ones. When you have become a mystical minister of prayer, you will ascend to God’s tabernacle and from there fill the censer of prayer with sacred fire. Unclean fire—the blind, material inflammation of the blood—is forbidden to be brought before the all-holy God.

The sacred fire of prayer, drawn from God’s tabernacle, is holy love, poured out in true Christians by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). He who strives to join prayer with the fire of the blood imagines, in his self-delusion, deceived by his high opinion of himself, that he is performing service to God, whereas in reality he is angering Him.

Do not seek delight in prayer: it is altogether inappropriate for a sinner. A sinner’s desire to feel delight is itself already self-delusion. Seek rather that your dead, hardened heart may come alive, that it may open to feeling its sinfulness, its fall, its nothingness, that it may see and acknowledge these with self-denial. Then the true fruit of prayer will appear in you: true repentance. You will groan before God and cry out to Him in prayer from the disastrous condition of your soul, suddenly revealed to you; you will cry out as from a prison, as from a tomb, as from hell.

Repentance gives birth to prayer, and in double measure is itself born from its daughter.

Delight in prayer is the exclusive lot of the holy elect of God, renewed by the Holy Spirit. Whoever—carried away by surges of the blood, by vainglory and sensuality—contrives delight for himself is in grievous self-delusion. Such contriving is very much within the capacity of a soul darkened by life according to the flesh, a soul deceived and continuously deceiving itself through its own pride.

The feelings produced by prayer and repentance consist in a lightening of the conscience, in peace of soul, in reconciliation with one’s neighbors and with the circumstances of life, in mercy and compassion toward humanity, in restraint from the passions, in indifference to the world, in submission to God, in strength when contending against sinful thoughts and impulses. Be content with these feelings—in which, however, there is a tasting of the hope of salvation. Do not seek prematurely the higher spiritual states and raptures of prayer. They are not at all what they appear to be in our imagination: the action of the Holy Spirit, from which the higher states of prayer arise, is incomprehensible to the carnal mind.[3]

Learn to pray with all your thought, with all your soul, with all your strength. You will ask: what does this mean?—It cannot otherwise be known than by experience. Strive constantly to engage in attentive prayer: attentive prayer will grant you the resolution of this question through blessed experience.

The ascetic struggle of prayer appears burdensome, tedious, and dry to a mind accustomed to occupying itself only with perishable things. The habit of prayer is acquired with difficulty; but when once acquired, it becomes a source of unceasing spiritual consolation.

Prayer, as was said above, is the mother of all the virtues: gain the mother! With her will come her children into the house of your soul and make it a sanctuary of God.

Before undertaking any task, offer prayer to God; by prayer draw down God’s blessing upon your deeds, and by prayer judge your deeds: the thought of prayer stops one from deeds that are contrary to the commandments of God.

Whoever turns to God with prayer for enlightenment, help, and blessing before every deed and word lives his life as though beneath the gaze of God, under His guidance. The habit of such conduct is easy to form; there is nothing swifter than the mind, said the great Barsanuphius, and nothing easier than to raise the mind to God in every need that arises.[4]

In difficult circumstances of life, increase your prayers to God. It is more reliable to have recourse to prayer than to the empty calculations of weak human reason—calculations which for the most part prove unrealizable. It is more reliable to lean by faith and prayer on the omnipotent God than to lean on one’s own infirm reason with its uncertain calculations and suppositions.

Be not foolish in your petitions, lest you anger God with your small-mindedness: one who asks the King of kings for something trifling dishonors Him. The Israelites, paying no heed to the miracles of God wrought for them in the desert, asked for the satisfaction of the belly’s desires—“while the food was still in their mouths, the anger of God rose against them” (Ps.This article and the two that follow it are drawn from the Fifth Homily of St. Isaac the Syrian. 77:30–31).

Bring to God petitions befitting His greatness. Solomon asked of Him wisdom; he received it, and with it a multitude of other goods, because he asked wisely. Elisha asked of Him the grace of the Holy Spirit in double measure beyond his great teacher, and his petition was accepted.

One who seeks perishable earthly goods in his prayer provokes the displeasure of the Heavenly King. The Angels and Archangels—the courtiers of His court—look upon you during your prayer and observe what you are asking of God. They are filled with wonder and rejoice when they see an earthly creature who has left behind his earthly concerns and brings a petition to receive something heavenly; they grieve, on the contrary, at one who has neglected heavenly things and asks for his earth and his corruption.

We are commanded to be children in malice, but not in understanding (1 Cor. 14:20). In prayer, the wisdom of this world—wordy and puffed up—is set aside: from this it does not follow that feeble-mindedness is required or desired in it. What is required of it is perfect understanding, spiritual understanding, filled with humble-mindedness and simplicity, expressed often in prayer not in words but in a silence of prayer that surpasses words. This prayerful silence seizes the mind when new, spiritual concepts suddenly present themselves to it—concepts inexpressible in the words of this world and this age—when a particularly vivid sense of the God who is present appears. Before the boundless majesty of the Godhead, His weak creature, man, falls silent.

Vain repetition (Mt.According to the commentary of blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria. 6:7–8), condemned by the Lord in pagan prayers, consists in the numerous petitions for temporal goods with which the prayers of the pagans are filled, and in the rhetorical style in which they are presented—as though oratorical adornments, material sonority, and force of style could act upon God as they act upon the hearing and nerves of carnal people. In condemning this wordiness, the Lord by no means condemned prolonged prayers, as it seemed to certain heretics: He Himself hallowed prolonged prayer by abiding long in prayer. “And He continued through the night” (that is, spent the whole night) “in prayer to God” (Lk. 6:12), the Gospel narrates of the Lord.

The prolonged prayers of God’s saints arise not from vain repetition but from the abundant spiritual feelings that arise in them during prayer. By the abundance and intensity of these feelings, time is as it were annihilated—transformed, for the holy ones of God, into a foretaste of eternity.

When one who labors in prayer attains progress in his blessed struggle, the diversity of thoughts in the psalms and other prayer-offices becomes unsuited to his condition. The prayer of the publican and other briefest prayers express more satisfactorily the inexpressible, vast desire of the heart, and the saints of God have often spent many hours, days, and years in such prayer without feeling any need for a diversity of thoughts to sustain their intense, concentrated prayer. (The hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov, a monk who made exceptional progress in prayer, spent a thousand days and a thousand nights standing on a stone and crying to the Lord: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”)[5]

Prayers composed by heretics closely resemble the prayers of pagans: in them is vain repetition; in them is the earthly beauty of words; in them is the inflammation of the blood; in them is a lack of repentance; in them is a striving toward the marriage-feast of the Son of God directly from the brothel of the passions; in them is self-delusion. They are alien to the Holy Spirit: from them breathes the deadly contagion of the dark spirit, the crafty spirit, the spirit of falsehood and perdition.

Great is the occupation of prayer! The holy Apostles, for the sake of prayer and service to the Word, declined the ministry of bodily care for their neighbors. “It is not right for us”, they said, “to leave the word of God and serve tables… We will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word” (Acts 6:2, 4)—that is, to converse with God through prayer, and to converse about God with their neighbors, announcing to them the Triune God and the incarnate God-Word.

The occupation of prayer is the highest occupation for the human mind; the state of purity free from distraction, which prayer grants to the mind, is its highest natural state; and its being caught up to God—whose first cause is pure prayer—is a supernatural state.[6]

Into a supernatural state only the holy saints of God ascend—renewed by the Holy Spirit, having put off the old Adam and put on the New—those who are capable of “beholding with unveiled face of the soul the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” by the action of the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18).[7] The greater part of Divine revelations they receive during the exercise of prayer, as at a time when the soul is especially prepared, especially purified, and attuned to communion with God. Thus the holy Apostle Peter during prayer saw the symbolic sheet descending from heaven (Acts 10:11). Thus to Cornelius the centurion an angel appeared during prayer (Acts 10:3). Thus, when the Apostle Paul was praying in the Jerusalem temple, the Lord appeared to him and commanded him immediately to depart from Jerusalem: “Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles” (Acts 22:21), He said to him.

Prayer is commanded by the Lord, just as repentance is. The end of prayer, just as the end of repentance, is appointed as one: entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, into the Kingdom of God, which is within us. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Mt. 4:17). “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk. 17:21). “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened… The Father who is in heaven will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Lk. 11:9–10, 13). “Will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry out to Him day and night”—and who complain of the violence done to them by sinful corruption and by demons? “I tell you, He will bring about their justice speedily” (Lk. 18:7–8). Entry into the Kingdom of Heaven—planted in the heart of every Christian through holy baptism—is the development of that Kingdom by the action of the Holy Spirit.

Hasten with prayer, O soul thirsting for salvation; hasten in the footsteps of the Saviour, accompanied by His countless disciples. Call out after Him with prayer as the Canaanite woman did (Mt. 15:22–28); do not be grieved by His prolonged inattention; endure with magnanimity and humility the sorrows and humiliations which He will permit you on the path of prayer. For success in prayer, help from temptations is indispensable. By your faith, for your humility, for your persistent prayer, He will comfort you by healing your daughter who is tormented by demonic action—the passion’s action—by healing your thoughts and feelings, transforming them from passionate to passionless, from sinful to holy, from carnal to spiritual. Amen.

[1] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 28, Chapter 17.

[2] Hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov.

[3] St. Isaac the Syrian. Homily 55.

[4] Reply 216.

[5] A Narrative of the Life and Ascetic Struggles of Father Seraphim. Moscow, edition of 1844.

[6] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 28.

[7] St. Isaac the Syrian. Homily XVI.

On Prayer: Article 2

On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

The ascetic struggle of prayer is holy, great, and saving for the soul. It is the chief and foremost among all monastic ascetic struggles. All other struggles are subsidiary to this one; they are undertaken so that the struggle of prayer may proceed more successfully and that the fruits of prayer may be more abundant. “The head of all devout living,” said Venerable Macarius the Great, “and the summit of all good works is constant perseverance in prayer.”60[1]

What human condition can be higher—can even be compared to the condition of one who is admitted through prayer to converse with the King of kings, the God of gods, the Creator and sovereign Lord of all visible and invisible, material and spiritual creatures?

By reason of the importance of the practice of prayer, this practice requires considerable prior preparation.61[2]

From those who desire to approach the King of kings, He requires a manner of thinking and a disposition of heart that are pleasing to Him—that very manner of thinking and disposition of heart by means of which all the righteous of the Old and New Testaments drew near to Him and were well-pleasing to Him (Lk. 1:17). Without this manner of thinking and disposition of heart, access is impossible; attempts and efforts toward access are in vain.

You who desire to approach God and to become united to Him through constant perseverance in prayer—take heed! Examine carefully your manner of thinking: are you infected by any false teaching? Do you follow, exactly and without exception, the teaching of the Eastern Church, the one true, holy, and apostolic Church?62 “If anyone ‘will not listen to the Church,’” said the Lord to His disciple, “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector” (Mt.The Trebnik. The Order of Confession. 18:17)—strangers to God, enemies of God. What significance, then, can the prayer of one who is in a state of enmity toward God, in a state of estrangement from God, possibly have?

The awareness of one’s sinfulness, the awareness of one’s weakness and utter insignificance—this is the necessary condition for prayer to be mercifully received and heard by God. All the saints placed as the foundation of prayer the awareness and confession of their own sinfulness and of the sinfulness of all humanity. The holiness of man depends upon the awareness and confession of this sinfulness. He who grants holiness to men through their repentance said: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mt. 9:13).

You who desire to take up the ascetic struggle of prayer! Before you approach this struggle, endeavor to forgive everyone who has grieved you, slandered you, humiliated you, or done you any harm whatsoever. He before Whom you intend to stand in prayer commands you: “If you bring your gift” of prayer “to” the heavenly “altar” of the King of kings, “and there remember that your brother has something against you: leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Mt. 5:23–24).

Prepare yourself for prayer through detachment and freedom from care. From attachments come cares. Held back by attachments and distracted by cares, your mind will not be able to press steadily toward God in prayer. “You cannot serve God and mammon: for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Do not be anxious, saying: what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? Seek” with earnest, constant, compunction-filled prayers “… the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Mt. 6:24, 21, 31, 33). Tear your mind and heart away from the earth and from all that is earthly, and it will not be difficult for you to begin the unseen journey to heaven in prayer.

If you endure poverty, or are oppressed by sorrowful circumstances, or if an enemy is plotting against you and persecuting you—leave it unheeded. So that your attention in prayer may not be assailed by any distraction or disturbance, leave unheeded the memories and thoughts that come to you concerning your poverty, your circumstances, and your enemy. He in Whose full power you are, together with your circumstances and your enemy, says to His beloved: “Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, and believe also in Me” (Jn. 14:1).

“When you pray,” the Lord enjoins, “go into your inner chamber, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father Who is in secret” (Mt. 6:6). Whether you are in society or alone, strive constantly to withdraw into your inner chamber of the soul, to shut the doors of the senses and of the tongue, and to pray secretly with mind and heart.

Having come to love the ascetic struggle of prayer, love also the solitude of the material cell. Shut its door both for yourself and for others. Bear patiently the tedium of enclosure: it will not be long before it gives way to a far sweeter feeling. “Remain in your cell,” the holy Fathers said, “and it will teach you everything”63—that is, the monastic way of life, which is wholly concentrated in prayer.[3]

Having come to love the ascetic struggle of prayer, love also silence: it preserves the powers of the soul undivided and capable of constant prayer in the inner chamber. The habit of silence makes possible a soundless prayer of the heart even amid a noisy throng.64[4]

As a sacrifice to your love of prayer, offer up the pleasures of the senses and the pleasures of the intellect—curiosity and the desire to know. Guard your soul from all outward impressions, so that God may be imprinted upon it through prayer. His all-holy, invisible, spiritual Image cannot abide in a soul cluttered with images of the vain, material, and transient world.

Do not delight in visible nature, do not occupy yourself with contemplating its beauties; do not spend precious time and the powers of the soul in acquiring the knowledge furnished by human sciences.65 Employ both your powers and your time in the acquisition of prayer, which performs its sacred work in the inner chamber.[5] There, within yourself, prayer will reveal a spectacle that will draw all your attention to itself; it will furnish you with knowledge that the world cannot contain—knowledge of whose very existence the world has not the slightest conception.

There, in the depths of the heart, you will see the fall of humanity;[6] you will see your soul, slain by sin; you will see a tomb; you will see hades; you will see demons; you will see chains and fetters; you will see the flaming sword of the Cherub who guards the way to the tree of life and bars mankind from entering the dwellings of paradise—you will see many other mysteries, hidden from the world and from the children of the world.66 When this spectacle opens before you, your gaze will be riveted to it; you will grow cold toward all that is temporal and corruptible, with which you have hitherto been in sympathy.

“Today or tomorrow we shall die,” said St.[7] Andrew to a monk,67 drawing him away from attachment to material things and explaining the senselessness of such attachment. Very true words! A very accurate depiction of the indefinite term of our earthly life! Today or tomorrow—we shall die. Nothing is easier than to die. The longest life, when we come to its end, proves to have been the briefest moment. Why, then, occupy oneself with what one must of necessity leave forever—and leave very soon? It is better to study oneself through prayer, to study the life and the world that await us, in which we shall remain for eternity.

Solitude and the desert are the dwelling-place of prayer. “One who has tasted of prayer,” said St. John of the Ladder, “will flee from crowds;[8] for who but prayer makes its lover free from the need of society, like the wild ass that loves the desert?”68 If you wish to dedicate your soul to the work of prayer, withdraw from beholding the world, renounce human society, conversations, and the customary receiving of friends in your cell—even under the pretext of love. Remove from yourself all that interrupts and disturbs your mysterious converse with God.69 Abide on earth and in human society as a stranger. You are a stranger.[9] The earth is a inn. Unknown is the hour in which you shall be called. The call is inevitable and inescapable; to refuse or to resist is impossible. Prepare yourself through holy prayer for a joyful departure from the inn.

Prayer unites a person to God. The fallen angels, who through their fall passed from union with God to a terrible, senseless enmity toward Him, behold its working with inexpressible envy and hatred. By various temptations they strive to shake the one who prays, to turn him away from this most saving of struggles, and to deprive him of the progress and blessedness that the struggle will without doubt bring. Therefore, one who desires to devote himself to the practice of prayer must prepare himself in good time for sorrows, so as not to be bewildered and confused when they overtake him, and so as to resist them manfully with the strength of faith and patience.70[10]

Demons afflict the monk who perseveres in prayer with bodily ailments and oppress him with poverty and lack of human attention and help, just as they afflicted and oppressed the long-suffering Job by God’s permission. But we, like that righteous man, will bless and give thanks to God for what He has permitted, which the demons have carried out;71 by glorifying and giving thanks to God, we shall fulfill the all-holy will of God, declared to us by the Holy Spirit of God:[11] “in everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thes. 5:18).

Demons incite people to take up arms against the practitioner of prayer—to condemn him for the strangeness of his behavior and the meagerness of his useful activity; to accuse him of idleness, hypocrisy, and sanctimony; to impute to him evil and cunning intentions and vicious acts; to disturb and agitate his stillness; and to compel him to occupations contrary to his manner of life, involving distraction, dissipation, and the disruption of his inward peace. Knowing the ultimate cause of these temptations, let us pray, according to the commandment of the Gospel and the injunction of the holy Fathers, for our neighbors, who sin in ignorance and by being swept away; and God will bring to nothing the wiles of the demons.

Tempting us from without, demons do their evil work within us as well. When we withdraw into solitude and begin to occupy ourselves with prayer, they stir up within us various sinful desires such as we had not previously felt; they agitate our heart with countless sinful thoughts and fantasies that had never previously presented themselves to our mind. They do this with the purpose of bringing us to bewilderment and despondency, so that, seeing no benefit whatsoever from the prayerful struggle and solitude, we might abandon them.72 To monks who are new to the struggle, this action of the demons appears to be the soul’s own activity:[12] our unseen, crafty enemies, while committing their evil deeds, also wish to remain concealed, so that escape from the nets spread for man might be impossible, and ruin and destruction inevitable.73[13]

Just as the demons consider it very important to conceal themselves from man, so for man it is very important to understand that they are the primary agents of sin, the source of our temptations—not our neighbors, not we ourselves when we lead a life in the service of God, not some accident of circumstance. Having discerned the enemy, we shall gradually learn, under the guidance of the Word of God, to watch over them and over ourselves with vigilance, and to resist them with firmness. “Humble yourselves,” the chief Apostle instructs us, “under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be watchful, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith” (1 Pet. 5:6–9).

This struggle, these attacks of demons upon those who are being saved and who pray, are permitted by God Himself—they are consequences of our voluntary fall, through which we subjected ourselves to the power of demons. Let us submit to God’s just decree concerning us and bow our heads beneath all the blows of sorrows and afflictions with which it pleases God to chastise our sinfulness and our transgressions in this temporal life, in order to deliver us from the eternal sorrows and afflictions that we have deserved. God, in permitting us temptations and delivering us to the devil, does not cease to provide for us; in chastising us, He does not cease to do us good. “God is faithful,” says the Apostle, “Who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). And the devil, being a servant and creature of God, tempts not as much as he would wish, but only as much as a nod from God permits him;[14] he tempts not when he wishes, but when he is given permission to do so.74 Let us cast upon God, according to the Apostle’s counsel, all our care for ourselves, all our anxieties, all our hope; and to this end let us multiply and intensify our prayer to Him.

The permission given to demons to tempt us is necessary for our growth: by opposing our prayer, they compel us to learn especially skillful use of this sword. By the sword of prayer, the fiery sword of the Cherub guarding the way to the tree of life is shattered, and the victor becomes a partaker of eternal life.75 By God’s inexpressible wisdom, “evil cooperates with good through no good intention.”76 When in our solitude and in the exercise of prayer there suddenly surge up within us passionate feelings and impulses, when fierce thoughts assail us, when sinful fantasies present themselves to us with seductive vividness—this is a sign of the coming of enemies.[15] Then is not the time for despondency, not the time for weakness:[16] it is the time for struggle. Let us resist the enemies with intensified prayer to God, and He will scatter and drive away our enemies.77[17]

In the unseen warfare we do not always or quickly become victors: victory is a gift of God, granted to the ascetic by God in His own time—a time known to God alone and determined by God alone. Even the defeats we suffer are sometimes necessary for us. Here we speak of defeats arising from our weakness and sinfulness, not from a changed resolve. Defeats are permitted us for our humility, so that we might discern and comprehend the fallen state of our nature, acknowledge the necessity of a Redeemer, believe in Him, and confess Him.78[12]

In the wake of such defeats, our unseen enemies instill in us shame on account of the defeat, and on account of the shame a weakening in the prayerful struggle—distrust of it, the thought of abandoning it and turning to virtuous activity in the midst of human society. Let us not be deceived! With self-denial and shamelessness let us lay bare our wound before our all-good and all-powerful Physician, Who has commanded this saving shamelessness and promised to crown it with vengeance upon our adversaries (Lk. 18). Let us make a covenant in our soul: not to abandon the prayerful struggle until the end of our life, but to pass from its midst into eternity.

Our shame over defeats is devoid of reason: it is a cruel mockery of us by our enemies. Can this fig leaf—shame with all its contrivances—conceal a man’s sin from the all-seeing God? God sees sin even without a confession of sin. He seeks confession for one reason only—in order to heal. If He enjoined His Apostle to forgive a sinning and repentant brother “seven times” in a day, how much more will He Himself fulfill this toward us, who unceasingly bring Him prayer and repentance (Lk. 17:4).

Let us give careful attention to the following: is it not our double-mindedness that strengthens our enemies in the battle against us? Is it not the cause of our frequent defeats? Do we not ourselves establish the power and influence of our enemies over us by fulfilling their will through fulfilling our carnal desires, inclinations, and attachments? Do we not thereby provoke God to anger and drive Him away from us? Does there not act within us a love of the world that preserves our outward appearance as servants of God, while robbing us of the essential dignity of God’s bondservants and making us in substance enemies of God (Jas. 4:4–5)?

“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” of virtue (Jas. 1:8), and still more so will he waver on the path of the highest and foremost virtue—prayer. He is rejected by God as neither hot nor cold (Rev. 3:16). He will not be able to become a disciple of true prayer—which brings its disciples before the face of God for supernatural instruction and leads them in the footsteps of Jesus—unless he “renounces all that he has” (Lk. 14:33): the painful inclinations of the fallen human will toward the world. “Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24): only those who belong entirely to Christ can acquire true prayer.

An attachment that seems trivial, a love that seems innocent toward some animate or inanimate object, drags the mind and heart down from heaven and casts them upon the earth among the countless reptiles and creeping things of the vast sea of worldly life (Ps. 103:25). The holy Fathers liken the ascetic who has made progress in prayer to an eagle, and a petty attachment to the snare of a trap;[18] if in this snare one talon of the eagle’s mighty claw becomes entangled, the eagle becomes incapable of soaring aloft and becomes the easy and certain prey of the trapper79—then the strength and courage of the royal bird avail nothing. “Go,” the holy Fathers counsel us, drawing their counsel from the holy Gospel, “sell” your material “possessions and give to the poor, and taking up your cross,” deny yourself by opposing your attachments and your fallen will (Mt.Venerable Nil of Sinai. On Prayer, Chapter XVII. 19:21, 16:24; Mk. 10:21), that you may be able to pray without disturbance and without distraction.80 So long as attachments live in you, disturbance and distraction will assail your prayer.

It is necessary first to detach oneself from material possessions, to part with the world, and to renounce it: only after this renunciation is accomplished can a Christian discern his inner captivity, his dungeon, his chains, his wounds, and the death of his soul.81 The battle against the death living in the heart, carried on through prayer under the guidance of the Word of God, is a crucifixion—it is the losing of the soul for the saving of the soul (Mk.Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Discourse 21, Chapters 2, 3:8:35).82[19]

Unite prayer with prudent fasting: the joining of these two spiritual weapons was commanded to us by the Lord Himself for the casting out of demons from ourselves (Mk. 9:29). “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face” (Mt.The Commentary (of Theophylact). 6:17), the Saviour commanded. According to the explanation of the holy Fathers,83 the oil with which people of that time customarily anointed the head signifies the mercy that ought to abide in our spiritual judgment, just as the Apostle also said: “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with hearts of compassion, kindness, humble-mindedness, gentleness, and patience; bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another: just as Christ has forgiven you, so also must you” (Col. 3:12–13). The face of body and soul must be washed with tears: they will then appear in the eyes of one who prays and fasts when his heart overflows with mercy toward his neighbors and with compassion for all of humanity without exception.

Do you wish to be united to God through prayer? Implant mercy in your heart—the mercy by which we are commanded to become like our heavenly Father (Lk. 6:36) and to attain to gracious perfection (Mt.St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 1:5:48). Compel your heart to mercy and goodness; immerse and clothe your whole spirit in these qualities, until you feel within yourself a love for mankind like that which shines as the sun equally “on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt. 5:45).84

When from your soul you have forgiven all your neighbors their transgressions, your own transgressions will be revealed to you. You will see how much you stand in need of God’s mercy, how much all humanity stands in need of it: and you will weep before God—for yourself and for all humanity.

The holy Fathers comprehend all the practices of a monk, his entire life, in the word “weeping.” What does a monk’s “weeping” signify? It is his “prayer.”85[20]

The holy “Spirit,” when He dwells in a man, “makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26). The divine and all-heavenly Spirit, having become as it were the soul of a man, prays and weeps for him; He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Rom. 8:27), because to Him alone the will of God is perfectly known. “The things of God no one knows except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11). The Lord, promising His disciples the greatest gift—the gift of the Holy Spirit—said: “The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things” (Jn.Venerable Macarius the Great. Homily 6, Chapter 11. Homily 7, Chapter 12:14:26); if all things, then also weeping and prayer. He will weep for us; He will pray for us; while we “do not know what we should pray for as we ought” (Rom. 8:26). Such is our weakness, our limitation, our darkening and corruption by sin!86

If the Holy Spirit, dwelling within us, weeps for us, how much more ought we ourselves, before receiving within us this all-holy Stranger, to weep for ourselves. If our condition, after our renewal by the Holy Spirit, is worthy of weeping—worthy of weeping by the testimony of the Spirit Himself—how much more is it worthy of weeping in its oldness, in its fallen state, left to itself. Weeping must be an inseparable quality of our prayer, its constant, inseparable companion and helper, its very soul.

One who joins weeping to prayer labors according to God’s own direction; he labors rightly and lawfully. In due time he will reap an abundant fruit: the joy of certain salvation. One who has removed weeping from prayer labors contrary to God’s ordinance; he will reap no fruit whatsoever. More than that—he will reap the thorns of self-conceit, self-delusion, and destruction.

Brothers! Let us not allow ourselves to be deceived by a thought that is false, absurd, senseless, and ruinous: let us not rush to seek pleasures in our prayer! Gracious enjoyment is not proper to sinners; weeping is proper to them. Let us seek it with all our hearts—let us seek this treasure, the key to all spiritual treasures.

One who does not have weeping is in a false position: he has been deceived by his own pride.

The holy Fathers call weeping the leader in the spiritual struggle. It must lead all our devout thoughts and direct them toward their true goal. A thought not permeated by weeping and not guided by it is a thought gone astray.87[21]

Venerable Pimen the Great said: “The entire life of a monk must be weeping. This is the path of repentance handed down to us by Scripture and the Fathers, who said: weep! There is no other path but weeping.”88[22]

Another great Father said: “If you wish to please God, go out from the world, separate yourself from the earth, leave the creature, draw near to the Creator, and be united with God through prayer and weeping.”89[23]

Monks living in populous monasteries who desire to acquire the weeping of prayer must pay particular attention to the mortification of their own will. If they cut it off and do not pay attention to the sins and behavior of their neighbors in general, they will acquire both prayer and weeping. Thoughts, as they gather in the heart, stir up within it prayer and sorrow according to God, and this sorrow gives rise to tears.90[24]

Given the terrible scarcity of true guides in prayer in our time, let us choose weeping as our guide and instructor. It will both teach us prayer and guard us from self-delusion. All those who have rejected weeping, who have separated it from their prayer, have fallen into self-delusion. So the holy Fathers affirm.91[25]

[1] Homily 3, Chapter 1.

[2] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 28, Chapter III.

[3] The Alphabetical Patericon. Venerable Arsenius the Great.

[4] St. Isaac the Syrian. Homily 41.

[5] St. John of Carpathus, Chapter 13. The Philokalia, Part 4.

[6] Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 1, Chapter 1. Homily 7, Chapter 1.

[7] The Menaion Reader, 2 October.

[8] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 27, Chapter 56.

[9] Drawn from the 56th Homily of St. Isaac the Syrian.

[10] Venerable Nil of Sinai. On Prayer. The Philokalia, Part 4.

[11] Job, Chapters 1 and 2.

[12] Venerable Nil of Sora, Homily 3.

[13] Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 7, Chapter 31.

[14] Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 4, Chapter 7.

[15] Rev. 2:7; Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 4, Chapter 5.

[16] Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 4, Chapter 6.

[17] An example of the battle against arising passions may be seen in the life of St. Justina. The Menaion Reader, 2 October.

[18] Venerable Abba Dorotheus. Instruction 11, on swiftly cutting off the passions.

[19] Examples of such struggle and crucifixion may be seen in the life-accounts of Venerable Anthony the Great, Venerable Macarius of Egypt, and other holy monks.

[20] St. Isaac. Homily 21.

[21] Venerable Symeon the New Theologian. Homily 6.

[22] The Alphabetical Patericon.

[23] The Alphabetical Patericon. Sisoes the Great.

[24] A Guide to the Spiritual Life by Venerable Barsanuphius the Great and John the Prophet, Reply 282.

[25] Venerable Gregory of Sinai, on spiritual delusion, and on many other subjects. The Philokalia, Part 1.

On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2)

One who has attained pure prayer through weeping remembers during prayer only God and his own sinfulness. Death and the judgment that must immediately follow death present themselves to him as having already arrived. He stands in the heartfelt feeling of one who appears before the impartial and inexorable Judge on the final day of judgment—a Judge Who can still be entreated and Who can still receive with favor the face of one weeping at the tribunal established and inaugurated by prayer. He is seized in good time by terror, bewilderment, trembling, sobbing, and groaning, in order to escape the useless terror, trembling, bewilderment, sobbing, and despair that will be engendered in the rejected sinners by the final verdict of God angered forever. He condemns himself, lest he be condemned; acknowledges himself as a criminal deserving all punishment, in order to avert punishment from himself; confesses himself a sinner, in order to receive righteousness from the right hand of God, Who gives this righteousness freely to all sinners who acknowledge and repent of their sinfulness.

The Lord commands: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Here what is indicated is not a single act, but a continuous one; the commandment extends over the entire earthly life of a person. “For everyone who asks” in this manner “receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks” persistently “it will be opened … the Father from heaven will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Lk.The Commentary (of Theophylact). 11:9–10, 13).92 By the very nature of the promise, most diligent and unceasing labor is required: “you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, or at midnight, or at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning—lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping” (Mk. 13:35–36).

It is impossible, St.[1] John of the Ladder observes, to teach prayer to one who desires to learn it by words alone.93 Its teachers are experience and weeping. In contrition and humility of spirit let us begin the struggle of prayer, let us place ourselves under the guidance of weeping: God Himself, Who “gives prayer to the one who prays” (1 Sam. 2:9), will become our teacher of prayer. “Come to me,” the sacred mother of all virtues—prayer—invites us, “all you who labor” under the yoke of the passions, held captive by fallen spirits, “and are heavy laden” with various transgressions, “and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you … and you will find rest for your souls,” healing for your wounds.[2] “For my yoke is easy” (Mt. 11:28–30), capable of healing even the greatest of transgressions.94 “Come, children,” the sacred mother of all virtues—prayer—invites us; listen to me: “I will teach you the fear of the Lord” (Ps. 33:12). I will teach you the “fear of the Lord” through direct experience itself, and will bring the feeling of it into your hearts. I will teach you both the “fear” of the newly begun, by which “everyone turns from evil” (Prov. 15:27), and the pure “fear” of the Lord, “enduring forever and ever” (Ps. 18:10), the fear by which the Lord is feared “above all those around Him” (Ps. 88:8), feared even by the flaming Cherubim and the glorious six-winged Seraphim. Abandon your fruitless and vain attachment to all that is transient, from which you must in any case part against your will! Abandon your seductive amusements and pleasures! Abandon the idle talk, jesting, and verbosity that lay the soul waste! Remember, consider, and assure yourselves that you are here on earth brief sojourners, and that your fatherland and eternal dwelling is heaven. You have need of a faithful and mighty leader for the journey there: that leader is I, and none other. All the saints who have ascended from earth to heaven have made that journey by no other way than through me. I disclose to one who has entered into union with me the fall and sinfulness of man, and I draw him out of it as from a deep abyss. I reveal to him the princes of the air, their snares and chains; I tear apart those snares and chains, and I strike and drive away those princes. I explain the Creator to the creature, and the Redeemer to the redeemed; I reconcile man with God. I unfold before my disciple and beloved the immeasurable greatness of God, and I lead him into that state of reverence and submission toward Him in which creatures ought to stand before their Creator. I sow humility in the heart; I make the heart a fountain of abundant tears; those who partake of me I make partakers of divine grace. I do not abandon those whom I guide until I have brought them before the face of God, until I have united them with God. God is the inexhaustible fulfilment of all desires in this age and in the age to come. Amen.

[1] Homily XXVIII, Chapter LXIV.

[2] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 28, Chapter II.

The Eight Principal Passions, With Their Subdivisions and Offshoots

Drawn from the writings of the holy Fathers.

1. Gluttony

Overeating, drunkenness, non-observance and breaking of fasts, eating in secret, greediness, and intemperance in general. Improper and excessive love of the flesh, of its life and ease—from which is formed self-love, which gives rise to faithlessness toward God, the Church, virtue, and one’s fellow men.

2. Fornication

Lustful burning, lustful sensations and desires of the body, lustful sensations and desires of the soul and heart (titillation), the acceptance of impure thoughts, conversing with them, taking pleasure in them, consenting to them, lingering over them. Lustful fantasies and captivity of mind. Defilement by involuntary emission. Failure to guard the senses—especially the sense of touch—in which boldness destroys all virtues. Foul language and the reading of lascivious books. Natural sins of fornication: fornication and adultery. Unnatural sins of fornication: self-abuse, sodomy, bestiality, and the like.

3. Avarice

Love of money, and in general love of movable and immovable property. The desire to grow rich. Deliberation on ways to enrich oneself. Fantasies of wealth. Fear of old age, sudden poverty, sickness, or exile. Miserliness. Covetousness. Unbelief toward God, lack of hope in His providence. Attachments, or the morbid and excessive love of various corruptible objects, which deprives the soul of its freedom. Being carried away by vain cares. Love of gifts. Appropriating what belongs to others. Usury. Harshness of heart toward the poor in need and toward all who are in want. Theft. Robbery.

4. Anger

Hot-temperedness, the acceptance of wrathful thoughts, fantasies of anger and revenge, the agitation of the heart by fury, the darkening of the mind by it: unseemly shouting, argument, abusive, harsh, and cutting words, striking, pushing, killing. Remembrance of wrongs, hatred, enmity, vengeance, slander, condemnation, the troubling and offending of one’s neighbor.

5. Despondency

Grief, anguish, the cutting off of hope in God, doubt concerning God’s promises, ingratitude to God for all that befalls one, faint-heartedness, impatience, failure to blame oneself, sorrow against one’s neighbor, murmuring, refusal of one’s cross, attempts to descend from it.

6. Sloth

Laziness toward every good deed, and especially toward prayer. Abandonment of the church and cell rule. Abandonment of unceasing prayer and of edifying reading. Inattentiveness and haste in prayer. Negligence. Lack of reverence. Idleness. Excessive comfort in sleep, lying down, and every manner of ease. Moving from place to place. Frequent departures from the cell, walks, and visits to friends. Idle talk. Jokes. Ribaldry. Abandonment of prostrations and other bodily ascetic labors. Forgetfulness of one’s sins. Forgetfulness of Christ’s commandments. Carelessness. Captivity of mind. Loss of the fear of God. Hardness of heart. Insensibility. Despair.

7. Vainglory

Seeking the glory of men. Boasting. Desire and seeking of earthly honors. Love of fine garments, carriages, servants, and furnishings. Attention to the beauty of one’s face, the pleasantness of one’s voice, and other qualities of the body. Disposition toward the sciences and perishable arts of this age, seeking to succeed in them for the sake of temporal earthly glory. Shame at confessing one’s sins. Concealing them from others and from one’s spiritual father. Cunning. Self-justification. Contradiction. Forming one’s own opinion. Hypocrisy. Lying. Flattery. People-pleasing. Envy. Contempt of one’s neighbor. Inconstancy of character. Pretense. Unconscionableness. A demonic character and way of life.

8. Pride

Contempt of one’s neighbor. Setting oneself above all. Audacity. Darkening and coarsening of the mind and heart. Their being fastened to earthly things. Blasphemy. Unbelief. Spiritual delusion. Falsely named knowledge. Disobedience to the Law of God and to the Church. Following one’s own carnal will. Reading heretical, profligate, and vain books. Insubordination to authorities. Sharp mockery. Abandonment of Christ-imitating humility and silence. Loss of simplicity. Loss of love toward God and one’s neighbor. False philosophy. Heresy. Atheism. Ignorance. Death of the soul.

Such are the maladies, such are the wounds, that together constitute the great wound—the oldness of the old Adam—which was formed from his fall. Of this great wound the holy prophet Isaiah speaks: “From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it: neither bruise nor wound nor raw sore—there is no balm to apply, nor oil, nor bandage” (Is. 1:6). This means, according to the explanation of the Fathers, that the wound95—sin—is not partial, not on one single member, but on the entire being:[1] it has seized the body, seized the soul, taken possession of all the qualities and all the powers of man. This great wound God called death when, forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He said: “in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Immediately upon eating the forbidden fruit, the first ancestors felt the eternal death: a carnal sensation appeared in their eyes; they saw that they were naked. In the knowledge of the body’s nakedness was reflected the nakedness of the soul, which had lost the beauty of innocence on which the Holy Spirit had rested. A carnal sensation acts in the eyes, and in the soul shame—in which is joined together the totality of all sinful sensations: pride, uncleanness, despondency, sloth, and despair! The great wound is the death of the soul; the oldness that came after the loss of the divine likeness is beyond remedy! The great wound the Apostle calls “the law of sin, the body of death” (Rom. 7:23–24), because the deadened mind and heart have turned entirely toward the earth, serve slavishly the corruptible desires of the flesh, have grown darkened and heavy, and have themselves become flesh. This flesh is no longer capable of communion with God (Gen. 6:3)! This flesh is incapable of inheriting eternal, heavenly blessedness (1 Cor. 15:50)! The great wound has spread over all of humanity and has become the unhappy inheritance of every man.

Contemplating my great wound, gazing upon my own death, I am filled with bitter grief! I do not know what to do. Shall I follow the example of the old Adam, who, seeing his nakedness, hastened to hide himself from God? Shall I, like him, seek to justify myself, laying the blame upon the causes of sin? It is vain—to hide from the All-Seeing! It is vain—to justify oneself before Him “Who is always victorious ‘when He judges’ (Ps. 50:6).

Instead of fig leaves, I will clothe myself in the tears of repentance; instead of self-justification I will offer sincere confession. Clothed in repentance and tears, I will stand before my God. But where shall I find my God? In paradise? I have been driven out from there—and the Cherub standing at the entrance will not let me in! By the very heaviness of my flesh I am riveted to the earth, my prison!

Sinful descendant of Adam, take courage! A light has dawned in your prison: God has descended to the lower country of your exile in order to raise you up to your heavenly homeland, which you have lost. You wished to know good and evil: He leaves you this knowledge. You wished to become “like God,” and from this you became in soul like the devil and in body like cattle and beasts: God, uniting you to Himself, makes you a god by grace. He forgives your sins. That is not all! He draws out from your soul the root of evil, the very infection of sin, the poison poured into the soul by the devil, and grants you a remedy for the entire path of your earthly life—for healing from sin, however many times you may be infected by it in your weakness. This remedy is the confession of sins. Do you wish to put off the old Adam—you who have already been clothed in the New Adam through holy baptism, but through your own iniquities have managed to revive within yourself the oldness and death, and to stifle the life, making it half-dead? Do you, who have enslaved yourself to sin and are drawn toward it by the violence of habit, wish to regain your freedom and righteousness? Then plunge yourself into humility! Overcome the vainglorious shame that teaches you to feign righteousness hypocritically and cunningly, and thereby to preserve and strengthen within yourself the death of the soul. Cast out sin; enter into enmity with sin through sincere confession of sin. This healing must precede all others; without it the healing by prayer, tears, fasting, and all other means will be insufficient, unsatisfying, and impermanent. Go, proud one, to your spiritual father—at his feet find the mercy of the Heavenly Father! Sincere and frequent confession alone, nothing else, can free one from sinful habits, make repentance fruitful, and correction firm and true.

In a brief moment of compunction—in which the eyes of the mind are opened to self-knowledge, which comes so rarely—I wrote this as a reproach to myself, as an exhortation, a reminder, and an instruction. And you, whoever with faith and love in Christ shall read these lines and perhaps find in them something of profit for yourself: offer a heartfelt sigh and prayer for a soul that has greatly suffered from the waves of sin, has often seen ruin and destruction before it, and has found repose in one harbor alone—in the confession of its transgressions.

[1] Venerable Abba Dorotheus. Instruction 1.”

On the Virtues Opposed to the Eight Principal Sinful Passions

1. Temperance

Restraint from the excessive use of food and drink, and especially from the use of wine in excess. Precise observance of the fasts established by the Church. Curbing the flesh by a moderate and consistently uniform use of food, from which all the passions in general begin to weaken, and especially self-love, which consists in the irrational love of the flesh, its life, and its ease.

2. Chastity

Avoidance of every kind of fornication. Avoidance of lascivious conversation and reading, and of the utterance of foul, lustful, and ambiguous words. Guarding the senses—especially sight and hearing, and still more especially touch. Modesty. Rejection of licentious thoughts and fantasies. Silence. Stillness. Service to the sick and infirm. Remembrance of death and of hades. The beginning of chastity is a mind unshaken by licentious thoughts and fantasies; the perfection of chastity is purity, which beholds God.

3. Non-possessiveness

Contenting oneself with what is strictly necessary. Hatred of luxury and comfort. Mercy toward the poor. Love of evangelical poverty. Hope in God’s providence. Following Christ’s commandments. Tranquility and freedom of spirit. Freedom from care. Tenderness of heart.

4. Meekness

Avoidance of wrathful thoughts and of the agitation of the heart by fury. Patience. Following Christ, Who calls His disciple to the cross. Peace of heart. Tranquility of mind. Christian firmness and courage. Insensibility to insults. Freedom from malice.

5. Blessed Weeping

The sense of the fall common to all men, and of one’s own spiritual poverty. Lamentation over them. The weeping of the mind. The painful contrition of the heart. The lightness of conscience that springs from them, gracious consolation and rejoicing. Hope in the mercy of God. Thanksgiving to God in sorrows; submissive bearing of them from the sight of one’s own multitude of sins. Readiness to endure. Purification of the mind. Relief from the passions. Death to the world. Desire for prayer, solitude, obedience, humility, and the confession of one’s sins.

6. Watchfulness

Zeal for every good deed. Unfailingly performing the church and cell rule. Attentiveness in prayer. Careful observation of all one’s deeds, words, and thoughts. Extreme distrust of oneself. Constant perseverance in prayer and the Word of God. Reverence. Constant vigilance over oneself. Keeping oneself from much sleep, self-indulgence, idle talk, jesting, and sharp words. Love of night vigils, prostrations, and other ascetic labors that bring alertness to the soul. Going out from the cell as rarely as possible. Remembrance of eternal blessings, desire and expectation of them.

7. Humility

The fear of God. The sensing of it during prayer. The dread that arises in especially pure prayer, when the presence and majesty of God are felt with especial strength—the fear of vanishing and becoming as nothing. Deep knowledge of one’s own nothingness. A change in one’s view of one’s neighbors, by which they, without any compulsion, seem to one who has so humbled himself to be superior to him in every respect. The appearance of simplicity of soul from living faith. Hatred of human praise. Constant self-accusation and self-reproach. Uprightness and directness. Detachment. Death to all things. Compunction. Knowledge of the mystery hidden in the cross of Christ. Desire to crucify oneself to the world and to the passions; striving toward this crucifixion. Rejection and forgetting of flattering customs and words, modest under compulsion, calculation, or ingrained habit of pretense. Reception of the folly of the Gospel. Rejection of earthly wisdom as unfit for heaven. Contempt of all that is highly esteemed among men and is an abomination before God (Lk. 16:15). Abandonment of self-justification. Silence before those who wrong one, learned from the Gospel. Putting aside all one’s own reasonings and receiving the understanding of the Gospel. Casting down every thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ. Humble-mindedness, or spiritual discernment. Conscious obedience to the Church in all things.

8. Love

The transformation during prayer of the fear of God into love of God. Fidelity to the Lord, demonstrated by the constant rejection of every sinful thought and sensation. An inexpressible, sweet attraction of the whole person by love toward the Lord Jesus Christ and the worshipped Holy Trinity. The beholding in one’s neighbors of the image of God and of Christ; the preference of all one’s neighbors over oneself that flows from this spiritual vision, and their reverent honoring in the Lord. Love of one’s neighbors: brotherly, pure, equal toward all, impartial, joyful, equally aflame toward friends and enemies. The rapturing of the mind, heart, and whole body into prayer and love. The inexpressible enjoyment of the body by spiritual joy. Spiritual inebriation.[1] The loosening of the bodily members in spiritual consolation.96 The inactivity of the bodily senses in prayer. The loosing of the tongue of the heart from muteness. The cessation of prayer from spiritual sweetness. The silence of the mind. The illumination of mind and heart. The prayerful power that conquers sin. The peace of Christ. The departure of all passions. The absorption of all understanding by the surpassing understanding of Christ. Theology. Knowledge of incorporeal beings. The weakness of sinful thoughts, unable to take form in the mind. Sweetness and abundant consolation amid sorrows. The vision of the spiritual states of men. The depth of humility and a most abased opinion of oneself…

The end is endless!

[1] St. Isaac the Syrian. Homily 44.

The Apostle Reading for the Day, February 1, 1840

A certain monk, by the inscrutable judgments of God, entered upon the field of temptations. On the day of his entering that field, the sixty-second passage of the First Catholic Epistle of Peter was read at the liturgy: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you for your testing”, and so forth (1 Pet. 4:12). The words proclaimed by the Apostle struck the monk with particular force: “For it is time for judgment to begin at the house of God” (1 Pet. 4:17). It seemed to the monk that these words had been proclaimed expressly for him.[1] Beneath the outward action of men and demons—who are but blind instruments of Divine providence—a mysterious, higher judgment is accomplished: the judgment of God.

If the consequence of this judgment is punishment, then that punishment is the fruit of justice. And if justice issues in punishment, then punishment is a reproof of guilt—a reproof from God. In vain, therefore, do I count myself a righteous man unjustly punished; in vain do I struggle with clever justifications—which I myself in my conscience know to be lies—to excuse myself and blame others. Self-appointed righteous man! Turn the gaze of your mind upon your sins, unknown to men but known to God, and you will confess that the judgments of God are righteous and your self-justification is shameless cunning. With reverent submission, offer up praise to the judgment of God, and justify the instruments chosen by God for your correction. The peace of Christ will descend into your heart. By that peace you will be reconciled to your sorrows, and will surrender yourself and everything to the will of God with self-denial. One care, one care alone will remain in you: the care for a most exact and genuine repentance, which destroys the enmity between man and God and unites man to God. The foundation of repentance is self-knowledge—full knowledge of one’s sinfulness.

[1] Job, chs. 1 and 2. The Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 4, ch. 7.

A Meditation on Faith

I pour out the words of my heart, gently stirred by an incorruptible and ineffable joy. Brothers! Draw near with pure thought to my words, and feast at the spiritual banquet! Faith in Christ is life. He who is nourished by faith tastes already, during the wandering of earthly life, the eternal life appointed for the righteous at the end of that wandering. The Lord said: “He who believes in me has eternal life” (Jn. 6:47). By faith the pleasing ones of God endured fierce temptations: holding in their hearts the riches and enjoyment of eternal life, they counted earthly life with all its allurements as nothing. By faith they received sorrows and sufferings as gifts from God, by which God found them worthy to imitate and partake in His own sojourn on earth, when He was pleased, in one of His Persons, to take upon Himself our nature and accomplish our redemption. The measureless delight born of faith swallows up the bitterness of sorrow, so that during sufferings only delight is felt. This was attested by the great martyr Eustratios in his dying prayer, as he bent his neck under the sword.[1] “Bodily torments,” he said to God, “are joy to Your servants!” By faith the saints plunged into the depths of humility: with the pure eye of faith they perceived that man’s sacrifices to God are God’s own gifts within man—debts of man, unnecessary to God, yet needful and saving for man, when man strives to offer, to multiply, and to repay them. “Hear, O my people”, says God, “and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against you: I am God, your God. I do not reprove you for your sacrifices… for the world is mine and all that is in it” (Ps. 49:7–8, 12). “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you had not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7). “Everyone to whom much is given, much will be required; and from him to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded” (Lk. 12:48). God’s saints worked miracles, raised the dead, foretold the future, were filled with spiritual sweetness, and yet at the same time humbled themselves and trembled, beholding with perplexity, wonder, and awe that God had been pleased to enrich dust—that to dust and clay He had entrusted His own Holy Spirit. O dread! At the contemplation of these mysteries, silence falls upon the beholding mind; ineffable joy encompasses the heart; the tongue grows faint to tell it. By faith the saints entered into love for their enemies: the eye of the mind, enlightened by faith, looks steadfastly upon God in His providence, and attributes all outward visitations to that Divine providence. So David, who held the “Lord ever before him” so as to remain unshaken in courage amid all sorrows and trials that threatened to shake and trouble his heart (Ps. 15:8), said of Shimei when Shimei cursed him and threw stones at him: “The Lord has said to him, Curse David. What is it to you and to me, sons of Zeruiah”—thoughts of anger and vengeance![2] — “Let him be, and let him curse! Let him curse me, for the Lord has bidden him; perhaps the Lord will look upon my affliction” (2 Sam. 16:10–12). The soul receives temptations as remedies for its ailments, gives thanks to the Physician—God—and sings: “Try ‘me, O Lord, and test me; purify my inmost being and my heart’” (Ps. 25:2). When temptation is viewed in this way, men and all other instruments of temptation remain to one side, as instruments. There is no malice toward them, no enmity! The soul, glorifying the Creator, giving thanks to the Heavenly Physician, in its rapture of ineffable feelings begins to bless the instruments of its own healing. And then! Suddenly there is kindled in it a love for enemies; a man becomes ready to lay down his soul for his enemy—and sees in this not a sacrifice, but a duty, the inescapable duty of an unprofitable servant. From this, heaven is opened to us—we enter into love for our neighbors, through it into love for God, we come to be in God, and God comes to be in us. Such are the treasures enclosed in faith—the mediator and bestower of hope and love. Amen.

1840. Sergiev Hermitage.

[1] The Menaion Reader. December 13.

[2] The Venerable Macarius the Great, Discourse XXXVII, chs. 2 and 4.

A Garden in Winter

In the year 1829 I spent the winter at the Ploshchanskaya Hermitage.[1] There, in the garden, to this day stands a solitary wooden cell in which I lived with my companion. In calm weather, on bright sunny days, I would go out to the porch, sit on the bench, and gaze upon the spacious garden. Its nakedness was covered with a snowy shroud; all around—stillness, a kind of dead and majestic repose. This sight began to please me: my pensive gaze was involuntarily drawn and fixed upon it, as though searching out some mystery within.

One day I sat gazing intently at the garden. Suddenly a veil fell from the eyes of my soul; before them there opened the book of nature. This is the book given to the first-created Adam to read—a book containing within itself the words of the Spirit, like the Divine Scripture. What teaching did I read in the garden?—The teaching of the resurrection of the dead: a powerful teaching, a teaching presented through an action similar to the resurrection. If we were not accustomed to seeing nature revive in spring, it would seem to us entirely miraculous, incredible. We do not marvel through familiarity; beholding a miracle, we as it were no longer see it! I look at the bare branches of the trees, and they speak to me persuasively in their mysterious tongue: “We will come alive, we will be covered with leaves, we will breathe fragrance, we will be adorned with flowers and fruits—shall not then the dry bones of men come alive in the spring of their resurrection?”

They will come alive, they will be clothed with flesh; in a new form they will enter into a new life and a new world. As trees that could not withstand the ferocity of the frost and have lost their vital sap are cut down at the coming of spring and carried out of the garden for firewood—so also sinners, who have lost their life—that is, God—will be gathered on the last day of this age, at the dawn of the coming eternal day, and cast into the unquenchable fire.

If one could find a man who knew nothing of the changes wrought by the turning of the seasons; if one were to bring this stranger into a garden resting majestically in the deathlike sleep of winter, to show him the bare trees and tell him of the luxury in which they will be clothed in spring—he would look at you instead of answering, and smile: so utterly fantastic a fable would your words seem to him! So too the resurrection of the dead seems incredible to the sages who wander in the darkness of earthly wisdom, who do not know that God is almighty, that His manifold wisdom may be contemplated but not comprehended by the mind of creatures. To God all things are possible: there are no miracles for Him. Frail is the thought of man: what we are not accustomed to seeing seems to us an impossible thing, an incredible miracle. The works of God, upon which we gaze constantly and now with indifference—these are wondrous works, great miracles, incomprehensible.

And year after year nature repeats before the eyes of all humanity this teaching of the resurrection of the dead, depicting it through a symbolic, mysterious action!

1843. Sergiev Hermitage.

[1] This cenobitic monastery is located in the Oryol diocese, between the towns of Sevsk and Dmitrovsk, forty versts from each.

A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

The winter of 1828 I spent at the monastery of the Venerable Alexander of Svir. Before the windows of my cell stood a tree, stripped bare by the frosts, like a skeleton stripped bare by death. Solitude sharpens the senses and sharpens thought; the range of their activity expands. Meanwhile the sea, of which Saint John of the Ladder says that it must inevitably be stirred up, was indeed stirring.[1] The bare tree served as a consolation for me: it consoled me with the hope of the renewal of my soul. “With my voice”—with the voice of my mind, with the voice of my heart, with the voice of my ailing body, with the voice of my infirmities, with the voice of my falls—“I cried out” (Ps. 141:2): “O Lord, hear my prayer” (Ps. 142:1), “give ear to my supplication” (Ps. 141:7), which I send up to You from the midst of battles that shake my mind and heart, from the midst of ailments that weary and weaken my body, from the midst of countless infirmities that encompass my entire being, from the midst of the innumerable falls with which my life is filled. You who heard Jonah praying in the belly of the whale, hear me, who cry to You from the belly of my iniquities, from the belly of hell. From the depths, from the abyss of sins, from the abyss of my lapses and temptations, “I cry to You, O Lord!” O Lord, hear my voice! “Bring out of prison” the prison of passions, “my soul”, pour into it the light of grace! (Ps. 141:8). When You pour into it that light—bright and joyful and life-giving—then will it “give praise to Your name” (Ps. 141:8).—There acts in the soul a confession awakened by grace, surpassing the mind and drowning it in its ineffable sweetness; descending into the inner chamber of the heart, shutting itself in there by inattention to all that is sensory, the mind pronounces Your name, bows before Your name, is nourished by Your name, embraces Your name and is embraced by it. Your name, O Word of God and God, renders all other words superfluous to it! “Deliver me from those who pursue me”—from demonic thoughts and assaults—“for they are stronger than I” (Ps. 141:7), stronger than the will of my soul, stronger than the comprehension of my mind! “My spirit grows faint within me; within me my heart is troubled” (Ps. 142:4). “The sorrows of death encompassed me; the perils of hell found me” (Ps. 114:3).

O Lord! It is not in my own strength that I place my hope: my falls teach me to know my weakness. In You, O Lord, is my hope! Only when You, O Lord, send down Your grace into my heart; only when, dwelling in my heart, You are “the portion of my inheritance” (Ps. 15:5), my sole possession and treasure, shall I be able to dwell “in the land of the living” (Ps. 114:8), in the land of Your holy righteousness. The holy angels of God will rejoice, the ranks of those who have pleased You among men will rejoice, seeing my salvation. “The righteous wait for me until You render to me” (Ps. 141:8) Your mercy—not according to the multitude of my sins, but according to the multitude of Your love for mankind. Amen.

[1] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 4, ch. 60.

A Reflection on the Seashore

To whom may a Christian be compared who bears the sorrows of earthly life with true spiritual understanding?—He may be likened to a pilgrim who stands on the shore of a surging sea. Furiously the grey-white waves approach the pilgrim’s feet and, breaking against the sand, scatter into fine spray at his feet. The sea, contending with the whirlwind, roars, heaps up waves like mountains, seethes and churns. Waves beget and devour one another; their crests are crowned with snow-white foam; the sea covered with them presents one vast maw of a terrible monster, studded with teeth. Upon this fearful spectacle the mysterious pilgrim gazes with a tranquil mind. His eyes alone are upon the sea—but where is his thought, where is his heart? His thought is at the gates of death; his heart is at the judgment seat of Christ. There he already stands in mind; there he stands in feeling; there are his cares; there is his fear—and from that fear flees the fear of earthly temptations. The winds will subside, the sea will be stilled. Where the angry waves rolled in ridges, there will spread out the unmoving surface of waters wearied by the storm. After the heightened tumult they will settle into a deathly calm; in their clear mirror the evening sun will be reflected when it rises over Kronstadt and sends its rays along the Finnish Gulf, to meet the currents of the Neva, toward Petersburg. A picturesque sight, familiar to the inhabitants of Sergiev Hermitage! How many proud, fierce waves crowned with foam have these skies, this shore, these buildings seen? And all of them have passed away, all have lain down in the silence of the grave. And those who pass by now will pass on too, will settle in the same silence! What is so fleeting, so short-lived, as the crowns of watery foam!

Gazing from the quiet monastic haven upon the sea of life stirred up by the storm of the passions, I give thanks to You, my King and God! You have brought me within the enclosure of the holy monastery! You have hidden me “in the shelter of Your face from the conspiracies of men;” You have sheltered me “under a covering from the strife of tongues!” (Ps. 30:21). Only on one account is my soul sorrowful, on one account am I troubled with uncertainty: whether I shall pass hence—from the shore of this changeable and unreliable sea of life—“to the place of the wondrous tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, the sound of one who keeps festival” (Ps. 41:5), and dwell there forever. As for earthly sorrows—“In God I have placed my hope; I will not fear: what can man do to me?” (Ps. 55:12).

1843. Sergiev Hermitage.

The Prayer of One Persecuted by Men

I give thanks to You, my Lord and God, for all that has befallen me! I give thanks to You for all the sorrows and temptations that You sent me for the cleansing and the healing of my soul and body, defiled and wounded by sin!

Have mercy and save those instruments which You employed for my healing: those people who inflicted insults upon me. Bless them in this age and in the age to come! Count to them as virtues what they did to me! Assign them abundant rewards from Your eternal treasures!

But what have I brought You? What pleasing sacrifices?—I have brought only sins, only violations of Your most divine commandments. Forgive me, O Lord; forgive one who is guilty before You and before men! Forgive one who has no answer! Grant me to be convinced and sincerely confess that I am a sinner! Grant me to reject cunning justifications! Grant me repentance! Grant me contrition of heart! Grant me meekness and humility! Grant me love for my neighbors—a love unsullied, equal toward all, both toward those who comfort me and those who offend me! Grant me patience in all my sorrows! Put me to death to the world! Take away from me my sinful will, and plant in my heart Your holy will, that I may fulfill it alone—in my deeds, my words, my thoughts, and my feelings.

To You alone is glory due for all things! To You alone does glory belong! My sole portion is shame of face and silence of lips. Standing before Your dread judgment in my wretched prayer, I find within myself not a single good deed, not a single virtue; I stand encompassed on every side by the countless multitude of my sins, as though by a thick cloud and fog, with one consolation alone in my soul: the hope in Your boundless mercy and goodness. Amen.

The Cemetery

After many years of absence I visited the picturesque village in which I was born. It has belonged to our family since time immemorial. There stands a majestic cemetery, shaded by age-old trees. Beneath the broad spreading boughs lie the ashes of those who planted them. I came to the cemetery. Over the graves rang out mournful songs—the consoling songs of the sacred memorial service. The wind moved through the tops of the trees; their leaves rustled; this rustling mingled with the voices of the chanting clergy.

I heard the names of the departed—names alive to my heart. They were recited one by one: my mother, brothers and sisters, my grandfathers and great-grandfathers who had gone before. What solitude there is in a cemetery! What a wondrous, sacred stillness! How many memories! What a strange, many-years-long life! I listened to the inspired, divine hymns of the memorial service. At first I was overcome by a single feeling of grief; then it began gradually to ease. By the end of the service, a quiet consolation had replaced the deep sorrow: the prayers of the Church had dissolved the living memory of the departed in spiritual sweetness. They proclaimed a resurrection awaiting the dead! They proclaimed their life, drawing blessedness to that life.

The graves of my forebears are enclosed in a ring of ancient trees. Branches spread wide have formed a canopy over the graves; beneath the canopy rests a numerous family. Here lie the ashes of many generations. Earth, earth! Human generations succeed one another upon your surface as leaves succeed one another on trees. Tenderly green, consolingly and innocently rustling, those little leaves are set in motion by the soft breath of a spring wind. Autumn will come upon them: they will yellow, fall from the trees onto the graves, and decay there. With the coming of spring, other little leaves will grace the branches—and they too will last only through their brief season, will also wither and disappear.

What is our life? It is almost the same as the life of a leaf upon a tree!

“May 20, 1848. The village of Pokrovskoye, Vologda Province”.

A Voice From Eternity (A Reflection at the Grave)

In the dusk of a quiet summer evening I stood, pensive and alone, at the grave of my friend. That day a memorial had been held for him; that day his family had remained at the grave for a long time. Hardly any words were heard among those present: only sobs were heard. The sobs were interrupted by deep silence; the silence was interrupted by sobs. And long did sobs alternate with silence, silence with sobs.

I stood, pensive and alone, at the grave, still under the impressions of the day. Suddenly an unexpected, wondrous inspiration came over me. I seemed to hear the voice of the departed!—His speech from beyond the grave, his mysterious conversation, his wondrous homily—as it took form in my soul—I hasten to set down with a trembling hand.

“My father! My mother! My wife! My sisters! Clothed in black garments, shrouded in deep grief both in body and soul, you have gathered at my solitary grave—with bowed heads you have surrounded it. In silence, through thoughts and feelings alone, you converse with the silent dweller of the tomb. Your hearts are vials of inconsolable grief. Streams of tears flow from your eyes; after the streams already poured out, new streams of tears are born: the grief has no bottom, the tears no end.”

“My little children! You too are here at the gravestone, at the grave marker! Even your little eyes have filled with tears, yet your heart does not know why your eyes weep, imitating the eyes of my father, the eyes of my mother. You admire the gravestone, the gleaming stone, the mirror-like granite; you admire the inscription in golden letters—yet that granite and that inscription are heralds of your early orphanhood.”

“My father! My mother! My wife! My kinspeople and friends! Why do you stand so long over my grave, over the cold stone standing cold guard over the tomb? My breathless body has long grown cold; by the decree of the almighty Creator it returns to its earth, it crumbles to dust. What heavy thoughts encompass you, hold you at my grave?… The ministers of the altar have offered prayer here for my repose, have proclaimed for me eternal memory in God who saves and gives rest to me. They have gone away from the silent grave: go away also. You need rest after the struggles of soul and body, wearied and torn by sorrow.”

“You do not go!… You remain here!… You have fastened yourselves to the place of my burial! In a silence that says more than any splendid eloquence could say—with a soul that admits no explanation—with a heart in which the abundance of feelings swallows up the distinctness of feelings—you do not step back from the grave sealed for many ages, from the stone—a monument without feeling. What do you want?… Are you perhaps waiting for my voice to come from beneath the stone, from the depths of the dark grave?”

“There is no such voice! I speak only through silence. Silence—inviolable stillness—is the inheritance of the graveyard until the very trumpet of the resurrection. The dust of the dead speaks without the sounds that earthly speech requires: through accomplished decay it proclaims a loud sermon, the most persuasive exhortation, to the seekers of corruption who rage and make noise upon the earth’s surface.”

“And yet I do have a voice! And I speak with you, and I answer your inexplicable thoughts, your unuttered and inexpressible questions. Listen to me! Distinguish my voice in the common voice by which eternity speaks to time!—The voice of eternity is one—unchanging, unalterable. In eternity there is no inconstancy, no variability: there the day is one, the heart is one, the thought is one. He who unites all in One is Christ. From there the voice is one.”

“In this voice by which eternity speaks—in this voice that is silent and yet like thunder—distinguish my voice! Surely you, my kinspeople, recognize my voice? My voice within the common, single voice of eternity has its own distinct sound, as the voice of a string within the common chord of a many-stringed piano.”

“The voice of eternity has spoken to all of us; it has spoken since the times of our appearance into existence. It spoke to us when we were still incapable of heeding it; it spoke to us also in our mature age, when we were already able and obliged to heed it, to understand it. O voice of eternity!… alas!… how few there are who hearken to you in the noisy earthly hostelry! Now our infancy prevents us from heeding you; then the cares and distractions of earthly life prevent us from heeding you. But you do not fall silent. You speak, you speak—and at last, through a fearsome messenger—death—you summon the attentive and inattentive listener alike to account for their attention and obedience to the great words of eternity.”

“In order that the voice of eternity might have for you a special resonance, specially capable of penetrating your heart and drawing your mind to the word of salvation, God has numbered me among those who speak from eternity. My voice has merged in harmonious accord with the common voice of the vast invisible world. For all pilgrims of the earth I am dead, voiceless, like all the dead—but for you I am alive; and though dead, I speak the word of salvation more openly, more powerfully, than I could have spoken it had I remained among you, chasing together with you the phantoms of goods by which decay deceives and destroys those banished from paradise and placed for a short time in the earthly hostelry for reconciliation with the God they have offended.”

“God is merciful—infinitely merciful. If it had been needful and beneficial, I would have responded to you suddenly from the darkness of the grave, from beneath the heavy stone!… Heaven has deemed a private voice from eternity superfluous… And what voice from eternity is not superfluous, when God was pleased that not only those human beings equal to the angels, but His own Only-begotten Son, should announce to the world His will—announcing the holy and strict statutes of eternity, which is blessedness for the obedient, and dread for the disobedient? ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them’ (Lk. 16:29)—this was the answer of Heaven to one who requested the voice of the dead to preach to those living the life of the flesh upon earth, but slain by the spiritual, eternal death. ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead’ (Lk. 16:31).

“My companion—a dead man, yet one still with a living word in his lips! Accept from me this commission and carry it out.

There is my father! There is my mother! There is my wife! There are my kinspeople! I cannot speak with them except through the common voice of eternity. In that voice they hear the sound of my voice as well… yes, they hear it!… but I have no separate, private word of my own… My companion! Be my word; from our common treasury, from the sacred realm of eternity, say to them on my behalf the brief, most needful word: “Earthly life is a fleeting, deceptive dream. Eternity is inescapable. There is also a wretched eternity!… Win for yourselves the blessed eternity through attentiveness and obedience to the all-holy law of the all-holy God—and come to me for sure, unending joy, each in your own time appointed by God alone!”

1848, Sergiev Hermitage. The meditation was written on the death of K. F. O., who from his youth had been in close relations with Archimandrite Ignatius Brianchaninov.”

The Teaching of Saint Pimen the Great on Weeping

The Alphabetical Patericon, letters P and A.

A brother asked Abba Pimen what a monk’s occupation should be. The Abba replied: “When Abraham came to the Promised Land, he bought for himself a tomb, and it was with a tomb that he began to take possession of the Promised Land.” The brother asked: what is the meaning of “the tomb”? The Abba replied: “It is the place of weeping and mourning.”

The following saying also belongs to Abba Pimen: “Weeping is twofold: it both makes and preserves.”

A brother asked Abba Pimen: “What am I to do with my passions that trouble me?” The elder said to him: “Let us weep with all our might before the goodness of God until it has mercy upon us.”

A brother asked Abba Pimen: “What am I to do about my sins?” The elder said: “He who desires to be freed from the sins dwelling in him is freed from them through weeping, and he who desires not to fall into sins again avoids falling into them through weeping. This is the path of repentance handed down to us by Scripture and the Fathers, who have said: weep! There is no other path besides weeping.”

Once Abba Pimen, passing through Egypt, saw a woman sitting at a grave and weeping bitterly. At this he said: “If all the comforters in the world were to come to her, they would not draw her soul away from weeping. So also must a monk constantly have weeping within himself.”

Once the Venerable Pimen was walking with Abba Anuv in the environs of the city of Diolcos. There they saw a woman in anguish, weeping bitterly at a grave, and they stopped to listen to her. Then, having moved a little way off, they met a passerby, and Saint Pimen asked him: “What has happened to this woman? She weeps so bitterly.” The passerby answered: “Her husband, son, and brother have died.” Then Abba Pimen, turning to Abba Anuv, said: “I tell you: if a man does not put to death all the desires of the flesh and does not acquire such weeping, he cannot be a monk. The whole life of a monk is weeping.”

An elder said: “Weeping constitutes the spiritual exercise—the inner discipline, the inner ascetic struggle—of the monk. Without weeping it is impossible to preserve oneself from disorder and confusion.” I replied: “When I am in my cell, weeping remains with me; but if someone comes to me, or if I go out of the cell, I no longer find it.” To this the elder said: “That is because weeping has not yet become properly yours, but is as it were lent to you.” I asked him to explain these words. The elder said: “If a man labors with all his might to acquire weeping, he will find it at his service whenever he wishes.”

A brother asked Abba Pimen: “To what ought the attention of one who keeps silence in his cell be directed?” The elder replied: “I am like a man sunk in a bog up to his neck, with a burden on his neck, who cries out to God: have mercy on me!” “Have mercy on me”—this is the expression of weeping that has taken deep root in the soul. Weeping, when it reaches full development, cannot clothe itself in much thought or many words: it is satisfied, in order to express a boundless spiritual feeling, with the briefest prayer.

A brother asked Abba Pimen about the monastic occupation. The elder said: “When God visits us with a summons into eternity: what will concern us then?” The brother replied: “Our sins.” The elder said: “So let us! Let us enter into our cells; in solitude let us call our sins to mind, and the Lord will hear us.” Here we should understand not a superficial, cold recollection of sins and one’s sinfulness, but a recollection joined to repentance and weeping.

When Arsenius the Great fell asleep, and Saint Pimen received news of his falling asleep, he wept and said: “Blessed are you, Abba Arsenius! For you wept over yourself in this life. He who does not weep here will weep forever. It is impossible not to weep—either here voluntarily, or there involuntarily, in torment.”

On Tears

Tears are natural to fallen human nature. Before the fall, that nature knew no tears—it knew only the purest enjoyment of paradisiacal blessedness. It lost that blessedness; tears were left to it as an expression of sympathy toward blessedness, as a testimony of the fall, as a testimony to the condition of being under the wrath of an offended Deity, as a hope of one day recovering blessedness. This hope is faithful: because sympathy toward blessedness has not been effaced from nature. This hope is faithful: because the mourning over the loss of heavenly blessedness cannot be satisfied by any temporal satisfaction; remaining unsatisfied, it awaits satisfaction and proclaims the existence of satisfaction. In tears there lives mysteriously a consolation, and in weeping—a joy. A man, whatever earthly prosperity he may enjoy, whatever height he may stand on, whatever abundance he may swim in, meets and lives through moments, hours, and days in which he needs the consolation afforded by tears—and finds consolation in nothing else. Each of us has barely entered the land of our exile and affliction, the land of sufferings and weeping, when we already mark this entry, the beginning of our existence, with a tearful cry. “Blessed is the man whose help is in You”, marked by tears at his prayer! Such are the invisible, spiritual ones who “have set in their heart the ascents”, passing through the “valley of weeping”—earthly life, which You have appointed for repentance: “for the lawgiver” who gives us weeping and tears “will bestow His blessing”. Those who purify themselves through weeping and tears “will go from strength to strength, and the God of gods will be seen in Zion”—in the human spirit made ready to receive God by true repentance (Ps. 83:6–8). “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy”. Those who “go out” on the path of earthly life, who “walked” along the narrow and sorrowful way, “and wept as they went, casting their seeds, will come back rejoicing, carrying their sheaves” (Ps. 125:5–6).

Tears, as a property of fallen nature, are infected with the disease of the fall, like all its other properties. A person may by nature be especially prone to tears and shed them on every available occasion: such tears are called natural tears. There are also sinful tears. Sinful tears are those shed from sinful impulses. Such tears are shed in great quantity and with particular ease by those given over to sensuality; tears like those of the sensual are shed by those who are in self-deception and spiritual delusion; tears flow abundantly from vanity, hypocrisy, pretense, and people-pleasing. Finally, malice also sheds tears: when it is deprived of the opportunity to commit a wicked deed or to shed human blood, it pours out tears. Such tears Nero had—in whom the Christians of his day, on account of his cruelty and hatred of Christianity, thought they saw the Antichrist.[1] Natural tears include tears from offense; but when the offense has a sinful character, the tears of offense become sinful tears. Both natural and sinful tears, immediately upon appearing, are directed by the holy Fathers to be transformed into godly tears—that is, the motive of the tears is to be changed: one is to call to mind one’s sins, the inevitable and unknown death, the judgment of God—and to weep for these reasons.[2]

A remarkable thing! Those who by natural inclination shed streams of effortless, meaningless, and fruitless tears, and likewise those who shed them from sinful impulses—when they wish to weep in a godly manner, suddenly discover in themselves an extraordinary dryness, and cannot draw from their eyes a single tear. From this we learn that tears of the fear of God and of repentance are a gift from God, and that to receive them one must first take care to acquire the cause of them.

The cause of tears is the sight and acknowledgment of one’s sinfulness. “Streams of water flow from my eyes”, says the holy prophet David, “because I have not kept Your law” (Ps. 118:136). The cause of tears is poverty of spirit: being in itself a blessedness, it gives birth to another blessedness—weeping (Mt. 5:3–4), nourishes, sustains, and intensifies it. “Weeping does not come from tears, but tears from weeping,” said the Venerable John the Prophet.[3] “If a person, being in the midst of the brotherhood, cuts off his own will and pays no attention to the sins of others, he acquires weeping. Through this his thoughts are gathered together, and being gathered thus, they beget in the heart grief (weeping) according to God, and grief begets tears.” Tears, as a gift from God, serve as a sign of God’s mercy: “Tears in prayer,” says Saint Isaac the Syrian, “are a sign of the mercy of God, of which the soul has been deemed worthy through its repentance, and that it has been received and has begun to enter the field of purity through tears. If thoughts are not torn away from passing things, if they do not cast away from themselves hope in this world, if contempt for it is not awakened in them and they do not begin to prepare provisions for their departure; if thoughts of the things belonging to the age to come do not begin to act in the soul, then the eyes will not be able to produce tears.”[4]

One who has acquired the sight of his own sinfulness, who has acquired the fear of God, who has acquired the feeling of repentance and weeping, needs to ask of God the gift of tears through diligent prayer. So Achsah, the daughter of Caleb, when she was given in marriage and received a plot of land as a dowry, on sitting upon the donkey to set out for her husband’s house, cried out with sighing and lamentation to her father to add to the plot given her another plot abounding in waters. “You have given me dry land; now give me also springs of water” (Judg. 1:15). Caleb fulfilled his daughter’s desire.[5] The holy Fathers understand in the person of Achsah the soul that sits, as it were upon a donkey, upon the irrational impulses of the flesh. The dry land represents activity under the guidance of the fear of God; and that Achsah began with sighing and lamentation to ask for springs of water signifies the extreme need for tears in every ascetic, who must ask with sighs and heartfelt pain for the gift of tears from God. Alongside prayer for the bestowal of tears, a personal effort to produce them is also indispensable. This personal effort or labor comes both before the outpouring of tears and accompanies that outpouring.

The labor that precedes tears consists in prudent abstinence from food and drink, in prudent keeping of vigil, in non-acquisitiveness, in withdrawing attention from everything that surrounds us, and in gathering it toward ourselves. Saint John of the Ladder said in his Homily on Weeping: “Repentance is the voluntary deprivation of every bodily comfort.” Saint David describes the state of one who weeps thus:[6] “I am struck down like grass and my heart has withered, for I have forgotten to eat my bread. By reason of the sound of my groaning my bones have cleaved to my flesh. I have become like a pelican in the wilderness; I have become like a night raven on a ruin. I lie awake and am become like a solitary sparrow on a rooftop”… “I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping” (Ps. 101:5–8, 10). Without dying to the world it is impossible to acquire weeping and tears: we acquire them in proportion to our dying to the world.—The labor that accompanies weeping itself and the outpouring of tears consists in constraining oneself to them, in magnanimous endurance of the dryness and drought by which the blessed struggle is sometimes assailed, and after which the patient laborer is always rewarded with an abundant outpouring of tears. As earth that has long awaited irrigation and finally received it in abundance suddenly covers itself with tender, vivid green: so the heart, wearied by dryness and then enlivened by tears, puts forth from itself a multitude of spiritual thoughts and feelings, adorned with the common color of humility. The practice of weeping, being inseparable from the practice of prayer, requires for its progress the same conditions of which prayer stands in need. Prayer requires patient, constant perseverance in it: so too does weeping. Prayer requires the wearying of the body, and produces the exhaustion of the body: weeping also produces this exhaustion, standing in need—in order to be born—of the labor and wearying of the body. “I am weary with my groaning”, says the great Laborer of weeping, “every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping” (Ps. 6:7). Constraining oneself and laboring must be measured against one’s bodily strength.[7] The Venerable Nil Sorsky commends and blesses weeping and tears. “This is the path of repentance and its fruit,” he says. “He who weeps before the goodness of God concerning every affliction that comes upon him and against every hostile thought, that it might help him, will quickly find rest, if he prays with spiritual understanding.” However, even this Venerable man, having advised that the practice be guided by the instructions found in the books of Saint John of the Ladder and Saint Symeon the New Theologian, gives a caution borrowed from Saint Isaac the Syrian, lest the weak body be disordered by immoderate constraint. “Then,” he says, “it is not profitable to war against nature.[8] When the frail body is forced to deeds beyond its strength, darkness upon darkness is brought upon the soul—it is thrown into confusion.” Yet even with a frail constitution and health, some constraint proportioned to one’s strength is necessary. The proportionateness is easily discerned from a few trials. The infirm should bring themselves to weeping and tears chiefly through attentive prayer and should strive to acquire weeping in spirit, in which quiet tears flow and the pain of heart is not so intense.[9] Every spiritual practice, being properly a gift of God within us, inevitably requires our own constraining of ourselves toward it, since constraint is the active manifestation and witness of our good will. Constraint is especially needed when some sinful impulse or agitation arises from fallen nature or through the wickedness of demons: then it is necessary to utter the tearful words of prayer partly aloud. Material, mechanical, vocal weeping—especially forced and violent weeping—is not appropriate for the infirm, as it shakes the body and produces excruciating weariness and suffering in it. This weariness and suffering is likened by the Fathers to the pangs of a woman in labor;[10] the consequence is significant exhaustion even in strong ascetics. For monks of robust constitution, a more intensive constraint toward weeping and tears is both possible and beneficial; for them it is needful, especially at the beginning of their struggle, before they have acquired the weeping of the spirit, to pronounce the words of prayer in a mournful voice, so that the soul, fallen asleep in the sleep of death from intoxication with sin, may be roused to the voice of weeping and may itself feel the sense of weeping. So wept the mighty David. “I roared with the groaning of my heart” (Ps. 37:9), he says of himself—“I roared” like a lion filling the desert with its cry, in which both the expression of strength and the expression of grief are terrible. For vocal prayer and weeping, solitude is indispensable—at least the solitude of the cell: this practice has no place among the brethren. From the lives of the holy Fathers it is evident that those among them who had the opportunity engaged in vocal weeping, which sometimes involuntarily carried beyond the walls of the cell, although they took every care that all their practice should remain a secret known to God alone. As an accumulation of gases in the air breaks forth in thunder at a heavy rain, so an accumulation of the feelings of weeping in the soul breaks forth in sobbing with loud cries and abundant tears. This happened with the monk whose ascetic struggle is described by Saint Isaac in his tenth homily. After thunder and rain there is a special mildness of the air: and the soul, having relieved its grief by sobbing and been cooled by tears, tastes a special stillness and peace, from which, as though fragrance from aromatic substances, the purest prayer arises and acts.—In general it is profitable to learn from Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers the various methods of the monastic practice, to try them out, and to choose for oneself that practice which proves most fitting. Human beings are constituted in such variety, and their capacities and qualities are so various, that one and the same practice or method, when employed by several ascetics, acts in each of them with considerable difference. For this reason experience is indispensable, as the Apostle also advises: “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thes. 5:21).

The gift of “weeping” and “tears” is one of the greatest gifts of God. It is a gift essentially needful to us for our salvation. The gifts of prophecy, clairvoyance, and miracle-working are signs of a special pleasing of God and of God’s good will; but the gift of compunction and tears is a sign of accepted or being-accepted repentance. “The sorrow of the mind is an honorable bestowal from God; he who has it and guards it as he ought is like a man who has holiness within him.[11] Bodily ascetic struggles without the sorrow of the mind are like a body without a soul.” Tears shed for sins are bitter at first, and flow with pain and anguish of spirit, which the spirit communicates to the body as well. Little by little consolation begins to unite with tears—a consolation consisting in a special calm, in a sense of meekness and humility; at the same time, proportional and corresponding to this consolation, the tears themselves are changed: they lose much of their bitterness, they flow without pain or with less pain. At first they are scarce and come rarely; then little by little they begin to come more often and grow more abundant. But when the gift of tears grows strong in us by God’s mercy, the inner conflict is subdued, the thoughts are stilled, mental prayer or the prayer of the spirit begins to act in special development, nourishing and gladdening the inner man. Then the veil of the passions is removed from the mind and the mysterious teaching of Christ is opened to it. Then tears are transformed from bitter into sweet.[5] Then spiritual consolation sprouts in the heart—a consolation that has nothing like it among earthly joys, and which is known only to those engaged in the weeping of prayer and possessing the gift of tears. Then the promise of the Lord is fulfilled: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Mt. 5:4). Then the ascetic greets himself, at the prompting and assurance of the Holy Spirit: “The Lord keeps the simple; I was brought low, and He saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you: for He has delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling” (Ps. 114:6–8). Then the ascetic, perceiving the powerlessness of sinful thoughts and feelings over him—vainly straining to subject him to their influence—speaks boldly to them: “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication; the Lord has received my prayer” (Ps. 6:9–10).

The spiritual state of the monk who has seen the fall of human nature—who is not deceived by the allurements of the passing world, but has directed the gaze of the soul wholly upon that fall and given himself over in deep solitude to deep weeping—is vividly depicted in the Lamentations of the holy prophet Jeremiah.[12] “And it came to pass”, says Scripture, “after Israel had been led into captivity and Jerusalem was laid waste, that the prophet Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem” (Lam. 1). All remedies for Jerusalem have been exhausted and are now all in vain: only lamentation over it remains. The prophet once proclaimed to it, proclaimed without ceasing the prophetic word; now there is no one left to hear that word; not only are there no people—there are no buildings; only ruins remain: over them only lamentation can sound. These lamentations are intelligible to no one, and there is no need to concern oneself that they should be intelligible to anyone. By them the Prophet expresses his inexpressibly heavy grief; they sound through the desert from the ruins; God in heaven heeds them. What is the Prophet’s position! He is alone upon the vast ruins of the city; he alone is living amid the countless dead signs and witnesses of a life now past; he alone is living amid the realm of death. As one living, he raises a voice of grief over the loss of life; he calls that life to return to the dwelling it has abandoned, to replace once more the terrible death that does not feel itself. “How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people? She has become like a widow, she that was great among the nations, a princess among the provinces—she has become a vassal” (Lam. 1:1).

By the Prophet is signified the mind of the monk, enlightened by the revealed teaching of God; the great city is the whole man, created by God; the inhabitants of the city are the faculties of soul and body; the Gentiles are the demons, who were humbled before man prior to his fall and became his masters after his fall. The monk himself, and all human beings, are in a state of fallenness: the object of his weeping is himself and all humanity. But the monk weeps alone, because he alone, in the light of the Word of God, sees the fall of humanity; other people do not see it, do not share in the weeping, do not understand the weeping, and consider one who weeps to have lost his reason. The monk weeps alone on behalf of himself and on behalf of all humanity, being unable to separate himself from humanity out of love for it and kinship with it; the monk weeps for himself and for all humanity; he mourns the fallen nature common to all. He weeps alone amid insensate ruins, among scattered stones lying in heaps: the ruins and stones are an image of humanity struck with insensibility—humanity that neither feels nor understands its own fallenness and eternal death, and is in no way concerned with them. The monk weeps alone, and his weeping is intelligible only to God. “She weeps bitterly in the night”—throughout all the time of earthly life—“and her tears are on her cheeks; there is none to comfort her among all who loved her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her and have become her enemies” (Lam. 1:2). In order to weep the weeping that is according to God, one must withdraw from the world and from people, die to the world and to people, and become solitary in heart and mind. “The abandonment of all concerns will help you draw near to the city of silence;[13] if you cease to reckon yourself, you will dwell in it; and if you die to every person, you will become heir to the city and its treasures,” said the Great Barsanuphius to the monk whom he was preparing for silence and hermitage in the tomb-cell—that beloved dwelling of the weeping of prayer. The Jews in captivity and service under the Babylonians represent voluntary sorrows—that is, the bodily privations and struggles to which the monk subjects himself with a view to repentance—as well as the sorrows permitted him by Divine Providence for the cleansing of sins. The spiritual leader of the struggles—weeping—sends from the ruins of Jerusalem, where it dwells in solitude and silence, a message to them. In the message it announces to the captives, after the appointed time has passed, their liberation.[14] For bitter weeping there is its own appointed term; for the cup of voluntary and involuntary sorrows there is its own measure. These weight and measure are determined by God, as Saint David also said: “You have fed us with the bread of tears, and given us to drink tears in full measure” (Ps. 79:6); “for You ‘have counted my tears before You’” as a means of cleansing, “in Your promise” (Ps. 55:9) of mercy and salvation. There were days in which “my tears have been my food day and night” (Ps. 41:4); they were followed by days in which, corresponding to the preceding “abundance of sorrows in my heart, Your consolations have gladdened my soul” (Ps. 93:19). “When the Lord restored the captivity of Zion, we were like those who are comforted. Then our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongues with singing” (Ps. 125:1–2). “But you, fear not, my servant Jacob”, the inspired Jeremiah proclaims on behalf of God to the chosen people, to whom captivity in Babylon had been permitted on account of their sins, “nor be dismayed, O Israel: for behold, I will save you from afar, and your offspring from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be at rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid” (Jer. 46:27). The sorrows and pains of repentance contain within themselves the seed of consolation and healing. This mystery is revealed to the disciple of weeping through weeping itself.—All monks who have been cleansed from sins have been cleansed through weeping, and all who have attained Christian perfection have attained it through weeping. This practice was especially developed among the numerous hesychasts of lower Egypt, in the desert of Scetis, on the mountain of Nitria, in the Cells, and in other solitary places. It transformed the ranks and battalions of monks into the ranks and battalions of angels. When the founder of the monastic life in the desert of Scetis, the Venerable Macarius the Great—whom the other desert fathers also acknowledged as the Father of Fathers—had reached deep old age, the monks of the mountain of Nitria, very close to Scetis, asked him to visit them before his departure to the Lord.[15] Macarius came to the mountain; a multitude of monks who were practicing silence there came out to meet him. They asked him for edification. Macarius, weeping, said: “Brethren! Let us weep. Let our eyes pour forth tears until our departure to that place where our tears will scorch our bodies.” All wept, fell on their faces, and said: “Father! Pray for us.” From his own gift of tears, the holy teacher of the holy ancient monks pronounced a brief teaching on tears, combining in it all the teaching on monastic life. The hearers expressed by the manifestation of their gift of tears that they had understood the meaning and breadth of the teaching. Many words were not needed there.

The gift of tears—this overshadowing by the grace of God—most of all visits ascetics during attentive prayer, being its customary fruit; to some it comes during reading; to others during some form of labor. So to the Venerable Kirill of Belozersk tears came during work in the monastery kitchen. Looking at the material fire, he would call to mind the unquenchable fire of eternal torment and shed tears. Kirill, thinking that in solitude his compunction would intensify and his tears increase, desired to withdraw to his cell. By God’s providence the circumstances afforded him what he desired—and what happened? With the removal of the cause that had aroused compunction and tears, the tears diminished, and Kirill asked the prior to return him to the fire of the monastery kitchen.[16] The holy Fathers enjoin remaining in that practice in which tears come: because tears are the fruit, and the goal of monastic life is the attaining of that fruit by whatever means it pleases God to bestow the fruit.—The Venerable Theodore of Enaton used to say that “he knew a monk who practiced silence in his cell and whose handiwork was the plaiting of rope. When this monk sat plaiting rope and engaged in mental prayer, tears came to him. He would then stand up for the prayer services, but at that the tears ceased. The brother would sit down and take up the rope, gathering his thoughts within himself, and the tears would come again. Equally, when he sat and read, tears came. He would stand up for prayer, and the tears immediately ceased. As soon as he again took up his book, the tears returned.” On this occasion the Venerable man said: “The saying of the holy Fathers is just: weeping is the teacher. It teaches each person what is profitable for him.”[17]

The Venerable Theodore of Enaton used to say: “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18), because from the body the defilement flows that defiles it; so too every virtue “is outside the body”, but he who weeps daily purifies even the body: because the tear that flows from above washes the body of its impurities.[17] “A truly penitent person counts,” according to the words of Saint John of the Ladder, “every day in which he did not weep as lost to him, even though he may have done something good during it.” “Whatever exalted manner of life we may be pursuing, if we have not acquired a contrite heart, that manner of life is pretense and fruitless.[18] It is fitting—truly fitting—that those who have been defiled after the bath of regeneration (after holy baptism) should purify their hands with the constant fire of the heart and the mercy of God.” “We shall not be condemned, O friends, at the departure of our soul from the body because we were not miracle-workers, were not theologians, did not have spiritual visions; but we shall assuredly render to God an account for not having wept unceasingly”—that is, for not having abided in constant salutary grief over our sins and sinfulness.[19] Although weeping is almost always crowned with more or less abundant tears, yet some ascetics—as is evident from the consolation pronounced for them by the holy Fathers—languish either throughout all their ascetic struggle or for a considerable time under the weight of weeping without receiving tears for relief and refreshing. Let them know that the essence of repentance consists in the humility and contrition of our spirit (Ps.Homily VII, ch. 70:50:19), when the spirit weeps by reason of humility. The weeping of the spirit, when there is an insufficiency of bodily strength to express through bodily struggles and actions the repentance acting in the soul, takes the place of all bodily struggles and actions, and among them also of tears. Amen.[20]

[1] This opinion is found in the Dialogues of Sulpitius Severus, included in the Library of Gallandus and in the complete course of Patrology.

[2] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 7. The Venerable Nil Sorsky, Homily 8.

[3] Reply 282 of the Venerable Barsanuphius and John.

[4] Homily 30.

[5] The Venerable Nil Sorsky, Homily 8.

[6] Homily VII, ch. 3.

[7] Homily 8.

[8] Ibid.

[9] The Venerable Nil Sorsky in Homily 2 calls prayer and the weeping of the spirit “rational crying and weeping.”

[10] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 7, ch. 60.

[11] Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 89.

[12] The Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily IV, ch. 19.

[13] Reply XXXVIII.

[14] Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily LXV.

[15] The Alphabetical Patericon and Memorable Sayings, ch. XXXIII.

[16] The Menaion Reader, June 9.

[17] The Alphabetical Patericon.

[18] Homily V, ch. 33.

[19] Homily VII, ch. 64.

[20] Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 59.—The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 7.—The Venerable Nil Sorsky, Homily 8.

On the Jesus Prayer

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Section I. On the Jesus Prayer in General

Disciple. May all the brothers in a monastery practice the Jesus Prayer?

Elder. Not only may they, but they must. At the tonsure into monasticism, when the prayer rope—referred to at that time as the spiritual sword—is placed in the hands of the newly tonsured, he is enjoined to pray the Jesus Prayer unceasingly, day and night.[1] Consequently, the practice of the Jesus Prayer is a vow of the monk. The fulfillment of a vow is an obligation that cannot be renounced.

Old monks told me that even at the beginning of this century, in the Sarov Hermitage—and probably in other well-ordered Russian monasteries—the Jesus Prayer was taught to every person who entered the monastery. The blessed elder Seraphim, who labored in this hermitage and attained great progress in prayer, constantly advised all monks to lead an attentive life and to practice the Jesus Prayer.[2] A certain youth who had completed his theological seminary studies visited him and disclosed to the elder his intention to enter monasticism. The elder imparted to the youth most soul-saving instructions. Among them was the enjoining to learn the Jesus Prayer. Speaking of it, the elder added: “External prayer alone is not sufficient. God attends to the mind;[3] and therefore those monks who do not unite external prayer with inner prayer are not monks.” A most apt definition! Monk means one who is solitary: he who has not become solitary within himself is not yet solitary, is not yet a monk, even if he lives in the most solitary monastery. The mind of an ascetic who has not withdrawn into and enclosed himself within himself is of necessity in the midst of the din and turmoil produced by innumerable thoughts that always have free access to it; and the mind itself wanders painfully, without any need or benefit, harmfully to itself, throughout the universe. The solitude of a man within himself cannot be achieved other than by means of attentive prayer, and most especially by means of the attentive Jesus Prayer.

Disciple. The judgment of Elder Seraphim seems to me too severe.

Elder. It seems so only upon a superficial glance; it seems so to an insufficient understanding of the great spiritual treasures hidden in Christianity. The blessed Seraphim did not express his own private opinion: he expressed the opinion that belongs to the holy Fathers in general, the opinion that belongs to the Orthodox Church. Saint Hesychius of Jerusalem says: “He who has renounced all worldly things—wife, possessions, and the like—has made only the outer man a monk, and not also the inner man, which is the mind. He is a true monk who has renounced partial thoughts: he can easily make the outer man a monk too, when he wishes. The struggle of making the inner man a monk is no small one. Is there to be found in the present generation a monk who has been completely freed from partial thoughts and been deemed worthy of pure, immaterial, unceasing prayer, which is the sign of the inner monk?” The Venerable Agathon, a monk of the Egyptian Scetis, when asked which is greater—bodily struggle or inner struggle—replied:[4] “Man is like a tree; bodily struggle is like the leaves of the tree, but the inner struggle is like its fruit. But since in Scripture it is said that ‘every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire’ (Lk. 3:9), it is clear from this that all our effort must be about the fruit—that is, the guarding of the mind.[5] It is needful also that the tree be covered and adorned with leaves, which represents bodily struggle.” “O wonder!” exclaims the blessed Nikephoros of Athos, having cited the words of the Venerable Agathon in his treatise on spiritual struggle, “what a saying this Saint has pronounced against all who do not guard the mind but rely on bodily practice alone! ‘Every tree that does not produce good fruit’—that is, the guarding of the mind—but has only leaves—that is, bodily struggle—‘is cut down and cast into the fire.’ Fearsome, Father, is your saying!”[6]

The guarding of the mind, the keeping of the mind, watchfulness, attentiveness, the mental work, mental prayer—these are various names for one and the same inner struggle in its various manifestations. The inner struggle passes, in its own time, into the spiritual. The spiritual struggle is the same inner struggle, but already overshadowed by Divine grace. This inner or spiritual struggle the Fathers define as follows: “Attentiveness is the heart’s unceasing silence, always and without interruption calling upon Christ Jesus, the Son of God and God, breathing in Him, bravely marshaling forces against enemies together with Him, confessing to Him who alone has authority to forgive sins.” To put it more simply—inner practice, mental practice, mental prayer, watchfulness, the guarding and keeping of the mind, attentiveness—all these are one and the same:[7] devout, careful practice of the Jesus Prayer. The blessed Nikephoros of Athos compared these names to a piece cut from a loaf, which, depending on the way it looks, can be called a chunk, a slice, or a morsel. The Divine Scripture of the Old Testament ordains:[8] “Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23). “Take heed to yourself, lest there be a word hidden in your heart of iniquity” (Deut. 15:9). Vigilance over the heart and its cleansing is commanded especially by the New Testament.[9] To this all the commandments of the Lord are directed. “First cleanse”, says the Lord, “the inside of the cup and the dish, so that the outside may also be clean” (Mt. 23:26). By the vessels of fragile glass and low-value clay the Lord here named human beings. “What comes out of a man is what defiles a man: for from within, from the heart of a man, come evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, murder, theft, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man” (Mk. 7:20–23). Saint Barsanuphius the Great says:[10] “If inner practice with God—that is, practice overshadowed by Divine grace—does not help a man, then he labors in vain at the outer—that is, at bodily struggle.” Saint Isaac the Syrian: “He who does not have inner practice is deprived of spiritual gifts.” In another homily this great teacher of Christian asceticism likens bodily struggles, without the struggle to purify the mind, to a barren womb and dried-up breasts:[11] “They,” said the Saint, “are unable to draw near to the understanding of God” (Homily 58). Saint Hesychius of Jerusalem: “He who does not have prayer pure from thoughts has no weapon for the battle—I speak of prayer that acts ceaselessly in the inmost being of the soul, prayer in which the adversary who wars in secret is struck and scorched by the invocation of Christ.” “It is impossible to cleanse the heart and to drive from it the hostile spirits without the frequent invocation of Jesus Christ.” “As it is impossible to live earthly life without food and drink, so it is impossible without the guarding of the mind and purity of heart—in which watchfulness consists and which is called watchfulness—for the soul to achieve anything spiritual, or to be freed from mental sin, even though a man constrain himself by the fear of eternal torment not to sin.” “If you truly wish to put to shame the thoughts that assail you, to have peace of soul, to be able to exercise watchfulness in the heart with freedom, let the Jesus Prayer be united with your breathing—and after a few days you will see this accomplished.” “Navigation without water is impossible; and the guarding of the mind cannot subsist without watchfulness joined with humility and uninterrupted prayer of Jesus.” “If you have the desire before the Lord not merely to appear a monk and a good and meek man constantly united with God—if you have the desire to be truly such a monk—practice with all your might the virtue of attentiveness, which consists in the guarding and keeping of the mind, in the practice of the silence of the heart, in the blessed state of the soul free from imagining, which is found in few.” “Truly and essentially a monk is he who exercises watchfulness: and he truly exercises watchfulness who in his heart is a monk—that is, a solitary.” The foundation for the teaching of the holy Fathers, as the cornerstone to a building, is the teaching of the Lord Himself.[12] “True worshippers”, the Lord proclaimed, “will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is Spirit: and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth”[13][13] (Jn.Saint Hesychius’s Homily on Watchfulness, chapters XXI, XXVIII, CIX, CLXXXII, CLXVIII. 4:23–24).[13][14][13]

I remember: certain devout lay people of my youth, even from among the gentry, living very simple lives, practiced the Jesus Prayer. This precious custom has now, amid the general weakening of Christianity and monasticism, almost entirely disappeared. Praying in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ requires a watchful, strictly moral life—a pilgrim’s life; it requires the abandonment of attachments, but we have come to need distraction, wide circles of acquaintance, the gratification of our numerous whims, benefactors and benefactresses. “Jesus withdrew from them, for there was a crowd in that place” (Jn. 5:13).

Disciple. Will not the conclusion of what has been said be that without the practice of the Jesus Prayer one cannot receive salvation?

Elder. The Fathers do not say this. On the contrary, the Venerable Nil Sorsky, citing the hieromartyr Peter of Damaskos, affirms that many, without having attained dispassion, were deemed worthy to receive the remission of sins and salvation.[15] Saint Hesychius, having said that without watchfulness it is impossible to avoid sin “in thoughts,” also called blessed those who refrain from sin “in deed.” He named them those who take the Kingdom of Heaven by force. Attainment of dispassion, sanctification—or, what is the same thing, Christian perfection—is impossible without the acquisition of mental prayer:[16] in this all the Fathers are agreed. The goal of monastic life consists not only in the attainment of salvation, but preeminently in the attainment of Christian perfection. This goal was set forth by the Lord: “If you wish to be perfect”, said the Lord, “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor,… and come, follow me, taking up your cross” (Mt. 19:21; Mk. 10:21). The Fathers, comparing the struggle of prayer in the name of the Lord Jesus with the other monastic struggles, say the following: “Although there are other paths and forms of life—or, if you will, good deeds—guiding toward salvation and bestowing it upon those who engage in them; although there are struggles and practices that introduce into the state of a servant and a hired laborer (as the Saviour Himself said: ‘In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places’ (Jn. 14:2))—nevertheless the path of mental prayer is the royal, chosen path.[17] It is as much more exalted and refined than all other struggles as the soul is more excellent than the body: it raises one from dust and ashes into the adoption of God.”

Disciple. Can the direction of contemporary monasticism—in which the practice of the Jesus Prayer is encountered very rarely—serve as an excuse and justification for me if I do not engage in it?

Elder. A debt remains a debt, and an obligation remains an obligation, even if the number of those who fail to fulfill it should grow still larger. The vow is pronounced by all. Neither the multitude of those who violate the vow, nor the custom of violation, confers any legitimacy upon the violation. Small is the flock to which the Heavenly Father has been pleased to grant the Kingdom (Lk. 12:32). Always the narrow way has few travelers, and the broad way many (Mt. 7:13–14). In the last times the narrow way will be abandoned by almost all, and almost all will walk the broad way. From this it does not follow that the broad way will lose its property of leading to destruction, or that the narrow way will become superfluous, unnecessary for salvation. He who desires to be saved must hold fast to the narrow way, positively enjoined by the Saviour.

Disciple. Why do you call the practice of the Jesus Prayer the narrow way?

Elder. How is it not a narrow way? A narrow way in the exact sense of the word! He who desires to practice the Jesus Prayer successfully must fence himself in, both outwardly and inwardly, with the most prudent and most cautious conduct: our fallen nature is ready at any moment to betray us, to surrender us; the fallen spirits assail the practice of the Jesus Prayer with particular fury and cunning. Not infrequently from an apparently trivial carelessness, from a negligence and presumption that went unnoticed, there arises a weighty consequence having influence upon the life and eternal destiny of the ascetic—“if the Lord had not helped me, my soul would almost have dwelt in hell… My foot slipped; Your mercy, O Lord, held me up” (Ps. 93:17–18).

The foundation for the practice of the Jesus Prayer is prudent and cautious conduct. First of all, one must remove from oneself effeminacy and fleshly pleasures in all their forms. One must be satisfied constantly with moderate food and sleep proportioned to one’s strength and health, so that food and sleep provide the body the necessary sustenance without producing improper movements that arise from excess, and without producing the exhaustion that arises from insufficiency. Clothing, dwelling, and all material appurtenances in general must be modest—in imitation of Christ, in imitation of His Apostles, following their spirit, in communion with their spirit. The holy Apostles and their true disciples brought no sacrifice to vanity and futility according to the customs of the world; they entered into no communion with the spirit of the world in anything. The right, gracious action of the Jesus Prayer can sprout only from the Spirit of Christ; it sprouts and grows exclusively on that soil alone. The sight, hearing, and other senses must be strictly guarded, so that through them, as through gates, the adversaries do not break into the soul. The mouth and tongue must be bridled, as though shackled in silence; idle talk, many words, and especially mockery, gossip, and slander are the most vicious enemies of prayer. One must decline to receive brothers in one’s cell and to visit theirs: one must abide patiently in one’s own cell, as in a tomb, with one’s corpse—with one’s soul torn apart and slain by sin—entreating the Lord Jesus for mercy. From the grave—the cell—prayer ascends to heaven: in the grave to which the body is consigned at death, and in the hellish grave into which the soul of the sinner is cast down, there is no longer any place for prayer. In the monastery one must remain a stranger, not entering into the affairs of the monastery by one’s own volition, forming no close acquaintance with anyone, guarding oneself during monastic labors with silence, visiting the church of God without fail, visiting the cell of one’s spiritual father in cases of need, deliberating over every departure from one’s own cell, going out from it only when directed by genuine necessity. Curiosity and vain desire for knowledge must be decisively abandoned; all curiosity and all inquiry must be turned to the investigation and study of the path of prayer. This path demands the most careful investigation and study: it is not only a “narrow way”, but a way that “leads to life” (Mt.The Venerable Cassian of Rome. Conference 2, On Discernment. The blessed Nikiphoros of Athos. The Philokalia, part 2, and many other Fathers. 7:14); it is a science of sciences and an art of arts. So the Fathers call it.

The path of true prayer becomes incomparably narrower when the ascetic enters upon it through the activity of the inner man. But when he enters into these narrows and feels the rightness, the salutary quality, and the necessity of such a position; when labor in the inner chamber becomes desirable to him—then the narrowness in external life also becomes desirable, as the dwelling place and guardian of inner activity. He who has entered in mind upon the struggle of prayer must renounce and constantly continue to renounce both all the thoughts and feelings of fallen nature and all the thoughts and feelings brought by fallen spirits, however seemingly reasonable those thoughts and feelings on both sides may appear: he must walk constantly along the narrow path of most attentive prayer, turning neither to the left nor to the right. By turning to the left I mean the abandonment of prayer by the mind in order to converse with vain and sinful thoughts; by turning to the right I mean the abandonment of prayer by the mind in order to converse with thoughts that appear to be good. Four kinds of thoughts and feelings act upon the one who prays: some sprout from the grace of God planted in every Orthodox Christian at holy baptism; others are offered by the guardian angel; others arise from fallen nature; and others still are brought by fallen spirits. The first two kinds of thoughts—more precisely, remembrances and feelings—assist prayer, enliven it, strengthen attentiveness and the feeling of repentance, produce compunction, weeping of the heart, and tears, lay bare before the gaze of the one praying the expanse of his sinfulness and the depth of the human fall, announce the death that is unavoidable for all and the unknown hour of it, announce the impartial and dread judgment of God, the eternal torment that exceeds in its ferocity all human comprehension. In the thoughts and feelings of fallen nature, good is mixed with evil; while in the demonic, evil is often concealed under the guise of good, though sometimes acting openly as evil. The latter two kinds of thoughts and feelings act in concert on account of the bond and communion of fallen spirits with fallen human nature, and the first fruit of their combined action is pride, and—in prayer—distraction. Demons, bringing seemingly spiritual and lofty reasonings, draw one away from prayer by means of them, produce vainglorious joy, delight, and self-satisfaction, as if from the discovery of the most mysterious Christian teaching. In the wake of the demonic theology and philosophy, vain and passionate thoughts and imaginings break into the soul, pillage and destroy prayer, and ruin the good ordering of the soul. By their fruits are truly good thoughts and feelings distinguished from seemingly good ones.

O how justly the Fathers call the practice of the Jesus Prayer both the narrow way and self-denial and renunciation of the world![18] These qualities belong to every attentive and reverent prayer, but preeminently to the Jesus Prayer, which is free from the variety of form and the abundance of thought that belong to psalmody and other prayer forms.[19]

Disciple. Of what words does the Jesus Prayer consist?

Elder. It consists of the following words: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Some Fathers divide the prayer, for beginners, into two halves, and direct that from morning, approximately until midday, one say: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” and after midday:[20] “Son of God, have mercy on me.” This is an ancient tradition. But it is better to accustom oneself, if possible, to pronouncing the whole prayer. The division was permitted out of condescension for the weakness of the weak and the newly-begun.

Disciple. Is the Jesus Prayer mentioned in Holy Scripture?

Elder. It is spoken of in the holy Gospel. Do not suppose that it is a human institution: it is a Divine institution. The Jesus Prayer—the most sacred prayer—was established and enjoined by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. After the Last Supper, at which the greatest of the Christian mysteries was performed—the holy Eucharist—the Lord, in His farewell discourse to His disciples, before going out to the dread sufferings and the death on the Cross for the redemption of perished humanity, imparted the most exalted teaching and the most important final commandments. Among these commandments He granted the permission and injunction to pray in His name.[21] “Truly, truly I say to you”, He said to the Apostles, “whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you” (Jn. 16:23). “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (Jn. 14:13–14). “Until now you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (Jn. 16:24). The greatness of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ was foretold by the prophets. Pointing to the redemption of human beings that was to be accomplished by the God-man, Isaiah cries out: “Behold, God is my salvation, my Saviour!… Draw water with joy from the wells of salvation! And you shall say in that day: give praise to the Lord, call upon His name;… make mention that His name is exalted; sing praise to the name of the Lord, for He has done glorious things” (Is. 12:2–5). “The way of the Lord is a righteous judgment; we hoped in Your name and the remembrance of You, which our soul desires” (Is. 26:8). In agreement with Isaiah, David foretells: “We will rejoice in Your salvation, and in the name of the Lord our God we will be magnified… we will call upon the name of the Lord our God” (Ps. 19:6, 8). “Blessed are the people who know the festal shout”—who have made mental prayer their own—“O Lord, they walk in the light of Your face, and in Your name they rejoice all the day, and in Your righteousness they are exalted” (Ps. 88:16–17).

Disciple. In what does the power of the Jesus Prayer consist?

Elder. In the Divine name of the God-man, our Lord and God Jesus Christ. The Apostles, as we see from the book of their Acts and from the Gospel, performed great miracles in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ: they healed diseases incurable by human means, raised the dead, commanded demons, and cast them out of the people possessed by them. Once, soon after the Lord’s ascension to heaven, when all twelve Apostles were still in Jerusalem, two of them—Peter and John—went to the Jerusalem temple for prayer. To the gates of the temple called Beautiful, a man lame from birth was brought daily and placed on the pavement: the lame man could neither walk nor stand. Cast down at the gates, the sufferer asked alms from those who entered the temple, by which he evidently sustained himself. When the Apostles drew near to the Beautiful Gate, the lame man turned his eyes upon them, expecting to receive a gift. Then Saint Peter said to him: “Silver and gold have I none, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk” (Acts 3:6). The cripple was healed instantly, entered the temple with the Apostles, and loudly glorified God. The people, struck with amazement, ran together to the Apostles. “Men of Israel!” said Saint Peter to the gathered people, “why do you marvel at this? Or why do you stare at us, as if by our own power or godliness we made him walk? The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His servant Jesus… and by faith in His name, this man whom you see and know has been made strong through His name” (Acts 3:12–13, 16). News of the miracle soon reached the Sanhedrin, which was hostile to the Lord Jesus.[22] The Sanhedrin was stirred by the news; it seized the Apostles, placed them under guard, and the next day summoned them to trial before its full assembly. The healed lame man was also summoned. When the Apostles stood in the midst of the assembly of murderers of God—who had recently branded themselves with the execution of the God-man, in whose name and by whose name the most striking miracle had now been performed before a multitude of eyewitness-witnesses—the Apostles were asked: “By what power or in what name have you done this?”—Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied with the words of the Holy Spirit, which concluded with the following: “Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by Him this man stands before you well… For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:7, 10, 12). The mouths of the enemies of God were sealed in silence before the invincible force of the words of heavenly truth; the numerous assembly of the wise and the powerful found nothing to say and nothing with which to reply to the testimony of the Holy Spirit, proclaimed by two unlettered fishermen and sealed with the heavenly seal—the miracle of God. The Sanhedrin resorts to its authority, to violence. Despite the evident miracle, despite the testimony given to the truth by God Himself, the Sanhedrin sternly forbids the Apostles to teach about the name of Jesus—even to pronounce this name. But the Apostles answered boldly: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you judge; for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20). The Sanhedrin again finds no answer, again resorts exclusively to its authority, and repeats the stern prohibition. It released the Apostles and did nothing to them, though it desired to pour out its frenzied malice upon them: the all-public miracle bound both its disposition and its action. Peter and John, returning to their own, transmitted to them the threats and prohibition of the supreme tribunal. Then the twelve Apostles and all members of the newborn Jerusalem Church poured out in one accord a fervent prayer to God: prayer they set against the force and hatred of the rulers of the world—human beings and demons. This prayer concluded with the following petition: “Lord, look upon their threats and grant to Your servants to speak Your word with all boldness, while You stretch out Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of Your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:29–30).

Disciple. Some maintain that the practice of the Jesus Prayer always or almost always leads to spiritual delusion, and very strongly forbid engaging in this prayer.

[1] The preface of the schema-monk Basil of Poiana Marului to the chapters of the blessed Philotheus of Sinai. The life and writings of the Moldavian elder Paisius Velichkovsky, published by Optina Hermitage. Moscow, 1847.

[2] Instruction 32. Published in 1844, Moscow. Elder Seraphim was born in 1759, entered the brotherhood of Sarov Hermitage in 1778, and fell asleep on 2 January 1833.

[3] This information was received from the person who sought the counsel himself, now Archimandrite Nikon, abbot of the first-class St. George Balaklava Monastery (year 1866).

[4] Homily on Watchfulness, chapters LXXX and LXXXI. The Philokalia, part 2.

[5] The Sketic Patericon.

[6] The Homily on Watchfulness by Nikiphoros the Monk. The Philokalia, part 2.

[7] Saint Hesychius of Jerusalem. Homily on Watchfulness, chapter V. The Philokalia, part 2.

[8] Homily on Watchfulness. The Philokalia, part 2.

[9] As explained by Saint Hesychius. Homily on Watchfulness, chapter II.

[10] Reply CCX.

[11] Homily LVI.

[12] Saint Hesychius’s Homily on Watchfulness, chapters XXI, XXVIII, CIX, CLXXXII, CLXVIII.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Saint Hesychius’s Homily on Watchfulness, chapters CXV, CLIX.

[15] The Sketic Rule. Homily I.

[16] Saint Hesychius’s Homily on Watchfulness, chapter CX, compared with chapter CIX.

[17] The Venerables Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopouloi, chapter 98. The Philokalia, part 2.

[18] Venerable Nilus of Sinai, On Prayer, chapters 17, 18, 142. The Philokalia, part 4.

[19] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 28, chapter 10.

[20] The Venerable Abba Dorotheos. The Life of the Venerable Dositheos. The Venerable Gregory of Sinai. The Philokalia, part 1.

[21] On Stillness and Prayer by Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopouloi, chapter 10. The Philokalia, part 2.

[22] The Sanhedrin was the name for the supreme spiritual tribunal of the Jews.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)

Elder. In the adoption of such a thought and in such a prohibition there is contained a terrible blasphemy—a pitiable spiritual delusion. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the sole source of our salvation, the sole means of our salvation; His human name has borrowed from His Divinity an unlimited, all-holy power to save us: how then can this power, acting to salvation—this sole power that grants salvation—reverse itself and act to destruction? This is foreign to all sense! It is a lamentable, blasphemous, soul-destroying absurdity! Those who have adopted such a way of thinking are truly in demonic spiritual delusion, deceived by the false-named wisdom that has come forth from Satan. Satan has risen up craftily against the all-holy and glorious name of our Lord Jesus Christ; he employs the blindness and ignorance of human beings as his tool; he has slandered the name that is “above every name. At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil. 2:9–10). To those who forbid praying the Jesus Prayer one can reply with the words of the Apostles Peter and John to a similar prohibition made by the Jewish Sanhedrin: “Whether it is right before God to listen to you rather than to God, you judge.” The Lord Jesus commanded praying in His all-holy name; He gave us this priceless gift: what significance can a human teaching that contradicts the teaching of God have, or a human prohibition that strains to set aside and destroy the commandment of God and to take away a priceless gift? It is dangerous—very dangerous—to preach a teaching contrary to the teaching proclaimed by the Gospel. Such an undertaking is a voluntary separation of oneself from the grace of God, according to the testimony of the Apostle (Gal. 1:8).

Disciple. But the elders whose opinion I have cited are held in particular esteem and are recognized by many as the most experienced guides in the spiritual life.

Elder. The Apostle enjoined—or more precisely, the Holy Spirit enjoined through the mouth of the Apostle—to reject every teaching that is not in agreement with the teaching that the Apostles “proclaimed”—to reject it even if “an angel from heaven” should proclaim this disagreeing teaching. “Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to the one we proclaimed to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, and now I say again: if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8–9). Holy Scripture expressed this not because any one of the holy angels would dare to contradict the teaching of Christ, but because the teaching of Christ—the teaching of God—proclaimed by the Apostles, is fully reliable, fully holy, and is subject to no alterations, however reasonable those alterations may appear to insufficient, perverted knowledge and carnal thinking. The teaching of Christ, being above the judgment both of men and of angels, is received by humble faith alone, and itself serves as the touchstone by which all other teachings are tested.

The opinion of human society concerning a teacher of monasticism carries no weight whatsoever if that teacher’s doctrine contradicts Holy Scripture and the writings of the holy Fathers, or contains blasphemy. Monasticism is a science of sciences: one must know it in order to evaluate rightly one who imparts it. The Venerable Macarius the Great said: “Many who appear outwardly righteous are reputed to be true Christians; but it belongs only to master craftsmen—and among them, those who have a thorough knowledge of the craft—to discern whether such righteous persons truly bear the knowledge and image of the King, or whether the mark has perhaps been counterfeited and impressed upon them by ill-intentioned men. Will the skilled craftsmen approve or reject them? And if no skilled craftsmen are to be found, there is no one to examine the malicious workers—for they too are clothed in the outward appearance of monastics and Christians.”154 The blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria, explaining the words of the Archangel Gabriel concerning John, the Forerunner of the Lord—that he “shall be great before the Lord” (Lk.Discourse XXXVIII, chapter I. 1:15)—says: “The angel promises that John will be great, but before the Lord: for many are called great before men, not before God, and these are hypocrites.” If a vicious life and malicious intent, concealed by hypocrisy, are not recognized by the world and are taken by it for virtue, how much more incomprehensible to the world is knowledge that is insufficient, superficial, or distorted. The world prizes bodily ascetic struggles and deprivations highly, without discerning whether they are used rightly and beneficially or erroneously and to great harm of the soul; the world particularly esteems what acts successfully on the bodily senses, what corresponds to the world’s concepts of virtue and monasticism; the world loves what flatters and pleases it; the world loves its own—so said the Saviour (Jn. 15:18–25). Rather, the world’s hatred, the world’s slander, and its persecution may be signs of a true servant of God: and this too is attested by the Saviour. The holy Fathers enjoin one to choose a teacher free from spiritual delusion, a quality that must be recognized by the conformity of his teaching and way of life with Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Spirit-bearing Fathers.155 They warn against unskilled teachers, lest one be infected by their false teaching.156 They command that the teaching of teachers be compared with the teaching of Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers—what agrees with it is to be accepted, what disagrees rejected.157 They affirm that those who have no purified eye of the soul, and who cannot recognize a tree by its fruit, count the vainglorious, the empty, and hypocrites as men of wisdom and spirit, while paying no heed to the truly holy, finding them ignorant of all things when they are silent—proud and harsh when they speak.158 Survey all of Holy Scripture:[1] you will see that everywhere in it the name of the Lord is exalted and glorified, and his power magnified—salvific for mankind.[2] Survey the writings of the Fathers:[3] you will see that all of them, without exception, counsel and command the practice of the Jesus Prayer, calling it a weapon stronger than any in heaven or on earth,159 calling it a God-given, inalienable inheritance, one of the final and highest testaments of the God-man, a comfort most loving and most sweet, a pledge most certain.160 Finally, turn to the canons of the Orthodox Eastern Church:[4] you will see that she has appointed the Jesus Prayer for all her illiterate children—monks and laypeople alike—to take the place of psalmody and other prayers in the cell rule.161 What, then, can the contradictory teaching of certain blind men—glorified and still being glorified by those like them—signify against the unanimous testimony of Holy Scripture and all the holy Fathers, against the canon of the Universal Church regarding the Jesus Prayer?[5][6][7]

The Moldavian elder, the schema-monk Basil, who lived at the end of the last century, set forth the teaching on the Jesus Prayer with particular fullness in his remarks on the works of the Venerables Gregory of Sinai, Hesychius of Jerusalem, and Philotheus of Sinai. The schema-monk called his remarks prefaces or forewords—a most fitting title. Reading these remarks prepares one to read the aforementioned Fathers, whose works pertain chiefly to monks already considerably advanced. The remarks were published by Optina Hermitage together with the writings of Paisius of Neamţ, of whom Basil was instructor, fellow-ascetic, and friend.162 In his preface to the book of the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, Elder Basil says: “Some who are not acquainted by experience with the mental work, and who imagine that they possess the gift of discernment, justify themselves—or rather, divert others from training in this sacred work—by three pretexts or excuses:[8] first, by relegating this work to holy and passionless men, supposing that it belongs to them and not also to those still subject to passions; second, by pointing to the complete absence of instructors and teachers in this way of life and this path; third, by citing the spiritual delusion that follows upon this work. Of these pretexts, the first is unsuitable and unjust: for the first degree of progress for newly-tonsured monks consists in the lessening of the passions through watchfulness of the mind and guarding of the heart—that is, through mental prayer, proper to those in the active life. The second is thoughtless and groundless: for in the absence of an instructor and teacher, Scripture is our teacher. The third contains self-deception: those who cite it, reading the writings about delusion, trip themselves up by that same writing, interpreting it wrongly. Instead of learning from these writings how to recognize delusion and guard against it, they pervert them and present them as grounds for avoiding the mental work. But if you fear this work and its pursuit out of reverence alone and simplicity of heart, then I too fear it on that ground—not on the ground of empty fables, by which “fearing the wolf, one will never enter the forest.” One ought to fear God as well, but not to flee from Him or withdraw from Him on account of that fear.” Further, the schema-monk explains the difference between prayer performed by the mind with the sympathy of the heart—which is proper to all devout monks and Christians—and gracious prayer performed by the mind in the heart or from the heart, which is the possession of more advanced monks. Those who have acquired and made their own the unfortunate prejudice against the Jesus Prayer, and who are not at all familiar with it through correct and prolonged practice, would have acted far more prudently and far more safely had they refrained from judging it, acknowledging their complete ignorance of this most sacred ascetic struggle, rather than taking upon themselves the task of preaching against the practice of the Jesus Prayer—proclaiming that this all-holy prayer is the cause of demonic delusion and the destruction of souls. As a warning to them, I find it necessary to say that the blasphemy of the prayer in the name of Jesus, and the attribution of harmful action to this name, are equivalent to the blasphemy that the Pharisees pronounced against the miracles performed by the Lord (Mt. 12:31, 34, 36). Ignorance may be excused far more readily at the judgment of God than willful prejudice and the clamors and actions founded on it. Let us remember that at the judgment of God we must render account for every idle word163; how much more terrible the account for blasphemous words against the foundational dogma of the Christian faith. The teaching on the divine power of the name of Jesus has the full standing of a foundational dogma and belongs to the all-holy number and substance of those dogmas. The ignorant and blasphemous speculation against the Jesus Prayer bears all the marks of heretical speculation.[9]

Disciple. Yet the holy Fathers warn very strongly those engaged in the Jesus Prayer against spiritual delusion.

Elder. Yes, they do warn. They warn against spiritual delusion for those in obedience, for hesychasts, for those who fast—in short, for all who practice any virtue whatsoever. The source of spiritual delusion, as of every evil, is the devil, and not any virtue. “With every vigilance one must observe,” says Saint Macarius the Great, “the wiles, deceits, and cunning acts of the enemy (the devil) on every side. As the Holy Spirit through Paul became all things to all (1 Cor. 9:22), so the evil spirit strives maliciously to be all things to all, so as to bring all to destruction. With those who pray he pretends to pray as well, so as to lead them into pride by occasion of prayer; with those who fast he fasts, so as to beguile them with self-conceit and drive them to madness; with those versed in Holy Scripture he too rushes into the investigation of Scripture, seeking in appearance to gain knowledge, but in reality striving to lead them into a perverted understanding of Scripture; with those accounted worthy of illumination by light he pretends to possess that gift as well, as Paul says: ‘Satan transforms himself into an angel of light’ (2 Cor. 11:14), so as to deceive by a phantom of light and draw them to himself.[10] To speak simply: he assumes every form for all men, so that through action resembling the action of good he may bring the ascetic into subjection to himself, and, cloaking himself in a fair appearance, cast him into destruction.”164 It happened to me to see elders who were occupied exclusively with intensified bodily ascetic struggle, and who thereby fell into the most extreme self-conceit and the most extreme self-deception. Their soul’s passions—anger, pride, cunning, disobedience—received an extraordinary development. Self-will and self-direction prevailed in them absolutely. With resolve and bitterness they rejected all the most soul-saving counsels and warnings of their confessors, superiors, and even bishops; trampling on the rules not only of humility but of modesty and propriety, they did not refrain from expressing contempt for these persons in the most brazen manner.

A certain Egyptian monk at the beginning of the fourth century fell victim to the most terrible demonic spiritual delusion. Initially he fell into pride; then, on account of his pride, he came under the particular influence of the evil spirit. The devil, taking advantage of the monk’s voluntary pride, took care to develop in him this infirmity, so as, through pride fully matured and grown strong, to bring the monk finally under his control and lead him to the destruction of his soul. Aided by the demon, the monk attained such a wretched degree of advancement that he would stand with bare feet upon red-hot coals and, while standing on them, recite the entire Lord’s Prayer “Our Father.”

Naturally, people who lacked spiritual discernment saw in this action a miracle of God, an extraordinary holiness of the monk, the power of the Lord’s Prayer, and praised the monk with encomiums, developing his pride and helping him to destroy himself. There was no miracle of God there, no holiness of the monk; the power of the Lord’s Prayer was not at work there—Satan was at work, basing himself on the man’s self-deception, on his wrongly-directed will; demonic spiritual delusion was at work. You will ask: what significance did the Lord’s Prayer have in this demonic action? After all, the one deluded read it and attributed what was happening to its action. It is evident that the Lord’s Prayer took no part in this: the one deluded, by his own will, by his own self-deception and by demonic delusion, turned against himself the spiritual sword given to mankind for salvation. The error and self-deception of heretics have always been concealed by the abuse of the Word of God, concealed with subtle cunning; and in the event described, human error and demonic spiritual delusion, with the same aim, craftily concealed themselves beneath the Lord’s Prayer. The wretched monk supposed that he stood on the red-hot coals with bare feet by the action of the Lord’s Prayer, for the purity and height of his ascetic life—whereas he stood on them by demonic action. In precisely this way, self-deception and demonic spiritual delusion sometimes conceal themselves as if under the action of the Jesus Prayer, while ignorance attributes to the action of this most holy prayer what should be attributed to the combined action of Satan and man—of man who has given himself over to be guided by Satan. The aforementioned Egyptian monk passed from feigned holiness to unbridled licentiousness, then to complete madness, and, throwing himself into the heated furnace of a public bathhouse, was burned. It is probable that either despair seized him, or that some deceitful phantom appeared to him in the furnace.165[11]

Disciple. What is it in a person, what condition within him, makes him susceptible to spiritual delusion?

Elder. The Venerable Gregory of Sinai says: “In general, there is one cause of spiritual delusion—pride.”166 In human pride, which is self-deception, the devil finds a comfortable lodging, and adds his own deception to the self-deception of man.[12] Every person is more or less inclined to spiritual delusion: for “the very purest human nature has something proud in it.”167[13]

The warnings of the Fathers are well-founded. One must be very circumspect, must guard oneself very diligently against self-deception and spiritual delusion. In our time, with the complete dearth of God-inspired instructors, particular caution and particular vigilance over oneself are needed. They are needed in all monastic struggles; they are needed most of all in the ascetic struggle of prayer, which of all struggles is the most exalted, the most soul-saving, and the most assailed by enemies.168 “Conduct yourselves… in fear”[14] (1 Pet. 1:17), the Apostle enjoins. In the practice of the Jesus Prayer there is a beginning proper to it, a proper gradation, and an endless end. It is necessary to begin the practice from the beginning, and not from the middle or the end. The most holy Callistus, Patriarch of Constantinople, depicting the spiritual fruits of this prayer, says: “Let no one who is uninitiated into the mysteries, or who still requires milk, dare, upon hearing the exalted teaching concerning the gracious action of prayer, to lay a hand to it. Such an untimely attempt is forbidden. The Fathers regard those who venture upon it, who seek prematurely what comes in its own time, and who strive to enter into the haven of dispassion in a state unsuited to it, as nothing other than deranged. It is impossible to read books for one who has not learned to read.”169[15]

Disciple. What does it mean to begin the practice of the Jesus Prayer from the middle or from the end, and what does it mean to begin this practice from the beginning?

Elder. Those novice monks who, having read in the patristic writings the instruction for the practice of the Jesus Prayer given by the Fathers to hesychasts—that is, to monks already greatly advanced in the monastic struggle—incautiously take this instruction as a guide for their own activity, begin from the middle. Those who, without any preliminary preparation, strive to bring the mind into the temple of the heart and from there to offer prayer, begin from the middle. Those who seek immediately to unfold in themselves the gracious sweetness of prayer and its other gracious actions begin from the end. One must begin from the beginning—that is, to perform the prayer with “attentiveness” and “reverence,” with the aim of “repentance,” caring only that these three qualities be constantly present with the prayer. So also Saint John of the Ladder, that great laborer of heartfelt gracious prayer, prescribes attentive prayer for those in obedience, and heartfelt prayer for those mature enough for hesychasm. For the former he considers prayer free from distraction to be impossible, while he requires such prayer from the latter.170 In human society one should pray with the mind alone, but in solitude—with both mind and lips, somewhat aloud to oneself alone.171 The utmost care, the most thorough care, must be taken to order one’s moral life in accordance with the teaching of the Gospel.[16] Experience will not be slow to disclose to the praying mind the closest connection between the commandments of the Gospel and the Jesus Prayer.[17] These commandments serve the prayer as oil serves a burning lamp: without oil the lamp cannot be lit; when the oil is spent it cannot burn—it goes out, spreading a foul-smelling smoke all around. Moral life is formed in accordance with the teaching of the Gospel very readily through the fulfillment of monastic obediences, when they are fulfilled in the spirit in which the holy Fathers have commanded them to be fulfilled. True obedience serves as the foundation and the lawful door to true hesychasm.172 True hesychasm consists in the Jesus Prayer assimilated to the heart—and some of the holy Fathers accomplished the great struggle of heartfelt hesychasm and enclosure while surrounded by the clamor of men.173 Only on moral life brought into order by the Gospel commandments—only on this firm Gospel rock—can the majestic, sacred, immaterial temple of God-pleasing prayer be erected. Vain is the labor of one who builds on sand: on a moral life that is light and wavering (Mt. 7:26).[18] Moral life brought into harmonious and beautiful order, consolidated by the habit of fulfilling the Gospel commandments, may be likened to an indestructible silver or golden vessel—the only vessel capable of worthily receiving and safely preserving within itself the priceless spiritual myrrh:[19] prayer.

Saint Symeon the New Theologian, reflecting on the occasional fruitlessness of the ascetic struggle of prayer and the tares of spiritual delusion that spring from it, attributes the cause both of the fruitlessness and of the delusion to a failure to observe the proper order and gradation in the struggle. “Those who wish to ascend,” says the Theologian, “to the heights of prayerful progress must not begin by going from the top downward, but must ascend from below upward—first to the first step of the ladder, then to the second, then to the third, and finally to the fourth. In this way each one can rise from the earth and ascend to heaven. First, he must strive to tame and diminish the passions. Second, he must practice psalmody—that is, vocal prayer: when the passions are diminished, prayer naturally affords delight and sweetness to the tongue and is accounted well-pleasing to God. Third, he must occupy himself with mental prayer.” Here is meant the prayer performed by the mind in the heart: the attentive prayer of novice monks, with the sympathy of the heart, the Fathers rarely dignify with the name of mental prayer, reckoning it more to the category of vocal prayer. “Fourth, he must ascend to contemplation. The first belongs to novices; the second to those advancing in progress; the third to those who have reached the utmost progress; the fourth to the perfect.” Further, the Theologian says that even those striving to lessen the passions must accustom themselves to guarding the heart and to the attentive Jesus Prayer suited to their condition.174 In the communities of Pachomius the Great—which produced the most exalted laborers of mental prayer—each newly-entered monk was first occupied with bodily labors under the direction of an elder for three years. Through bodily labors, frequent instructions from the elder, daily confession of external and internal activity, and the cutting-off of the will, the passions were powerfully and swiftly subdued, and a considerable degree of purity was given to the mind and heart. During the practice of labors the novice was taught the prayer-work suited to his condition.[20] After three years the novice was required to memorize the entire Gospel and Psalter, and those who were able—the entire Holy Scripture, which develops vocal attentive prayer in an extraordinary manner. Only after this did the initiatory teaching in mental prayer begin: it was expounded richly from both the New and Old Testament.175 In this way monks were led into a correct understanding of mental prayer and into its correct practice. From the soundness of the foundation and the correctness of the practice, the progress was wondrous.176[21][22]

Disciple. Is there any reliable means of preserving oneself from spiritual delusion in general—in all monastic struggles—and in particular in the practice of the Jesus Prayer?

Elder. As pride is in general the cause of spiritual delusion, so humility—the virtue directly opposed to pride—serves as a reliable warning and safeguard against spiritual delusion. Saint John of the Ladder called humility “the destruction of the passions.”177 It is evident that in one in whom the passions do not act, in whom the passions are bridled, spiritual delusion cannot act either, for “spiritual delusion is the passionate or partial turning of the soul toward falsehood on the basis of pride.”[23]

[1] Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopouloi, On Stillness and Prayer, chapter 14. The Philokalia, part 1.

[2] The Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, chapter 32. The Philokalia, part 1.

[3] The Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, chapter 33.

[4] The Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, chapters 70, 71, 72. The Philokalia, part 1.

[5] The Psalter with the Order of Services.

[6] The Venerables Callistus and Ignatius, chapter X. The Philokalia, part 2.

[7] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 21, chapter 7. Homily 15, chapter 55.—The Homily on Watchfulness of Saint Hesychius, chapters 28, 39, 62, and others.—The Venerable Nilus of Sora. Homily 5, On the Thought of Fornication.

[8] Optina Hermitage rendered the greatest service to Russian monasticism by translating from Greek into Russian, and in part publishing in Slavonic, many patristic works on the spiritual monastic struggle. May the name of the departed blessed elder of that hermitage, the hieroschemamonk Macarius, who stood at the head of this work, be here mentioned with blessing.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Homily VII, chapter 9.

[11] The Menaion Reader. Life of the Venerable Pachomius the Great, May 15th.

[12] Chapter 131. The Philokalia, part 1.

[13] The Venerable Macarius the Great. Discourse 7, chapter 4.

[14] The Venerable Macarius the Great. Homily 3, chapter 2.

[15] Chapters on Prayer, chapter 8. The Philokalia, part 2.

[16] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 4, chapter 93; and Homily 27, chapters 6, 46, 60, 61, 62.

[17] The most holy Callistus, “On Prayer in Brief”. The Philokalia, part 4.

[18] Saints Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopouloi, chapter 15. The Philokalia, part 2.

[19] Such were: Alexis the Man of God (March 17), Saint John the Hut-dweller (January 15), the Venerable monk Vitalius, and others.—The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 4, chapter 36.

[20] Homily on the Three Methods of Attentiveness and Prayer, in the article on the third method, at the end of the article.—The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 27, chapter 33.

[21] Drawn from the accounts of the Venerable Cassian of Rome.

[22] This is evident from the writings of the Venerable Cassian of Rome, the Venerable Orsisius, the Venerable Isaiah the Hermit, and other holy monks who received their monastic formation in the Egyptian monasteries.

[23] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, title of Homily 25.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 3)

In the practice of the Jesus Prayer, and of prayer in general, that form of humility called “weeping” preserves fully and with entire fidelity. Weeping is the heartfelt feeling of repentance, of salvific grief over one’s sinfulness and the manifold, numerous infirmity of man. Weeping is a “spirit broken, a heart contrite and humble,” which “God will not despise” (Ps. 50:19)—that is, He will not deliver it into the power and mockery of demons, as He delivers to them a heart that is proud, filled with self-conceit, self-assurance, and vainglory. Weeping is the sole sacrifice that God receives from the fallen human spirit, prior to the renewal of the human spirit by God’s Holy Spirit. Let our prayer be penetrated by the feeling of repentance, let it be joined with weeping—and spiritual delusion will never gain power in us.[1] Saint Gregory of Sinai, in the final article of his work178—in which he sets forth for ascetics of prayer the warnings against soul-destroying spiritual delusion—says: “It is no small labor to attain precisely to truth and to become pure from everything contrary to grace: for the devil is accustomed to show his delusion, especially before novices, in the guise of truth, giving the evil the appearance of the spiritual. For this reason, one who strives in hesychasm to attain pure prayer must travel the mental path of prayer with great trembling and weeping, seeking guidance from the experienced, always weeping over his sins, grieving and fearing lest he fall into torment or fall away from God, become separated from Him in this age or in the age to come. If the devil sees that the ascetic lives in weeping, he does not remain near him, not enduring the humility that proceeds from weeping… It is a great weapon—to have weeping together with prayer. Prayer free from delusion consists in warmth together with the Jesus Prayer, which (the Jesus Prayer) casts fire into the soil of our heart—warmth that burns up the passions as stubble and produces in the soul joy and quietness.[2] This warmth does not come from the right side or the left, nor from above, but springs up within the very heart itself, like a spring of water from the Life-giving Spirit.179 Love to find and gain this warmth alone in the heart, keeping your mind ever free from imaginings and alien from concepts and thoughts, and do not fear. He who said: ‘Take courage: it is I, do not be afraid’ (Mt. 14:27)—He is with us. He is the One we seek. He will always defend us, and we need not fear or sigh in calling upon God. If some have gone astray and suffered mental disorder, know that they suffered this from self-will and pride.” Today, owing to the complete dearth of Spirit-bearing instructors, the ascetic of prayer is compelled to be guided solely by Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers.180 This is far more difficult.[3] A new reason for redoubled weeping!

[1] The Philokalia, part 1.

[2] Spiritual warmth is the possession of monks who have made very considerable progress and who labor in hesychasm—for whom the entire book of Saint Gregory of Sinai is written—and is by no means the possession of novices. Novices must be content if they pray with attentiveness and compunction. On spiritual warmth, see the “Homily on the Jesus Prayer” in Ascetic Experiences, volume 2.

[3] The Venerable Nilus of Sora, preface to the Tradition.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)

Section II. On Spiritual Delusion

Disciple. Give an exact and detailed account of spiritual delusion. What is spiritual delusion?

Elder. Spiritual delusion is the corruption of human nature by falsehood. Spiritual delusion is the condition of all mankind without exception, produced by the fall of our forebears. We are all in spiritual delusion.181 To know this is the greatest safeguard against spiritual delusion.[1] The greatest spiritual delusion is to consider oneself free from delusion. We are all deceived, all beguiled, all in a false condition, all in need of liberation by truth. The Truth is our Lord Jesus Christ (Jn. 8:32, 14:6). Let us make our own this Truth by faith in it; let us cry out to this Truth in prayer—and it will draw us from the abyss of self-deception and delusion by demons. Our condition is grievous! It is a prison, from which we pray that our soul be brought out, “to confess” the name of the Lord (Ps. 141:8). It is that dark land into which our life has been cast down by the enemy who envied us and pursued us (Ps. 142:3). It is the carnal mind (Rom. 8:6) and the knowledge falsely so called (1 Tim. 6:20), with which all the world is infected—a world that does not acknowledge its own sickness, but proclaims it to be flourishing health. It is “flesh and blood,” which “cannot inherit the Kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50).[2] It is eternal death, healed and abolished by the Lord Jesus, who is “the resurrection and the life” (Jn. 11:25). Such is our condition. To behold it is a new occasion for weeping. With weeping let us cry out to the Lord Jesus, that He draw us out of the prison, lift us from the depths of the earth, and snatch us from the jaws of death. “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” says the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, “descended to us for this reason: He desired to deliver us from captivity and from the worst spiritual delusion.”182

Disciple. This explanation is not sufficiently accessible to my understanding: I have need of an explanation more simple, more within my comprehension.

Elder. “Falsehood” was the instrument used by the fallen angel to destroy the human race (Gen. 3:13). For this reason the Lord called the devil “a liar, the father of lies, and a murderer from the beginning” (Jn. 8:44). The Lord joined the concept of falsehood closely to the concept of murder: for the latter is the inevitable consequence of the former. The word “from the beginning” indicates that from the very beginning, falsehood served as the devil’s instrument for the murder of men, and constantly serves him as an instrument for murder—for the destruction of mankind. The beginning of all evils is a false thought! The source of self-deception and demonic delusion is a false thought! The cause of every kind of harm and ruin is a false thought! Through falsehood the devil struck mankind with eternal death in its very root—in our forebears. Our forebears were deluded — that is, they acknowledged falsehood as truth, and accepting the lie under the guise of truth, they damaged themselves irremediably with mortal sin, as our foremother herself attested. “The serpent deceived me,” she said, “and I ate” (Gen. 3:13). From that time our nature, infected with the poison of evil, strives both “voluntarily” and “involuntarily” toward evil that presents itself as good and pleasure to the corrupted will, the distorted mind, and the distorted feeling of the heart. Voluntarily: because there still remains in us a remnant of freedom in the choice of good and evil. Involuntarily: because this remnant of freedom does not act as full freedom; it acts under the inescapable influence of corruption by sin. We are born thus; we cannot but be so: and therefore all of us, without any exception, are in a condition of self-deception and demonic spiritual delusion. From this view of the condition of mankind in relation to good and evil—a condition that by necessity belongs to every human being—flows the following definition of delusion, explaining it with full adequacy: “spiritual delusion is the appropriation by man of falsehood, accepted by him as truth.” Delusion acts first upon the manner of thinking; having been accepted and having perverted the manner of thinking, it immediately communicates itself to the heart, perverting the feelings of the heart; having seized the substance of man, it spreads over all his activity, poisoning even the body, as inseparably bound to the soul by the Creator. The condition of spiritual delusion is a condition of destruction or eternal death.

Since the fall of man, the devil has had constant free access to him.183 The devil has a right to this access:[3] man voluntarily subjected himself to his authority by obeying him, having rejected obedience to God. God has redeemed man. The redeemed man is granted the freedom to obey either God or the devil; and in order that this freedom may manifest itself without compulsion, the devil is permitted access to man. It is very natural that the devil employs every effort to keep man in his former relation to himself, or even to bring him into greater subjection. For this he employs his former and constant weapon—falsehood. He strives to beguile and deceive us, relying on our condition of self-deception; he sets in motion our passions—these diseased cravings—and clothes their ruinous demands in the appearance of goodness, endeavoring to incline us to satisfy the passions. One who is faithful to the Word of God does not permit himself such satisfaction, bridles the passions, repels the attacks of the enemy (Jas. 4:7): acting under the guidance of the Gospel against his own self-deception, taming the passions, thereby gradually destroying the influence of the fallen spirits upon himself, he little by little passes out of the condition of delusion into the realm of truth and freedom (Jn. 8:32), the fullness of which is given by the overshadowing of Divine grace. One who is unfaithful to the teaching of Christ, who follows his own will and reason, submits to the enemy and passes from the condition of self-deception to the condition of demonic delusion, losing the remnant of his freedom and entering into full subjection to the devil. The condition of people in demonic delusion is very varied, corresponding to the passion by which man is beguiled and enslaved, and to the degree in which he is enslaved to it. But all who have fallen into demonic delusion—that is, who through the development of their own self-deception have entered into communion with the devil and into subjection to him—are in delusion, are temples and instruments of demons, victims of eternal death, destined for life in the prisons of hell.

Disciple. Enumerate the kinds of demonic delusion that arise from incorrect practice of prayer.

Elder. All forms of demonic delusion to which the ascetic of prayer is subject arise from the fact that repentance has not been laid as the foundation of prayer, that repentance has not been made the source, the soul, and the goal of prayer. “If anyone,” says the Venerable Gregory of Sinai in the article cited above, “with self-assurance founded on self-conceit,184 imagines that he will attain to high states of prayer, and has developed a zeal not genuine but satanic, the devil easily entangles him in his nets as one who is his own servant.” Everyone who strives to enter the marriage feast of the Son of God not in the pure and bright garments fashioned by repentance, but directly in his own rags—in a condition of senility, sinfulness, and self-deception—is cast out into the outer darkness:[4] into demonic delusion. “I counsel you,” the Saviour says to one called to mystical priesthood, “to buy from me gold refined in fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, so that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint the eyes of your senses” and the eyes of your mind “with the eye-salve” of tears “that you may see. Those whom I love I reprove and discipline. Be zealous, therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:18–19). Repentance and all that constitutes it—contrition or anguish of spirit, weeping of the heart, tears, self-condemnation, the remembrance and foretaste of death, of God’s judgment and eternal torments, the sense of God’s presence, the fear of God—are gifts of God, gifts of great worth, gifts that are primary and foundational, pledges of higher and eternal gifts. Without receiving them first, the bestowal of subsequent gifts is impossible. “However exalted our ascetic struggles may be,” said Saint John of the Ladder, “if we have not acquired a suffering heart, these struggles are both false and vain.”185 Repentance, contrition of spirit, and weeping are signs—they are testimony to the correctness of the ascetic struggle of prayer;[5] their absence is a sign of deviation into a false direction, a sign of self-deception, delusion, or barrenness. The one or the other—that is, delusion or barrenness—are the inevitable consequence of incorrect practice of prayer; and incorrect practice of prayer is inseparable from self-deception.

The most dangerous incorrect mode of prayer consists in the following: the one who prays composes by the force of his imagination fantasies or pictures, drawing them in appearance from Holy Scripture but in reality from his own condition, from his own fall, his sinfulness, his self-deception—and with these pictures he flatters his self-conceit, his vainglory, his pride, deceiving himself. It is evident that everything composed by the fantasy of our fallen nature—a nature perverted by the fall—does not exist in reality; it is fiction and falsehood, so characteristic of, so beloved by, the fallen angel. The fantasist, from the very first step on the path of prayer, departs from the realm of truth and enters the realm of falsehood, the realm of Satan, and voluntarily submits to the influence of Satan. Saint Symeon the New Theologian describes the prayer of the fantasist and its fruits thus: “He raises to heaven his hands, his eyes, and his mind, imagines in his mind—like Klopstock and Milton—divine counsels, heavenly goods, the orders of the holy Angels, the dwellings of the saints; in short, he gathers in his imagination all that he has heard in the Divine Scripture, he contemplates these things during prayer, gazes up at heaven, and by all this stirs his soul to Divine longing and love; sometimes he sheds tears and weeps. In this way his heart gradually becomes inflated without his mind perceiving it; he supposes that what he is doing is the fruit of Divine grace for his consolation, and prays God to grant him always to remain in this activity. This is a sign of delusion. Such a person, even if he keeps complete silence, cannot but fall into mental disorder and madness. And if this does not happen to him, it is still impossible for him ever to attain spiritual understanding, virtue, or dispassion. In this way were deluded those who saw light and radiance with these bodily eyes, who smelled fragrances with their nostrils, who heard voices with their ears. Some of them went mad and wandered in their mental disorder from place to place; others received a demon that had transformed itself into a bright Angel, were deluded, and remained uncorrected to the very end, accepting no counsel from any of the brethren; some of them, prompted by the devil, killed themselves;[6] some cast themselves into abysses; others hanged themselves. And who can enumerate the various delusions of the devil by which he deceives—delusions that are beyond telling? Nevertheless, from what we have said, every intelligent person can learn what harm comes from this mode of prayer. But if any of those who employ it do not suffer any of the above-mentioned calamities because they live in community with the brethren—since such calamities befall chiefly hermits who live alone—such a person spends his entire life without progress.”186

All the holy Fathers who have described the ascetic struggle of mental prayer forbid not only the composing of voluntary fantasies, but also the consenting in will and sympathy to fantasies and apparitions that may present themselves to us unexpectedly, independently of our will. And this does happen in the ascetic struggle of prayer, especially in hesychasm. “In no wise accept,” says the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, “if you see something whether with your bodily eyes or with the mind, whether outside you or within you—be it an image of Christ, or an Angel, or a saint, or if a light presents itself to you… Be attentive and cautious! Do not permit yourself to trust in anything, do not express sympathy or consent, do not hasten to entrust yourself to an apparition, even if it be true and good; remain cold toward it and aloof, always keeping your mind without images, forming no likeness within itself and imprinted by none. Whoever sees something in thought or sensibly, though it be from God, and hastily accepts it, easily falls into delusion—or at least reveals his inclination and susceptibility to delusion, as one who receives apparitions quickly and without reflection. A novice must direct all his attention to the single action of the heart, and consider that action alone as free from delusion—while refusing to accept the rest until such time as he enters into dispassion. God is not angered with one who, fearing delusion and watching himself with the utmost care, does not accept even something sent from God without having examined it with all thoroughness; on the contrary, God praises such a one for his prudence.”187 Saint Amphilochius, who entered monasticism from youth, was found worthy in his mature and elder years to lead the eremitic life in the desert.[7] Having enclosed himself in a cave, he practiced hesychasm and attained great progress. When “forty” years of his eremitic life were completed, an Angel appeared to him by night and said: Amphilochius! go to the city and tend the spiritual flock. Amphilochius remained watchful over himself and paid no heed to the Angel’s command. On the following night the Angel appeared again, repeated the command, and added that it came from God. And again Amphilochius rendered no obedience to the Angel, fearing to be deceived and recalling the words of the Apostle, that Satan also transforms himself into an Angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). On the third night the Angel appeared once more, and having assured Amphilochius of his identity by glorifying God—which is intolerable to rejected spirits—took the elder by the hand, led him out of the cell, and brought him to a church that was nearby. The church doors opened of themselves. The church was illumined by a heavenly light; in it stood a multitude of holy men in white robes with sun-like faces. They ordained Amphilochius as bishop of the city of Iconium.188—In contrary conduct, the Venerables Isaakios and Nikita of the Kiev Caves, new and inexperienced in the eremitic life, fell into the most terrible calamity by rashly trusting in an apparition that presented itself to them.[8] To the first there appeared a multitude of demons in radiance: one of the demons took on the appearance of Christ, the rest the appearance of holy Angels. The second was deluded by a demon, first by a fragrance and a voice as if divine, and then by the demon appearing before him openly in the form of an Angel.189 Monks who are experienced in the monastic life—truly holy monks—fear spiritual delusion far more and trust themselves far less than novices, especially those novices who are consumed with fervor for ascetic struggle. With heartfelt love the Venerable Gregory of Sinai warns the hesychast—for whom his book is written—against spiritual delusion:[9] “I wish you to have a definite concept of delusion: I wish this with the aim that you may be able to guard yourself against it, lest in your striving, not illumined by proper knowledge, you cause yourself great harm and destroy your soul. The free will of man is easily inclined to communion with our adversaries—especially the will of the inexperienced, who are new to the struggle, as still possessed by demons.”190 How true this is! Our free will inclines, is drawn, toward delusion: for every delusion flatters our self-conceit, our vainglory, our pride.[7] “The demons are near and surround the novices and the self-willed, spreading nets of thoughts and ruinous fantasies, constructing abysses of falls. The city of novices—the entire being of each of them—is still in the hands of barbarians… Out of frivolity, do not quickly trust whatever presents itself to you, but remain “heavy”—retaining the good with much discernment and rejecting the evil… Know that the actions of grace are clear; the demon cannot impart them: he cannot impart either meekness, or quietness, or humility, or hatred of the world; he does not tame the passions and love of pleasure, as grace does.” His actions are: “puffing up”—arrogance, inflation—“pride, fearfulness, and in short all forms of wickedness. By the action you will be able to recognize the light that has dawned in your soul—whether it is of God or of Satan.”191 It must be known that such discernment is the possession of advanced monks, and in no way of novices. Venerable Sinait converses, though with a novice in the hesychast life, yet with one who by his monastic seniority and physical age was an elder, as is evident from the book.[10]

Disciple. Have you happened to see anyone who fell into demonic delusion from developing fantasy during the practice of prayer?

Elder. It happened to me. A certain civil servant living in St. Petersburg occupied himself with an intensified ascetic struggle of prayer and through it came to an extraordinary condition. He disclosed his struggle and its consequences to the then-priest of the Church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Kolomna. This priest, visiting a certain monastery of the St. Petersburg diocese, asked one of the monks of that monastery to converse with the civil servant. “The strange condition into which the civil servant has come through his struggle,” said the priest rightly, “can more readily be explained by the inhabitants of a monastery, as being more familiar with the details and contingencies of ascetic struggle.” The monk agreed. After some time the civil servant arrived at the monastery. I too was present at his conversation with the monk. The civil servant immediately began to recount his visions—that he constantly saw light coming from the icons during prayer, smelled a fragrance, tasted an extraordinary sweetness in his mouth, and so forth. The monk, having heard this account, asked the civil servant: “Has there not come to you the thought of killing yourself?”—“Indeed it has!” replied the civil servant, “I had already thrown myself192 into the Fontanka, but they pulled me out.” It turned out that the civil servant had employed the mode of prayer described by Saint Symeon, had inflamed his imagination and blood—a state in which a man becomes very capable of intensified fasting and vigil. To the condition of self-deception, voluntarily chosen, the devil added his own action—akin to that condition—and human self-deception passed into manifest demonic delusion.[11] The civil servant saw light with his bodily eyes; the fragrance and sweetness he experienced were also sensory. In contrast to this, the visions of saints and their supernatural states are wholly spiritual:193 the ascetic becomes capable of them only after the eyes of the soul are opened by Divine grace, whereupon the other senses of the soul also come alive, having until then remained inactive;194 the bodily senses of the saints also participate in the gracious vision—but only when the body has passed from the passionate state to the dispassionate state. The monk began to persuade the civil servant to abandon the mode of prayer he was using, explaining both the incorrectness of the method and the incorrectness of the condition that the method produced. With bitterness the civil servant resisted the counsel.[12] “How can I renounce manifest grace!” he objected.[13]

Listening to the civil servant’s account of himself, I felt an inexpressible pity for him, and at the same time he seemed to me somehow comical. For example, he put the following question to the monk: “When from the abundant sweetness the saliva in my mouth increases and begins to drip on the floor—is that sinful?” Truly: those in demonic delusion arouse compassion, as persons who no longer belong to themselves, and who are held, as to mind and heart, captive to the evil, rejected spirit. They also present a comic spectacle: they are made an object of mockery by the evil spirit that has mastered them, which brought them to a state of humiliation by deluding them with vainglory and pride. Neither their captivity nor the strangeness of their conduct do the deluded understand, however evident that captivity and strangeness may be.

The winter of 1828–1829 I spent at Ploschansk Hermitage.195 At that time there lived there an elder who was in spiritual delusion.[14] He had cut off his hand at the wrist, supposing that he was thereby fulfilling the Gospel commandment, and recounted to everyone willing to listen that the severed wrist had become holy relics, that it was stored and venerated with due ceremony at Simonov Monastery in Moscow, that he—the elder—being in Ploschansk Hermitage five hundred versts from Simonov, could feel when the Simonov archimandrite and brethren were venerating the hand. The elder would fall into trembling, whereupon he began to hiss very loudly: he regarded this phenomenon as the fruit of prayer, but to observers it appeared as a distortion of self, worthy only of pity and laughter. Children living in the monastery as orphans amused themselves with this phenomenon and imitated it before the elder’s eyes. The elder fell into anger and rushed at one boy and then another, pulling them by the hair. No respected monk of the monastery could convince the deluded man that he was in a false condition, in a state of mental disorder.

When the civil servant had left, I asked the monk: “How did it occur to him to ask the civil servant about an attempt at suicide?” The monk replied: “Just as in the midst of weeping before God there come moments of extraordinary peace of conscience—in which lies the consolation of those who weep—so in the midst of the false pleasure afforded by demonic delusion there come moments in which the delusion seems to unmask itself, and gives one a taste of itself as it actually is. These moments are terrible! The bitterness they bring, and the despair produced by that bitterness, are unbearable. By means of this state into which delusion brings one, it would be easiest for the deluded person to recognize the delusion and take measures to heal himself. Alas! The beginning of delusion is pride, and its fruit is pride in abundance. The deluded man, who considers himself a vessel of Divine grace, despises the salutary warnings of those near him—as Saint Symeon observed. Meanwhile the fits of despair grow stronger and stronger; at last despair turns into madness and is crowned by suicide.”

At the beginning of the present century, a schema-monk named Theodosius was an ascetic at Sophroniev Hermitage,196 having attracted to himself the respect both of the brotherhood and of laypeople by his strict and exalted manner of life.[15] Once it seemed to him that he had been caught up to paradise. At the end of the vision he went to the abbot, recounted the miracle in detail, and added an expression of regret that in paradise he had seen only himself, and none of the brethren. This detail escaped the notice of the abbot: he assembled the brethren, and with contrition of spirit retold to them the vision of the schema-monk, urging them to a life more earnest and pleasing to God. After some time strange actions began to appear in the schema-monk’s conduct. The matter ended with him being found hanged in his cell.

[1] Beginning of the 3rd Homily of the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian. Optina Hermitage edition of 1852.

[2] Beginning of the 3rd Homily.

[3] Quotation from the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, in the Homily of Nikephoros the Monk. The Philokalia, part 2.—The Venerable Macarius the Great. Homily 7, ch. 2.

[4] In the original it is said: “if anyone imagines with opinion to attain lofty things”. An explanatory rendering is used here in order to show more distinctly the meaning of the word “opinion”.

[5] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 7.

[6] On the first mode of attentiveness and prayer. The Philokalia, part 1.

[7] The article cited above.

[8] The Menaion Reader. November 23rd.

[9] The Paterikon of the Caves.

[10] The Philokalia, part 1. On spiritual delusion, etc.

[11] A turn of phrase used by the inhabitants of St. Petersburg.

[12] Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 55.

[13] The Venerable Symeon the New Theologian. Homily on Faith. The Philokalia, part 1.

[14] Of the diocese of Oryol.

[15] Of the diocese of Kursk.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

The following case, worthy of note, befell me. An Athonite hieroschemamonk who was in Russia collecting donations once paid me a visit. We sat in my reception cell, and he began to say to me: “Pray for me, father: I sleep too much, I eat too much.” As he said this to me, I felt a heat emanating from him, and so replied: “You do not eat too much, nor do you sleep too much; but is there not something extraordinary in you?” and I asked him to come into my inner cell. As I walked before him and opened the door to the inner cell, I prayed inwardly to God that He would grant my hungry soul to profit from the Athonite hieroschemamonk, if he were a true servant of God. Indeed: I noticed something extraordinary in him. In the inner cell we sat down again to converse, and I began to ask him: “Do me the kindness of teaching me about prayer. You live in the first monastic place on earth, among thousands of monks: in such a place and in such a numerous assembly of monks there must certainly be found great men of prayer, who know the mystery of prayer and impart it to their neighbors, following the example of the Gregorys of Sinai and Palamas, following the example of many other Athonite luminaries.” The hieroschemamonk immediately agreed to be my instructor—and, O horror! With the greatest ardor he began to impart to me the above-described method of enraptured, imaginative prayer. I see: he is in terrible ardor! His blood and imagination are inflamed! He is in self-complacency, in rapture over himself, in self-deception, in delusion! Having let him have his say, I began little by little, in the guise of a pupil, to set before him the teaching of the holy Fathers on prayer, pointing to it in The Philokalia and asking him to explain this teaching to me. The Athonite fell into complete bewilderment. I see: he is wholly unacquainted with the teaching of the Fathers on prayer! As the conversation continued, I said to him: “Look here, elder: if you are going to live in Petersburg, never take lodgings on the upper floor—be sure to take lodgings on the lower floor.” “Why so?” objected the Athonite. “Because,” I replied, “if the angels take it into their heads to snatch you up suddenly and carry you from Petersburg to Athos, and they carry you out from the upper floor and drop you, you will be killed: but if they carry you out from the lower floor and drop you, you will only be bruised.” “Imagine,” replied the Athonite, “how many times, when I stood at prayer, there came to me the vivid thought that angels would snatch me up and place me on Athos!” It turned out that the hieroschemamonk wore chains, slept almost not at all, ate very little, and felt such a heat in his body that in winter he had no need of warm clothing. By the end of the conversation there came to me the thought to proceed as follows: I began to ask the Athonite that he, as a faster and ascetic, put to the test upon himself the method handed down by the holy Fathers—consisting in keeping the mind during prayer wholly free from all fantasy, wholly absorbed in attentiveness to the words of the prayer, enclosed and contained, in the expression of Saint John of the Ladder, within the words of the prayer.197 In this, the heart ordinarily cooperates with the mind through the soul-saving feeling of grief over sins, as the Venerable Mark the Ascetic said: “The mind praying without distraction oppresses the heart: ‘and a heart contrite and humble God will not despise’ (Ps. 50:19).”198 “When you have tried it upon yourself,” I said to the Athonite, “inform me also of the fruit of the experience; for such an experience is unsuited to me personally because of the busy life I lead.” The Athonite gladly agreed to my suggestion. After several days he came to me and said: “What have you done to me?”—“What do you mean?”—“Well, as soon as I tried to pray with attention, enclosing the mind in the words of the prayer, all my visions disappeared, and I can no longer return to them.” Further in the conversation with the Athonite I no longer saw that self-assurance and that boldness which had been very noticeable in him at the first meeting, and which are usually observed in persons who are in self-deception, imagining themselves to be holy or to be in spiritual progress. The Athonite even expressed a desire to hear my poor counsel. When I advised him not to distinguish himself from the rest of the monks by his outward manner of life—since such distinguishing leads to pride199—he removed his chains and gave them to me.[1] A month later he came to me again and said that the heat in his body had ceased, that he needed warm clothing, and that he slept considerably more. In the course of the conversation he said that on Mount Athos many—even those enjoying a reputation for holiness—employ that method of prayer which had been employed by him, and teach it to others. No wonder![2] Saint Symeon the New Theologian, who lived eight centuries before our time, says that very few engage in attentive prayer.200 The Venerable Gregory of Sinai, who lived in the fourteenth century after the Birth of Christ, when he arrived on Mount Athos found that its numerous monasticism had no notion whatsoever of mental prayer, and occupied itself only with bodily struggles, performing prayers only vocally and aloud.201 The Venerable Nilus of Sora, who lived at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, and who also visited Mount Athos, says that in his time the number of attentive men of prayer had diminished to the extreme.202 The Elder, Archimandrite Paisius Velichkovsky, moved to Mount Athos from Moldavia in 1747. He became thoroughly acquainted with all the monasteries and sketes, and conversed with many elders whom the general opinion of the Holy Mountain recognized as the most experienced and holy monks. But when he began to question these monks about the books of the holy Fathers who had written on mental prayer, it turned out that they not only did not know of the existence of such writings, but did not even know the names of the holy authors; at that time The Philokalia had not yet been printed in the Greek language.203 Attentive prayer requires self-denial, and few resolve upon self-denial. One who is enclosed within himself by attentiveness, who is in a state of bewilderment at the sight of his own sinfulness, who is incapable of verbosity and of effects and playacting in general, appears to those unfamiliar with the mysterious struggle as somehow strange, enigmatic, and deficient in every respect. Is it easy to part with the opinion of the world! And how is the world to know the ascetic of true prayer, when the very struggle is altogether unknown to the world? How different is the man in self-deception! He does not eat, does not drink, does not sleep, goes in winter in one cassock, wears chains, sees visions, teaches and reproves everyone with brazen boldness, without any order, without sense or meaning, with a blood-heated, material, passionate ardor—and on account of this grievous and ruinous ardor. A saint, and nothing less![3] The taste and inclination of human society for such persons has long been remarked: “You bear it,” the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, “if anyone enslaves you, if anyone devours you, if anyone takes from you, if anyone exalts himself, if anyone strikes you in the face” (2 Cor. 11:20). Further, the holy Apostle says that when he was in Corinth he could not conduct himself boldly and brazenly:[4] his conduct was marked by modesty, by “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor.Life of the Venerable Gregory of Sinai. The Philokalia, part 1:10:1).[5] The greater part of the ascetics of the Western Church proclaimed by it as its greatest saints—after its falling away from the Eastern Church and the departure of the Holy Spirit from it—prayed and attained to visions by the method I have described—visions that were, of course, false. These pseudo-saints were in the most terrible demonic delusion. Delusion naturally arises on the foundation of the blasphemy by which heretics pervert the dogmatic faith. The conduct of the Latinist ascetics seized by delusion was always frenzied, on account of extraordinary material and passionate ardor.[6] In such a state was Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order. His imagination was so inflamed and sharpened that, as he himself affirmed, all he had to do was to will it and exert a certain effort, and there appeared before his gaze, at his pleasure, hell or paradise. The apparition of paradise and hell was not accomplished by the action of human imagination alone; the action of human imagination alone is insufficient for this: the apparition was accomplished by the action of demons, who joined their abundant action to the insufficient human action, combining action with action, completing action with action, on the basis of the human free will that had chosen and appropriated to itself a false direction. It is known that to the truly holy, visions are granted solely by the goodwill of God and by the action of God—not by the will of man or his own effort—granted unexpectedly, very rarely, in cases of special need, by the wondrous providence of God, and not as it might happen.204 The intensified ascetic struggle of those in delusion ordinarily goes side by side with deep depravity. Depravity serves as an assessment of the flame by which the deluded are consumed. This is confirmed both by the accounts of history and by the testimony of the Fathers. “One who sees the spirit of delusion in the apparitions it presents,” said the Venerable Maximus Capsocalyves, “very often falls subject to rage and anger; the fragrance of humility, of prayer, or of true tears has no place in him. On the contrary, he constantly boasts of his virtues, is vainglorious, and gives himself over always to evil passions fearlessly.”205[7][8]

Disciple. The incorrectness of this method of prayer and its connection with self-deception and delusion are clear; warn me also against the other forms of incorrect prayer and the false condition associated with them.

Elder. As an incorrect action of the mind leads to self-deception and delusion, so equally does an incorrect action of the heart. The desire and striving to behold spiritual visions with a mind not yet cleansed of the passions, not yet renewed and re-created by the right hand of the Holy Spirit, are full of senseless pride; equally full of such pride and folly are the desire and striving of the heart to enjoy holy, spiritual, and divine feelings when it is still altogether incapable of such enjoyments. As the impure mind, wishing to see Divine visions and being unable to see them, composes visions out of itself, by them deceives and beguiles itself, so also the heart, striving to taste Divine sweetness and other Divine sensations and finding them not within itself, composes them out of itself, by them flatters, beguiles, deceives, and destroys itself—entering the realm of falsehood, entering into communion with demons, submitting to their influence, subjecting itself to their power.

Of all the feelings of the heart in its fallen state, only one may be employed in invisible worship of God: grief over sin, over sinfulness, over the fall, over one’s own destruction—called weeping, repentance, contrition of spirit. This is attested by Holy Scripture. “If you had desired sacrifice, I would have given it; but in burnt offerings you have no delight” (Ps. 50:18): each heartfelt feeling separately, and all of them together, are not pleasing to You, as defiled by sin, as perverted by the fall. “The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit: a broken and humble heart God will not despise” (Ps. 50:19). This sacrifice is a negative sacrifice; with the offering of this sacrifice the offering of all other sacrifices naturally ceases: in the sensation of repentance all other sensations fall silent. In order for the sacrifices of the other feelings to become pleasing to God, it is first necessary for the good pleasure of God to shine upon our Zion, for the walls of our ruined Jerusalem to be rebuilt first. The Lord is righteous, all-holy; only righteous and pure sacrifices—to which human nature becomes capable after its renewal—are acceptable to the righteous, all-holy Lord. To defiled sacrifices and burnt offerings He shows no delight. Let us take care to be purified by repentance! “Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then they will offer bullocks upon your altar” (Ps. 50:21): the newborn feelings of the man renewed by the Holy Spirit.

The first commandment given by the Saviour of the world to all mankind without exception is the commandment of repentance: “From that time Jesus began to preach and to say: Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Mt. 4:17). This commandment encompasses, contains, and includes within itself all the other commandments. To those who did not understand the significance and power of repentance the Saviour said more than once: “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Mt. 9:13). This means: the Lord, having taken mercy on fallen and perishing men, has given to all repentance as the sole means of salvation, for all are encompassed by the fall and by perdition. He does not demand, nor does He even desire, sacrifices from them—sacrifices to which they are not capable—but desires that they have mercy upon themselves, acknowledge their wretchedness, and free themselves from it by repentance. To these words the Lord added the terrible words: “I have come”—He said—“not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Who are called “the righteous”? Those unhappy, blind sinners who, being deceived by self-conceit, do not find repentance essentially necessary for themselves and therefore either reject it or neglect it. O misfortune! For this the Saviour renounces them, and the treasure of salvation is lost to them. “Woe to the soul,” says the Venerable Macarius the Great, “that does not feel its own wounds and imagines itself, on account of the great and boundless damage wrought by evil, to be entirely free from the damage of evil.[9] Such a soul is no longer visited and healed by the good Physician, as one that has voluntarily left its wounds without care, and imagines itself to be healthy and blameless. ‘Those who are well’—He says—‘do not need a physician, but those who are sick’ (Mt. 9:12).”206 Terrible cruelty toward oneself—the rejection of repentance! Terrible coldness, lovelessness toward oneself—the neglect of repentance. One who is cruel toward himself cannot but be cruel to his neighbor as well. One who has shown mercy to himself by accepting repentance simultaneously becomes merciful to his neighbor.[10] From this is visible the full gravity of the error: to take from the heart the feeling of repentance—the feeling commanded by God Himself, essentially and logically necessary for the heart—and to strive to unfold in the heart, contrary to all order, contrary to the establishment of God, those feelings which should themselves appear in the heart after purification by repentance, though in a wholly different character.207 Of this spiritual character a carnal person can form no conception: for the conception of a feeling is always based on feelings already known to the heart, whereas spiritual feelings are wholly alien to a heart familiar only with carnal and soulish feelings. Such a heart does not even know that spiritual feelings exist.

It is well known what a soul catastrophe arose for the Jewish scribes and Pharisees from their incorrect spiritual disposition: they became not only strangers to God, but frenzied enemies of Him—deicides. A similar catastrophe befalls ascetics of prayer who have expelled repentance from their struggle and strive to arouse in the heart love for God, striving to experience pleasure and rapture: they develop their own fallen state, make themselves strangers to God, enter into communion with Satan, and become infected with hatred for the Holy Spirit. This kind of delusion is terrible; it is equally destructive to the soul as the first, but less manifest: it rarely ends in madness and suicide, but it utterly corrupts both mind and heart. From the state of mind it produces, the Fathers named it “conceit” (mnenie).208 The holy Apostle Paul points to this kind of delusion when he says:[11] “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind” (Col. 2:18). One possessed by this delusion imagines about himself, has composed a “conceit” about himself, that he possesses many virtues and merits—even that he abounds in gifts of the Holy Spirit. Conceit is composed of false concepts and false sensations: by this its very nature it belongs entirely to the realm of the father and representative of falsehood—the devil. The one who prays, striving to develop in the heart the sensations of the new man, and having no possibility of doing so, replaces them with sensations of his own devising—counterfeit ones—to which the action of the fallen spirits is not slow in joining itself. Having recognized his incorrect sensations—his own and the demonic—as genuine and gracious, he receives concepts corresponding to these sensations. These sensations, constantly appropriating themselves to the heart and growing stronger in it, nourish and multiply false concepts; naturally, from such incorrect struggle there form self-deception and demonic delusion—“conceit.” “Conceit does not allow that which is imagined to exist.”209—said Saint Symeon the New Theologian. One who imagines himself to be dispassionate will never be cleansed of the passions;[12] one who imagines himself to be filled with grace will never receive grace; one who imagines himself to be holy will never attain holiness. To speak simply: one who attributes to himself spiritual works, virtues, merits, and gifts of grace—who flatters and amuses himself with “conceit”—by this “conceit” bars the entrance into himself of spiritual works, Christian virtues, and Divine grace, and opens wide the entrance to sinful infection and to demons. There is no longer any capacity for spiritual progress in those infected with “conceit”: they have destroyed this capacity by offering up on the altar of falsehood the very first principles of human activity and salvation—the concepts of truth. An extraordinary inflation appears in those sick with this delusion: they are, as it were, intoxicated with themselves, with their condition of self-deception, seeing in it a gracious condition. They are soaked through and through with pride and arrogance, appearing, however, humble to many who judge by the face and cannot evaluate by the fruits—as the Saviour commanded (Mt. 7:16, 12:33), and still less by the spiritual sense of which the Apostle speaks (Heb. 5:14). The Prophet Isaiah vividly depicted the action of the delusion of “conceit” in the fallen archangel—the action that beguiled and destroyed this archangel. “You”—the prophet says to Satan—“said in your mind: I will ascend to heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven, I will sit on a high mountain, on the mountains to the north; I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High. Yet now you will descend to hell and to the foundations of the earth” (Is. 14:13–15). One infected with “conceit” is rebuked by the Lord thus: “You say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17). The Lord urges the deluded to repentance; He offers to purchase from none other than the Lord Himself the necessary necessities of which repentance is composed (Rev. 3:18). The purchase is urgently necessary: without it there is no salvation. There is no salvation without repentance, and repentance is received from God only by those who, in order to receive it, sell all their property—that is, renounce everything that has been falsely appropriated to them by “conceit.”

Disciple. Have you happened to encounter those infected with this kind of delusion?

Elder. Those infected with the spiritual delusion of “opinion” are encountered very frequently. Anyone who does not have a contrite spirit, who attributes to himself any kind of merits or worthiness, anyone who does not hold unswervingly to the teaching of the Orthodox Church but reasons about some dogma or tradition arbitrarily, according to his own judgment or according to heterodox teaching—such a person is in this delusion. The degree of the delusion is determined by the degree of one’s deviation and obstinacy in that deviation.

Man is weak! “Opinion” inevitably steals into us in one form or another, and, giving substance to our “self”, drives away the grace of God from us. Just as, according to the observation of Saint Macarius the Great, there is not a single person completely free from pride, so there is not a single person who would be completely free from the influence of the refined delusion called “opinion”. It assailed the Apostle Paul, and was treated by means of heavy dispensations of God. “We do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren”, writes the Apostle to the Corinthians, “of the tribulation that came upon us in Asia—that we were burdened exceedingly, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:8–9). For this reason one must watch over oneself with vigilance, so as not to ascribe to oneself any good deed, any praiseworthy quality or particular natural ability—even a gracious state, if a person has been raised to it—in short, so as not to acknowledge any worthiness as truly one’s own. “What do you have”, the Apostle says, “that you did not” “receive” from God? (1 Cor. 4:7) From God we receive both existence and re-existence, and all natural properties, all capacities—both spiritual and bodily. We are debtors to God! Our debt is beyond repayment! From such a view of ourselves there forms of itself for our spirit a state opposite to “opinion”—the state which the Lord called poverty of spirit, which He commanded us to have, and which He proclaimed blessed (Mt. 5:3). It is a great calamity to deviate from the dogmatic and moral teaching of the Church, from the teaching of the Holy Spirit, through any kind of rationalism! This is “the pride that exalts itself against the knowledge of God”. Such reasoning must be cast down and brought captive “into obedience to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Disciple. Is there any connection between the first kind of spiritual delusion and the second kind?

Elder. A connection between these two kinds of delusion necessarily exists. The first kind of delusion is always joined to the second—to “opinion”. One who composes seductive images by means of the natural faculty of imagination, who combines these images through the power of fantasy into a captivating picture, who subjects his entire being to the seductive and powerful influence of this imagery—such a person inevitably and by unhappy necessity “supposes” that this imagery is produced by the action of Divine grace, and that the feelings of the heart stirred by the imagery are gracious feelings.[13]

The second kind of delusion—“opinion” in the proper sense—operates without the composition of seductive pictures: it contents itself with composing counterfeit gracious sensations and states, from which arises a false, distorted conception of the entire spiritual struggle in general. One who is in the delusion of “opinion” acquires a false view of everything surrounding him. He is deceived both within himself and without. Fantastical imagination acts powerfully in those deluded by “opinion”, but acts exclusively in the domain of the abstract. It either does not occupy itself at all, or rarely occupies itself, with picturing in the imagination paradise, the heavenly dwellings and chambers, celestial light and fragrance, Christ, the Angels and the Saints; it continually composes pseudo-spiritual states—an imagined intimate friendship with Jesus, an inner conversation with Him, mysterious revelations, voices, pleasures—and upon these it builds a false conception of oneself and of Christian struggle, building in general a false manner of thinking and a false disposition of heart;[14][15][16] it brings one at times into intoxication with oneself, at other times into agitation and rapture. These varied sensations arise from the action of refined vainglory and sensuality: from this action the blood receives a sinful and seductive movement that presents itself as gracious delight. Vainglory and sensuality, in turn, are stirred by pride—the inseparable companion of “opinion”. A terrible pride, resembling the pride of demons, constitutes the dominant quality of those who have made either kind of delusion their own. In those deluded by the first kind of delusion, pride brings them into a state of manifest frenzy; in those deluded by the second kind it likewise produces a mental impairment—called in Scripture the corruption of the mind (2 Tim. 3:8)—but it is less noticeable, clothing itself in the guise of humility, piety, and wisdom; it is known by its bitter fruits. Those infected with “opinion” regarding their own worthiness—especially their own holiness—are capable and ready for every intrigue, every hypocrisy, cunning and deceit, every wickedness. They breathe with irreconcilable enmity toward the servants of truth, and rush upon them with frantic hatred when those servants refuse to acknowledge in the deluded the state attributed to them and displayed before a blindly following world by “opinion”.

Disciple. And yet there do exist spiritual states produced by Divine grace—states in which spiritual sweetness and joy are tasted, states in which the mysteries of Christianity are disclosed, states in which the presence of the Holy Spirit is sensed in the heart, states in which the ascetic of Christ is granted spiritual visions?

[1] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 28, ch. 17.

[2] Homily on those who think to be justified by their works, ch. 34. The Philokalia, part 1.

[3] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 4, ch. 82, 83. The Venerable Barsanuphius the Great. Reply 275. Life and teachings of the Venerable Apollos. The Alphabetical Patericon.

[4] On the third mode of prayer. The Philokalia, part 1.

[5] Preface to the Rule or Sketic Ustav.

[6] Excerpt from a letter of Elder Paisius to Elder Theodosius. Writings of Paisius. Optina Hermitage edition.

[7] The Discourse of the Venerable Maximus with the Venerable Gregory of Sinai.

[8] Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 36.

[9] Homily 6 on love, ch. 16.

[10] Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 55.

[11] The Venerable Gregory of Sinai. Homilies 108, 128. The Philokalia, part 1. Saint John of Carpathus, ch. 49. The Philokalia, part 4.

[12] Homily IV, at the end; also Homily 3.

[13] Fantasies.

[14] The Imitation of Thomas à Kempis, book 2, ch. 8.

[15] The Imitation of Thomas à Kempis, book 3, ch. 1.

[16] The Imitation, book 3, ch. 3.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 6)

Elder. They undoubtedly exist, but they exist only in Christians who have attained Christian perfection—who have first been cleansed and prepared by repentance. The gradual action of repentance in general, expressed through all the forms of humility and especially through prayer offered from poverty of spirit and from weeping, gradually weakens the action of sin in a person. This requires considerable time. And it is granted to true, sincere ascetics by the Divine providence, which watches over us without ceasing. The struggle with the passions is extraordinarily beneficial: it leads, more than anything else, to poverty of spirit. For the sake of our substantial benefit, our Judge and God “bears long” with us and does not quickly “avenge” (Lk. 18:7) our adversary—sin.[1] When the passions have greatly weakened—which takes place most often toward the end of life—then little by little spiritual states will begin to appear, differing infinitely from the states composed by “opinion”. First, gracious weeping enters the chamber of the soul, washes it, and whitens it for the reception of the gifts that follow upon weeping according to the ordering of the spiritual law. A carnal person can in no way, by any means, even imagine spiritual states;[2] he cannot have the least conception even of gracious weeping: the knowledge of these states is acquired only through experience. Spiritual gifts are distributed with Divine wisdom, which watches to see that the rational vessel destined to receive a gift can sustain without harm to itself the power of the gift. New wine bursts old wineskins! (Mt. 9:17). It is observed that in the present time spiritual gifts are distributed with the greatest moderation, in proportion to the spiritual enfeeblement that has encompassed Christianity in general. These gifts meet almost exclusively the need of salvation. “Opinion”, by contrast, scatters its gifts in boundless abundance and with the greatest haste.

The common mark of spiritual states is deep humility and humble-mindedness, joined with the preference of all one’s neighbours over oneself, with a disposition of evangelical love toward all, with a striving toward obscurity and withdrawal from the world. “Opinion” has little place here: for humility consists in the renunciation of all personal worthiness, in the essential confession of the Redeemer, in the gathering of all hope and support in Him—whereas “opinion” consists in the appropriation to oneself of gifts given by God, and in the fabrication for oneself of non-existent worthiness. It is joined to self-reliance and to a cold, superficial confession of the Redeemer. God is glorified for the sake of glorifying oneself—as He was glorified by the Pharisee (Lk. 18:11). Those possessed by “opinion” are for the most part given over to sensuality, notwithstanding that they attribute to themselves the most exalted spiritual states unprecedented in correct Orthodox asceticism; a few of them refrain from gross subjugation to sensuality—they refrain solely by reason of the preponderance in them of the sin of sins: pride.

Disciple. Can the spiritual delusion called “opinion” give rise to any tangible, visible and unhappy consequences?

Elder. From this kind of delusion have sprung ruinous heresies, schisms, godlessness, and blasphemy. The most miserable visible consequence of it is a wrong and harmful activity—harmful both to oneself and to one’s neighbours—an evil which, despite its clarity and extent, is little noticed and little understood. Calamities also befall those practitioners of prayer who are infected by “opinion” that are obvious to all, but rarely: for “opinion”, while bringing the mind into the most terrible error, does not bring it to frenzy, as disordered imagination does.—On the island of Valaam, in a remote hermitage in the wilderness, there lived a schema-monk Porphyrius, whom I myself saw. He engaged in the ascetic struggle of prayer. What kind of struggle it was I cannot say with certainty. Its incorrectness may be guessed from the schema-monk’s favourite reading: he held in high esteem the book of the Western writer Thomas à Kempis, On the Imitation of Jesus Christ, and was guided by it. That book is written out of “opinion”. One evening in autumn, Porphyrius visited the elders of the skete, from which his hermitage was not far distant. When he was taking leave of the elders, they warned him, saying: “Do not think of crossing on the ice: the ice has only just formed and is very thin”. The hermitage of Porphyrius was separated from the skete by a deep inlet of Lake Ladoga, which had to be skirted on foot. The schema-monk replied in a quiet voice, with an outward show of modesty: “I have already become light.” He departed. After a short while a cry of despair was heard. The elders of the skete were alarmed and ran out. It was dark; it was not soon that they found the place where the disaster had occurred, nor soon that they found means to retrieve the drowned man: they pulled out the body, already abandoned by the soul.

Disciple. You say of the book “The Imitation” that it is written out of a state of self-delusion; yet it has a multitude of admirers even among the children of the Orthodox Church!

Elder. It is precisely those admirers, in their rapture over its merits, who betray what those merits are without realising it. In the preface of the Russian translator to the book “The Imitation”—the edition of 1834, printed in Moscow—it is said: “A certain highly enlightened man—a Russian, an Orthodox Christian—used to say: if my opinion were needed, I would boldly place Kempis on the Imitation of Jesus Christ next after Holy Scripture.” In this so decisive verdict, a heterodox writer is given complete preference over all the holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, and one man’s own view is accorded preference over the determination of the whole Church—which at holy Councils recognised the writings of the holy Fathers as God-inspired, and bequeathed their reading not only for the edification of all her children, but also as a guide in resolving questions of the Church.[3] In the writings of the Fathers is preserved the great spiritual, Christian, and ecclesial treasury: the dogmatic and moral tradition of the Holy Church. It is evident that the book “The Imitation” brought the aforementioned man into that disposition from which he expressed himself so rashly, so erroneously, so sorrowfully. This is self-delusion![4] This is spiritual delusion! It was formed from false conceptions; false conceptions were born from incorrect sensations communicated by the book. Within the book there dwells, and from the book there breathes, the anointing of an evil spirit that flatters its readers, intoxicating them with the poison of falsehood sweetened with refined seasonings of pride, vainglory, and sensuality. The book leads its readers directly to communion with God without prior purification through repentance—which is why it arouses particular sympathy in passionate people, who are unfamiliar with the path of repentance, unguarded against self-delusion and spiritual delusion, untaught to a right manner of life by the teaching of the holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church. The book produces a powerful effect upon the blood and the nerves, stirring them—and for this reason it pleases especially those enslaved to sensuality; one can enjoy the book without renouncing the coarse pleasures of the senses. Pride, refined sensuality, and vainglory are presented by the book as the action of Divine grace. Having sniffed their own sensuality in its refined action, carnal people go into rapture over the pleasure and intoxication afforded them effortlessly, without self-denial, without repentance, without the “crucifixion of the flesh with its passions and lusts” (Gal. 5:24), with a flattering of their fallen state. Led by their own blindness and pride, they pass joyfully from the bed of a beastly love to the bed of a more criminal love—the love that reigns in the brothel of rejected spirits. A certain person who, by earthly station, belonged to the highest and most educated society, and in outward appearance to the Orthodox Church, expressed herself thus concerning a Lutheran woman who had died and whom this person considered a saint: “She loved God passionately; she thought only of God; she saw only God; she read only the Gospel and “The Imitation”, which is a second Gospel.” These words express precisely the state into which the readers and admirers of “The Imitation” are brought.—Essentially identical with this phrase is the saying of the celebrated French writer Madame de Sévigné about the celebrated French poet, Racine the Elder.[5] “He loves God”, Madame de Sévigné permitted herself to say, “as formerly he loved his mistresses.” The well-known critic La Harpe, who was first an atheist and then passed over to a Christianity incorrectly understood and perverted by him, approving of Madame de Sévigné’s expression, said: “It is with the same heart that one loves the Creator and the creature, though the effects differ as widely as the objects.” Racine passed from debauchery to the spiritual delusion called “opinion”. This delusion expresses itself with full clarity in the poet’s last two tragedies:[6] in “Esther” and “Athaliah”. Racine’s lofty Christian thoughts and feelings found ample place in the temple of the Muses and Apollo—in the theatre they aroused rapture and applause.[7] “Athaliah”, considered Racine’s greatest work, was performed forty times in succession. The spirit of that tragedy is one with the spirit of “The Imitation”.—We believe that in the human heart there is a beastly desire introduced into it by the fall, which stands in correspondence with the desire of the fallen spirits; we believe that there is also in the heart a spiritual desire—with which we were created—by which God and neighbour are loved naturally and rightly, which stands in harmony with the desire of the holy Angels.[8] In order to love God and in God one’s neighbour, it is necessary to be cleansed of the beastly desire. This cleansing is accomplished by the Holy Spirit in the person who expresses by his life the will to be cleansed. Properly speaking, it is desire and the other powers of the soul that are called “heart” in the moral sense—not the bodily organ, the heart. The powers are concentrated in that organ, and by common usage the name has been transferred from the organ to the assembly of powers.[9]

In contrast to the sensation of carnal people, spiritual men, having caught the scent of evil disguised as good, immediately feel repulsion from a book that emits such a smell. To Elder Isaiah—a monk who had lived in stillness at the Nikiforova Hermitage, who had made progress in mental prayer and been granted a gracious overshadowing—a passage from “The Imitation” was read aloud.[10] The elder immediately perceived the significance of the book. He laughed and exclaimed: “Oh! This is written out of opinion. There is nothing true here! Everything here is contrived! Just as the spiritual states appeared to Thomas and as he supposed about them, not knowing them by experience, so he described them.” Spiritual delusion, as a misfortune, presents a sorrowful spectacle; as an absurdity, it is a laughable spectacle. The archimandrite Theophan of the Kirillo-Novoezersky Monastery, known for his strict life, who engaged in simple-hearted and almost exclusively bodily ascetic struggle and had only a very moderate conception of the soul’s ascetic struggle—he at first offered to those who consulted him and lived under his guidance the reading of the book “The Imitation”; a few years before his death he began to forbid its reading, saying with holy simplicity:[11] “I formerly considered this book beneficial to the soul, but God has revealed to me that it is harmful to the soul.” The same opinion of “The Imitation” was held by the hieroschemamonk Leonid, known for his active monastic experience, who laid the foundation for moral uprightness at Optina Hermitage. All the aforementioned ascetics were personally known to me.—A certain landowner, raised in the spirit of Orthodoxy and intimately acquainted with what is called high society—that is, the world in its upper strata—once saw the book “The Imitation” in the hands of his daughter.[12] He forbade her to read the book, saying: “I do not want you to follow the fashion and play the coquette before God.” The most accurate assessment of the book.

Disciple. Are there yet other kinds of spiritual delusion?

Elder. All the particular kinds of self-delusion and delusion by demons belong to the two principal kinds described above, and arise either from the incorrect action of the mind or from the incorrect action of the heart. Especially extensive is the action of “opinion”. Not without reason is the soul’s disposition of those monks ascribed to a state of self-delusion and spiritual delusion who, having rejected the exercise of the Jesus Prayer and of the mental work in general, content themselves with external prayer alone—that is, with unfailing participation in the church services and unfailing performance of their cell rule consisting exclusively of psalmody and vocal oral prayers. They cannot escape “opinion”, as the aforementioned elder Basil explains in his preface to the book of Saint Gregory of Sinai, citing above all the writings of the Venerables Gregory and Symeon the New Theologian. The mark of the “opinion” that has crept in is revealed in ascetics when they think of themselves that they lead an attentive life, frequently from pride despise others, speak ill of them, and consider themselves worthy, in their own opinion, to be shepherds of sheep and guides of them—resembling a blind man who takes upon himself to point the way to other blind men.[13][14]

[1] Life of Theophilus, of Pimen the Ailing, of John the Long-Suffering. The Paterikon of the Caves.

[2] Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 55.

[3] P. XXXVII.

[4] “The Imitation”, upon its first appearance, was condemned even by its own Latin Church and was persecuted by the Inquisition. The persecution was subsequently stopped and turned into patronage, when it was observed that the book serves as a useful instrument of propaganda among people who have lost a true understanding of Christianity and have retained only a superficial relation to it. By the name of papal propaganda is understood the dissemination of that concept of the Pope which the Pope desires to instil in humanity—that is, the concept of the supreme, autocratic, unlimited power of the Pope over the world. Having this as its aim, the propaganda pays little attention to the quality of the teaching it imparts; whatever furthers its aim is serviceable to it—even faith in Christ without the abandonment of faith in idols.

[5] The rapturous utterance was pronounced in French, a language so well suited to the stage: “Elle aimait Dieu avec passion; elle ne pensait qu’à Dieu; elle ne voyait que Dieu; elle ne lisait que l’Evangile et l’Imitation qui est un second Evangile”.

[6] “Il aime Dieu, comme il aimait ses maîtresses”.

[7] “C’est avec le même cœur, qu’on aime le Créateur, ou la créature, quoique les effets soient aussi différents, que les objets”.

[8] The Muses and Apollo were deities of the ancient pagans, Greeks and Romans; to these demons the pagans ascribed patronage over the fine arts.

[9] In harmony, in concord.

[10] Of the diocese of Olonets or Petrozavodsk.

[11] Of the diocese of Novgorod.

[12] Of the diocese of Kaluga.

[13] On the second mode of attentiveness and prayer. The Philokalia, part 1.

[14] The preface of the schema-monk Basil.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)

Section III. On the Practice of the Jesus Prayer

Disciple. Set forth the correct manner of practising the Jesus Prayer.

Elder. The correct practice of the Jesus Prayer flows naturally from correct conceptions of God, of the all-holy Name of the Lord Jesus, and of man’s relationship to God.

God is a Being of infinite greatness, all-perfect, the Creator and Re-creator of men, the sovereign Lord over men, over Angels, over demons, over all creation visible and invisible. This conception of God teaches us that we must stand before God in prayer with the deepest reverence, with the greatest fear and trembling, directing all our attention toward Him, concentrating in attentiveness all the powers of mind, heart, and soul, rejecting distraction and fantastical imagination as a violation of attention and reverence, as a violation of the proper posture before God—a proper posture imperatively demanded by the majesty of God (Jn. 4:23–24; Mt. 22:37; Mk. 12:29–30; Lk. 10:27).[1] Isaac the Syrian said well: “When you prostrate yourself before God in prayer, be in your thought as an ant, as the crawling creatures of the earth, as a little worm, as a babbling child. Say nothing rational before Him; draw near to God in the manner of thinking of an infant.” Those who have attained true prayer feel an inexpressible poverty of spirit when they stand before God in praise, in confession, in laying their petitions before Him. They feel as though they have vanished, as though they do not exist. This is natural! When the one who prays senses abundantly the presence of God—the presence of Life Itself, of Life boundless and incomprehensible—his own life appears to him as the most minute drop compared with the boundless ocean. Into such a state came the righteous, long-suffering Job when he reached the highest spiritual advancement. He felt himself “dissolved” (Job 42:6), as snow melts and vanishes when the rays of the burning sun fall upon it.

The Name of our Lord Jesus Christ is Divine; the power and action of this Name are Divine—they are almighty and salvific; they surpass our understanding and are inaccessible to it. With faith, hope, and fervour, joined with great reverence and fear, let us perform this great work of God entrusted to us by God: let us practise prayer in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. “The unceasing invocation of the Name of God”, says the great Barsanuphius, “is a remedy that kills not only the passions but their very action. Just as a physician applies medicinal means or plasters to the wound of a sufferer, and they act—though the patient does not know how this is done—so too the Name of God, when invoked, kills all the passions, though we do not know how this is accomplished.”[2]

Our customary state—the state of all humanity—is a state of fall, spiritual delusion, and perdition. Recognising this state and, to the degree that we recognise it, feeling it, let us cry out from it in prayer—crying out in contrition of spirit, crying out with weeping and lamentation, crying out for mercy. Let us renounce all spiritual pleasure, all lofty states of prayer, as being unworthy of them and incapable of them. It is impossible to sing “the Lord’s song in a strange land”—in a heart held captive by the passions. If we hear an invitation to sing it, let us know for certain that the invitation is being made by “those who have taken us captive”. “By the rivers of Babylon” one can and must only weep. (Ps. 136:1, 3–4)

Such is the general instruction for the practice of the Jesus Prayer, drawn from Holy Scripture and the writings of the holy Fathers, from very few conversations with true men of prayer. Of the particular instructions—primarily for beginners—I consider it useful to mention the following:

Saint John of the Ladder advises enclosing the mind within the words of the prayer, and, however many times it may stray from the words, to bring it back again.[3] This mechanism is especially useful and especially convenient. When the mind is kept thus in attentiveness, the heart too will enter into sympathy with the mind through compunction, and prayer will be performed jointly by mind and heart. The words of the prayer should be pronounced very unhurriedly, even protractedly, so that the mind may have the opportunity to be enclosed within the words. Consoling and instructing communal monks who are engaged in monastic obediences, and encouraging their zeal and diligence in the ascetic struggle of prayer, John of the Ladder says: “From monks occupied with obediences God does not require prayer completely pure from distraction. Do not be cast down when you are robbed by distraction; be of good cheer, and constantly compel your mind to return to itself. Freedom from distraction is the property of the Angels.” “Those enslaved to the passions![4] Let us pray to the Lord constantly and unceasingly, because all who are without passions passed” by such prayer “from the passionate state to dispassion. If you train your mind unswervingly so that it does not stray anywhere” from the words of the prayer, “it will be with you even during your meal. But if you allow it unchecked wandering everywhere, it will never be able to abide with you. The great practitioner of great and perfect prayer said: ‘I would rather speak five words with my mind than ten thousand words with my tongue’ (1 Cor. 14:19). “Such prayer”—the gracious prayer of the mind in the heart, free from soaring—“is not proper for infants, and therefore we, as infants, taking care of the quality of prayer”—of attentiveness by means of enclosing the mind within the words—“let us pray very much. Quantity serves as the cause of quality. The Lord grants pure prayer to one who prays without slothfulness, abundantly and constantly with his own prayer defiled by distraction.” Beginning monks need a prolonged time for learning prayer. It is impossible, shortly after entering a monastery or beginning the ascetic struggle, to attain this supreme virtue.[5] Time is needed, and gradualness in the struggle, so that the ascetic may ripen for prayer in every respect. As flower and fruit grow on a stem or tree which must itself first be sown and grow: so also prayer grows upon other virtues, and cannot appear except upon them. A monk will not quickly master his mind; he will not quickly accustom his mind to abide within the words of prayer as though in enclosure and seclusion. Drawn away by the attachments, impressions, memories, and anxieties that have become his own, the mind of the beginner constantly breaks its saving bonds, leaves the narrow path, and is carried off to the wide one—it loves to wander freely through the heavens, in the country of delusions, with spirits that have been cast down from heaven—wandering without aim, senselessly, and to its own harm. The passions—these moral infirmities of man—serve as the fundamental cause of distraction in prayer. In proportion to the weakening of the passions, distraction diminishes. The passions are bridled and mortified little by little by true obedience and by the self-denial and humility that flow from true obedience. Obedience, self-denial, and humility are those virtues upon which advancement in prayer is founded. Freedom from soaring—to the degree accessible to man—is granted by God in due time to such an ascetic of prayer who, through constancy and zeal in the struggle, demonstrates the sincerity of his desire to acquire prayer.

The hieromonk Dorotheus, our fellow countryman—a great teacher of spiritual struggle, approaching in this quality Saint Isaac the Syrian—advises one who is training himself in the Jesus Prayer first to say it aloud.[6] He says that vocal prayer passes of itself into mental prayer.[7] “From much vocal prayer”, says the hieromonk, “flows mental prayer, and from mental prayer appears heartfelt prayer. The Jesus Prayer should be pronounced not in a loud voice but quietly, in one’s own hearing alone.” When there is a particular action of distraction, sorrow, despondency, or sloth, it is very beneficial to say the Jesus Prayer vocally:[8] vocal recitation of the Jesus Prayer gradually rouses the soul from the heavy moral sleep into which sorrow and despondency ordinarily plunge it. It is very beneficial to say the Jesus Prayer vocally when there is a forceful assault of thoughts and fantasies of carnal desire and anger, when from their action the blood grows heated and boils, when peace and quiet are taken from the heart, when the mind is shaken, weakened, as if overthrown and bound by the multitude of foul thoughts and fantasies: the aerial princes of malice, whose presence is not disclosed to bodily eyes but is known to the soul through the action they produce upon it, upon hearing the Name of the Lord Jesus—dreadful to them—will be thrown into bewilderment and confusion, will be seized with fear, and will not be slow to retreat from the soul. The method proposed by the hieromonk is very simple and convenient. It must be joined with the mechanism of Saint John of the Ladder—that is, one should pronounce the Jesus Prayer vocally, in one’s own hearing alone, without haste, enclosing the mind within the words of the prayer; the enclosure of the mind within the words of the prayer is also enjoined by the hieromonk himself.[8]

The mechanism of Saint John of the Ladder must also be observed with the method set forth by the Venerable Nil Sorsky in the 2nd Homily of his Rule or Sketic Ustav. The Venerable Nil borrowed his method from the Greek Fathers, Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory of Sinai, and somewhat simplified it. Saint Nil says: “What these saints have said about restraining the breath—that is, not breathing frequently—experience will soon teach is very useful for gathering the mind.” Some, not having understood this mechanism, attach excessive importance to it, restrain the breath immoderately, and thereby damage the lungs—causing harm to the soul at the same time by fixing upon it an incorrect conception. All heated and overly strained actions serve as obstacles to advancement in prayer, which develops solely in the breast of a peaceful, quiet, and reverent disposition of soul and body. “Everything immoderate is from the demons”, Pimen the Great used to say.[9]

For one beginning to train himself in the Jesus Prayer, a daily cell rule of a certain number of full and partial prostrations—proportionate to one’s strength—greatly assists in learning it. The prostrations are made unhurriedly, with a feeling of repentance, and at each prostration the Jesus Prayer is said. A model for this form of prayer may be seen in the “Homily on Faith” of the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian.[10] Describing the daily evening prayer struggle of the blessed youth George, Saint Symeon says: “He thought that he stood before the Lord Himself, and was prostrating himself at His most pure feet; he besought the Lord with tears that the Lord would have mercy upon him. In praying, he stood motionless like a pillar, not allowing himself any movement of the feet or of any other part of the body, not allowing his eyes to look curiously to the sides; he stood with great fear and trembling, not permitting himself drowsiness, despondency, or sloth.” The number of prostrations may initially be limited to twelve. In proportion to one’s strength and the convenience afforded by circumstances, this number may steadily increase. As the number of prostrations increases, one must strictly observe that the quality of the prayer struggle is preserved—so as not to be carried away toward a fruitless and harmful quantity through carnal excitement. From prostrations the body grows warm and somewhat tired: such a state of the body assists attentiveness and compunction. Let us take care, let us take care, that this state does not pass into carnal excitement—which is foreign to spiritual feelings and which develops the sensations of fallen nature. Quantity, so beneficial when the disposition and aim are correct, can be very harmful when it leads to carnal excitement. Carnal excitement is known by its fruits, by which it is distinguished from spiritual warmth. The fruits of carnal excitement are self-conceit, self-reliance, pride, vainglory—pride in its various forms, to which spiritual delusion easily attaches itself. The fruits of spiritual warmth are repentance, humility, weeping, and tears. The prostration rule is most conveniently performed at bedtime: at that time, when the day’s cares are over, one can perform the rule at greater length and with more concentration. But also in the morning and in the middle of the day it is beneficial—especially for the young—to make a moderate number of prostrations, some twelve to twenty. These prostrations maintain the disposition to prayer and the crucifixion of the flesh, and sustain and strengthen the zeal for the ascetic struggle of prayer.

The counsels I have proposed are, I believe, sufficient for a beginner wishing to learn the Jesus Prayer: “Prayer”, said the Venerable Meletius the Confessor, “requires no teacher, but effort, diligence, and special zeal—and God becomes its teacher.” The holy Fathers, having written many compositions on prayer in order to provide the practitioner with a correct understanding of it and a reliable guide for its practice, propose and encourage entry into the actual struggle itself for the acquisition of essential knowledge—without which teaching in words, even if drawn from experience, is dead, dark, and incomprehensible, needing to be explained and enlivened by experience.[11] On the other hand, one who is diligent in prayer and has already made progress in it must often turn to the writings of the holy Fathers on prayer, testing and directing himself by them—remembering that even the great Paul, though he had a witness to his Gospel surpassing all testimony in the witness of the Spirit, yet went up to Jerusalem and laid before the Apostles who were there the Gospel he had proclaimed among the Gentiles for their consideration—“lest by any means I might run or had run in vain” (Gal. 2:2), he says.

Disciple. Which books of the holy Fathers should one who desires to occupy himself with the Jesus Prayer under the guidance of God-inspired teaching read?

Elder. This depends on the manner of life conducted by the ascetic of prayer. Examine the compositions of Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos on stillness and prayer—and you will see that it is written for monks living in seclusion or leading an eremitic life similar to the life of the monks of the Egyptian Skete, in which each elder lived in a separate cell with one, two, or at most three disciples. Monks who lead such a manner of life are called hesychasts by the holy Fathers.[12] A hesychast disposes of himself and his time according to his own judgment or according to the custom received from his teachers; whereas monks who are in community life are obliged to participate in communal worship and to engage in monastic obediences, having neither the right nor the ability to dispose of themselves and their time at will. Furthermore, only those who have advanced in monastic life are admitted to stillness—those who have been previously trained in community life and have been granted gracious overshadowing; and therefore the books of the holy Fathers written for hesychasts are in no way suited to beginners or in general to monks who practise their struggle in coenobitic monasteries. What has been said about the book of Xanthopoulos must also be said about the books of Gregory of Sinai, Isaac the Syrian, Nil Sorsky, and the hieromonk Dorotheus. One who is occupied with prayer while also engaged in monastic obediences may become acquainted with these books—but not in order to be guided by them, solely for knowledge, observing care meanwhile that they do not draw him prematurely into solitude and seclusion or into an inappropriate struggle. Both things frequently occur, to the greatest harm of one who has been deceived by injudicious zeal. Children and youths, when in their foolishness and levity they attempt to lift a weight exceeding their strength, strain themselves and often ruin themselves entirely: so also those who have not matured in spiritual age incur great calamities from a spiritual struggle not corresponding to their state, and not infrequently fall into an irremediable disorder. The compositions of Saints Hesychius, Philotheus, and Theoleptos, contained in the second part of The Philokalia, are very beneficial both for communal and for solitary monks. Especially beneficial are the prefaces of the schema-monk Basil: in them is set forth the teaching on the prayer of repentance—a teaching so beneficial, so necessary for our time. Many edifying instructions on prayer are found in the book of Barsanuphius the Great; it should be noted that the first half of it contains answers to hesychasts, while the second half—from the 220th answer—contains answers to monks who had practised their struggle in community life.

Disciple. What is meant by “the place of the heart”, of which Saints Symeon the New Theologian, Nikephoros the Monk, and other Fathers speak?

Elder. It is the rational power or spirit of man, present in the upper part of the heart, opposite the left nipple, just as the mind is present in the brain. In prayer it is necessary that the spirit be united with the mind and pronounce the prayer together with it, the mind acting through words pronounced by thought alone or also with the participation of the voice, while the spirit acts through the feeling of compunction or weeping. The union is granted in due time by Divine grace; and for the beginner it is sufficient if the spirit is in sympathy with and assists the mind. When attentiveness is maintained by the mind, the spirit will without fail feel compunction. “Spirit” is ordinarily called “heart”, just as the word “head” is used in place of “mind”. Pray with attentiveness, in contrition of spirit, helping yourself with the mechanisms enumerated above: by doing so, experiential knowledge of the place of the heart will open of itself. It is satisfactorily explained in the prefaces of the schema-monk Basil.

Disciple. It seemed to me that you answered my question about the place of the heart reluctantly, and that by sending me to the prefaces of the schema-monk Basil you evaded setting forth your own thoughts and views. I beseech you, for my benefit and that of others, to speak openly on my question.

Elder. Your question has cast sorrow upon my heart. This question has been put to me by many—and it was frequently the expression by which a state of self-delusion, a state of spiritual injury, made itself known. Spiritual injury produced by incorrect practice of spiritual struggles is healed only with difficulty—for the most part it remains incurable. It remains incurable either because of the pride of those who have been injured, or because the injury has reached its end. The poison of falsehood is terrible: with stubbornness it holds fast in those who received it willingly; it leaves its deadly action in those who, having recognised it, did not reject it and did not expel it from themselves with resolute self-denial. Builders of castles in the air, seeing their edifice rising to the heavens, admire and delight in this seductive spectacle:[13] they do not like to be reminded of the Gospel commandment proclaiming that every “man who builds a house must dig, and deepen, and lay a foundation upon rock” (Lk. 6:48). The rock is Christ. Christ stands before the eyes of our mind in the Gospel: He stands before the mind’s gaze in His way of life; He stands before the mind’s gaze in His teaching; He stands before the mind’s gaze in His commandments; He stands before the mind’s gaze in His humility—by reason of which He was “obedient even to death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). The one who imposes upon himself the heavy labour of digging the earth and descends into it is he who, contrary to the pull of the heart, descends into humility—who, rejecting his own will and his own reason, endeavours to learn the commandments of Christ and the tradition of the Orthodox Church with exactness, and to follow them with exactness; the one who lays firm stones as a foundation is he who cares, before and above all other struggles, to correct and direct his moral life in accordance with the conduct, the teaching, and the testament of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no place for true prayer in a heart that has not been ordered and disposed by the Gospel commandments. On the contrary, spiritual delusion is planted in each of us by the fall: “By reason of this state of self-delusion—which is an inalienable property of each of us—it is customary for the mind”, says the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, “especially in light-minded people, to strive prematurely toward acquiring lofty states of prayer, by which even the small spiritual ordering given by God is lost, and the practitioner is struck with deadness toward everything good. And therefore one must examine oneself carefully, so as not to seek prematurely that which comes in due time, and so as not to reject that which is placed in one’s hands by reaching for something else.[14] It is characteristic of the mind to represent to itself by fantasy lofty states of prayer that it has not yet attained, and to “distort” them in its own fantasy or in its own opinion. It is very dangerous lest such a practitioner be deprived even of what has been given to him, lest he fall into mental impairment and madness from the action of spiritual delusion.” Spiritual delusion in greater or lesser degree is the inevitable logical consequence of incorrect prayer struggle.

Monastic life is a science of sciences, a Divine science. This applies to all monastic struggles—and applies in particular to prayer. In every science there is a beginning, a gradualness in the imparting of knowledge, and final exercises: so too in the learning of prayer there is its own order, its own system. Careful observance of the order—which is the same as the system—serves in every science as the guarantee of solid success in it: so also correct practice of prayer serves as the guarantee of progress in it—of the progress with which it pleases God to enrich the ascetic. The rejection of system in the study of a science is the source of perverted conceptions, the source of a knowledge which is worse than ignorance, being an incorrect and negative knowledge: such is also the consequence of disorderly practice of prayer. The inevitable and natural consequence of such practice is spiritual delusion. Self-willed monasticism is not monasticism. It is spiritual delusion! It is a caricature, a distortion of monasticism! It is a mockery of monasticism! It is the deceiving of oneself! It is play-acting—very capable of attracting the attention and praise of the world, but rejected by God, devoid of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, abounding in fruits that proceed from Satan.”

[1] Homily 49.

[2] Reply 421.

[3] Homily 28, chapter 17.

[4] Homily 4, chapter 93.

[5] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 28, chapter 21.

[6] Information about the author of The Flower-Garden, the priest-monk Dorotheus, is found in the first volume of the Ascetic Experiences in the article “A Visit to Valaam Monastery”.

[7] The Flower-Garden of the priest-monk Dorotheus. Instructions 30 and 32.

[8] The Flower-Garden. Instruction 32.

[9] The Sketic Patericon. Memorable Sayings, chapter CXXIX.

[10] The Philokalia, part 1.

[11] Selected Ears of Grain. Publication of Optina Hermitage, 1848.

[12] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 1, chapter 26.

[13] Architects, builders.

[14] Chapter CXVIII. The Philokalia, part 1.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)

Many, having felt a disposition and zeal for spiritual struggle, approach this struggle rashly and light-mindedly. They surrender to it with all their fervour and excitement, with all their imprudence—not having understood that this fervour and excitement are above all sanguine and carnal, that they are full of impurity and admixture; not having understood that in the study of the science of sciences—prayer—the most reliable guidance is needed, the greatest prudence and caution are required. Alas! The right ways of God are hidden from us; they are hidden from us by reason of the blindness produced and maintained in us by the fall. We choose as our guides above all those teachers whom the world has proclaimed saints, and who are either deep in spiritual delusion or deep in ignorance. Books written by heterodox ascetics are chosen as guides—ascetics who were in the most terrible demonic delusion, in communion with demons. The writings of the holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church are chosen as guides—writings that set forth the lofty prayer struggle of advanced monks, a struggle inaccessible to the understanding of beginners, let alone to their following—and the fruit of spiritual struggle monstrously becomes mental disorder and perdition. “You have sown wheat but have reaped thorns” (Jer. 12:13), the Holy Spirit says in sorrow to people who pervert good into evil through the incorrect use of good. A sorrowful, truly sorrowful spectacle! On the most exalted work of the mind—the work that leads to God those who ascend by the established steps—there is acquired through incorrect practice a darkening and corruption of the mind, mental impairment, madness, subjugation to demons, perdition. This spectacle—a spectacle that has not infrequently been presented to my eyes—served as the cause of sorrow to my heart at your question. I would not wish to hear it either from you or from any other beginner.[1] “It is not profitable for you”, the Fathers said, “to learn what follows before you have acquired experiential knowledge of what precedes.” Such curiosity is a sign of an idle and puffed-up mind.[2] And I directed you to the prefaces of the schema-monk Basil as to a composition of a true practitioner of prayer, particularly beneficial for our time. That composition guides toward an infallible understanding of the Patristic writings on the prayer struggle—writings composed for advanced monks, and above all for hesychasts.

In order to fulfil your wish, I will repeat—only in other words—what I have already said. The practice of the Jesus Prayer has two principal subdivisions or periods, ending with pure prayer, which is crowned by dispassion or Christian perfection in those ascetics to whom it pleases God to grant it. Saint Isaac the Syrian says: “Not many have been counted worthy of pure prayer, but of a few; but the one who has attained the mystery accomplished after it, and has crossed to the other shore of the Jordan, is scarcely encountered—one in a generation—by the “grace and good pleasure” of God.” In the first period, the one who prays is left to pray by his own effort alone;[3] the grace of God undoubtedly assists one who prays with sincere intention, but it does not make its presence manifest. During this time the passions, hidden in the heart, are set in motion and raise the practitioner of prayer to a martyric struggle in which defeats and victories constantly replace one another, and in which the free will of man and his weakness are expressed with clarity. In the second period, the grace of God makes its presence and action sensorially felt, uniting the mind with the heart—granting the possibility of praying without soaring, or, which is the same thing, without distraction, with heartfelt weeping and warmth;[4][5] at the same time sinful thoughts lose their violent power over the mind. The holy Fathers point to these two states. Among them the Venerable Nil Sorsky, citing the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, says: “When the action of prayer comes, it holds the mind at itself, gladdens it, and frees it from soaring.” For those who have not yet acquired the gracious action, the Venerable considers the restraining of the mind from distraction and attentive prayer to be the most difficult, burdensome, and inconvenient struggle. In order to reach the second state, it is necessary to pass through the first;[6] it is necessary to demonstrate and prove the soundness of one’s will, and to “bring forth fruit in patience” (Lk.Ibid. 8:15). The first state of one who prays may be likened to bare trees in winter; the second—to the same trees covered with leaves and flowers from the action of the warmth of spring. The strength for producing leaves and flowers the trees accumulate in winter, when their state has every appearance of a passive state, of a state under the dominion of death. Let us not permit ourselves to tempt the Lord! Let us not permit ourselves to approach Him light-mindedly, without fear, with double-mindedness, with the disposition of doubting inquisitiveness—for which entry into the promised land is forbidden (Heb. 3:8–11, 18–19). Let us draw near as those who have perished, as those who have essential need of salvation—which is granted by God for true repentance. Repentance must be the soul and aim of prayer in both states. For repentance offered through one’s own effort alone, God grants in due time repentance that is gracious—and the “Spirit” of God, having dwelt within a person, “makes intercession” for him with “groanings that cannot be uttered”: He “makes intercession for the saints” in accordance with the will of God, which He alone knows (Rom. 8:26–27).

From this it is evident with full clarity that for the beginner the seeking of the place of the heart—that is, the seeking to open in oneself prematurely and before the proper time the manifest action of grace—is the most mistaken of undertakings, one that overturns the order and system of the science. Such an undertaking is an undertaking of pride and foolishness! Equally unsuited to the beginner is the use of the mechanisms proposed by the holy Fathers for advanced monks and hesychasts. Beginners in their practice of prayer must hold to one alone: the most reverent attentiveness, the sole enclosure of the mind within the words of prayer—pronouncing the words very unhurriedly so that the mind may have time to be enclosed within them—and producing their breathing quietly but freely. Some have thought that in the very act of breathing there is something especially important, and, not understanding that unhurried and quiet breathing was enjoined by the Fathers for the restraining of the mind from distraction, began to restrain their breath immoderately and thereby disordered their bodily health—which is so helpful in the prayer struggle.[7] “Restrain”, says the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, “also the breathing—that is, the movement of the mind—closing the lips somewhat at the time of performing the prayer; and not the breathing of the nostrils—that is, the sensory breathing—as ignorant people do, to avoid harming themselves by puffing themselves up.” Not only in the process of breathing but in all movements of the body one must observe calm, quiet, and modesty. All this greatly assists in restraining the mind from distraction. The mind that prays attentively will without fail draw the heart into sympathy with itself, into the feeling of repentance. Between the sympathy of the heart with the mind and the union of the mind with the heart—or the descent of the mind into the heart—there is the greatest difference.[8] Saint John of the Ladder considers it significant progress in prayer when the mind abides within its words.[9] This great teacher of monks affirms that the prayer of one who prays constantly and zealously, with the mind enclosed within the words of prayer, from a feeling of repentance and weeping, will without fail be overshadowed by Divine grace. When prayer is overshadowed by Divine grace, then not only will the place of the heart be opened, but the entire soul will be drawn to God by an incomprehensible spiritual power—drawing the body along with it. The prayer of those advanced in it is pronounced from the entirety of their being. The whole person becomes, as it were, one pair of lips. Not only the “heart” of the renewed person, not only the “soul”, but also the “flesh” is filled with spiritual consolation and delight, with joy in “God the living” (Ps. 83:3)—in God who acts sensorially and powerfully through His grace. “All my bones” of the true man of prayer “shall say: Lord, who is like to You, delivering the poor from the hand of those stronger than he, and the poor and needy from those who plunder” his prayer and hope—from the thoughts and sensations rising from fallen nature and stirred by demons (Ps. 34:10). All Christians should strive toward advancement in the prayer of repentance; the holy Fathers invite all Christians to the practice of the prayer of repentance and to advancement in it. On the contrary, they strictly forbid the premature effort to ascend with the mind into the sanctuary of the heart for gracious prayer, when that prayer has not yet been given by God. The prohibition is accompanied by a terrible threat. “Mental prayer”, says the Venerable Nil Sorsky, repeating the words of the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, “is above all works and is the head of the virtues, as the love of God.[10] One who shamelessly and boldly wishes to enter to God, and to converse with Him in purity, forcing himself to acquire Him within himself, is easily slain by the demons.”

I entreat, I entreat you to give all due attention to the dread prohibition of the Fathers. I know that certain well-intentioned people, who yet actually fall into fornication and who, by unhappy habit, cannot refrain from falling, venture upon the practice of heartfelt prayer. Can there be anything more imprudent, more ignorant, more presumptuous than such an undertaking? The prayer of repentance is given to all without exception—it is given also to those held by passions, and to those who fall under violent compulsion. They have every right to cry out to the Lord for salvation; but entry into the heart for the sacred act of prayer is forbidden to them: it is reserved exclusively for the mysterious hierarch, lawfully ordained by Divine grace. Understand, understand, that this entry is opened only by the finger of God; it is opened when a person has not only ceased from active sin but has also received from the right hand of God the power to resist passionate thoughts—not to be carried away by them and not to take pleasure in them. Purity of heart is built up little by little: to purity God appears “gradually” and “spiritually”. Gradually!—because both the passions diminish and the virtues increase not all at once; both require considerable time.

Here then is my testament to you: do not seek the place of the heart. Do not struggle vainly to explain to yourself what the place of the heart signifies: it is satisfactorily explained only by experience. If it is God’s pleasure to grant you knowledge of it, He will grant it in due time—and will grant it in a manner that even a carnal person cannot imagine. Occupy yourself exclusively and with all diligence with the prayer of repentance; endeavour through prayer to bring forth repentance: you will be assured of success in the struggle when you sense in yourself poverty of spirit, compunction, and weeping. Such progress in prayer I desire for both myself and you. The attainment of supernatural gracious states has always been rare. Pimen the Great, a monk of the Egyptian Skete—that Skete renowned for the high attainments of its monks—who lived in the fifth century, when monasticism especially flourished, used to say: “Of perfection many among us speak, but in truth one or two have attained it.” Saint John of the Ladder, an ascetic writer of the sixth century, testifies that in his time the vessels of Divine grace had greatly diminished in comparison with the preceding time;[11] the saint sees the cause of this in the change of spirit in human society, which had lost its simplicity and been infected with cunning.[12] Saint Gregory of Sinai, a writer of the fourteenth century, ventured to say that in his time there were no gracious men at all, so rare had they become; the cause of this Gregory of Sinai points to the extraordinary development of vices arising from the multiplication of temptations.[13] All the more in our own time is the greatest caution necessary for the practitioner of prayer. God-inspired teachers we have none! Chastity, simplicity, and evangelical love have withdrawn from the face of the earth. Temptations and vices have multiplied without end! The world is engulfed in depravity! Criminal love in its manifold forms reigns over human society like an absolute tyrant! It is enough—more than enough—if we are counted worthy to offer to God the one work essentially necessary for our salvation: repentance.

Disciple. Is life in a monastery, amidst a more or less numerous brotherhood and the bustle unavoidable in a populous community, suitable for learning the Jesus Prayer? Is life in stillness not more convenient for this?

Elder. Life in a monastery—especially a coenobitic one—assists the beginner in successful and lasting training in prayer, if only he lives there rightly. One who lives rightly in a community is constantly presented with occasions for obedience and humility, and these virtues—more than all others—prepare and attune the soul for true prayer. “From obedience comes humility”, the Fathers have said.[14] Humility is born from obedience and sustained by obedience, just as the burning of a lamp is sustained by the oil poured into it. Through humility, “the peace of God” (Phil. 4:7) is introduced into the soul. The peace of God is the spiritual dwelling place of God (Ps. 75:3), the spiritual heaven;[15] those who have entered this heaven become equal to the angels and, like the angels, sing without ceasing in their hearts a spiritual song to God (Eph. 5:19)—that is, they offer pure and holy prayer which, in the advanced, is truly a song and the Song of Songs. For this reason obedience—by which is obtained the priceless treasure of humility—is unanimously recognised by the Fathers as the fundamental monastic virtue, as the door that leads lawfully and rightly into mental and heartfelt prayer, or, which is the same thing, into true sacred stillness. Saint Symeon the New Theologian says concerning attentive prayer: “As I think, this good flows to us from obedience.[16] Obedience shown to the spiritual father makes everyone free from care. By what temporal thing can such a person be overcome or enslaved? What sorrow and what care can such a man have?” Cares and attachments, constantly drawing thought toward themselves, serve as a cause of distraction in prayer; pride serves as a cause of hardness of heart; anger and rancour—which are grounded in pride—serve as a cause of disturbance of heart. Obedience serves as the initial cause that eliminates the distraction from which prayer is fruitless; it serves as the cause of humility—humility eliminates the hardness of heart in which prayer is dead;[17][18] it drives away the disturbance in which prayer is unprofitable; it anoints the heart with compunction—from which prayer comes alive, takes wing, and ascends to God.[19] Consequently obedience not only acts against distraction but also guards the heart from hardness and disturbance, holds it constantly meek and gentle, constantly capable of compunction, constantly ready to pour itself out before God in prayer and weeping—so sincere that they may with full justice be called both an “confession” of the soul before God and a spiritual “appearing” of God to the soul.[20] If a monk conducts himself in the monastery as a stranger—not cultivating acquaintances either outside or inside the monastery, not visiting the cells of the brethren and not receiving the brethren in his own cell, not acquiring any superfluities in his cell, not fulfilling his own wishes, labouring in monastic obediences with humility and conscientiousness, resorting frequently to the confession of his sins, obeying the abbot and the other monastic authorities without murmuring, in simplicity of heart—then without doubt he will make progress in the Jesus Prayer; that is, he will receive the gift of occupying himself with it attentively and of shedding tears of repentance during it. “I have seen”, says Saint John of the Ladder, “those who had progressed in obedience and had not neglected, to the best of their ability, the remembrance of God worked by the mind—how they, having suddenly stood up in prayer, quickly overcame their minds and shed tears in torrents:[21] this happened with them because they had been prepared beforehand by holy obedience.” Saints Symeon the New Theologian, the Venerable Nikita Stithatos, and many other Fathers learned the Jesus Prayer and occupied themselves with it in monasteries situated in the capital of the Eastern Empire—in the vast and populous Constantinople.[22][23] The most holy patriarch Photius learned it already in the rank of patriarch, amidst his many other occupations connected with that rank.[24] The most holy patriarch Callistus learned it while serving in the obedience of cook in the lavra of the Venerable Athanasius of Athos on the Holy Mountain.[25] The Venerables Dorotheus and Dositheus learned it in the community of Saint Seridos—the first while bearing the obedience of head of the infirmary, the second while serving as an attendant in it.[26] In the Alexandrian community described by Saint John of the Ladder, all the brethren practised mental prayer. That saint, as well as Barsanuphius the Great, enjoins upon those assailed by the passion of fornication a particularly intensified invocation of the Name of the Lord Jesus. The blessed elder Seraphim of Sarov testified, instructed by his own experience, that the Jesus Prayer is a scourge against the flesh and carnal lusts. The flame of these lusts withers from its action. When it acts within a person, the carnal lusts, through its action, lose their freedom of operation. Just as a predatory beast placed on a chain—retaining the capacity to kill and devour people and animals—loses the ability to act according to its capacity.

Saints Symeon and Andrew, fools for Christ, were in a most particular progress in prayer, having been raised to it by their complete self-denial and deepest humility. Nothing grants such free access to God as resolute self-denial, the trampling of one’s pride and one’s “self”. The abundant action of the heartfelt prayer of Saint Andrew is described by his intimate companion Nikephoros, a priest of the great church of the royal city of Constantinople. This action, by reason of its particularity, is worthy of being noted. “He”, says Nikephoros, “received such a gift of prayer in the secret temple of his heart that the whisper of his lips rang out from afar. Like a cauldron of water set in violent boiling, which emits steam from itself: so too steam came from his lips from the action of the Holy Spirit. Some of those who saw him said that a demon dwelt in him, and that was why steam came from him; others said: no! His heart, tormented by the hostile spirit, produces such breathing. Neither opinion was correct: in this phenomenon was reflected the unceasing, God-pleasing prayer—and those unfamiliar with the spiritual struggle formed about the great Andrew a conception similar to that formed long ago at the sudden opening of the gift of knowledge of foreign languages.” It is clear that the servant of God produced his prayer from his entire being, combining mental and heartfelt prayer with vocal prayer.[27] When Saint Andrew was caught up into paradise, then—as he told the priest—the abundant grace of God filling paradise produced in him that spiritual action which is ordinarily produced by mental prayer in the advanced: it brought his mind and heart into union, in which a person comes into a state of spiritual intoxication and a certain self-forgetfulness. This intoxication and self-forgetfulness is at the same time a sensation of new life.[28] Saint Symeon told his intimate companion, the deacon John, that in the midst of the most powerful temptations his mind remained entirely directed toward God, and the temptations remained without their usual effect. In those who have been granted gracious overshadowing, the soul is constantly caught up from amidst sinful and vain thoughts and sensations by mental prayer—as if by a mysterious invisible hand—and is borne aloft:[29] the action of sin and of the world remains powerless and fruitless.[30]

In the days of my early monastic life, a certain elder told me in candid conversation: “In secular life, through the simplicity of former times and the devout disposition that then prevailed, I learned of the Jesus Prayer, occupied myself with it, and at times sensed an extraordinary change in myself and consolation. Upon entering the monastery, I continued to occupy myself with it, guided by the reading of Patristic books and the instructions of certain monks who, it seemed, had some understanding of it. With them I saw the low stool mentioned by the Venerable Gregory of Sinai—made in the style of those stools used in Moldavia. At the end of the past century and the beginning of the present one, the mental work flourished in various monasteries of Moldavia, especially in the Niamets Monastery. At first I was in the obedience of the refectory; while occupied with the obedience, I occupied myself also with prayer, joining it with the humble thoughts that assist it, according to the instruction of the Fathers.[31] Once I was placing a dish of food on the last table, at which the novices sat, and was saying inwardly: receive from me, servants of God, this poor service. Suddenly such consolation fell into my breast that I even swayed; the consolation continued for many days—about a month. Another time it happened that I went into the prosphora bakery; I know not why—by some impulse—I bowed very low to the brethren working in the bakery;[32] and suddenly prayer so acted within me that I hastened to go to my cell and lay down on my bed because of the weakness produced throughout my whole body by the action of prayer.”

In the account of the repose of Saint Dimitri of Rostov it is narrated that he was found at rest in prayer. Some hours before his repose, his beloved singer had been with him; in parting from the singer, the Saint bowed to him almost to the ground. From one and the same disposition of heart flowed humility and prayer. The coenobitic monastic life, as I have already said, serves as the greatest assistance for learning the Jesus Prayer in its first degrees, providing the beginner with constant occasions for humility. Each monk can readily test upon himself, can soon see, the effect of obedience and humility upon prayer. Daily confession of one’s thoughts to a spiritual father or elder, the renunciation of activity according to one’s own reason and one’s own will—will begin in a short time to act against distraction, to eliminate it, to hold the mind within the words of prayer. Humility before the elder and before all the brethren will immediately begin to bring the heart into compunction and to hold it in compunction. On the contrary, activity according to one’s own will and one’s own reason will immediately produce anxiety about oneself; various calculations, suppositions, fears, and fantasies will present themselves to the mind and will destroy attentive prayer. The abandonment of humility for the preservation of one’s dignity in relation to a neighbour will deprive the heart of compunction, harden the heart, kill prayer—robbing it of its essential properties, attentiveness and compunction. Every act contrary to humility is an adversary and destroyer of prayer. Let prayer be built upon obedience and humility! These virtues are the only firm foundation of the prayer struggle.

Stillness is beneficial for those who have advanced—who have understood the inner warfare, who have been strengthened in evangelical morality by a thorough habituation to it, who have put away attachments:[33] all this must be acquired beforehand in community life. For those who enter into stillness without adequate prior training in a monastery, stillness brings the greatest harm: it deprives them of progress, intensifies the passions, becomes a cause of pride, self-delusion, and demonic spiritual delusion.[34][35][36] “Those without experience”—those untrained experientially in the mysteries of monastic life—“are destroyed by stillness”, said Saint John of the Ladder.[37] “Those capable of true stillness”, observes that same saint, “are few: those who have acquired Divine consolation as encouragement for their labours and Divine assistance in help against battles.”[38]

Disciple. You said before that one not cleansed from the passions is incapable of tasting Divine grace, yet you have just mentioned gracious consolation in prayer in a layman and a novice in his first obediences. Here it seems to me there is a contradiction.

[1] The Venerable Mark the Ascetic, On the Spiritual Law, chapter 84.

[2] 1 Cor. 8:1. According to the explanation of the Venerable Mark the Ascetic, in the same chapter 84.

[3] Homily 16. Here the word “good pleasure” has been added for the precise expression of the writer’s thought.

[4] Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily LV.

[5] Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 61, very remarkable.

[6] Homily II.

[7] On Spiritual Delusion. The Philokalia, part 1.

[8] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily XXVIII, chapter 19.

[9] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily XXVIII, chapters 17, 21, 27, 28.

[10] Homily XI.

[11] The Sketic Patericon.

[12] Homily 26, chapter 52.

[13] Chapter 118. The Philokalia, part 1.

[14] The Venerable Cassian. Conference 2; The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 4, chapter 106.

[15] Of the Saints Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, on stillness and prayer, chapters 14 and 15. The Philokalia, part 2.

[16] On the Third Method of Attentiveness and Prayer. The Philokalia, part 1.

[17] Ps. 103:1; Ps. 104; Ps. 105; Ps. 106; Ps. 110.

[18] Ibid.

[19] The Fathers call the unceasing Jesus Prayer the Remembrance of God and Meditation. A separate article on meditation, or the remembrance of God, is found in the second part of the Ascetic Experiences.

[20] Homily 28, chapter 31.

[21] Preface of the schema-monk Basil.

[22] Reply 268 of Barsanuphius the Great.

[23] The Life of the Venerable Dositheus at the beginning of the Instructions of the Venerable Abba Dorotheus.

[24] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 4, chapter 17.

[25] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 15, chapter 55.—Replies 252 and 255.

[26] From a manuscript instruction to Archimandrite Nikon.

[27] Acts 2:13. The Great Menaion Reader of Metropolitan Macarius.

[28] The Great Menaion Reader.

[29] The Life of the Venerable Symeon. The Menaion Reader, July 21.

[30] Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 43.

[31] The humble-minded thoughts that assist prayer are described in the First Homily of Saint Symeon the New Theologian. Much is said about them by Saint Isaac the Syrian, Isaiah the Hermit, and other Fathers.

[32] On the exhaustion produced by gracious consolation, Saint Isaac the Syrian speaks in Homily 44.

[33] Quotation from the Life of the Venerable Sabas the Sanctified in the Homily of Nicephorus the Monk. The Philokalia, part 2.

[34] The Venerable Cassian the Roman on the spirit of anger. Book VIII of the Cenobitic Institutes.

[35] Replies 311 and 313 of the Venerables Barsanuphius the Great and John.

[36] The Kiev Caves Paterikon, lives of the Venerables Isaac and Nicetas.

[37] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 27, chapter 55.

[38] The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 4, chapter 120.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 9)

Elder. Instructed by Holy Scripture and the writings of the holy Fathers, we believe and confess that Divine grace acts, now as before, in the Orthodox Church—despite finding few vessels worthy of it. It overshadows those ascetics of God whom it is pleased to overshadow. Those who affirm that it is now impossible for a Christian to become a partaker of the Holy Spirit contradict Holy Scripture and cause the greatest harm to their souls—as the Venerable Macarius the Great reasons so well about this.[1] Not supposing in Christianity any particularly lofty aim, not knowing of it, they do not strive for it and do not even think at all about attaining it; content with the external fulfilment of certain virtues, they deprive themselves of Christian perfection. What is worst of all—being satisfied with their condition and considering themselves, by reason of their outward conduct, to have ascended to the summit of spiritual life, they can not only have no humility, no spiritual poverty, and no contrition of heart, but fall into self-conceit, pride, self-delusion, and spiritual delusion, and henceforth take no care at all about true progress. On the contrary, those who have believed in the existence of Christian perfection strive toward it with all their zeal and enter into unwearying struggle to attain it. The conception of Christian perfection preserves them from pride: in bewilderment and in weeping they stand in prayer before the closed entry to this spiritual bridal chamber. Led by the Gospel into a correct self-knowledge, they think humbly and lowly of themselves: they acknowledge themselves as unprofitable servants who have not fulfilled the vocation purchased and appointed for them by the Redeemer for those whom He has redeemed.[2] The rejection of a life according to the commandments of the Gospel and the teaching of the holy Fathers—a life that is self-willed, founded on one’s own rationalism, however active or however outwardly decent it may appear—has the most harmful influence upon a correct understanding of Christianity, even upon the dogmatic Faith (1 Tim. 1:19). This has been demonstrated with complete clarity by the character of those absurd delusions and that depravity into which all apostates, all heretics and schismatics have cast themselves.

Together with this, again basing ourselves on the Divine Scripture and the Patristic writings, we affirm that the mind and heart, not cleansed from the passions by repentance, are incapable of becoming partakers of Divine grace—we affirm that those who compose for themselves gracious visions and gracious sensations, flattering and deceiving themselves by them, fall into self-delusion and demonic spiritual delusion. Believing without doubt in the existence of gracious action, we must equally without doubt believe in the unworthiness and incapacity of a person, in his passionate state, to receive Divine grace. By reason of this twofold conviction, let us plunge ourselves wholly and disinterestedly into the work of repentance, committing and entrusting ourselves entirely to the will and goodness of God. “There is no injustice with God”, the Venerable Macarius the Great instructs;[3] “God will not leave unfulfilled what He has set aside for Himself to fulfil, when we have fulfilled what we are obliged to fulfil.” A monk must not doubt about receiving the gift of Divine grace—says Saint Isaac the Syrian—just as a son does not doubt about receiving his inheritance from his father. The inheritance belongs to the son by the law of nature. At the same time Saint Isaac calls prayer’s petition for the sending down of the manifest action of grace an undertaking deserving censure, a petition prompted by pride and self-exaltation; he considers the desire and seeking of grace to be an incorrect disposition of soul, rejected by the Church of God, a malady of the soul. Those who have made such desire their own he considers to have made pride and the fall their own—that is, self-delusion and demonic spiritual delusion. Although the very aim of monasticism is the renewal by the Holy Spirit of the one who has taken monastic vows, yet Saint Isaac proposes to advance toward this aim through repentance and humility—to acquire weeping over oneself and the prayer of the publican, to disclose in oneself one’s sinfulness to such a degree that our conscience witnesses to us that we are unprofitable servants and stand in need of mercy. “What is of God”, says the saint, “comes of itself, at a time when we do not even think of it. Even so! But if the place is clean, and not defiled.”[4]

As for the beginner who was mentioned, from the very cases cited concerning him it is evident that he was not at all expecting such an action of prayer as suddenly opened within him—indeed he did not even understand that it existed. This is the ordering of the Divine providence, the comprehension of which is beyond us. That same Saint Isaac says: “The order of a particular dispensation—of the providence and judgment of God—differs from the common human order. Follow the common order;[5] and by the path along which all men have gone—according to the succession of precedent—ascend to the height of the spiritual tower.”

Disciple. I have had occasion to learn that certain elders who had made great progress in the Jesus Prayer imparted to beginners directly the mental prayer, and even the heartfelt prayer.

The Elder. I know this. Such particular cases must not be taken as a general rule, nor should one, relying on them, disregard the tradition of the Church—that is, the teaching of the holy Fathers which the Church has received as common guidance. The advanced elders you mentioned were led to depart from the general rule either by some exceptional aptitude for mental prayer that they had observed in their novices, or by their own inadequacy as satisfactory guides for others, despite their prayerful advancement. The latter does happen! In the Egyptian Scete, a certain novice monk sought instruction in one aspect of the monastic ascetic life from Abba Ivestion, an elder of a very exalted manner of life. Having received the instruction, the novice thought it advisable to verify it by consulting the Venerable Pimen the Great. The Great One set aside Abba Ivestion’s instruction as too exalted, unbearable for one who is a novice and still in the grip of the passions; he offered the monk a more accessible and practical approach, pronouncing on this occasion the following memorable saying: “Abba Ivestion and his practice are in heaven, with the Angels:[6] it has escaped him that you and I are on earth and in the passions”287.[7] The Venerable Gregory of Sinai rightly observes that those who are advanced in prayer teach prayer to others in accordance with the manner in which they themselves attained advancement in it288. From experience I have been able to ascertain that those who have received grace-given prayer, by a particular providence of God, swiftly and not by the common path, hasten—in accordance with what has taken place in themselves—to impart to novices such knowledge of prayer as novices can in no way understand rightly; they understand it in a distorted way, and are harmed by it. Those, by contrast, who have received the gift of prayer after a prolonged struggle with the passions, while cleansing themselves through repentance and forming their moral character through the evangelical commandments, impart prayer with great circumspection, gradualness, and correctness. The monks of the Moldavian Niamets Monastery told me that their renowned elder, Archimandrite Paisius Velichkovsky—who had received the heart-felt, grace-given prayer by a special providence of God rather than by the common course—for that very reason did not trust himself to teach it to the brethren:[8] he entrusted that teaching to other elders who had acquired the gift of prayer by the common course. Saint Macarius the Great says that, by the ineffable goodness of God condescending to human weakness, there are souls found who have become partakers of Divine grace, filled with heavenly consolation and enjoying the action of the Holy Spirit within them—yet, at the same time, by reason of a lack of practical experience, remaining in a kind of childhood, in a state most unsatisfactory in relation to that state which true asceticism demands and bestows289. I happened to see such a child-elder, abundantly overshadowed by Divine grace. A lady in the bloom of years and health, of distinguished name, leading an entirely worldly life, came to know this elder and, having formed a respect for him, rendered him certain services. The elder, moved by a feeling of gratitude and wishing to recompense a material service with a great spiritual benefit—and not perceiving that what this lady needed first of all was to give up the reading of novels and a life lived by novels—gave her the practice of the Jesus Prayer, mental and heartfelt, with the aid of those physical methods proposed by the holy Fathers for those living in stillness and described in the first and second parts of The Philokalia. The lady obeyed the holy elder, fell into an extremely difficult situation, and might have harmed herself irreparably, had not others guessed that the child-elder had given her some most unsuitable instruction, drawn from her the admission, and turned her away from following it.

A monk who knew the elder mentioned here well once said to him: “Father! Your interior constitution is like a two-story house whose upper floor has been excellently appointed, while the lower floor is still in the rough—so that access to the upper floor is very difficult.” In monasteries, the saying “holy but unskilled” is used of such advanced elders, and caution is observed in consultations with them—consultations which can sometimes be very profitable. The caution consists in this: not to entrust oneself hastily and frivolously to the instructions of such elders, but to verify their instructions by Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers290, as well as by conversation with other advanced and well-intentioned monks, should the opportunity to find them arise.[9] Blessed is the novice who in our time has found a trustworthy counselor! “Know,” exclaims the Venerable Symeon, the New Theologian, “that in our times many false teachers and deceivers have appeared!”291 Such was the condition of Christianity and monasticism eight centuries before us.[10] What then can be said of the condition of our own time? Hardly anything other than what the Venerable Ephrem the Syrian said of the condition of those who will seek the living word of God in the last times: “They will,” the Venerable one prophesies, “travel the earth from east to west and from north to south, seeking such a word—and will not find it”292.[11] Just as to the exhausted eyes of those lost in the steppes there appear tall buildings and long streets, by which the lost ones are drawn into an even greater, inescapable delusion—so to those seeking the living word of God in today’s moral wasteland there appear in abundance magnificent phantoms of God’s word and teaching, raised up from carnal reason, from an insufficient and false knowledge of the letter, from the disposition of the rejected spirits, the princes of this world. These phantoms, deceptively presenting themselves as a spiritual Eden abounding in food, light, and life, draw the soul away by their deceptive appearance from true food, from true light, from true life; they lead the wretched soul into impenetrable darkness, exhaust it with hunger, poison it with falsehood, and slay it with eternal death.

The Venerable Cassian the Roman relates that in the Egyptian monasteries of his day, where monasticism especially flourished and the traditions of the Spirit-bearing Fathers were preserved with particular care and precision, no monk who had not been rightly formed in monasticism through obedience was ever permitted to take on the duty of guide and superior—even if that monk was of a very exalted manner of life and even adorned with the gifts of grace. The Egyptian Fathers regarded the gift of guiding brethren to salvation as the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit. One who has not been rightly taught the science of monasticism, they maintained, cannot rightly teach it either293.[12] Some have been caught up by Divine grace from the land of the passions and carried over into the land of dispassion—thereby spared the heavy labor and tribulations endured by all who must sail across the stormy, vast, and deep sea that separates one land from the other. Such persons can describe in detail and with accuracy the land of dispassion, but cannot give a proper account of the voyage across the sea—of that voyage which they never experienced for themselves. The great teacher of monastics, Saint Isaac the Syrian, having explained that some receive Divine grace and sanctification quickly by a special providence of God, ventured to add that, in his opinion, one who has not formed himself through the keeping of the commandments and has not walked the path by which the Apostles walked is “not worthy to be called holy”294.[13] “He who has conquered the passions through the keeping of the commandments and a laborious life in virtuous struggle—let him know that he has acquired health of soul lawfully”295.[10] “The order of the tradition is this: patience, compelling itself, struggles against the passions in order to acquire purity. If the passions are conquered, the soul acquires purity. True purity gives the mind boldness in time of prayer”296.[10] In the letter to the Venerable Symeon the Wonderworker, Saint Isaac says: “You write that purity of heart has been conceived in you, and that the remembrance of God”—mental prayer, the Jesus Prayer—“has blazed up greatly in your heart, warming and kindling it. If this is true, it is great; but I would not have wished you to write this to me—for here there is no order whatever”297. “If you wish your heart to become a vessel of the mysteries of the new age, first enrich yourself with bodily struggle:[10] fasting, vigil, service to the brethren, obedience, patience, the casting down of thoughts, and the like. Bind your mind to the reading and study of the Scriptures; set the commandments before your eyes, and pay the debt to the passions—being overcome and overcoming; accustom yourself to unceasing prayer and supplication, and by constant exercise in them uproot from the heart every image and every likeness with which sin has sealed you in your former life”298.[13] “You know that evil entered into us through the transgression of the commandments: from this it is evident that health is restored by the keeping of the commandments. Without the practice of the commandments, we ought not even to desire the cleansing of the soul, nor to hope to receive it, when we are not walking the path that leads to the cleansing of the soul. Do not say that God can, even without the practice of the commandments, grant the cleansing of the soul by grace: these are the judgments of God, and the Church forbids asking that such a miracle be wrought in us. The Jews, returning from Babylon to Jerusalem, went by the ordinary road and within the time appointed for such a journey; having completed the journey, they reached their holy city and saw the wonders of the Lord. But the prophet Ezekiel was supernaturally caught up by a spiritual action and set down in Jerusalem, and by Divine revelation became a beholder of the future renewal. In the same manner it is with regard to purity of soul. Some enter into purity of soul by the path laid out for all—the lawful path: by the keeping of the commandments in a laborious life, shedding their blood. Others are granted purity as a gift of grace. The remarkable thing is that what is granted to us by grace is not permitted to be sought in prayer when one has abandoned the active life according to the commandments”299.[10] “For the weak one who needs to be nourished on the milk of the commandments, life among many is profitable—so that he may both be instructed and be bridled, so that he may be chastened by many temptations, may fall and rise again, and may acquire health of soul. There is no infant who has not been nourished on milk—and one cannot be a true monk who has not been raised on the milk of the commandments, keeping them with effort, conquering the passions, and in this way being granted purity”300.[10]

Mental and heartfelt prayer can indeed be imparted even to a novice or a young person, if he is capable of it and has been prepared for it. Such persons were very rare even in earlier times, prior to the era of general moral corruption. I was a witness to the fact that an elder who had acquired grace-given prayer and spiritual discernment imparted counsel concerning mental and heartfelt prayer to a certain novice who had preserved his virginity, had been prepared from childhood to receive the mystical teaching on prayer through the study of Christianity and monasticism, and had already felt the action of prayer within himself. The elder explained the arising of prayerful action in the young man by his virginity. Quite different rules apply to young people, as well as to men of mature years who, before entering the monastery, had led a distracted life with sparse and superficial notions of Christianity, who have acquired various attachments and especially those who have defiled their chastity through fornication. The sin of fornication has this property, that it unites two bodies, even if unlawfully, into one body (1 Cor. 6:16): for this reason, although it is forgiven immediately after repentance and confession—on the indispensable condition that the penitent has forsaken it—yet the cleansing and sobering of body and soul from the sin of fornication requires a prolonged time, so that the bond and union which have been established between bodies, which have taken root in the heart and infected the soul, may wither and be annihilated. For the annihilation of this unhappy attachment, the Church assigns to those who have fallen into fornication and adultery very substantial periods of repentance, after which she admits them to Communion of the most holy Body and Blood of Christ. In the same way, for all who have led a distracted life, for those sealed with various attachments—especially for those who have plunged into the abyss of carnal falls and acquired a habit of them—time and more time is needed: to be pre-purified by repentance, to erase from themselves the impressions of the world and its temptations, to become sober from sin, to form their moral character by the commandments of the Gospel, and in this way to make themselves capable of grace-given, mental, and heartfelt prayer.[14] “Let each one examine his own soul,” says the Venerable Macarius the Great, “searching and investigating carefully to what it feels attached; and if he perceives that the heart is at variance with the laws of God, let him strive with all his might to guard both body and soul from corruption, rejecting fellowship with impure thoughts—if he wishes to lead the soul into the dwelling and ranks of the pure virgins, according to the vow given”—at baptism and at entering upon monastic life—“for God has promised His indwelling and walking only in souls that are perfectly pure and confirmed in righteous love”301. “The diligent farmer first breaks up the soil and uproots the tares from it, and only then sows it with seed:[10] so too he who expects God to sow the seed of grace in his soul must first cleanse the field of the soul, so that the seed which the Holy Spirit will afterward cast upon it may bring forth perfect and abundant fruit. If this is not done first, and if a man does not cleanse himself from all defilement of flesh and spirit, he will remain flesh and blood, and far removed from life in God”302. “He who compels himself exclusively and with all his might to prayer, but does not labor to acquire humility, love, meekness, and the whole choir of the remaining virtues—not forcing himself to implant them in himself—can attain only to this: that sometimes, in answer to his petition, Divine grace touches him, since God by His natural goodness graciously grants to those who ask what they desire. If, however, the one who has received does not accustom himself to the remaining virtues we have mentioned, and does not acquire a habit in them, then either he is deprived of the grace received, or, having been exalted, he falls into pride, or, remaining on the lower step to which he has ascended, he advances no further and does not grow.[15] The throne and resting-place, so to speak, of the Holy Spirit are humility, love, meekness, and, in succession, all the holy commandments of Christ. Therefore, whoever would wish—joining together and gathering within himself all the virtues equally and without exception—to attain perfection through their careful increase, let him first compel himself, as we have said, and, constantly overcoming his stubborn heart, let him strive to present it submissive and pleasing to God. Having first exercised such compulsion over himself, and having returned all that within the soul resists God—as if taming a wild beast—to submission to the commandments of God, to obedience to the direction of the true and holy teaching, having thus ordered his soul, if he will pray to God and ask God to grant progress to his endeavors, he will receive all that he asks for together;[16] the most loving God will grant him all in full abundance, so that the gift of prayer in him may grow and flourish, sweetened by the Holy Spirit”303. “Know, however, that in much labor and in the sweat of your brow you will receive your lost treasure—for the effortless acquisition of good is not in keeping with your benefit. That which you received without labor you lost, and surrendered to the enemy the inheritance that was yours”304.

The Disciple. When I pray, a multitude of fantasies and thoughts presents itself to my mind and does not allow me to pray purely. Can spiritual delusion or some other harm arise for me from this?

The Elder. A multitude of thoughts and fantasies naturally arises from fallen nature. It is even characteristic of prayer to reveal in fallen nature the hidden marks of its fall and the impressions wrought by voluntary sins305.[17] Likewise the devil, knowing what a great good prayer is, strives during prayer to trouble the ascetic with sinful and vain thoughts and fantasies, so as to turn him away from prayer or to render prayer fruitless306.[18] From the midst of sinful thoughts, fantasies, and feelings—from the midst of this enslavement and our brickmaking—let us cry out with all the more fervor, and let us continue to cry out in prayer to the Lord, like the Israelites who “groaned… from their labors and cried out. And their cry”, says Scripture, “‘went up to God from their labors. And God heard their groaning’ (Ex. 2:23–24).

The general rule of the struggle against sinful beginnings is to reject sin at its very first appearance—to slay the mysterious Babylonians while they are still infants (Ps. 136:9). “He who fights intelligently,” said the Venerable Nil Sorsky, “repels the mother of the evil mental multitude—that is, the first contact of evil thoughts with his mind.[19] He who has repelled this first contact has repelled at once the whole throng that follows it”307. If, however, sin forces itself upon us by reason of prior enslavement to it and habituation to it, then even in that case we must not lose heart, fall into despondency, and despair; we must heal the invisible defeats through repentance, and persist in the struggle with firmness, courage, and constancy. Sinful and vain thoughts, fantasies, and feelings can assuredly harm us only when we do not struggle against them, when we take pleasure in them and implant them in ourselves. From voluntary fellowship with sin and from voluntary communion with the rejected spirits, the passions are born and grow strong; spiritual delusion can steal unnoticed into the soul. But when we resist sinful thoughts, fantasies, and feelings, the very struggle with them will bring us advancement and enrich us with practical knowledge. A certain elder advanced in mental prayer asked another monk who likewise practiced it: “Who taught you prayer?” The monk answered: “The demons.” The elder smiled and said: “What a scandal you have uttered for those who do not know the matter!—yet tell me, in what way did the demons teach you prayer?” The monk answered: “I was afflicted with a heavy and prolonged warfare from fierce thoughts, fantasies, and feelings that gave me no rest by day or by night. I was exhausted and grew incredibly thin from the burden of this unnatural condition. Pressed hard by the assault of the spirits, I would have recourse to the Jesus Prayer. The warfare reached such a pitch that apparitions began to flash visibly before my bodily eyes in the air. I constantly felt as though my throat were bound tight as by a rope. Then, in the very midst of the warfare, I began to feel that prayer was intensifying and hope was renewing itself in my heart. And when the warfare, growing lighter and lighter, at last fell completely silent—suddenly prayer appeared in my heart of itself.”

Let us pray constantly, patiently, persistently. God will, in His own time, give grace-given, pure prayer to one who prays without laziness and constantly by his own impure prayer—to one who does not faint-heartedly abandon the ascetic struggle of prayer when prayer long resists him. We see in the Gospel an example of the success of the persistent Jesus Prayer. When the Lord was leaving Jericho accompanied by his disciples and a great multitude, the blind man Bartimaeus, who sat by the roadside begging, hearing that the Lord was passing by, began to cry out: “Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me.” He was told to be silent, but he cried out all the more. The consequence of his unceasing cry was the healing of the blind man by the Lord (Mk. 10:46–52). So let us too cry out, notwithstanding the sinful thoughts, fantasies, and feelings that arise from fallen nature and are brought by the devil to hinder our prayerful cry—and we shall without doubt receive mercy.

The Disciple. What are the true fruits of the Jesus Prayer, by which a novice might know that he is praying rightly?”

[1] Homily 3, chapters 12, 13, and 14.

[2] Drawn from the aforementioned chapters 12, 13, and 14 of the Third Homily of the Venerable Macarius the Great; see also the Second Homily of the Venerable Nil Sorsky, page 100, in the edition of the Holy Synod, 1852.

[3] Homily 4, chapter 8.

[4] Homily 55 and Homily 2.

[5] Homily 1.

[6] The Sketic Patericon and Memorable Sayings. Concerning Pimen the Great, chapter 62.

[7] From the Fifteen Chapters, chapter 5. The Philokalia, part 1.

[8] Homily 7, chapter 14.

[9] Of the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, chapter 33. The Philokalia, part 1.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Homily 106 according to the Slavonic text.

[12] Book 11, on the rule of the nocturnal prayers and psalms, chapter III.

[13] Selected from various places in Homily 55.

[14] Patrologiae Graecae Tomus XXXIV, Macarii Aegyptii liber de libertate mentis, cap. 5 and 6.

[15] Patrologiae Graecae Tomus XXXIV, Macarii Aegyptii liber de libertate mentis, cap. 19.

[16] Liber de patientia et discretione, cap. 19.

[17] Of the Saints Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, chapter 49. The Philokalia, part 2.

[18] The Venerable Nil Sorsky. Homily 3.

[19] Homily 2, at the beginning.

On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

The Elder. The initial fruits of prayer consist in attentiveness and compunction. These fruits appear before all others from every rightly performed prayer, and most particularly from the Jesus Prayer, whose practice surpasses psalmody and other forms of prayer308.[1] From attentiveness is born compunction, and from compunction attentiveness is intensified. They increase by giving birth to one another; they give prayer depth, gradually quickening the heart; they give it purity, removing distraction and fantasy. As true prayer itself, so too attentiveness and compunction are gifts of God. Just as we prove our desire to acquire prayer by compelling ourselves to it, so we prove our desire to acquire attentiveness and compunction by compelling ourselves to them. A further fruit of prayer is the gradually widening vision of one’s own sins and sinfulness, from which compunction intensifies and turns into weeping. Weeping is overflowing compunction joined with the suffering of a broken and humble heart, acting from the heart’s depths and encompassing the soul. Then there appear feelings of the presence of God, a vivid remembrance of death, the fear of judgment and condemnation. All these fruits of prayer are accompanied by weeping, and in due time are overshadowed by a subtle, holy, spiritual feeling of the fear of God. The fear of God cannot be compared to any feeling of the carnal, or even the soulful, person. The fear of God is an entirely new feeling. The fear of God is an action of the Holy Spirit. From the tasting of this wondrous action the passions begin to melt away—the mind and heart begin to be drawn toward unceasing exercise in prayer. After some advancement there comes the feeling of stillness, humility, love toward God and neighbor without distinction of good from evil, patience in sorrows as God’s permissions and healings, which our sinfulness is in absolute need of. The love toward God and neighbor that appears gradually out of the fear of God is wholly spiritual, ineffably holy, subtle, and humble; it differs with an infinite difference from human love in its ordinary state, and cannot be compared with any love that moves within fallen nature, however correct and sacred that natural love may be. The natural law acting in time is approved; but the eternal law, the spiritual law, is as far above it as the Holy Spirit of God is above the human spirit. I forbear to speak of the further fruits and consequences of praying with the most holy name of the Lord Jesus: let blessed experience teach them to both me and others. These consequences and fruits are described in detail in The Philokalia, that excellent, God-inspired guide to the teaching of mental prayer for advanced monks capable of entering the haven of sacred stillness and dispassion. Acknowledging both myself and you as novices in the spiritual struggle, I have primarily in view, in setting forth correct notions concerning the practice of the Jesus Prayer, the need of novices, the need of the majority. “Acquire weeping,” the Fathers have said, “and it will teach you everything”309.[2] Let us weep and constantly weep before God: what is of God cannot come otherwise than by God’s good pleasure—and it comes in a spiritual character, in a new character, in such a character as we cannot form any conception of in our present state, which is carnal, soulful, old, and passionate310.[3]

Worthy of particular notice is that opinion of oneself which is instilled by the rightly practiced Jesus Prayer in one who practices it. Hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov attained the greatest advancement in it. Once the superior sent to him a monk whom he had blessed to begin the life of a hermit, so that Father Seraphim might instruct this monk in the hermit’s life to the extent that he himself knew this most laborious form of monastic life. Father Seraphim, receiving the monk most cordially, replied: “I myself know nothing.” He then repeated to the monk the Saviour’s words concerning humility (Mt. 11:29) and their explanation by Saint John of the Ladder through the action of the heartfelt Jesus Prayer311.[4] The following was told to me of a certain practitioner of prayer. He had been invited by benefactors of the monastery to a provincial capital. When visiting them, the monk was constantly at a loss, finding nothing to say to them. Once he was at the house of a very devout Christian benefactor. This man asked the monk: “Why are there no possessed people nowadays?”—“What do you mean, there are none?” replied the monk, “there are many.”—“But where are they?” the benefactor objected. The monk answered: “First of all, here—I am.” “Come now! What are you saying!” exclaimed the host, looking at the monk with a wild smile in which both bewilderment and horror were expressed. “You may be sure…” the monk was about to continue.—“Come now, come now!” the host interrupted, and began speaking with others about other matters, while the monk fell silent. “The word of the cross” and self-denial “is foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:18) to those who do not understand their action and power. Who, not knowing the weeping of prayer and the mysteries it discloses, will understand words spoken from the depths of weeping? One who has attained self-vision through spiritual struggle sees himself bound by the passions, sees the rejected spirits acting within him and through him. A brother asked Pimen the Great: “How should a hermit conduct his life?” The Great One answered: “I see myself as a man sunken in mud up to his neck, with a burden on his neck, and crying out to God: have mercy on me”312. This saint, taught by weeping to the deepest, incomprehensible humble-mindedness, used to say to the brethren who lived with him: “Believe me—where they cast the devil, there they will cast me”313. With the remembrance of the perfect monk, Pimen the Great, let us conclude our discourse on the Jesus Prayer.[5][5]

The Disciple. My heart thirsts to hear more: say something further.

The Elder. It is very profitable for one practicing prayer to have in his cell icons of the Saviour and of the Mother of God, of fairly considerable size. At times one may turn during prayer toward the icons, as if to the Lord and the Mother of God themselves who are present there. The sense of God’s presence in the cell can become habitual. With such a constant sense we shall abide in the cell with the fear of God, as though constantly under the gaze of God. Indeed: we are always in the presence of God, for He is everywhere present—we are always under the gaze of God, for He sees all things and everywhere. Glory to the all-merciful Lord, who sees our sinfulness and our sins, who with long-suffering awaits our repentance, who has granted us not only permission but even the commandment to beseech Him for mercy.

Let us avail ourselves of God’s ineffable mercy toward us! Let us receive it with the greatest reverence, with the greatest gratitude! Let us cultivate it for our salvation with the greatest zeal, with the greatest diligence! Mercy is granted by God in fullest abundance; but to receive it or to reject it, to receive it with the whole soul or halfheartedly, is left to the free will of each person. “My child, from your youth choose discipline, and even to old age you will find wisdom. As one who plows and sows, draw near to her, and await her good fruits: for in laboring at her you will toil but a little, and soon you will eat of her fruits” (Sir. 6:18–20). “In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not let your hand be idle” (Eccl.According to the explanation of the Venerable Gregory of Sinai. 11:6)314. “Give thanks to the Lord and call upon His name… Seek the Lord and be strengthened; seek His face always” (Ps. 104:1, 4). By these words Holy Scripture teaches us that the struggle of serving God—the struggle of prayer—must be performed with the whole soul, constantly and without interruption. The external and internal sorrows that are bound to be encountered on the course of this struggle are to be overcome with faith, courage, humility, patience, and long-suffering, healing deviations and waywardness through repentance. Both the abandonment of the prayerful struggle and intervals in it are extremely dangerous. Better not to begin this struggle than, having begun, to abandon it. The soul of an ascetic who has abandoned the practice of the Jesus Prayer he had undertaken may be compared to land that has been tilled and enriched with compost but afterward left desolate: on such land weeds grow with extraordinary force, put down deep roots, and acquire a particular coarseness. Into the soul that has renounced the blessed union with prayer, abandoned prayer and been abandoned by prayer, the passions pour in as a rushing torrent and flood it. The passions acquire a particular power over such a soul, a particular firmness and permanence; they are sealed with the hardening and deadness of the heart, with unbelief. The demons expelled by prayer return to the soul; enraged by their previous expulsion, they return with greater frenzy and in greater numbers. “The last state of that man becomes worse than the first” (Mt. 12:45), according to the declaration of the Gospel: the condition of one who has fallen under the dominion of the passions and demons after being delivered from them through true prayer is incomparably more wretched than the condition of one who never attempted to cast off the yoke of sin, who never drew the sword of prayer from its sheath. The harm from intervals or from the periodic abandonment of the prayerful struggle is similar to the harm arising from complete abandonment; this harm is the greater, the longer the interval. During the “sleep” of the ascetics—that is, during their negligence regarding prayer—“the enemy comes”, unseen by bodily eyes, unnoticed by ascetics who have allowed themselves to be carried away and distracted, “and sows tares among the wheat” (Mt. 13:25). The sower of tares is very experienced, cunning, and filled with malice: it is easy for him to sow a tare of the most malignant kind—trivial in appearance and at its beginning, but afterward entangling and intertwining the whole soul with its numerous offshoots. “He who is not with Me”, said the Saviour, “is against Me: and he who does not gather with Me, scatters” (Lk. 11:23). Prayer does not entrust itself to double-minded, inconstant practitioners; “to the undisciplined she is very crooked, and the foolish cannot abide with her: she will weigh upon him like a stone of testing, and he will not delay in casting her away. Hear, my child, and receive my counsel, and do not reject my advice: and bring your feet into her fetters and your neck into her collar. Bow your shoulder and bear her, and do not be averse to her bonds. With all your soul draw near to her and with all your might guard her ways. Search and seek, and she shall be made known to you; and once you have taken hold of her, do not let her go. For in the end you will find rest in her, and she will be turned to joy for you. And her fetters will be to you a strength of repose, and her collar a garment of glory” (Sir. 6:21–22, 24–30). Amen.

[1] The Venerable Nil Sorsky, Homily 11.

[2] The Sketic Patericon. Sayings of Theodore of Enaton. Also of the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian.

[3] Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 55.

[4] The Instructions of Father Seraphim, edition of 1844.

[5] The Sketic Patericon.

A Rule of Attentiveness to Oneself for One Living in the Midst of the World

The soul of all spiritual exercises in the Lord is “attentiveness”. Without “attentiveness” all these exercises are fruitless and dead. He who desires to be saved must so order himself that he is able to maintain “attentiveness to himself” not only in solitude but also amid the very distraction into which he is sometimes drawn against his will by circumstances. Let the fear of God outweigh all other feelings on the scales of the heart: then it will be easy to maintain “attentiveness to himself”, both in the quiet of the cell and amid the noise that surrounds one on every side.

Prudent moderation in food, by reducing the heat in the blood, greatly assists “attentiveness to oneself”; while the heating of the blood—as from excessive eating, from intense bodily movement, from inflaming with anger, from intoxication with vainglory, and from other causes—produces a multitude of thoughts and fantasies, that is, distraction. The holy Fathers prescribe to one who wishes to “attend to himself” first of all moderate, even, and constant temperance in food315.[1]

On waking—in the image of that awakening from the dead which awaits all people—direct your thoughts toward God, and offer to God as a sacrifice the first fruits of the mind’s thoughts, which have not yet received any vain impressions. With calm, very carefully, having attended to all bodily necessities of one who has risen from sleep, read the customary prayer rule, caring not so much for the quantity of the prayers as for their quality—that is, that they be performed with “attentiveness”, and that, by reason of “attentiveness”, the heart be sanctified and quickened with prayerful compunction and consolation. After the prayer rule, once again with all your might taking care for “attentiveness”, read the New Testament, and most especially the Gospel. In this reading, carefully note all the injunctions and commandments of Christ, so that by them you may be able to direct your activity, visible and invisible. The quantity of reading is determined by a person’s strength and circumstances. One must not burden the mind with excessive reading of prayers and Scripture, nor must one neglect one’s duties for the sake of immoderate exercise in prayer and reading. Just as excessive food unsettles and weakens the stomach, so immoderate use of spiritual food weakens the mind, produces in it an aversion to devout exercises, and brings upon it despondency316. For the novice, the holy Fathers propose frequent prayers, but brief ones.[2] When the mind has grown in spiritual stature, has strengthened and matured, it will then be able to pray without ceasing. To Christians who have reached perfect spiritual maturity in the Lord belong the words of the holy Apostle Paul: “I desire therefore that men pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without wrath and without disputing” (1 Tim. 2:8)—that is, without passion and without any wandering or soaring. What is proper to a man is not yet proper to an infant. Having been illumined, through prayer and reading, by the Sun of Righteousness, our Lord Jesus Christ, let a person go forth to the works of the day’s course, attending that in all his deeds and words, in his whole being, the most holy will of God—revealed and explained to people in the evangelical commandments—may reign and act.

If a few free moments fall during the day, use them for the “attentive” reading of certain chosen prayers, or of certain chosen passages from Scripture, and by them again strengthen the powers of the soul that are spent by activity amid the vain world. If, however, these golden moments do not fall, one must grieve for them as for the loss of a treasure. What has been lost today must not be lost on the following day: for our heart readily gives itself over to negligence and forgetfulness, from which a dark ignorance is born—ignorance so ruinous in the matter of God, in the matter of human salvation.

If it happens that something has been said or done contrary to God’s commandments, immediately heal the fault through repentance, and through sincere repentance return to the path of God from which you have strayed by violating God’s will. Do not linger outside the path of God!—Against sinful thoughts, fantasies, and feelings that approach, set with faith and humility the evangelical commandments, saying with the holy patriarch Joseph: “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:9). One who attends to himself must renounce all fantasy in general, however enticing and plausible it may seem: all fantasy is the wandering of the mind, outside truth, in a country of non-existent and unrealizable phantoms that flatter and deceive the mind. The consequences of fantasy are: the loss of “attentiveness” to oneself, distraction of the mind, and hardness of heart in prayer; from this—spiritual disorder.

In the evening, going to sleep—which, in relation to the life of that day, is a death—examine your deeds throughout the course of the day that has passed. For one who leads an “attentive life”, such examination is untroubling: for by reason of “attentiveness to oneself”, the forgetfulness so characteristic of the distracted person is eliminated. And so, calling to mind all your sins in deed, word, thought, and feeling, bring repentance for them to God, with a disposition and heartfelt pledge of amendment. Then, having read the prayer rule, close with godly reflection the day that was begun with godly reflection.

Where do all the thoughts and feelings of a sleeping person go? What is this mysterious state—sleep—in which the soul and body are alive, and at the same time not living, are strangers to the consciousness of their life, as if dead? Sleep is as incomprehensible as death. During it the soul rests, forgetting even the most grievous sorrows and tribulations of earth, in the image of its eternal rest; and the body!… if it rises from sleep, it will assuredly also rise from the dead. The great Agathon said: “It is impossible to advance in virtue without intense “attentiveness to oneself””317.[3] Amen.

Written at the desire of a certain devout lay person to lead an attentive life in the world.

[1] The Philokalia, pt. II, chapters of the Venerable Philotheus of Sinai.

[2] Isaac the Syrian. Homily 71.

[3] The Sketic Patericon.

The Praying Mind Seeks Union With the Heart

The gates of the senses have been shut: the tongue is silent, the eyes are closed, the hearing receives nothing from without. The mind, clothed in prayer and having laid down the burden of earthly thoughts, descends toward the inner chamber of the heart. The doors of the chamber are locked; on every side there is darkness, an impenetrable gloom. And the mind, at a loss, begins to knock with prayer upon the doors of the heart; it stands patiently at the doors, knocks, waits, knocks again, waits again, and prays again. There is no answer, no voice is heard! A deathly stillness and darkness respond with a grave-like silence. The mind withdraws from the heart’s doors, sorrowful, and in bitter weeping seeks some consolation. It was not permitted to stand before the King of kings in the sanctuary of the inner chamber.

Why, why have you been turned away?

Upon me lies the seal of sin. The habit of thinking about earthly things distracts me. There is no strength in me, for the Spirit does not come to my aid—the all-holy and all-gracious Spirit, who restores the union of mind, heart, and body, sundered by the terrible fall of man. Without the almighty, creative help of the Spirit, all my own efforts are in vain! He is most merciful, infinitely loving toward mankind; yet my impurity does not allow Him to draw near to me. I will wash myself in tears, I will be purified by the confession of my sins, I will not give my body the food and sleep whose abundance imparts heaviness to the soul. Clothed wholly in the weeping of repentance, I will descend to the doors of my heart. There I will stand, or sit, as the blind man in the Gospel, enduring the burden and tedium of darkness, and cry out to the One who is able to have mercy: “Have mercy on me!” (Mk 10:48).

And he descended, and stood, and began to cry out with weeping. He likened himself to a blind man who cannot see the true, unfading Light—to one deaf and mute, unable either to speak or to hear in the spiritual sense. He felt in very deed that he was truly blind, deaf, and dumb, standing at the gates of Jericho—the heart inhabited by sins—awaiting healing from the Saviour, whom he does not see, whom he does not hear, to whom he cries out only by his own wretched condition. He does not know His name; he calls the Son of God the son of David: for flesh and blood cannot honor God as God.

Show me the road by which the Saviour will pass. That road is prayer, as the Prophet declared to man on God’s behalf and by God’s Spirit: “A sacrifice of praise shall glorify Me, and therein is the way by which I will show him My salvation” (Ps 49:23). Tell me, at what hour will the Saviour pass? In the morning, or at noon, or toward evening? “Watch and pray, for you do not know at what hour your Lord will come” (Mt 24:42; Mk 13:33).

The road is known; the hour is not appointed!—I will go out beyond the city, I will stand or sit at the gates of Jericho, as the holy Apostle Paul counsels: “Let us therefore go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb 13:13). The world is passing away; all things in it are unstable: it is called not even a city, but a camp. I will forsake attachment to possessions, which are perforce abandoned at death, and often before death; I will forsake honors and perishing glory; I will forsake sensual pleasures, which rob one of the capacity for ascetic struggles and spiritual occupations. “For here we have no abiding city, but we seek the one that is to come” (Heb 13:14), which must first be revealed to me within my heart through the mercy and grace of God, my Saviour. Whoever does not ascend in spirit to the mystical Jerusalem during earthly life cannot, after the soul’s departure from the body, have any assurance that entry into the heavenly Jerusalem will be granted to him. The first is the pledge of the second.[1] Amen.

[1] The Venerable Hesychius, The Philokalia, pt. 2, ch. 4. The other holy Fathers reason in agreement with this.

Render True and Peaceable Judgment in Your Gates, and Love No False Oath, Says the Lord Almighty (Zech. 8:16–17)

“Gates”: these are the gates of the soul, through which various thoughts and impressions enter into her.

“Your”: these gates alone truly belong to man.

“Judge”: the judge who sits at the gates and pronounces judgment is our mind:[1] it examines and scrutinizes thoughts and impressions as they come to the gates of the soul, in order to admit into the temple of the soul those that ought to be there, and to bar those that ought not.

“Judge true and peaceful judgment at your gates”: the mind, the judge sitting and pronouncing judgment at the gates of the soul, must, in its examination of thoughts and impressions, admit only those that are true. A true thought, a true impression—that is, one flowing from the Lord, who alone is “the Truth”—brings with it into the soul an inexpressible peace and stillness; by this it is recognized as coming from the Truth, from Christ, who gives His disciples peace, or (what is the same thing) humility, so that their hearts may not be troubled by any earthly affliction. By contrast: “thoughts that proceed from demons,” says the Great Barsanuphius, “are filled with agitation and grief from the very outset, and secretly and subtly draw the mind after them. The enemies clothe themselves in sheep’s clothing—that is, they suggest thoughts that appear right, but inwardly are ‘ravening wolves’ (Mt 7:15), that is, they snatch away and ‘deceive the hearts of the innocent’ (Rom 16:18) with what seems good but is in reality harmful.[2] Scripture says of the serpent that he is the most cunning: therefore continually watch his head (Gen 3:1, 15), lest he find a hole in you and, dwelling there, work devastation. The head of the serpent is the beginning of his thought or imagination.”

“Love not false oaths”. A demonic thought, approaching the gates of the soul, seeks to assume the appearance of righteousness and brings to the mind—the judge sitting and pronouncing judgment at the gates—countless justifications, in order to gain entry into the soul. But these false assurances, this false oath, the Prophet forbids us to love. We must not only refuse to receive such thoughts and agree with them, but must not even parley with them;[3] rather, at the very first appearance of a sinful thought, we must immediately flee with prayer to the Lord God, that He may drive the enemy away from the gates of the soul. Amen.

[1] According to the custom of the ancients, kings and other rulers held court in person, and for such trials they chose a place at the city gates. An example of this may be seen in the life of the holy great-martyr George. The Menaion Reader, April 23.

[2] Barsanuphius the Great. Reply 59.

[3] The holy Isaac the Syrian. Homily 30.

A Proof of the Resurrection of Human Bodies, Drawn From the Working of Mental Prayer

In a secluded, little-known, and insignificant monastery standing among forests and marshes, there lived a certain monk. With fear, with distrust of himself, and with close attention to the writings of the Fathers, he was penetrating into prayer performed by the mind in the depth and secret of the inner chamber of the soul.

Once the monk was standing in church, drawing his mind into his heart, when suddenly the heart moved in prayer toward the mind and drew the whole body along with it into a sacred, spiritual state—inexpressible in words, surpassing all the passions, comprehensible to experience alone. When the monk perceived this so extraordinary and new a condition of his body, his mind was illumined with a mysterious knowledge. There became clear to him the words of the holy John of the Ladder, which had until then seemed enigmatic and strange; he says: “‘I cried out with my whole heart’ (Ps 118:145), that is, with body, soul, and mind.”[1]

Behold the proof of the resurrection of human bodies, which I carry within myself! If the body is capable of spiritual feelings, if it can participate together with the soul in gracious consolation, if it can even now become a partaker of grace—how then shall it not rise for eternal life, according to the teaching of Scripture?

The bodies of God’s holy ones were salted with grace—and corruption could not touch them! By their victory over corruption they already prefigured their resurrection; by pouring forth healings, they prove the grace present in them and the eternal life dwelling in them, which is destined in due time to unfold in the glorious resurrection appointed and granted to humanity by our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

[1] The Ladder, Homily 28, ch. 61.

On Humility (A Conversation between an Elder and His Disciple)

On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Disciple. What is humility?

Elder. It is a Gospel virtue that unites the powers of man into one by the peace of Christ—a virtue surpassing all human comprehension.

Disciple. If it surpasses comprehension, how do we know of its existence? And still more, how can we acquire a virtue we cannot even comprehend?

Elder. We learn of its existence through faith, by means of the Gospel; and the virtue itself we come to know experientially, to the degree that we acquire it. But even after acquiring it, it remains beyond comprehension.

Disciple. Why is that?

Elder. Because it is Divine. Humility is the teaching of Christ, the property of Christ, the action of Christ. The words of the Saviour, “Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart” (Mt 11:29), the holy John of the Ladder explains thus: “Learn not from an Angel, not from a man, not from a book, but from ‘Me’—that is, from My assimilation to you, My illumination and operation within you—‘for I am gentle and humble in heart’, and in thought and in manner of thinking.” How then can we comprehend the properties and operations of Christ? They are incomprehensible even when they are felt, just as the Apostle said:[1] “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7). The peace of God is both the beginning and the direct consequence of humility; it is the action of humility and the cause of that action. It acts upon the mind and heart with almighty Divine power. Both the power and its action are by nature incomprehensible.

Disciple. By what means can one attain to humility?

Elder. By fulfilling the Gospel commandments, and above all through prayer. The gracious action of humility is very similar to the gracious action of prayer; or more precisely: it is one and the same action.

Disciple. Do not refuse to expound both means of acquiring humility in greater detail.

Elder. Both are set forth in the teaching of the holy Fathers. The holy John of the Ladder says that only those led by the Spirit of God can speak satisfactorily about humility, and the holy Isaac the Syrian says that the Holy Spirit teaches humility mystically to the man who has prepared himself for such teaching.[2][3] We, gathering the crumbs that fall from the spiritual table of our masters—the holy Fathers—have received a most meager notion of humility;[4] we ourselves endeavor to hold to it, and to pass it on to those who ask, as the precious tradition of the Fathers. One may with full justice call the notions about humility that we have received mere crumbs: the treasure itself, in its inexhaustible fullness, belongs to him who has acquired Christ within himself.

The Venerable Abba Dorotheus says that “humility is naturally formed in the soul through activity according to the Gospel commandments… What happens here is the same as with learning sciences and the art of medicine. When a man has learned them well and practices them, then, little by little, through practice, the scholar or physician acquires a habit; yet he cannot say or explain how he arrived at it, for the soul received it little by little through practice. The same thing is accomplished in the acquisition of humility:[5] from the doing of the commandments a certain humble habit is formed, which cannot be explained in words.” From this teaching of the Venerable Abba Dorotheus it is evident that he who wishes to acquire humility must study the Gospel with diligence, and with the same diligence fulfill all the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ. The practitioner of the Gospel commandments may come to a knowledge of his own sinfulness and the sinfulness of all mankind, and finally to an awareness and conviction that he is the most sinful and the worst of all men.

Disciple. It seems incongruous to me that one who fulfills the Gospel commandments with all diligence should arrive at the recognition that he is the greatest of sinners. One would expect the contrary. Whoever unceasingly performs virtues, and performs them with special zeal, cannot fail to see himself as virtuous.

Elder. The latter refers to those who do a supposed good “out of themselves”, out of their own fallen nature.[6] He who does such good according to his own understanding, following the inclinations and promptings of his own heart, cannot fail to see this good, cannot help but be satisfied and delighted with it; he takes personal pride in it and is gratified by human praise; he seeks and demands it; he grows angry and hostile toward those who withhold praise. He counts his good deeds, and from their number forms an opinion of himself, and from his opinion of himself forms an opinion of his neighbors—as the Pharisee mentioned in the Gospel did.[7] This kind of activity leads to an opinion of one’s own righteousness, forming righteous men who are rejected by the Lord and who reject the Lord, or who confess Him only superficially and coldly with a dead confession (Mt 9:13). Opposite consequences follow from the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments. The ascetic, as soon as he begins to fulfill them, sees that he fulfills them very inadequately and impurely, that he is swept along hourly by his own passions—that is, by a corrupted will—toward activities forbidden by the commandments. Then he clearly discerns that his fallen nature is hostile to the Gospel. Intensified activity according to the Gospel reveals to him ever more plainly the insufficiency of his good deeds, the multitude of his deviations and failures, the wretched state of the fallen nature estranged from God, which has acquired a disposition of hostility toward God. Looking back on his past life, he sees it as an unbroken chain of sins, falls, and actions that provoke God, and from the sincerity of his heart acknowledges himself to be the greatest sinner, deserving both temporal and eternal punishment, wholly in need of a Redeemer, in whom alone he places his hope of salvation. Such an opinion of himself forms in him imperceptibly through the doing of the commandments. It can be affirmed with certainty that whoever is guided in his life by the Gospel will not hesitate to bear full witness that he knows of not a single good deed in himself.[8] His fulfillment of the commandments he regards as their distortion and defilement, as the holy Peter of Damascus says.[9] “Teach me to do Your will” (Ps 142:10), he cries with weeping to God—that will which You have commanded me to do, which I strive to do, but cannot, because my fallen nature does not understand it and does not submit to it. All my efforts have been and will be in vain, unless You stretch out Your hand to help me. “Your good Spirit”, He alone, “will lead me onto level ground.”[10] “Nothing good can be either believed or done except in Christ Jesus and in the Holy Spirit”—so said the Venerable Mark the Ascetic.[11]

Disciple. Will not such a view of oneself lead to despondency or despair?

Elder. It will lead to Christianity. It was for sinners such as these that the Lord descended to earth, as He Himself declared: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mt 9:13). Such sinners are those who can receive and confess the Redeemer from the whole soul.

Disciple. Let us grant that activity according to the Gospel commandments leads to the knowledge and acknowledgment of one’s sinfulness; but how is one to reach the point of regarding oneself as more sinful than all other men, among whom there are terrible criminals and evildoers?

Elder. This too is a natural consequence of the ascetic struggle. If two objects are before our eyes, and we examine one of them with all possible attention and without ceasing, while paying no attention to the other, we acquire a clear, detailed, and precise understanding of the first, while remaining with only the most superficial notion of the second. The eyes of the practitioner of the Gospel commandments are constantly fixed on his own sinfulness; with confession of it to God and with weeping, he labors to uncover new wounds and blemishes in himself. Discovering them with God’s help, he strives for yet further discoveries, drawn by the desire for a purity pleasing to God. He does not look upon the sins of his neighbors. If some occasion arises for him to glance at a neighbor’s transgression, that glance is of the most cursory and passing sort, as is usual with people occupied by something important. From his very manner of life there follows naturally and logically the recognition of himself as a sinner among sinners. This is the disposition the holy Fathers require of us.[12] Without such self-regard, the holy Fathers consider the very ascetic struggle of prayer to be wrongly ordered. A brother said to the Venerable Sisoes the Great: “I see that the remembrance of God abides in me unceasingly.” The Venerable replied: “It is no great thing that your thought is with God; the great thing is to see yourself as lower than all creation.” The foundation of prayer is the most profound humility. Prayer is the cry and weeping of humility.[13] When humility is lacking, the ascetic struggle of prayer becomes inclined toward self-deception and the demonic spiritual delusion.

Disciple. By raising the question of how one may advance in humility while advancing in the virtues, I have drawn you away from the orderly sequence of your discourse.

Elder. I return to it. In the aforementioned instruction of the Venerable Abba Dorotheus, a saying is cited from one of the holy elders: that “the path of humility is bodily labors done in understanding.” This counsel is very important for the brethren engaged in various monastic obediences, some of which are burdensome to the body and others involving an interior spiritual struggle. What does it mean “to labor in understanding”? It means to bear monastic labor as a punishment for one’s sinfulness, in the hope of receiving forgiveness from God. What does it mean “to labor thoughtlessly”?—To labor with carnal fervor, with vainglory, with boastfulness, with contempt for other brethren who cannot bear such labor because of weakness or incapacity, or even from sloth. In the latter case, labor, however intense, prolonged, and materially beneficial to the monastery, is not only useless to the soul but actually harmful, since it fills the soul with self-conceit, in the presence of which no virtue can find a place there. An example of “labor in understanding” that raised its practitioner to the height of Christian perfection by lowering him into the depths of humility is seen in the exploit of the blessed Isidore of Alexandria. He was one of the dignitaries of Alexandria. Called by God’s mercy to the monastic life, Isidore entered a monastic community not far from Alexandria and surrendered himself in unconditional obedience to the abbot of the community, a man filled with the Holy Spirit. The abbot, perceiving that from the height of rank there had formed in Isidore a haughty and harsh disposition, resolved to act against this spiritual malady by imposing an obedience burdensome not so much to the body as to the sick heart. When entering the community, Isidore had declared to the abbot that he surrendered himself to him as iron is given into the hands of a smith. The abbot commanded him to stand and remain constantly at the gates of the monastery, bowing to the feet of every person entering or leaving and saying: “Pray for me, for I am possessed by a demon.” Isidore rendered obedience to the abbot as if to an angel of God. Having spent seven years in this obedience, and foreknowing his end through Divine revelation, Isidore departed this life joyfully. Concerning the state of his soul during the struggle, he confessed to the holy John of the Ladder thus: “At first I thought that I had sold myself for the redemption of my sins, and therefore with the greatest anguish, forcing myself, as if shedding blood, I prostrated myself. After a year had passed, my heart ceased to feel sorrow, awaiting the reward for patience from God Himself. After yet another year had passed, from the awareness of my heart I accounted myself unworthy even of abiding in the monastery, of beholding the Fathers, of conversing with them, of meeting with them, and of receiving the Holy Mysteries; but, having cast my eyes down and my manner of thought still lower, I already sincerely besought the prayer of those entering and departing.” This is bodily labor and obedience pursued in understanding! This is their fruit![14] One humble thought handed the blessed practitioner over to another, yet deeper, as if nurturing him, until he entered into the richest and most mysterious perception of humility. By this holy perception heaven was opened to the holy Isidore, as to a living temple of God. “Humility makes man a dwelling-place of God,” said the Great Barsanuphius.[15]

The Venerable Abba Dorotheus, at the beginning of his instruction on humility, lays down as a cornerstone in the foundation of the edifice the following saying of one of the holy elders: “Above all things we need humble-mindedness, and we must be ready to say ‘forgive me’ in answer to every word we hear; for humble-mindedness shatters all the arrows of the enemy and adversary.” In the renunciation of self-justification, in self-accusation and in asking forgiveness on all those occasions on which ordinary worldly life employs justifications and multiplies them, there lies a great and mysterious acquisition of holy humility.[16] All the holy Fathers adhered to it and bequeathed it. This practice may appear strange at a superficial glance; but experience itself will not delay in proving that it is full of benefit for the soul and flows from the Self-Truth, Christ. Our Lord rejected self-justification, not employing it before men, though He could have manifested His Divine righteousness before them in all its grandeur; and He said to the Pharisees: “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for what is exalted among men is an abomination before God” (Lk 16:15). “Behold My servant”, the prophet of the Old Testament proclaims concerning the Lord, “whom I have chosen; My beloved, in whom My soul is well pleased. I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He will proclaim justice to the nations; He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets” (Mt 12:18–19; Is 42:1–2). “Christ suffered for us”, the Apostle of the New Testament witnesses to the exact fulfillment of the prophecy, “leaving us an example, that we should follow in His steps; when He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to the One who judges justly” (1 Pet 2:21, 23). Therefore, if we, guilty of countless sins, have come to the monastery to endure crucifixion for our sins at the right hand of our Saviour, let us acknowledge betimes every affliction that befalls us as a just recompense and rightful punishment for our sins. With such a disposition, asking forgiveness on every occasion that presents itself will be a correct and logical action.[17] “Self-justification does not belong to the Christian life,” said the holy Isaac the Syrian. The Venerable Pimen the Great used to say: “We fall into many temptations because we do not maintain the order befitting our name. Do we not see that the Canaanite woman accepted the name given her and the Saviour consoled her (Mt 15:27 and following)? Likewise Abigail said to David: ‘Upon me be my sin’ (1 Sam 25:24), and David, hearing this, loved her. Abigail is an image of the soul, and David is an image of God: if the soul accuses herself before the Lord, the Lord will love her.” They asked the Great man what “what is exalted” (Lk 16:15) means. He answered: “Self-justifications. Do not justify yourself, and you will find rest.” He who does not justify himself is guided by humble-mindedness; he who does justify himself is guided by proud-mindedness.[13] Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, once visited the Nitrian mountain. That mountain was the dwelling-place of a numerous monastic community living the life of those given to stillness. The abbot of the mountain was a man of great holiness. The Archbishop asked him: “What, Father, in your opinion, is of greatest importance on the monastic path?” The abbot replied: “Constant self-accusation and self-condemnation.” The Archbishop responded: “Indeed! There is no other path besides this.”[18]

I will conclude my poor teaching on humility with the beautiful teaching of the Venerable John the Prophet on this virtue. “Humility consists in not reckoning oneself as anything in any circumstances, in cutting off one’s will in all things, in submitting to all, and in bearing without agitation whatever befalls us from without. This is true humility, in which vainglory finds no place. The humble-minded person must not display his humility through ‘humble-talk,’ but it suffices for him to say ‘forgive me’ or ‘pray for me.’ Neither should he of his own accord volunteer for the performance of lowly tasks: this, like the first (that is, humble-talk), leads to vainglory, hinders progress, and does more harm than good; but when commanded to do something, not to contradict but to fulfill it in obedience—this leads to progress.”[19]

Disciple. Can the use of humble words—called humble-talk—really be harmful to the soul? It seems very fitting for a monk, and very edifying to worldly people, who are moved to compunction on hearing a monk’s humble-talk.

Elder. The Lord said: “What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Mt 16:26). Evil can in no way be the cause of good. Hypocrisy and people-pleasing cannot be the cause of edification: they may please the world, for they have always pleased it; they may provoke the world’s praise, for they have always provoked it; they may attract the world’s love and trust, for they have always attracted them. The world loves what is its own; it praises those in whom it hears its own spirit (Jn 15:18–20). The world’s approval of humble-talk is already its condemnation. The Lord commanded that all virtues be performed in secret (Mt 6), whereas humble-talk is the outward display of humility for men to see. It is pretense, deception—first of oneself, then of others—because the concealment of one’s virtues is one of the properties of humility, and humble-talk and the outward show of humility destroy precisely this concealment. “While living among your brethren,” says the holy John of the Ladder, “take heed that you do not in any way appear more righteous than they in anything. Otherwise you will do a double wrong: you will wound the brethren by your hypocrisy and pretense, and you will inevitably produce proud-mindedness in yourself. Be diligent in soul, without displaying this at all outwardly—not by appearance, nor by word, nor by hint.” As much as it is beneficial to reproach and accuse oneself of sinfulness before God, in the secret of the inner chamber of the soul, so much is it harmful to do this before men. In the contrary case we shall be arousing in ourselves a deceptive opinion that we are humble, and conveying such a notion of ourselves to the spiritually blind laity. A certain monk told me that in his early monastic days he endeavored to practice humble-talk, supposing—out of ignorance—that there was something especially important in it.[20] Once he was speaking in humble-talk, and so successfully that those hearing him, instead of declaring his words to be lies and himself to be humble—which is always the aim of humble-talk—agreed that he was speaking the truth; at which he was grieved and fell into displeasure. Before men one must conduct oneself carefully and reverently, but simply—responding to praise with silence, likewise to reproach, except in those cases where asking forgiveness and, if needed, a moderate explanation may calm and reconcile the person offering criticism. Those advanced in monastic life acquire a particular freedom and simplicity of heart, which cannot but manifest itself in their dealings with their neighbors. These qualities do not please the world! It considers them proud, as the holy Symeon the New Theologian very rightly observes. The world seeks flattery, yet in them it sees sincerity, which is of no use to the world, and meets with reproof, which is hateful to it. During my sojourn in a large city, an elder who was greatly advanced in the spiritual life came there on monastery business with his novice disciple. Certain devout laypeople wished to see the elder.[21] He did not please them. They were very pleased with the disciple, who, on entering wealthy and distinguished homes, was struck by worldly grandeur and bowed low to everyone. “How humble he is!” the laypeople said with particular pleasure, a pleasure born in them by the bows. The elder had spent his life in weeping over his sinfulness; he considered the greatest happiness of man to be the discovery in himself of sinfulness, and with sincere love and compassion for poor humanity—equally poor both in palace and in hut—with simplicity of heart, with a remarkable perspicacity born of equal purity of mind, he desired to share spiritual treasures with those who asked him about salvation: and by this he aroused their displeasure.

Disciple. What is the difference between humble-mindedness and humility?

Elder. “Humble-mindedness” is a manner of thought drawn wholly from the Gospel, from Christ. “Humility” is a feeling of the heart, a gift of the heart, corresponding to humble-mindedness. One must first accustom oneself to humble-mindedness; to the degree that one exercises oneself in humble-mindedness, the soul acquires humility, for the state of the heart always depends on the thoughts that have been appropriated by the mind. But when a person’s work is overshadowed by Divine grace, then humble-mindedness and humility will begin abundantly to beget and to multiply each other, with the help of their co-worker in prayer—weeping.

Disciple. Explain by examples how humility is born of humble-mindedness and vice versa.

Elder. I had a monk with whom I was on close terms, who was subject unceasingly to various afflictions by which, as he said, it pleased God to replace a spiritual elder for him. Despite constant afflictions, I saw the monk almost always calm, and often joyful. He occupied himself with the Word of God and with mental prayer. I asked him to reveal to me, for the benefit of my soul, where he drew his consolation. He replied: I owe my consolation to God’s mercy and to the writings of the holy Fathers, toward which I have been given a love from childhood. When afflictions descend upon me, I sometimes repeat the words of the thief who confessed from his cross the righteousness of the divine judgment in the human sentence, and by that confession entered into the knowledge of the Saviour. I say: “I am receiving what my deeds deserve;… remember me, Lord, in Your kingdom” (Lk 23:41–42). With these words, peace and calm pour into the heart. At other times I set against thoughts of grief and agitation the words of the Saviour: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (Mt 10:38); then agitation and grief are replaced by peace and joy. Other similar sayings of Holy Scripture and of the holy Fathers produce the same effect. The words repeated: “Glory to God for all things” or “may the will of God be done” act with complete sufficiency against even very complex afflictions. A strange thing! Sometimes, under the powerful action of affliction, all the soul’s strength is lost; the soul grows as it were deaf, losing the capacity to feel anything; then I begin to pronounce aloud, forcibly and mechanically, with the tongue alone, “Glory to God,” and the soul, hearing the glorifying of God, begins as it were to revive little by little at that glorifying, then takes courage, grows calm, and is consoled. Those upon whom afflictions are permitted would not be able to stand firm in them, were they not secretly sustained by God’s help and grace. Again: without affliction a man is not capable of that mysterious yet at the same time substantial consolation which is given him in proportion to his affliction, as the Psalmist also said: “According to the multitude of my sorrows within my heart, Your consolations have gladdened my soul” (Ps 93:19). Once a dangerous snare was laid against me. Learning of it, and having no means of averting it, I felt grief to the point of exhaustion. I went to my cell, and as soon as I pronounced the words of the Saviour that came to mind—“Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, and believe also in Me” (Jn 14:1)—the grief vanished; in its place an inexpressible joy encompassed me, and I had to lie down on my bed, and all day long I was as if intoxicated, while in my mind the words kept repeating, pouring consolation into my soul: “believe in God, and believe also in Me.” The cause of the heart’s agitation is unbelief; the cause of the heart’s calm, of the heart’s gracious peace, is faith. When faith acts abundantly, the whole being of man is plunged into a spiritually most consoling enjoyment of the sacred peace of Christ, as if permeated and filled to overflowing with this feeling. Intoxicated by it, the being becomes insensible to the arrows of agitation. The Fathers rightly said that “faith is humility”, that “to believe means to abide in humility and goodness.” Such a conception of faith and humility is granted by the holy experiences of a rightly ordered monastic life.[22][23]

[1] Homily 21, ch. 3.

[2] Homily 21, ch. III.

[3] Homily 38.

[4] The expression is borrowed from the holy John of the Ladder. Homily 21, ch. III.

[5] Instruction 2, On Humble-mindedness.

[6] The blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, on the Publican and the Pharisee (ch. XVIII).

[7] Luke, XVIII.

[8] The first of the morning prayers of the Venerable Macarius the Great. The Prayer Book.

[9] The Philokalia, pt. 3, book 1, article 1.

[10] Ibid. (Ps 142:10).

[11] On the Spiritual Law, ch. II. The Philokalia, pt. 1.

[12] The Venerable Nil Sorsky. Homily 5, On the thought of pride.

[13] The Alphabetical Patericon.

[14] The Ladder. Homily 4, ch. 23, 24.

[15] Reply 210.

[16] Instruction 2.

[17] Homily 89.

[18] The Memorable Sayings and the Alphabetical Patericon.

[19] Reply 275 of the Venerable Barsanuphius and John.

[20] Homily 4, ch. 82, 83.

[21] Ch. 70, 71, 72. The Philokalia, pt. 1.

[22] Reply 579 of Barsanuphius and John.

[23] A saying of the Venerable Pimen the Great. The Sketic Patericon.

On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 2)

At other times affliction is permitted to torment the soul for a prolonged period. Once, from a sudden affliction, I felt something like a nervous blow to the heart, and spent three months confined to my cell, shaken by a nervous fever. “God is ever doing great and inscrutable things with us, glorious and terrible things.” We must understand that we are His creatures, wholly in His power, and therefore, in complete submission, we must “commit ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.” I will not refrain from telling you the following remarkable incident, which sheds some light on the action of humility directly from the heart, without a prior thought of humble-mindedness.[1] Once I was subjected to punishment and disgrace.[2] When they subjected me to it, I suddenly felt a warmth throughout my whole body, and with it a certain inexplicable deadness; after which there suddenly blazed from my heart a desire to receive public shaming and blows from an executioner in the public square, on account of my sins. At this, a flush rose on my face; an inexpressible joy and sweetness encompassed me entirely; through them I remained for two weeks in a rapture, as if outside myself. Then I understood with clarity and precision that the holy humility in the martyrs, united with Divine love, could not be satisfied by any torments. The martyrs received cruel torments as gifts, as a refreshing drink that quenched the thirst for humility blazing in them. Humility is an inexpressible grace of God, incomprehensibly comprehended by the spiritual perception of the soul alone.[3]

Disciple. You promised to explain to me how humility is wrought through prayer.

Elder. The union of humility with prayer is very clearly set forth by the Venerable Abba Dorotheus. “Continual exercise in prayer,” the Saint says, “counteracts pride. Evidently: the humble and devout man, knowing that it is impossible to perform any virtue without God’s help and protection, does not cease to pray to God unceasingly, beseeching Him to show him mercy. He who constantly prays to God, if he is found worthy to do anything right, knows through Whom this was done, and cannot exalt himself or attribute it to his own strength, but ascribes all his improvements to God, thanks Him ceaselessly, and prays to Him ceaselessly, trembling lest he be deprived of help from on high, lest his own weakness thereby be revealed. He prays out of humility.” If anyone, during his prayer, is found worthy of compunction—which is born of attentive prayer—he knows from experience that precisely in the precious moments of compunction there arise in him thoughts of humble-mindedness that impart the feeling of humility.[4] This takes place especially when compunction is accompanied by tears. The more frequently the times of compunction come, the more frequently the practitioner of prayer becomes a hearer of the mysterious teaching concerning humility, and the more deeply this teaching penetrates into his heart. Constant compunction keeps the soul in constant humility, in the disposition of unceasing prayer and meditation on God. The holy Fathers note that in contrast to vainglory, which scatters a person’s thoughts throughout the world, humility concentrates them within the soul; it leads from fruitless and frivolous contemplation of the whole world to fruitful and deep self-examination, to mental stillness, to that state which true prayer requires and which attentive prayer produces. Finally, the gracious action of humility and the gracious action of prayer are one and the same action, as was said at the beginning of our discourse.[5] This action appears in two persons: in Christ-like humility and in Divine love, which is the highest action of prayer. This action belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ, who dwells and acts through the Holy Spirit—inexpressibly and incomprehensibly—in His chosen vessels. Amen.

[1] The sixth morning prayer.

[2] The last petition of the Great Ektenia.

[3] The life of the holy martyrs Timothy and Maura. The Menaion Reader, May 3. A wondrous life! Throughout the entire course of their exploit the martyrs never ceased to confess that martyrdom served them as a cleansing from sins. Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, they received this cleansing with thirst. Abundant humility was united in them with an abundance of love surpassing nature. When Maura was being led to crucifixion, her mother stopped her, weeping over her. But the martyr, tearing herself from her mother’s arms, hastened to the cross, saying to her mother: “Why do you draw me away from the cross, not allowing me to delight sooner in my Lord in the likeness of His death?”

[4] Instruction 2.

[5] The holy Isaac. Homily 48.

On Patience

On Patience (Part 1)

“The home of the soul is patience: for she lives in it; the food of the soul is humility: for she is nourished by it”—so said the holy Elias Ecdicus.[1]

Indeed: nourished by the holy food of humility, one can abide in the holy home of patience. But when this food is lacking, the soul goes out from the home of patience. Like a whirlwind, agitation seizes her, sweeps her away, and spins her about. Like waves, various passionate thoughts and feelings rise within her, drowning her in the depths of senseless and sinful reflections, fantasies, words, and deeds. The soul falls into a state of enfeeblement, dark despondency, and often draws near to the abyss of deadly despair and complete disorder.

Do you wish to dwell without departure in the holy home of patience?—Lay in a store of the food necessary for such dwelling: acquire and multiply within yourself humble thoughts and feelings. The form of humility that prepares one for the patient bearing of afflictions before they arrive, and that assists in their serene endurance once they have come, has been called “self-reproach” by the holy Fathers.

Self-reproach is the accusation of oneself in the sinfulness common to all mankind and in one’s own particular sinfulness. In this practice it is useful to recall and enumerate one’s own violations of the Law of God—with the exception of sins of impurity and stumbling, of which the Fathers forbid detailed recollection, since it renews in the person the sensation of sin and delight in it.[2]

Self-reproach is a monastic practice, a mental work set in opposition and counteraction to the painful property of fallen nature, whereby all people—even the most manifest sinners—strive to appear as righteous and to prove their righteousness by every possible artifice. Self-reproach is a violence done to fallen nature, just as prayer and the other monastic struggles are a violence to it—those by which “the kingdom of heaven is taken by force” and by which “those who use force seize it” (Mt 11:12). Self-reproach has, at the beginning of practice, the character of an unconscious mechanism—that is, it is uttered by the tongue without any particular sympathy of the heart, even contrary to the feeling of the heart; then, little by little, the heart begins to be drawn into sympathy with the words of self-reproach; finally, self-reproach will be uttered from the whole soul, in an abundant feeling of weeping. It will diminish and hide from us the shortcomings and transgressions of our neighbors; it will reconcile us to all men and to all circumstances; it will gather thoughts scattered throughout the world into the work of repentance; it will bestow an attentive prayer full of compunction; it will inspire and arm us with an invincible power of patience.

Humble thoughts of self-condemnation fill all the prayers of the Orthodox Church. But monks set apart a portion of each day especially for the practice of self-reproach. They endeavor by means of it to convince themselves and persuade themselves that they are sinners: the fallen nature is unwilling to believe this, unwilling to make this knowledge its own. In general, self-reproach is beneficial for all monks: both for beginners and for the advanced, both for those living in community and for those living in stillness. For the latter, the most dangerous passion that destroys all their work is pride;[3] while, by contrast, the foundational virtue for them, upon which all other virtues rest and are sustained, is self-reproach.[4] This is why the abbot of the Nitrian solitaries said that the chief practice among them, in his estimation, is constant self-reproach. Self-reproach, when it reaches its fullness, uproots malice from the heart entirely, completely eradicating from it the craftiness and hypocrisy that never cease to live in the heart as long as self-justification finds a place there.[5] The Venerable Pimen the Great said that the hatred of evil consists in a man’s justifying his neighbor and accusing himself in every circumstance. This saying is founded on the words of the Saviour: the Saviour called everyone who condemns his neighbors a hypocrite (Mt 7:5). Through self-reproach, the one given to stillness will see all men as saints and angels, and himself as the sinner of sinners, and will plunge—as into an abyss—into constant compunction.

Excellent models of self-reproach are to be found in the Lamentations of the Venerable Isaiah the Hermit and in the twentieth Homily of the holy Isaac the Syrian. The holy Isaac, whose book in general contains instructions for those given to stillness, gave the following title to his Homily: “A homily containing the most needful and beneficial daily reminder for one who is in stillness in his cell and desires to attend to himself alone.”

“A certain brother,” says the holy Isaac, “wrote the following, and set it constantly before himself as a reminder: ‘In foolishness you have spent your life, O shamed man, worthy of every evil! At least guard yourself in this day that remains from your days—days which have been offered up to vanity, void of good activity, enriched with evil activity. Ask not about this world, nor about its state, nor about monks, nor about their activity—of what kind it is, nor about the measure of their struggle—do not be drawn into concern about any such thing. You have gone out from the world in mystery, you have been reckoned dead for Christ’s sake: live no more for the world, nor for what belongs to the world, that rest may come upon you, and that you may live in Christ. Be prepared and ready to bear every reproach, every insult, and shame and rebuke from all. Accept all this with joy, as truly deserving it. Endure with thanksgiving to God every pain, every affliction and trouble from the demons, whose will you have fulfilled. Manfully bear every want and bitterness that nature brings. With hope in God, endure the deprivation of the body’s necessities, which will shortly return to decay. All this receive with good will in hope of God, expecting neither deliverance nor consolation from any other. ‘Cast upon the Lord’ all your care (Ps 54:23), and in all your temptations accuse yourself as their cause. Be scandalized by nothing, and reproach none of those who offend you: for you have tasted of the forbidden tree, and have acquired manifold passions. Receive these bitternesses with joy; let them shake you somewhat, so that you may afterward taste sweetness. Woe to you and to your foul reputation! You have left your soul, full of every sin, without attention, as if not subject to judgment, yet you have condemned others both in word and in thought. Leave this food of swine upon which you have fed until now. What have you to do with men, O defiled one! Are you not ashamed to associate with them, having spent your life in foolishness! If you will turn your attention to this and remember all these things, you may perhaps be saved with God’s assistance. But if not, you will go into the dark country, into the dwelling-places of the demons, whose will you have fulfilled shamelessly. Behold! I have testified all these things to you. If God in righteousness raises men up against you to repay you for the insults and reproaches that you have pondered and uttered against them, then the whole world ought to rise up against you forever. And so, from this time forward, cease from what you have done until now, and endure the recompenses that are permitted to come upon you.’—All these things the brother reminded himself of each day, so as to be in a condition to bear with thanksgiving to God and with benefit to his own soul the temptations and afflictions when they came. Let us also endure with thanksgiving what is permitted to come upon us, and thereby receive benefit through the grace of the merciful God.”

Self-reproach has this particular, most beneficial, and mysterious property: that it calls to memory even those sins which had been completely forgotten or to which no attention had been paid.

The exercise of self-reproach introduces the habit of reproaching oneself. When any affliction befalls the man who has acquired this habit, the action of the habit immediately appears, and the affliction is accepted as deserved. “The chief cause of all agitation,” says the Venerable Abba Dorotheus, “if we examine carefully, is that we do not reproach ourselves. From this every disorder flows; it is for this reason that we never find rest. And so it is no wonder that we hear from all the saints: ‘There is no other path besides this.’ We do not see that any of the saints, traveling by any other path, found rest! Yet we want to have it while holding to the right path without ever desiring to reproach ourselves. Truly, if a man accomplishes ten thousand virtues but does not hold to this path, he will never cease to give offence and to take offence, thereby destroying all his labors. Whereas the one who reproaches himself is always in joy, always in peace. He who reproaches himself, wherever he may go—as Abba Pimen also said—whatever may happen to him, whether harm or dishonor or any affliction, already considers himself beforehand as worthy of all that is unpleasant, and is never agitated. Can anything be more peaceful than this state? But someone may say: If a brother offends me, and I, examining myself, find that I gave him no occasion for it, how can I reproach myself? Truly, if anyone examines himself in the fear of God, he will find that he somehow gave occasion—either by deed, or by word, or in some way. But if he sees, as he says, that he gave no occasion at the present time, then at some earlier time he offended this brother or another in this matter or in some other, and ought to have suffered for it, or else for some other sin—as often happens. Yes! if anyone examines himself, as I have said, in the fear of God and searches his conscience, he will in every case find himself guilty.” A wondrous thing! Beginning to reproach ourselves mechanically and forcibly, we eventually arrive at a self-reproach so convincing and so effective that with its help we endure not only ordinary afflictions but even the greatest calamities. Temptations no longer have such power over one who is making progress;[6] rather, in proportion to progress, they grow lighter, even when they are in themselves heavier. In proportion to progress, the soul grows stronger and receives the capacity to bear patiently what befalls it. This strength is given as a specially nourishing food by the humility that has sunk deep into the heart. And this strength is patience.[7]

Unwavering faith in Divine Providence establishes one in patience and assists self-reproach. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny”, the Lord said to His disciples, “and not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father? But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore” (Mt 10:29–30). With these words the Saviour of the world depicted that sleepless care which God has—and which only an almighty and omnipresent God can have—for His servants and ministers. By God’s such care for us, we are delivered from every faint-hearted anxiety and fear for ourselves, prompted by our unbelief. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Pet 5:6–7). When we are subjected to affliction, God sees it. This comes to pass not only by His permission but by His all-holy Providence for us. He allows us to be tormented for our sins in time, in order to deliver us from torment in eternity. It often happens that a hidden and grievous sin of ours remains unknown to men, remains without punishment, covered by God’s mercy; yet at the same time, or after some interval, we are constrained to suffer somewhat as a result of slander or vexation, as if unjustly and innocently. Our conscience tells us that we are suffering for our hidden sin! God’s mercy, which covered that sin, gives us the means to be crowned with the crown of innocent sufferers through the endurance of slander, and at the same time to be cleansed from the hidden sin by punishment. Contemplating this, let us glorify the all-holy Providence of God and humble ourselves before it.

An instructive example of self-condemnation and self-reproach united with the glorification of the righteous and most merciful judgments of God was given by the three holy Hebrew youths in captivity and in the furnace of Babylon. “Blessed are You, O Lord God of our fathers”, they said, “praised and glorified is Your name forever. For You are righteous in all that You have done for us, and all Your works are true, and Your ways are straight, and all Your judgments are true, and You have made true judgments in all that You have brought upon us and upon the holy city of our fathers Jerusalem; for in truth and in justice You have brought all these things upon us because of our sins. For we have sinned and transgressed, departing from You, and in all things we have acted wrongly” (Dan 3:26–29). The holy Youths, cast into the burning furnace for their faithfulness to the true God, and not burning there but dwelling in it as in a cool chamber, acknowledged and confessed themselves as having sinned together with their compatriots, who had in fact departed from God. Out of love for their neighbors, they extended to themselves the sins of their neighbors. Out of humility, though they were themselves holy and righteous, they did not wish to separate themselves from the brethren who were enslaved to sin. From this condition—from the state of self-condemnation, humility, and love for mankind, from the justification of God’s permissions—they then offered prayer to God for their salvation. In this same way, let us glorify God’s Providence and confess our sinfulness in all the afflictions that befall us—both personal and communal—and upon the foundation of this glorification and confession let us entreat God for mercy. Holy Scripture testifies that upon God’s servants who walk the path of God’s commandments, particular afflictions are sent as an aid to their work, as the Saviour of the world also said, that the heavenly Father “every branch that bears fruit” in Christ, “He prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (Jn 15:2). These purifying afflictions are called the permissions or judgments of God; of them the holy David sang: “The judgments of the Lord are true and altogether righteous” (Ps 18:10). “Teach me Your judgments!” (Ps 118:108). May I know and be assured that all the bitter things that happen to me come by the Providence of God, by the will of my God! Then I shall also know that “Your judgments will help me” in my feeble and inadequate service of God (Ps 118:175).

As an example of how God’s judgments assist His servants who desire to please Him—how they raise them toward that holy activity to which they could in no way have attained without the help of God’s judgments—let us cite the events involving the Constantinople nobleman Xenophon, his wife, and his two sons. The wealthy and eminent Xenophon led a life of the most devout kind—the kind that the general piety of Christians of that age made possible amid the world, and that today can be lived only in withdrawal from the world. He wished his two sons to be heirs both to his estate and to his position at the imperial court, and to his piety. At that time there was a famous school in Syrian Berytus (the modern Beirut). There Xenophon sent his sons to study the wisdom of this age. The route from Constantinople to Berytus was by sea. Once, his sons, having visited their father on account of his dangerous illness, were returning to school. Suddenly a most powerful storm arose on the Mediterranean Sea; the ship was wrecked, and both young men were cast by the waves at different places onto the shores of Palestine. In this dire situation, nourished from childhood by devout thoughts and inclinations, the sons of Xenophon recognized in the affliction that had overtaken them a Divine calling to the monastic life, and—as if by mutual agreement—entered Palestinian monasteries. After a considerable time they encountered one another; after a considerable time Xenophon learned that the ship on which his sons had been sailing had been wrecked in the storm, and that all those on board had vanished without a trace. The deeply grieved father turned to prayer; after an all-night vigil in his cell he received a Divine revelation that his sons were overshadowed by a special mercy and grace of God. Understanding from this that they had taken monastic vows, and knowing that in Palestine—off the shores of which the ship had been wrecked—there were very many monasteries, Xenophon set out for Jerusalem with his wife: there he saw his sons, and returned to Constantinople no more. From Jerusalem he arranged the disposal of his estate, which was sold: the proceeds were distributed among monasteries, churches, and the poor.[8] Xenophon and Maria (as his wife was called) followed the example of their sons John and Arcadius, entered the monastic life, and in it both parents and children attained great spiritual progress. They could in no way have been found worthy of it had they remained in the worldly life, however devout. God, foreseeing their progress, led them to it by His inscrutable judgments. The path of God’s judgments is bitter, as the holy Apostle testified: “For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives” (Heb 12:6). The fruits of God’s judgments are most desirable and priceless. From the lives of many other chosen ones of God we are convinced that God sends afflictions to aid the good work of His servants, and through them purifies and perfects that work. A person’s own work alone is insufficient, as the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian observes. “Gold covered with rust,” he says, “can in no other way be purified and regain its natural luster than by being cast into fire and carefully hammered with the hammers: so also the soul, defiled by the rust of sin and rendered entirely useless, can in no other way be cleansed and regain its ancient beauty than by abiding through many temptations and entering the furnace of afflictions. This is expressed also by the words of our Lord God and Saviour: ‘Sell what you possess and take up your cross, and come, follow Me’ (Mt 19:21; Mk 10:21). Here, by the cross, temptations and afflictions are signified. To distribute all one’s possessions and yet not struggle manfully against the temptations and afflictions that occur seems to me a sign of a negligent soul that does not know what is for its good: for those who renounce their possessions gain nothing from that renunciation alone, if they do not endure to the end in temptations and afflictions for God’s sake. Christ did not say: in the laying aside of your possessions, but ‘by your endurance you will gain your souls’ (Lk 21:19). It is clear that giving to the needy and fleeing from the world are praiseworthy and beneficial; but they alone, by themselves, without the endurance of temptations, cannot make a man perfect according to God… One who has scattered his wealth among the needy and withdrawn from the world and from material things glories with great satisfaction of conscience in the hope of reward, and sometimes his very reward is stolen away by vainglory. But one who, after giving all to the poor, endures sorrows with thanksgiving of soul and lives amid afflictions—he tastes every bitterness and painful labor, yet his reward remains unplundered; great recompense awaits him in this age and the next, as one who has imitated Christ’s sufferings, as one who has suffered with Him in the days of the visitation of temptations and afflictions. And therefore I implore you, brethren in Christ: let us strive, according to the word of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, as we have renounced the world and all that belongs to the world, to pass also through the ‘narrow gate’ (Lk 13:24), which consists in the cutting off of our fleshly understanding and will and in fleeing from them: for without dying to the flesh, to its lusts and will, it is impossible to obtain the rest, the liberation from the passions, and the freedom that appear in us from the consolation wrought by the Holy Spirit.” Why are we unwilling to submit to the afflictions permitted to us by God’s Providence for the salvation of our souls—to which God Himself calls us?[9] — Because sensual pleasure and vainglory hold dominion over us: at the instigation of the first, we are unwilling to constrain our body; at the instigation of the second, we value the opinion of men. Both these passions are trampled by living faith, just as, conversely, they operate because of unbelief. To the Venerable Abba Dorotheus’ question: “What am I to do? I fear the shame of dishonors”, the holy John the Prophet answered: “Not to endure dishonor is the work of unbelief. Brother! Jesus became man and endured dishonors: are you greater than Jesus? This is unbelief and demonic spiritual delusion. He who desires humility, as he says, but does not endure dishonor cannot acquire humility. You have now heard the true teaching: do not disregard it. Otherwise the matter itself will disregard you. Concerning shame: by calling to mind the public shame before the Lord which will overtake sinners, you will count all temporal shame as nothing.” In general, the remembrance of God’s omnipresence and omnipotence restrains the heart from that vacillation into which the thoughts of unbelief strive to cast it, leaning upon vainglory and a wrong love for the body. The holy Prophet David said: “I keep the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart rejoiced and my tongue was glad; moreover, my flesh also will dwell in hope”[10] (Ps 15:8–9). “My heart rejoiced” through the action of faith and humility! The words of glorifying God and of self-reproach bring joy to the lips and tongue! The very flesh feels the power of incorruption entering into it and being poured into it from the feelings of a heart that is contrite and humble, consoled and consoled by God!

If no temptation can touch a person without God’s will, then complaints, murmuring, resentment, self-justification, and the blaming of neighbors and circumstances are movements of the soul against God’s will—they are attempts to resist and oppose God.[11] Let us be terrified by this calamity! When reflecting on whatever affliction is ours, let us not linger too long in reflection, lest it imperceptibly draw us from humble-mindedness into manifest or concealed self-justification, into a state contrary to God’s dispensation for us. Distrusting our own weakness, let us quickly take refuge in the sure weapon of self-reproach! On two crosses near the Saviour two thieves were crucified. One of them railed and blasphemed against the Lord; the other acknowledged himself worthy of punishment for his evil deeds, while recognizing the Lord as an innocent sufferer. Suddenly, self-reproach opened for him the eyes of his heart, and in the innocent human sufferer he beheld the all-holy God suffering for mankind. This was not seen by the learned, nor by the priests, nor by the Jewish hierarchs, though they rested upon the Law of God and had studied it diligently according to the letter. The thief becomes a theologian, and before the face of all who counted themselves wise and mighty—who were mocking the Lord—he confesses Him, trampling by his holy opinion the erroneous self-opinion of the wise in themselves and the strong in themselves. The thief-blasphemer was brought down to hell by the sin of blasphemy, which is the most grievous of all sins; there the eternal torment was increased for him. The thief who came through sincere self-condemnation to true knowledge of God—through his confession of the Redeemer, possible and fitting only for the humble—was led into paradise. The same cross belongs to both thieves! Contrary thoughts, feelings, and words were the cause of contrary consequences.[12] With complete justice these two thieves serve as an image of all humanity: every man, having spent his life wrongly, contrary to God’s purpose, to the harm of his salvation and blessedness in eternity, is in relation to himself both a thief, a robber, and a murderer. To this evildoer a cross is sent as the last means of salvation, so that the evildoer, confessing his crimes and acknowledging himself worthy of punishment, may retain the salvation granted by God. To ease the suffering and to supply spiritual consolations during the crucifixion and sojourn upon the cross, the incarnate God was crucified and hung upon the wood of the cross near the crucified man. He who murmurs, complains, and is indignant at his afflictions definitively rejects his own salvation: not recognizing and not confessing the Saviour, he is cast down into hell, into eternal and fruitless torments, as one who has fully alienated and rejected God. He who, on the contrary, opens his sinfulness through self-reproach, acknowledging himself worthy of temporal and eternal punishment, enters by degrees through self-reproach into an active and living knowledge of the Redeemer, which is “eternal life” (Jn 17:3). To the one crucified on the cross by God’s will, glorifying God from his cross, the “mystery of the cross” is revealed, and with it the mystery of the redemption of mankind by the God-man. Such is the fruit of self-reproach. In relation to God’s almighty and all-holy will, no other fitting feelings can exist in man besides unlimited reverence and equally unlimited submission. From these feelings, when they have become the possession of a person, “patience” is formed.

[1] The Flower-Garden of the holy Elias, ch. 62. The Philokalia, pt. 4.

[2] Philotheus of Sinai, ch. 13. The Philokalia, pt. 2.

[3] Reply 311 of the Venerable Barsanuphius the Great and John.

[4] The Alphabetical Patericon, on Archbishop Theophilus, and Abba Dorotheus, Instruction 7.

[5] The Alphabetical Patericon.

[6] Instruction 7, On Self-Reproach.

[7] Ibid.

[8] The Menaion Reader, January 26.

[9] Homily 4, edition of 1852.

[10] Reply 304.

[11] St Peter of Damascus, Book 1, The Philokalia, Part 3.

[12] Venerable Isaiah the Hermit. Homily 8, Ch. 2.

On Patience (Part 2)

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of heaven and earth, having come for the salvation of the human race with irrefutable proofs of His Divinity and with unlimited power over all visible and invisible creation, was received not only without the glory and honor due Him, but was met with hatred, suspicion, and murderous designs. Throughout the entire time of His earthly sojourn He was persecuted by slander, evil speech, petty harassment, and cunning; finally He was seized as a criminal during His nocturnal prayer, bound, dragged away by force, brought before a court that had resolved upon murder before the trial, subjected to mockery, blows, spitting, various torments and tortures, and death upon the cross—the shameful death of criminal offenders. Like a meek lamb standing silent and motionless before his shearer, so stood the Lord before His impious judges and inhuman murderers, responding with Divine silence to their insolent questions, slanders, and insults. Self-condemnation and self-reproach were not fitting for Him, who was without sin: by His silence He concealed His Divine righteousness, so that we, by self-condemnation and self-reproach renouncing our counterfeit, pretended righteousness, might be able to become partakers of His all-holy and all-perfect righteousness. Neither the righteousness of fallen nature nor the righteousness of the Mosaic Law could lead us into the lost eternal blessedness: it is the righteousness of the Gospel and of the cross that leads into it. There is no one perfect among men according to human virtues: it is the cross of Christ that leads to Christian perfection, and the Holy Spirit seals this perfection as a gift. Humility raised the Lord to the cross, and humility raises the disciples of Christ to the cross—which is holy “patience”—incomprehensible to carnal minds, as the silence of Jesus was incomprehensible to Herod, to Pontius Pilate, and to the Jewish hierarchs. Let us beseech the Lord to reveal to us the mystery and to grant us the love of His cross, to find us worthy to bear in the proper manner all the afflictions permitted to us by God’s all-gracious Providence in time, for our salvation and blessedness in eternity. The Lord has promised us: “He who endures to the end will be saved” (Mt 24:13). Amen.

On Purity

On Purity (Part 1)

Fornication was a sin when the Old Testament held sway—a sin as a dishonoring of human nature, as an abuse of an important property of nature, as a transgression of the laws of nature. The offense was considered so grave that its perpetrator was punished by death. In the New Testament this sin acquired a new weight, because human bodies received a new dignity. They were made members of the body of Christ, and one who violates purity thereby dishonors Christ, severs union with Him, and transforms “members of Christ” into “members of a harlot” (1 Cor. 6:15). The fornicator is punished by the death of the soul. The Holy Spirit withdraws from one who has fallen into the sin of fornication; the sinner is reckoned as one who has fallen into mortal sin—a sin that takes away salvation, a sin that is the pledge of inescapable perdition and eternal torment in hell, if this sin is not healed in good time by repentance.

What is purity? It is the virtue opposed to the passion of fornication; it is the estrangement of the body from actual falling into sin and from all actions that lead to sin, the estrangement of the mind from thoughts and fantasies of fornication, and of the heart from sensations and impulses of fornication—and thereafter follows the estrangement of the body from carnal desire.

Some maintain that falling into the sin of fornication in body and falling into it in mind and heart are transgressions of equal gravity and significance. They base this opinion on the words of the Saviour: “Whoever looks at a woman in order to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt. 5:28). An unjust opinion! This was said as a supplement to the Old Testament commandment; it was said to those who recognized bodily fornication alone as sin, not understanding that “evil thoughts”—among which are numbered thoughts of fornication—“proceed from the heart and defile a man” (Mt. 15:19–20), “separate from God” (Wis. 1:3), and take away purity—the means of beholding God. To take pleasure in thoughts and sensations of fornication is the fornication of the heart and the defilement of a person, rendering him incapable of communion with God; but bodily fornication is an alteration of the entire human being through its commingling with another body (1 Cor. 6:16), is complete estrangement from God, is death, is perdition. To emerge from the first condition one must sober oneself; to emerge from the second, one must rise again, one must be born anew through repentance.

Some maintain that it is impossible for a person to be free from enslavement to the flesh, and still more from thoughts and sensations of fornication, and that such a state is unnatural. It is God who legislates—He who knows what is possible and impossible for us, better than we know ourselves—and therefore the attainment of purity, both bodily and of the heart, is possible for man. It is God who legislates, the Creator of nature—and therefore purity of heart is not contrary to human nature. It is unnatural to fallen nature; it was natural to nature as it was created, and it can become natural again after renewal. It can be cultivated and acquired: bread, vegetables, and fruit trees do not grow of themselves on the earth; but when the earth is properly prepared and useful plants are set and sown, then they grow in exceptional abundance for the nourishment and joy of men. Uncultivated earth produces only weeds, or produces only grass—fodder for beasts, not food for men. Ascetic struggle is necessary: the object of that struggle is worthy of the intense and laborious ascetic effort undertaken for its sake by those chosen for it. Purity is called holiness in Scripture: “This is the will of God, your holiness”, says the Apostle, “that you keep yourselves from fornication: and that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in holiness and honor, not in the passion of desire” (1 Thess. 4:3–5).

The purity of those living in marriage consists in the faithfulness of spouses to one another. The purity of virgins and widows who have betrothed themselves to Christ consists in faithfulness to Christ. And it is to them that my humble, consoling, encouraging, and truthful word is addressed—a word drawn from the teaching of truth: from the All-Holy Word of God as expounded by the holy Fathers, by their holy word and experience.

When the Lord forbade the voluntary divorce permitted by the Mosaic Law, and declared that what God has joined together cannot be dissolved by man except on account of one partner’s actual fall into fornication—at that point the disciples of the Lord raised the question of the celibate life. The Lord said in response: “Not all receive this word, but those to whom it has been given… Let him who is able to receive it, receive it” (Mt. 19:11–12). Who is this one “who is able to receive it”? By what sign should each of us judge and determine our own capacity or incapacity for the celibate life? The answer is drawn from the writings of the holy Fathers: “by our own will.” “The capacity is given to those who sincerely ask it of God with earnestness of heart”, says blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria: “ask”,—the Lord said,—“and it will be given to you… everyone who asks, receives” (Mt. 7:7–8). The sincerity of the petition is proven by a manner of life conforming to the petition, and by constancy in the petition, even if the fulfilment of the petition is deferred for a longer or shorter time, even if our desire is assailed by various temptations. The monk’s own ascetic efforts, by which he strives to overcome and transform the property of his fallen nature, are only witnesses of his true will.[1] The victory and transformation of nature belong to God alone. “Where nature has been conquered”, says St John of the Ladder, “the coming of the One who is above nature is acknowledged.” God transforms the natural impulse in one who by all means in his power proves his sincere desire that this impulse be changed: then the Spirit of God touches the spirit of the human person, who, having felt the touch of God’s Spirit, turns entirely—with all his thoughts and sensations—toward God, having lost his sympathy for the objects of carnal desire. Then the words of the Apostle are fulfilled:[2] “he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor. 6:17).[3] Then the very body is drawn whither the spirit tends.

By reason of their will—proven and attested through experience—many who had not known woman persevered to the end of their lives in this blessed state, or preserved their virginity; others after married life maintained an irreproachable widowhood; still others passed from a dissolute life to a chaste and holy one; and finally, some who had wavered in their will returned to it again, and recovered through repentance the chastity they had lost. All of them not only refrained from falling into fornication in body, but entered into battle with thoughts and sensations of passion, resisted them, conquered them, and received from God the freedom of purity, which is wholly foreign to any communion with sin, even if sin does not cease from its assaults. Thus the force of a storm ceases to affect the traveler when he enters a well-built house, even though the storm may continue or rage even more fiercely.—Beloved brethren, monks! Let us not be faint-hearted or despondent. Let us pay no heed to the demons who insinuate distrust of the path we have chosen; let us pay no heed to human judgments and counsels pronounced from ignorance or from depravity and ill intent: let us believe the Lord our God, who has promised to hear us and to help us if we remain faithful to Him. Let us attest this faithfulness by our constant striving toward Him and our constant repentance for our deviations from this striving. It is impossible not to fall into greater or lesser deviations—owing to our weakness, to our limitations, to the corruption of nature by sin, to the cunning of our invisible enemies, and to the multiplied snares that are now boundless in number. We have but a short time to labor! A short time to suffer in the struggle with ourselves! Soon will come the hour of death, which will wrest us from the torment of the battle and from the danger of falling into sin. O! if only at that hour, on the threshold of eternity, we might behold the arms of the Heavenly Father stretched out toward us, and hear His consoling voice: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will set you over many things: enter into the joy of your Lord” (Mt. 25:23). Until that hour let us struggle with courage, placing no trust in our flesh, no trust in our dispassion, whether imagined or real. Those who have relied upon themselves, upon the mortification of their flesh, upon their own dispassion and state of grace, have been subjected to terrible temptations.

St Isaac the Syrian said: “He who does not voluntarily remove himself from the causes of sin is involuntarily dragged into sin against his will.” This rule, relating to monastic life in general, is especially important for those who have entered into struggle with the property of nature that appeared in it after the fall.[4] It is useful for us not to see at all that fruit of which we have renounced the tasting. For this reason the rules of the holy Fathers forbid women to enter men’s monasteries, a practice still observed to this day on the holy Mount Athos. In the Life of St John of the Ladder it is said that through solitary life in the desert and withdrawing himself from the sight of persons he finally extinguished in himself the flame of desire. All the holy Fathers endeavored as much as possible to avoid acquaintance and association with women, and handed down this manner of conduct to us in their soul-saving, divinely-inspired writings. The Fathers, knowing the ease with which man falls, trusted neither in their holiness nor in their advanced age and its incapacity for sin. They did not cease, to the very end of their lives, from withdrawing from the occasions of sin: such withdrawal is the most powerful means for victory over sin. When the Venerable Sisoes the Great had grown very old, his disciple, Abba Abraham, suggested that they take up residence closer to human habitation. The ninety-year-old elder replied: “Let us settle where there are no women.” The disciple objected: “And where is the place that has no women, save the desert?” The elder said: “Then place me in the desert, my child.” A person’s good will is strengthened far from temptations and acquires uncommon firmness and strength; on the contrary, when brought near temptations, it begins little by little to weaken, and finally is completely perverted. So ice grows ever harder in the frost; but when subjected to the influence of warmth, it melts and disappears.[5] Brethren! It is fitting for us to withdraw from acquaintance with women, especially from close acquaintance, from frequent meetings and conversation with them. You who have purposed to conquer nature! Understand that this conquest is impossible if we continually expose ourselves to the influence of nature and arouse its operation within us.

The Venerable Pimen the Great said to one who was warred upon by the passion of fornication: “If a monk bridles his belly and his tongue and preserves withdrawal from the world, he will not die”—that is, he will not die the death of the soul, which overtakes every person who has sunk into fornication.[5] By “withdrawal from the world” is meant here the removal from a scattered manner of life, from free association and broad and familiar acquaintance, all of which inflame carnal desire.—The Venerable Isaiah the Hermit used to say that the warfare of fornication is intensified by five occasions: idle talk, vainglory, much sleep, adorning oneself with clothing, and gluttony.[6] Among the causes that arouse the passion of fornication, two act with particular force and harm: violation of withdrawal from the world, and gluttony. It is difficult to say which of the two is more ruinous—both are destructive. One who has submitted to and been enslaved by either of them will be unable to stand firm in the struggle against his own nature.

To attain purity it is necessary to reject both causes. Having given special attention to guarding oneself from the principal causes that arouse desire, we must not leave the secondary ones without due attention either: we must guard ourselves from these as well. Even a cause of lesser force acquires especial power through habitual indulgence in it and carelessness about it. For instance: some people fast, live in solitude and without possessions, and implore God to bridle the desires of their nature; but at the same time they allow themselves to speak evil, to reproach, to judge their neighbors, to mock them—and the help of God withdraws from them; they are left to themselves and find no strength to resist the sinful impulses of fallen nature. In a certain community there lived a recluse by the name of Timothy. One of the brothers in the community fell into temptation. The superior, learning of this, asked Timothy how he should deal with the fallen brother. The recluse advised that the one who had stumbled be expelled. When he was expelled, the temptation of the fallen brother passed to Timothy and brought him into danger. Timothy began to cry out with tears to God for help and mercy. And there came to him a voice: “Timothy! Know that I have sent you this temptation precisely because you despised your brother at the time of his temptation.” With members of Christ—Christians—one must deal very carefully and wisely:[7] one must share in compassion for their infirmities, and cut off only those who, affording no hope of recovery, merely infect others with their disease.

It is of great importance to preserve the body from falling into fornication; but this alone is not sufficient for that God-pleasing purity by which God is beheld. We bear an inescapable obligation to cleanse the soul itself from thoughts, fantasies, and sensations of lust, as our Saviour commanded us. “As the body”, says the Venerable Macarius the Great, “joining itself to another body, is infected with impurity—so the soul, uniting with evil and foul thoughts and consenting to them, is corrupted. If anyone corrupts the soul and mind by consenting to evil, he is liable to punishment. We must guard both the body from visible sin and the soul from impure thoughts: for she is the bride of Christ.” Having removed from ourselves the occasions of sin—such as frequent association and close acquaintance with women, free intercourse and a scattered manner of life, gluttony and the enjoyment of food and drink, luxury and excess in clothing and other furnishings of the cell, judging our neighbors, evil-speaking, jesting, idle talk, and excessive talking—let us resolve to refuse to take pleasure in lustful thoughts, fantasies, and sensations. We must not arouse them in ourselves, and we must boldly reject them when they arise from our fallen nature or are presented to us by the enemies of our salvation—the demons. St Hesychius of Jerusalem says:[8] “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord”, said the Lord, “shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father” (Mt. 7:21). And the will of His Father is this: “You who love the Lord, hate evil” (Ps. 96:10). Therefore: let us practice the Prayer of Jesus Christ and let us come to hate wicked thoughts. In this way we shall do the will of God. “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit” (2 Cor. 7:1), the Apostle exhorts us.[9]

The holy Fathers command us to “watch the head of the serpent” (Gen. 3:14–15), that is, to detect the very beginning of a sinful thought and to reject it. This applies to all sinful thoughts, but most of all to the thought of fornication, which is aided by fallen nature and on that account has a particular influence over us. The Venerable Cassian of Rome enjoins a novice monk to confess immediately to his elder any sinful thought that comes to him.[10] This method is excellent; for the novice it is the best; but even for the more advanced it is in some cases extremely necessary and always profitable, as one that decisively severs all friendship with the sin toward which ailing nature is drawn. Blessed is he who can employ this method! Blessed is the novice who has found an elder to whom he can disclose his thoughts! For those monks who have no possibility of constant recourse to an elder, the Fathers command that any sinful thought which arises be immediately rejected, on no account entering into conversation or debate with it—since such engagement will inevitably lead to being drawn in and overcome by sin—and that one turn at once to prayer. This method was employed with the greatest success and fruit by the Venerable Mary of Egypt, as may be seen from her Life.[11] “If anyone”, said the Venerable Nil Sorsky, “at every tribulation that befalls him, and at every thought brought by the enemy, cries out with weeping for help to the goodness of God, he will very soon feel peace, if he prays with understanding.” “Just as fire is naturally fitted to consume dry wood, so are pure tears naturally fitted to consume all defilements of flesh and spirit”, said St John of the Ladder.[12][13]

When we are alone and are assailed by thoughts and fantasies of fornication, or when the body is inflamed in an unusual manner, we must fall on our knees and on our face before the holy icons, imitating the practice of the great Mary of Egypt, and implore God with tears or weeping to have mercy upon us. Experience will not be slow to demonstrate God’s nearness to us and His power over our nature: this will grant us a living faith, and living faith will inspire us with extraordinary strength and will bring us constant victories. Let us not be surprised if even after a prolonged struggle, followed by an equally prolonged peace—which led us to the thought that the poison and death of fornicating impulses in our nature had been extinguished—there arises again a fierce warfare, and unseemly impulses and movements come alive again in the body.[14] Our enemy is shameless; he does not refrain from directing his arrows against the greatest Saints of God, for experience has shown him that the attempt is sometimes successful and brings down and shatters even vessels of the Spirit—as happened to the bearer of the Spirit who walked one evening on the roof of his royal house (2 Sam. 11:2). Our flesh is an unfaithful friend: it desires another flesh not only from its own impulse but also from an alien impulse—from the impulse of the fallen spirit, who finds enjoyment for himself in the defilements of a flesh that does not belong to him. Suddenly its unseemly, impudent, vehement demand appears! For this reason the Venerable Pimen the Great used to say: “As the armor-bearer of a king stands before him always ready, so must the soul be always ready against the demon of fornication.”[5]

The life and practice of the ancient monks can in many respects only be admired by us, but by no means imitated; we can only contemplate them as a divine wonder and glorify God on their account for having granted to frail humanity incomprehensible strength and holiness. Among such practices belongs the method of struggle that the advanced monks of the first centuries of monasticism employed against thoughts and fantasies of fornication. They did not at first resist the thought but allowed it to act somewhat—in their expression, to “enter”—and then wrestled with it.—The Venerable Pimen the Great, before he attained perfection, used to seek edification from the counsel and teaching of holy elders of his own time. He sought counsel also from Abba Joseph, who lived in silence at Panephosis. Once Pimen asked the abba: “How should I act when impulses of desire come to me? Should I resist them, or should I allow them to enter?” The elder answered: “Allow them to enter and wrestle with them.” Having received this answer, Pimen returned to Scetis, where he dwelt in silence. After this a certain monk from the Thebaid happened to come to Scetis; he related to the brethren: “I asked Abba Joseph: if impulses of desire come to me, should I resist them or let them enter? And he said: by no means allow the impulses to enter, but cut them off immediately.” Abba Pimen, hearing that Father Joseph had said this to the Thebaid monk, went again to him at Panephosis and said: “Abba! I did not conceal my thoughts from you, but you said one thing to me and another to the Thebaid monk.” The elder replied: “Do you not know that I love you?” “I know it”, replied Pimen. “Did you not yourself”, continued the elder, “ask me to tell you what I would say to myself? When impulses of desire come to you and you allow them to enter, and then wrestle with them, you thereby become more skilled. I said this to you as I would say it to myself. But when impulses of desire come to novices, it is not profitable for them to let them in; they must immediately reject them.” From the answers of Pimen the Great himself, when he had already become a guide of monastics, in similar circumstances, it is evident that allowing the thoughts of fornication to enter was forbidden to monks who still sympathized with the passion, and was permitted to those who were living a heavenly life. The existence of this practice is explained by the elevated spiritual advancement of monasticism in general at that time: clearly, a state of dispassion was necessary for such an ascetic effort. By the later Fathers this practice, as being very dangerous and presumably in consequence of unfortunate experiences, was forbidden to all monks without exception. “Do not permit”, said St Isaac the Syrian, “your mind to be tempted by fornicating thoughts or by the fantasy of persons who have an influence over you, supposing that you will not be overcome by them; for thus did the wise ones grow dark and were put to shame.” We must hold firmly to this teaching.[15][16][17]

From the lives of the holy servants of God we see that some of them endured a most fierce and prolonged struggle with thoughts and sensations of fornication as they passed from a passionate state to dispassion. This was experienced not only by those ascetics who had previously led a dissolute life—such as the Venerable Moses the Ethiopian and Mary of Egypt—but also by those who had been virgins: Symeon, the Fool for Christ’s sake; John the Many-Sufferer of the Kiev Caves; and others. The fierceness of the struggle drove them to intensified and supernatural ascetic efforts. And since God’s gracious gift is always commensurate and proportionate to the preceding sorrow and labor, the saints just mentioned were granted—in accordance with their extraordinary effort and the ferocity of the warfare permitted them—extraordinary gifts of grace. Their struggle and ascetic effort were unique events in ascetic life and cannot serve as complete guidance for all ascetics. It is possible and proper to imitate as much as possible the strength of will, the resolution, the faith, and the self-denial of these servants of God; but their actual ascetic effort remains inimitable. It is generally recognized by the most discerning Fathers that in the struggle against the impulses of nature, abstinence from food and other bodily efforts must be prudent and moderate, that carnal desire is only restrained by these efforts, and that it is overcome by humility and prayerful weeping, which draw to the ascetic Divine grace—that excessive bodily efforts are more harmful than beneficial when, by over-weakening the bodily forces, they hinder engagement in prayer, weeping, and the works of humility. In The Paterikon the following account is read: “A certain devout man in Egypt left his wife and children, renounced the world, and withdrew into the desert. A fierce warfare from the demon of fornication, bringing him remembrances of his wife, arose against him. He confessed this to the Fathers. Seeing that he was an ascetic and fulfilled everything commanded him, they laid upon him a doubled ascetic effort drawn from various lives of the holy Fathers. From this effort he grew so weak that he took to his bed. By God’s providence, an elder from Scetis came there. In the Egyptian Scetis—the name given to the barren and wild desert situated not far from Alexandria—there dwelt venerable monks who abounded especially in gifts of grace and the gift of spiritual discernment. The Scetan visited the sick man and asked him: Abba! Why are you ill? He answered: I am one who was married, recently come to this desert, and the enemy sent warfare upon me on account of my wife. I confessed this to the Fathers. They laid various ascetic efforts upon me, drawn from the lives of the holy Fathers. When I began to fulfill them, I fell into exhaustion, while the warfare increased doubly in my body. The Scetan elder, hearing this, was grieved, and said to him: The Fathers, being strong, rightly commanded you to act thus. But if you wish, listen to my humble counsel: leave off fulfilling these efforts; take a moderate amount of food at its proper time, perform a moderate rule, and cast all your care upon the Lord—He will conquer the enemy who wars against you.[18] By your own effort you cannot obtain victory in this warfare. The warred-upon brother began to conduct himself according to the counsel of the Scetan elder; within a few days he felt relief from his illness, and the warfare withdrew from him.” The monk of Scetis renowned for his special gift of spiritual discernment, the Venerable Agathon, was questioned about the passion of fornication.[5] He answered the one who asked: “Go, cast your strength in the dust before God, and you will find rest.” Similar answers on this subject were given by other great Fathers as well. This is altogether right and true: if only God can transform nature, then the acknowledgment of the corruption produced in nature by original sin, and humble entreaty for the healing and renewal of nature by its Creator, is the most powerful and effective weapon in the struggle against nature. This weapon is weakened by reliance on oneself, to which excessive and disproportionate bodily effort leads.[19] The Venerable Cassian of Rome observes that “the passion of desire necessarily wars against the soul until the soul acknowledges that this struggle is beyond its strength, until it acknowledges that it cannot obtain victory by its own labor and effort, if it does not have the help and protection of the Lord.” This holy Father spent considerable time among the Scetan Fathers and was imbued with their teaching.

[1] A commentary on the above-cited words of Chapter 19 of the Gospel of Matthew.

[2] Homily 15, Ch. 8.

[3] St Isaac the Syrian, Homilies 43 and 38.

[4] Homily 57. The same teaching is found in Homily 56.

[5] The Alphabetical Patericon.

[6] The Sayings of the Venerable, appended after his spiritual and moral Homilies. Moscow, edition of 1860.

[7] Memorable Sayings concerning Abba Pimen, Ch. 70.

[8] Homily 7, Ch. 4.

[9] Chapter 11. The Philokalia, Part 2.

[10] Venerable Cassian. Book 4. On the Institutes for Those Who Renounce the World, Ch. 37.

[11] The Menaion Reader, April 1.

[12] Homily 7, Ch. 31.

[13] Homily 8.

[14] Venerable Macarius the Great. Homily 5, Ch. 14.

[15] The Alphabetical Patericon and Memorable Sayings concerning Abba Joseph of Panephosis, Ch. 3.

[16] Homily 2.

[17] Ibid., concerning Abba Pimen, Ch. 62.

[18] The Manuscript Paterikon.

[19] Book VI, on the spirit of fornication, Ch. 5.

On Purity (Part 2)

Discoursing on purity, we find it essentially necessary to address a humble word to the ignorance of our time, which prides itself so greatly on its knowledge, and to extend a helping hand to those who are drowning and languishing in confusion, despondency, and grief by reason of their ignorance. Very many who desire to lead a devout life fall into complete bewilderment when thoughts and sensations of carnal desire arise in them. They regard this as something strange, something that ought not to be, and are thereby brought to spiritual prostration and disorder, often resolving to abandon the God-pleasing life, reckoning themselves incapable of it. A most erroneous view of oneself! Our nature is in a state of fall. In a state of fall, carnal desires are natural to it and cannot but arise from it. Therefore one must not be surprised or fall into bewilderment at the appearance of thoughts, fantasies, and sensations of desire: this is a natural necessity. Every human being is subject to it; all holy persons were subject to it.

This is not all. For progress in the spiritual life it is absolutely necessary that our passions should arise and thus become manifest.[1] When the passions become manifest in the ascetic, he enters into struggle with them. One who has entered the struggle and fights courageously can gain victory and be crowned with the crown of victory by the Holy Spirit. We offer our beloved brethren the counsel to examine attentively the lives and writings of the holy Fathers: we shall see that all the servants of God were subjected to the trial and labor of this struggle, passed through the fire of passions and the water of tears, and entered into the rest of dispassion. The Venerable Abba Dorotheus, upon entering a monastery, was greatly tempted by carnal desires, and had recourse in this struggle to the counsel and guidance of the Venerable Barsanuphius the Great. The answers of the Great Father contain excellent guidance for courageous resistance to the mad and corrupt demands of fallen nature.[2] In one of these answers the Venerable Barsanuphius speaks of himself, saying that he was warred upon by the passion of fornication for five years. “The warfare raised by the flesh”, he said, “is ended by prayer with weeping.” The Venerable Anthony the Great, as is related in his Life, was urgently assailed by thoughts and fantasies of fornication. Many of the saints, even after being renewed by the Holy Spirit and having attained the haven of blessed dispassion, suddenly experienced unseemly impulses and movements of nature, and an onslaught of impure thoughts and fantasies—as happened to the Venerable Macarius of Alexandria, the Venerable Joannicius the Great, and others.[3] For this reason the holy Fathers said that one’s flesh can be trusted only when it has lain down in the grave.[4]

We enter a monastery for this very purpose: to uncover the passions that live hidden within us, and to understand our nature’s relationship to the spirits of malice, to which it subjected itself voluntarily.[5] We sever our ties with the world, leave the society of men, of relatives, and of possessions, so that we may see our inner bonds and break them by the right hand of the Lord. The second cannot take place unless the first has been accomplished beforehand. Only then can we come to humility of spirit, when we see within ourselves the fall of humanity, its captivity, the fierce dominion over us of demons and of eternal death; only then can we cry out to God in prayer and weeping from the depths of the heart, with our whole soul, and by such a cry, such an acknowledgment of our perdition and helpless weakness, draw to ourselves Divine grace as a helper. For this reason the warfare that rises within ourselves contributes to our spiritual progress, if we fight courageously and do not submit to defeat with pusillanimity. The Venerable Abba Dorotheus relates that the disciple of a certain great elder was subject to carnal warfare. The elder, seeing the disciple’s labor, said to him: “Do you wish me to pray to God that He lighten the warfare for you?” The disciple answered: “Father, although I am laboring, I see fruit from the labor within myself: rather pray to God that He give me patience in the warfare.” “Such is one who truly wishes to be saved!” exclaims the Venerable Dorotheus at the close of the account. The Venerable Pimen the Great related, for the instruction and consolation of the brethren, concerning the great servant of God John the Dwarf, that he had besought God and was delivered from the action of desire, and on that account remained in unbroken peace. Then he went to a certain elder very experienced in the spiritual life and told him what had occurred. The elder replied:[6] “Go, pray to God that the warfare and that contrition and humility which you formerly had on account of the warfare may return to you; for through them the soul comes to progress.” Let us not, then, give ourselves over to confusion, despondency, pusillanimity, or prostration when fierce waves of desire rise up in us, and thoughts fall upon us like powerful winds! Let us resist sin: through this struggle we shall work out a living faith in God and a living knowledge of God.[7]

We harm ourselves greatly and frequently by requiring of ourselves what is not proper to our condition. For instance: those who have just entered the ascetic life, steeped and saturated, as it were, with desire, wish that in themselves there should be no sympathy with thoughts, fantasies, and sensations of the flesh. Such sympathy exists; it is natural; it cannot but be. It is senseless to seek the impossible. Desire must necessarily arise from a nature infected with it; but as soon as it arises in whatever form, we must immediately, with a forcing of ourselves, counteract it by the means described above. We must, contrary to the powerful will of the whole of nature, by the action of the feeble will of the mind alone (Rom. 7:23), guided by the Word of God, wrench ourselves free from our captivity, from our old self, from our fallen nature. “The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force”, the Lord said, and only those who compel themselves, overcoming their sinful will, “seize it” (Mt.Homily 15, Ch. 9, in the translation of Paisius of Niamets. 11:12). When the grace of God begins to help us perceptibly, the first sign of its assistance is “the unsubmitting thought”, as St John of the Ladder says—that is, there appears little by little in the mind a lack of sympathy with thoughts and fantasies of fornication, in place of the former sympathy, which produced captivation and defeat at every occasion when no especial effort at resistance had been made.

Virgins—that is, those who have not tasted the death of the soul through the actual fall of the body into fornication—guard your virginity as a precious treasure: in the way of proper monastic life you will not be slow to experience what the holy Fathers call the spiritual action, or the action of the Holy Spirit upon the soul—an action which is communicated from the soul to the body, and assures us by experience that our bodies were created for spiritual enjoyment, that they descended to a sympathy with animal-like pleasures through the fall, and that they can return to a sympathy with spiritual pleasures by means of true repentance. Alas![8] Even knowledge of the existence of the capacity of the human body for spiritual sensation has been lost by those who trumpet their great learning. The announcement of this capacity is heard with incredulity, as a new and strange teaching. It is not new, and it is not strange! Examine the writings of the holy Fathers: you will find this teaching in them. Having acquainted yourself with it more closely, you will find it in Holy Scripture. The redemption granted to humanity by God is filled with inexpressible and substantive blessings and is attested by them; but we, content with superficial knowledge according to the letter, are unwilling to acquire knowledge by experience, which requires crucifixion (Gal. 5:24), and thereby deprive ourselves of living knowledge. The feeling of the heart is changed when it has partaken of spiritual enjoyment. Such a heart begins to feel aversion toward sensuality, and with zeal to resist its impulses and suggestions, and to cry out with weeping to God for deliverance from this foul mire.

You who have been brought by the providence of God to the state of widowhood, and who wish or are obliged to bear the yoke of this condition! Do not hesitate to have recourse with warm and humble prayer to God, and He will grant you victory both over nature and over your habit, which has strengthened and maintained the force and right of nature. Do not refuse to endure the brief sorrow of struggle with yourself: this sorrow is as nothing compared with the consolation that appears from victory; this sorrow is as nothing compared with the sense of freedom that arises in the soul immediately after victory.

You who are sunk in the abyss of adultery and debauchery! Hear the voice calling you to repentance, and receive from the all-powerful Physician, God, the all-powerful remedy of repentance that He offers. This remedy has already been tested. It has made adulterers models of chastity and the dissolute holy and righteous. It has transformed vessels of the devil into vessels of the Holy Spirit—and many who have repented have left far behind them on the path of spiritual progress ascetics who had never known mortal sin. The dignity of every Christian is constituted by the Redeemer, and that person among men stands highest in dignity who has most essentially made the Redeemer his own.

Many of the holy Fathers who lived a virginal life called themselves defiled and adulterers; more than that: some of them, having been slandered of the sin of fornication, offered no justification—though it would have been very easy for them to do so—and submitted themselves to punishment and sorrows as though genuinely guilty. Such conduct, at a superficial glance, may appear strange: it is explained by the nature of the ascetic effort by which holy purity is wrought. Through this effort, the fall of nature is so clearly revealed, and the ascetic is shown so tangibly the inescapable submission of his being to the demand of fallen nature—if the right hand of God had not snatched him out from the realm of nature—that he cannot but acknowledge himself personally an adulterer. His purity is the work of God in him, and by no means a property of his nature or the fruit of his own efforts. The length of time of the ascetic effort has a considerable influence on the formation and assimilation of such a view of oneself. One can assert with confidence that the Saints of God acknowledge themselves defiled by adultery incomparably more than those who, living a carnal life, continually sink in adultery. From such self-understanding, St Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, a man filled with the Holy Spirit, uttered this saying of himself: “I have not known a woman, and yet I am not a virgin.” What a deep sense of weeping is heard in these words![9]

May the boundless mercy of God grant us to draw near to the holy purity of the Saints of God and to their holy humility. Amen.

[1] Venerable Abba Dorotheus, Instruction 13.

[2] Question 252 and following.

[3] Reply 255.

[4] Venerable Isaiah the Hermit. Homily 27, Ch. 2.

[5] Venerable Macarius the Great. Discourse 21.

[6] Instruction 13, on enduring temptations.

[7] The Alphabetical Patericon and Memorable Sayings concerning John the Dwarf, Ch. 12.

[8] See The Ladder of Monk Theophanes, The Philokalia, Part 1. Also the Chapters of the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, the Tradition of the Venerable Nil Sorsky, and the writings of many other holy Fathers.

[9] Venerable Cassian of Rome, Book VI on the spirit of fornication, Ch. 19.

A Word of Consolation to Grieving Monks

“My child”, Scripture says, “if you come to serve the Lord God, prepare your soul for temptation: set your heart aright, and endure patiently… Accept all that is brought upon you, and in the changing of your condition be long-suffering” (Sir. 2:1–2, 4).

Sorrows have been from the beginning of the age the sign of God’s election. They were the sign of pleasing God for the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and monastics. All the saints walked the narrow path of temptations and sorrows, and by enduring them offered themselves as an acceptable sacrifice to God.

Even now holy souls are permitted, by the will of God, to undergo various tribulations, so that their love for God may be revealed in all its clarity.

Nothing happens to a person without the consent and permission of God.

A Christian who wishes to be a follower of our Lord Jesus Christ and to become by grace a son of God, born of the Spirit, must above all establish for himself as a rule and count as an inescapable obligation the patient endurance of all sorrows: bodily sufferings, insults from people, assaults from demons, and even the uprising of his own passions.

A Christian who wishes to please God is in need above all else of patience and firm hope in God. He must hold this weapon unceasingly in the right hand of his mind: for our wicked enemy, the devil, employs on his part every means to cast us into despondency during sorrows and to rob us of our hope in the Lord.

God never permits temptation to come upon His true servants beyond their strength. “God is faithful”, says the holy Apostle Paul, “who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will also with the temptation provide the way of escape” (deliverance), “so that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

The devil, being a creature and servant of God, afflicts the soul not as much as he wishes, but only as much as God permits.

If men know well enough what burden various pack animals can carry, how much more does the infinite Wisdom of God know what measure of temptation is fitting for each soul.

A potter knows how long clay vessels must remain in the fire—for if they are kept too long they crack, and if too short they are unfit for use. How much more does God know what intensity and degree of the fire of temptations is needed for the rational vessels of God—Christians—so that they may become capable of inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven.

A child is incapable of performing the duties of life in the world: he is incapable of managing a household, of tilling the earth, and of other worldly occupations. So too souls, when they are already partakers of Divine grace but have not been tried by sorrows sent from evil spirits and have not been tested by these sorrows, remain still in infancy and are, as it were, incapable of the Kingdom of Heaven.

“If you are without chastening”, says the Apostle, “of which all have become partakers: then you are illegitimate and not sons” (Heb. 12:8).

Temptations and sorrows are sent down to a person for his benefit: the soul formed by them becomes strong and honorable before its Lord. If it endures all things to the end in hope in God, it cannot be deprived of the good things promised by the Holy Spirit and of complete liberation from the passions.

Souls that are given over to various sorrows—whether open sorrows inflicted by people, or hidden sorrows from the arising of impure thoughts in the mind, or bodily illnesses—if they endure all of these to the end, are accounted worthy of the same crowns as martyrs and of the same boldness before God as theirs.

Martyrs endured tribulations from men. They willingly delivered themselves to torments and manifested courageous patience even to death. The more varied and heavy their ascetic effort was, the greater the glory they gained and the greater the boldness they received before God. Monks endure tribulations from evil spirits. The greater the tribulations the devil inflicts on them, the greater the glory they will receive in the age to come from God, the greater the consolation they will be granted by the Holy Spirit here, during their earthly sojourn, amid their very sufferings.

The path that leads to eternal life is narrow and sorrowful; few walk upon it; but it is the inalienable and inescapable inheritance of all who are being saved. We must not turn aside from it! Every temptation brought upon us by the devil, let us endure with firmness and constancy, looking with the eye of faith toward the reward prepared in heaven.

Whatever sorrows we may suffer during earthly life, they can in no way be compared with the blessings promised us in eternity, or with the consolation which the Holy Spirit grants even here, or with deliverance from the dominion of the passions, or with the forgiveness of our many debts—with these inevitable fruits of patient and grateful endurance of sorrows.

“The sufferings of this present time are not worthy”—that is, our present temporal sufferings count for nothing, says the Apostle—“to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us”, that is, compared with the glory that will be revealed in us at our renewal by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:18).

Let us courageously endure all things for the sake of the Lord, as brave soldiers who do not shrink even from death for their King.

Why did we not suffer such and so great afflictions when we served the world and worldly cares? Why do we now, having come to serve God, suffer manifold calamities? Know this: sorrows rain down upon us like arrows on account of Christ. Our enemy, the devil, fires them at us to avenge against us the eternal blessings we hope and strive to obtain, and together with that—to weaken our souls with grief, despondency, and sloth, and thereby deprive us of the blessedness we await.

Christ invisibly fights for us. This mighty and invincible Defender of ours destroys all the snares and schemes of our enemy.

He Himself, He Himself—our Lord and Saviour—walked throughout the whole of His earthly life along the narrow and sorrowful path, and no other. He was continually persecuted, endured many reproaches, mockeries, and tribulations—and finally a shameful death on the cross between two thieves.

Let us follow Christ! Let us be humbled as He was! Like Him, let us not refuse to be accounted deceivers and madmen: let us not spare our honor, let us not turn our face from spitting or our cheeks from blows; let us seek neither the glory, nor the beauty, nor the pleasures belonging to this world; let us complete our earthly sojourn as strangers who have nowhere to lay their head; let us receive, let us receive the reproaches, humiliations, and contempt of men as the inalienable attributes of the path we have chosen; let us struggle openly and secretly against the thoughts of pride, striving with all our might to cast down those thoughts of our old self, which seeks to revive its “I” under various plausible pretexts. Then the Son of God, who said “I will dwell in them and walk among them” (2 Cor. 6:16), will appear in our heart and grant us authority and power to bind the strong man, to plunder his vessels, to tread upon the asp and the basilisk, to trample them underfoot.[1]

Let us reject murmuring, let us reject complaints about our lot, let us reject the sorrow and anguish of heart from which weak souls suffer more than from the sorrows themselves. Let us reject every thought of vengeance and of repaying evil with evil. “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay”, said the Lord (Rom. 12:19).

Do you wish to bear sorrows with ease and comfort? Let death for Christ be dear to you. Let this death stand unceasingly before your eyes. Mortify yourself daily by abstaining from all sinful desires of flesh and spirit; mortify yourself by rejecting your own will and by rejecting the self-justifications brought forward by the falsely-named reason and the deceitful conscience of the old self; mortify yourself by vividly imagining and depicting to yourself your inevitable death. We are given the commandment to follow Christ, taking up our cross. This means: we must always be ready to die for Christ with joy and gladness. If we dispose ourselves thus, we shall easily bear every sorrow, visible and invisible.

If a person is willing to die for Christ, what tribulation, what insult, will he not endure with magnanimity?

Our sorrows seem heavy to us precisely because we do not wish to die for Christ, do not wish to enclose in Him alone all our desires, all our hopes, all our understanding, all our possessions, all our very existence.

One who strives to follow Christ and to be His co-heir must be a zealous imitator of His sufferings. Those who love Christ and are His followers reveal and prove their hidden pledge by this: that they endure every sorrow sent to them by Him not only with good cheer, but with eagerness, zeal, joy, and thanksgiving, placing all hope upon Christ.

Such patience is a gift of Christ.

This gift will be received by one who asks for it from Christ with humble and constant prayer, demonstrating the sincerity of his desire to receive the priceless spiritual gift of patience by compelling and painfully forcing his unwilling heart to endure all the sorrows and temptations that meet and befall him.[2] Amen.

This article is drawn chiefly from the 7th Homily of the Venerable Macarius the Great. See Chapters 13–18.

[1] Venerable Macarius. Homily 4, Ch. 15.

[2] St Isaac the Syrian. Homily 37.

One’s Own Cross and the Cross of Christ

The Lord said to His disciples: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mt. 16:24).

What is meant by “his cross”? Why is this “his cross”—that is, each person’s own individual cross—called at the same time “the Cross of Christ”?

One’s “own” cross: the sorrows and sufferings of earthly life, which are different for each person.

One’s “own” cross: fasting, vigil, and other devout ascetic efforts, by which the flesh is humbled and made subject to the spirit. These efforts must be commensurate with the strength of each person, and for each they are his own.

One’s “own” cross: the sinful infirmities, or passions, which for each person are his own! Some of them we are born with; others we contract along the path of earthly life.

“The Cross of Christ” is the teaching of Christ.

One’s “own cross” is vain and fruitless, however heavy it may be, if through following Christ it does not become “the Cross of Christ”. One’s “own cross” becomes for the disciple of Christ “the Cross of Christ”: because the disciple of Christ is firmly convinced that Christ watches over him without ceasing, that Christ permits him sorrows as a necessary and inescapable condition of Christianity, that no sorrow would have drawn near him if it had not been permitted by Christ, and that through sorrows the Christian is assimilated to Christ and made a partaker of His portion on earth—and therefore in heaven as well.

One’s “own cross” becomes for the disciple of Christ “the Cross of Christ”: because the true disciple of Christ counts the fulfillment of the commandments of Christ as the sole purpose of his life. These all-holy commandments become for him a cross upon which he continually crucifies his old self “with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24).

From this it is clear why, in order to take up the cross, one must first deny oneself—even to the losing of one’s own soul.

So powerfully and abundantly has sin assimilated itself to our fallen nature that the Word of God does not hesitate to call it the soul of the fallen person.

To take the cross upon one’s shoulders, one must first deny the body its capricious desires, providing it only with what is necessary for existence; one must acknowledge one’s own righteousness as the most grievous unrighteousness before God, and one’s own reason as utter folly; and finally, having surrendered oneself to God with all the force of faith, having committed oneself to the unceasing study of the Gospel, one must renounce one’s own will.

One who has accomplished such a denial of himself is capable of taking up his cross. With submission to God, calling upon God’s help to strengthen his weakness, he looks without fear or agitation upon approaching sorrow, prepares himself to bear it magnanimously and courageously, and hopes that through it he will become a partaker of the sufferings of Christ and attain to the mysterious confession of Christ not only in mind and heart, but in very deed and in the very conduct of his life.

The cross is burdensome for as long as it remains one’s own cross. But when it is transformed into the Cross of Christ, it receives an uncommon lightness: “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light”, the Lord said (Mt. 11:30).

The cross is laid upon the shoulders of the disciple of Christ when the disciple of Christ acknowledges himself to be deserving of the sorrows sent to him by Divine providence.

The disciple of Christ bears his cross rightly when he acknowledges that precisely the sorrows sent to him—and no others—are necessary for his formation in Christ and for his salvation.

Patient bearing of one’s cross is the true sight and acknowledgment of one’s own sin. In this acknowledgment there is no self-deception whatsoever. But one who acknowledges himself a sinner and at the same time murmurs and cries out from his cross thereby shows that his superficial acknowledgment of sin is but a flattering and deceiving of himself.

Patient bearing of one’s cross is true repentance. You who are crucified on the cross! Confess to the Lord the righteousness of His judgments. By accusing yourself, justify the judgment of God, and you shall receive the forgiveness of your sins.

You who are crucified on the cross! Know Christ—and the gates of paradise will be opened to you.

From your cross glorify the Lord, rejecting from yourself every thought of complaint and murmuring, rejecting it as a transgression and as blasphemy.

From your cross give thanks to the Lord for the priceless gift, for your cross—for the precious lot, for the lot of imitating Christ through your sufferings.

From the cross do theology: for the cross is the true and only school, treasury, and throne of true theology. Outside the cross there is no living knowledge of Christ.

Do not seek Christian perfection in human virtues. It is not there: it is hidden in the Cross of Christ.[1]

One’s own cross is changed into the Cross of Christ when the disciple of Christ bears it with an active acknowledgment of his sinfulness that deserves chastisement—when he bears it with thanksgiving to Christ, with the glorification of Christ. From glorification and thanksgiving there appears in the sufferer spiritual consolation; thanksgiving and glorification become an abundant source of incomprehensible, imperishable joy, which graciously wells up in the heart, pours forth upon the soul, and pours forth upon the very body.

The Cross of Christ, only in its outward appearance, to fleshly eyes, is a harsh arena. For the disciple and follower of Christ it is the arena of the highest spiritual joy. So great is this joy that the sorrow is completely smothered by the joy, and the follower of Christ amid the most fierce torments experiences nothing but joy.[2]

The young Maura said to her young husband Timothy, who was enduring terrible torments and invited her to share in the martyrdom: “I fear, my brother, that I may take fright when I see the terrible torments and the enraged governor, and that I may not be able to endure in patience on account of my young years.” The martyr answered her: “Place your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, and the torments will be for you like oil poured upon your body and like the spirit of dew in your bones, lightening all your pains.”[3]

The cross is the power and glory of all the saints from the ages.

The cross is the healer of the passions and the destroyer of demons. The cross is death-dealing to those who have not transformed their own cross into the Cross of Christ—who from their own cross murmur against Divine providence, blaspheme it, and give themselves over to hopelessness and despair. Those who do not acknowledge their sins or repent of them die upon their cross with the death of eternity, forfeiting true life—life in God—through their impatience. They are taken down from their cross only to descend in their souls into an eternal tomb: into the prisons of hell.

The Cross of Christ lifts up from the earth the disciple of Christ who is crucified upon it. The disciple of Christ, crucified upon his own cross, thinks on what is above, dwells in mind and heart in heaven, and beholds the mysteries of the Spirit in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

“If anyone wishes to come after Me”, said the Lord, “let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me”. Amen.

[1] Venerable Mark the Ascetic. Homily on the Spiritual Law, Ch. 31.

[2] The Order of the Twelve Psalms, the prayer of Saint Eustratius.

[3] The Menaion Reader, May 3rd.

The Dew

Across a clear blue sky, on a beautiful summer day, the magnificent luminary was pursuing its accustomed course. The golden crosses of the five-domed cathedral, raised to the glory of the All-Holy, God-originating Trinity, blazed in the light; its silver domes reflected the blinding radiance of the sun’s rays. The shadow showed that the tenth hour was approaching, the hour at which the Divine Liturgy customarily begins. Multitudes of people were hastening from the main road toward the peaceful monastic dwelling: the day was a Sunday, or perhaps a feast day—I no longer remember.

Beyond the wall of that monastery, on the eastern side, there lay a broad meadow. At that time it was covered with thick, tender grass and wild flowers of many kinds, which bloomed and breathed their fragrance freely in the open air. On that day a heavy dew had fallen upon it. Countless drops of it were visible on every flower, on every stalk and small leaf, and in each drop the sun was clearly reflected; each drop sent forth rays like the rays of the sun. The meadow had the appearance of a vast velvet carpet spread wide, upon whose bright, dense green a lavish hand had scattered a countless multitude of variegated precious stones, with their exquisite lustre, their play of light, their rays and radiance.

At that moment a priest-monk who was preparing to celebrate the Divine Liturgy stepped out with deep thought from the side, secluded gate of the monastery, and after taking a few steps, halted before the vast meadow.[1] His heart was still; and nature answered that stillness of heart with an inspired quiet of her own—that quiet which fills a beautiful June morning, which so favours contemplation. Before his eyes: the sun upon the azure, clear sky, and countless reflections of the sun in the countless drops of dew upon the broad meadow. His thought was losing itself in a kind of boundlessness; the mind was without thought, as though purposely prepared and attuned to receive a spiritual impression. The priest-monk gazed upon the sky, upon the sun, upon the meadow, upon the glistening drops of dew—and suddenly there opened before the eyes of the soul an explanation of the greatest of the Christian mysteries: that explanation by which the incomprehensible and inexplicable may be explained—an explanation through a living similitude, a vivid picture that lay before his eyes.

It was as though someone said to him: “Behold!—the sun reflects itself entire in each humble yet pure drop of dew: so also Christ, in each Christian Orthodox church, is wholly present and offered upon the holy table. He imparts light and life to those who receive Him—who, having communed of the Divine Light and Life, themselves become light and life: just as the drops of dew, having received the rays of the sun, themselves begin to emit rays like the rays of the sun. If the material and corruptible sun—a creature of the Creator, which cost Him, to bring into being, only a single effortless movement of His will—can reflect itself in countless drops of water all at once: why can the Creator Himself, almighty and omnipresent, not be wholly present all at once in His Most Holy Flesh and Blood, together with the Divinity united to them, in the countless temples where, by His command and institution, the all-creating, all-holy Spirit is called down upon the bread and wine for the completion of the greatest, most salvific, most incomprehensible mystery?…”

Bearing within him a deep and powerful spiritual impression, the minister of the Mystery returned to his cell. The impression remained to live in his soul. Months passed, years passed, yet it was as vivid as on the day of its first reception. Sharing its benefit and edification with his neighbour, he now, after many years, renders it in word and in writing. How poor a rendering! Pen and word are too weak for a full and exact description of spiritual visions.

Sacred vision! Sacred beholding of the mind! With what unexpected suddenness you appear in a vivid, striking picture before the mind prepared for the vision of mysteries by repentance and attentive, solitary prayer! How powerful, clear, and living is the knowledge you impart! What unassailable, incomprehensible conviction it is filled with! You are independent of men: you come to him whom you choose, or to whom you are sent. In vain would a man seek to penetrate spiritual mysteries by his own effort alone! He will be only a feeble dreamer, wandering blindly in the darkness of self-deception, himself neither feeling nor imparting any light or life. As chains clank on the hands and feet of a captive, so in the thoughts and words of the dreamer there will be heard an echo of compulsion, counterfeit, constraint, bondage, and the filth of sin. The path to spiritual vision is constant abiding in repentance, in weeping and tears over one’s sinfulness. Weeping and tears are the collyrium by which the eyes of the soul are healed (Rev. 3:18).

Sergius Hermitage, 1846.

[1] A church was subsequently built on this spot, dedicated to Saint Gregory the Theologian.

The Sea of Life

Before my eyes lies the majestic sea. In the north it is mostly overcast and stormy; yet at times it is also beautiful. Vast sea! deep sea! You draw to yourself both the gaze and the mind. I gaze upon the sea for long stretches of time, without thought. There is no variety in this spectacle; yet the eye and the mind cannot tear themselves away from it: they seem to float upon the broad sea, to plunge into it, to be engulfed within it. What inspiration is stored in the depths of the sea! What fullness is felt in the soul when the eyes have taken their pleasure and been satisfied by the contemplation of the sea! Let us look, my friends, let us look upon the sea from our monastic shelter, set by the hand of God’s providence beside the sea.

Beyond the sea—another sea: the capital of the mighty North. Its appearance is magnificent when viewed from across the water, from the seashore where the dwelling of the Venerable Sergius is situated.[1] This sea is a stretch of the famous Belt. It spreads wide, crystalline and silver, between gently sloping banks. It is enclosed by Kronstadt, beyond which the boundlessness of the sea merges with the boundlessness of the sky.

Once the holy David sang of “the great and wide sea. There are creeping things innumerable there”—he says—“creatures small and great, the fishes of the sea, those that pass through the paths of the sea; there ships sail, and this great leviathan, which you have formed to play in it” (Ps. 103:25–26; Ps. 8:9). The words of David have a mystical meaning. The holy Fathers explain this meaning. The world is called the sea;[2] the countless creatures and fishes that fill the sea are called the people of all ages, nations, and stations who serve sin; by ships in general is meant the holy Church, and in particular are meant true Christians, who conquer the world. The serpent that dwells in the sea is named the fallen angel, who was cast down from heaven to earth.

The holy Church sails upon the waters of the sea of this life throughout the whole of her earthly sojourn, through centuries, through millennia. Belonging to the world by her material condition, she does not belong to it in spirit, even as the Lord said to the Church in the person of the Apostles: “You are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world” (Jn. 15:19): in body, by the needs of the body, you belong to the world; in spirit you are strangers to the world, for you belong to God, whom “the world has hated” (Jn. 15:18, 23). The holy Church sails upon the waves of the sea of this life, and abides above those waves by the Divine teaching, holding within her the true knowledge of God, the true knowledge of man, of good and evil, of the material and temporal world, of the spiritual and eternal world. All true Christians throughout the whole world belong to the one true Church and, holding her teaching in its fullness and purity, constitute that company of ships which sails across the sea of life without being submerged in its dark depths.

Every true Christian journeys upon the waters of the sea of this life, pressing toward eternity. Upon the material sea there can be no permanent dwelling; only voyaging lives there: and upon the sea of this life there is nothing permanent, nothing that remains forever as man’s own possession, that accompanies him beyond the grave. Only his good deeds and his sins go with him into eternity. Naked he enters into earthly life, and naked he departs from it, leaving even his body behind. The slaves of the world, the slaves of sin, do not see this; the true Christian sees it. He may be likened to a great ship, filled to the full with spiritual treasures of every kind, unceasingly augmenting them on his way. The world cannot contain these riches: so great are they. So precious are these riches that all the riches of the world are as nothing in comparison with them. The world envies these riches and breathes hatred toward him who has acquired them. The ship, notwithstanding the soundness of its construction and its great size, is beset by contrary winds, storms, hidden rocks, and shoals: every Christian, notwithstanding that he is clothed in Christ, must accomplish his earthly sojourn amid numerous dangers. All, without exception, who desire to be saved, “shall be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). The ship presses toward its harbour; on the way it halts only for the briefest time, only in extreme necessity. And we also must strive with all our might toward heaven, toward eternity. Let us become attached in heart to nothing temporal! Let not our soul “cling” to anything earthly, let it not “cling” to it through the action of the self-deception dwelling in us, through the action of the self-deception that surrounds us! By our fall, “our soul has been humbled to the dust” and has received a draw toward everything corruptible; “our belly has cleaved to the earth” (Ps. 43:26)—our spiritual essence, instead of pressing toward heaven and eternity. Our earthly duties and obligations we shall bear as those placed upon us by God, fulfilling them as though before the eyes of God, conscientiously and with zeal, preparing to render account of our fulfillment of them to God. Let not sinful motives and aims steal into and defile these duties! Let us accomplish our earthly deeds with the aim of pleasing God, and earthly deeds will become heavenly deeds. Let the chief and essential occupation of our lives be service to God and the striving to be united to Him. Service to God consists in the unceasing remembrance of God and of His commandments, and in the fulfillment of these commandments in one’s whole conduct, visible and invisible.

The helmsman guides the ship: he thinks constantly of the harbour to which the ship’s cargo must be brought; he is constantly careful not to lose the way upon the sea, where there is both a path everywhere and no path at all. Now he looks at the sky and at its stars, now at the chart and the compass—weighing both one and the other, he steers the ship. Man is guided by his mind. And upon the sea of this life there are no set paths; everywhere is a way upon it for the true Christian. No one knows what circumstances await him in the future, what he will encounter in a day’s time, in an hour’s time. Most often what meets us is unforeseen and unexpected. On the constancy of a favourable wind it is impossible to rely: it blows sometimes for a long while, but more often it suddenly turns contrary and is replaced by a terrible storm. For the Christian there is a way everywhere: he believes that all that befalls him befalls him by God’s will. For the Christian even a contrary wind becomes favourable: submission to the will of God reconciles him to the most burdensome and most bitter conditions. Our mind must unceasingly turn its gaze to the spiritual sky—the Gospel—from which, like the sun, the teaching of Christ shines forth; it must keep constant watch over the heart, over the conscience, over inner and outer activity. Let this helmsman press unswervingly toward the blessed eternity, remembering that forgetfulness of eternal blessedness leads to eternal misery. Let the mind restrain the heart from being swept away into attachment to the vain and corruptible, from growing cold toward the incorruptible for the sake of corruption, toward the true and essential for the sake of vanity. Let it look often, as at the compass needle, at the conscience, so as not to take a course contrary to that which the conscience points out. Let it guide all activity so that it is pleasing to God, that the harbour of eternity above the clouds may open its gates and receive into its bosom the ship laden with spiritual treasures.

Let us not be frightened by the storms of the sea of this life. Its waves rise up to heaven and descend to the depths; yet living faith does not allow the Christian to be submerged in the raging waves. Faith rouses the Saviour who sleeps in the stern—who, in the mystical sense, appears to be sleeping to His disciples as they sail across the sea of life, when they themselves fall into negligence: faith cries out to the Saviour with fervent prayer from a humble heart, from a heart that grieves over human sinfulness and weakness, asks for help, for deliverance—and receives them. The Lord and Master of all rebukes the winds and the sea and establishes upon the sea and in the air a “great calm” (Mt. 8:26). Faith, tried by the storm of the wind, finds itself strengthened: with new forces, with new courage, it prepares itself for new struggles.

Let us not trust in the calm of the sea of this life: this calm is deceptive; the sea is changeable. Let us not allow ourselves to fall into carelessness: the ship may unexpectedly run aground or strike against an unseen submerged rock, covered by a gentle ripple—strike it and sustain severe damage. Sometimes what appears to be an insignificant little cloud rushes in: suddenly it begins to pour out whirlwinds, thunder, and lightning, and the seemingly tranquil sea is boiling with a dangerous storm. Our life is filled to overflowing with sorrows, vicissitudes, and temptations. Our own mind plots against us: this guide not infrequently loses its own way, and draws our whole life after it into error. Our own heart plots against us, inclining to fulfill its own promptings and evading the fulfillment of God’s will. Sin plots against us: both the sin planted within us by the fall, and that which acts upon us from the temptations that surround us on every side. The world plots against us, serving vanity and corruption, striving to draw everyone into this service, both by flattery and by persecution. Our enemies—the fallen spirits—plot against us; those possessed by them and enslaved to them plot against us. Often our very friends, willingly and unwillingly, become our adversaries. The Lord has commanded us to be unceasingly watchful over ourselves, exercising ourselves in the virtues, guarding against sin by the word of God, by prayer, by faith, by humility.

Who are “the great creatures” that graze in the boundless expanse of the sea of this life? Neither for myself nor for any other would I desire a likeness to these titans of the sea, whose one delight is the dark depths, densely covered with water, where the rays of the sun do not reach; there they live, there they dwell, going forth from time to time in pursuit of prey, sustaining their life by the slaughter of numerous victims. Their watery, wild gaze cannot bear, cannot endure, any light. Under their name, Scripture understands those who are great in abilities, in learning, in wealth and power, yet—alas!—attached with their whole soul to vanity and corruption. Their hearts and thoughts are directed exclusively toward the acquisition of earthly glory and earthly sweetness. They have sunk, they have become mired in the sea of this life; they chase after only the temporal and momentary, only after phantoms: “they pass through”—says Scripture—“the paths of the sea” (Ps. 8:9). Strange are these paths! Their traces vanish in the wake of those who pass along them, and for those who travel them there is no sign of the road ahead. Such is earthly success: it does not know what it seeks; having found what it desired, it is as though it no longer possesses it; again it desires, again it seeks. The light of the teaching of Christ is heavy and unbearable for the sons of the world. They flee from it into dark, deaf abysses: into dissipation, into manifold distraction, into carnal pleasures. There, in moral darkness, they spend their earthly life, without a spiritual and eternal purpose. Scripture does not honour such people with the name of human beings: “man, though in honour, did not understand; he has been compared to the senseless cattle and made like them”[3] (Ps. 48:13). Man is the one who has known himself, said the Venerable Pimen the Great; man is the one who has known his own worth, his own condition, his own calling.—By “small creatures” of the sea are meant those not endowed with particular abilities, not granted wealth or power, yet even in such a condition serving vanity and sin. They lack the means to commit great and notorious iniquities; but guided, swept along, and blinded by their own free will corrupted by malice, they take part in the lawlessness committed by the great creatures, and themselves commit lawlessness according to their own strength and means. They wander in the sea of this life unconsciously, without purpose.—The serpent is “king over all the children of pride” (Job 41:26), “this great leviathan which you have formed to play in it” (Ps. 103:26). The fallen angel is called a serpent, on account of the abundance of malice and cunning that live within him. He acts as secretly as possible, so that his action, being little noticed, may be the more certain and deadly. His slaves do not feel the chains that bind them on every side—and they call their ruinous bondage the name of freedom and the highest happiness. True Christians laugh at this serpent, discerning his wiles by the purity of the mind and trampling them down by the power of the Divine grace that has overshadowed their souls.—Let us be like ships sailing in good order upon the sea! A considerable part of them is also in the water; yet they are not submerged entirely in the water, as fish and other sea creatures are. It is impossible, impossible for one sailing across the sea of this life not to be wetted by its waters: one must not sink into them.

In the sea—“a countless multitude of creeping things.” What shall be said of them? Their very name says all. Wretched is the lot of those whom the word of God has deprived of the name of human beings and reduced to the name of irrational animals: how much more wretched are those upon whom it—the all-holy Word, the Judge of the universe—has set the stamp of the name of creeping things? Not the deep waters are their constant dwelling and delight, but the foul and muddy slime, into which the enraged wave sweeps all manner of impurity, into which the corpses of those who perished in sea-disasters and by the daggers of the pirates of the sea of life are swept and putrefy.

My brethren! My friends! I stand with you on the shore of the sea and look upon the sea, traced over with stripes of many colours. Beyond the sea—another sea, with blazing golden domes and spires… Meanwhile in the house of God there rings forth the majestic, many-meaningful song: “Beholding the sea of life uplifted by the storm of temptations, I have run to your calm harbour and cry out to you: Raise up my life from corruption, O Most Merciful One.”[4]

[1] Sergius Hermitage.

[2] The Psalter with marginal commentaries drawn from the holy Fathers, published by the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.

[3] The Alphabetical Patericon and the Memorable Sayings.

[4] Ode 6, tone 6.

The Conscience

Conscience is a faculty of the human spirit—subtle, luminous, discerning good from evil.

This faculty discerns good from evil more clearly than the mind.

It is harder to deceive the conscience than the mind.

Even with a mind that has been deceived and fortified by a sin-loving will, conscience long continues to struggle.

Conscience is the natural law.[1]

Conscience guided humanity before the written Law. Fallen humanity gradually adopted false conceptions of God, of good and evil, and the falsely-named reason communicated its error to the conscience. The written Law became a necessity for guidance toward the true knowledge of God and toward a life pleasing to God.

The teaching of Christ, sealed by holy baptism, heals the conscience from the duplicity with which sin had infected it (Heb. 10:22). The right action of conscience, restored to us, is maintained and elevated by following the teaching of Christ.

The healthy state and right action of conscience are possible only within the bosom of the Orthodox Church, because every erroneous thought that is adopted has an influence on the conscience: it leads the conscience away from its right action.

Willful sins darken, dull, stifle, and lull the conscience to sleep.

Every sin not cleansed by repentance leaves a harmful impression on the conscience.

A continual and willful life of sin as it were kills the conscience.

To kill the conscience completely is impossible. It will accompany a person to the fearful judgment of Christ: there it will accuse the one who disregarded it.

According to the explanation of the holy Fathers, the “adversary” of man mentioned in the Gospel is the conscience (Mt.The Venerable Abba Dorotheus, Instruction 3, on conscience. 5:25).

Indeed: it is an adversary! For it resists every unlawful undertaking of ours.

Keep peace with this adversary on your way to heaven, during your earthly life, so that it may not become your accuser at the time when your eternal lot is being decided.

Scripture says: “A faithful witness delivers the soul from evil” (Prov. 14:25). The faithful witness is an unblemished conscience: it will deliver the soul that heeds its counsel from sins before the coming of death, and from eternal torment after death.

As the blade of a knife is sharpened on a stone, so the conscience is sharpened by Christ: it is enlightened by the study and honed by the fulfillment of the Gospel’s commandments.

A conscience enlightened and honed by the Gospel shows a person his sins in detail and clearly—even the most minute.

Do not do violence to your adversary—your conscience! Otherwise you will lose your spiritual freedom: sin will take you captive and bind you. The Prophet grieves on God’s behalf over those who trample the conscience and plot against themselves: “Ephraim has prevailed over his adversary, he has trampled upon judgment, for he has begun to walk after vanity” (Hos. 5:11).

The edge of the conscience is very tender; it must be guarded and guarded carefully. It is guarded when a person fulfills all the demands of the conscience, and washes with the tears of repentance every violation of any demand, whether through weakness or through being carried away.

Do not think of any sin that it is of little importance: every sin is a violation of the Law of God, a contradiction of God’s will, a trampling of the conscience. From trifles, from what appear to be negligible transgressions, we pass by degrees to great falls.

What does it matter?—is this sin really so great?—what kind of sin is this anyway?—this is not a sin!—so reasons the one who is careless of his own salvation, when he resolves to taste of the sinful food forbidden by the Law of God. Basing himself on such wholly groundless reasoning, he unceasingly tramples the conscience.

Its edge is dulled, its light grows dim; darkness and the coldness of negligence and insensibility spread through the soul.

Insensibility at last becomes the habitual state of the soul. Often the soul is satisfied with it; often it mistakes it for a state pleasing to God, for the peace of conscience—while in reality it is the loss of the sense of one’s own sinfulness, the loss of the sense of gracious, spiritual life, the lulling to sleep and the blindness of the conscience.[2]

In such a state, amid such terrible darkening and insensibility, various sins freely enter the soul and make their lair within it. Sins, taking deep root in the soul, turn into habits as powerful as nature itself, and sometimes more powerful than nature. Sinful habits are called passions. A person does not notice it—yet he has been imperceptibly bound on every side by sin, is in its captivity, in its bondage.

One who, by constantly disregarding the reminders of conscience, has allowed himself to fall into the bondage of sin, will only with the greatest difficulty, and with the assistance of special help from God, be able to break the chains of this bondage and conquer the passions that have become as it were a natural property.

Most beloved brother! Guard your conscience with all possible attentiveness and diligence.

Guard your conscience toward God: fulfill all God’s commandments, both those visible to all and those visible to no one—seen and known only by God alone and by your conscience.

Guard your conscience toward your neighbour: do not be content with the mere outward propriety of your conduct toward your neighbours! Seek from yourself that your very conscience be satisfied with this conduct. It will be satisfied when not only your deeds, but also your heart, are set in the relation to your neighbour that the Gospel commands.

Guard your conscience toward things, avoiding excess, luxury, and negligence, remembering that all the things you use are God’s creation, gifts of God to man.

Guard your conscience toward yourself. Do not forget that you are the image and likeness of God, and that you are obliged to present this image, in purity and holiness, to God Himself.

Woe, woe! if the Lord does not recognise His own image and finds in it no resemblance to Himself. He will pronounce the dread sentence: “I do not know you” (Mt. 25:12). The defiled image will be cast into the unquenchable flame of Gehenna.

Infinite joy will embrace that soul upon which the Lord, looking, recognises in it a likeness to Himself, sees in it that beauty which He, in His infinite goodness, bestowed upon it at its creation, restored and increased at the redemption, and which He commanded to be preserved in unblemished wholeness by withdrawal from every sin and by the keeping of all the Gospel’s commandments.

The tireless, impartial guardian and reminder of such withdrawal and keeping is the conscience. Amen.

[1] The Venerable Abba Dorotheus, Instruction 3, on conscience.

[2] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 18.

On the Distracted and the Attentive Life

The sons of this world consider distraction to be harmless, while the holy Fathers regard it as the beginning of all evils.[1]

A person given over to distraction has only a very light, the most superficial understanding of all matters, even the most important.

The distracted person is ordinarily inconstant: his feelings of the heart lack depth and strength, and for that reason they are short-lived and transient.

As a butterfly flutters from flower to flower, so the distracted person passes from one earthly pleasure to another, from one vain concern to another.

The distracted person is a stranger to love for his neighbour: he looks with indifference upon the misfortune of others and readily lays upon them burdens too heavy to bear.

Sorrows act powerfully upon the distracted person, precisely because he does not expect them. He expects only joys.

If a sorrow is intense but short-lived, the distracted person quickly forgets it in the noise of diversions. A prolonged sorrow crushes him.

Distraction itself chastises the one given over to it: in time everything becomes tiresome to him—and he, having acquired no solid knowledge or lasting impressions, falls prey to a tormenting and endless despondency.

Distraction, so harmful in general, is especially harmful in the work of God, in the work of salvation, which demands constant, concentrated watchfulness and attentiveness.

“Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation”, says the Saviour to His disciples (Mt. 26:41).

“What I say to you, I say to all: Watch” (Mk. 13:37), He declared to all Christianity: and therefore to our own generation as well.

One who leads a life of distraction directly contradicts the commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ by his very way of life.

All the saints carefully avoided distraction. Continually, or at least as often as possible, they gathered themselves within, attending to the movements of the mind and heart and directing them according to the testament of the Gospel.

The habit of attentiveness to oneself guards against distraction even amid the noise of surrounding diversions on every side. The attentive person remains in solitude, alone with himself, in the midst of multitudes.

Having learned by experience the benefit of attentiveness and the harm of distraction, a certain great Father said: “Without intense watchfulness over oneself, it is impossible to make progress in a single virtue.”[2]

It is senseless to spend the brief earthly life given to us for preparation for eternity in purely earthly pursuits, in satisfying petty, countless, and insatiable whims and desires, flitting frivolously from one sensual pleasure to another, forgetting—or remembering only rarely and superficially—the unavoidable, majestic, and at the same time dread eternity.

The works of God—this is evident—must be studied and examined with the greatest reverence and attentiveness; otherwise a person can neither examine nor know them.

The great work of God—the creation of man, and then, after his fall, his renewal through redemption—must be known in detail by every Christian; without this knowledge he cannot know or fulfill the duties of a Christian. Knowledge of the great work of God cannot be acquired amid distraction!

The commandments of Christ have been given not only to the outward person, but, above all, to the inward: they embrace all the thoughts and feelings of a person, all his most subtle movements. To keep these commandments is impossible without constant watchfulness and deep attentiveness. Watchfulness and attentiveness are impossible in a life of distraction.

Sin and the devil who works through sin creep subtly into the mind and heart. A person must be unceasingly on guard against his invisible enemies. How can he be on this guard when he is given over to distraction?

The distracted person is like a house without doors or bolts: no treasure can be preserved in such a house; it lies open to thieves, robbers, and harlots.

A dissipated life, filled with worldly cares, bestows upon a person a grossness comparable to overeating and overdrinking (Lk. 21:34). Such a person is attached to the earth, occupied exclusively with the temporal and vain; the service of God becomes for the distracted something extraneous; even the very thought of this service is strange to him, full of darkness, unbearably burdensome.

An attentive life weakens the action of the bodily senses upon a person—and sharpens, strengthens, and forms the action of the faculties of the soul. Distraction, on the contrary, lulls to sleep the action of the soul’s faculties: it is nourished by the unceasing action of the bodily senses.

In vain do those given to distraction assert the innocence of a distracted life! By this they expose the malignancy of the sickness that has seized them. Their sickness is so great, it so dulls the faculties of the soul, that the soul afflicted with it does not even feel its own wretched condition.

Those who wish to learn attentiveness must forbid themselves all idle occupations.

The fulfillment of private and public duties does not form part of distraction: distraction is always connected with idleness, or with such empty occupations as may without error be counted as idleness.

Useful occupation—especially official duties connected with responsibility—does not hinder the keeping of attentiveness to oneself; rather, it leads toward such attentiveness. The monastic obediences lead toward attentiveness even more, when they are performed in the right manner. Activity is a necessary path to watchfulness over oneself, and this path is prescribed by the holy Fathers for all who wish to learn attentiveness to themselves.

Attentiveness to oneself in deep solitude yields precious spiritual fruits; but only men of mature spiritual age are capable of it—those who have made progress in the ascetic struggle of piety, having first learned attentiveness in the active life.

In the active life, other people help a person acquire attentiveness by reminding him of its lapses. Subordination is the best means of learning attentiveness to oneself: no one teaches a person to be attentive to himself so well as his strict and wise superior.

During your working hours, in the company of other people, do not allow yourself to waste time in idle chatter and foolish jesting; during study hours, forbid yourself day-dreaming: soon your conscience will sharpen, and will begin to point out to you every deviation into distraction as a violation of the Gospel law, and even as a violation of prudence. Amen.

[1] The Alphabetical Patericon and the Memorable Sayings, concerning Pimen the Great, ch. 43.

[2] The Alphabetical Patericon and the Memorable Sayings concerning Abba Agathon, ch. 39.

On Habits

Habits have a force akin to natural qualities: a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ must acquire good habits and shun bad ones.

Young man! Be prudent and far-sighted: in the years of your youth, give special attention to the acquisition of good habits; in the years of your maturity and old age you will rejoice in the wealth acquired without effort in the years of youth.

Do not count as trifling the fulfillment of even the most apparently insignificant desire: every fulfillment of a desire inevitably leaves its impression on the soul. The impression may sometimes be very strong, and serves as the beginning of a ruinous habit.

Did the card-player know, when he first touched a deck of cards, that the game would become his passion? Did the man afflicted with the disease of drunkenness know, when drinking his first glass, that he was beginning a self-destruction? That is what I call this wretched habit, which ruins both soul and body.

A single careless glance not infrequently inflicts a wound upon the heart; a few repeated glances deepened this wound so gravely that it was barely healed by years of prayer, years of ascetic struggle and weeping.

Educators and teachers! Give the young good habits; turn them away, as from a great calamity, from vicious ones.

Vicious habits are like fetters upon a person: they rob him of moral freedom and hold him by force in the foul swamp of the passions.

For the ruin of a person one vicious habit is sufficient: it will constantly open the door of the soul to all sins and all passions.

Accustom yourself to modesty: permit yourself no boldness, do not even allow yourself to touch your neighbour without extreme necessity—and the habit of modesty will make the great virtue of chastity easy for you. Your neighbours, feeling the pledge of modesty that lives in you, will be restrained before you, as though reverencing the fragrance of holiness.

Nothing shakes chastity so greatly as the habit of boldness, of free familiarity that has discarded the rules of modesty.

Accustom yourself to abstinence in food: by abstinence you will give health and strength to the body, and a special alertness to the mind—so necessary in the work of salvation, and very useful also in earthly pursuits.

Gluttony is nothing other than a bad habit—a senseless, insatiable gratification of a natural desire corrupted by misuse.

Accustom yourself to the simplest food. To one habituated to it, it is more palatable than the most exquisite dishes—to say nothing of how much more wholesome it is.

What freedom and moral strength the habit of simple food—an apparently so trivial, material habit—gives to a person! With it, a person needs the smallest expenditure for the table, the least time and the least trouble in its preparation. If one habituated to simple food is poor, he is not burdened by his poverty.

The transition from a lavish and refined table to simple fare is hard! Circumstances have compelled many to make this transition, and many, in making it, have lost their health and even been shaken morally. From this misfortune they would have been protected by a prudent and timely habit of simple food.

Especially for one who wishes to dedicate himself to the service of Christ, the habit of simple food is, one may say, invaluable in its consequences: it permits one to choose the most secluded place for dwelling, makes frequent contact with people unnecessary—and thus, by removing the causes of distraction, makes it possible to give oneself wholly to contemplation of God and to prayer.

All the saints were greatly concerned not only with the habit of moderate use of food, but also with the habit of simple food. The daily food of the Apostle Peter cost a few copper coins.

Drunkenness is a terrible vice! It is a passion, a disease, that enters into one’s constitution through indulgence of desire and acquires, by habit, the force of a natural quality.

The servant of Christ must guard himself not only from drunkenness, but also from the habit of drinking much wine, which inflames the flesh and arouses in it the lusts of brute beasts. “Do not be drunk with wine, in which there is debauchery” (Eph. 5:18), said the Apostle. The use of wine in very small quantity is permissible; but one who cannot limit himself to moderate use will do better to renounce it altogether.

Pimen the Great said: “The ascetic needs above all a sober mind.” Wine robs a person of the ability to keep the mind in sobriety.[1] When an ascetic falls under the influence of wine, his enemies draw near to his weakened and darkened mind, and the mind is no longer able to struggle with them. Bound by the effect of wine, it is drawn into the abyss of sin! In a single moment the fruits of a long ascetic struggle are destroyed, for the Holy Spirit withdraws from one defiled by sin. This is why the Venerable Isaiah the Egyptian hermit said that those who love wine will never be granted spiritual gifts: these gifts, to abide in a person, require constant purity, which is possible only through constant sobriety.[2]

Avarice, irascibility, haughtiness, and insolence are malignant diseases of the soul, formed by indulgence of the vicious inclinations of fallen nature. They are intensified, they ripen, they enslave a person through the medium of habit.

The same law applies to carnal desire, notwithstanding that it is natural to fallen man. Blessed is the young man who understands at the first appearance of desire’s action within him that desire must not be yielded to, that it must be bridled by the Law of God and by prudence. Desire, when bridled at its first demands, is readily subjected to the mind, and makes its demands more weakly thereafter, acting like a slave in chains. Desire that is gratified intensifies its demands. Desire to which reason surrenders its power over a person through long and constant gratification already reigns, like a tyrant, over both body and soul, destroying both body and soul.

In general all the passions develop in a person through indulgence; repeated indulgence turns an inclination into a habit, and habit makes the passion a violent master over a person. “Fear evil habits”, said the Venerable Isaac the Syrian, “more than demons.”[3]

When a sinful desire or impulse acts within us, we must refuse it. The next time it will act more weakly, and at last will grow altogether quiet. But when it is gratified, it acts each time with new force, as one that gains ever more power over the will, and at last gives birth to a habit.

The transgressions we are in the habit of committing seem light to us, however grave they may be. A transgression new to the soul terrifies it, and only slowly does the soul resolve to commit it.

Passions are evil habits; virtues are good habits. Here the discussion is of passions and virtues acquired and made one’s own by a person through his activity, through his manner of living. Sometimes in the writings of the Fathers the name “passions” is given to the various properties of the disease produced in us by the fall, the various forms of sinfulness common to all people; with these passions we are born; and the name “virtues” is given to the natural, innate good properties of a person. Such passions and such virtues impose no decisive seal upon a person; the seal is imposed by the inclination voluntarily made one’s own—made one’s own through constant or frequent gratification of it, through constant fulfillment of its demands.

The servant of Christ must be as free as possible from bad habits, lest they bar his way to Christ. He must avoid habits that are not only directly sinful, but all those that lead to sin—such as habits of luxury, of soft living, of distraction.

Sometimes the most trifling habit shackles our feet and leaves us upon the earth, when we ought already to be in heaven.

Young man! I repeat to you the salutary counsel: while you are still in moral freedom, flee evil habits as fetters and a prison; acquire good habits, by which moral freedom is guarded, established, and sealed.

But if someone in maturer years has resolved to serve Christ and has, unfortunately, already acquired many vicious habits—or habits of luxury and soft living, which ordinarily keep the soul in a state of enervation—he must not give himself over to despondency and double-mindedness; he must enter manfully into the struggle against the evil habits. Victory over them is not impossible, with God’s help.

A firm resolve, overshadowed and strengthened by the grace of Christ, can conquer even the most deeply-rooted habits.

A habit at first resists fiercely the one who wishes to throw off its yoke, and at first appears invincible; but in time, through constant struggle with it, through every act of disobedience to it, it grows weaker and weaker.

If in the course of the struggle you happen, by some unexpected circumstance, to be defeated, do not be troubled, do not fall into hopelessness: begin the struggle anew.

The forceful struggle against vicious habits is reckoned by God as martyrdom, and the one who has won victory in this struggle is crowned with the crown of a confessor, as one who strives for the sake of the Law of Christ.

The merciful and almighty Lord receives everyone who comes to Him, and stretches out His right hand to support our weakness. And therefore, even if you are wholly bound in evil habits as in heavy chains, do not despair of receiving freedom. Enter into the unseen warfare, fight manfully and persistently, bear your defeats with magnanimity. At times God leaves us to ourselves, so that we may learn by experience how weak we are in our solitude—and, on account of this knowledge, cling inseparably to God, who alone can be the conqueror of sin in those who truly will to see sin conquered within themselves. Amen.

[1] The Memorable Sayings, concerning Abba Pimen, ch. 135.

[2] Homily 17, chapters 2 and 8.

[3] Homily 89.

A Meditation on Death

The lot of all people on earth, a lot inescapable for none—is death. We fear it as a most savage enemy, we bitterly mourn those it carries off, yet we lead our lives as though death did not exist at all, as though we were eternal upon the earth.

My grave! Why do I forget you? You wait for me, you wait—and I shall certainly be your inhabitant: why then do I forget you and conduct myself as though the grave were the lot only of other people and not at all my own?

Sin has taken and continues to take from me the knowledge and perception of every truth: it steals from me, it erases from my thought the remembrance of death—of this event so important for me, so palpably certain.

To remember death, one must lead a life in accordance with the commandments of Christ. The commandments of Christ cleanse the mind and heart, mortify them to the world, and quicken them for Christ: the mind, freed from earthly attachments, begins to turn its gaze often toward its mysterious passage into eternity—toward death; the purified heart begins to have a foreboding of it.

A mind and heart freed from the world press toward eternity. Having come to love Christ, they thirst insatiably to stand before Him, though they also tremble at the hour of death, beholding the majesty of God and their own insignificance and sinfulness. Death appears to them as both a fearful trial and a longed-for deliverance from earthly captivity.

If we are not capable of desiring death, owing to our coldness toward Christ and our love of corruptible things, then at least let us make use of the remembrance of death as a bitter medicine against our sinfulness: for “the memory of death”—as the holy Fathers call this remembrance—when it has taken up residence in the soul, severs its friendship with sin and with all sinful pleasures.

“Only he who has made friends with the thought of his own end,” said a certain Venerable Father, “can put an end to his sins.”414 “Remember your last end”, says Scripture, “and you will never sin.”[1] (Sir. 7:39).

Rise from your bed as one rising from the dead; lie down upon it as though into a grave: sleep is an image of death, and the darkness of the night is a herald of the darkness of the tomb, after which the light of resurrection will shine forth—joyous for the servants of Christ, and terrible for His enemies.

The light of the sun is obscured by a dense cloud, though it is composed of the thinnest vapors—and the majestic eternity is likewise hidden from the soul’s gaze by bodily pleasures, dissipation, and the petty cares of earth.

In vain does the sun shine from a clear sky for eyes stricken with blindness—and eternity is as though it does not exist for the heart possessed by attachment to the earth, to its greatness, its glory, its sweetness.

“The death of sinners is grievous” (Ps. 33:22): it comes to them at a moment when they do not expect it at all; it comes to them when they have made no preparation either for death or for eternity, and have not even acquired any clear understanding of either matter. And death seizes the unprepared sinners from the face of the earth on which they only provoked God, and delivers them forever into the prisons of hell.

Do you wish to remember death? Maintain strict moderation in food, clothing, and all the appointments of your household; take care that the things of necessity do not become things of luxury; meditate on the Law of God day and night, or as often as possible—and the remembrance of death will come to you. The remembrance of it will be joined with streams of tears, with repentance for sins, with the intention of amendment, and with fervent and abundant prayers.

Which of us has remained to live upon earth forever?—No one. And I shall follow after my fathers, my forefathers, my brothers, and all those near to me. My body will be set apart in a dark grave, and the fate of my soul will be covered for the remaining inhabitants of earth in impenetrable mystery.

My kinsmen and friends will weep for me; perhaps they will weep bitterly, and then—forget. So have countless thousands of people been mourned and forgotten. They are numbered and remembered by God alone, who is all-perfect.

Scarcely was I born, scarcely was I conceived, when death set her seal upon me. “He is mine,” she said, and immediately prepared her scythe for me. From the very beginning of my existence she has been swinging that scythe. At any moment I may become death’s victim! There have been many near misses; but the sure swing and blow are unavoidable.

With a cold smile of contempt, death looks upon the earthly affairs of humankind. The architect builds a colossal edifice; the painter has not finished his exquisite picture; the genius has formed gigantic plans and wishes to carry them out—then comes unexpected and inexorable death, which casts the celebrated ones of earth and all their schemes into nothingness.

Before a single servant of Christ, harsh death bows in reverence: vanquished by Christ, it respects only the life lived in Christ. Often a heavenly messenger announces to the servants of Truth that their translation into eternity is near at hand, and speaks of the blessedness that awaits them there. Prepared for death by the life they have lived, consoled both by the witness of their own conscience and by the promise from on high, they fall asleep quietly, with a smile upon their lips, into the long sleep of death.

Has anyone seen the body of a righteous man that has been left by the soul? There is no foul odor from it; to approach it is not fearful; at the burial, grief is mingled with some incomprehensible joy. The features of the face, frozen as they were in the moments of the soul’s departure, sometimes rest in the deepest tranquility, and sometimes a joy shines in them—the joy of a sweet encounter and greeting—no doubt with the Angels and the choirs of the saints who are sent from heaven to meet the souls of the righteous.

Come to me, O remembrance of my death! Come, bitter yet wholly just and salutary remembrance! Tear me away from sin! Set my feet upon the path of Christ! Let the remembrance of death weaken my hands for every empty, vain, and sinful undertaking.

Come to me, O remembrance of my death!—and vainglory and the love of pleasure, which hold me captive, will flee from me. I will clear from my table the steaming dishes of luxury, strip from myself garments of splendor, clothe myself in the garments of mourning, and weep for myself while yet alive—I who was destined for death from the moment of my birth.

“Yes! Remember and weep for yourself while yet alive,” says the “remembrance of death”: “I have come to afflict you for your benefit, and I have brought with me a host of the most soul-profitable thoughts. Sell your superfluous things and distribute the proceeds to the poor; send your treasures ahead of you to heaven, according to the testament of the Saviour—they will meet their owner there, having multiplied a hundredfold. Shed fervent tears and fervent prayers over yourself. Who after your death will remember you with such care and zeal as you yourself can remember yourself before death? Do not entrust the salvation of your soul to others, when you yourself can accomplish this work, which is essentially necessary for you! Why should you pursue corruption, when death will inevitably take from you everything corruptible? She is the executor of the decrees of the all-holy God: no sooner does she hear the command than she rushes with the swiftness of lightning to carry it out. She will not be ashamed before the rich man, the nobleman, the hero, or the genius; she will spare neither youth, nor beauty, nor earthly happiness—she translates a person into eternity. And by death the servant of God enters into the blessedness of eternity, while the enemy of God enters into everlasting torment.”

“The remembrance of death is a gift of God,”415 said the Fathers:[2] it is given to one who keeps the commandments of Christ, so as to perfect him in the holy struggle of repentance and salvation.

The grace-given remembrance of death is preceded by one’s own effort to remember death. Compel yourself to remember death often; convince yourself of the certain truth that you will inevitably die—though you do not know when—and the remembrance of death will begin to come of itself, to present itself to your mind: a deep and powerful remembrance that will strike mortal blows against all your sinful undertakings.

The lover of sin is a stranger to this spiritual gift: even at the very gravesides he does not cease to indulge the sinful pleasures of the flesh, having no recollection at all of the death that faces him. On the contrary, the servant of Christ, even in magnificent palaces, will remember the grave that awaits him, and will shed over his soul the most salvific of tears. Amen.

[1] St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 21.

[2] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 6.

Glory to God!

Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to God! For all that I see in myself, in all people, in all things—“Glory to God!”

What do I see in myself?—I see sin, unceasing sin: I see an unceasing violation of the most holy commandments of God, my Creator and Redeemer. And my God sees my sins—He sees them all, sees their numberlessness. When I, a human being, a limited creature, like the grass and the flower of the field in my weakness, look more clearly upon my sins, they strike me with horror both in their quantity and in their quality. How then do they appear before the eyes of God, who is all-holy and all-perfect?

And still God looks with long-suffering upon my stumblings! Still He does not deliver me to the ruin long deserved and long called upon me! The earth does not open beneath me and swallow the transgressor who burdens it! The heavens do not cast down their flame to consume the violator of heaven’s decrees! The waters do not surge from their storehouses and rush upon the sinner who sins openly before all creation—they do not seize him and bury him in the dark depths of the abyss! Hell is restrained: the victim it justly demands, the victim over which it has an irrefutable right, is not delivered to it!

With reverence and with fear I gaze upon God, who gazes upon my sins and sees them more clearly than my own conscience sees them. His wondrous long-suffering fills me with astonishment and bewilderment: I give thanks and praise to this “incomprehensible Goodness.” My thoughts are lost within me; I am wholly encompassed by thanksgiving and praise—thanksgiving and praise take full possession of me and lay a reverent silence upon my mind and heart. I am able to feel, to think, to utter with my tongue only one word: “Glory to God!”

Where are you rushing, O my thought? Look unflinchingly upon my sins; stir up within me a sobbing over them: I need cleansing by bitter weeping, washing by unceasing tears. It does not heed me; it flies—irrepressible—and stands at an immeasurable height! Its flight is like the coursing of lightning when lightning in a single instant touches both ends of the horizon. And the thought stood at the height of spiritual contemplation; from there it gazes upon an extraordinary, most vast spectacle, upon a most vivid and striking scene. Before it lies the whole world, all time from creation to the end of the world, all the events of the world—past, present, and future; before it lie the fate of each person in their minutest particulars; and above all times, all public events, and all private destinies one beholds God, Creator of all creatures and their boundless Sovereign, seeing all things, governing all things, appointing His own ends to all things, giving each its purpose.

God permits a person to be a witness of His governance. But the causes of destinies, the origins of God’s decrees, are known to God alone: “who has understood the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?” (Rom. 11:34). And the very fact that a person is permitted to be a witness of God in His providence, in His governance of creation, in His decrees, is the greatest blessing for a person—a blessing that pours out abundant profit for his soul.

The vision of the Creator and Lord of all visible and invisible creation clothes the one who beholds with a strength above nature: joined to this vision is the acknowledgment of the unbounded authority of the Almighty King of creation over His creation. The very hairs of our head—hairs so trifling in the weak estimation of human beings—are numbered by this boundless, all-encompassing Wisdom and are kept by Him (Mt. 10:30; Lk. 21:18). How much more can no event, no upheaval in human life, take place without His nod. The Christian who looks steadily upon God’s providence preserves amid the most terrible misfortunes a constant courage and unshakeable steadiness. He says with the holy Psalmist and Prophet: “I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved” (Ps. 15:8). The Lord is my helper: I will not fear any misfortune; I will not give myself over to despondency; I will not sink into the deep sea of grief. For all things—“Glory to God!”

The vision of God’s providence instills boundless submission to God. Should a servant of God be surrounded on all sides by various and manifold sorrows?—He consoles his wounded heart thus: “God sees all of this. If, for reasons known to Him in His wisdom, these sorrows were neither profitable nor necessary for me, He, the Almighty, would have averted them. But He does not avert them: it is, therefore, His all-holy will that they should weigh upon me. This will is precious to me, more precious than life! It is better for the creature to die than to reject the will of the Creator! In this will is true life! He who dies in fulfilling the will of God enters into a greater development of life. For all—glory to God!”

From the vision of God’s providence there form in the soul a deep meekness and an unchanging love of neighbor, which no winds can agitate or disturb. For such a soul there are no offenses, no injuries, no wrongdoings: all creation acts by the command or permission of the Creator; the creature is only a blind instrument. In such a soul there resounds the voice of humility, which accuses it of countless transgressions and justifies neighbors as instruments of “righteous providence.” This voice sounds consolingly amid sufferings, bringing peace and comfort; it says quietly: “I am receiving what I deserve for my deeds. It is better for me to suffer in this brief life than to suffer eternally in the everlasting torments of hell. My sins cannot go unpunished: justice requires it. In the fact that they are punished in this short earthly life, I see the ineffable mercy of God.” “Glory to God!”

The vision of God’s providence preserves and nurtures faith in God. He who sees the invisible Almighty Hand—the governor of the world—remains untroubled amid the terrible storms that buffet the sea of life: he believes that the civil order, the helm of the Church, and the fate of each person are held by the Almighty and wise right hand of God. Gazing upon furious waves, threatening storms, and dark clouds, he satisfies and pacifies himself with the thought that God sees what is taking place. For the human being—a frail creature—quiet, humble submission is fitting, along with a single reverent acknowledgment and contemplation of God’s decrees. Let all things proceed along their appointed paths toward the ends determined from on high! For all—“Glory to God!”

Before the vision of Divine providence, not only the temporal sorrows are dispelled, but also those which await a person when he enters eternity, beyond the threshold of the grave. They are blunted and annihilated by the grace-given consolation that always descends into the soul that has renounced itself in submission to God. In self-denial and abandonment to God’s will, even death itself is not terrible: the faithful servant of Christ entrusts his soul and eternal destiny into the hands of Christ—entrusts them with firm faith in Christ, with unshakeable hope in His goodness and power. When the soul departs from the body, and the fallen angels approach it boldly and insolently, it will rout and put to flight those dark and malevolent angels by its own self-renunciation. “Take me, take me,” it will say to them boldly; “cast me into the abyss of darkness and flame, cast me into the abyss of hell, if such is the will of my God, if such a decree has gone forth against me from Him: it is easier to be deprived of the joys of paradise, easier to bear the flames of hell, than to violate the will and decree of the great God. To Him I gave myself, and I give myself now! He, not you, is the Judge of my weaknesses and transgressions!—You, even in your mad disobedience, are only the executors of His decrees.” The servants of the prince of this world will be shaken and confounded at seeing such bold self-renunciation, such quiet and complete abandonment to the will of God! Having rejected this blessed obedience, they were transformed from bright and good Angels into dark and wholly malevolent demons. They will withdraw in shame, and the soul will direct its course unhindered toward the place where its treasure is—God416.[1] There it will behold face to face Him whom it beheld here by faith in His providence, and will cry out “glory to God” eternally.

“Glory to God!” Powerful words! In times of sorrow, when thoughts of doubt, faintheartedness, discontent, and murmuring close in and surround the heart, one must compel oneself to the frequent, unhurried, attentive repetition of the words: “Glory to God!” Whoever with simplicity of heart believes the counsel offered here, and in a time of need tests it in actual practice, will behold the wondrous power of praising God; he will rejoice at the acquisition of such a useful and new knowledge, will rejoice at the acquisition of a weapon against our unseen enemies—so strong and so ready to hand. At the mere sound of these words, pronounced amid a gathering of dark thoughts of grief and despondency—pronounced under compulsion, as it were with lips alone, as it were only into the air—the princes of the air are shaken and put to flight; all dark thoughts are scattered like dust by a strong wind; heaviness and oppression depart from the soul; and there come to dwell within it lightness, peace, calm, consolation, and joy. “Glory to God!”

“Glory to God!” Triumphant words! Words—the proclamation of victory! Words—the rejoicing of all faithful servants of God, the dread and destruction of all His enemies, the shattering of their weapons. That weapon is sin; that weapon is the carnal mind, the fallen wisdom of humanity. This wisdom arose from the Fall; its original cause is sin; it is rejected by God; it is constantly at war with God and is constantly rejected by God. All the wise of earth may gather in vain beside one wounded by sorrow; in vain will they try to heal him with the remedies of eloquence and philosophy; vain is the labor of the sufferer himself, should he wish to disentangle the many-woven net of sorrow by the efforts of his own reason. Very often—almost always—reason loses itself entirely in this many-woven net! Often it sees itself entangled, enclosed on all sides! Often deliverance, even consolation, seems already impossible! And many perish under the unbearable weight of bitter grief; they perish from the mortal wound, the wound of sorrow, having found on earth no remedy strong enough to heal it. Earthly wisdom has presented itself with all its resources: all have proved feeble and of no account. Disdain, O dearly beloved brother, her who is rejected by God! Put aside all the weapons of your reason! Receive the weapon that is offered to you by the foolishness of the preaching of Christ. Human wisdom will smile mockingly when it sees the weapon offered by faith; the fallen mind, by its very nature of enmity toward God, will not delay in presenting the cleverest objections, full of cultivated skepticism and irony. Pay no heed to them—to those rejected by God, to the enemies of God. In your sorrow, begin to pronounce from your soul, to repeat—without any reasoning—the words: “Glory to God!” You will see a sign, you will see a miracle: these words will drive away sorrow, will summon consolation into the heart, and will accomplish what the reason of the reasonable and the wisdom of the wise of earth could not accomplish. Shamed, shamed will be this reason and this wisdom—and you, delivered, healed, believing with a living faith proven to you within yourself, will send up “Glory to God!”

“Glory to God!” Many of God’s saints loved to repeat these words often: they had tasted the power hidden within them. Saint John Chrysostom, when conversing with his spiritual friends and brothers about various circumstances—especially sorrowful ones—always placed the words “glory to God for all things!” as the cornerstone, the foundational teaching, of the conversation. By his habit, preserved for later generations by Church history, he would strike with the forefinger of his right hand against the palm of his left417 and always begin his speech with the words: “Glory to God for all things!”[2]

Brothers! Let us also accustom ourselves to frequent praise of God; let us have recourse to this weapon in our sorrows; by unceasing praise of God let us repel and wear down our invisible adversaries—especially those among them who strive to cast us down through grief, faintheartedness, murmuring, and despair. Let us cleanse ourselves with tears, with prayer, with reading of Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers, so as to become witnesses of God’s providence, which sees all things, possesses all things, governs all things, and directs all things by its unsearchable decrees toward ends known to God alone. Having become witnesses of God’s governance, let us in reverence, in unbroken inward peace, in full submission and firm faith, marvel at the greatness of the incomprehensible God, and send up glory to Him now and to the age of ages.

It is meet and right that the creature should unceasingly praise You, O God our Creator, who called us into being out of nothingness by Your sole infinite and incomprehensible goodness, who adorned us with the beauty and glory of Your image and likeness, who brought us into the blessedness and delight of paradise, for which no end was appointed.

With what did we repay our Benefactor? What did the dust that He had quickened bring as thanks to the Creator?

We sided with Your enemy—with the angel who had rebelled against God, the originator of evil. We heeded the words of blasphemy against our Benefactor: we resolved to suspect our Creator, who is all-perfect Goodness, of envy.

Alas, what a darkening! Alas, what a fall of the mind! From the height of beholding God and theology, our race in an instant—in our forefather—plunges into the abyss of eternal death…

Satan fell first; a bright Angel became a dark demon: having no body, he sinned by mind and by word. Instead of praising God the Benefactor in blameless joy with the other holy Angels, he chose blasphemy. No sooner had he conceived a dark and deadly thought, no sooner had he given it substance in a pernicious word, like the most deadly poison, than he darkened, was transformed, and was cast down with unspeakable swiftness from the high Eden to the earth. The eternal Word testifies to the swiftness of his fall: “I beheld”, He says, “Satan fallen like lightning from heaven” (Lk. 10:18).

Equally swift was the fall of the human being who followed the fallen angel, beginning his own fall with the acceptance of a dark and blasphemous thought, followed by the violation of God’s commandment. This violation had already been preceded by a covert contempt and rejection of God.

Alas, what blindness! What a terrible sin! What a terrible fall! Before this sin, before this fall, the punishments are as nothing: expulsion from paradise, earning daily bread by the sweat of one’s brow, the pain of childbirth, and the return to the earth from which the Creator had taken our body.

But You, what do You do, O boundless Goodness? With what do You repay us for our repayment—the repayment with which we repaid You for Your first benefactions? With what do You repay us for disobedience to You, for unbelief toward You, for the acceptance of terrible blasphemy against You—against You, who are Goodness itself, Perfection itself?

You repay with new benefactions, greater than the first. In one of Your Divine Persons You take upon Yourself our humanity—You take upon Yourself, apart from sin, all our weaknesses that clung to human nature after its fall. You appear before our eyes, having veiled the unbearable glory of Godhead in human flesh; being the Word of God, You speak to us the word of God in the sounds of human speech. Your power is the power of God. Your meekness is the meekness of a lamb. Your name is the name of a man. This all-holy Name moves heaven and earth. How consoling and how majestic is the sound of Your name! When it enters the hearing, when it proceeds from the lips, it enters and goes forth as a priceless treasure, a priceless pearl! “Jesus Christ!” You are both Lord of humankind and a human being. How wondrously and beautifully have You joined Godhead with humanity! How wondrously You act! You are both God and man! You are both Sovereign and servant!418 You are both Priest and Sacrifice! You are both the Saviour and the impartial Judge who is to come for the universe![3] And You heal all infirmities! And You visit and receive sinners! And You raise the dead! And You command the waters of the sea, the winds of heaven! And in Your hands the loaves wondrously multiply, yielding a thousandfold—sown, reaped, baked, and broken at one and the same time, in one and the same instant! And You hunger, that You might deliver us from hunger! And You thirst, that our thirst might be quenched! And You travel through the land of our exile, wearying Yourself, that You might restore to us the tranquil, sweet-filled, heavenly homeland we had lost! And You pour out Your sweat in the Garden of Gethsemane, that we might cease to pour out our sweat in the winning of bread for the body, and might learn to pour it out in prayers, for a worthy reception of the bread of heaven. The thorns that the cursed earth brought forth for us You have taken upon Your head; You have crowned and pierced Your most holy head with thorns! We were deprived of the tree of life in paradise and of its fruit that granted immortality to those who tasted it; You, stretched out upon the wood of the Cross, have become for us the fruit granting eternal life to those who partake of You. Both the fruit of life and the tree of life have appeared on earth, in the land of our exile. These surpass the ones in paradise; those imparted immortality, while these impart immortality and Divinity. By Your sufferings You have poured sweetness into our sufferings. We renounce earthly pleasures; we choose suffering as our lot—if only we may become partakers of Your sweetness! It, as a foretaste of eternal life, is sweeter and more precious than temporal life! You fell asleep in the sleep of death, which was unable to hold You in eternal slumber—You, who are God! You arose, and granted us awakening from this sleep, from the terrible sleep of death; You granted us the blessed and glorious resurrection! You have taken our renewed nature up to heaven and seated it at the right hand of Your Father, who is eternal and co-eternal with You! You have made Your Father our Father also! You have opened to us the way to heaven! You have prepared for us mansions in heaven! You guide all weary pilgrims of earth—those who believed in You, called upon Your holy name, kept Your holy commandments, served You in Orthodox piety, bore Your cross and drank Your cup with courage, with thanksgiving to You, with praise of You—to those mansions, receive them there, give them rest, and console them in them!

Glory to You, Creator of those who did not exist! Glory to You, Redeemer and Saviour of the fallen and the lost! Glory to You, our God and Lord! Grant us both on earth and in heaven to praise, to bless, and to glorify Your goodness! Grant us with unveiled face to behold Your awesome, unapproachable, and magnificent Glory—to behold it eternally, to bow before it, and to be blessed in it. Amen.

1846. Sergius Hermitage.

[1] Venerable John of Carpathus. Chapter XXV. The Philokalia, Part 4.

[2] Histoire du Christianisme par Fleury. Liv. 21, chap. 19.

[3] Lk. 14:17. Commentary of blessed Theophylact.

The Snares of the Prince of This World

Under the sign of the holy cross I lead you, brothers, to a spiritual spectacle. Let our guide be the great one among God’s saints—Anthony, the desert-dweller of Egypt.

He, by the action of Divine revelation, once beheld the snares of the devil spread out across the whole world for the capture of human beings to their destruction. Seeing that these snares were without number, he wept and asked the Lord: “Lord! Who then can avoid these snares and obtain salvation?”419[1]

I plunge in thought into a contemplation of the devil’s snares. They are set both outside and inside the human being. One snare is joined closely to another; in some places the snares are ranged in several rows; in others there are wide openings—but these lead to the most numerous windings of the snares, from which escape already seems impossible. Gazing upon these many-cunning snares, I weep bitterly! The sorrowful question of the blessed desert-dweller repeats itself within me: “Lord! Who then can be delivered from these snares?”

Snares are set for my mind in various books that call themselves light while containing a teaching of darkness, written under the manifest or concealed influence of the dark and wholly malevolent prince of this world, from the source of a reason corrupted by the Fall, “in the craftiness of deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14)—as the Apostle expresses it—by writers who “are puffed up without cause by their fleshly mind” (Col. 2:18). My neighbor, in love for whom I ought to seek my salvation, becomes for me a snare that catches me to my destruction when his mind is caught by the snares of false and deceitful teaching. My own mind bears the marks of the Fall; it is covered by the veil of darkness and infected with the poison of falsehood: deceived by the prince of this world, it sets snares for itself. Even in paradise it strove recklessly and incautiously to acquire a knowledge that was deadly and fatal for it! After the Fall it became yet more reckless and headstrong: it drinks boldly from the cup of poisonous knowledge, thereby utterly destroying in itself any taste or desire for the Divine cup of saving knowledge.

How many snares there are for my heart! I see coarse snares and subtle snares. Which of them to call the more dangerous, the more terrible?—I am at a loss. The trapper is skilled—and he who escapes the coarse snares is caught by him in the subtle ones. The end of the chase is one: destruction. The snares are covered in every way, with surpassing artfulness. The Fall is clothed in every form of triumph: people-pleasing, hypocrisy, and vainglory—in every form of virtue. Deception and dark spiritual delusion wear the mask of the spiritual and the heavenly. Soulish love—often vicious—is covered with the appearance of holy love; a false and illusory sweetness is passed off as spiritual sweetness. The prince of this world uses every means to keep a person in his fallen nature: and this alone, without any gross transgressions, is sufficient to make a person a stranger to God. Gross transgressions will be fully replaced, by the trapper’s sure calculations, by a Christian’s proud opinion of himself—a Christian who rests content with the virtues of his fallen nature and has given himself over to self-delusion—thereby becoming estranged from Christ.

How many snares there are for the body! The body itself—what a snare it is! How the prince of this world makes use of it! Through the body, by descending to its degrading inclinations and desires, we approach a likeness to the irrational beasts. What an abyss! What a removal, what a descent from the Divine likeness! Into this deep abyss, so terribly far from God, we plunge when we give ourselves over to the crude pleasures of the flesh, called “falls” for the gravity of their sinfulness. But the less crude bodily pleasures are no less ruinous. For their sake care for the soul is abandoned; God, heaven, eternity, and the vocation of the human being are forgotten. The prince of this world strives to keep us in unceasing distraction and darkening through bodily pleasures! Through the senses—these doorways of the soul through which it communicates with the visible world—he unceasingly introduces into it sensory pleasure, with sin and captivity inseparably joined to it. In celebrated earthly concerts music thunders, expressing and stirring up various passions; these passions are portrayed in earthly theaters, roused in earthly entertainments: by every possible means the human being is led to find pleasure in the evil that has slain him. In intoxication with it he forgets the Divine good that saves him, and the blood of the God-man by which we have been redeemed.

This is a faint sketch of the snares set by the prince of this world for the capture of Christians. A faint sketch—yet has it not, brothers, justly struck you with terror? Has there not been born in your souls the question: “Who then can escape these snares?”

The dreadful picture is not yet finished! Still, still my brush—moved by the Word of God—is roused to paint on.

What does the Word of God declare? It announces a prophecy being fulfilled before our very eyes—a prophecy that in the last times, “because lawlessness will be multiplied, the love of many will grow cold” (Mt. 24:12). The unfailing Word of God—more firm than heaven and earth—announces to us the multiplication in the last times of the snares of the devil and the increase in the number of those who perish in these snares.

Indeed! I look at the world and see: the snares of the devil have multiplied, in comparison with the times of the primitive Church of Christ, multiplied beyond measure. Books containing false teaching have multiplied; minds that hold and transmit false teaching to others have multiplied; the followers of holy Truth have diminished—diminished to the extreme; esteem for natural virtues, accessible to Jews and pagans alike, has increased; esteem has appeared even for virtues that are directly pagan and contrary to nature itself, which regards them as evil; understanding of Christian virtues has diminished—I say nothing of how much their actual practice has diminished and been almost annihilated; the material life has expanded; spiritual life is vanishing; bodily pleasures and concerns devour all one’s time—there is no time even to remember God. And all this becomes an obligation, a law. “Because lawlessness will be multiplied, the love of many will grow cold”—even the love of those who would have remained in love toward God, had the evil not been so universal, had the snares of the devil not multiplied to such incalculable numbers.

The grief of blessed Anthony was just. All the more just is the grief of a Christian of our own times, upon beholding the snares of the devil; well-founded is the sorrowful question: “Lord! Who among human beings can avoid these snares and obtain salvation?”

To the question of the Venerable desert-dweller came the answer from the Lord: “Humble-mindedness passes through these snares, and they cannot even touch it.”

A Divine answer! How it removes every doubt from the heart, depicting in brief words the certain means of victory over our adversary—the means of dissolving and nullifying his many-woven stratagems, devised with the help of his many-year and many-malice experience.

Let us guard the mind with humility, not allowing it to rush indiscriminately and headlong toward the acquisition of knowledge, no matter how much their novelty and the importance of their titles may attract our curiosity. Let us protect it from the examination of false teachings disguised under the name and mask of Christian teaching. Let us humble it into obedience to the Church, casting down every thought that exalts itself against the understanding of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), against the mind of the Church. The narrow path of obedience to the Church is distressing to the mind at first; but it leads out into the breadth and freedom of the spiritual mind, before which all the apparent inconsistencies that the carnal and soulish mind finds in strict submission to the Church disappear. Let us not allow the mind to read about spiritual subjects in any books other than those written by the authors of the true Church, of which the Church herself has testified that they are organs of the Holy Spirit. He who reads the holy authors imperceptibly receives a share of the Holy Spirit who dwells in them and speaks through them;[2] he who reads the works of heretical authors—even though they may be adorned with the title of “saints” by their heretical conventicle—receives a share of the evil spirit of delusion420: for his disobedience to the Church, which is pride, he falls into the snares of the prince of this world.

What is to be done with the heart?—Let us graft onto this wild olive tree a branch from the fruitful olive; let us graft onto it the properties of Christ; let us accustom it to the humility of the Gospel; let us forcibly compel it to accept the will of the Gospel. Having seen its dissonance with the Gospel, its unceasing contradiction of and resistance to the Gospel, let us see in this opposition, as in a mirror, our own fall. Having seen our fall, let us weep over it before the Lord, our Creator and Redeemer; let us be afflicted with a salutary grief, and remain in this grief until we behold our own healing. “A heart that is contrite and humble God will not despise” (Ps. 50:19), delivering it as prey to the enemy. God is our Creator and absolute Lord: He can re-create our heart—and He will transform a heart that cries out to Him unremittingly with weeping and prayer from a heart that loves sin into a heart that loves God, a holy heart.

Let us guard our bodily senses, not admitting sin through them into the chamber of the soul. Let us bridle the curious eye and the curious ear; let us put a severe restraint upon that small member of the body which, though small, produces strong agitations—upon our tongue; let us subdue the irrational impulses of the body by abstinence, vigil, labors, frequent remembrance of death, and by attentive and constant prayer. How brief are the pleasures of the body! With what foulness do they end! The body, by contrast, fenced by abstinence and the guarding of the senses, washed by the tears of repentance, sanctified by frequent prayers, is being built up mysteriously into a temple of the Holy Spirit, who makes every assault of the enemy upon such a person fruitless.

“Humble-mindedness passes through all the snares of the devil, and they cannot even touch it.” Amen.

1846. Sergius Hermitage.

[1] The Sketic Patericon.—Venerable Abba Dorotheus. Instruction 2.

[2] Saint Peter of Damascus. The Philokalia, Part I. On Discernment.

A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

(Drawn from chapter 15 of Exodus)

I sit down beneath the sacred shade of the wood of the Cross, and begin a song of praise, a song of thanksgiving to my Creator and Saviour.

I do not flee beneath the shade of the Cross from the burning rays of the sensory sun: I flee from the heat of sins, from the heat of temptations. Alas! the world is filled with terrible temptations.

How cool, how refreshing it is beneath the shade of the holy Cross! From its very roots a spring of living water strikes forth: the teaching of Christ.

The voice of my song is not heard by the vain world. My mind and heart sing in mystery. May my Saviour hear them.

Once a pillar of cloud and fire went before the assembly of the people of Israel through the air, guiding them through the wild and terrible desert. The invisible and yet visible to me providence of my God has guided me along the difficult and sorrowful path of earthly life.

I lived formerly in Egypt. Pharaoh, its king, occupied me without cease in the making of bricks and other heavy labors—in unbroken concern for the material. Whenever the thought came to me of serving my God, Pharaoh reproached me for idleness and multiplied my cares about what is temporal, earthly, and vain, so that it became impossible for me even to think of God.

Moses—by this name and person is depicted the law of the Spirit—by wondrous means drew me out of Egypt: out of a life for the flesh, for the world—into the desert.

The path through the desert is hard! There the burning sand shifts under the feet; there sharp stones and prickly thorns wound the feet; there the scorching sun burns the traveler; there is an unbearable thirst; there are no pots of flesh as in Egypt; there are tents, no comfortable and quiet shelter; there the dead nature wearies and torments the mind and the eyes.

Barely had I reached the Red Sea when I saw behind me hostile horsemen and thundering chariots. Before me was the sea; before me and behind me was a terrible and inevitable death.

But my God was there. He is the source of life, and death is subject to Him. In the midst of the sea a path opened before me: in life, amid the world, a way of salvation suddenly appeared before me.

The horsemen rushed in pursuit of me, the chariots sped forward—all of them perished in the sea. “Let us sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider He has cast into the sea” (Ex. 15:1).

The frenzied horse is the irrational impulses and desires of my flesh; the rider seated upon it is the sinful thought.

The thundering chariots are the vain glory of the world, its greatness. It will pass and fall silent, sinking into the sea of oblivion. What is so worthless as the noise and creaking of wheels and iron in chariots!

The one good, the one treasure of the human being is God—his Creator and Saviour, his life and delight, his eternal possession. To Him be praise, to Him be glory! “The Lord, who shatters wars, the Lord is His name.” What is impossible for human beings is possible for Him. “The chariots of Pharaoh and his army He cast into the sea; His chosen chariot commanders were drowned in the Red Sea” (Ex. 15:3–4)—in the weeping of a person over his sinfulness.

“The waters were congealed like a wall, the waves were congealed in the heart of the sea” (Ex. 15:8). The temptations of the world have lost their power; their action has been shackled; they have not subdued my heart to themselves—it has become insensible to them, and passed between the watery deeps as though between walls of stone. “Your right hand, O Lord, has been glorified in power; Your right hand, O Lord, has shattered the enemies” (Ex. 15:6)—it gave me strength and took away the strength of the sin that hung over me like a wall of waves. You turned to stone the waves that thirsted to swallow me, to drag my lifeless body into the unknowable abysses of hell.

“My helper and my protector” (Ex. 15:2). On my path to You—to You, my promised land—enemies still await me: the children of strangers. They have come to know that Your holy providence watches over me, that Your hand leads and guards me and fights on my behalf; they know that Your hand is mighty. They fear Your hand, yet they envy me and gnash their teeth against me.

“The peoples heard” of Your mercies toward me, “and were troubled”: the inhabitants of Philistia were grieved; the leaders of Edom were dismayed; trembling seized the princes of Moab; the hearts of all who dwell in Canaan melted (Ex. 15:14–15). Save me, O my God, from all the children of strangers—from all and everything that is estranged from Your Holy Spirit, and which is therefore, for the Christian, a child of strangers. Let not my foot be caught in any snares; let me not fall into any ruinous abyss—invisible to me, unknown to me, incomprehensible to me.

Take away from all the enemies of my soul their strength, as You took it from the chariots and horsemen of Pharaoh; turn them to stone, that they may be without any movement, without any action—as You turned the waters to stone. Save me, O Lord my God! My enemies are strong and great! If You leave me to myself, they will slay me as a lion slays a weak lamb; they will grind me as a millstone grinds a grain of wheat.

“By the greatness of Your arm let them be as stone” (Ex. 15:16)—all who hate my salvation, all who resist my journey to You—“until Your people pass over, O Lord, until the people whom You have acquired pass over. Bring them in and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which You have made for Your dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands have established” (Ex. 15:16–17).

When the waters of the Red Sea had covered and drowned the host of Pharaoh, his chariot commanders, his horsemen, his chariots, then “Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron”—the high priest of Israel—and of Moses their lawgiver—“took a timbrel in her hand”, and accompanied by a choir of the women of Israel, sang the song: “Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider He has cast into the sea” (Ex. 15:20–21).

The soul that abides in the service of God, meditating on the Law of God day and night, is united in one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17), is made akin to His holy Law, becomes its sister, a prophetess—as one drawing from it a grace-given inspiration. When it sees its deliverance from sinful death, from drowning in the vain cares and occupations of the world, from the authority and violence of Pharaoh, it tunes the feelings of the heart into the wondrous peace of Christ and, touching them as upon strings with Divine thoughts, sends forth wondrous and prophetic sounds, and sings praise to God—mystically, spiritually, and with great delight.

O you women of Israel—souls of the faithful servants of the Lord Jesus! Take your timbrels; join the song of the inspired prophetess! Let us sit in harmonious choir beneath the sacred shade of the Cross, having crucified “the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24), and with pure mind and heart, with pure lips, “let us sing to the Lord”—the great God, our Saviour—“for He has triumphed gloriously” with His inexpressible benefactions toward us and toward the whole Christian and human race. Amen.

A Meditation at Sunset

The magnificent luminary of the day, having completed its daily course, drew near to setting. Inclined toward the very sea, as though hovering above it, it was sending farewell rays upon the earth, ready to plunge into the boundless sea. I watch this majestic spectacle from the windows of my cell, from within a quiet monastery! Before me are Kronstadt, the opposite shore of Finland, and the sea marked out with bands. Above the sea the rosy sun circles, already touching with its edges the surface of the sea. The setting sun allows the human eye to gaze upon it—that same eye for which the sun is inaccessible throughout the entire course of the day, as it hides itself behind an unbearable and blinding radiance.

What contemplation is born for the solitary monk from this spectacle? What inspiration will pour into my breast in reading this leaf from the sacred book written by God Himself—the book of nature?

This book is constantly opened for those who do not cease to cleanse themselves by repentance and by withdrawal from every sinful undertaking—both gross and subtle. It is opened for those who have renounced earthly pleasures and vain dissipation. It is opened for the followers and disciples of the Gospel, for those who love heavenly glory and eternal delights, for those who love a modest and quiet solitude—who have come to love it in order to acquire within it an abundant knowledge of God, by removing from themselves everything that conceals God from us and distances us from Him.

The great book of nature is sealed for impure readers who are darkened by sin, enslaved to sin, plunged into fleshly pleasures, dizzied and clouded by vain distraction. In vain do they, in their pride, suppose that they too are readers of it! They read in it a dead, material letter; they do not read—God.

The content of the book of nature: God is depicted beyond description—sung in the resounding songs of the Spirit, inaudible to the fleshly ear, beautiful, sacred, striking, and captivating the hearing of the reborn soul.

Before this book—according to the teaching of the great Apostle to the nations—the tribes and peoples of all the ages of the world’s life who have remained in their pitiable and absurd idolatry, in their disastrous ignorance of God, will stand for judgment on the day of the terrible Judgment of God, and it will condemn them. The invisible with regard to God that cannot be seen with the eyes of flesh, when beheld in His creation—in nature—is seen, and “His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).

There is a book higher and more divine, more blessed and more awesome, than the book of nature: the Gospel.

The Gospel brings the perceptive and prudent reader—one who reads this book of life with his very life—to God Himself, and unites the human being with God; the book of nature places its reader in the choir of the Angels and makes him a beholder and proclaimer of the majesty of God. The Angels, when they beheld the book of visible nature newly issued forth from the hand of the Creator, sang a song of praise to the Creator; in like manner, the human being who looks upon nature with a cleansed eye sings and glorifies God. The Gospel more strictly condemns the inattentive reader than does nature. “How much worse a punishment do you think”, says the Apostle, “will he deserve who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, and has counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?… Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord” (Heb. 10:29–30). The Christian will be judged by the Gospel: this the Lord proclaimed: “The word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day” (Jn. 12:48). In the book of nature, though God is read—the Almighty, the All-wise, the All-good, infinitely higher than any creature, worthy of worship from rational creatures as Creator and Benefactor—yet God is read as One who by His very essence is inaccessible to comprehension and to the forming of any definite concept, as transcending all comprehension and conception. The Gospel opens to us God who in His essence is One and Three-Personed; it opens the Origin—the Father; it opens the Son, born of the Father, co-eternal with the Father; it opens the Spirit proceeding from the Father, worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son as Their equal and consubstantial; it opens and proclaims the Redeemer, and brings the human being not only to the true worship of God but also to adoption by God, to union with God. The book of nature is illumined by a visible, majestic giant, immense and radiant—the sun; in the Gospel and from the Gospel shines the Sun of righteousness—God who humbled Himself to the Incarnation, to a manger and a cave, to the execution of criminals: the Firstborn from the dead, the Father of the age to come, our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. The blind man cannot be a spectator of the wonders of nature: he who is darkened by sin, a slave of the world and its prince, cannot know Christ and His holy Gospel. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light… Whoever does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father” (Jn. 1:5, 3:20, 36; 1 Jn. 2:23).

The setting sun vividly represents the state of Christianity in our own times. The same Sun of righteousness, Christ, shines; He sends forth the same rays—but they no longer pour down the same radiance or warmth as in the times before our own. This is because the rays do not fall directly upon us, but reach us only in an oblique, glancing direction. The rays of the Sun of righteousness, Christ, are the Holy Spirit: “the Light and Giver of light to human beings, by whom the Father is known and the Son is glorified and is known by all.”421[1]

The Holy Spirit found among the first Christians many living vessels, living temples worthy of His indwelling and habitation. Such were the Apostles; such was the first martyr Stephen; such were almost all the members of the Church established by the Apostles; such were the saints of every age. The Holy Spirit, finding a Christian faithful to Christ, descended upon him, re-created him according to the likeness of the New Adam, introducing into his soul and body an incorruptible holiness from God and filling His temple with spiritual gifts. Spirit-bearing men abundantly spread the teaching of Christ by the power of spiritual words confirmed by the power of the gifts of the Spirit, and provided their brothers with swift and exalting progress, “admonishing”, says the Apostle, “every person and teaching in all wisdom, that we may present every person perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:28).

Now, when those who are rich in sciences, arts, and everything material have multiplied, now “the devout man has vanished” (Ps. 11:2). The Holy Spirit, looking upon the children of humankind, seeking a worthy vessel in this multitude of those who call themselves educated, enlightened, and Orthodox, pronounces upon them a sorrowful verdict: “There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become useless. There is no one who does good—no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; the venom of asps is under their lips; their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. 3:11–18).

These are the reasons why the Spirit of God holds Himself aloof from us, even though He is the true inheritance of true Christians—acquired for all the new Israelites by their all-holy Ancestor. The Spirit of God is holy and rests only in the holy—in those who have crucified themselves to the world, who have crucified “the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). Even in the Old Testament it was proclaimed of Him: “My Spirit shall not strive with these people forever, because they are flesh” (Gen. 6:3). And that all-good Spirit, who in the primitive Church descended upon the Cornelius who had merely heard the word of the Cross and filled him with various spiritual gifts, holds Himself aloof from us—already washed in baptism, claiming to be believers and Orthodox; holds Himself aloof, though He, as God, has no partiality; holds Himself aloof, lest He make us yet more sinful by adding to our other sins the grave sin of the offense by which the Holy Spirit is offended and compelled to withdraw (Eph. 4:30; 1 Thes. 5:19).

The rays of the Sun of righteousness no longer fall directly upon human beings! Because of the intensification of material and fleshly life, a living vessel of the Holy Spirit is now rarely, very rarely found upon the earth. The hearts of human beings have become, by their impurity, incapable of directly receiving and bearing the inscriptions of the Spirit; for this purpose lifeless matter has become more capable than hearts—undefiled by sin, at least. Where does the word of the Spirit now rest?—In the books of Holy Scripture and of God’s holy saints: in books written by the inspiration and under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit communicated to His chosen ones various spiritual gifts, and appointed them to various services. Some He anointed for prophecy, others for apostleship, others for pastoring and teaching, others for martyrdom for Christ, others for the cleansing of themselves to Christ through the ascetic struggles of monasticism. The gifts are diverse, the services are diverse; but the origin and source is one: the Holy Spirit, who imparts to each his gift and appoints each to his service according to His own will and authority, as God. And the books of God’s saints were written in the exercise of various gifts of the Spirit, by vessels of the Spirit who had various ministries—all written either by the inspiration or under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit already shows from here the degree of glory of His living temples—shining from one more brightly, from another more moderately. As the stars of the visible, heavenly firmament “differ” (1 Cor. 15:41) from one another in glory, so diverse is the spiritual progress of God’s saints shining in the heaven of the Church. Proportionate to their spiritual progress is the light emitted by the books they have written—yet all of them are in heaven, all of them emit the light and fragrance of the Holy Spirit. And these books are the light of the rays of the setting Sun of righteousness—appointed by the all-good God to illumine the final hours of the Christian day.

Brothers! Let us discern the signs of the times, as the Saviour enjoins—for ignorance of these signs is what the Lord rebukes in the Pharisees (Mt. 16:3). Let us give proper heed to the instruction of the Saviour, who said to the Jews of His own day: “A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light” (Jn. 12:35–36).

With faith let us exercise ourselves in reading the books written by God’s holy saints, drawing from them enlightenment and life for the soul. Let us shun as a deadly poison the books written from an impure and foul-smelling source—from falsely-called reason, this possession of fallen human nature, which by its fall has become kindred to the fallen angels. “Let us no longer be children”, the Apostle exhorts us, “tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning and craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14).

They are coming, they are coming—more terrible than the waves of the universal flood that destroyed the whole human race—the waves of falsehood and darkness are coming, surrounding from all sides, ready to swallow up the world, destroying faith in Christ, demolishing His kingdom upon earth, suppressing His teaching, corrupting morals, blunting and annihilating conscience, establishing the dominion of the wholly malevolent prince of this world. As the means of our salvation, let us employ the flight commanded by the Lord (Mt. 24:16).

Where is that blessed ark—like the ark of righteous Noah—into which one might flee from the waves that encompass from every side, where one might find sure salvation? The ark is the holy Church, sailing above the waves of the moral flood and, in the dark, stormy, and threatening night, with courage and steadiness steering her course by the lights of heaven: the writings of God’s holy saints. No darkness, no clouds can obscure the radiance of these lights.

The ark will reach the haven of blessed eternity and will bring there in safety all those who have entrusted their salvation to it.

Whoever despises this ark, and supposes—in the blind pride and self-conceit—to cross these terrible waves on the frail skiff of his own reason; whoever disdains humble obedience to the true Church; whoever boards other vessels—damaged by false teaching, eaten through by the delusion of the crafty serpent; whoever rejects the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or follows Holy Scripture and the sacred writings—in which alone the teaching of the Spirit is found—with coldness and half-heartedness—will perish.

“While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” Amen.

Sergius Hermitage, 1846.

[1] Sticheron at Vespers of Holy Pentecost.

The Pharisee

The Pharisee (Part 1)

Brothers! Let us look closely in the Gospel at the disposition of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ. We shall see that He is never offended at sinners, however grievous their sins may be. Likewise, there is not a single example in all the Gospel of the holy Apostles being offended at anyone. The Pharisees, on the contrary, are perpetually offended—offended at the All-perfect One Himself, at God who has become incarnate; so offended as to condemn Him as a criminal, to hand Him over to a shameful death, to crucify the Saviour on the Cross between two robbers! From this there naturally follows the conclusion that the tendency to take offense is a grave infirmity of the soul, a mark of the Pharisee. One must carefully watch over the heart and put to death within it the feeling of offense at one’s neighbor by means of spiritual reasoning drawn from the Gospel.

The Gospel is a sacred and all-holy book! As the sun is reflected in pure waters, so Christ is portrayed in the Gospel. Let him who desires to behold Christ cleanse his mind and heart by repentance! He will behold in the Gospel Christ, the true God, Saviour of fallen human beings; he will behold in the Gospel what qualities the disciple of Jesus must have—the disciple called to learn meekness and humility from the Lord Himself. In these God-imitating virtues he will find the blessed rest of his soul.

Part One

Once the Lord entered the house of the tax-collector Matthew—transforming the tax-collector into an Apostle—and the incarnate God reclined at table with sinners. The Pharisees, seeing this, were offended. “Why”, they said to the disciples of Jesus, “why does your Teacher eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?” (Mt. 9:11).

Tell me first, you Pharisees, why do you call these people sinners? Would it not be closer to the truth to call them the fortunate and the blessed—Angels, Cherubim—because God was pleased to recline in their company? Would it not be better for you to say: “We too are sinners! Receive us also, O merciful Jesus, at Your feet. These sinners You—O Knower of hearts, true Judge—have preferred to us: passing us by, You have reclined with them. It seems that our sins before You are heavier than theirs. With them You recline: permit us at least to fall at Your feet.”

There is no holy fragrance of humility in these dark self-styled righteous men—rich in the righteousness of fallen human nature, in the counterfeit righteousness of the world, in the demonic righteousness. Boldly they condemn the Lord; they condemn the sinners He receives—who thereby become true righteous persons; they reject the Lord, saying: “your Teacher.” By this they make clear that they do not acknowledge Him as “their Teacher.”

The Lord’s answer is an answer to all the hidden roots of the Pharisees’ infirmity, to the entire state of their souls. This answer contains a terrible condemnation and rejection from the face of God of every false human righteousness joined with the condemnation of one’s neighbor. “Those who are well”, said the Lord, “have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mt. 9:12–13).

Once, on a Sabbath day, the Lord was walking with His holy disciples and Apostles through fields sown with grain. The disciples felt hungry and began to pluck ears of grain; rubbing them in their hands, they separated the kernels and ate them. The Pharisees, seeing this, said to the Lord: “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath” (Mt. 12:2). The Lord, having mentioned David and the priests—the former of whom broke the ceremonial law on occasion, while the latter break the law by prescription of the law—repeats to the Pharisees again the solemn remark: “If you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Mt. 12:7).

The feeling of offense—how fault-finding, how malicious it is! It pretends with petty exactness to hold to the forms of the law, while trampling upon the very substance of the law. O dark and blind Pharisee! Hear what the Lord says to you: “I desire mercy.” When you see a deficiency in your neighbor, have mercy upon your neighbor: he is a member of your own body! The weakness you see in him today may become your own weakness tomorrow. You take offense solely because you are proud and blind! You observe certain outward rules of the law, and for this you admire yourself; you despise and condemn your neighbors, in whom you notice the violation of certain trifles, and you do not notice the practice of great, hidden virtues—virtues pleasing to God, unknown to your arrogant and hard heart. You have not looked sufficiently into yourself; you have not seen yourself: it is only for this reason that you do not acknowledge yourself a sinner. This is why your heart has not been broken, has not been filled with repentance and humility; this is why you have not understood that you, equally with all other human beings, are in need of God’s mercy and of salvation. It is terrible not to acknowledge oneself a sinner! Jesus disowns the man who will not acknowledge himself a sinner: “I came not”, He says, “to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” What blessedness it is to acknowledge oneself a sinner! He who has acknowledged himself a sinner gains access to Jesus. What blessedness it is to behold one’s own sins! What blessedness it is to look into one’s own heart! He who gazes into his own heart will forget that there are any sinners on earth other than himself. If he does glance at his neighbors from time to time, they all seem to him innocent and beautiful, like Angels. Gazing into himself and examining his sinful stains, he becomes convinced that the sole means of his salvation is the mercy of God; that he is an unprofitable servant—not only for violating but also for insufficiently keeping the commandments of God, for a manner of keeping that more resembles a distortion than actual fulfillment. Being himself in need of mercy, he pours it out abundantly upon his neighbors, having for them—only mercy. “If you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mt. 12:7, 9:13).

Our merciful Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, who never turned away repentant tax-collectors and harlots, did not disdain the Pharisees either: He came to heal the human being of all his infirmities—and among these, of Pharisaism, which is especially difficult to cure only because this disease proclaims itself to be flourishing health, rejects the physician and his remedies, and itself wishes to cure the diseases of others—using, for the removal of a barely visible speck from a tender eye, heavy blows of massive beams.

A certain Pharisee invited the Lord to share a meal with him. “Entering the Pharisee’s house, He reclined at table” (Lk. 7:36), the Gospel narrates of the merciful Lord. It seems that the Pharisee, though he had some zeal and a certain faith toward the Lord, yet, in receiving Him, made room also for calculation about what degree of greeting to offer the Guest. If there had been no such calculation based on a sense of one’s own righteousness and merit, what would have prevented the Pharisee from running out to meet the Divine Visitor, falling at His holy feet with trembling, spreading beneath His feet his own soul and heart? This was not done; the Pharisee missed the blessed occasion to honor the Saviour as the Saviour. The missed opportunity is seized by a certain woman of the city, a known sinner. She hastens with an alabaster flask of fragrant myrrh to the Pharisee’s house, enters the chamber where the meal was being held, and begins to wash the Saviour’s feet with her tears, to wipe them with the hair of her head—to kiss the Saviour’s feet and anoint them with myrrh.

The blind Pharisee does not see the virtue being performed before his very eyes—virtue that exposes the coldness and deadness of his own heart. Offense and condemnation stir in his soul. He thinks to himself: “If this man were a prophet, He would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner” (Lk. 7:39). Why do you belittle God by calling Him merely a prophet? Why do you call a sinner the woman who honors God better than you do? Fear, and be silent: the Creator is present! To Him belongs judgment over His creatures; to Him it is equally easy to forgive five hundred or fifty denarii of a sinful debt—He is Almighty and infinitely rich. The Pharisee customarily leaves this out of his calculations! Seeing five hundred denarii of debt in his neighbor, he pays no attention to his own fifty—he does not even count them as debt—whereas the determination of the Divine Judgment declares that neither of them has anything with which to pay, that both of them alike are in need of the forgiveness of their debt. “When they had nothing with which to repay, he forgave them both” (Lk. 7:42). The lack of humility—from which the infirmity of Pharisaism springs—is a great hindrance to spiritual progress. While those who have fallen into grievous sins bring repentance with burning zeal and contrition of spirit, forget the whole world, see their sin unceasingly, and weep before God over it—the Pharisee’s gaze is divided. His own sin—appearing to him as trifling—does not draw to itself all his attention. He remembers and knows certain good deeds of his own, and places his hope in them. He sees the deficiencies of his neighbors; comparing them with his own, he judges his own to be slight and excusable. The more his own righteousness grows in his eyes, the more the justification freely granted by grace—“freely” given to the repentant—diminishes. This is why the feeling of repentance weakens and is extinguished. With the diminution of the feeling of repentance the journey toward spiritual progress becomes harder; with the annihilation of the feeling of repentance a person is turned aside from the salvific path onto the path of self-conceit and self-delusion. He becomes a stranger to the holy love of God and neighbor. “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven”, the Lord said of the blessed sinner, “for she loved much. But he to whom little is forgiven, loves little” (Lk. 7:47).

He who is infected with the infirmity of Pharisaism is deprived of spiritual progress. The soil of his heart-field is hard; it bears no harvest: for spiritual fruitfulness what is needed is a heart tilled by repentance, softened, moistened with compunction and tears. Deprivation of progress is already a substantial loss! But the harm that comes from Pharisaism is not limited to the soul’s fruitlessness: the deadly infection of Pharisaism is in most cases accompanied by the most ruinous consequences. Pharisaism not only renders a person’s good deeds fruitless, but directs them to the harm of his soul and to his condemnation before God.

The Lord depicted this in the parable of the “Pharisee and the tax-collector” who prayed together in the Temple of God (Lk. 18:10–14). The Pharisee, looking at himself, found no cause for repentance, no cause for a feeling of heartfelt contrition; on the contrary, he found cause to be satisfied with himself and to admire himself. He saw in himself fasting and the giving of alms; but he did not see those vices which he saw—or thought he saw—in others, and at which he was offended. I say “thought he saw” because offense has large eyes; it sees even in a neighbor sins that are not in him at all—sins that its imagination, led by malice, has invented for the neighbor. The Pharisee, in his self-delusion, offers praise to God for the state of his soul. He conceals his self-exaltation—and it is concealed from him—under the guise of thanksgiving to God. At a superficial glance at the Law, it seemed to him that he was a fulfiller of the Law, pleasing to God. He forgot that the commandment of the Lord is, in the expression of the Psalmist, “exceedingly broad” (Ps. 118:96); that before God even “the heavens are not clean” (Job 15:15); that God is not pleased with sacrifices or even with burnt offerings, when they are not accompanied and assisted by contrition and humility of spirit (Ps. 50); that the Law of God must be planted in the very heart itself to attain true, blessed, spiritual righteousness. The appearance of this righteousness in a person begins with the feeling of poverty of spirit (Ps. 39:9; Mt. 5:3). The vainglorious Pharisee imagines he is thanking and glorifying God: “God, I thank You”, he says, “that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers” (Lk. 18:11). He enumerates the obvious transgressions that can be seen by all; but of the soul’s passions—of pride, craftiness, hatred, envy, hypocrisy—he says not a word. Yet it is precisely these that make up the Pharisee! It is precisely these that darken and deaden the soul, making it incapable of repentance! It is precisely these that destroy love for one’s neighbor, and give rise to offense—filled with coldness, pride, and hatred! The vainglorious Pharisee imagines he is thanking God for his good deeds; but God turns away from him; God pronounces against him a terrible verdict: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled” (Lk. 18:14).

When Pharisaism intensifies and ripens, takes possession of the soul, its fruits are terrible. There is no lawlessness before which it recoils, which it would not bring itself to commit. The Pharisees dared to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. The Pharisees dared to call the Son of God demonic. The Pharisees permitted themselves to assert that the incarnate God, the Saviour who had come to earth, was a danger to the public welfare and to the civic life of the Jews. And for what end were all these tangled inventions? So that under the cover of an outward semblance of justice, under the mask of protecting the nation, the laws, and the religion, they might satiate their insatiable malice with blood—offering blood as a sacrifice to envy and vainglory—so as to commit deicide. Pharisaism is a terrible poison; Pharisaism is a dreadful infirmity of the soul.

Let us endeavor to draw a portrait of the Pharisee, borrowing our colors from the Gospel, so that each one, looking intently at this terrible and monstrous image, may be diligently guarded, according to the Lord’s command, “from the leaven of the Pharisees” (Mt. 16:6)—from the manner of thinking, the principles, and the disposition of the Pharisees.

The Pharisee, content with fulfilling the external rites of religion and with performing certain visible good deeds—deeds not foreign even to pagans—slavishly serves the passions, which he takes constant pains to conceal, which he does not see or understand in himself to any significant degree, and which produce in him a complete blindness with respect to God and all His divine teaching. Knowledge—and therefore the sight—of the activity of the soul’s passions in oneself is granted by repentance; but the Pharisee is inaccessible to the feeling of repentance. How can a heart be broken, moved to compunction, and brought to humility—a heart that is satisfied with itself? Incapable of repentance, he is incapable of beholding the light of God’s commandments, which enlighten the eyes of the mind. Although he occupies himself with reading Scripture and sees these commandments in it, in his darkening he does not pause over them: they escape his gaze, and he replaces them with his own reasonings—absurd and misshapen. What could be stranger, more incongruous, than the Pharisaical reasonings mentioned in the Gospel! “Whoever swears by the temple”, the Pharisees insisted, “it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound” (Mt. 23:16). The Pharisee, abandoning the fulfillment of God’s commandments—which are the very substance of the Law—strives for the refined fulfillment of external trifles, even if this is done with obvious violation of the commandments. The holy commandments of God, in which is eternal life, are left by the Pharisees without any attention, entirely forgotten! “You tithe mint and dill and cumin”, the Lord said to them, “and have neglected the weightier matters of the Law: justice and mercy and faithfulness… Blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Mt. 23:23–24).

The most hidden of all the soul’s passions is vainglory. This passion more than all others masks itself before the human heart, providing it with a pleasure often mistaken for the consolation of conscience, for a Divine consolation. And it is precisely upon vainglory that the Pharisee is leavened. He does everything for the praise of others; he loves that both his almsgiving, and his fasting, and his prayer should have witnesses. He cannot be a disciple of the Lord Jesus, who commands His followers to disdain human glory and to travel the path of humiliation, deprivation, and suffering. The Cross of Jesus serves the Pharisee as an offense. He needs a Messiah resembling Alexander of Macedon or Napoleon I—with the resounding glory of a conqueror, with trophies, with plunder! The thought of heavenly, spiritual glory, of the glory of God, eternal, of eternity itself, is inaccessible to his soul, which crawls along the earth in its earthly dust and corruption. The Pharisee is covetous. His heart is where his treasure is. There is his faith, there his feelings, there his hope, there his love! With his lips, with the edge of his tongue, he confesses God—but in his heart he renounces Him. He never feels the presence of God, never perceives God’s providence, never knows by experience what the fear of God means. For his heart there is no God, and no neighbors either. He is entirely earthly, entirely fleshly, entirely in the power of the soul’s passions—moved by them, ruled by them, drawn toward every lawlessness; he lives and acts solely for self-love. In this soul the idol of “I” has been enthroned. Unceasing incense is burned to the idol; unceasing sacrifices are offered. How can the service of the all-holy God be joined in this soul with the service of a vile idol? This soul is in terrible desolation, terrible darkness, terrible deadness. It is a dark cave, inhabited only by fierce beasts, or by robbers yet more fierce. It is a tomb, adorned on the outside for the sensory eyes of human beings—so easily deceived—and within filled with dead bones, foulness, worms, and all that is impure and God-hated.

The Pharisee, being estranged from God, needs to appear before people as a servant of God; being filled with every lawlessness, he needs to appear before people as virtuous; striving to satisfy his passions, he needs to give his actions a respectable appearance. The Pharisee has need of a mask. Having no desire whatever to be truly devout and virtuous—wishing only to be regarded as such among people—the Pharisee clothes himself in hypocrisy. Everything in him is invention, everything is fabrication! His deeds, his words, his whole life are one unceasing lie. His heart—like a dark hell—is filled with all the passions, all the vices, and unremitting torment. And this hellish heart breathes upon his neighbor with the inhuman and murderous feeling of offense and condemnation. The Pharisee, who is careful to appear righteous before people and who is by soul a child of Satan, picks out from the Law of God certain features, adorns himself with them, so that the inexperienced eye will not recognize in him an enemy of God and—trusting him as a friend of God—become his victim. The Pharisee condemns in his neighbors not evil, not vice, not the violation of the Law. No! How can he condemn evil, whose friend and confidant he is? His arrows are aimed at virtue. But so that his blows may be the more certain, he slanders virtue, attributes evil to it, takes offense at this evil—and, in apparently striking it down, he kills the servant of Christ whom he despises. You Pharisee! Are you leading to execution an innocent person on account of a crime that you yourself invented for him? The execution belongs to you equally with the crime! Does it not encourage you that the disciple of Christ, imitating Christ, drinks in silence the cup of suffering that you have prepared for him? Wretched man! Fear this very silence itself—magnanimous and mysterious. As the follower of Jesus now keeps silent for the sake of Jesus, so at the terrible, universal judgment Jesus will speak on his behalf, will expose the lawless man unrecognized by people, and will send him into eternal torment. The Pharisees invented crimes for the God-man Himself; they arranged His execution; they purchased His blood; they pretended not to have understood Him.

The greatest evil deed on earth was committed by the Pharisees. They have always been faithful, and to this day remain faithful, to their infernal calling. They are the chief enemies and persecutors of true Christian virtue and piety, stopping at no means and no crime. Against them thunders the Lord’s decree: “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you escape the sentence of the fire of Gehenna? Therefore, behold, I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from city to city, so that upon you may fall all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation” (Mt 23:33–36). The Lord’s words were fulfilled, and continue to be fulfilled to this day: those infected with the leaven of the Pharisees remain in implacable enmity with the true disciples of Jesus, persecuting them—now openly, now under cover of slander and scandal—and greedily, tirelessly seeking their blood. “Lord Jesus Christ! Aid Your servants. Grant them to know You and to follow You—You, who ‘was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before its shearer’ (Is 53:7). Grant them to behold You with the pure eye of the mind, and, suffering in blessed silence as though before Your very eyes, to be enriched with gifts of grace, to feel within themselves the peace-giving breath of the Holy Spirit, who declares to Your servant that there is no other way to be Yours than by partaking of the cup of suffering which You have chosen as the portion of Your sojourn on earth and of those who are close to You.”

Part Two

The Lord uttered in the holy Gospel many commandments that introduce into a person thoughts and feelings utterly opposed to the soul-destroying, man-hating spirit of Pharisaism. These commandments abolish the very foundations upon which Pharisaism is built and stands. “Beware”, said the Lord,—in general—“of the leaven of the Pharisees” (Mt 16:6). One of the Evangelists explains that by the words “the leaven of the Pharisees” the Lord meant the “teaching” of the Pharisees (Mt 16:12), while another Evangelist understands by this expression their “hypocrisy” (Lk 12:1). These are one and the same thing: from hypocritical conduct arise the Pharisaic manner of thinking and teaching; conversely, Pharisaic teaching and manner of thinking breed the hypocrite, for whom no sin is terrifying, no virtue deserving of respect—who hopes both to cover every sin, to excuse and justify it, and to substitute for every virtue the appearance of virtue.

The Lord taught His disciples a conduct that is straightforward and sincere, grounded in holy wisdom rather than justified by cunning—a conduct from which pure virtue must shine forth and, by its heavenly beauty, draw to itself the gaze and hearts of people. “Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:16). The Pharisees, on the contrary, wished only to appear righteous, caring solely about displaying themselves as servants of God before society—before the masses, which are ordinarily not very discerning. Even now one may observe that the Pharisees resort to every possible contrivance so that their deeds, which have the outward appearance of good, may shine as brightly as possible before human eyes, while their evil deeds are excused by political necessity, by the mask of justice and prudent foresight, by the desire to prevent greater evil by permitting lesser evil, and by other justifications that flow so abundantly from a heart filled with cunning. The Lord forbids such conduct in very strong terms. “You”, He says, “are those who justify yourselves before others, but God knows your hearts; for what is exalted among people is an abomination in the sight of God” (Lk 16:15). The Pharisees strove to cover their soul’s passions—and the deeds and fruits of those passions—with justifications. Soul’s passions, sheltered under the shade and coolness of justifications, ordinarily strike deep roots into the soul, becoming a dense tree whose branches embrace all of a person’s activity—that is, penetrating all his thoughts, all his feelings, all his actions. St Pimen the Great said: “If justifications come to the aid of a person’s sinful will, he is corrupted and perishes.”[1]

With a manner of life in which virtue is not sought disinterestedly before the eyes of God, but the glory of virtue is sought before the eyes of people—in their trivial opinion, which is unstable and changeable—a person is incapable of knowing the Christian faith or receiving the teaching of Christ, for which a heart is required that acknowledges itself as sinful and confesses its sin. “How can you believe”, says the Saviour to the Pharisees, “when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one God?” (Jn 5:44). The Lord takes away from His disciples every sustenance for vainglory. He desires that the altar of the heart be cleansed of the vile idol—of everything belonging to idol-worship. The Lord commands that all good works be done in secret. Even almsgiving, by His command, is to be in secret! And fasting is to be in secret! And prayer—in a closed chamber! Our good works must be hidden not only from other people but from ourselves, so that not only may people not corrupt our souls with their praises, but our very heart may not flatter us and commit adultery, breaking the holy union with holy humility. “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (Mt 6:3). And this is not all! The Lord commanded us to deny ourselves in this brief earthly life, to trample underfoot all justifications and every righteousness for the sake of the Gospel’s righteousness. What does the Gospel’s righteousness consist in? In suffering, in the cross! This is where the Saviour calls His disciple! Here He examines those who are called! Here He separates the tares from the wheat! Here He seals His chosen ones with His seal! “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his soul will lose it, and whoever loses his soul for My sake will find it” (Mt 10:38–39).

[1] The Alphabetical Patericon.

The Pharisee (Part 2)

Brethren! At the foot of Christ’s Cross, let us lay down and bury all the world’s concepts of honor, of offenses, of insults, of losses, of injustice, of human laws, and of human justice. Let us become fools for Christ’s sake! Let us offer our cheeks to spitting and blows! Let our earthly, old honor be covered with the dust of humiliation! Let us not look with pity or attachment upon our corruptible possessions—let the whirlwinds carry them off and scatter them when they are permitted! Let us not spare our flesh in voluntary ascetic struggles and involuntary sufferings! Let us learn from the Lord Jesus Christ His mysterious silence, which is the most exalted theology and eloquence—a silence that fills the angels with wonder! He, God incarnate, was not granted justice by the world: shall we seek it from the world? Let us renounce it at the foot of Christ’s Cross! Let us not be beasts, biting and wounding trappers and other beasts that attack us! Let us be likened to the Lamb of God here on earth, during our brief earthly sojourn—and He will make us like Himself in eternity, where our blessedness shall have no end and no measure. Even here, in earthly exile, to the faithful disciple of Jesus there comes the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, breathing upon his soul the ineffable blessedness of the life to come—a blessedness that takes away from him the sense of suffering, that introduces him into an invisible, holy delight independent of people and circumstances. Before this delight all earthly delights, even lawful ones, are as nothing.

The chief distinguishing mark of the hypocrite, the first arrow he shoots at his neighbor, is scandal and the condemnation of his neighbor that flows from scandal. In deliberate evildoers, scandal is often feigned and fabricated—a seemingly legitimate pretext for wickedness, prepared in advance both for the evil act and for the justification of it; in those still infected with the old Adam, even if they are well-intentioned and striving for salvation, scandal is a mark of their oldness and a very grave and stubborn disease. This disease is opposed to repentance, from which comes purification. Scandal is a sickly way of looking at the weaknesses of one’s neighbor, a gaze under which those weaknesses grow to an immeasurable and monstrous size. Scandal is the offspring of self-love, taking up residence in a soul devoid of love for one’s neighbor and of right love for oneself. The Lord likened this disease to a beam, compared to which any open sin of one’s neighbor is but a splinter. “Do not judge”, said the Lord, “so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you… Hypocrite, first remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye” (Mt 7:1–2, 5). One must forcibly draw oneself away from condemning one’s neighbors, guarding against it by the fear of God and humility. In order to weaken and, with God’s help, utterly uproot from one’s heart the temptation to scandalize over one’s neighbor, one must in the light of the Gospel go deep into oneself, observe one’s own weaknesses, examine one’s own sinful impulses, movements, and states. When our own sin attracts our gaze, we shall have no time to observe our neighbor’s shortcomings or take notice of them. Then all our neighbors will appear beautiful and holy to us; then each one of us will acknowledge himself the greatest sinner in the world, the only sinner in the world; then the gates and the embrace of true, genuine repentance will open wide before us.

The great Pimen used to say: “We and our brethren are like two pictures. If a person, looking at himself, finds shortcomings in himself, he sees perfection in his brother. But if he thinks himself perfect, then, comparing his brother to himself, he finds him inferior.” The greatest of God’s servants were especially concerned to see themselves as sinners—and so great sinners that the open and grievous sins of their neighbors seemed trifling and pardonable to them.[1] The Venerable Sisoes said to Abba Or: “Give me a word of instruction.” “Do you trust me?” Abba Or asked him. “I do,” replied Sisoes. “Then go,” said Abba Or, “and do what I do.” “What is your practice, Father?” asked Abba Sisoes. The elder said: “I see myself as worse than all people.”[1]

“If a person attains that state of which the Apostle spoke, ‘to the pure all things are pure’ (Tit 1:15),” Pimen the Great used to say, “he will see that he is worse than every creature.” A brother asked an elder: “How can I think of myself as worse than a murderer?” Pimen replied: “If a person attains the state indicated by the Apostle and sees a person who has committed murder, he will say: he committed that sin once, but I kill myself daily.” The brother repeated the words of Pimen to another elder. The elder replied: “If a person arrives at such purity and sees the sins of his brother, his righteousness will swallow up that sin.” The brother asked: “What is his righteousness?” The elder replied: “Constant self-accusation.”[1]

These are the true hearers and doers of the evangelical Law! Having driven condemnation and scandal from their hearts, they were filled with holy love for their neighbors, pouring out mercy upon all and healing sinners through that mercy. The holy Fathers tell of the great Macarius of Egypt that he was like a god upon earth—so powerful was the compassion with which he bore the shortcomings of his neighbors. Abba Ammon, constantly looking within himself and reproving his soul for its failings, came to deep humility and holy simplicity. By reason of his great love for his neighbor, he ceased to see evil in others and forgot that evil existed. Once, a girl who had conceived was brought before him—for he was a bishop—and people said: “So-and-so has done this; impose a penance on them.” Ammon made the sign of the cross over her womb and ordered that six pairs of linen be given to her, saying: “When her time comes to give birth, neither she nor her child should die for lack of burial cloth.” Those who had accused the girl said to him: “What are you doing? Impose a penance on them!” He replied: “Brethren, she is near death—what more is to be done with her?”—and dismissed her. Once, Abba Ammon came to a community of monks to share a meal with the brethren. One of the brothers there had fallen grievously in his conduct: a woman was visiting him. This became known to the other brothers; they were troubled and, gathering for counsel, resolved to expel the brother from his cell. Learning that Bishop Ammon was present, they came to him and asked him to accompany them to inspect the brother’s cell. The brother heard of this and hid the woman under a large wooden vessel turned upside down. Abba Ammon understood this, and for God’s sake covered the brother’s sin. Coming with the crowd of brothers to the cell, he sat down on the wooden vessel and ordered that the cell be searched. The cell was searched; the woman was not found. “What is this?” said Abba Ammon to the brothers. “May God forgive you your sin.” After this he prayed and ordered everyone to leave. He himself followed after the brothers. On his way out, he kindly took the accused brother by the hand and said to him with love: “Brother, take heed of yourself!” Thus did holy Ammon keep himself from condemning anyone, healing sinners by softening their hearts through mercy and bringing them to repentance through that mercy.

As much as the Lord turns us away from the abyss of scandal and condemnation, and as much as the true servants of the Lord keep themselves far from this fearful and ruinous abyss—so, on the contrary, the devil drags us into it, covering it with various justifications. One of the Satanic justifications is a senseless zeal, which many take for zeal for piety, for holy zeal. “A person driven by senseless zeal,” says St Isaac the Syrian, “will never be able to attain peace of mind. But he who is a stranger to this peace is a stranger to joy. If peace of mind is perfect health, and zeal is opposed to peace, then the one who has evil zeal is afflicted with a great sickness. O man! Thinking that you are inflamed with righteous zeal over the failings of others, you are driving away the health of your own soul. Strive, strive for the health of your soul! But if you wish to heal the infirm, understand that the sick have greater need of attentive care than of harshness. Besides, while you are not helping others, you are plunging yourself into grave illness. Such zeal in a person belongs not to the marks of wisdom, but to the diseases of the soul, to a lack of spiritual understanding, to the greater ignorance. The beginning of God’s wisdom is gentleness and meekness—qualities of a great and strong soul, appearing in it from a sound manner of thinking and bearing the infirmities of humanity.”[2]

The sin of scandal and condemnation is so convenient for the destruction of people, and for that reason so beloved of the devil, that he is not content with arousing in our hearts an evil zeal alien to the evangelical mind, and with arousing proud thoughts always coupled with the disparagement and contempt of one’s neighbor; he also sets open snares to ensnare the inattentive into scandal and condemnation. Abba Pimen used to say: “Scripture says: ‘What your eyes have seen, declare’ (Prov 25:8). But I counsel you not even to speak of what you have touched with your own hands. A certain brother was deceived in this way: it seemed to him that his brother was sinning with a woman. For a long time he struggled with himself; at last, going up to them, he pushed at them with his foot, thinking it was really them, and said: ‘Enough of this—how long will you continue?’ But it turned out that they were sheaves of wheat. That is why I tell you: do not accuse, even if you touch with your own hands.”[1]

The sin of condemnation is so contrary to God that He is displeased and turns away even from His own righteous ones when they permit themselves to condemn their neighbor: He withdraws His grace from them, as is evident from the many examples preserved by ecclesiastical writers for the benefit and edification of Christian generations. No righteousness gives the right to condemn a sinning brother, upon whom the Lord can very easily bestow a righteousness that is essential and incomparably greater than what we think we find in ourselves. We may be righteous by God’s own righteousness; but when we condemn our neighbor, by that very act we reject the righteousness of God and substitute our own righteousness for it—or more precisely, the disease of Pharisaism. One who condemns his neighbor usurps the dignity of God, to whom alone belongs “judgment” over His creatures—usurps the dignity of Christ, who is to judge the living and the dead on the last day.[3]

The wondrous John the Sabbaite related of himself: “While I was living in the desert not far from a monastery, a brother came from the monastery to visit me. I asked him: ‘How are the fathers and brethren?’ ‘Well, through your prayers,’ he answered. Then I asked about one of the brethren who had an ill reputation. He answered: ‘Believe me, father, that brother continues to live as he always has.’ Hearing this, I said ‘alas!’ and immediately fell into ecstasy. I saw myself standing before Golgotha in Jerusalem. Our Lord Jesus Christ stood on Golgotha between two robbers. I rushed forward to bow before Him. At that moment I saw the Lord turn to the angels standing before Him and say: ‘Cast him out, for he is an antichrist toward Me: anticipating My judgment, he has condemned his brother.’ As they were expelling me, and I was going out through the doors, my mantle caught in them and was held fast. I left it there. Coming immediately to myself, I said to the brother who had visited me: ‘This day has been a bitter one for me.’ He asked: ‘Why so, father?’ I told him what I had seen, adding that the mantle that had been stripped from me signified the taking away from me of God’s protection and God’s help. From that day I went deeper into the desert and wandered in it for seven years, eating no bread, entering no roof, and conversing with no one. After that time I saw the Lord again: He returned my mantle to me.’”[1]

Brethren! Let us be attentive to ourselves! Let us strive to cleanse ourselves not only from bodily passions, but from the passions of the soul as well—from vainglory, unbelief, cunning, envy, hatred, avarice, and other such diseases, which appear to move and act in the soul alone, without the participation of the body, and are therefore called soul’s passions. I said “appear to”: they do in fact exert an influence upon the body as well, but a subtle one, not apparent or comprehensible to many. When we are attentive to ourselves and purify ourselves from these passions, love for our neighbor is gradually sown within us; and through it, the temptation to scandal over one’s neighbor and the condemnation of him will weaken and be destroyed. Let us constantly bear in mind that there is no righteousness pleasing to God apart from poverty of spirit. Let us justify our neighbors and condemn ourselves, that God may grant us His grace and mercy—which He grants only to the humble and the merciful. Amen.

[1] The Alphabetical Patericon.

[2] Homily 89.

[3] The Life of the Venerable Basil the New, the toll-house of condemnation. The Menaion Reader, 26th of March.

A Visit to the Valaam Monastery

A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 1)

A storm on Lake Ladoga is magnificent when, beneath a clear sky in the shining of the sun, a gusting wind drives watery hills across the surface of the deep, wide lake. This immeasurable surface is strewn with azure hills crowned with snow-white, silver crests. The lake, agitated by the storm, seems alive.

In such a storm, in the early days of September 1846, I was travelling from the Konevsky Monastery to the Valaam Monastery on a steamship bearing the name of the island on which the latter monastery stands.[1] The wind was very fresh; white clouds raced swiftly beneath the sky in separate groups, like flocks of birds on their seasonal migration in autumn and spring. A storm on the open lake is majestic; and near the shores it has its own beauty. There, fierce waves are in eternal dispute with the winds, angry, conversing with one another in menacing tones; here, they rage against the land with bold intent. “Look how the wave climbs the shore,” said the elder of Konevsky who accompanied me. Indeed, the wave “climbs” the shore. This is a precise description of its action. And it climbs with stubbornness not only upon a gently sloping shore but also upon an enormous granite cliff standing sheer above the depths—a cliff that from the beginning of time has gazed calmly upon fierce storms, as upon children’s games. The wave rises a fathom, two fathoms up the cliff and, exhausted, falls back to its foot in fine spray, like shattered crystal; then begins again its constantly persistent, constantly futile attempt.

Some years before, I had seen a storm on Lake Ladoga in overcast weather. Then the picture loses much of its vividness. The waters are tinged grey; the foam is not silvery but murky and yellowish; the haze narrows the frame of the spectacle; there is neither the movement nor the variety—in a word, the life is not there. The rays of the sun are needed to complete this serious, inspiration-filled picture. And how beautiful the sun itself is, when it gazes from the clear, unreachable sky upon the earthly storm!

The island of Valaam is, without question, the most picturesque place in old Finland. It lies at the northern extremity of Lake Ladoga.[2] As you approach it, you are met by an entirely new kind of nature, such as no traveller through Russia alone would have had occasion to see—a wild, stern nature that attracts the gaze by its very wildness, through which there show inspired, austere beauties. You see sheer, high, bare cliffs, rising proudly from the depths: they stand like giants on the forward guard. You see steep slopes covered with forest, leaning companionably toward the lake. Here, some hermit has come out with a water jar in his hand to draw water, and, setting the jar on the ground, has become lost in contemplation of the vast lake, listening to the voice of the waves and nourishing his soul with spiritual contemplation. You see coves enclosed on all sides by granite walls of native stone, in which pure mirror-like waters slumber peacefully while a terrible storm rages on the lake; here a galiot or a fishing boat has hidden from shipwreck, waiting in the calm for a favorable wind, its owner already gazing with indifferent curiosity at the furious, roaring waves of the lake that only recently sought to destroy his vessel—the vessel in which he had placed all his possessions, his entire fate and that of his family. You sail through winding straits, where two opposing walls often draw so close together that they leave barely enough passage for a single galiot. You cast the lead, measuring the depth in this narrow passage: the depth there is many fathoms. You enter from the north into a bay that reaches deep into the interior of the island; you sail along this bay: on the right, dense forest on massive rocky ledges rising sheer and overhanging from the dark waters. This forest and these stones are reflected as a dense shadow in the waters of the bay, making the waters here especially sombre, and the landscape takes on the most forbidding appearance. The bay gradually widens and finally forms an oval of considerable size. You tear your gaze from this extraordinary scene, which fills the soul with an involuntary dread—a dread that is pleasant, from which one is reluctant to part; you turn to the opposite side: before you, on a high, long granite cliff like a light burden on the shoulders of a giant, stands a great monastery. The cliff was formerly covered with whitish moss. The monks have scraped away the moss; now the granite is free of the grey hairs that once hung upon its swarthy brow; it is majestic and awesome in its renewed youth and nakedness. From the crevices of the cliff have grown linden trees, maples, elms; ivy winds along the cliff, and beneath the cliff a fruit garden has been cultivated, over which the greening tops of trees sway and rustle—trees that seem about to fall upon the garden below yet are held back by roots that have gone far into the rock. A striking, magnificent picture! How pleasant to see the habitation of man, his hand, a plot of earth moistened by his sweat and adorned by his labors, amid the enormous masses of wild, powerful nature! You pull up to the harbor, step ashore: along the steep slope of the hill a granite staircase has been built; you ascend it to the monastery, which stands on the summit of the hill, on a wide open square. To this square from the south there is a steep incline; to the west, toward the bay, the square is cut by a sheer cliff.

The plan of the monastery buildings consists of two quadrilaterals, one enclosed within the other. Having ascended by the granite staircase to the square, you walk along an avenue to the holy gates situated in the outer quadrilateral; opposite these gates are others, in the inner quadrilateral. You enter them: before you on the right side is the cathedral church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, on the upper floor; on the lower floor, the church of the Valaam wonder-workers Sergius and Herman, where their relics rest beneath the altar. The cathedral is connected by a gallery to the warm church of the Dormition of the Mother of God; the gallery contains the sacristy. At the other end, forming the south-eastern corner, is the church of St Nicholas the Hierarch. On the left side, opposite the line on which the churches stand, are the cells of the abbot and some of the brethren. Opposite you are the refectory and kitchen of the brethren; and in that section where the gates are, where I presume you are standing, are the cells of the serving hieromonks. Above the holy gates of the outer quadrilateral is the church of Sts Peter and Paul. In this section, on the left side, is the guest house; on the right, the cell of the confessor and the large storehouse of the monastery (in monasteries this is called the warehouse). In the opposite section is the monastery’s infirmary with a considerable number of cells in which all the elderly and the infirm are housed. At the infirmary are churches, on the upper floor the church of the Most Holy Trinity, on the lower that of the Life-giving Spring. In the section facing the bay, on one side is a continuation of the guest house; on the other, the monastery’s administrative office. In the eastern section, on one side is a continuation of the storehouse; on the other, the monastery library—which is comparatively rich by the standards of other monasteries and possesses quite a few manuscripts, consisting almost exclusively of the works of holy Fathers who wrote about the monastic life. For the history of the Valaam Monastery, this library does not offer abundant material. It was assembled at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one; the ancient manuscripts were destroyed, as was everything ancient in the Valaam Monastery, by fires and by the Swedes. There is no building on the entire island, nor even a chapel, that is so much as a hundred years old.

The foundation and continued existence of the Valaam Monastery are reliably traced back to the remote depths of Russian antiquity: certain historical facts lead to this conclusion. The Venerable Abraham, founder and archimandrite of the Rostov Epiphany Monastery, came to the Valaam hermitage still a pagan in the year 960 after the birth of Christ, and there was baptized and received the monastic tonsure.[3] In the Sophia Chronicle it is recorded: “In the year 6671 (1163 after the birth of Christ), the relics of our venerable Fathers Sergius and Herman of Valaam were found and translated.” Another chronicler mentions that in 1192 the Abbot Martyrius built a stone church on Valaam island.[4] Local tradition, supported by these and similar sparse pieces of evidence that have come down to us, recognizes the Venerable Sergius and Herman as Greek monks who were contemporaries of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Grand Princess Olga.[5] If one takes into account the determination with which the ancient monks sought the deepest solitude, and the convenience that Valaam island now affords—and all the more afforded then—for such solitude, one must agree that the settlement of Greek monks here contains nothing strange or implausible. In all the historical glimpses through which the existence of the Valaam Monastery is from time to time revealed, it is evident that its monks led a life of the strictest kind, that there were both a cenobium and hermits there, and that all the monks were governed by an abbot. Here, in the fourteenth century, the Venerable Arsenius of Konevsky lived for a time—he who had undertaken the long pilgrimage to the holy Mount Athos and had founded the Konevsky Monastery. Here, in the second half of the fifteenth century, the Venerable Alexander of Svir entered as a young man: he first worked in the cenobium, then practised silence on Holy Island, in a narrow cave—whether a natural one or one hewn in the rock is not known. Holy Island is a stone mountain; it rises from the lake, ending toward the north in a high cliff, and belongs to a group of small islands that in various places surround the main island, as a planet is surrounded by its moons. In the first half of the fifteenth century the Venerable Sabbatius of Solovki also lived here for a time, before crossing over for deeper solitude to the White Sea, to the far north, to the deserts of Solovki island, which had until then been uninhabited. He sought there the same thing and with the same courageous self-denial as the Greeks Sergius and Herman had sought on Valaam island, finding their own Athos and their own Olympus too populous—even though that populousness consisted entirely in the ranks of monastics.[6]

More than once the Valaam Monastery suffered devastation at the hands of the Swedes; more than once its monks fell under the edge of the sword, and the earth moistened by the sweat of prayer was moistened by the blood of martyrdom; more than once the holy churches and monastic cells were set ablaze by the hand of the enemy or by carelessness. But the location of the Valaam Monastery, its manifold conveniences for all forms of monastic life, quickly renewed its black-robed population. Valaam was appointed and consecrated as a place of divine worship, as it were, by nature itself. An ancient tradition—which, it seems, has a genuine foundation—holds that in those distant times when this region was in the darkness of paganism, the worship of idols was performed here.[7] When one gazes upon these dark, deep waters, these dark, dense forests, these proud, mighty cliffs, this whole majestic scene ever-changing and ever picturesque; when one reads in it the deep poetic inspiration, and compares the luxuriant location of Valaam with the spare landscape of the surrounding Finland—one says: “Yes, here the hard-hearted and warlike Scandinavian was bound to change his martial, harsh thoughts and feelings into reverence; here the soul was bound to be filled with all that lifts the human soul toward the higher experiences granted by religion.” The same tradition brings here the holy Apostle Andrew, who came, according to the account of Nestor, from Kiev to Novgorod, and returned by sea routes to southern Europe, where the crown of martyrdom awaited him in Achaia. It holds that the Apostle, travelling along the river Volkhov, reached Lake Ladoga, crossed the lake to Valaam, converted the priests dwelling there to Christianity, and founded a Christian church. This tradition names Sergius as the companion of the Apostle and, after his departure, as the instructor of these lands in Christianity.

Is this surprising? “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world” (Ps 18:5), Holy Scripture testifies concerning the journeys of the Apostles. Their labors belonged not to any single people but to all humanity; their solicitous care and the love of their hearts were drawn not by culture, not by civil order and power—they were drawn by the plight of fallen humanity, whether he were Scythian or Barbarian, Jew or Greek (Col 3:11). Why, then, should the holy Apostle Andrew not have come to our forefathers, the Slavs, and to the Slavs’ neighbors, the Scandinavians? Why should he not have visited a place consecrated for popular worship—and there planted true knowledge of God and true worship? Why should we not entertain the thought that God Himself inspired the Apostle with this exalted and holy intention and gave him the strength to fulfil it? The wildness and obscurity of the region, its remoteness, the difficulty of the journey—none of these can be a sufficient, or even moderately strong, reason to reject this tradition. Not long after the Apostolic age, entire armies travelled these same routes: why, then, could an Apostle not have travelled them, guided by the right hand of God and by apostolic zeal?

Here now is a tradition that is not obscure or doubtful, but reliable and purely historical. Monastic life on Valaam and the Eastern confession of the Christian faith in that region flourished far earlier and more strongly than a traveller might have concluded from a superficial visit to the area and a brief glance at it. One must look more attentively, one must devote sufficient time, one must listen carefully to the accounts both of the Valaam monks and of the inhabitants of the surrounding shores, and from them draw out information worthy of being inscribed on the tablet of history, worthy of the attention of contemporary civilization and the memory of an educated posterity. Monastic life so flourished on Valaam island that it sent out shoots across the lake to the opposite shore, where the town of Serdobol now stands. On that shore there were twelve sketes founded by Valaam monks, under the governance and spiritual direction of the Valaam abbot. The inhabitants of the shores confessed the Orthodox Eastern faith, having derived their knowledge of it from the Valaam Monastery; along the shore as far as Keksholm stood Orthodox churches. The Karelians of this shore of Lake Ladoga were Orthodox, as the Karelians of the opposite shore—the inhabitants of Olonets province—are Orthodox now. Both peoples share one language, with only the slightest variation, which does not hinder their understanding of one another and their conversing with one another; they shared one faith as well. But an unfortunate time came—the Finns inclined toward the teaching of Luther. In the places where Orthodox churches once flourished, where Orthodox worship was performed, where the Divine Liturgy united heaven with earth—now stand Lutheran churches, resounding only with the thin preaching of a cold pastor. He, speaking to the people in his sermon only of a superficial, learned knowledge of the Redeemer and His moral teaching, speaks each time as if pronouncing a funeral oration over the true living faith and the Church that these people and places have lost. Besides the oral traditions that unanimously testify to this fact, there is yet a living witness—whole villages of Finns, thousands of Finns, who to this day confess the Orthodox faith. For them worship is conducted in the Slavonic language, according to our liturgical books, by our priests, who deliver only the sermon to the people in their native Finnish tongue. Was it difficult for the Swedes, given this simple-hearted faith, to introduce Lutheranism here? All they had to do was to banish or kill the Russian priests, and make a Lutheran pastor mask with his preaching the terrible loss which, with time and because it was not fully understood, was simply forgotten.

I hope this information will be welcome to many! Hardly anyone knows that Orthodoxy is still alive in the depths of Finland—that it is not newly planted, but has lived there from of old, a remnant of the common ancient Christian faith that replaced paganism. Many of the present-day coastal Finns retain their love for the Church of their ancestors, who were torn from it by deception and violence. They would wish to return to its saving embrace; but no voice calls them, and they are mechanically drawn to Luther’s church, as if by the continuing force of the old compulsion.

When did this unfortunate transformation take place? The religious fate of the Finnish shore is bound up with the fate of the Valaam Monastery, from which—as from a heart—the religious life of the entire region evidently always flowed; it flourished and diminished according to how much or how little strength the Valaam Monastery communicated to it. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Swedish commander Pontus de la Gardie, who caused so much harm to Russia, ravaged the Valaam hermitage: he committed its churches and cells to the flames and its monks to the edge of the sword; some fled, carrying with them the relics of the holy founders of the monastery. A similar fate befell the left bank of Finland: the Orthodox churches were burned; the clergy were killed or driven out; Lutheranism was spread among the inhabitants, whose adherents still breathed with fanatical attachment to their newly born faith, which was preparing to wash itself in the blood of the Thirty Years’ War. It is worthy of note that the villages that preserved the Orthodox faith are situated not on the very shore of Lake Ladoga—not on the path of the conquerors—but deeper in Finland, behind mountains and marshes, the natural barriers of the region: there they hid themselves and were saved from the gaze and the religion of the Protestants. During this time many Finns crossed into Russia to preserve their faith: you encounter their Orthodox descendants in the Novgorod and Tver provinces.

When Providence, through the arms of Peter the Great, was chastising the Swedes for having entered Russia as allies only to treacherously trample upon the law of God and the rights of nations—turning from allies into enemies and conquerors—at that time the Valaam Monastery passed back, together with Karelia, under the native shelter of the Russian state, having lived as an orphan under foreign dominion for nearly a century. From 1717, at the summons of the victorious emperor, monks from the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery came to the ruins of the former Valaam hermitage; a church of God was once again erected there, and cells were established. In the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, all the buildings—which were of wood—were destroyed by fire. The Empress restored the monastery at state expense. The buildings, as before, were constructed of wood. I have seen a drawing of this monastery; it pleased me. In my opinion, wooden construction is fitting for a desert hermitage such as that of Valaam. How pleasing to the eye are the monastic cells in their humility when hewn from timber! They are suited to the occupations of monastic life: they preserve the health that is here threatened by the damp climate, the sharp winds, the very food, the ascetic labors, and the frame of spirit that refines and mortifies the flesh. It would have been fitting for the Valaam Monastery to have a large stone cathedral church housing both a warm and a cold church on its two floors, and a stone enclosure wall to protect the interior of the monastery from the winds—but the cells proper could well have been of wood, set at sufficient distance from one another for safety in the event of fire, surrounding the church on all sides. This arrangement is a beautiful one: besides the conveniences it provides, it depicts the fact that the inhabitants of such cells, all turned toward the house of God, have as their sole aim the service of God, have recognized themselves as sojourners on earth, have recognized God as their one necessity, and have therefore set up their tents around His tabernacle. Such is the arrangement at the Glinsk hermitage, the Beloberezh hermitage, the Optino skete, and several others.

The restoration of the Valaam Monastery proceeded slowly, with poor success. For a long time it remained sparsely populated. Lovers of solitude were not drawn to it, because the monks employed to restore the hermitage had not been sufficiently enriched with knowledge of monastic life. Solitude alone is not sufficient for the moral and spiritual wellbeing of a monastery, though solitude does constitute one of the principal and foundational conditions of that wellbeing. Together with solitude, spiritual guidance and instruction for the brethren are indispensable; without them, all the benefits that solitude itself provides are cancelled. On the other hand, spiritual guidance and edification transfer the benefits of solitude to monasteries situated among villages and populous cities. In this way flourished the monasteries that lay within and around Constantinople; they produced illustrious Fathers whose spiritual gifts were equal to those of the Fathers reared in barren deserts.[8]

The Metropolitan of St Petersburg, Gabriel, discerned with penetrating clarity the primary and foundational need of the Valaam Monastery. To address it, in 1785 he summoned from the Sarov Hermitage the elder Nazarius, renowned for his spiritual knowledge and experience, and entrusted to him the leadership of the Valaam Monastery. The Metropolitan took the holy hermitage under his special archpastoral protection and rendered it assistance both through governmental measures and through material means. The Valaam Monastery quickly began to rise and expand, to fill with those who had taken, and with those who wished to take, the monastic vows. Both a cenobium and a skete were established; and there appeared both desert-dwellers and hermits. The abbot Nazarius himself had a hermit’s cell to which he would withdraw, sometimes for whole weeks at a time, to look within himself more attentively, to examine himself more thoroughly, and then to draw from his own living experience and observations the instructions he needed for his charges—to guide them in the correction of their ways and in the advancement enjoined by the Gospel. Father Nazarius, a tonsured monk and pupil of the Sarov Hermitage, was filled with the spirit of that house and replicated it with devoted exactitude in the Valaam Monastery. At the Sarov Hermitage all the buildings were of stone—and so he began erecting stone buildings at the Valaam Monastery. The inner quadrilateral was built by him, the outer by his successors. The generosity of Emperors Paul Petrovich and Alexander Pavlovich secured the material provision of the monastery; it is, by rank, a first-class monastery, governed by an abbot elected by the brethren and confirmed by the Metropolitan of St Petersburg.

In its structure, in the monastic respect, the Valaam Monastery is a faithful copy of the monasteries of the early Christian Church. It has monastics of all kinds belonging to the Eastern, Orthodox Church: it has a cenobium, a skete, desert-dwellers, and hermits. The main monastery, of which we have spoken, houses what is properly the cenobium. The monks dwelling in it participate in the common divine services, the common refectory, wear the same common clothing, and labor in both private and common obediences. Let us enumerate the types of obediences.

[1] This steamship is called “Valaam.” From the opening of navigation on Lake Ladoga until the stormy season of autumn, the steamship makes two runs a week to the Valaam Monastery, departing each time from Schlüsselburg.

[2] Valaam island is twenty-five versts from the nearest shore, forty from the Finnish town of Serdobol, and eighty from the Konevsky Monastery; its circumference is about thirty versts; it belongs to the St Petersburg diocese and, in civil administrative terms, to the Vyborg province of the Grand Duchy of Finland.

[3] Manuscript Life of St Abraham of Rostov and the Dictionary of Russian Saints.

[4] Dictionary of Russian Saints.

[5] Manuscript from the library of the Valaam Monastery. It is possible that the archives of Finland will in time provide more definite and detailed information for the history of Valaam than is furnished by the sources currently known.

[6] The sojourn on Valaam of the Venerable Arsenius, Sabbatius, and Alexander are verified facts preserved in their biographies. In the biography of the Venerable Alexander of Svir, written by his disciple Hilarion, the ascetic labors of the Valaam monks are described with sufficient detail and with high praise; while in the life of the Venerable Arsenius it is noted that the monastery had a numerous brotherhood.

[7] Manuscript from the library of the Valaam Monastery, referring to an ancient manuscript called “The Narrative.”

[8] The Venerable Nil Sorsky. Foreword to the Homilies.

A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 2)

The first obedience is that of the abbot, which is laid upon him by the entire brotherhood and which is blessed and confirmed in him by the diocesan bishop. This is not the authority of this world. It is a burden that is both light and heavy at the same time. These shoulders must bear the infirmities of the entire brotherhood. What strength must there be in these shoulders! What magnanimity, what self-denial must an abbot possess—he needs a complete forgetting of his own “I”, lest this angular and sharp letter wound, and still less kill, any of those near him. The second obedience is that of the deputy abbot, who is chosen by the abbot with the counsel of the brethren and confirmed by the diocesan bishop. The deputy is the abbot’s chief assistant in all branches of monastic governance. The third obedience is that of the treasurer, who oversees the monastery’s funds; the fourth, that of the sacristan, who has charge of the sacristy. After the sacristan come the confessors; apart from these, no other hieromonk may hear the confession of either the brethren or the monastery’s visitors. Like the deputy, the treasurer, sacristan, and confessors are confirmed by the diocesan bishop and, together with the deputy, form what is called the “council” or “senior brethren”—summoned by the abbot for counsel and to participate in certain of the more important matters submitted to the diocesan authority, which in such cases issues its instructions to the abbot together with the senior brethren. Further obediences include: the rota of holy service, performed by all hieromonks except the deputy and the treasurer, as well as by the hierodeacons. The chanters are chosen from among the monastics and novices of the purest and most modest life. Those capable of ecclesiastical reading and chanting are appointed to the choral obedience. In the choral obedience there also participate certain hieromonks and hierodeacons at times free from holy service. For the remaining obediences, monks and novices are appointed. Let us mention these obediences as well, to acquaint the reader as fully as possible with the organization of the monastery. Some of the brethren are engaged in sewing the church vestments and clothing for all the brotherhood; others sew shoes; some are employed in the kitchen, bakery, prosphora-bakery, and refectory; others work at carpentry, blacksmithing, and locksmithing; others catch fish; still others labor in the gardens, kitchen-gardens, and fields; some do the laundry—in a word, the Valaam cenobium provides for the greater part of its own needs. Each such separate occupation is called an “obedience”. According to need, one obedience is performed by a single brother, while another is performed by many. Thus at the library, at the pharmacy, at the cellar, there is one tried brother each. At the kitchen, the laundry, the storehouse, and at similar places there are several brethren, of whom the chief in the Valaam cenobium is commonly called “the steward” and the rest his “helpers.” There are obediences called “common,” such as: the preparation of firewood, the harvesting of hay, the threshing of grain, the planting, watering, and gathering of garden vegetables. For these common obediences are employed brethren incapable of private obediences, for which—as is clearly apparent from what has been said—greater or lesser knowledge of the appointed task is required. When someone wishing to enter the monastery is admitted, he is at first sent to the common obediences, where his character, habits, and conduct can be more conveniently observed; if in due course he proves capable of some private obedience, he is assigned among the helpers and, after many years and trials, is entrusted with the particular portion corresponding to his knowledge or craft. All the brethren, and especially the “newly arrived” (those recently entered into the monastery are called newly arrived), maintain frequent contact with the confessors; it is upon this contact that the moral order of the junior brotherhood is based and sustained; in those who have advanced, it is additionally supported by attentive reading of the patristic writings and diligent attendance at the divine services. The librarian distributes, by the abbot’s direction, books suited to the spiritual condition of each. The brethren engaged in obediences are present at all church services on all feast days; on the remaining days of the week they come to Matins and, having listened until the Six Psalms, go to their labors, and after the evening meal participate in the common evening rule.

Divine service is conducted according to the church typicon, and consists of Matins or the All-Night Vigil before a feast day, two Liturgies—the early and the late—Vespers, and the rule performed after supper, which consists of the reading of the prayers before sleep, the commemoration of the departed, and several prostrations. The chant used is “Znamenny” or the so-called “stolpovy”—the ancient Russian chant. The tones of this chant are majestic, drawn-out, mournful; they depict the groans of a soul repenting, sighing in the land of its exile for the blessed, longed-for land of eternal rejoicing and pure, holy delight. Yes—these very tones, and no others, should resound in this monastery, whose very buildings have the aspect of a prison appointed for weeping, for lamentation over one’s captivity, for deep reflection, for pondering on eternity. These tones are in harmony with the wild, austere nature, with the enormous masses of granite, the dark forest, the deep waters. These tones now stretch on plaintively, mournfully, like a desert wind; now gradually fade, like an echo among cliffs and ravines; now ring out suddenly. Now, with quiet sorrow, they bring a lament over sinfulness, expressing the gnawing, consuming grief caused by the burden of sin; now, as if from the unbearable weight of that burden, from the blows of sin, they begin to cry out and call for help from heaven—then they thunder! The majestic “Lord, have mercy” is like a desert wind: so mournful, so compunctionate, so drawn-out it is! Fallen humanity has felt, through the aid of solitude and self-examination, its own fall, has seen it within itself, been persuaded of it, and has given itself over to unceasing lamentation in the hope of mercy. The chant “You we praise” ends with a drawn-out, undulating sound that gradually subsides and disappears imperceptibly beneath the vaults of the church, as an echo fades in the expanse of air. But when the brethren sing at Vespers “Lord, I have cried to You, hear me,” the sounds first emerge as if from a deep abyss, then with speed and thunder burst from it, soaring to heaven, carrying there a thought and a desire as ardent as lightning—then they thunder! An artist will find in the Valaam chanting many roughnesses and defects in execution, but he will also acknowledge in it the complete predominance of reverence and piety, and an extraordinary energy that both moves and shakes the soul. Here everything must be weighty and grand. All that is cheerful, light, or playful would seem strange and incongruous. Do not be alarmed by this account, which is a truthful one. Do not think that only unhappiness lives here, or can live here. No! Here too there is its own consolation: the consolation of those who mourn, proclaimed in the Gospel.

There are seven separate churches in the Valaam hermitage. Of these, the cathedral surpasses all the others in beauty and interior furnishing; in its iconostasis, the lower row of icons is covered with silver casings. The multiplicity of churches—so that not one of them, not even the cathedral, can accommodate all those living in the Valaam Monastery—and the gaudy painting of the cathedral church and refectory are specimens of the initial, unrefined-by-education taste of the Russian person, inhabitant of Europe and neighbor of Asia. Instead of so many churches, it would have been far better if a single spacious building had contained both a warm and a cold church—as is the case in the Konevsky Monastery. There might also have been a church at the infirmary. In this way the essential need of the monastery—which at present goes unmet—would have been fully satisfied: namely, that all the brethren and visitors might find room in the church and participate in the divine service. The builders of the hermitage thought otherwise. Their zeal required separate churches of St Nicholas the Hierarch and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and of the Life-giving Spring. And so these churches stand without divine service, which is performed in each of them only once a year, on the feast of the church’s patron. But even on the feast day of the separate church of the Most Holy Trinity, the service cannot be performed in it owing to its extreme smallness; it is served in the cathedral.

Immediately after the Liturgy, all go to the refectory, where simple but wholesome and satisfying food is set according to the direction of the church typicon—that is, on feast days fish, on ordinary days with oil, and on Wednesdays and Fridays, on weekdays during the Great Lent, without fish and without oil, from vegetables alone. During the meal deep silence is observed, and the resonant voice of the reader proclaims to the assembled brotherhood the self-denial, virtues, and ascetic labors of the holy servants of God. Supper takes place after Vespers: during it, soul-edifying reading is likewise performed. On the days of great feasts, one hour before Vespers, a common tea is set in the refectory, which the Valaam elders have called “a consolation.” It is touching to see how the frail old men—barely able to walk, returned to a second childhood—hasten to this consolation with their little wooden cups; their cooling blood thirsts to be revived by the boiling water. Much in the customs of the Valaam Monastery has about it a simplicity and patriarchal character. These customs call to mind, pleasantly and movingly, the native antiquity of Russia—the Russian old ways—in which the attentive observer often finds the simple-hearted and the sacred united.

The monastery’s sacristy has been adorned with the generous gifts of the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, who bore a special affection for the Valaam hermitage, which in 1819 he graciously honored with his visit. In 1844 Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich visited it, and in memory of his visit presented it with rich sacred vessels. In the middle of the court formed by the inner quadrilateral of the monastery buildings—in which a certain special, quiet, reverential feeling lives—the monks have erected a marble monument with an inscription. The inscription announces to contemporaries and preserves for posterity the events: the visit of the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich and of Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich to the hermitage. An inscription in the cathedral church marks the place where Alexander the Blessed stood during divine service, not wearied by the length of the monastic service. An inscription in the guest house points out the rooms in which the Emperor lodged. A marble square stone with an inscription, surrounded by flowers, stands in the garden on the spot from which Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich sketched views of the monastery. A precisely similar stone has been placed on the other side of the bay, in the forest, beneath the dense shade of firs and pines, on the spot where the Grand Duke completed a drawing he had begun in the garden—a spot from which the view of the monastery is especially majestic and picturesque. In setting up these stones and carving these inscriptions upon them, the monks of Valaam expressed the feeling of their heart—that feeling of love and devotion to the tsars and the imperial house by which our clergy has been distinguished in all centuries of Russian history.

The clothing of the Valaam monks, like their food, is simple but adequate. It and its materials are kept in the storehouse. The storehouse is a row of rooms in which are stacked cloth, nankin, linen, thread, leather, sewn underclothes, ready-made cassocks, inner cassocks, mantles, fur coats—all of this in considerable quantities. The storekeeper keeps a book in which he records what has been issued to each of the brethren. Worn clothing is returned to the storehouse; new clothing is issued in its place. A newcomer to the monastery from the world is provided with the necessary underclothes, outer clothing, and footwear. The Valaam storehouse is at any time capable of supplying everything needed for up to a hundred persons. Such reserves in all branches of the household economy are indispensable at the Valaam Monastery, by reason of the multitude of its brethren, its remoteness from the cities, and finally because in spring, when the ice breaks up, and especially in autumn, when it is forming, communication with the shore is difficult and even impossible for a prolonged period. The lake between Serdobol and Valaam freezes, but not before the middle of January; until then countless blocks of ice wander in all directions across the entire expanse of water, and a vessel that ventured out upon the lake would inevitably be surrounded and locked in by the ice.

The monastery library contains all the books needed for a thorough knowledge of monastic life. Besides those printed in the Slavonic and Russian languages, many manuscripts are to be found there. Let us list the noteworthy manuscripts. First place among them, by reason of their rarity, must be given to the “Catecheses” of the Venerable Theodore, abbot of the Constantinople Studite Monastery, or “His Discourses to the Brethren.” This is a book of considerable size. Its value has been recognized by the Church: the church typicon appoints it to be read in church at the services on certain days of the Great Lent. This provision pertains properly to monasteries.[1] The Discourses of the Studite breathe the love he bore for his brotherhood: he calls them his fathers, his instructors, his brethren, and his children; his teaching is extraordinarily simple and accessible to the understanding of all, and is especially suited to monks of the cenobium, since it deals exclusively with the various duties and circumstances of the cenobitic life. There are manuscript books of the Fathers who described the ascetic struggle of mental prayer. Such are: Gregory Palamas, Kallistos Antilikoudis, Symeon the New Theologian, the Venerable Nil Sorsky—a Russian writer. There are books for the guidance of skete-dwellers, desert-dwellers, and hermits: such as the Patericons; the book of the famous teacher of the hesychasts, Isaac the Syrian; and the book “The Flower-Garden” by the hieromonk Dorotheos, a Russian writer who lived, as is apparent from the book itself, in the time of the patriarchs.[2] In this very extensive work, the hieromonk says, among other things, that in the cenobia one must without fail follow the tradition of the holy Fathers who established cenobitic monastic life; those who transgress the tradition of the holy Fathers shall not see the light of Christ. The hieromonk bequeathed to anyone intending to found a new monastery that he should obtain “a letter of blessing from the Most Holy Patriarch” and fence his monastery with “the blessing of the Patriarch.” The Flower-Garden was especially revered by native monks engaged in the highest monastic ascetic struggle. By this book the famous Solovki ascetic Jesus of Golgotha was schooled in the Jesus Prayer; by this same book the Venerable Joasaph of Kamensky, Wonder-worker of Vologda, learned the Jesus Prayer, as is evident from his manuscript life. This last circumstance shows that the hieromonk lived in the time of the first Patriarchs and reached the domestic turmoil, as may be concluded from brief references to contemporary events encountered in his book. The excerpts cited here are drawn from a book printed at Grodno in 1687 by Orthodox Christians, twenty years after the deposition of Patriarch Nikon, with the old spelling preserved. That the book was printed by Orthodox Christians is proven by the injunction in it to seek blessing from the Most Holy Patriarch—something schismatics would never have permitted. We deem this note necessary: experience has shown that the book’s spelling may raise doubts as to its Orthodox character, at a superficial glance—all the more so since at such a glance it is very easy to overlook its essential significance, for which reason the author named it The Flower-Garden. Let us now make some excerpts from this last book, facilitating the understanding of the Slavonic by rendering it into Russian, both on account of the book’s moral and ascetic merits and especially because the author is our fellow-countryman, forgotten by us. Only some hermit reads and re-reads this inspired book, filled with precious spiritual counsel.[3] Let the voice of the hieromonk resound for us as well from the grave into which our forgetfulness has buried him. This voice, speaking of the deepest truths, fittingly resounds from the stern Valaam hermitage.

“O my beloved reader,”—thus the hieromonk begins his book—“would you let me show you something more precious than pure gold and silver and many-valued pearls and precious stones? Nothing else can bring you to the Kingdom of Heaven, to future joy and rest, except this alone. This is: solitary reading and attentive, earnest listening to the holy books of the Divine Scripture. It is impossible, impossible, for one who does not frequently read the God-inspired Holy Scripture to be saved. As a bird without wings cannot soar to the heights, so the mind without books, by its own thoughts alone, cannot reason out how to obtain salvation. The reading in solitude and the attentive, earnest listening to the holy books of the Divine Scripture are the parents and beginning of all virtues and of every good work: because all virtues are born from them and begin with them. Solitary reading and attentive, earnest listening to the holy books of the Divine Scripture, with the aim of action and one’s own salvation, give birth to every virtue, serve as a source of blessings, drive away from us every sinful and evil passion, every sinful desire, craving, and action—one’s own and that of the demons. The holy Fathers recognize solitary reading and attentive, earnest listening to the holy books of the Divine Scripture as the elder and king over all virtues…” By “Divine Scripture” the hieromonk understands not only the sacred books of the Old and New Testament, but also the writings of the holy Fathers; in this he expresses himself in the same way as the Venerable Nil Sorsky. Such a beginning has extraordinary, precious importance: by it the hieromonk acknowledges the necessity of adhering unswervingly not only to the dogmatic but also to the moral tradition of the Church; by it he enters into a union of like-mindedness with all the ascetic holy writers of the Eastern Church. All of them unanimously assert that for an unfailing walk upon the path of monastic struggles, guidance by the writings of the holy Fathers is indispensable—that this is the only means of salvation remaining to us by reason of the decrease of spiritual guides. From his very first words the hieromonk sets the reader upon the right, holy, and safe paths—prescribed and blessed by the Church—gives his disciple the definite character of a son of the Eastern Church, introduces him into spiritual communion with the holy monks of all centuries of Christianity, and withdraws him from everything alien, from everything counterfeit. How excellent is the character of a son of the Eastern Church! How simple, how majestic, how holy it is! The Protestant is coldly rational; the Roman Catholic is enthusiastic, captivating, carried away; the son of the Eastern Church is imbued with holy truth and gentle peace. The first two characters are earthly; the last descended from heaven and stands before our eyes in the Gospel. This character is nurtured in the Orthodox Christian by the reading of Holy Scripture and the works of the holy Fathers; nourished by this reading, the Christian becomes a confidant of Truth and a partaker of the Holy Spirit bestowed by it.

The hieromonk looked with penetrating clarity upon the monasticism of his own time; and what he observed is of precious value: “I have often marvelled,” he says, “at how the holy ancient Fathers in a short time attained salvation, came to perfection, found grace; while in our own times few are saved! But here is how all the holy Fathers attained perfection and salvation, found grace, and were accounted worthy of the gift of wonderworking: they followed with their whole soul all the words and commandments of the Lord, above all they strove to keep them, and always held them in mind… In the first place, one must keep the commandments of Christ, because the Holy Gospel is the mouth of Christ speaking to us daily; and then one must keep the traditions of the holy Fathers, fulfil the practices commanded by them, and with these practices labour the body… Without the fulfilment of the holy, sacred, and light-bearing commandments of the Lord, our traditions and rules are vain… One who does not keep the commandments of the Lord corrupts and destroys his own great labours, and is deprived of perfection, salvation, and grace. One who does not keep the commandments of the Lord and does not prepare a place within himself for grace, cannot arrive at perfection or receive grace. Foreign to spiritual wisdom is he who exercises himself in bodily ascetic struggles but neglects the commandments of the Lord! Nothing of ours is acceptable to God without the fulfilment of the Lord’s commandments.[4] As carefully and unfailingly as the holy Fathers kept them—so too must we keep them, insofar as our strength permits.” Most soul-profiting instruction! Let every monk who cares about preparing a blessed eternity for himself inscribe these words upon the tablets of his heart in indelible letters!

The beautiful soul of the hieromonk spoke from the abundance of his heart, and often poured itself out in spontaneous, captivating eloquence. Some passages of his writing would grace the pages of the finest authors. How elegant are the following lines: “When we are working out an immortal life, we should fear no tribulations, no lack of bodily necessities, nor death itself. The Lord said: ‘Do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or with what shall we be clothed? For all these things the nations’ of this world ‘seek’—those who are unbaptized, who do not know God—‘for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you’ (Mt 6:31–33). And so, He has given His promise! I, He says, am your food and your clothing; I will serve you in your weakness like a father and a mother and a friend of the soul. I will provide everything you need and will labor for you by My grace. Only believe in Me with your whole soul and without doubt, serve Me steadfastly, and trust that I am able to fulfil what I have promised.”[5]

The words of the God-inspired David were fulfilled in the hieromonk, who said: “My lips shall pour forth praise, when You teach me Your righteous ordinances” (Ps 118:171). When Divine grace itself, dwelling in the heart, begins to teach it the law of the Spirit, then a person becomes inspired. His thoughts and feelings come alive with a new life of the Spirit, and his discourse bears the stamp of the most exalted poetry. Such are many passages of the hieromonk’s writings—among them the beginning of chapter eleven, where he converses with his own soul: “My beloved soul,” he says, “do not put off year after year, month after month, time after time, day after day, do not pass them in vain expectation! Lest you come to sigh from the depths of your heart, to seek one who can share your grief, and find no one. Alas! How much you will then begin to torment yourself, how much you will weep, lament, and mourn, and repent to no purpose! You can do good today: do not put it off until tomorrow! You do not know what the coming day will bring forth. Will not some calamity overtake you in this very night! You do not know what the day carries with it, what the night carries. My soul! Now is the time of enduring sorrows! Now is the time of fulfilling the commandments of the Lord and the virtues of the Fathers! Now is the time of weeping and lamentation and tears—of tears that give birth to sweetness and joy! O my soul! If you truly wish to be saved, love sorrows, as you once loved pleasure; live, dying daily. Our life passes swiftly and vanishes like the shadow of a cloud formed by the sun. The days of our life are dissipated like smoke in the air…” The Flower-Garden is one of the most exalted ascetic books; by this merit it approaches the famous book of Isaac the Syrian. Two writers of the Russian Church wrote on the mental work: Nil Sorsky and the hieromonk Dorotheos. The book of the former is a very useful guide for beginners in the struggle of hesychasm, while that of the latter is for those who have advanced and are approaching perfection. The teaching on mental prayer is set forth in “The Flower-Garden” with extraordinary clarity, simplicity, and completeness. Everywhere one sees abundant spiritual progress and the sound sense of the Russian person, who simplifies what is complex and sets forth the most exalted spiritual teaching with extraordinary naturalness—with exceptional intelligibility and—elegance! Especially such are his teachings: on purity of heart, mental, and soul; on dispassion; on the darkening of the mind; on the watchfulness of the mind; on holy pure prayer. By reason of the exaltation and sanctity of these subjects, which have their own time and place, we dare not make excerpts from them; the reader who wishes to become acquainted with them is referred to the book itself. The titles of the chapters alone already say much. It is for such spiritual exercises that monks who have advanced pass from the cenobium to the life of the skete and the hermitage.

[1] The Church Typicon, Monday of Holy Lent.

[2] The Flower-Garden, chapter 54, on the monastic cenobium.

[3] The Flower-Garden is preeminently a collection and explanation of the sayings of the ancient Fathers, without naming those Fathers. One must know the Fathers in order to identify the excerpts from them in the anthology.

[4] The Flower-Garden, chapter VI.

[5] The Flower-Garden, chapter X.

A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 3)

The skete of the Valaam Monastery is situated three versts from the main hermitage. The way to it is both by water and by shore. One must descend from the monastery by the granite staircase to the harbor. Here you board a cutter, and travel by the same bay through which you arrived at the monastery, going further into the depths of the island, to the skete. The bay narrows and widens by turns; you constantly see on both sides landscapes that change in form but preserve a stern tone. At last you enter a large oval surrounded by gently sloping shores on which many birches, rowans, and maples grow; the cliffs have almost hidden themselves from view; here and there, in the distance, from behind the firs and pines, a rock peeps out. The waters of the oval are not sombre: in them the blue of the sky is pleasantly reflected. Greening meadows, scattered with and fragrant with innumerable wild flowers, comfort the eye. Here there is no wind—none of the rough, gusting wind that rarely dies down on the elevated open court where the main monastery stands. Here everything is so hospitable and welcoming! You feel at ease; you feel that you are resting. And it becomes comprehensible to you that the wild nature with its fearsome pictures, upon which you have been gazing without ceasing, has brought your bodily and soul’s feelings to a state of tension. You climb up the gently sloping meadow by a winding path, enter a thicket of forest: before you, suddenly, stands a secluded skete. In the middle of the skete is a two-storeyed stone church in the Byzantine style; around the church are the separate cells of the brethren—also of stone—and a stone wall. The skete is surrounded on all sides by forest; in it there is an extraordinary stillness. A completely different feeling comes over you when you enter the skete than when you entered the monastery. There, everything breathes life—strict life; here, there is a kind of incomprehensible tranquility, like the peace of those who have died a blessed death. In the skete, divine service is performed twice a week, on Sunday and Saturday; on the other days the brethren keep silence in their cells, occupied with prayer, reading, contemplation of God, and handiwork; while in the church one monk performs the reading of the Psalter and the commemoration of the departed brethren and benefactors of the Valaam hermitage. This reading and commemoration is performed without interruption day and night, with the brethren living in the skete taking turns. Food is offered in the common refectory; it is considerably plainer than that of the monastery—almost exclusively from plants. At Pascha and other great feasts, the skete brethren come to the monastery, participate with the monastery brethren in the solemn divine service, and share with them the festive meal in the common refectory—a meal that never exceeds four courses even at the monastery itself. Fish soup, one more fish dish, a piece of pie—this is the mark of a great feast at the table of the Valaam brethren. Fried foods are excluded from their fare: they regard them as a delicacy not permitted to themselves. In the skete there live up to twelve brethren, or a few more. The road from the skete to the monastery by the overland path is also scenic: it runs along the shore of the bay through groves, over hills and mountains, and from time to time the wheels of a carriage begin to clatter on bare granite.

In various places on the island, in deep solitude, at the edge of a forest on a small hill, or on a small meadow in the midst of the forest, stand the solitary log huts of the hermits, hewn from timber. The number of hermits is very small. The hermit’s life may be permitted only to those most experienced in monasticism, mature both in years and in spiritual wisdom. The hermits, like the skete brethren, come to the monastery on the great feasts.

Visitors to the monastery are housed in the guest house. There is also a special shelter for the poor, of whom this part of Finland is full. The poor are permitted to remain on Valaam for two days and to make use of the refectory specially prepared for them in their shelter; and upon their departure each is given two pieces of rye bread. And for this gift, a Finn will travel forty or fifty versts to the Valaam Monastery! In summer, as soon as the path across the lake is clear, many dozens of small boats bring the poor daily across the stormy depths to the monastery. Some depart; others have already arrived in their place. In winter, as soon as the ice has set, whole flocks of them set out on foot for the difficult journey, heedless of the severity of the frost and the length of the road. They go half-naked across the ice! Old men, cripples, children, and women with nursing infants make the journey. Not infrequently, the frozen bodies of these poor souls are found on the icy plain—people who had hoped to escape hunger and were killed by the cold.

Finally, a word of tribute must be paid to the Valaam infirmary, which serves as a peaceful refuge not only for the aged and infirm monks of Valaam itself but for monks of the entire St Petersburg diocese. At the infirmary there is a separate church, a separate refectory, special attendants, and a small pharmacy stocked with the most essential medicines.

Valaam island, with the small islands belonging to it, is nothing other than a single stone that has risen from Lake Ladoga, the elevations of which form cliffs, mountains, and crags, while the depressions form bays, straits, and lakes. You will be convinced of this by measuring the depth of the lake. In the bays, straits, and throughout the expanse between the main island and the smaller islands, this depth is five, ten, and at the deepest places twenty fathoms; but barely have you moved out onto the open lake before the depth within a hundred paces of the shore is already seventy, a hundred, or nearly two hundred fathoms. The soil everywhere is solid rock, covered by a layer of vegetable earth a quarter of an arshin thick, in some places more. Sand and clay exist in small quantities in a few places, not to any great depth. The layer of earth covering the “luda”—as the Valaam monks call their rock—is particularly fertile: near the monastery, two fruit gardens have been cultivated, one beneath the cliff on which the monastery stands, the other to the right of the granite staircase leading from the harbor to the hermitage. In these gardens the apple trees are fresh and vigorous—witness to the goodness of the soil—yet the apples, which ripen perhaps once in ten years, lodge a complaint against the climate, against the weakness of the sunlight here. The large watermelons and melons grown in the Valaam kitchen-gardens join in this complaint; they are very juicy, but the juice is lifeless: the sun does not warm sweetness into it. The kitchen-garden produce is excellent; it is grown in considerable quantity—sufficient for all the numerous brotherhood, the many workers living in the monastery, and the many visitors to the monastery. Rye and oats are sown in some quantity; but the main stock of bread is purchased in St Petersburg and brought to the monastery on its own galiots. Hay is mown in adequate supply. The island abounds in forest; here primarily grows the pine, then the fir; in much smaller quantity, the birch, maple, and linden. Grateful thanks to them! They soften with the tender color of their leaves the sternness of the cliffs and the dark, perpetual green of the firs and pines. In the valleys, where the layer of soil is thicker, the forest is larger; but on the mountains, where this layer is thin, the forest is smaller and cannot attain its proper height; the roots vainly seek to go deep into the earth; they encounter the “luda”, and spread and intertwine along it to gather the food they need—and do not find it. On the mountains, therefore, grows almost exclusively the pine, least fastidious and selective in its soil. What more is there to say? I gaze upon the waters, upon the immeasurable masses of the waters of Ladoga—ancient Neva, long famed for its storms and for the battles of the Varangian with the Slav—and they, these deep, spacious waters, are in harmony with the solitary, sternly inspired island, as though decreeing that on the island, within a wall of waters, a monastic community should be preserved and saved. They guard it both with their expanse and with their storms and their ice. In their immeasurable depths they contain and nourish countless schools of various fish, surrendering them to the enticing nets and preparing for the table of the desert-dwellers a dish whose entire value lies not in seasoning or art but in the abundance and freshness of the provision.

When the light monastery cutter, in a favorable, pleasant wind, was carrying me away from Valaam, I was ill. To the feeling of illness were added many other feelings. My gaze turned with an unaccountable sorrow—in which there was something like delight—toward Valaam, and fastened upon it. I suspected this might be a gaze of farewell for ever! In silence I looked at Valaam from the cutter while the cutter moved through the bay. I lifted my head now toward one cliff, now toward another: there is no other way to look at them, they are so high. The mighty nature, which had always filled me with awe, which had always gazed upon me only sternly and harshly, seemed to smile upon me in friendship. Or perhaps the sun gave it that smile, sending its life-giving rays along the bay at that moment—upon the waters, the stones, the dense forest. The granite ledge of the cliff on which the monastery stands, enclosed by a railing, was lined with the brethren. There were mature men, hardened in battles with themselves; young men who had but recently entered the hermitage, upon whom the struggle still awaits; and frail old men, their heads covered with grey, whose hearts and minds are already at peace, for whom the crown has been woven and the grave dug. It was not enough for them that they had warmly received and given rest to the traveller: they needed also to see him off, their farewell mingled with the sorrow of love, tempered with a tear of regret at the parting. The majestic peal of the monastery bells rang out, answered from all sides by the ravines of the stone mountains with their many-voiced echo. The cutter sailed out of the bay as from a high-walled castle; the cliffs remained in their places; the wide lake came into view; in the distance the shore of Serdobol was barely visible; in other directions there was no shore at all—the blue of the waters blended with the blue of the sky. The sails were raised; the cutter swiftly ran over the gentle waves. Soon we reached the opposite shore; from there I looked back at Valaam: it appeared to me, upon its vast, blue, boundless waters, like a planet in the azure sky.

And indeed, it is so far from everything! It is as though it were not of this earth! Its inhabitants have lifted their thoughts and desires high above the earth! Valaam is a world apart! Many of its monks have forgotten that any other country exists! You will meet there elders who have not left their Valaam for fifty years and have forgotten everything except Valaam and heaven.

Spiritual host! Blessed inhabitants of the sacred island! May the blessing of heaven descend upon you, for you have loved heaven! May the blessing of the traveller rest upon you, for you have loved hospitality! May your prayers be heard by God, may your songs of praise be pleasing to Him: for your prayers and songs are full of sacred reverence! May your granaries and your possessions be blessed: for the poor always find at your house both a crust of bread and a strip of clothing to cover their nakedness! Brethren! You have chosen the good part! Do not look back; do not let yourselves be drawn again to the world by any vain, transitory pleasure of the world! In it everything is so unstable, so inconstant, so momentary, so corruptible! Divine Providence has granted you a separate dwelling place, remote from all temptations—the majestic, inspired Valaam. Hold fast to this haven, undisturbed by the waves of life’s sea; bear manfully the invisible storms within it; do not let good zeal grow cold in your souls; renew and sustain it by reading the holy patristic books; flee into these books with mind and heart, seclude yourselves in them with your thoughts and feelings—and Valaam, on which you see granite ledges and high mountains, will become for you a step toward heaven, the spiritual height from which easy passage is made into the dwelling-places of paradise.

The traveller who wrote these lines, who poured into them his feelings toward you and your dwelling place, who visited your hermitage more than once with sincere concern for it and for your wellbeing—this traveller asks for himself life in your prayerful remembrance until the grave, and beyond the threshold of the grave.

On Monasticism

On Monasticism (Part 1)

A Conversation Between Orthodox Christians, a Layman and a Monk

Layman. Father! I count myself fortunate that, in our acquaintance, I have found in you a person before whom I can open my heart, and from whom I hear a sincere word. I desire—I desire it with my whole soul and fully—to belong to the Orthodox Church and to follow its dogmatic and moral tradition. With this aim I endeavor to have a definite understanding of all matters of tradition. Incorrect ideas lead to incorrect actions; an incorrect action is the source of both private and public harm. In our present conversation, please do not decline to explain to me the significance of “monasticism” in the Church of Christ.

Monk. May God bless your desire. From precise and correct ideas all good things are born; from distorted and false ones all misfortunes arise. This opinion belongs to the Gospel. It sets before us Truth as the primary cause of salvation, and points to falsehood as the primary cause of perdition (Jn 8:32, 44). Why do you wish that the subject of our conversation today should be precisely “monasticism”?

Layman. In the society I frequent, the topic of monasticism is often raised, and various contemporary opinions about it are expressed. My acquaintances almost always turn to me—as one who is in contact with many ecclesiastical persons—expressing the wish that I should also voice my opinion. I wish to provide those close to me with accurate information, and so I ask you to share it with me.

Monk. I do not know to what degree I am capable of satisfying you; but I wish to be sincere with you and to set forth what I have come to know from reading Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers, from conversations with monks who are deserving of respect and trust by their manner of life, and finally from my own observations and experience. As the foundation of our conversation—as if laying a cornerstone at the base of a building—I will say that monasticism is a divine institution, and in no way a human one.

Layman. Imagine! The idea that monasticism is a divine institution is one I have never heard in society.

Monk. That I know. And so, whenever a conversation about monasticism starts up in secular society, one person says: “It seems to me thus!”—another: “But to me it seems otherwise!”—yet another: “I would do this!”—another: “And I would do that!” One hears a thousand contradictory opinions and proposals, uttered by people who have no conception of monasticism yet are ready to become authors of rules for it and to dispose of it according to their own wise discretion, without reference to anything. Some even repeat the blasphemies pronounced against monasticism by Protestants and atheists. A feeling of grief and dread grips the heart at such exclamations and judgments, in which ignorance tramples with its hooves the most precious pearls of the divine tradition and institution.

Layman. Indeed! The cause of this is ignorance, as you have said, Father.

Monk. Do not think that ignorance is an insignificant evil. The holy Fathers call ignorance a great, primary evil from which evil is born in full abundance. The Venerable Mark the Ascetic says that ignorance is the first, chief giant of evil.[1] Ignorance does not know its own ignorance;[2] ignorance is satisfied with its own knowledge, said another Father. It is capable of causing a great deal of harm without in the least suspecting that it does so. I say this from a feeling of compassion for people who do not understand in what the dignity of the human person consists—for Christians who do not know what Christianity consists in, who act out of their ignorance against themselves. Do not think that I have any intention of covering up human abuses and human weakness within a divine institution. No! The exposure and removal of human abuses within a divine institution is a sign of reverence for that institution, a means of preserving in proper holiness an institution granted by God and entrusted to the management of humanity.

Layman. That last thought is also new to me. I have never looked at monasticism from this point of view, nor have I encountered this perspective in others.

Monk. What I have said applies not to monasticism alone, but to the Church as a whole—both the Old-Covenant and the New-Covenant Church. That the Old-Covenant Church was founded by God, that it was entrusted to workers—the Jewish people—the Lord depicted in the parable of the vineyard, in the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.[3] That the New-Covenant Church was founded by the God-man, that it was entrusted to another people made up of all nations—to Christians—is evident from the Gospel and from all of Holy Scripture (Eph 1:22–23, 2:10–11 and elsewhere). The Jews were obliged to give account to God for the preservation of God’s gift, for the stewardship and management of God’s gift. Since their conduct proved to be criminal, they were set aside—yet only when they had already voluntarily set themselves apart in spirit—and subjected to punishment. In the same way, an account will be required from Christians: what use they have made of the divine institution as a whole—the New-Covenant Church—and of the particular institutions within it, such as monasticism.

Layman. Is it possible to discern from Holy Scripture what the earthly fate of the New-Covenant Church will be in the end?

Monk. Holy Scripture testifies that Christians, like the Jews, will gradually grow cold toward the revealed teaching of God; they will begin to neglect the renewal of human nature by the God-man, will forget about eternity, and will turn all their attention to their earthly life; in this frame of mind and direction, they will occupy themselves with developing their earthly condition as though it were eternal, and with developing their fallen nature to satisfy all the corrupted and perverted demands and desires of soul and body. It is evident that the Redeemer—who redeemed humanity for a blessed eternity—is alien to such a direction. To such a direction the apostasy from Christianity is natural. The apostasy will come, according to the prophecy of Scripture (2 Thes 2:3). Monasticism will share in the weakening of Christianity: a member of a body cannot but share in the infirmity that has stricken the whole body. This was foretold by the holy monks of ancient times by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in them. When Christianity is reduced to extremity on earth, then the life of the world will come to an end (Lk 18:8).[4]

Layman. What is the significance of monasticism in the Church of Christ?

Monk. Monks are those Christians who abandon, as far as possible, all earthly occupations for the occupation of prayer—the virtue that is higher than all virtues—so that through it they may be united in one with God, as the Apostle said: “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor 6:17).[5] And since prayer derives its strength from all the other virtues and from the whole of Christ’s teaching, monks apply special diligence to the fulfilment of the evangelical commandments, adding to the fulfilment of the commandments—which is obligatory for all Christians—the fulfilment of two counsels of Christ: the counsel concerning non-acquisition and the counsel concerning celibacy.[6] Monks strive by their manner of life to be conformed to the life lived on earth by the God-man: for this reason holy monks are called “venerables”—those who resemble him.

Layman. Where does the name “monk” come from?

Monk. The words “monk, monastery, monasticism” derive from the Greek word “μόνος”—alone. A monk means one who lives in seclusion or in solitude; a monastery, a secluded, separate dwelling; monasticism, a secluded manner of life. This manner of life differs from the ordinary life common to all—it is a different, “inoye,” mode of life; and so in the Russian language the name “inochestvo”—otherness of life—has formed for it. A monk in Russian is an “inok.” The words “cenobium, skete, hesychasm, hermitism, reclusion, desert-dwelling” denote different forms of monastic life. A monastic cenobium is the common life of a more or less numerous gathering of monks who share a common divine service, common refectory and clothing, and who are under the management of one abbot. Hesychasm is the common life of two or three monks in a separate cell, living according to mutual counsel or the counsel of the elder, sharing a common refectory and clothing, performing divine service in the cell for five days, and on Saturday and Sunday coming to the common service in church. Hermitism is the solitary life of a monk. When a hermit remains without leaving the cell situated within a monastery, he is called a recluse and his manner of life is called reclusion; but when he lives in an uninhabited desert, he is called a desert-dweller and his life, desert-dwelling.

Layman. When did monasticism begin?

Monk. From the time of the Apostles, on the testimony of Venerable Cassian.[7] Venerable Cassian, a writer and monk of the fourth century, who surveyed the monastic communities of Egypt—where monasticism then flourished with particular splendor—who spent considerable time among the monks of the Egyptian “Scete”, and who transmitted to later generations the rules and teachings of the Egyptian monks, states that in the earliest times of Christianity the chosen disciples of the holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, first bishop of Alexandria, received in Egypt the name “monks”. They withdrew to the most secluded outskirts of the city, where they led an exalted manner of life according to the rules that the Evangelist had handed down to them.[8] — In the life of the venerable martyr Eugenia it is related that during the reign of the Roman emperor Commodus—Commodus ascended the throne in the year 180 after the birth of Christ—the Roman nobleman Philip was made governor of Egypt. At that time there was a monastery in the suburbs of Alexandria; and the bishop of that era, Saint Helius, is mentioned as having entered monasticism from his youth.[9] The Jewish historian Philo, a contemporary of the Apostles and citizen of Alexandria, describes the life of the Therapeutae, who had withdrawn to the outskirts of Alexandria, in precisely the same terms as Venerable Cassian uses to depict the life of the first Alexandrian monks, and calls their dwellings “monasteries”.[10] From Philo’s description it is not evident whether the Therapeutae were Christians; but Philo’s account, as that of a secular writer, is superficial; and moreover, during this period many did not distinguish Christianity from Judaism, regarding the former as a sect of the latter. In the life of Venerable Anthony the Great—composed by his contemporary, Saint Athanasius the Great, Archbishop of Alexandria—it is mentioned that at the time when Saint Anthony entered monasticism (Anthony was then about twenty years of age), the Egyptian monks were living a solitary life in the environs of towns and villages. Venerable Anthony the Great reposed in the year 356 after the birth of Christ, at the age of one hundred and five.[11] — There is also a fact proving that monasticism existed in Syria from apostolic times. The venerable martyr Eudocia, who lived in the Syrian city of Heliopolis during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan, was converted to Christianity by Venerable Herman, the abbot of a men’s monastery that housed seventy monks. Upon embracing Christianity, Eudocia entered a women’s monastery of thirty nuns.[12] Trajan began to reign in the year 96 after the birth of Christ.—In the final years of the third century, Venerable Anthony the Great gave rise to the eremitic life; in the latter part of the first half of the fourth century, Venerable Pachomius the Great founded the Tabennisian cenobitic communities in the Thebaid desert, and Venerable Macarius the Great established the life of hesychasts in the wild desert of Scete near Alexandria—from which such a manner of life received the name “sketic”, and the monasteries established for this life received the name “sketes”. Saint Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, who lived in the second half of the fourth century, studied the monastic life among the Egyptian monks; returning to his homeland of Cappadocia, he lived the monastic life there in the desert until he entered the service of the Church, and wrote rules for monks, which were subsequently adopted in part as a guide and in part for edification by the entire Eastern Church. Thus monasticism, which had sheltered in the environs of towns and villages, in the fourth century relocated for the most part to uninhabited deserts. There it developed and flourished, as on soil naturally suited to it. Yet monasteries also remained in cities and their surroundings, and new ones continued to be established there.—Venerable Cassian, having spoken of the founding of monasticism in Alexandria by the holy Evangelist Mark, directs those seeking more detailed information to consult the Church History. That History has not come down to us, as almost no written documents of Egypt have: they were destroyed by the Muslims in the seventh century, a fate they also visited upon other Christian lands they conquered, though to a lesser degree.

Layman. What was the cause of monasticism’s migration to places remote from towns and villages?

Monk. This migration took place at the very time when the struggle of martyrdom came to an end, and people began to receive the Christian faith no longer as the chosen few, not by special vocation, not with readiness for the greatest sufferings and death, but all in general, as the dominant faith—protected and propagated by the government. Christianity had become universal; yet it had not retained its former spirit of self-renunciation. Christians in towns and villages began to give themselves over to many worldly concerns, to permit themselves luxury, fleshly pleasure, participation in popular entertainments, and other indulgences which the original confessors of the faith had shunned as a renunciation of Christ in spirit. The desert offered a natural refuge and haven, undisturbed by temptations, for those Christians who desired to preserve and develop in themselves Christianity in all its power. “The desert”, says Saint Isaac the Syrian, “is beneficial both to the weak and to the strong: in the former, by withdrawal from material things, the passions are not permitted to flare up and multiply, while the strong, when they are removed from material things, attain to struggle with the evil spirits.” Saints Basil the Great and Dimitri of Rostov depict the reason for Saint Gordius’s departure into the desert in these words:[13] “Gordius fled the tumults of the city, fled the clamor of the marketplace, fled the grandeur of princes, fled courts, buyers, sellers, those who swear oaths, those who lie, those who speak obscenity; fled the games and buffoonery and mockery that take place in cities, himself having pure hearing, pure eyes, and above all a purified heart capable of beholding God;[14] and he was counted worthy of divine revelations, and learned great mysteries not from men, nor through men, but having acquired the great teacher of truth—the Spirit.” From the time of monasticism’s migration to the deserts, it adopted a distinctive garb, with the aim of making its final separation from the laity complete. During the times of persecution, both clergy and monks wore predominantly common dress: this concealed them to a considerable degree from their persecutors.

Layman. The lofty teaching vouchsafed to Saint Gordius is an exclusive privilege of very few. In modern times the Christian faith is taught satisfactorily and in detail in the seminaries, and its higher teaching in the theological academies.

Monk. Between the teaching given in theological schools and the teaching that is or ought to be given in monasteries there is a very great difference, though the subject of both is one and the same: Christianity. The Saviour of the world, sending his holy Apostles out on their universal mission, commanded them to teach all peoples “the faith” in the true God and “the manner of life” according to his commandments. “Go”, he said, “and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:19–20). Teaching “the faith” must precede “baptism”; teaching “the manner of life” according to the commandments must follow “baptism”. The first teaching is theoretical, the second practical. Of the first the holy Apostle Paul said: “I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and from teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:20–21); of the second: “Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:27–28). God has given two teachings about himself: teaching by word, received through faith, and teaching by life, received through activity according to the commandments of the Gospel. The first teaching may be compared to the foundation of a building, and the second to the building itself, raised upon that foundation. As it is impossible to erect a building without a foundation, so a foundation alone serves no purpose if no building is raised upon it. “Faith without works is dead” (Jas. 2:26).

The holy Apostle Paul depicts the necessity of the first teaching in these words: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God. But how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Rom. 10:17, 14). Here is the beginning of catechetical instruction. To those entering Christianity, the Apostles and their successors set forth the foundational teaching of Christianity: concerning God, concerning the God-man, concerning the human person, concerning the significance of humanity in time and in eternity, concerning the sacraments, concerning the blessedness of paradise, concerning the torments of hell (Heb. 6:1–2), and concerning all else that constitutes the foundational, dogmatic teaching of Christianity—to which was also joined the theoretical teaching on the manner of life according to the commandments of the Gospel (Heb. 11, 12, 13). Here is the beginning of dogmatic and moral theology, that most exalted and sacred science. From the very times of the Apostles, heretical teachings began to arise within the Church of Christ—that is, teachings about Divine Revelation from the falsely named human reason. In the Revealed Teaching of God there is no place for human speculation: there, from alpha to omega, everything is of God. The holy Universal Church strove diligently to preserve the priceless spiritual treasure entrusted to her—the Revealed Teaching of God: she rebuked her open enemies—idolaters, pagan philosophers, and Jews—and repelled their attacks; she rebuked her inner enemies—the heretics—refuted their teachings, expelled them from her bosom, and warned her children against them. For this reason, with the passage of time, theology grew ever broader in scope. The need arose for schools in which to teach it. The most ancient and extensive school was in Alexandria, where it flourished especially in the second and third centuries after the birth of Christ. Teachings hostile to the Divine Teaching multiplied ceaselessly, arising in various forms; the necessity of schools and their systematic organization made itself ever more keenly felt. The West, having separated from the East by falling into heresy, embraced the culture and manner of life of the pagans: from that time onward, teachings hostile to the Orthodox Church—teachings most cunningly devised, most audacious, misshapen, and blasphemous—multiplied without end. Theological schools became an essential necessity for the Orthodox Church, as vital as the breath of life. Judge for yourselves: one must present clearly to the Orthodox Christian—especially to one being prepared to be a pastor—both the true teaching of the Orthodox Church and the whole of her victorious struggle against secret and open enemies, concealed and unconcealed, a struggle extending over eighteen centuries and growing ever more intense. One must set forth the errors of Arius, of Macedonius, of Nestorius, of Eutyches, of the iconoclasts, of papism, and of Protestantism with its countless branches crowned by atheism and modern philosophy; and one must provide a satisfactory refutation of all these teachings. The study of theology required little time in the earliest days of Christianity—today it requires a lengthy period;[15] formerly it could be conveyed in discourses delivered in the church of God—today it requires systematic instruction over several years. The provision of this study in its full extent is the purpose of our theological seminaries and academies: they impart knowledge of Christianity that is foundational and introductory—as Venerable Mark the Ascetic called it—imparting it to youth who have not yet entered public service and have been prepared for it only theoretically, unacquainted with the knowledge that the experience of life confers. Upon this theoretical knowledge of the faith must be built practical, living, grace-filled knowledge. For the acquisition of this knowledge earthly life has been given to the human person. A Christian who lives in the midst of the world according to the commandments of the Gospel will inevitably be enriched with knowledge not only experiential but also gracious to a certain degree. Far more richly still must he be enriched who, having left behind all earthly concerns, devotes all his time and all the powers of body and soul to the pleasing of God—that is, the monk. He is the one called in the Gospel the one who “has” the commandments of the Lord, because the commandments of the Lord constitute his entire inheritance. “He who has my commandments”, said the Saviour of the world, “and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn. 14:21). For this reason, the most zealous Christians of every age, having completed their education in schools, have entered and continue to enter monasticism in order to acquire that formation which monasticism affords. Who were the great teachers of the Church in every age? Monks. Who explained her teaching in detail, who preserved her tradition for posterity, who unmasked and overthrew the heresies? Monks. Who sealed their Orthodox confession of faith with their blood? Monks. This is altogether natural. Christians living in the midst of the world, entangled in its bonds and occupied with various concerns, voluntary and involuntary, cannot devote much time, cannot consecrate all their love to God. “The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly things” (1 Cor. 7:32–33): the married man cannot persistently and intensely cleave to the Lord in prayer detached from everything earthly, and be united “in one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor. 6:17), as is possible and proper for the monk.[16] — For personal Christian progress there is no need of human learning, which is necessary for the teachers of the Church: many illiterate Christians, including Venerable Anthony the Great, having entered monasticism, attained Christian perfection and shed spiritual light upon their contemporaries through their example, their oral teaching, and their gifts of grace. “Who among laymen,” says Saint John of the Ladder, “was a wonder-worker? Who raised the dead? Who cast out demons? No one; all these are the honors of monks, which the world cannot contain.”

Layman. Not all monks, however, attain such a lofty state; not all fulfill their vocation. Those who do are rare.

[1] Word to the Monk Nicholas. The Philokalia, part 1.

[2] Hieromartyr Peter of Damascus. Book 1. The Philokalia, part 3.

[3] Verse 33 and following.

[4] The Alphabetical Patericon and the Memorable Sayings concerning Abba Iskhirion.

[5] Venerable Mark the Ascetic. Homily 4.

[6] Venerable Abba Dorotheus. Instruction 1.

[7] Cassiani Collatio XVIII, cap. V.

[8] Lib. 11. De Nocturnis orationibus caput. V.

[9] The Menaion Reader, December 24.

[10] Histoire du Christianisme, par Fleury, livre 2, chap. 6.

[11] Vies des peres des deserts d’Orient.

[12] The Menaion Reader, March 1.

[13] Homily 55.

[14] The Passion of the Holy Martyr Gordius. The Menaion Reader, January 3.

[15] Homily 4.

[16] Homily 2, ch. 9.

On Monasticism (Part 2)

Monk. Those monks who conduct their life according to the monastic rules will inevitably acquire grace, by the promise of God. The promise of God cannot fail to be fulfilled, by the very nature of the Word of God and of the commandments of the Gospel—a nature that imparts the Spirit of God to those who labor according to them. By contrast, those monks who despise the God-given ordinances of monasticism and lead a self-willed, dissipated, pleasure-seeking, and worldly life are deprived of spiritual progress. The same occurs with all Christians. Those Christians who lead a Christian life are saved, while those who, calling themselves Christians, lead a pagan life perish. In former times there were far more saints among monks and far more saved among Christians than there are today. The reason for this is the general weakening of faith and morality. Yet even today there are true monks and true Christians. I repeat: there are monks unworthy of their name and calling; but this is an abuse of God’s institution. God’s institution does not cease to be God’s institution on account of its abuse by human beings. So too Christianity does not lose its great dignity because some or even many Christians lead a life contrary to the teaching of Christ. As with Christianity, so with monasticism: one must judge it by the true Christians and true monks. This is not easy: piety and virtue, like chaste virgins, are always beneath the veil of the cell and of obscurity, as if beneath the folds of cloth; while harlots strive to appear half-naked before the public gaze. Often a monk’s lofty life becomes known only at his end or after his death. Often the world heaps abuse and slanders upon a monk who is a partaker of God’s grace, out of the world’s hatred of the Spirit of God (Jn. 15:18–19). Progress itself has various degrees: for, as was said above, monastic solitude, while beneficial to the spiritually strong in one respect, is beneficial to the spiritually weak in another. Naturally, the number of the latter has always been greater than the number of the former.

Layman. After all that you have said, it becomes necessary to have a definitive explanation and demonstration that monasticism is indeed a divine institution. What you have already said leads to that conclusion to a considerable degree.

Monk. The Saviour of the world indicated two paths, two manners of life for those who believe in him: the path or manner of life that leads to “salvation”, and the path or manner of life that leads to “perfection”. The latter path and manner of life the Lord called “following himself”, since they serve as the most precise expression of the teaching he imparted, and as an imitation—to the extent humanly possible—of the manner of life the Lord led during his earthly pilgrimage. The conditions of salvation consist in faith in Christ (Jn. 3:36; 17:3), in living according to the commandments of God (Mt. 19:17; Mk.Venerable Abba Dorotheus. Instruction 1:10:19), and in the healing by repentance of any shortcomings in keeping the commandments (Lk. 13:3, 5): consequently salvation is granted to all, and is possible for all, even amid the duties and services of life in the world, provided they are not contrary to the Law of God. To follow the Lord some were called by the Lord himself, as were the Apostles; but in general the following of the Lord is left by the Lord to the free choice of each person, as is evident from all the passages of the Gospel where the Lord speaks on this subject. “If any man wishes to come after me” (Mt. 16:24), “if you wish to be perfect” (Mt. 19:21), “if any man comes to me” (Lk. 14:26), says the Lord at the beginning of his teaching on “following” and Christian “perfection”. The taking upon oneself of this manner of life depends upon free choice; but the conditions of the life are already prescribed by the Lord; without the keeping of these conditions, the following of the Lord cannot take place. The Lord set forth the conditions of following him—the path and manner of life leading to perfection—as follows: “If any man wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt. 16:24). “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mt. 19:21), “taking up the cross” (Mk. 10:21). “If any man comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple… whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Lk.The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Homily 2, ch. 9. 14:26–27, 33). Here are prescribed precisely those conditions from which the essential vows of monasticism are formed; monasticism, as we have said, was from the beginning nothing other than the solitary life, remote from worldly commotion, of Christians who strove toward Christian perfection. The Christians of populous and wealthy Alexandria withdrew to the outskirts of the city on the instruction of the holy Evangelist Mark; the same instruction is given by the holy Apostle Paul to all Christians who desire to enter into closer communion with God.[1] “You are”, he says, “the temple of the living God, as God said: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; and I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty”[2] (2 Cor.The Menaion Reader, January 19.The Menaion Reader, May 15:6:16–18). Saint John of the Ladder applies this calling specifically to monks. The above-cited words of the Lord were understood in the primitive Church exactly as they have been explained here.[3] Saint Athanasius the Great, in the life of Venerable Anthony the Great, relates that Anthony as a young man entered the church for prayer. On that day the Gospel of Matthew was being read (Mt. 19), concerning the rich man who inquired of the Lord about salvation and perfection. When the above-cited words were read—“If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you possess” and so forth—Anthony, whose soul was occupied with the question of what manner of life to choose, felt a special resonance with these words, recognized that the Lord himself had spoken them to him, and therefore immediately sold his possessions and entered monasticism. These words of the Lord are to this day recognized by the holy Church as foundational for monasticism, and are always read at the monastic tonsure.—The placing of monasticism at a distance from villages, in the deserts, came about by divine revelation and command. Venerable Anthony the Great was called by God to live in the deep desert; Venerable Macarius the Great was commanded by an angel to settle in the desert of Scete; Venerable Pachomius the Great was likewise commanded by an angel to establish a monastic community in the desert, and received in writing the rules for monastic life. The aforementioned venerable Fathers were men filled with the Holy Spirit, dwelling constantly in communion with God, and serving monasticism as the “word” of God, just as Moses served the Israelites. The Holy Spirit constantly illumined monasticism throughout all the centuries of Christianity. The teaching of the Holy Spirit—the teaching of Christ, the teaching of God—concerning monasticism, that science of sciences, as the holy Fathers express themselves about this divine science, was set forth by the venerable monks in all its precision and fullness in their God-inspired writings. All of them testify that the institution of monasticism, this supernatural manner of life, is in no way a human work: it is the work of God. Being supernatural, it cannot be a human work; it cannot fail to be the work of God.

Layman. Some hold that the original cause of monasticism was the persecutions launched against Christians by the idolaters during the first three centuries of Christianity’s life.

Monk. Carnal wisdom always reasons wrongly about spiritual men. Spiritual men, such as were the monks of the early centuries, thirsted for martyrdom, and many of them were crowned with the martyr’s crown—among them the venerable martyrs Nikon, Julian, and the venerable martyresses Eudocia, Eugenia, Febronia, and others. The holy desert-dweller Gordius, mentioned above, when the struggle of martyrdom opened in Caesarea of Cappadocia, came to that city during a public festival, exposed the error of idolatry, confessed Christ, and sealed his confession with a martyr’s death.[4][5][6][7][8] When the fierce persecution of Christians was launched by the emperor Diocletian, Venerable Anthony the Great was already a monk and desert-dweller. Hearing that Christians were being subjected to torments and executions for confessing Christ, Anthony leaves his cave and the desert, hastens to Alexandria, joins the martyrs, confesses Christ before all the people, and by his very actions demonstrates his desire for martyrdom. “The Venerable One”, says the writer of his life, “truly became a martyr in his love and will: though he desired to suffer for the name of the Lord, martyrdom was not granted to him by the Lord.” Already the Lord was replacing the harvest of sanctity, so abundantly reaped by the martyrs who confessed him before the idolaters, with another abundant harvest, which the monks were to reap on the field of a different martyrdom. Barely had the torments ceased and the blood of Christians barely stopped flowing in city squares and arenas, when thousands of Christians migrated to the wild deserts, there to crucify their flesh with its “passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24), and to confess Christ before the very princes of this world, the principalities and powers of evil (Eph. 6:12). The reason for Venerable Paul of Thebes’s withdrawal to the desert was his desire to escape a plot upon his life during the persecution launched by the emperor Decius. Perhaps some others also withdrew to the desert for the same reason. Others withdrew to the desert as a result of other circumstances. But these are individual cases from which no general conclusion about the beginning of monasticism should be drawn. The original cause of monasticism is not human weakness but the power of Christ’s teaching. Venerable John the Short, the author of the life of Venerable Paisius the Great, says in the preface to that life: “The eternal heavenly goods arouse in those who hope to receive them a boundless longing for themselves, fill the hearts of these seekers with a certain insatiable divine sweetness, cause them always to recall the blessedness of that realm, the recompense of labors, the radiant triumph of the ascetics, and incite such striving toward themselves that these souls not only despise the temporal and the vain, but do not spare their very lives, choosing, according to the word of the Gospel, to lay down their beloved soul for the sake of Christ. They love death for Christ more than all pleasures and delights. But as there are now no persecutors, and the longed-for death is not easily found, they strive to bear it in another manner, establishing for themselves a prolonged and violent mortification of themselves. Day by day they endure thousands of sufferings, fasting, struggling in manifold ways, contending with invisible demons, ceaselessly constraining their nature, clothed in flesh, to resist bodiless enemies.”[9]

Layman. Are you comparing the struggle of monasticism with the struggle of martyrdom?

Monk. It is one and the same struggle, in different forms. Both martyrdom and monasticism are founded upon the same words of the Gospel; both were in no way invented by human beings but were given to humanity by the Lord; and both cannot be accomplished except through the all-powerful help of God, through the action of God’s grace. You will be convinced of this if you read the lives of Venerable Anthony the Great, Macarius the Great, Theodore the Studite, Mary of Egypt, John the Much-Suffering, Nikon the Dry, and other monks, whose ascetic struggle and suffering were above nature. Saint Symeon the New Theologian speaks of his elder, Symeon the Pious, a monk of the Studion monastery, saying that through bodily sufferings and afflictions he was made like to many martyrs.[10]

Layman. Explain to me, Father, what significance celibacy and non-possessiveness have in the monastic struggle. This is obscure to those who live in the midst of the world, who labor for the common good, who give abundantly in alms and perform many good works pointed out and approved by the Gospel. For lack of explanation, the monastic life appears to be a life of idleness, devoid both of activity and of usefulness.

Monk. The activity of laymen that you mention—consisting in the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments through the actions of the body—is necessary for “salvation” but insufficient for “perfection”. Nothing prevents engaging in such activity amid the cares and obligations of the world. Even earthly prosperity enables one to do more good works: a wealthy man can give much assistance to the poor through almsgiving, while a man of high station can help them with protection from violence and intercession in the courts. In this activity one must guard against acting out of oneself, as did the Pharisee mentioned in the Gospel (Lk.According to the commentary of Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria. 18), who indeed did many good works, but with a wrong view of his own activity. Because of this he fell into a wrong opinion of himself and of his neighbors; his good activity became displeasing to God. The Apostle says that those who perform good works should perform them “as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Pet. 4:10). Let the wealthy man give alms from his estate, not as from what is his own, but as from what has been entrusted to him by God. Let the man of high station do good from his elevated position, not as from what is his own, but as from what has been given to him by God. Then a contemptuous glance at the activity of one’s neighbors—even if their activity is insufficient—will disappear; then the question will begin to appear in the conscience about one’s own activity, as was the case with righteous Job (Job 1:5): does it satisfy God’s requirement? are there not greater or lesser deficiencies in it? And then, little by little, a conception will begin to take shape of a more perfect manner of life. Admit it: the monastic life appears devoid of activity and usefulness precisely to those who esteem their own activity highly—that is, erroneously. The mark of correct Christian activity is humility; pride and self-conceit are the sure mark of incorrect activity, as the Lord himself indicates. The opinion you expressed reveals an ignorance of Christianity, a perverse and distorted understanding of it. Christian perfection was itself proposed by the God-man to his chosen disciples. Perfection begins where the good works prescribed for laymen have reached their full measure. Study Christianity; learn in what its perfection consists—and you will understand the significance of monasticism; you will understand all the absurdity of the blasphemous charge of idleness leveled against those who strive to fulfill the highest commandments of the Gospel, commandments inaccessible to laymen. Those who heap reproaches and slanders upon monasticism inevitably slander the very institution of Christian perfection established by the Lord.

Layman. I agree, I agree! But then explain to me clearly the significance of non-possessiveness and celibacy on the path to Christian perfection.

Monk. Their significance is of extraordinary importance. I shall endeavor, to the best of my ability, to make it comprehensible to you. He who has distributed his possessions to the poor in order to render complete obedience to the Saviour and follow him entirely; who has himself become poor in order to subject himself to the deprivations accompanying poverty, which abundantly supply humility—by this act he destroys all his hope in the world and concentrates it in God. His heart is translated from earth to heaven (Mt. 6:21), and he begins to walk upon the surface of the waters of the sea of life, upheld by faith. His care is cast upon the Lord, who, having commanded his closest disciples to distribute their possessions (Lk. 12:33) and to lay aside concern for providing for bodily needs, promised that for those who seek “the kingdom of God and his righteousness”, all these needs would be “added” by the providence of the Heavenly Father (Mt. 6:33). Various sorrows are permitted to the servants of God, in which God’s providence over them seems to be concealed, and the influence of the world acquires special power; but this is necessary for their training in living faith in God, which grows and is strengthened unceasingly through experience. Experience exposes the unbelief that dwells in fallen nature; it exposes the apostasy and renunciation of God that dwells in fallen nature, for the heart, with sorrowful blindness, at the least relaxation of vigilance over it, rushes to place its hope in itself, in the world, in material things, and to turn away from hope in God (Mt. 14:22, 33). It seems clear from this brief explanation that the abandonment of possessions raises the ascetic of Christ to an exalted spiritual state that separates him from those brethren who live in the midst of the world, and which cannot be known by them through experience. Yet this exalted state is at the same time a state of unceasing suffering for the body and for all of fallen nature: the Lord called it the “cross”.

In a spiritual sense, the action of celibacy resembles the action of non-possessiveness. The striving to overcome a property of nature—even fallen nature—raises one to such a struggle as those who have not experienced it cannot conceive. By this struggle, through which is accomplished a renunciation of nature itself, crucifixion and the cross are completed—beyond what is supplied by non-possessiveness, in which there is only a renunciation of possessions. This struggle leads down into the depths of humility, brings to living faith, and raises to a state of grace. In this struggle, as is evident from the lives of Venerable Anthony the Great, John the Much-Suffering, and others, fallen spirits come to the aid of fallen nature and strive to keep the human person within the realm of the fall. In accordance with the difficulties of the contest, the victory is most fruitful: it is bestowed by, and followed by, a renewal of nature through the appearance in the heart of what the holy Fathers call spiritual sensation.[11] Nature remains the same human nature, but its sensation—its taste, in secular terms—is changed:[12] as paper saturated with oil no longer absorbs water, not because its nature has changed, but because its capacity has been filled with a different substance that has no physical affinity with water.[13][14]

Layman. Very many people today maintain that celibacy is unnatural to the human being, impossible for him, and that the closing of the lawful door to nature only compels nature to seek unlawful doors.

Monk. It is natural for every person to judge by his own experience. What is unknown and untried appears impossible, while what is known and tried appears as the common lot of all. The holy Fathers who have written on this subject are agreed that celibacy is unnatural to fallen nature, that it was natural to the human being before the fall (Gen. 2:25), that by the renewal of nature the capacity for virginity and celibacy has been restored to nature, and that virginity and celibacy are honored above marriage, even though married life too has been raised by Christianity to a higher degree than it occupied before Christianity (Eph. 5:32). The God-man lived a virginal life; his most holy Mother was and remained a Virgin; the holy Apostles John the Theologian, Paul, Barnabas, and without doubt many others were virgins. With the appearance of Christianity there appeared hosts of virgins, both male and female. This struggle was exceedingly rare before the renewal of nature by the Redeemer. Through the Redeemer, God’s goodwill was poured out upon humanity, as the angels justly sang (Lk. 2:14), and sanctified human beings with manifold gifts of grace. The gracious abundance of Christians is vividly depicted in the instruction that, according to the Church’s rule, the priest is to read to the newly wedded at the conclusion of the marriage service. “The great field of the Church of the great Master, God, is cultivated in three ways and adorned with three harvests and fruits. The first part of this field is cultivated by those who have loved virginity and preserved it undefiled to the end of their lives, and it bears in the Lord’s storehouse the fruits of virtue a hundredfold. The second part of the field is cultivated by the restraint of widowhood, and bears fruit sixtyfold. The third is cultivated by the cohabitation of those united in marriage, and if they live piously in the fear of God, the field bears fruit thirtyfold. In one field there are various sections with various fruits, but all are blessed and praiseworthy, in keeping with their appointed purpose.[15] The god-wise Ambrose says: we preach virginity in such a way as not to despise widows; we honor widows in such a way as to preserve marriage in its own honor.”

Layman. How can a Christian know whether he is capable or incapable of the celibate life? In my opinion, this question must greatly perplex anyone intending to enter monasticism.

Monk. He who wills it is capable.[16] Just as in the blameless state of the human being it was left to his free will to remain in that state or to depart from it, so too after the renewal of nature it is left to his free will to appropriate to himself the renewed nature in all its development, or to avail himself of it only to the degree necessary for salvation, or to remain in the state of the fall and develop within himself the fallen nature. The renewal of nature is a gift of the Redeemer. For this reason every Gospel virtue is chosen by good will, but is given as a gift by Christ to the one who wills it. Will is demonstrated by compelling oneself to virtue, while the virtue itself is petitioned from God by diligent and patient prayer. All Gospel virtues are foreign to fallen nature; toward all of them the ascetic must compel himself; all must be sought from God by humble prayer united with heartfelt weeping. Like all other Gospel virtues, the celibate life is chosen by free will;[17] the sincerity of that will is demonstrated through struggle with the strivings of fallen nature and the disciplining of the body through ascetic labors; the gift of purity is asked from God through the recognition of fallen nature’s incapacity for purity and through most fervent prayer filled with compunction; and the gift is sent down through the overshadowing of divine grace, which changes and renews nature.[18][19] Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria, explaining in this manner the human capacity for the celibate life (Mt. 19:12), concludes his explanation with the following words of the Lord: “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds” (Mt.The Commentary (of Theophylact). Mt 7:8:7:8). Read those lives of the saints in which their struggle against fallen nature is described: you will see that all the saints passed from the ordinary state, in which the human being is incapable of the celibate life, to a state to which celibacy is proper, after a strenuous struggle against the desires and impulses of fallen nature; you will see that their chief weapons were prayer and weeping; you will see that not only virgins removed themselves from the necessity of marriage and widowers from its repetition, but that even the most dissolute people, overflowing with passions, stained with crimes, bound and shackled as with chains by sinful habits, ascended and soared to incorruptible purity and holiness. I repeat: in the New Testament Church, thousands upon thousands of virgins and virginal women, blameless widowers and widows, adulterers and harlots transformed into vessels of chastity and grace, irrefutably demonstrate that the struggle for chastity is not only not impossible, but not even so difficult as it appears to theorists who reason about it without experiential knowledge, without the knowledge imparted by the moral tradition of the Church—theorists who reason and conclude, I will say plainly, from their own depravity, from blind and stubborn prejudice, from hatred of monasticism and of Orthodox Christianity in general. Rightly did Venerable Isidore of Pelusium write to Saint Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria:[20] “Prejudice does not see clearly, and hatred is completely blind.”

Layman. Yet one must admit that scandals, appearing abundantly and strikingly, also serve as the cause of talk against monasteries and those who inhabit them.

Monk. I agree with this. Do not imagine that I would cover over an evil harmful to all. On the contrary, I would sincerely desire that evil be uprooted from the field of Christ, that this field might bear only pure and ripened wheat. I repeat: it is essential to define God’s institution with all precision, and to separate it from human abuses, in order to act effectively against those abuses. It is necessary to have a correct view of the evil, so as to adopt true and effective remedies against it—so as not to replace evil with evil, error with error, abuse with abuse—so as not to trample, reject, or distort the divine institution, as the Protestants did in relation to the Roman Church. It is necessary to know the very methods and art of healing, so as to employ remedies that are genuinely beneficial and effective, and not by incorrect treatment to substitute death for the patient’s illness.

[1] The Menaion Reader. Life of Venerable Anthony the Great, January 17.

[2] The Trebnik. The Office of the Lesser Schema.

[3] Venerable Cassian. Homily on Discernment. The Philokalia, part 4.

[4] The Menaion Reader, March 23.

[5] The Menaion Reader, January 8.

[6] The Menaion Reader, March 1.

[7] The Menaion Reader, December 24.

[8] The Menaion Reader, June 25.

[9] The Menaion Reader, June 19.

[10] Homily 2.

[11] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 4, ch. 43.

[12] Venerable Macarius of Egypt, Discourse 7, chapter 5.

[13] St. Isaac the Syrian, Homilies 43 and 48.

[14] In depicting the relationship of paper, water, and oil, the technical expressions of physics are employed here.

[15] The Trebnik, the Order of the Marriage Service.

[16] The Commentary (of Theophylact). Mt 19:12.

[17] The Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 1, ch. 13.

[18] The Venerable Cassian the Roman, Book IV, ch. V.

[19] The Venerable Barsanuphius the Great, Reply 255.

[20] Histoire du Christianisme, Fleury, livre 26, chap. 5.

On Monasticism (Part 3)

In general, the view of contemporary laymen toward monks is greatly mistaken, precisely because the former too sharply separate themselves from monks in a moral and spiritual regard. Between Christians living in monasteries and Christians living in the midst of the world there is the closest moral connection. The inhabitants of monasteries did not fly there from the moon, or from some other planet: they entered from the midst of the earthly, sinful world. The immorality that is condemned in monasteries was formed in the midst of the world, is nourished and sustained by intercourse with the world. The decline of the monks’ morality is in the closest connection with the decline of the morality of laymen; the decline of morality in monasteries is a direct consequence of the decline of morality and religion among laymen. Monasticism is built upon Christianity, is founded and sustained by it, and advances or weakens in proportion to the advance or weakening of Christianity. The essence of the matter is Christianity; monasticism is a form of it, its particular manifestation. The malady is common! Let us weep over it together, and together take care for its healing! Let us show compassion for humanity, let us show love! Let us leave behind the harsh, mutual condemnation—that expression of hatred and Pharisaism—that rushes to destroy the ailments of the sick by beating them with logs!

Layman. Your understanding of the moral bond between monks and laymen is again a novelty to me. I perceive that it has been given to you by experience. Without that it could not be so deep, could not be distinguished so sharply from the superficial views of theory. Please do not refuse to set it forth in more detail.

Monk. You are not mistaken. The understanding I expressed is in part the fruit of my own observations, and in part was given to me by persons worthy of full confidence. Metropolitan Seraphim of Saint Petersburg, in a conversation about the increase of divorce cases in the consistory during his time, told me that when he was a vicar bishop in Moscow, there would be one, or at most two, divorce cases a year in the Moscow consistory; while elderly bishops of that time told him that in their youth divorce cases did not exist at all. Here is a fact that vividly depicts the morality of former times and the course of its movement to the present state—a course rapid and far from encouraging. The accounts of other elderly monks confirm the conclusion that follows from the account of Metropolitan Seraphim. Even at the beginning of the present century, many virgins entered monasteries, many persons who had never tasted wine, who had taken no part in worldly entertainments, who had read no secular books, formed by abundant reading of Holy Scripture and of the patristic writings, who had acquired the habit of unfailing attendance at the church of God, and who were filled with other pious habits as well. They brought to the monastery a morality whole and unshaken by vicious habits; they brought to the monastery health unimpaired by abuse of the body, capable of enduring the monastic struggles, labors, and deprivations. The strict piety of the world reared and prepared strict and vigorous monks both in soul and in body.

Today, a weakened Christianity prepares and supplies, in keeping with its own condition, weak monks. Today, the entry of a virgin into a monastery is the greatest rarity! Today, the entry of a person who has not acquired vicious habits is a rarity! Today, the entry of one who has preserved his health unimpaired and is capable of monastic struggles is a rarity! The majority of those who enter are weak, damaged in body and soul; they enter having filled their memory and imagination with the reading of novels and other such trifling books; they enter having grown weary of sensual pleasures and having acquired a taste for all the temptations with which the world today is overflowing; they enter with deep-rooted vicious habits, with a conscience dulled and deadened by a preceding way of life in which all lawlessness was permitted, along with all the deceits needed to cover up the lawlessness. For these individuals the struggle with themselves is very difficult. It is difficult both on account of their deeply rooted vicious habits and on account of their loss of sincerity, of their incapacity for it. For the same reason it is difficult to instruct them. They have entered the monastery, removed their worldly garments, and clothed themselves in the black monastic habit; but the habits and disposition acquired in worldly life remain with them, and, being unsatisfied, acquire new force. Sinful habits and dispositions can weaken only when the one in their grip acts against them through confession of them and through struggle against them according to the guidance of the Word of God. Otherwise, as soon as a starved habit, which has preserved all its power over the person, finds opportunity to satisfy itself—it does so with greed and frenzy. Many havens that were formerly reliable harbors for those suffering from moral ailments have, with the passage of time, changed and lost their virtue. By “havens” I mean monasteries. Many monasteries, established by their founders in deep or at least remote desert, now stand in the midst of the world, surrounded by countless temptations, as the population has grown. Not only does the ailing person who cannot stand face to face before temptation encounter it of necessity the moment he steps outside the monastery gates—temptation itself violently and furiously forces its way into the monastery, causing moral devastation and wickedness. The spirit of hatred for monasticism counts it a triumph to introduce temptation into the monastery. Success is greeted with loud laughter and applause, as if some famous victory had been won—while the sin and the calamity are common to all. Given the present state of morality and the direction of the world, monasteries need more than ever to stand at a distance from the world. When the life of the world was united with the life of the Church, when the world lived by the life of the Church, when the piety of laymen differed outwardly from the piety of monks only in marriage and in the possession of property—then it was fitting for monasteries to be located in the midst of cities, and the urban monasteries proved this by rearing many holy monks. But today special attention must be given to the above-cited exhortation of the Apostle (2 Cor. 6:16–18), and particular diligence must be applied to its fulfillment.

Layman. In the opinion of many, a significant help toward reducing scandals would be the enactment of a “law” forbidding young people—upon whom external temptations act with particular force and in whom the passions seethe—from entering a monastery; a law that would reserve monastic life solely for persons of mature age and for the elderly.

Monk. A measure that in outward appearance seems so prudent, and that according to the calculations of the theory of carnal wisdom ought to protect and elevate monasticism, is in essence nothing other than a powerful and decisive measure for the destruction of monasticism. Monasticism is a science of sciences. In it theory and practice go hand in hand. This path, throughout its entire extent, is illumined by the Gospel; it is on this path, proceeding from outward activity, that one passes, with the help of heavenly light, to self-contemplation. The correctness of self-contemplation, imparted by the Gospel, is irrefutably demonstrated by interior experience. When demonstrated, it compellingly proves the truth of the Gospel. The science of sciences—monasticism—provides, to use the language of the worldly learned, the most detailed, thorough, deep, and elevated knowledge in Experimental Psychology and Theology—that is, living and active knowledge of the human person and of God, insofar as this knowledge is accessible to the human person. For the human sciences one must approach with fresh faculties, with full receptivity, with unspent spiritual energy; all this is all the more necessary for the successful study of the science of sciences—monasticism. The monk faces a struggle with his own nature. The best age for entering upon this struggle is youth. Youth is not yet shackled by habits; in it the will has much freedom! Experience testifies that the best monks are those who entered monasticism in tender youth. The majority of monks of our time consists of those who entered monasticism in youth. Those who enter in the years of mature age are very few, and those who enter in old age are exceedingly rare. Those who enter the monastery in mature or advanced years very often cannot endure the monastic life and return to the world, without even having understood what monasticism means. In those who have remained in the monastery, one notices almost only an outward reverence and precise fulfillment of outward monastic rules—which pleases laymen so much and satisfies them completely—while in them there is no essential monasticism, or it is encountered very, very rarely, as an exception to the general order.

Let us turn to the instruction given us by the holy Church. “My child”, says the Wise One, with the wisdom given by God, “from your youth choose discipline, and you will find wisdom even until gray hairs. Like one who plows and sows, draw near to her and wait for her good fruits” (Sir. 6:18–19). “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth… and walk in the ways of your heart blamelessly, and not by the sight of your eyes” (Eccl. 11:9). “This”—wisdom—“I loved and sought from my youth; I desired to take her for my bride and became a lover of her beauty. Her nobility glorifies the life that has God; and the Lord of all loves her, for she is an initiate into the knowledge of God and a chooser of his works” (Wis. 8:2–4). These sayings of Holy Scripture are applied by the holy Fathers to the science of sciences—the monastic life; indeed it is obvious to everyone that they do not refer to wisdom taught according to the principles of the world and of the prince of this world. The Sixth Ecumenical Council, having stated in its fortieth canon that it is most salvific to cleave to God through the abandonment of worldly commotion, nonetheless commanded that tonsure be performed with due consideration, and not before the age of “ten years”, by which time the mental faculties will have received sufficient development. From the lives of the venerable monks it is evident that the majority of them entered the monastery at the age of twenty. Old age was regarded by the holy Fathers as incapable of monastic life. Old age is incapable of this life—fixed in its habits, in its manner of thinking, with its faculties dulled![1] The struggle of youth is not suited to it! Venerable Anthony the Great initially refused to receive the sixty-year-old Paul the Simple into monasticism, telling him that he was incapable of the monastic life precisely on account of old age. By contrast, many Fathers entered the monastery in childhood and attained high spiritual progress by reason of the wholeness of their will, their blamelessness, their direct striving toward the good, and their receptivity—qualities so characteristic of childhood.

Layman. Firmness of will, a resolve that has decisively turned toward its goal—these are necessary for spiritual progress. It is precisely they that must be discerned in good time and determined in one who desires to receive monasticism.

Monk. A just observation! In the admission to a monastery, caution has been observed from ancient times—and is observed today even more so: the manifold formalities attending the admission of persons not from the clerical estate make the process of admission very lengthy and often very difficult. But firmness of will, or true resolve, sometimes manifests itself only after a very considerable time; very often it presents one appearance at first trial, and quite another afterwards. Some, upon entering a monastery, at first display reverence and self-renunciation, but later grow weak.[2] On the contrary, others at first display lightness of mind, but afterwards begin to assimilate monastic life more and more, and finally become strict and zealous monks. Saint Isaac the Syrian says: “How often it happens that a man is unprofitable, ceaselessly wounded and cast down for lack of sufficient experiential knowledge in the monastic life, remaining constantly in spiritual lassitude—and then suddenly snatches the banner from the hands of the host of the sons of the giants; his name is exalted and praised far more than the names of those known for their victories; he receives a crown and precious gifts in abundance before all his friends.[3] For this reason let no one permit himself despair; only let us not neglect prayer, and let us not be too lazy to ask the Lord’s intercession.” Often the greatest sinners were transformed into the greatest righteous ones. The monastery is a place of repentance. It is impossible to refuse repentance to one who desires and seeks it—even if he cannot govern himself like one possessed—since repentance has been given by God, and the refuge and harbor of repentance—the “monastery”—has not been taken away by God.[4] Saint John of the Ladder, who lived in the sixth century after the birth of Christ, enumerating the compelling reasons for entering the life of stillness, points far more often to the desire to escape from sin and to remove one’s weakness from temptations that it cannot withstand, than to the desire for Christian perfection—a desire that guided only a few. Today, when temptations and falls have multiplied in the world, when human strength has been exhausted by the power of temptations that have spread and engulfed the world, when the feeling of awareness of sinfulness and the desire to be freed from it have not yet been extinguished in all people—the majority of those who enter monasteries enter to lay down the burden of sin, to assist their weakness, to bridle themselves.[5] Saint John of the Ladder already called the monastery a hospital; all the more have monasteries acquired this character today. Shall we refuse help to humanity—humanity suffering from moral ailments? If we labor diligently to establish shelters for bodily infirmity, decrepitude, and sickness, why should there be no shelters for the sickness, infirmity, and debility of the soul? Those who judge monasteries on the basis of their erroneous views demand that flourishing health reign in these hospitals, that there be not a trace of sickness there. Seek here successful healing! Then your demand will be more just. The realization of this idea I happened to witness from experience. In the Kaluga diocese, near the town of Kozelsk, lies the cenobitic Optina Pustyn. In 1829, the hieroschemamonk Leonid, well known for his knowledge of the active monastic life, came to reside there; subsequently the hieroschemamonk Macarius, his closest disciple, joined him. Both elders were nourished by reading the patristic writings on monastic life, were themselves guided by these writings, and guided by them those who came to them for edifying counsel. This manner of life and conduct they had received from their own teachers; it began with the earliest monks, reached our time by succession, and constitutes the precious inheritance and patrimony of monks worthy of their name and calling. The brotherhood of Optina Pustyn immediately began to increase considerably in numbers and to improve in the moral regard. To the zealous brethren the elders explained the correct and accessible method of ascetic struggle; the wavering they supported and encouraged; the weak they strengthened; those who had fallen into sins and sinful habits they led to repentance and healed. To the humble cells of the schemamonks there began to flock in great numbers secular persons of all estates, who laid bare before them the suffering of their souls and sought healing, consolation, strengthening, and restoration. Thousands are indebted to them for their pious direction and peace of heart. With compassion they looked upon suffering humanity; they lightened for it the weight of sin, explaining the significance of the Redeemer, and from the significance of the Redeemer explaining the necessity for the Christian of abandoning a sinful life; they were indulgent toward human weakness, and at the same time healed that weakness powerfully! Such is the spirit of the Orthodox Church; such were all her “saints” in every age.[6] To Venerable Sisoes the Great—a monk of the fourth century—a certain brother confessed his unceasing falls. The Venerable One encouraged him, advised him to heal each fall with repentance, and to persevere in the struggle. Is the counsel sound? How, in the opinion of modern theorists, ought one to have acted here? Probably somehow differently. I visited Optina Pustyn for the first time in 1828, and for the last time in 1856. At that time it was in its most flourishing state; its brotherhood extended to two hundred persons. The hieroschemamonk Leonid was commemorated among the blessedly departed, and the seventy-year-old hieroschemamonk Macarius was occupied with the spiritual guidance of the brotherhood and the edification of the monastery’s numerous visitors. Despite the spiritual progress and the large number of the brotherhood, few—very few—of them revealed the capacity to become healers and guides of others, for which both an innate capacity and a spirit worked out by true monastic struggle are needed. Such is the general character of hospitals: there are few physicians, and many patients. At the present time the number of physicians is steadily decreasing, while the number of patients is steadily increasing. Again the cause of this is the world. Look at whom the world sends off to monasteries. These are not chosen Christians, as was the case at the beginning of Christianity and monasticism; these are not members belonging to the educated classes of the world. At the present time monasteries are filled almost exclusively by members of the lower estates—and what kind of members? Mostly those incapable of serving in the estate from which they are released into the monastery. Very many from the lower estates enter with habits of the vices proper to their estate, especially that weakness which even the equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir acknowledged as a national one. Infected by this weakness, they go to the monastery with the intention of restraining themselves from it, if only by compulsion; but habit asserts itself, and from time to time displays its power over those who have incautiously and unreasoningly submitted to it. Many fine and very devout people are subject to this weakness: they bitterly lament their falls and strive to atone for them with repentance. Weeping in the privacy of the cell and repentance in the privacy of the heart are not visible to people, as falls are. By these falls the educated estate is scandalized—that estate which is particularly prone to take scandal at monasteries; it has its own weaknesses, which it easily excuses, and would excuse if it found them in a monastery; but, entering the monastic enclosure with its own customs and its own point of view, encountering there the weakness of simple people, it is scandalized by them, without reckoning that it has entered a habitation of simple people. It sees monks as beings completely separate from laymen; the former, all without exception, must be models of perfection; while the latter are permitted and excused everything. Simple people view their own class weakness differently. In a certain monastery remote from the world, there lived at the beginning of the present century an elder who occupied himself with the edification of his neighbors. After his death there remained a written instruction addressed to those in the grip of the passion for drunkenness. The elder was of simple origin, and with full compassion for his suffering brethren he says that it is impossible for one who has lost power over himself to be healed, or even to abstain from a passion, amidst temptations—and for this reason he proposes to the sick the offer of a place in his monastery, as one fully remote from temptations. The counsel is both very kind and very sound. Deserts remote from worldly settlements can serve as true havens and infirmaries for those who are sick with spiritual ailments, and can at the same time conceal the objects of temptation from those who are diseased by a spiritually impoverished susceptibility to scandal.

Layman. From what you have said there follows as a direct consequence, however, that the present condition of monasteries—of many of them, at least—does not correspond to their purpose, and that measures of correction are both useful and necessary.

Monk. Yes! In our time, when secular learning is advancing rapidly, when civil life has separated from the life of the Church, when a multitude of teachings hostile to the Church are flooding in upon us from the West, when religion and morality are noticeably weakening in all estates—bringing monasteries into proper order is necessary for two reasons: first, for the preservation of monasticism itself, which is essentially necessary and beneficial to the Church, and second, for the protection of the people from scandal. The people, scandalized both rightly and wrongly, themselves grow increasingly weak in faith. But here what is needed is not a superficial knowledge of monasticism, but a precise one—a thorough, experiential knowledge of the ordinances concerning monasticism of the holy Church and the holy Fathers, and a heartfelt awareness of the importance and holiness of these ordinances. Measures for the correction of monasticism adopted on the basis of a superficial understanding of it, drawn from the foul treasuries of carnal wisdom, have always been extremely harmful to it. By resorting to such measures, by trampling heedlessly and rashly upon the most holy ordinances inspired and imparted by the Holy Spirit, the proud and darkened world may ultimately ruin monasticism, and in it, Christianity itself.

Layman. Point out, by way of example, the ordinances concerning monasticism of some holy Father, by which one might form a conception of the measures of correction needed by our monasteries and which could be applied to them with genuine benefit.

Monk. I suggest you turn your attention to the “Tradition” or “Rule of Venerable Nil Sorsky”, our compatriot who lived in the fifteenth century, and who is perhaps the last holy writer on the monastic life. This work, despite its brevity, possesses most satisfactory fullness; it is a deep and spiritual work. It was published in 1852 by the direction of the holy Synod in thousands of copies and distributed to monasteries. Venerable Nil entered monasticism and remained in it with the purpose of studying and developing in himself, according to the tradition of the ancient holy Fathers, the spiritual monastic struggle. In order to become more closely acquainted with the tradition of the Fathers, he undertook a journey to the East, spending considerable time on Mount Athos in conversation with disciples of the holy Gregories of Sinai and Palamas, and was also in contact with monks who lived in the vicinity of Constantinople. Returning to Russia, he settled in a remote forest on the river Sora, and became the founder of the “sketic life” in our homeland. The aforementioned “Rule”, or “Tradition”, was written by him for his skete. The work of Venerable Nil is especially precious to us because it is most applicable to contemporary monasticism, which, owing to the scarcity of Spirit-bearing guides, cannot follow that unconditional obedience that the ancient monks followed. Venerable Nil, instead of unconditional obedience to a Spirit-bearing guide, proposes to the monk of more recent times Holy Scripture and the writings of the holy Fathers as his guide, together with counsel from more advanced brethren, with careful and judicious verification of this counsel against Scripture. Having studied the true monastic struggle, Venerable Nil raised his humble voice against the deviations from the direct monastic course into which the Russian monasticism of his day had fallen through its simplicity and ignorance. No attention was paid to this voice. The deviation became custom, and, having become universal, acquired irresistible force; it served as the occasion for the upheaval of monasteries in the eighteenth century. The deviation consisted in the striving to acquire property on a large scale.

Layman. What especially useful things can be drawn from the work of Venerable Nil for contemporary monasticism?

Monk. First of all, his example is extraordinarily edifying. He studied Holy Scripture and the patristic writings on monastic life, studying them not only in the letter, but through “his own experiences”. Not content with this, he wished to see the life of the holy monks of Athos and Byzantium, and to supplement his knowledge and practice from their instruction and manner of life. Having attained a particular spiritual progress, he did not consider himself to have attained it and did not seek to be a guide to others. He was asked not to refuse his edifying word; after persistent requests, yielding to the desire of the brethren, he accepted the role of guide and superior as an obedience laid upon him.—From this conduct of Venerable Nil it is evident that for the establishing, maintaining, and correcting of monasteries it is essential that worthy men stand and remain at their head—men who have studied Holy Scripture and the patristic writings, who have formed themselves according to them, who have acquired living and active knowledge, who have drawn to themselves divine grace. One must pray God that such persons be sent, because the holy monastic rules can be properly fulfilled only by men who understand them essentially and from their own experience. Venerable Cassian relates that in the Egyptian monasteries, the first in the world, leadership was entrusted only to those monks who had themselves been in obedience and had experientially studied the traditions of the Fathers.[7]

[1] Such were Sabbas the Sanctified (December 5), Symeon of the Wondrous Mountain (May 24), and many others.

[2] So it happened with the Venerable Silvanus. The Menaion Reader, the Life of the Venerable Pachomius the Great, May 15.

[3] Homily 47.

[4] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 27, ch. 29.

[5] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 1, ch. 18 and 19.

[6] The Alphabetical Patericon.

[7] Book 11, ch. 3.

On Monasticism (Part 4)

The first place among the rules set forth by Venerable Nil must be given to the above-mentioned guidance by Holy Scripture and the patristic writings that he proposes. Saint John of the Ladder defines a monk thus: “A monk is one who in every time, every place, and every deed holds solely to the ordinances of God and to the Word of God.” It was by this rule that Venerable Nil was guided, and he transmitted it to his disciples.[1] “We have resolved”, says the servant of God, “if such be the will of God, to receive those who come to us, on condition that they observe the traditions of the holy Fathers and keep the commandments of God, and bring no justifications, no excuses for their sins, saying: it is impossible today to live according to Scripture and to follow the holy Fathers. No! though we are weak, yet we must, to the best of our ability, be like and follow those ever-memorable and blessed Fathers, even if we cannot attain an equal degree with them.” Whoever knows Russian monasticism thoroughly in its present state will, from the fullness of conviction, testify that only those monasteries in which holy reading is developed flourish in the moral and spiritual regard; that only those monks who are reared and nourished on holy reading worthily bear the name of monks.[2] Venerable Nil never gave instruction or counsel directly from himself, but proposed to those who questioned him either the teaching of Scripture or the teaching of the Fathers. When, as he says in one of his letters, he could not recall a consecrated opinion on some subject, he would defer his reply or its fulfillment until he found instruction in Scripture.[2] This method is evident in the works of the hieromartyr Peter of Damascus, of Venerable Gregory of Sinai, of Saints Xanthopouloi, and of other Fathers, especially the later ones. It was followed by the hieroschemamonks of Optina Pustyn whom I mentioned—Leonid and Macarius. Their memory was richly adorned with holy thoughts. They never gave counsel from themselves; they always offered in counsel a saying either of Scripture or of the Fathers. This gave their counsel its power: those who might have objected to a human word listened with reverence to the Word of God and found it right to subordinate their reasoning to it. Such a manner of acting keeps the one giving counsel in the greatest humility, as is evident from Venerable Nil’s Tradition: the one giving counsel is giving not his own, but God’s. The giver becomes a witness and instrument of holy Truth, and the question arises in his conscience: is he fulfilling his responsible ministry with due pleasing of God? “The Divine Scripture and the words of the holy Fathers”, writes Venerable Nil in his Tradition, “are numberless, like the sand of the sea; searching them without laziness, we share with those who come to us and need instruction. More correctly: it is not we who share—we are unworthy of that—but the blessed holy Fathers from the Divine Scriptures.” All the holy ascetic writers of the later centuries of Christianity affirm that, amid the general scarcity of God-inspired guides, the study of Holy Scripture—especially the New Testament—and the patristic writings, and their careful and unwavering use as a guide in one’s manner of life and in the instruction of one’s neighbors, is the only path to spiritual progress given by God to later monasticism. Venerable Nil declares that he refuses to dwell together with those brethren who do not wish to conduct their life according to this rule—so important is it, so essential![2]

The second moral rule proposed by Venerable Nil consists in having the brethren daily confess to the “elder”—the “elder” in monasteries is the name for a monk who has advanced in the spiritual life and to whom the edification of the brethren is entrusted—confessing their sins, however small, even sinful thoughts and sensations, and presenting their uncertainties to him for consideration.[2] This practice is filled with extraordinary benefit to the soul: no other struggle mortifies the passions with such ease and power as this one. The passions withdraw from one who confesses them without sparing himself. Bodily desire withers from confession more than from fasting and vigil. Monks who in their novitiate acquired the habit of daily confession strive even in their mature years to have recourse to this healing as frequently as possible, having learned from experience what freedom it gives the soul. Through this practice, in thorough and precise detail, they come to know in themselves the fall of humanity. By healing themselves through confession of their own sins, they acquire the knowledge and skill to help their neighbors in their spiritual disturbances. The above-mentioned hieroschemamonks of Optina Pustyn had many disciples under their guidance who, after the evening rule, daily opened their conscience to them. These disciples were distinguished from those who lived self-willfully by a sharp line of difference. The thought of the approaching confession was, as it were, a constant guardian of their conduct; it gradually accustomed them to vigilance over themselves; and confession itself made them collected within themselves, constantly plunged in Scripture—systematic monks, one might say. Daily confession, or daily disclosure and examination of conscience, is the most ancient monastic tradition and practice. It was universal in former monasticism, as is seen with full clarity from the works of Venerable Cassian, of John of the Ladder, of Barsanuphius the Great, of Abba Isaiah, of Abba Dorotheus—in a word, from all the patristic writings on monasticism. It was, in all probability, instituted by the Apostles themselves (Jas. 5:16). Monks reared according to the two moral rules set forth here may be compared to people who enjoy sight and life, while monks deprived of this upbringing are like the blind and the dead. These two rules, if introduced into any monastery whatsoever, can significantly change for the better both the moral and spiritual direction of the brotherhood—as experience has proven—without changing anything in the monastery’s outward appearance. For the realization of the second rule, a monk advanced in the spiritual life and reared according to this rule is essential. Here experiential knowledge is an absolute necessity.[3] Venerable Cassian the Roman says: “It is beneficial to disclose one’s thoughts to the Fathers, but not to just any of them—to spiritually experienced elders who possess discernment, elders not in bodily age and gray hair. Many, led away by the outward appearance of old age and having disclosed their thoughts, have received harm instead of healing, owing to the inexperience of those who heard them.”

Layman. I see that you have pointed to the most fundamental principles of the moral good order of monasteries. Please do not refuse to mention also other rules and traditions of the holy Fathers that could contribute to giving monasteries the position proper to them.

Monk. The formation of a human being depends on external impressions; it is accomplished through them. It cannot be otherwise: we are made this way. The holy Fathers, penetrating this mystery with their pure minds, surrounded the monk in their holy tradition with such impressions as, in their combined force and action, all lead him toward his goal, and removed from him all impressions that distract from the goal, even if their outward appearance were attractive. To explain this, let us again turn to the precious little book of Venerable Nil Sorsky. Venerable Nil says that the church of God in a monastery should be built very simply. He appeals in this to Venerable Pachomius the Great, who did not wish the church in his community to have beauty in the architectural sense. The Great One said that he was removing architectural refinement from the monastic dwelling for the purpose that the minds of the monks might not slip on account of human praises of the church building and become the prey of the devil, whose cunning is manifold. To this Venerable Nil adds: “If the Great Saint spoke and acted thus, all the more ought we to be on guard—for we are weak and passionate, and in mind easily prone to slipping.”[2]

Venerable Nil bequeaths concerning the cells and the rest of the monastic buildings that they should be of the simplest kind, inexpensive, without ornament.[2] The great servant of God, John the Prophet, a recluse who lived in silence at the Gaza community, before his death gave most edifying instructions to the newly appointed abbot of the community—his spiritual son. Among other things, he charged the abbot to build cells without providing them with excessive comfort, but only as need required, and with some degree of restriction—as though with departure in view—since the buildings of this age, in comparison with eternity, are no more than tents.[4]

Venerable Nil lays down as law, on the basis of the teaching and conduct of the ancient holy Fathers, that the church vestments and sacred vessels in a monastery should be as simple as possible, inexpensive, and few in number. Likewise he commands that all the monastic property should be simple, without excess, satisfying only need, not exciting vainglory in the monks, not attracting their attachment and special solicitude—since the spiritual powers of monks must be directed entirely toward God.[2]

Venerable Nil forbade entry of the female sex to his skete. In ancient times, and to this day on Mount Athos, entry of the female sex to all men’s monasteries is forbidden. An ordinance essentially necessary for those who desire to overcome the property of their nature! For them complete removal from its influence upon them is indispensable; remaining under that influence, they cannot help but be unsettled. Given the present decline of morality, the benefit and necessity of this measure becomes evident.[2]

In Russia the removal of wine from monasteries is essentially necessary. This was understood by wise and devout abbots, of whom one may point to the recently departed righteous man Feofan, who was abbot and restorer of the Kirillov-Novoezersky monastery. He strove with particular zeal to eliminate wine-drinking in the monastery entrusted to him—but in vain. And all the efforts of anyone whatsoever will remain in vain unless the ordinances of the holy Fathers concerning monasteries are restored in their full completeness.

Venerable Nil, having surveyed the monastic life in its cradle—the East—and having returned to Russia, chose a deep wilderness as his dwelling. He was content with the place he had chosen. He states the reason for his contentment in one of his letters. “By God’s grace”, he says, “I have found a place agreeable to my mind, because it is little frequented by worldly people.” Let us use here the syllogism of Venerable Nil: “If even for so holy a man the place he had chosen for his dwelling was pleasant for the reason that worldly people seldom visited it, then for us—weak in will and in mind, easily inclined to all sins—it is all the more fitting to choose for our dwelling places that are solitary, remote from worldly settlements, not attracting throngs of laymen, and with them throngs of temptations.”

Venerable Nil desired the monks of his monastery to be sustained by the labor of their own hands, and if there should be need of charitable assistance from laymen, to ask for it in a moderate amount.

These are the foundational rules given by the holy Fathers to monasticism and recognized by the holy Church. The other rules, touching on particulars, have the same character and the same aim.

Layman. Many monasteries have deviated from the rules you have enumerated, more or less. These deviations must at some point be corrected. The learning and spirit of our time demand—as you too know—that correction not be deferred. There is much talk about this in society. It would be desirable, amid the voices raised from ignorance, to raise a voice from true knowledge. Please do not refuse to say what, in your opinion, might contribute to bringing monasteries into the condition proper to them.

Monk. The answer to this question is very difficult, despite the fact that I have almost given it already. I am reminded now of the Saviour’s words about the field in which good seed was sown, but when this seed had sprung up, weeds appeared in great abundance. Not human beings, but Angels made the proposal to the Master of the field to pull up the weeds. The Lord said to them: “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest” (Mt. 13:29–30). Scarcely, even in relation to monasteries, is this not the best measure. In any case it deserves special attention. In the repairing of aged buildings one needs caution. Wise physicians refuse to treat long-standing ailments that have become native to the body’s constitution, precisely because any interference with these ailments is an interference with life itself. Monasticism and monasteries were established by the Holy Spirit through his chosen vessels, the venerable Fathers: the restoration of monasteries to their former spiritual beauty, if such restoration is part of God’s foreordained purposes, can follow only through the action of a special grace of God, through the mediation of equally worthy instruments. That is all I am able to say in general about the correction and improvement of monasteries. Yet from what I have said there follows a clear conclusion: that the correction and improvement of monasteries can in no way be the work of secular people. Secular people will act soundly and piously if they leave this matter to those to whom it has been entrusted by God’s providence, and from whom it will be required at the judgment of God.

I consider it a sacred duty to share with you the wise counsel I heard from experienced and worthy elders. They spoke to both laymen and monks who sincerely sought salvation: “In our time, when temptations have multiplied so greatly, we must attend to ourselves in particular, paying no attention to the life and deeds of our neighbors, and not judging those who have been led astray by temptations—because the corrupting action of scandal easily passes from those drawn away by it to the one who judges them.” The aforementioned elders counseled laymen to be guided in life by the Gospel and by those holy Fathers who wrote instructions for Christians in general, as Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk did. They counseled monks likewise to be guided by the Gospel and by the holy Fathers who composed works specifically for monks. The monk guided by the patristic writings will have the opportunity in any monastery whatsoever to acquire salvation; while he who lives by his own will and his own reason will lose it, even if he dwells in the deepest desert.

“Woe to the world for its temptations”, the Lord foretold; “because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold”. The coming of temptations enters into God’s purpose, which is inscrutable to us: “it is necessary that temptations come” (Mt. 18:7; 24:12), the Lord declared. After his redemption, the human person is given freedom to choose between good and evil, just as it was given to him after his creation. And as after his creation he chose, so too after his redemption the human person for the most part chooses evil. In the midst of paradise evil appeared clothed in the appearance of good, for ease of seduction: in the bosom of the holy Church it appears concealed and adorned, in the enticing variety of temptations, calling them innocent diversions and entertainments, calling the development of carnal life and the belittling of the Holy Spirit the advancement and development of humanity. “People” will be “corrupted in mind”, because of their approval of unrighteousness; “reprobate concerning the faith, having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:8, 5). For those who have received this power and voluntarily rejected it, its return is difficult (Heb. 10:26), because the very good will is lost—which inevitably follows upon the willful neglect of God’s gift. A “form of godliness” human cleverness can cobble together somehow; but the restoration of the “power of godliness” belongs to him who clothes human beings with “power from on high” (Lk. 24:49). An aged and decayed tree is often covered and adorned with a dense canopy of green leaves, still expressing through its massive trunk an appearance of strength and health; but its interior has already rotted: the first storm will break it.

[1] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 1, ch. 4.

[2] Tradition.

[3] The Philokalia, vol. 4. Concerning the holy Fathers of Scete and discernment.

[4] Reply 603.

Faith and Works

Faith and Works (Part 1)

“Repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mk 1:15), the Gospel exhorts us.

This exhortation is simple, true, and holy: one must repent, forsake a sinful life, so as to become capable of drawing near to the Gospel. To receive the Gospel, one must believe in it.

The holy Apostle Paul compressed the whole substance of his preaching into the preaching of repentance and faith. He proclaimed to all—both Jews and Greeks—“repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21).

The Gospel, as a Revelation of God who surpasses all comprehension, is inaccessible to the fallen human reason. The boundless mind of God is embraced by faith: for faith is capable of receiving everything—even what is incomprehensible to reason, and even what contradicts reason. Only that soul is capable of faith which, by a resolute act of will, has renounced sin and directed all its will and strength toward the Divine good.

“I have come as light into the world” (Jn 12:46), the Lord said of himself. This Light stood before the Jews, clothed in flesh; before us it stands, clothed in the Gospel.

This Light stands before us, “so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Whoever believes in him is not condemned; but whoever does not believe is already condemned” (Jn 3:16, 18).

Who, then, does not believe in the Son of God?—Not only he who openly and decisively rejects him, but also he who, calling himself a Christian, lives a sinful life and chases after fleshly pleasures; he whose god is his belly; he whose god is silver and gold; he whose god is earthly glory; he who has honored earthly wisdom—hostile to God—as though it were a god. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds should be exposed; but he who practices the truth comes to the Light, that his deeds may be revealed,… that they have been wrought in God” (Jn 3:20–21).

Without self-denial a person is incapable of faith; his fallen reason wars against faith, boldly demanding an account from God for his actions and proofs for the truths he reveals to man; the fallen heart desires to live the life of the fall, which faith strives to mortify; flesh and blood, notwithstanding the grave that stands before them at every hour, likewise wish to live their own life—a life of corruption and sin.

It is for this reason that the Lord proclaimed to all who desire to be numbered among his followers and to follow him in living faith: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul will lose it; but whoever loses his soul for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:24–25).

The fall has so thoroughly pervaded the whole being of man that the renunciation of this fall has become like the renunciation of life itself. Without this renunciation it is impossible to acquire faith—the pledge of eternal, blessed, spiritual life; and whoever desires to enliven the passions of heart or body, to take pleasure in them, desires to enliven his fallen reason—such a one falls away from “faith”.

“Living faith”—is a journey into the spiritual world, into the world of God. It cannot abide in one who is nailed to the lower world, where flesh and sin hold dominion.

“Faith” is the door to God. There is no other door to him: “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6). This door opens gradually before the one who purifies himself by unceasing repentance; it stands wide open before the pure heart; it is shut to the lover of sin.

Only by “faith” can one draw near to Christ; only by “faith” can one follow Christ.

“Faith” is a natural property of the human soul, planted in it by the merciful God at its creation.[1] This natural property was chosen by God in the work of redemption as a branch among branches of a tree, for the grafting of grace upon it.

Justly did God choose “faith” as the instrument of mankind’s salvation: we perished by believing the flattering words of the enemy of God and of ourselves. Once upon a time there resounded in paradise the noise of words from the lips of a villain; our forebears hearkened to them, believed—and were expelled from paradise; now, in the vale of banishment, the voice of the Word of God—the Gospel—resounds for their descendants, and those who hearken and “believe the Gospel” enter paradise once more.

You who do not believe—turn from your unbelief. You who are a sinner—turn from your sinful life. You who are a sage—turn from your false wisdom! Turn, all of you! Become, by your guilelessness and simplicity, like children, and believe the Gospel with a child’s simplicity.

A dead faith—the acknowledgment of Christ by mere involuntary intellectual conviction—may even be the possession of demons! Such faith will serve the believer only to his greater condemnation at the judgment of Christ. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” cried the unclean spirit to the Lord; “have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God” (Mk 1:24). “Faith” in the Gospel must be “living”; one must “believe” with mind and heart, “confess the faith” with the lips, and “express and prove it” by one’s life. “Show me your faith by your works” (Jas 2:18), says the Apostle to one who boasts of nothing more than a dead faith, a bare knowledge of the existence of God.

“Faith—said the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian—in the full breadth of that word, encompasses all the Divine commandments of Christ: it is sealed by the conviction that in the commandments there is not a single stroke without significance, that in them everything, down to the last jot, is life and the cause of eternal life”.[2]

“Believe” in the dogmas proclaimed by the Gospel, understand and confess them according to the precise teaching of the Orthodox Eastern Church, which alone preserves the Gospel’s teaching in all its purity and correctness.

“Believe” in the sacraments established in the Church by the Lord himself, preserved by the Eastern Church in all their fullness.

“Believe” in the holy, life-giving commandments of the Gospel, whose correct fulfillment is possible only within the bosom of the true Church, whose fulfillment constitutes what the holy Fathers call the active “faith of a Christian”.[3]

In dogmas is Theology given by God himself. In the rejection of dogmas lies the blasphemy called unbelief; in the distortion of dogmas lies the blasphemy called heresy.

When the mind—not yet purified by repentance, still wandering in the domain and darkness of the fall, still not enlightened and not guided by the Holy Spirit—dares on its own, by its own diseased powers, from the darkness of pride, to reason about God: then it inevitably falls into error. Such error is blasphemy. About God we can know only what he in his great mercy has revealed to us.

Through the sacraments of the Christian Church, the believer is brought into union with the Divinity—and in this consists essential salvation, the sealing of “faith” by the act of “faith”, and the reception from this moment of the pledge of eternal blessings.

The one who renounces the devil, sin, and the world for the sake of “faith” in Christ dies to the life of fallen nature in which he has lived until now in unbelief and sinfulness; plunging into the baptismal font, he is buried to that life; he emerges from the font already born to a new life—life in Christ.

By baptism the Christian is joined to Christ and clothed with Christ; by communion of the holy Mysteries of Christ he is united with Christ. In this way, through the sacraments, he becomes wholly Christ’s.

The one baptized into Christ no longer lives as a self-sufficient being, but as one who draws all the fullness of life from another being—from Christ. “You are not your own”,—the Apostle says to Christians—“for you were bought with a price. Your bodies are members of Christ. Therefore glorify God in your bodies, and in your souls, which are God’s” (1 Cor 6:19–20, 15).

The fulfillment of the life-giving commandments of the Gospel sustains the union of the Christian with Christ (Jn 15:10). In no other way can a member of Christ abide in unity with Christ than by acting out of his will, out of his mind. Both the will and the mind of Christ are portrayed in the commandments of the Gospel.

It is natural for every being to act, within and without itself, in accordance with its own nature. So too for the new man, clothed with Christ: it is natural for him to think, to feel, to act as Christ thinks, feels, and acts. To be guided by the thoughts and feelings of the old man—even if they appear outwardly good—is contrary to his nature.

The guide of the Christian must be the Holy Spirit, just as the guides of the old man are flesh, blood, and the evil spirit. “The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45). All the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the Christian must flow from the Holy Spirit, and not be his own, soulish thoughts in accordance with the nature of the old Adam. You will attain this when you order your entire life by the commandments of the Gospel, by its most holy words: “The words that I have spoken to you”,—says the Lord,—“are Spirit and are life” (Jn 6:63).

“Orthodox ‘faith’” in Christ, sealed by the sacrament of baptism, is sufficient for salvation on its own, without works, when a person has no time to perform them: for “faith” substitutes for the person with Christ, and the good deeds of man with the merits of Christ.

But with the continuation of earthly life, works are indispensably required. Only those works in a Christian are reckoned as good which serve to fulfill the commandments of the Gospel—by which his “faith” is nourished and lives, by which his life in Christ is sustained: for the sole agent in a Christian must be Christ.

One who is baptized has no right to act according to the impulse of feelings of the heart, which depend on the influence of flesh and blood upon the heart—however good those sensations may appear: from him only those good works are received which the Spirit of God and the Word of God arouse the heart to perform, those which belong to the nature renewed by Christ.

“The righteous shall live by faith” (Heb 10:38). True faith in Christ is the sole means of salvation—but “faith” that is living, expressed by the whole being of man.

It is this “living faith” that the holy Apostle James requires of the Christian when he declares that faith without works is dead, and that faith is perfected by works (Jas 2:17, 22).

The contrariness of deeds to “faith” exposes other beliefs secretly and criminally nestling in the human heart.

Praising the deed of the patriarch Abraham, St. James praises the deed of his “faith”—the offering of his son in sacrifice at God’s command, a deed directly opposed to the qualities of fallen nature that are called good. The power to perform this deed was given by “faith”, and the deed expressed the power of “faith”: thus is explained the substance of Abraham’s action, as interpreted by the two Apostles James and Paul (Jas 2:21–23; Rom 4:1, 3).

Those are blind who attach great value to what they call the good works of fallen nature. These deeds have their own praise, their own worth, in time, among men, but not before God, before whom “all have turned aside, together they have become worthless” (Rom 3:12). Those who place their hope in the good works of fallen nature have not known Christ, have not understood the mystery of redemption; they are entangled in the nets of their own sophistry, raising against their half-dead and wavering faith the absurd objection: “Is God so unjust that he will not reward with eternal salvation the good works performed by idolaters and heretics?” These judges transfer the faultiness and weakness of their own judgment onto the judgment of God.

If good works done from the feelings of the heart could bring salvation, then the coming of Christ would have been superfluous, the redemption of mankind by the sufferings and crucifixion of the God-man unnecessary, and the commandments of the Gospel unneeded. It is plain that those who recognize salvation as possible through the works of fallen nature alone are annulling the significance of Christ and rejecting Christ.

Lawlessly did the Jews arm themselves against faith, demanding that believers observe the ceremonial ordinances of the old law; lawlessly do the sons of the world that is hostile to God—strangers to the mystical and at the same time essential knowledge of Christ—demand from those who believe in Christ good works according to the reason and feelings of fallen nature.

The one who believes in Christ holds the sword of Christ drawn against the feelings of the heart, and does violence to his own heart, cutting down with the sword of obedience to Christ not only openly vicious impulses, but also those impulses which outwardly seem good yet in actual fact contradict the commandments of the Gospel. And such is all the activity of man directed according to the impulses of fallen nature.

The ostensibly good works done from the impulse of fallen nature nurture the person’s “I” in him, destroy faith in Christ, and are hostile to God; the works of “faith” mortify self-will in man, nurture “faith” in him, and magnify Christ in him.

“If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord”,—the Apostle teaches,—“and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation” (Rom 10:9–10).

True living faith, as soon as a person confesses it with his lips, brings him salvation. It brought salvation to the thief on the cross; it brought salvation, through repentance, to many sinners in the last, pre-mortem moments of their lives.

So important and so necessary for salvation is the “confession of the lips” of heartfelt faith and the conviction of the soul, that the holy martyrs of all the centuries of Christianity—beginning with the very Apostles of Christ—preferred to endure terrible and prolonged sufferings and to shed their blood like water rather than pronounce a renunciation of Christ, even merely in pretense, with the lips alone, without the heart’s participation.

[1] The Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, Homily on Faith, The Philokalia, vol. 1.

[2] Homily III, p. 42. Optina Monastery edition, 1852.

[3] Saints Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopouloi, ch. 16, The Philokalia, vol. 2.

Faith and Works (Part 2)

God requires of man for his salvation one thing alone: “living, true faith”. As the pledge of salvation and eternal blessedness, it must be more precious to the Christian than his earthly life.

Martyrdom was the fruit of true knowledge of God, granted by faith.

Martyrdom was the work of “faith”. This work was and is blasphemed by those who place high value on the works of fallen human nature: in their blindness they call this magnanimous and most holy exploit—bestowed upon humanity by God—a consequence of madness.

So important is every thought of the God-given dogmas, that the holy confessors, like the martyrs, sealed the Orthodox confession of dogmas with grievous suffering and torrents of blood.

Given the importance of faith in the work of salvation, sins against it also carry a particular weight on the scales of God’s justice: they are all mortal sins—that is, with them the death of the soul is joined, and eternal perdition and eternal torment in the depths of hell follow from them.

A mortal sin is “unbelief”: it rejects the sole means of salvation—faith in Christ.

A mortal sin is “the renunciation of Christ”: it deprives the one who renounces of the living faith in Christ that is manifested and maintained by the confession of the lips.

A mortal sin is “heresy”: it contains blasphemy within itself, and makes the one infected by it a stranger to true faith in Christ.

A mortal sin is “despair”: it is the rejection of active, living faith in Christ.

The healing from all these mortal sins: holy, true, living “faith” in Christ.

Of essential importance in matters of faith is the confession of the lips: the great lawgiver of Israel, Moses the God-seer, had only just uttered—in an act of faith—a word carrying some trace of doubt, and straightway he was deprived of entrance into the promised land (Num 20:10–12).

A disciple of a certain Egyptian desert-dweller, in conversation with a Jew, had barely uttered—out of simplicity—an ambiguous word concerning the Christian faith, and the grace of baptism immediately departed from him.[1]

Church history relates that in the early days of Christianity, in the times of persecution, certain pagans pronounced the oral confession of Christ mockingly, as a pretense and a jest—and suddenly the grace of God overshadowed them: they were instantly transformed from hardened pagans into fervent Christians, and sealed with blood that confession which had at first been uttered as mockery.[2]

Suffering and death for the commandments of the Gospel is likewise a work of living faith in Christ, likewise martyrdom.[3] And this martyrdom belongs preeminently to “the holy monks”.

Animated by living faith, the holy monks, like Abraham, abandoned their homeland and their parents’ house; like Moses, they preferred to earthly pleasures suffering for Christ; like Elijah, half-naked, they chose deserts and caves as their dwelling-place; with the eyes of faith they gazed upon the heavenly reward.

In their deserts, far from men, far from distractions and perishable pursuits, they entered into the ascetic struggle against sin, expelled it from their actions, thoughts, and feelings—and the Holy Spirit descended into their pure souls and filled them with gifts of grace. Living faith in Christ and in the Gospel gave the Venerable Fathers the strength to endure the struggle against sin and made them vessels of the Holy Spirit.

“Faith” is the mother of patience, the mother of courage, the power of prayer, the guide to humility, the bestower of hope, and the ladder to the throne of love. “Faith” in Christ—manifested and confessed visibly and invisibly by the fulfillment of Christ’s commandments—preserves the pledge of salvation unharmed, and for those who have left the world so as to devote themselves wholly to evangelical activity it bestows Christian perfection.

In those who have attained Christian perfection, faith—strengthened and intensified—gazes by the action of the Holy Spirit with particular clarity upon the promises of God, as though beholding and as though touching the eternal goods. And it becomes, according to the teaching of the Apostle, in the fullest sense “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).

Those enriched with living faith in Christ undergo a change in their relation to the visible world and to earthly life: the law and sentence of decay, of change and ending in the perishable things of the visible world becomes evident to their pure gaze; earthly advantages, as fleeting, are worthless before these pure eyes.

Those enriched with living faith in Christ fly as though on wings through all sorrows, through all the most trying circumstances. Intoxicated with faith in the all-powerful God, they see no labor in toil, feel no pain in sickness. They acknowledge God as the sole agent in the universe; they have made him “their own” by living faith in him.

The one who believes in Christ, even if he should die a death of sin, will live again through repentance (Jn 11:25). And we see many among the saints who fell from the height of holiness into the abyss of grave sins, yet afterwards—with the aid of faith and of the repentance it inspires—were freed from the fetid and dark abyss and ascended once more to the height of purity and holiness.

Despair is the revealer of unbelief and self-reliance that have preceded it in the heart: one who believes in himself and trusts in himself will not rise from sin through repentance; he who believes in Christ—the all-powerful Redeemer and Physician—will rise.

“Faith comes from hearing” (Rom 10:17): hear the Gospel as it speaks to you, and the holy Fathers who expound the Gospel; hear them with attentiveness, and little by little “living faith” will take up its dwelling in you—which will require of you the fulfillment of the commandments of the Gospel, and for this fulfillment will reward you with the hope of certain salvation. It will make you on earth a follower of Christ, and a co-heir with him in heaven. Amen.

[1] Life of the Venerable Paisius the Great. The Menaion Reader, June 19.

[2] Passion of the holy martyr Philemon. The Menaion Reader, December 14.

[3] The Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, ch. 1. The Philokalia, vol. 1.

On the Gospel Commandments

On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

The Saviour of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, approaching the setting forth of his most holy commandments, said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them” (Mt 5:17).

In what manner did the Lord fulfill the Law and the Prophets? By sealing the prefigurative sacrifices through the offering of himself as a sacrifice for humanity; by replacing the shadows and enigmas of the Old Testament with the grace and truth of the New Testament; by satisfying prophetic predictions through their fulfillment; by supplementing the moral law with precepts so exalted that this law, remaining unchanged, was at the same time transformed by reason of the loftiness of the new precepts. Thus does a child change upon reaching manhood, while remaining the same person.

The relation of the Old Testament to man may be likened to a spiritual last will and testament for an inheritance, to which is usually appended a detailed description of the estate with all necessary measurements and calculations, with plans of the lands and drawings of the buildings; the relation of the New Testament may be likened to entering into possession of the inheritance. In the former, everything is set forth and described on paper; in the latter, everything is granted in substance and in deed.

How do the commandments of the Gospel differ from the commandments of the Mosaic Decalogue? The latter did not permit fallen man to sink into a state utterly contrary to nature, but neither could they raise him to that state of blamelessness in which man was created. The commandments of the Decalogue preserved in man the capacity to receive the commandments of the Gospel (Jn 3:21). The commandments of the Gospel raise man to a blamelessness surpassing that in which we were created: they build the Christian as a temple of God (Jn 14:23); having made him a temple of God, they sustain him in this state of grace and the supernatural (Jn 15:10).

The holy Apostles Peter and Paul were exact observers of the Mosaic Law out of a special love for God (Acts 10:14 and ff., Phil 3:5–6). The purity of their orientation and the blamelessness of their life made them capable of believing in the Redeemer and of being his Apostles. Openly notorious sinners were often found capable of faith—those who had descended through their sins to a likeness with beasts and animals, yet who acknowledged their sins and resolved to bring repentance for them. Least capable of faith proved to be those sinners who by self-conceit and pride had come to resemble the demons, and who, like the demons, rejected acknowledgment of sinfulness and repentance (Mt 21:31–32).

The Lord called all his teaching, his whole Word and all his words, “commandments” (Jn 14:21, 23). “The words”,—he said,—“that I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life” (Jn 6:63). They transform the carnal man into a spiritual one, raise the dead to life, make the descendant of the old Adam a descendant of the New Adam, and the son of man by nature a son of God by grace.

The commandment of the New Testament that encompasses all other particular commandments is the Gospel. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mk 1:15).

The Lord called his particular commandments small by reason of the simplicity and brevity of their expression, on account of which they are accessible to every person. Having called them small, the Lord nonetheless proclaimed that the violator of even one such commandment “will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 5:19)—that is, will be excluded from that Kingdom.[1]

Let us fear the Lord’s decree! Let us examine the Gospel; let us note in it all the commandments of our Lord, let us fix them in our memory for careful and unfailing fulfillment; let us believe in the Gospel with a living faith.

The first commandment given by the incarnate Lord to humanity is the commandment of repentance. The holy Fathers affirm that repentance must be both the beginning of a devout life and its very soul throughout all its duration.[2] Without repentance it is impossible either to acknowledge the Redeemer or to abide in the confession of the Redeemer. Repentance is the acknowledgment of one’s own fall, which has rendered human nature worthless and defiled, and therefore constantly in need of a Redeemer. The fallen man who confesses the Redeemer is replaced by the Redeemer—all-perfect and all-holy.

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:16), said the Lord to his disciples, while at the same time commanding them to perform all virtues in secret, and foretelling that they would be hated and reviled by men (Mt 6:1–19, Lk 21:17). How then are we to fulfill this commandment of the Lord while performing our good works in secret?—We will gain the possibility of fulfilling it precisely when we renounce the seeking of our own glory, when we renounce the ostensibly good actions that proceed from our fallen nature, from ourselves, and begin to act for the glory of God, out of the Gospel.[1] “As each one has received a gift”,—says the holy Apostle Peter,—“minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God; if anyone ministers, let him do so with the strength that God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion forever and ever” (1 Pet 4:10–11). Those who, forgetting their own glory, seek only that God may be glorified and known by men, are themselves glorified by God. “Those who honor me I will honor” (1 Sam 2:30); “if anyone serves me, my Father will honor him” (Jn 12:26), said the Lord. He who performs his good works in secret, exclusively with the aim of pleasing God, will be glorified for the edification of his neighbors by the ordering of God’s providence over him.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 5:20). The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was satisfied by the letter-study of the Law of God, which was not followed by a life of studying it, but rather by a life contrary to the Law of God. Those who remain with nothing more than the letter-study of the Law of God fall into pride and self-conceit on account of such superficial knowledge, as the Venerable Mark the Ascetic observes, and as happened with the scribes and Pharisees.[3] The commandments of God—which are essentially understood through their fulfillment—remained hidden from the Pharisees.[4] The eyes of the soul, enlightened by the commandments (Ps 18:9) when they are fulfilled, did not find enlightenment in the Pharisees. They, through a manner of life contrary to the Law of God, acquired a perverted understanding of the Law of God; and because of the Law of God—which was meant to draw them near and unite them to God—they distanced themselves from God and became enemies of God. Each commandment of God is a sacred mystery: it is disclosed by its fulfillment and in proportion to its fulfillment.

The Old Testament forbade the coarse consequences of anger; the Lord forbade the very action of the passion in the heart (Mt 5:21–22). This prohibition was pronounced by the Lord, and therefore it carries extraordinary power. At the mere recollection of the brief and simple words of the commandment, the passion falters. This effect is observed in all the commandments of the Gospel. The Lord directed his first words against anger as the chief sinful wound, the chief passion, opposed to the two chief virtues: love of neighbor and humility. The entire edifice of Christian activity rests upon these two virtues. The persistence of the passion of anger in a person removes from him all possibility of spiritual advancement.

The Lord commanded the most earnest keeping of peace with one’s neighbors (Mt 5:24), as the Apostle also said: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men” (Rom 12:18). Do not trouble yourself to sort out who is right and who is wrong, whether you or your neighbor: strive rather to accuse yourself and to preserve peace with your neighbor through humility.

The Mosaic Law forbade adultery; the Lord forbade carnal desire (Mt 5:27). How powerfully this prohibition acts upon fallen nature! Do you wish to refrain from impure glances, thoughts, and imaginings? When they begin to stir, recall at that moment the Lord’s words: “Everyone who looks upon a woman”—with bodily eyes, or in the mind upon her image presented in imagination—“with desire for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28).

Between the bodies of the two sexes there exists a natural attraction to one another. This attraction does not act uniformly. Toward some bodies of the opposite sex a person feels almost no attraction, toward others a weak one, toward certain ones a very strong one. The Lord commanded us to avoid drawing close to persons toward whom one feels a particular natural attraction—however worthy those persons may be of our friendship on account of their praiseworthy spiritual qualities, however necessary and beneficial they may be to us. Such is the meaning of the commandment concerning the plucking out of the right eye that causes offense, and the cutting off of the right hand that causes offense.[5]

The Lord forbade divorce, which was permitted by the Mosaic Law, with the exception of those cases where the marriage has already been unlawfully dissolved by the adultery of one of the parties (Mt 5:31–32).

The dissolution of marriage was permitted to human nature, which had been degraded by the fall; upon the renewal of humanity by the God-man, the law given to nature in its state of blamelessness was restored (Mt 19:4–9).

The Lord restored virginity, leaving it to be preserved by those who voluntarily choose to do so (Mt 19:11–12).

The Lord forbade the taking of oaths. The Fathers rightly observe that no one deserves less credence than the person who frequently takes oaths; on the contrary, no one is trusted so much as the person who always speaks the truth, even though he uses no oath. Speak the truth, and you will not need to swear—which, being a violation of reverence toward God, belongs to the works of Satan.[6]

The Lord forbade revenge, which had been established by the Mosaic Law and by which evil was repaid with equal evil. The weapon given by the Lord against evil is humility. “But I say to you, do not resist evil: but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well” (Mt 5:39–40).

The Lord bequeathed love for enemies, and for the acquiring of this love commanded us to bless those who curse us, to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who cause us affliction and persecute us (Mt 5:44). Love for enemies grants the heart the fullness of love. In such a heart there is no place at all for evil, and it becomes like the all-good God in its goodness. The Apostle invites Christians to this exquisite moral condition when he says: “Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassionate hearts, kindness, humble-mindedness, meekness, and patience; bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another: even as Christ has forgiven you, so also you” (Col 3:12–13). Through perfect love for one’s neighbors, adoption by God is granted (Mt 5:45)—that is, the grace of the Holy Spirit is drawn into the heart, and the most holy love toward God is poured into it.

A heart infected with malice and incapable of the love toward enemies commanded by the Gospel must be healed by the means to which the Lord pointed: one must pray for enemies, by no means judge them, not subject them to evil speech, speak well of them, and benefit them as much as one is able. These actions extinguish hatred when it blazes up in the heart, keep it constantly bridled, and significantly weaken it. But the full uprooting of malice is accomplished by the action of Divine grace.

To those who give alms the Lord commanded that they give it in secret; to those who practice prayer, he commanded them to pray in the solitude of a closed room; to those who fast, he commanded them to conceal their fasting (Mt 6:18). These virtues must be performed solely with the aim of pleasing God, with the aim of benefiting one’s neighbor and one’s own soul. Our spiritual treasure must be concealed not only from the gaze of men, but even from our own “left hand” (Mt 6:3). Human praise steals our virtues when we perform them openly, when we do not strive to conceal them—and we are imperceptibly drawn toward people-pleasing, craftiness, and hypocrisy. The cause of this is our corruption by sin, the diseased state of our souls. As a sick body needs protection from winds, cold, various foods and drinks: so too the sick soul needs manifold protection. While guarding our virtues from corruption by human praise, we must guard them also from the evil dwelling within us—this left hand of ours—and not be carried away by vainglorious thoughts and imaginings, by vainglorious joy and vainglorious delight, which arise in us after the performance of a virtue and rob us of its fruit.

The Lord commanded us to forgive our neighbors their trespasses against us: “for if you forgive”,—he said,—“men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father” in Heaven “forgive you your trespasses” (Mt 6:14–15). From these words of the Lord there follows the conclusion of itself, that a trustworthy sign that our sins are forgiven us consists in this: that we sense in our own heart that we have truly forgiven our neighbors all their trespasses against us. Such a state is produced, and can only be produced, by Divine grace. It is a gift of God. Until we are vouchsafed this gift, let us, according to the Lord’s command, before each of our prayers examine our conscience, and—finding in it resentment—uproot it by the aforementioned means: that is, by prayer for enemies and by blessing them (Mk 11:25). Whenever we recall an enemy of ours—let us not permit ourselves any other thought about him except prayer and blessing.

To his closest disciples and followers the Lord commanded non-possessiveness. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth” (Mt 6:19). “Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourselves with purses that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in the heavens, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys: for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Lk 12:33–34). In order to acquire love for spiritual and heavenly things, one must renounce love for earthly things; in order to love one’s homeland, one must give up the diseased love for the land of exile.

The Lord gave a commandment concerning the guarding of the mind—a commandment about which people ordinarily take no care, do not even know of its existence, of its necessity and particular importance (Lk 11:34–36). But the Lord, calling the mind the eye of the soul, declared: “If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Mt 6:22–23). “Body” here means the manner of life. The manner of life derives its quality from the cast of mind that governs it. We acquire a correct cast of mind by reason of the soundness, wholeness, or simplicity of our mind, when it follows Truth wholly, admitting no admixture from the domain of falsehood. Otherwise: sound can only be called that mind which, by the help and action of the Holy Spirit, follows the teaching of Christ fully and without deviation. A greater or lesser deviation from the teaching of Christ reveals a greater or lesser sickness of the mind that has lost its simplicity and admitted complexity. A complete deviation of the mind from the teaching of Christ is its death. Then this light is reckoned as extinguished, ceases to be light, becomes darkness. The activity of a person wholly depends on the state in which his mind is found: activity proceeding from a sound mind is entirely pleasing to God; activity dependent on a mind that has admitted admixture is partly pleasing to God and partly contrary to God; activity of a mind darkened by the teaching of falsehood and rejecting the teaching of Christ is wholly worthless and abominable. “If therefore the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Mt 6:23).

The Lord forbade vain anxieties, lest they scatter us and weaken the essentially necessary care for the acquisition of the Heavenly Kingdom (Mt 6:24–34). Vain anxiety is nothing other than a sickness of the soul—an expression of its unbelief. For this reason the Lord also said: “O you of little faith! Do not be anxious for your soul, what you shall eat or what you shall drink; nor for your body, what you shall put on” (Mt 6:30, 25). Hate the idleness hateful to God; love the labor beloved of God; but do not enervate your soul with empty care, which is always useless and superfluous. So that you may be firm in soul and zealous in the work of God—in the work of your salvation—the Lord gave the promise to supply you with everything needful for your temporal life by his omnipotent right hand, that is, by his Divine providence (Mt 6:33).

The Lord forbade not only “condemning” one’s neighbors, but even “judging” them (Lk 6:37; Mt 7:1), when there is no necessity of rendering a correct judgment for one’s own benefit and the benefit of society. The latter kind of “judgment” is among the “weightier matters of the law” (Mt 23:23), by the Lord’s definition; without such judgment good cannot be separated from evil, and our activity cannot be correct and pleasing to God. This judgment is rarely encountered among men; but in the judging and condemning forbidden by the Lord they are engaged unceasingly. For what reason? Because of complete inattentiveness to themselves, because of forgetfulness of their own sinfulness, because of complete contempt for repentance, because of self-conceit and pride. The Lord came to earth to save sinners—and therefore acknowledgment of sinfulness is indispensably required of all men; whereas the “judging” and “condemning” of one’s neighbors is the rejection of this acknowledgment and the appropriation of a righteousness that does not belong to oneself—and it is from this that judging and condemning proceed: the name of hypocrite is the most fitting name for every person who judges and condemns his neighbors (Mt 7:5).

The Lord commanded constant—that is, frequent and unceasing—prayer. He did not say that we should ask once and then cease from asking, but commanded us to ask urgently and persistently, and joined to the command to ask the promise to hear and fulfill the request.[1] “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Mt 7:7–8). Let us ask with patience and perseverance, denying our own will and our own reason, entrusting to the most holy will of God both the time and the manner of fulfillment, and the fulfillment itself of what is asked. We shall not be put to shame: “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night, while he is patient toward them?” (Lk 18:7)—that is, while delaying the fulfillment of their petition. The day-and-night cry to the Lord of his chosen ones depicts their constant, unrelenting, unceasing, and earnest prayer.

By the outcome of prayer, with which God crowns it, one can and must conclude what its subjects are. The Evangelist Luke says that “God will bring about justice for his chosen ones”—that is, will liberate them from the captivity in which we are held by our passions and by demons. The Evangelist Matthew says that “the Heavenly Father will give good things to those who ask him” (Mt 7:11). Good things “that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man” (1 Cor 2:9). Again the Evangelist Luke says:[7] “the Heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Lk 11:13). The subjects of our prayer must be spiritual and eternal, not temporal and material. The foundational and primary prayer must consist of petitions for the forgiveness of sins.[8]

Raising us toward perfect goodness, driving out evil from us, the Lord—who has commanded us not to judge or condemn our neighbors, and to forgive our neighbors all their trespasses against us—legislates further: “Whatever you wish men to do to you, do so to them as well” (Mt 7:12). We love for our neighbors to be indulgent with our weaknesses and shortcomings, to bear with magnanimity the offenses and injuries we cause them, to do us every possible service and kindness: let us be such toward our neighbors. Then we shall attain the fullness of goodness, in accordance with which our prayer will acquire special power; the power of prayer always corresponds to the degree of our goodness. “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. For by the measure you use it will be measured to you” (Lk 6:37–38)—by the merciful and in his mercy righteous God.

“Enter through the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter through it” (Mt 7:13). The wide gate and the broad road are activity according to the will and reason of fallen nature. The narrow gate is activity according to the commandments of the Gospel. The Lord—who looks equally upon the present and the future, and who sees how few people will follow his holy will revealed to them in the commandments of the Gospel, and will prefer self-gratification to this will—said: “How narrow is the gate and how constricted is the road that leads to life, and those who find it are few!” (Mt 7:14). Encouraging and consoling his followers, he added: “Do not be afraid, little flock; for it has been your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom” (Lk 12:32).

The Lord commanded us to lead a watchful life, to be constantly vigilant and to observe ourselves: for on the one hand the hour of the Lord’s visitation is unknown to us, as is the hour of our death, of our summoning to the judgment of God—unknown too what temptation and what sorrow may unexpectedly arise and fall upon us; on the other hand it is unknown what sinful passion may arise in our fallen nature, and what snare and what net our unsleeping enemies of salvation—the demons—may lay for us. “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and you yourselves be like men who are waiting for their lord, when he returns from a wedding feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks” (Lk 12:35–36). “And what I say to you I say to all: watch” (Mk 13:37).

“Beware”,—the Lord enjoins,—“of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves; by their fruits you will know them” (Mt 7:15–16). False prophets are always crafty—and for this reason the Lord commands particular attentiveness and particular caution with regard to them. False prophets are known by their fruits:[1] by their manner of life, their deeds, the consequences flowing from their activity. Do not be swept away by the eloquence and smooth speech of hypocrites, by their quiet voice as though expressing meekness, humility, and love; do not be swept away by that sweet smile playing on their lips and face, by that affability and obligingness gleaming from their eyes; do not be seduced by the rumor that they cleverly spread abroad about themselves among men, by those commendations, praises, and resounding names with which the world exalts them—look rather at their fruits.

Concerning those who attend to the teaching of the Gospel and strive to fulfill the commandments of the Gospel, the Lord said that they “hold fast to the word having heard it with a good and noble heart, and bear fruit with patience” (Lk 8:15). He foretold to his disciples hatred from the world, persecution, afflictions, promised to watch over them tirelessly and to protect them, forbade fearfulness and faintheartedness, and commanded: “By your endurance you will gain your souls” (Lk 21:19). In constant hope in God, one must magnanimously endure sorrows from the passions arising from fallen nature, from one’s brethren the people, and from one’s enemies the demons: “the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mt 24:13).

You who are in grievous bondage to sin—under the dominion of a hardened, stony-hearted Pharaoh, under the ceaseless and tormenting blows of cruel taskmasters, amid the tower-building contrived by the pride of the world! The Saviour calls you to spiritual freedom. “Come to me”,—he says,—“all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt 11:28–30). The yoke and burden of Christ are “the commandments of the Gospel”. They require self-denial, and for this reason are called a yoke—but they liberate and enliven the soul, filling it with inexpressible peace and delight, and for this reason are called an easy and light yoke. Each one of them is fragrant with meekness and humility, and imparts these virtues to the one who fulfills the commandment. The habit of fulfilling the commandments of the Gospel makes meekness and humility the property of the soul. Then Divine grace introduces into the soul spiritual meekness and spiritual humility by the action of the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding.

All his particular commandments the Lord comprised in two chief ones: the commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for neighbor. These commandments the Lord expressed thus: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk 12:29–31). “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 22:40). A person becomes capable of the love of God through fulfilling the love of neighbor; and into the state of striving toward God with one’s whole being one is raised by prayer.

The fulfillment of “the commandments of the Gospel” is crowned by the union of man with God. When the disciple of Christ is healed of malice toward his neighbor, and by the action of mental and heartfelt prayer directs all the powers of soul and body toward God—then he is reckoned as one who loves God. “Whoever loves me”,—says the Saviour,—“will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn 14:21, 23).

[1] The Commentary (of Theophylact).

[2] The Venerable Mark the Ascetic, Homily 1 on Repentance.

[3] Homily 4.

[4] The Venerable Mark the Ascetic. On the Spiritual Law, ch. 32. The Philokalia, pt. 1.

[5] Mt. 5:29–30. The Commentary (of Theophylact).

[6] Mt. 5:33–37. The Commentary (of Theophylact).

[7] According to the explanation of the Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, Homily 10.

[8] Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 55.

On the Gospel Commandments (Part 2)

The condition for abiding in the love of God and in union with God consists in the keeping of the commandments of the Gospel. Their violation severs the condition: the violator is expelled from the embrace of love and from the face of God into outer darkness—into the domain of passions and demons. “If you keep my commandments”,—said the Lord,—“you will abide in my love. Abide in me, and I in you. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out” (Jn 15:10, 4, 6).

Brethren! Let us study the all-powerful and life-giving commandments of our great God, Creator and Redeemer: let us study them with a twofold study—in a book and in life. In the holy Gospel they are read, but they are understood in proportion to their fulfillment in deed. Let us wage war against our fallen nature when it resists and rages, unwilling to submit to the Gospel. Let us not be afraid if this warfare proves difficult and stubborn. Let us strive with all the greater effort to gain the victory. Victory must inevitably follow: the warfare has been commanded and the victory has been promised by the Lord. “The Kingdom of Heaven”,—he said,—“has been suffering violence, and the violent”—those who do violence to their own nature—“take it by force” (Mt 11:12). Amen.

On the Gospel Beatitudes

On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Drawn from the writings of the Fathers, and chiefly from the book of the hieromartyr Peter of Damascus. The Philokalia, pt. 3.

From the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments there arise in the soul sensations foreign to fallen nature and unknown to it. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn. 3:6), and since the commandments of Christ “are spirit” (Jn. 6:63), the sensations they produce are likewise “spiritual” sensations.

What is the first sensation that arises in the soul from the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments?—“Poverty of spirit.”

As soon as a Christian desires to put the Gospel commandments into practice—outwardly and inwardly—he sees his own corrupted nature rising up against the Gospel, stubbornly resisting it.

In the light of the Gospel, a Christian sees within himself the fall of humanity. From this vision there naturally is born a humble understanding of oneself, which the Gospel calls “poverty of spirit” (Mt. 5:3).

Poverty of spirit is a beatitude—the first in the Gospel’s ordering, the first in the order of spiritual progress, the first spiritual state, the first rung on the ladder of the beatitudes.

Every sensation and state belonging to the renewed nature constitutes of necessity a beatitude as well, since it is the manifestation of the heavenly kingdom in the soul, a pledge of salvation, a foretaste of eternal blessedness.

Concerning poverty of spirit, holy David declared: “The sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; a broken and a humble heart God will not despise” (Ps. 50:19).

Poverty of spirit is the salt for all spiritual sacrifices and burnt offerings. If they are not salted with this salt, God rejects them.

For a fallen person, the very sight of one’s own fall is already a beatitude.

One who sees his own fall is capable of acknowledging the necessity of salvation and of a Saviour—capable of believing in the Gospel with a living faith.

Such a state is a gift of grace, the working of grace, its fruit—and therefore a beatitude.

It is the nature of the poor to grieve over their poverty.

Poverty of spirit gives birth to the beatitude that follows it: “weeping.”

“Weeping” is the devout grief of the faithful soul that gazes into the mirror of the Gospel and sees in that mirror its countless sinful stains.

Such a soul washes away its stains with holy water—tears; it cleanses those stains with holy grief.

Ineffable consolation, ineffable lightness pour into the heart after the shedding of salvific tears over sins and the fall—tears that arise on account of the felt poverty of the spirit.

If here on earth devout weeping brings such incomparable spiritual consolation, what blessedness does it prepare for the age to come?

Christ pronounced his verdict concerning those who weep devoutly: “Blessed are those who mourn” (Mt. 5:4).

Have you committed sins?—Shed tears.

One who is deeply engaged in examining himself, who sees himself defiled by countless sins, who counts himself worthy of eternal torment and already mourns as one condemned to it—such a person sees little or nothing of the failings of his neighbor; he readily excuses whatever failings he does see, and willingly, from the heart, forgives all offenses and injuries.

The state of the soul from which anger, hatred, remembrance of wrongs, and condemnation have been removed is a new beatitude; it is called “meekness.”

“Blessed are the meek”, the Saviour proclaimed, “for they shall inherit the earth” (Mt. 5:5).

What earth is this?… After the fall, God called Adam earth, and in Adam called me earth as well: “you are earth, and to earth you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).

Being earth, I am at the same time dispossessed of dominion over this earth: the passions seize it from me—above all the fierce anger that overpowers and sweeps me away. I am deprived of all authority over myself. Meekness restores this authority to me; it brings me into possession of my inheritance, of my earth, of myself, of my flesh, my blood, my impulses. “The meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight in abundant peace” (Ps. 36:11).

Having regained dominion over the earth, I begin to desire heaven: I enter into a new state, being formed within me by grace, into a new beatitude. I begin to “hunger and thirst for the righteousness” of God—not that empty, human righteousness (Mt. 5:6).

Divine righteousness appeared to humanity in Divine mercy, and commanded us to become like God in perfect mercy (Mt. 5:48)—not by any other virtue.

Mercy condemns no one; it loves enemies, lays down its life for friends, and makes a person God-like. This state is again a “beatitude” (Mt. 5:7).

A heart embraced by mercy can harbor no thought of evil; all its thoughts are goodness.

The heart in which only good moves is a pure heart, capable of beholding God. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt. 5:8).

What is a pure heart? one great teacher of monastics was asked. He answered: “A heart moved, in likeness to the Divinity, by an immeasurable feeling of mercy toward all creatures.”[1]

Into the pure heart descends the peace of God, which unites the mind, soul, and body that had been divided until then, restores the human person, and makes him a descendant of the New Adam.

“The peace of God” is the portion of God’s saints: through holy peace, a Christian who has completed the course of repentance is reconciled with God, with all circumstances, with all neighbors, and with himself; he becomes a son of God by grace (Mt. 5:9).

The peace of God is accompanied by the perceptible presence of the Holy Spirit in a person; it is the working and fruit of the Holy Spirit.

One who has acquired the peace of God within himself is capable of the remaining, ultimate beatitudes: of bearing reproaches, slanders, persecutions, and other afflictions with equanimity and even with joy.

One who has acquired the peace of God fears no outward waves: on the scales of his heart, the consolation of grace has annulled all value belonging to earth’s great and pleasant things, and all the weight of earth’s sorrowful and bitter things.

Survey the majestic spiritual ladder of the Gospel’s beatitudes; survey each of its rungs. It is good to stand at the summit of this ladder; but truly blessed is even one who stands only on its very first rung.

On this ladder, leaping is impossible: one must climb step by step, from rung to rung.

Divine grace leads along these rungs: it raises a person to the next step not when he deems himself worthy of it, but when grace itself judges him to be so.

The humble are worthy of being raised up.

Do not fabricate a beatitude for yourself: proud and foolish self-conceit can fabricate such a beatitude for a person, and it will deceive and flatter him throughout his entire life—robbing him of the true good both on earth and in heaven.

Seek spiritual poverty. The seeking of this beatitude is permissible and praiseworthy. It is the foundation and the giver of all the other beatitudes. When the foundation is shaken, even one who stood at the highest degree of spiritual progress crashes down and is often broken to pieces.

Poverty of spirit is found through studying the Gospel, fulfilling its precepts, comparing one’s own actions and qualities with the Gospel’s precepts, compelling one’s heart to bear offenses with magnanimity, reproaching oneself, and praying to receive a broken and humble heart.

God rejects proud petitions and does not fulfill needless ones; but when his creature asks him for a gift that is truly useful and necessary, he sends it down from his inexhaustible treasures.

The spiritual gift from God that is truly useful and necessary for a person is “poverty of spirit.” Amen.

[1] The Venerable Isaac the Syrian, Homily 48.

The Christian’s Relation to His Passions

The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 1)

A certain great ascetic said: “One must bear one’s own failings just as one bears the failings of others, and be indulgent toward one’s soul in its weaknesses and imperfections. At the same time one must not give way to negligence: one must take diligent care for one’s own correction and improvement.”[1]

“Do not be troubled, do not fall into bewilderment,” said a certain holy Father, “when you see within yourself the workings of some passion. When a passion rises up, struggle against it;[2] strive to curb and uproot it through humility and prayer.”

Disturbance and bewilderment at the manifest workings of a passion is proof that a person has not come to know himself.[3]

In the light of God’s Word, let us examine our relationship to our passions and weaknesses, so as to obtain a correct understanding of ourselves, and, on the basis of that correct understanding, to govern ourselves rightly.

A person is conceived in iniquities and born in sins (Ps. 50:7): consequently, the passions—those sinful infirmities of soul and body—are proper to our fallen nature.

The passions are contrary to our blameless nature as it was created; they are contrary to the renewed nature as well; they are natural to fallen nature. Just as every bodily disease has the properties of that disease, just as illness and death are natural to our body which has lost immortality and the qualities of immortality—so it is with the passions. Before the fall, immortality was natural to our body; illness and death were unnatural.

The passions are otherwise called “sin” in the broad sense of that word. When the Apostle speaks of “sin that dwells in a person” (Rom. 7:14, 7:20), he understands by the word “sin” the corruption of the whole of human nature by evil—he means the passions. This state is also called the “carnal” state (Rom. 7:14, 8:8) and “death” (Rom. 7:24, 8:2).

Before the redemption of our race by the Saviour, a person could not resist the passions even if he wished to: they carried him off by force; they held dominion over him against his will. A Christian, through holy Baptism, casts off the yoke of the passions; he receives the strength and the ability to resist and trample them down.[4] Yet even to the redeemed person—renewed and placed in the spiritual paradise, the Church—freedom is granted: of his own free will he may either resist the passions and conquer them in the Lord, or submit and be enslaved to them. So too in the physical paradise, the choice was left to the first-created person whether to obey the commandment of God or to transgress it.

Every act of resistance to the demand of a passion weakens it; constant resistance overthrows it. Every surrender to a passion strengthens it; constant surrender to a passion enslaves to that passion the one who yields to it.

A Christian’s resistance to the passions must extend to the crucifying of “the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24); in chosen spiritual athletes it must extend even to the shedding of blood:[5] give blood and receive the Spirit. Only one who “has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” (1Pet. 4:1). This means: only one who suffers bodily—whether in voluntary or involuntary ascetic struggles—is capable of withstanding the sinful desires of the flesh, of suppressing and silencing them within himself. A body that is comforted and pampered with varied luxury and indulgence is a dwelling-place of the passions.

The God-man who suffered and was crucified for us requires of his disciples and followers that they imitate his sufferings, that they sacrifice all that is temporal for the eternal, the corruptible for the incorruptible, and that they be disciples and followers of the God-man in their very life.

Ascetic struggle is necessary for a Christian; yet it is not the struggle that frees a Christian from the dominion of the passions—it is the right hand of the Most High that frees him, it is the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Through the mortification and chastening of the flesh, through the labors of piety accompanied by careful observance of the Gospel commandments, true humility is granted to a Christian. True humility consists in complete self-denial, in complete surrender to God, in unceasing service to God. Such humility draws Divine grace into the soul. Divine grace, having overshadowed the soul, imparts to it spiritual sensation—and the passions, those carnal and sinful sensations and inclinations, remain idle.[6]

The working of the passions, which brings delight to the carnal person, is burdensome and tormenting to the spiritual person—it arouses in him the strongest revulsion. At the slightest appearance or stirring of a passion, he flees from it as from a fierce and savage beast, as from a murderer; he flees under the shelter of prayer, under the shelter of Gospel teaching, under the shelter of God.

A soul not cultivated by the Gospel commandments, and a body not cultivated by the labors of piety, are unable to be the temple of Divine grace, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

The essence of the ascetic struggle lies in the fulfillment of the commandments. One who does not curb his body through labors, fasting, vigils, and standing in prayer—and therefore allows carnal reasoning to hold sway within him, nourishing and sustaining his passions—will not be able to become a fulfiller of the commandments.

Death—death alone—fully frees even God’s saints from the influence of sin upon them. The passions are shameless: they can rise up even in one lying on his deathbed. Even on the deathbed it is impossible to cease from vigilance over oneself. Trust in the dispassion of your body when it lies in the grave.

The passions, dwelling in a Christian and constantly compelling him to remain on guard, constantly calling him into battle, contribute to his spiritual progress. Evil, by the wise ordering of Divine Providence, serves the good through an intention that is not good: this was said by the Venerable Macarius the Great.[7]

A coarse and heavy millstone grinds grains of wheat into flour, making wheat fit for baking into bread. The heavy struggle with the passions grinds the heart of a person, crushes his proud spirit, forces him to acknowledge the state of the fall—laying it bare through experience—compels him to acknowledge the necessity of redemption, destroys all hope in himself, and transfers all hope to the Redeemer.

One must believe that in original sin lies the seed of all the passions, and that we are born with an inclination toward every kind of sin; therefore one must not be surprised at the manifestation and uprising of any passion, as though it were something extraordinary and strange.

According to the properties of soul and body, and the influence of circumstances, in one person one particular passion acts and develops with special force, and in another person a different one: in one there is a noticeable inclination toward avarice, in another toward gluttony; one is drawn away by carnal desire, another by thirst for vain honors. One who is not carried away by some particular passion should not think that passion is absent from him: it simply has not yet had occasion to manifest itself.

One must be constantly ready to oppose all the passions. In particular one must be vigilant against the predominant passion—the one that manifests itself more frequently than the others and troubles a person most of all.

The passions that are proper to fallen nature differ in the greatest degree from the passions that every person acquires voluntarily. The force of the latter is incomparably greater than the force of the former. But repentance, as the all-powerful remedy administered by the all-powerful physician—God—heals with full satisfaction, from all sinful infirmities, the person who wills to use this remedy rightly.

Certain passions serve as the origin and cause of other passions; such are: gluttony, softness, dissipation, luxury, avarice, love of glory, and unbelief. Their consequences are: licentiousness, despondency, anger, remembrance of wrongs, envy, pride, forgetfulness of God, and the abandonment of a virtuous life.

In the spiritual struggle one must arm oneself chiefly against the primary passions: their consequences will be destroyed of themselves. One who has renounced bodily pleasures, human glory, covetousness, and a scattered life will not give himself to anger and despondency, neither will pride nor envy overcome him; he will journey unimpeded along the path of God’s commandments toward salvation, toward the broad knowledge of God that is accessible to those alone who are pure in heart.

The leader of all the passions is unbelief. It opens the entrance into the soul to avarice, ambition, impure desires, anger, despondency, and the fulfillment of all evils—despair.

The leader and door of all true Christian virtues is faith.

The passions live secretly in those who lead a scattered, inattentive life; for the most part they are satisfied by them, for the most part they go unnoticed, for the most part they are justified—and are often recognized as the purest and most exalted virtues.

Only the true Christian—who constantly attends to himself, who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night, who strives to fulfill the Gospel commandments with all diligence—can see his own passions. The more he is cleansed and advances, the more the passions are revealed before him. At last, before the eyes of the mind healed by the Gospel, there opens a fearful abyss—the fall of humanity. A Christian sees in himself the fall of humanity because he sees his own passions. The passions are the sign of that sinful and deadly sickness by which all humanity is stricken.

Into what condition does the sight of his passions and his fall bring a Christian?—It brings him to weeping over himself, to bitter, inconsolable weeping. No earthly joy can stop or interrupt this weeping. Divine grace alone stops it from time to time, imparting to the weeping and torn heart hope of salvation, spiritual rest, and heavenly delight flowing from the peace of Christ.

Into what condition does the disclosure of the workings of the passions bring a Christian?—It rouses him to intensified battle against the passions. The athlete of Christ redoubles his prayers, his fasting, his vigils, his prostrations; and, displaying his distress before God in thought, he intercedes with inexpressible contrition and pain of heart for mercy. “But as for me”, says the Divine David, “when they troubled me, I clothed myself in sackcloth and humbled my soul with fasting, and my prayer returned to my own bosom. I went about mourning and bowed down” (Ps. 34:13–14).

By what are the passions made manifest?—By sinful thoughts, imaginings, and sensations. Thoughts and imaginings sometimes appear to the mind suddenly, sometimes they steal up to it stealthily; and in like manner do sensations arise in the heart and body. Sinful thoughts, imaginings, and sensations draw one toward the actual commission of sin, or at least toward taking delight and being captivated by sinful thoughts, imaginings, and sensations—toward committing sin in imagination and feeling.

The athlete of Christ must renounce not only the commission of sin in deed, but also its commission in imagination and feeling. Every passion is strengthened by taking delight in it, by fulfilling its lawless demands and representations through hidden movements of the soul. A passion, either committed in deed or planted in the soul through long-standing sympathy and nourishment of it, gains dominion over a person. Much time is needed, a bloody struggle is needed, a special mercy of God and special help of God are needed, in order to cast off the yoke of a passion that has been voluntarily accepted, that has gained power over a person—whether from a person’s fall into mortal sin or from criminal, voluntary indulgence in sin in the hidden inner chamber of the soul dedicated to Christ.

It is impossible for the passions that dwell within a person not to manifest themselves in his thoughts, words, and actions. These manifestations of the passions, when accompanied by any kind of being swept away, are called and counted as falls on the path of true Christian asceticism that strives toward perfection.[8] They are healed by immediate repentance.

Such falls are an inalienable property of the oldness of the old Adam—of human nature that has fallen and been infected by sin. In particular, the novice ascetic cannot avoid being swept away by sinful thoughts, imaginings, and sensations; he cannot avoid sinning through sinful thoughts, imaginings, and sensations; he cannot avoid sinning in word and very deed. These sins are healed by immediate repentance.

Nothing is said here of falls into mortal sins, nor of a voluntarily sinful life which is entirely a fall; here we speak of light falls through weakness—called venial sins—from which even the most righteous were not entirely free.

Scripture testifies: “A righteous man falls seven times and rises again” through repentance (Prov. 24:16). In proportion to cleansing through repentance, such being-swept-away diminishes, yet at the same time it becomes more subtle, more imperceptible, and sometimes deceives and beguiles even men filled with Divine grace (1 Chron.The Venerable Nilus of Sora, Homily 3:21:1). These being-swept-away keep one from exaltation, serve as the cause of humility, and hold one on the saving pasture of repentance.

Looking upon ourselves from such a knowledge of ourselves, we must preserve inner peace of soul, by no means being troubled or downcast, nor falling into bewilderment when the working of the passions opens within us. Sometimes this working is light; sometimes it is very strong. Let us courageously resist the passions.

They will not cease to rise up and attack us until the grave! And let us prepare ourselves for lifelong resistance to them, in firm conviction that we cannot be constant conquerors of the passions, that by natural necessity we are bound to suffer involuntary defeats, and that these very defeats further our progress when they sustain and intensify within us repentance and the humility born from it.

Let us not trust in our victories over the passions; let us not take delight in these victories. The passions, like the demons that wield them, are cunning: they pretend to be defeated so that we may be exalted, and that, because of our exaltation, their victory over us may be the easier and more decisive.

Let us prepare ourselves to look upon our victories and defeats alike: courageously, calmly, without partiality.

Have you been swept away by sinful fantasies, have you taken delight in sinful thoughts, have you uttered an idle or senseless word, have you eaten too much food, or done something else of this kind?[9] — Do not be troubled, do not be faint-hearted, do not add harm to harm. Repent immediately before God who knows hearts; strive to correct and improve yourself; be convinced of the necessity of the strictest watch over yourself; and, preserving peace of soul, continue on your spiritual path with firmness and perseverance.

Our salvation is God himself, not our own deeds. Through the works of faith—that is, through the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments—we demonstrate the truth of our faith and our fidelity to God.

Pay no attention to the thoughts of false humility which, after you have been swept away and fallen, suggest to you that you have irreparably angered your God, that God has turned his face away from you, abandoned and forgotten you. Know the source of these thoughts by their fruits. Their fruits are: despondency, slackening in the spiritual struggle—and often the abandonment of it entirely, or for a long time.

If even human beings are capable of knowing that on the long and laborious course of spiritual struggle every ascetic must inevitably encounter both victories and defeats, and that our limitedness, weakness, and sinfulness cannot but express themselves in manifestations—all the more does our Creator and the establisher of the struggle, God, know this. With mercy he looks upon the stumblings of his athlete, and for magnanimous constancy and faithfulness he prepares for him a crown of righteousness, victory, and glory.

[1] Spiritual Instructions of the blessed elder Seraphim of Sarov, ch. 10, on struggles, ed. 1844.

[2] Abba Dorotheus the Venerable, Instruction 13, on the endurance of temptations.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Abba Dorotheus the Venerable, Instruction 1, on the renunciation of the world.

[5] The 4th saying of Abba Longinus. The Memorable Sayings.

[6] Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 43.

[7] Homily 4, ch. 6.

[8] The Venerable Nilus of Sora calls them mental falls. Homily 3.

[9] Elder Seraphim, ch. 10.

The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 2)

Purity of heart and body is greatly to be desired! By it God is seen (Mt. 5:8). This purity is acquired through constant and laborious struggle against impurity. For the entry into the struggle against impurity, it is necessary that impurity first be revealed before the eyes of the mind. It is revealed through thoughts, fantasies, and carnal sensations. One who has never fought against impurity, who does not know it, who counts himself pure, is in the most dangerous self-delusion and is capable of unexpectedly and suddenly plunging headlong into the abyss of mortal sins: impurity is an inalienable property of fallen nature, while purity is a gift of God’s grace drawn out by the person’s right effort at cleansing himself.

There is the greatest difference between sinning deliberately and from a disposition toward sin, and sinning through being swept away and through weakness, while being disposed to please God. There is the greatest difference between living a sinful life—a life of satisfying all one’s desires and all one’s passions—and stumbling through weakness and limitedness and sinful infection while walking the path of God.

Premature dispassion is dangerous! Prematurely receiving the delight of Divine grace is dangerous. Supernatural gifts can destroy an ascetic who has not been taught his own weakness through falls, who is inexperienced in life, who is unskilled in the battle against sinful thoughts, who is unfamiliar in detail with the cunning and malice of demons, and with the changeableness of human nature. A person is free to choose good or evil; even if that person is a vessel of Divine grace, he can abuse the very grace of God. Because of it he may exalt himself above his neighbors; because of it he may fall into self-reliance—the consequence of self-reliance is usually negligence, a slackening in the struggle, and the abandonment of it. On the heels of negligence, carnal desires rise up suddenly and violently in the soul and body of those who have been sanctified, sweep them away like a rushing torrent, and plunge them into the abyss of fornication, often into the very death of the soul.

God, the lover of mankind, “who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4), has permitted his servants, permitted his beloved, throughout the whole time of their earthly sojourn, a struggle with outward and inward afflictions. The struggle with the passions and the sufferings that spring from this struggle are incomparably more burdensome than all temptations from without. The anguish and the struggle into which a Christian is brought by the invisible, interior battle rises in its significance to the struggle of the martyrs. “Give blood and receive the Spirit”—we repeat the saying of the Fathers who knew this battle through experience. The yoke of such struggle is borne only by those who carefully fulfill the commandments of the Gospel, only by the true servants of Christ.[1] “The fulfillment of the commandments teaches a person his own weakness”—so said the Venerable Symeon. Upon the knowledge and acknowledgment of weakness the entire edifice of salvation is built.

A strange course of things to a superficial eye! “The fulfillment of the commandments teaches a person his own weakness.” But these are the words of experience. Only through the careful fulfillment of Christ’s commandments can a person see the multitude of his passions; only through the careful fulfillment of Christ’s commandments can a person become convinced of the complete powerlessness of the old Adam for the activity of the new—convinced of the justice of the verdict pronounced by the spiritual law, a verdict that this law can be fulfilled only through the mercies of Christ.[2]

In the almighty hand of Providence, even sin itself—dwelling within a person, having encompassed his whole being, having encompassed all the members of soul and body—contributes to his progress, if that person is a true Christian.

Spiritual poverty, the acknowledgment of one’s fall, the acknowledgment of the necessity of a Redeemer, the striving with one’s whole being to confess the Son of God and God who redeemed us—our Lord Jesus Christ—these are the fruits of the battle with the passions. These fruits are a pledge of eternal blessedness.

Spiritual poverty, the fall of humanity, and living confession of the Redeemer are unknown to the son of this age. He serves the passions, perceives in himself an abundance of worthiness, sees virtues—and either expects nothing in heaven, never thinking of heaven at all, or expects rewards there as something owed him, expecting them because of his deep ignorance concerning the one virtue rewarded in heaven. That virtue is Christianity.

The servant of God, fulfilling the Gospel commandments, discloses more and more of his passions within himself; and at the very time when the grace of the Holy Spirit is forming within him blessed spiritual states—poverty of spirit, weeping, meekness, mercy, chastity, spiritual understanding—he counts himself the sinner of sinners, as one who has done no good, guilty of countless transgressions, worthy of eternal torment in the fire of Gehenna for his constant violation of God’s commandments.

The holy Fathers, seeing the spiritual fruit sprouting within them from the struggle with the passions, did not wish for this struggle to cease; they wished to endure in it valorously and with magnanimity.[3] Blessed men! They did not seek any other perfection than perfection in humility; they did not seek to find the hope of salvation in anything of their own, but sought to find it in Christ. Where there is no humility, there are no Christian virtues; but where there is true humility, there are all virtues in their fullness; there is Christ; there the passions and the “enemy” the devil who wields them “shall prevail nothing” against the servant of Christ, “and the son of lawlessness”, sin, “shall not harm him” (Ps. 88:23).

Let us follow in the footsteps of the Fathers—and we shall reach the harbor of eternal blessedness. Amen.

[1] Chapters, Theological and Practical, ch. 4. The Philokalia, pt. 1.

[2] The Venerable Mark the Ascetic, On the Spiritual Law, ch. 32.

[3] The Venerable Abba Dorotheus, Instruction 13.

On True and False Humble-Mindedness

On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1)

“Let no one defraud you of your prize by insisting on self-abasement” (Col. 2:18), said the holy Apostle Paul.

True humble-mindedness consists in obedience and following after Christ (Phil. 2:5–8).

True humble-mindedness is spiritual understanding. It is a gift of God; it is the working of Divine grace in the mind and heart of a person.

There can also be a voluntary humble-mindedness: it is fabricated for itself by the vainglorious soul, the soul deluded and deceived by false teaching, the soul that flatters itself, the soul that seeks flattery from the world, the soul entirely bent on earthly advancement and earthly pleasures, the soul that has forgotten eternity and God.

Voluntary, self-invented humble-mindedness consists of countless varied artifices by which human pride strives to capture the glory of humble-mindedness from a world blinded to its own—a world that loves its own, a world that extols vice when vice is clothed in the guise of virtue, a world that hates virtue when virtue stands before its gaze in its holy simplicity, in its holy and firm submission to the Gospel.

Nothing is so hostile to the humility of Christ as self-willed humble-mindedness—which has cast off the yoke of obedience to Christ and, under cover of hypocritical service to God, sacrilegiously serves Satan.

If we unceasingly contemplate our own sin, if we strive to discern it in detail, we shall find within ourselves no virtue at all—and we shall find no humble-mindedness either.

True holy virtue is covered by true humility: as a chaste maiden covers her beauty with a veil; as the Holy of Holies is concealed from the gaze of the people by a curtain.

True humble-mindedness is the Gospel’s character, the Gospel’s disposition, the Gospel’s cast of thought.

True humility is a Divine mystery: it is inaccessible to human comprehension. Being the highest wisdom, it appears as foolishness to the carnal mind.

The Lord Jesus discloses the Divine mystery of humility to his faithful disciple—to one who ceaselessly sits at his feet and attends to his life-giving words. And when disclosed, it remains hidden: it is inexpressible in earthly word and tongue. To the carnal mind it is incomprehensible; it is incomprehensibly comprehended by the spiritual mind, and when comprehended it remains incomprehensible.

Humility is heavenly life on earth.

The gracious and wondrous vision of the greatness of God and of God’s countless benefits to humanity, the gracious knowledge of the Redeemer and following him in self-denial, the sight of the ruinous abyss into which the human race has fallen—these are the invisible marks of humility, these are the first chambers of that spiritual palace built by the God-man.

Humility does not see itself as humble. On the contrary, it sees within itself a multitude of pride. It is concerned to seek out all pride’s branches; and in seeking them out, it perceives that there is still very much more to seek.

The Venerable Macarius of Egypt, surnamed by the Church “the Great” for the excellence of his virtues—and especially for his profound humility—a Father bearing the sign and bearing the Spirit, declared in his exalted, holy, and mystical Homilies, that even the most pure and perfect person has in himself something of pride.[1]

This pleaser of God attained the highest degree of Christian perfection;[2] he lived in times abounding in saints; he saw Anthony the Great, the greatest of holy monks—and he said that he had not seen a single person who could fully and in the strict sense of the word be called perfect.

False humility sees itself as humble: it foolishly and pitiably takes comfort in this deceptive, soul-destroying spectacle.

Satan takes on the form of a bright Angel; his apostles take on the form of the Apostles of Christ (2 Cor. 11:13–14); his teaching assumes the appearance of the teaching of Christ; the states produced by his deceptions take on the appearance of spiritual, grace-filled states: his pride and vainglory, and the self-delusion and spiritual delusion they produce, assume the appearance of the humility of Christ.

Alas! Where do they hide from these unhappy dreamers—dreamers disastrously content with themselves and with their states of self-delusion, dreamers who think they are enjoying delight and blessedness—where do the words of the Saviour hide from them: “Blessed are those who weep now, blessed are those who hunger now”, and “woe to you who are satisfied now, woe to you who laugh now” (Lk. 6:21, 25).

Look more intently, look impartially at your own soul, most beloved brother! Is not repentance more truly fitting for it than pleasure? Is it not more truly fitting for it to weep on earth, in this vale of sorrows appointed precisely for weeping, than to devise for oneself untimely, seductive, absurd, and ruinous pleasures!

Repentance and weeping over sins bestow everlasting blessedness: this is known; this is certain; this has been proclaimed by the Lord. Why, then, do you not plunge into these holy states, not abide in them, but instead devise pleasures for yourself, satisfy yourself with them, content yourself with them, and by them extinguish in yourself the blessed hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness, and the blessed and saving grief over your sins and sinfulness?

The hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness are witnesses to poverty of spirit; weeping is the expression of humility, its very voice. The absence of weeping, being filled with oneself, and taking pleasure in one’s own seemingly spiritual state—these expose the pride of the heart.

Fear lest, for the sake of an empty and seductive pleasure, you inherit the eternal woe promised by God to those who are now filled by their own self-will, contrary to the will of God.

Vainglory and its offspring—false spiritual pleasures operating in a soul not penetrated by repentance—construct a phantom of humility. This phantom replaces true humility for the soul. The phantom of truth, having taken possession of the soul’s dwelling, bars all the entrances of that dwelling to Truth itself.

Alas, my soul—a temple of truth built by God!—having received within yourself the phantom of truth, having bowed down before a lie in place of Truth, you become a shrine of idols!

In this shrine of idols an idol has been set up: the “conceit” of humility. “The conceit of humility” is the most terrible form of pride. Pride is driven out with difficulty even when a man recognizes it as pride; but how shall he drive it out when it appears to him to be his humility?

In this shrine there is a grievous abomination of desolation! In this shrine the incense of idol-worship is diffused; hymns are sung there which gladden hell. The thoughts and emotions of the soul feast on the forbidden food offered to idols, and drink wine mixed with deadly poison. The shrine—the habitation of idols and all manner of uncleanness—is inaccessible not only to Divine grace, to spiritual gifts, but to any true virtue, to any Gospel commandment.

False humility so blinds a man that it compels him not only to think of himself, to hint to others, that he is humble, but to say this openly, to proclaim it aloud.536.[3]

Lies mock us cruelly when, deceived by them, we take them for truth.

Gracious humility is invisible, as invisible is God, its bestower. It is covered by silence, simplicity, sincerity, effortlessness, and freedom.

False humility is always accompanied by a contrived exterior: by which it advertises itself.

False humility loves theatrical scenes: by them it deceives and is itself deceived. The humility of Christ is clothed in a tunic and robe (Jn. 19:24), in the most artless garment: covered by this garment, it goes unrecognized and unnoticed by people.

Humility is a pledge in the heart, a holy and nameless property of the heart, a Divine habit, born imperceptibly in the soul through the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments.537.[4]

The action of humility may be compared to the action of the passion of avarice. One infected with the infirmity of faith and love for corruptible treasures, the more he accumulates them, the more greedy and insatiable he becomes for them. The richer he grows, the poorer and more deficient he appears to himself. So it is with one guided by humility: the more he grows rich in virtues and spiritual gifts, the more impoverished and insignificant he becomes in his own eyes.

This is natural. When a man has not yet tasted the higher good, his own good—tainted as it is by sin—has value in his eyes. But when he has partaken of the Divine and spiritual good, his own good, intermingled and mixed with evil, loses all value in his eyes.

A poor man prizes his purse of copper coins, gathered over a long time with toil and weariness. A rich man unexpectedly pours into his lap a countless number of pure gold coins, and the poor man casts away the purse of coppers with contempt, as a burden that only weighs him down.

The righteous and much-suffering Job, having endured fierce temptations, was granted the vision of God. Then he said to God in inspired prayer: “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You.”—And what fruit was born in the soul of the righteous man from this vision of God? “Therefore,” Job continues and concludes his prayer, “I abhor myself and repent; I account myself earth and ashes.” (Job 42:5–6).

Do you wish to acquire humility?—Fulfill the Gospel commandments: together with them, holy humility—that is, the properties of our Lord Jesus Christ—will come to dwell in your heart and become native to it.

The beginning of humility is poverty of spirit; the middle stage of progress in it is the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding and comprehension; and its end and perfection is the love of Christ.

Humility never grows angry, never seeks to please people, never gives itself to grief, fears nothing.

Can he give himself to grief who has in advance acknowledged himself to be worthy of every sorrow?

Can he be frightened by misfortune who has in advance devoted himself to sorrows, who regards them as a means of his salvation?

The servants of God loved the words of the wise thief who was crucified beside the Lord. In their sorrows they were accustomed to say: “We receive what is due for our deeds; remember” us, “O Lord, in Your Kingdom.” (Lk. 23:41–42).[4] Every sorrow they greet with the acknowledgment that they are worthy of it.538.

Holy peace enters their hearts upon the words of humility! It brings a cup of spiritual consolation to the sickbed, to the prisoner in his cell, to those persecuted by people, and to those persecuted by demons.

The cup of consolation is brought by the hand of humility even to one crucified on the cross; the world can offer him only “vinegar mixed with gall” (Mt. 27:34).

[1] Discourse 7, Ch. 4.

[2] Discourse 8, Ch. 5.

[3] The Imitation, Book III, Ch. 2.

[4] The Venerable Abba Dorotheus, Instruction 2.

On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

The humble person is incapable of malice and hatred: he has no enemies. If anyone among people causes him offense, he sees in that person an instrument of God’s justice or providence.

The humble person surrenders himself wholly to the will of God.

The humble person lives not by his own life, but by God.

The humble person is a stranger to self-reliance, and therefore he unceasingly seeks the help of God and unceasingly abides in prayer.

A fruit-laden branch bends toward the earth, weighed down by the abundance and heaviness of its fruit. A barren branch grows upward, multiplying its fruitless shoots.

A soul rich in Gospel virtues sinks deeper and deeper into humility, and in the depths of that sea finds precious pearls: the gifts of the Spirit.

Pride is a sure mark of an empty person, a slave of the passions, the mark of a soul to which the teaching of Christ has found no access whatsoever.

Do not judge a person by his outward appearance; do not conclude from his appearance that he is proud or humble. “Do not judge by outward appearances,” but “by their fruits you shall know them” (Jn. 7:24; Mt. 7:16). The Lord commanded us to know people from their actions, their conduct, and the consequences that flow from their actions.

“I know your pride and the wickedness of your heart,” (1Sam. 17:28) David’s kinsman said to him; but God testified of David: “I have found David my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him” (Ps. 88:21). “Man does not see as God sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart” (1Sam. 16:7).

Blind judges often declare a hypocrite and a base flatterer to be humble: yet he is an abyss of vainglory.

On the contrary, to these ignorant judges the man who does not seek praise and rewards from people, and therefore does not grovel before people, appears proud—yet he is a true servant of God; he has sensed the glory of God, which is revealed only to the humble, has sensed the stench of human glory, and has averted from it both the eyes and the sense of smell of his soul.

What does it mean to believe? one great servant of God was asked. He replied: “To believe means to abide in humility and mercy”.539.[1]

Humility hopes in God—not in itself and not in people: and therefore in its conduct it is simple, direct, firm, and majestic. The sons of the world, who are blinded, call this pride.

Humility assigns no value to earthly goods; in its eyes—God is great, the Gospel is great. It strives toward them, not deigning to grant corruption and vanity even attention or a glance. The sons of corruption and ministers of vanity call this holy indifference to decay and vainness pride.

There is a holy bow that comes from humility, from reverence for one’s neighbor, from reverence for the image of God, from reverence for Christ in one’s neighbor. And there is a vicious bow, a self-serving bow, a bow that is simultaneously flattering and man-hating, a bow opposed to God and abhorrent to Him: this is what Satan asked of the God-man, offering in return all the kingdoms of the world and their glory (Lk. 4:7).

How many there are, even now, who bow down in order to gain earthly advantages! Those to whom they bow praise their humility.

Be attentive, observe: does the one who bows before you bow out of respect for a person, out of feelings of love and humility? Or does his bow merely flatter your pride and extract some temporal benefit from you?

You who are great in the earth! Look carefully: what grovels before you is vainglory, flattery, and baseness! When they have achieved their goal, they will mock you, they will betray you at the first opportunity. Never pour out your generosity on the vain person: the vain person is as abject before those above him as he is arrogant, insolent, and inhuman toward those below him.540.[2] You will know the vain person by his special aptitude for flattery, for servility, for lying, for all that is base and low.

Pilate was offended by Christ’s silence, which seemed to him proud. “Do you not answer me?” he said. “Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” (Jn. 19:10). The Lord explained his silence by pointing to the manifestation of the will of God, of which Pilate—who supposed he was acting on his own—was only a blind instrument. Pilate, from his own pride, was incapable of understanding that before him stood perfect humility: the God incarnate.

A lofty soul—a soul with a heavenly hope and contempt for the corruptible goods of the world—is incapable of petty flattery and servile fawning. You wrongly call this soul proud because it does not satisfy the demands of your passions. Haman! Honor the blessed, God-pleasing pride of Mordecai! That which appears to you as pride is holy humility.541.[3]

Humility is the teaching of the Gospel, the Gospel virtue, the mystical garment of Christ, the mystical power of Christ. God, clothed in humility, appeared to humanity, and whoever among people is clothed in humility becomes Godlike.542.[4]

“If anyone wishes to come after Me,”—holy Humility proclaims—“let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Mt. 16:24). Otherwise it is impossible to be a disciple and follower of the One who humbled Himself even to death, even death on a cross. He is seated at the right hand of the Father. He is the New Adam, the Progenitor of the holy race of the chosen. Faith in Him inscribes one in the number of the chosen: election is received through holy humility, and sealed by holy love. Amen.

[1] The Alphabetical Patericon. Concerning Abba Pimen the Great.

[2] The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Homily 22, Ch. 22.

[3] (Est. 4–7). Haman, a Macedonian, was the favorite and chief minister of Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Mordecai, a Jew, was among the courtiers, and being of deep piety, did not permit himself to flatter or grovel before the favorite. This conduct of Mordecai drove Haman to fury; he prepared a tall gallows upon which to execute the one he hated, for refusing to bow like all the rest. By the vicissitudes of earthly fortune circumstances changed—and Haman was hanged on the gallows he had erected for Mordecai.

[4] Isaac the Syrian, Homily 33.

The Cup of Christ

The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

Two beloved disciples of the Lord asked Him for thrones of glory—He granted them “His Cup” (Mt. 20:23).

The Cup of Christ is suffering.

The Cup of Christ grants to those who partake of it on earth a share in the gracious Kingdom of Christ, and prepares for them in Heaven thrones of everlasting glory.

We are all without excuse before the Cup of Christ; no one can complain of it or refuse it: for the One who commanded us to drink of it Himself drank of it before all others.

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil! You slew our forebears in Paradise, beguiling them with the delights of sensual pleasure and the delights of reason. Christ, the Redeemer of the perished, brought to earth, to the fallen and the exiled, His saving Cup. By the bitterness of this Cup, the criminal and deadly sinful pleasure is destroyed in the heart; by the humility that flows abundantly from it, the proud carnal mind is mortified; and to the one who drinks it with faith and patience, eternal life is restored—that life which was taken and continues to be taken from us by tasting the forbidden fruit.

The Cup of Christ—“the cup of salvation I will take!” (Ps. 115:4).

The Cup is received when a Christian bears the sorrows of earth with the humble-mindedness drawn from the Gospel.

Saint Peter rushed with drawn sword to the defense of the God-man surrounded by evildoers; but the meekest Lord Jesus said to Peter: “Put the sword into its sheath. The cup which the Father has given Me—shall I not drink it?” (Jn. 18:11).

And you, when afflictions surround you, say for the consolation and strengthening of your soul: “The cup which the Father has given me—shall I not drink it?”

The Cup is bitter; at the mere sight of it, all human reasoning fails. Replace reasoning with faith, and drink the bitter Cup courageously: it is given to you by the all-good and all-wise Father.

It was not the Pharisees, not Caiaphas, not Judas who prepared it, not Pilate and his soldiers who offer it! “The cup which the Father has given me—shall I not drink it?”

The Pharisees plot, Judas betrays, Pilate commands an unlawful murder, the governor’s soldiers carry it out. All of them prepared for themselves certain ruin by their evil deeds; do not prepare for yourself ruin equally certain by nursing grudges, by desiring and imagining revenge, by indignation toward your enemies.

The Heavenly Father is all-powerful and all-seeing: He sees your sorrows—and if He found it necessary and beneficial to turn the Cup away from you, He would assuredly do so.

The Lord—as both Holy Scripture and Church history testify—in many cases permitted sorrows to come upon His beloved ones, and in many cases turned sorrows away from His beloved ones, according to His inscrutable judgments.

When the Cup appears before you—do not look at the people who offer it to you; lift your eyes to Heaven and say: “The cup which the Father has given me—shall I not drink it?”

“I will take the cup of salvation.” I cannot refuse the Cup—the pledge of heavenly and eternal goods. The Apostle of Christ instructs me in patience: “Through many tribulations,” he says, “we must enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Should I then refuse the Cup—the very means of attaining and developing that Kingdom within myself! I will take the Cup—the gift of God.

The Cup of Christ is the gift of God. “To you it has been granted,” the great Paul wrote to the Philippians, “for the sake of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Phil. 1:29).

You receive the Cup, apparently, from human hands. What concern is it of yours whether those people act rightly or unlawfully? Your concern is to act rightly, in accordance with your duty as a follower of Jesus: to receive the Cup with thanksgiving to God, with living faith, and to drink it courageously to the last drop.

Receiving the Cup from human hands, remember that it is the Cup not only of the Innocent but of the All-Holy. Remembering this, repeat for yourself and for those like you—sufferers and sinners—the words of the blessed and wise sinner who spoke them while crucified at the right hand of the crucified God-man: “We receive what is due for our deeds… Remember me, O Lord, when You come in Your Kingdom.” (Lk. 23:41–42).

Then, turning to those people, say to them (and if they are not capable of understanding and receiving your words, then, not casting the precious pearls of humility before those unable to appreciate them, say it in thought and heart): “Blessed are you, instruments of God’s justice and mercy, blessed from henceforth and for ever!”

Only by this will you fulfill the commandment of the Gospel, which says: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you” (Mt. 5:44).

Pray to the Lord for them, that the offenses and injuries they have inflicted on you might be repaid to them with temporal and eternal rewards, that what was done to you might be counted by them at the judgment of Christ as a virtue.

Even if your heart does not wish to act thus, compel it: for only those who compel their heart to fulfill the Gospel commandments can inherit Heaven (Mt. 11:12).

If you do not wish to act thus, then you do not wish to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Examine yourself carefully and take stock: have you not found another teacher, have you not submitted to him? The teacher of hatred is the devil.

It is a terrible sin to offend and oppress one’s neighbors; it is a more terrible sin still to commit murder. But whoever hates his persecutor, his slanderer, his betrayer, his murderer—nurses a grudge against them, takes revenge upon them—that person’s sin is very close to their sin. In vain does he appear righteous to himself and others. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 Jn. 3:15), declared the beloved disciple of Christ.

Living faith in Christ teaches one to accept the Cup of Christ; and the Cup of Christ pours into the hearts of those who partake of it hope in Christ; and hope in Christ gives the heart strength and consolation.

What torment, what hellish torment it is—to complain and murmur against the Cup ordained from above!

Murmuring, impatience, faint-heartedness, and above all despair—these are monstrous offspring of sinful unbelief, and they are sins before God.

Murmuring against one’s neighbors when they are instruments of our suffering is sinful; it is all the more sinful when the Cup descends to us directly from Heaven, from the right hand of God.

Whoever drinks the Cup with thanksgiving to God, with blessing of his neighbors, has attained sacred rest, the gracious peace of Christ, and from this time forward already delights in the spiritual paradise of God.

Temporal sufferings are nothing in themselves: we give them significance by our attachment to the earth and to all that is corruptible, by our coldness toward Christ and toward eternity.

You endure the bitterness and repulsive taste of medicinal compounds; you endure the painful cutting and burning of limbs; you endure prolonged torment by hunger, prolonged confinement to a room; you endure all this for the sake of restoring lost health to a body that, once healed, will inevitably fall sick again, will inevitably die and decay. Endure then the bitterness of the Cup of Christ, which brings healing and everlasting blessedness to your immortal soul.

If the Cup seems to you unbearable and deadly—by this it exposes you: calling yourself Christ’s, you are not Christ’s.

For the true followers of Christ, the Cup of Christ is a cup of joys. Thus the holy Apostles, after being beaten before the assembly of the Jewish elders, “departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 5:41).

The righteous Job heard bitter tidings. One piece of news after another came to strike at his steadfast heart. The last news was the heaviest: the violent, sudden, and terrible death of all his sons and all his daughters. From intense grief the righteous Job tore his garments and scattered ashes upon his head—then, moved by the obedient faith that dwelt within him, he fell to the ground, bowed before the Lord, and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. As it pleased the Lord, so it has come to pass. Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever!” (Job 1:21).

Entrust yourself in simplicity of heart to the One by whom even the hairs of your head are numbered: He knows what measure of healing Cup is to be given to you.

Look often upon Jesus: before His murderers He is as a silent lamb before its shearer; He is delivered to death as a speechless sheep to the slaughter. Do not take your eyes from Him—and your sufferings will be mingled with a heavenly, spiritual sweetness; by the wounds of Jesus the wounds of your heart shall be healed.

“Stop!” said the Lord to those who wished to defend Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and He healed the severed ear of the one who came to bind Him (Lk. 22:51).

“Do you think”—the Lord replied to the one who attempted to turn the Cup away from Him by force of arms—“that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?” (Mt. 26:53).

In times of affliction, do not seek human help; do not waste precious time, do not exhaust the powers of your soul in seeking this powerless help. Await help from God: at His nod, at the appointed time, people will come and help you.

The Lord was silent before Pilate and Herod, and offered no defense. You too, imitate this holy and wise silence when you see that your enemies are judging you with the determination to condemn you no matter what, judging you only in order to conceal their malicious intent beneath the guise of a trial.

Whether preceded and foretold by gradually gathering storm clouds, or suddenly borne on a fierce whirlwind, when the Cup appears before you, say of it to God: “Your will be done”.

You are a disciple, follower, and servant of Jesus. Jesus said: “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also” (Jn. 12:26). And Jesus spent His earthly life in suffering: He was persecuted from birth to the grave; malice, from His very swaddling clothes, was preparing for Him a violent death. Having achieved its goal, it was not satisfied: it even strove to erase His very memory from the face of the earth.

Along the path of temporal sufferings, all His chosen ones followed the Lord into blessed eternity. It is impossible for us, while abiding in carnal pleasures, to abide at the same time in a spiritual state. For this reason the Lord continually offers His beloved ones His Cup, by which He maintains in them their deadness to the world and their capacity to live the life of the Spirit. Isaac the Syrian said: “A person for whom God has particular care is known by the unceasing sorrows sent to him”.543.[1]

Pray to God that He would turn away from you every affliction and every temptation. One must not presumptuously rush into the whirlpool of sorrows: in that there is the proud self-reliance of pride. But when sorrows come of themselves—do not fear them, do not think that they have come by chance, by a coincidence of circumstances. No; they have been permitted by the inscrutable providence of God. Full of faith and the courage and magnanimity it engenders, sail fearlessly through the darkness and howling storm toward the quiet haven of eternity: Jesus Himself invisibly guides you.

[1] Homily 35.

The Cup of Christ (Part 2)

Through devout and deep reflection, study the prayer that the Lord offered to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane during the difficult hours preceding His suffering and death on the cross. With this prayer, meet and overcome every sorrow. “O My Father,” the Saviour prayed, “if it is possible, let this Cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Mt. 26:39).

Pray to God for the removal of affliction from you, and at the same time renounce your own will as a sinful will, a blind will; entrust to the will of God—all-holy and all-wise—yourself, your soul and body, your present and future circumstances, and those neighbors who are dear to your heart.

“Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt. 26:41). When sorrows surround you, prayer must be multiplied so as to draw to oneself the special grace of God. Only with the help of special grace can we trample down all temporal calamities.

Having received from above the gift of patience, watch attentively over yourself so as to preserve and retain the grace of God. Otherwise sin will imperceptibly steal into the soul or body and drive from you the grace of God.

And if through negligence and distraction you allow sin to enter—especially that sin to which our weak flesh is so prone, which defiles both body and soul—then grace will depart from you, leaving you alone and stripped bare. Then the sorrow, permitted for your salvation and perfection, will descend upon you harshly, crushing you with grief, despondency, and despair, as one who has held the gift of God without due reverence for the gift. Hasten with sincere and decisive repentance to restore purity to the heart, and through purity the gift of patience: for it, as a gift of the Holy Spirit, rests only in the pure.

The holy martyrs sang a joyful song in the midst of the burning furnace, walking over nails, over the edge of swords, sitting in cauldrons of boiling water or oil. So too your heart, having drawn to itself by prayer the consolation of grace and preserving it by vigilance over itself, will sing, in the midst of misfortune and fierce calamities, a joyful song of praise and thanksgiving to God.

A mind cleansed by the Cup of Christ becomes a beholder of spiritual visions: it begins to see the all-encompassing providence of God, invisible to carnal minds; to see the law of decay in all that decays; to see the vast eternity that is close to all; to see God in His great works—in the creation and re-creation of the world. Earthly life appears to it as a swiftly ending pilgrimage, its events as dreams, its goods as a brief deception of the eyes, a brief and ruinous deception of the mind and heart.

What is the fruit of temporal sorrows for eternity? When the holy Apostle John was shown Heaven, one of the heavenly dwellers asked him, pointing to an innumerable assembly of radiant white-robed ones celebrating before the throne of God their salvation and blessedness: “These who are clothed in white robes, who are they, and from where did they come?—And I said to him,” John the Theologian relates, “Lord, you know.” Then the heavenly dweller said to the Theologian: “These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation; they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and guide them to living fountains of waters, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Rev. 7:13–17).

Estrangement from God, eternal torment in hell, eternal communion with devils and devil-like people, the flame, the cold, the darkness of Gehenna—that is what is truly worthy to be called sorrow! This indeed is the great, terrible, unbearable sorrow.

To the great eternal sorrow, earthly pleasures lead.

From this sorrow the Cup of Christ protects and saves—when the one who drinks it does so with thanksgiving to God, with praise of the all-good God who bestows on man, through the bitter Cup of temporal sorrows, His boundless and eternal mercy.

My Lament

My Lament (Part 1)

What word shall I place at the beginning of the words of my lament? What first thought shall I put into words from among my sorrowful thoughts?—They are all equally heavy: each one, when it presents itself to the mind, seems the heaviest; each seems the most painful to the heart when it pierces and wounds it. Groans have gathered in my breast, press upon it, and seek to burst forth; but, each forestalling the other, they return into the breast, causing within it a strange agitation. Shall I turn the eyes of my mind to the days of my past? It is a chain of delusions, a chain of sins, a chain of falls!—Shall I look at that portion of life which still lies before me on the path of earthly pilgrimage? Horror seizes me: it is produced by my weakness, proven to me by countless experiences. Shall I gaze upon my soul?—there is nothing consoling! It is entirely covered in sinful wounds; there is no sin of which it is not partaker; no transgression with which it has not stamped itself!—“My body,” my poor body! I smell the stench of your decay. “Corruption cannot inherit incorruption” (1 Cor. 15:50). Your lot—after death, in the prison of the grave; after the resurrection, in the prison of hell! What fate awaits my soul after its separation from the body? It would be well if a peaceful and radiant Angel appeared to it and soared with it to the blessed habitations of Eden. But for what reason would he appear? What virtue, what ascetic struggle would he find in it, worthy of the dwellers of Heaven? No! More likely, hosts of dark demons—fallen angels—will surround it, will find in it kinship with themselves, their own fall, their sinful properties, their will that is opposed to God—and will lead it, will drag it into their habitations, the habitations of eternal and fierce sorrow, the habitations of eternal darkness and at the same time of unquenchable fire, the habitations of unceasing and endless torments and lamentations.

Such I see myself to be, and I weep. At times, sparse drops of tears, like drops of dew, barely moisten the pupils of my eyes; at times a heavy rain of tears rolls down my cheeks onto my garments or pillow; at times tears dry up entirely—one painful weeping encompasses the soul. I weep with my mind, I weep with my heart, I weep with my body, I weep with my whole being; I feel the weeping not only in my breast—in every member of my body. They participate strangely and ineffably in the weeping, aching from it.

My soul! Before the decisive and unavoidable hour of passing into the future has arrived, take care for yourself. Draw near, cleave to the Lord through sincere and constant repentance—through a devout life according to His all-holy commandments. The Lord is greatly merciful, merciful without limit: He receives all who flee to Him, cleanses the sins of sinners, heals long-standing, festering, and mortal wounds, grants blessedness to all who believe in Him and obey Him. Examine your earthly pilgrimage from its very beginning, examine the great benefactions poured out upon you by God, entrust your destiny to Him, seek to implant His holy will within yourself, submit to His all-good and all-wise decrees. The Apostle observes: “If we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged” (1 Cor. 11:31).

No one, no one before my creation interceded before my Creator, that He might summon me by His almighty command into existence from nothingness. My only intercessor before God was His own goodness, coeternal with Him. I was born without knowing that I existed—I began to exist as if non-existent. Alas! I was born fallen; I began to live already dead: “in iniquity I was conceived,” and in the death of sin “my mother bore me” (Ps. 50:7). Life and death were together the beginning of my existence. I did not know, I did not fully understand that I was alive, that amid life I was dead, that amid existence I was perishing.

What mystery is the birth of man in sin? How is one who has not yet lived already dead? one who has not yet walked already fallen? one who has done nothing already guilty of sin? How are children in the womb of their forefather, separated from him by millennia, partakers of his sin? My mind gazes with reverence upon the judgments of God; it does not understand them; it does not dare to investigate them; but it sees them, marvels at them—and glorifies the incomprehensible, inscrutable God.

My birth in sin was a calamity worse than non-existence itself! How is it not a calamity—to be born for the sorrows of a fleeting earthly life, and then to exist for ever in the darkness and torments of hell! I have no intercessors; I have no strength of my own to pull myself out of the pit of perdition. The right hand of my God draws me out of it. Having given me birth through my parents into existence, He gives me birth through Himself into salvation: He washes me from the filth of sin, renews me by the Spirit in the waters of baptism, receives the pledges of my faithfulness from the lips of my godparent, pronounces His Name upon me, seals me with His seal, makes me a partaker of His Divinity, an heir of His Kingdom. Wonders are wrought over me, ineffable benefactions are poured upon me, at a time when I feel nothing, understand nothing, not even understanding my own existence. You looked upon me, my Lord, when I was a speechless infant! Wrapped in swaddling clothes, without reason, without capacity for action—what did I bring You? How did You receive my pledges? How, having received them, did You pour out Your gifts? Contemplating Your incomprehensible goodness, I am filled with bewilderment! And now I can do no more than what I did as a short-lived infant: in the silence of tongue and mind, I bring You an infant’s weeping and tears without any thought.

And what have I rendered in return for the abundant benefactions poured upon me at a time when I did not understand them?—I continued not to understand them, not to know them. My eyes turned to the world; its pleasures and temporal occupations within it seemed to me the proper portion and vocation of man. Death did not exist for me! Earthly life seemed to me eternal: so foreign was the thought of death to my mind. Eternity!… my gaze did not venture into its immeasurable depths!—I knew the dogmas and teaching of the holy Eastern Church, I believed them, but my knowledge and faith were dead. Wherein consists the fall of man, wherein consists his salvation, what are their signs and proofs?—I had no living, experiential knowledge of this. I considered only the Old Testament Decalogue to be God’s commandments, while the precepts of my Saviour, His all-holy words, I took to be mere moral teaching, the following of which is beneficial and praiseworthy, but not an indispensable obligation. In this way the ineffable gift of grace given at baptism was wrapped, like the Gospel talent, in the cloth of ignorance, buried and deeply hidden in the earth—in the cares of acquiring the transient knowledge of the transient world; covered over, as with dust, by thoughts of temporal advancement and pleasures, by service to vanity and to the dim light of the vain age.

My childhood was full of sorrows. Here I see Your hand, O my God! I had no one to whom to open my heart: I began to pour it out before my God, I began to read the Gospel and the lives of Your saints. A veil, occasionally pierced, lay for me over the Gospel; but Your Pimens, Your Sisoes and Macarii made a wondrous impression on me. The thought, which often soared toward God through prayer and reading, began little by little to bring peace and tranquility to my soul. When I was a youth of fifteen, an ineffable stillness breathed within my mind and heart. But I did not understand it; I supposed that this was the ordinary state of all people.

In such a state I entered military and at the same time scholarly service, not by my own choice or desire. At that time I did not dare, I did not know how to desire anything: for I had not yet found the Truth, had not yet seen Her clearly enough to desire Her! The human sciences—the inventions of fallen human reason—became the object of my attention: toward them I directed all the powers of my soul; indefinite religious occupations and feelings remained to one side. Nearly two years passed in earthly occupations: a kind of terrible emptiness was born and had already grown in my soul, a hunger appeared, an unbearable longing—for God. I began to mourn my negligence, to mourn the forgetfulness to which I had abandoned faith, to mourn the sweet stillness that I had lost, to mourn the emptiness I had acquired, which weighed upon me, terrified me, filling me with a sense of orphanhood, of deprivation of life! And indeed—this was the anguish of a soul that had withdrawn from its true life, God. I remember: I walk along the streets of St. Petersburg in the uniform of a cadet, and tears stream in torrents from my eyes!… Why do I not weep so now! Now tears are more necessary for me! I have passed the midpoint of my life: more swiftly have the days, months, and years flowed—they rush toward the grave, from which there is no return, beyond which there is no repentance and correction.

My understanding was already more mature; I sought definiteness in religion. Unreflective religious feelings did not satisfy me; I wanted to see something certain, clear—the Truth. At that time diverse religious ideas occupied and agitated the northern capital, contending and struggling with one another. Neither one side nor the other was agreeable to my heart; it did not trust them, it feared them. After grave deliberations I removed the cadet’s uniform and put on the officer’s. I regretted the cadet’s uniform: in it one could come to the house of God and stand in the crowd of soldiers, in the crowd of common people, and pray and weep as much as the soul desired. There was no thought of amusements or distractions for the young man! The world presented nothing alluring to me: I was so cold toward it, as though the world were entirely without temptations! Indeed—they did not exist for me: my mind was wholly submerged in the sciences, and at the same time burned with the desire to know where true faith lay hidden, where its true teaching was concealed, free from dogmatic and moral error.

Meanwhile, the limits of human knowledge in the higher and terminal sciences had come into view. Arriving at those limits, I asked of the sciences: “What do you give as man’s own possession? Man is eternal, and his possession must be eternal. Show me this eternal possession, this reliable wealth, which I could take with me beyond the threshold of the grave! So far I see only knowledge given, so to speak, on loan, ending with the earth, incapable of existing after the soul’s separation from the body.—What use is the study of mathematics? Its subject is matter. It reveals a certain kind of the laws of matter, teaches one to calculate and measure it, to apply calculations and measurements to the needs of earthly life. It points to the existence of infinite magnitude, as to an idea beyond the bounds of matter. Exact knowledge and definition of this idea is logically impossible for any rational but limited being. Mathematics points to numbers and measures, of which some, by reason of their significant magnitude, and others by reason of their extreme smallness, cannot be subjected to human investigation; it points to the existence of knowledge toward which man has an innate striving, but toward which science has no means of leading him. Mathematics merely hints at the existence of objects beyond the range of our senses.—Physics and chemistry reveal another kind of the laws of matter. Before science, man did not even know of the existence of these laws. The laws that were discovered revealed the existence of other innumerable laws still undisclosed. Some of them remain unexplained despite man’s efforts at explanation;[1] others cannot be explained at all, owing to the limitation of man’s powers and capacities. It seems, said to us the eloquent and intelligent Professor Soloviev,544 delivering an introduction to chemistry, that we study this science precisely in order to learn that we know nothing and cannot know anything: such a boundless field of knowledge does it open before the eyes of the mind! so insignificant are the items of knowledge we have acquired in that field! It demonstrates with palpable clarity, and persuades one, that matter—even though, as matter, it must have its limits—cannot be comprehended and defined by man, both on account of its vastness and for many other reasons. Chemistry traces the gradual refinement of matter, reducing it to a fineness barely accessible to human senses; in this refined state of matter it still discerns complexity and the capacity for decomposition into component parts still more refined, although the actual decomposition is already impossible. Man sees no end to the refinement of matter, just as he sees no end to the increase of numbers and measure. He perceives that the infinite must also be immaterial; on the contrary, everything finite must of necessity be material. But this is an undefined idea; defined is only its existence. Thereupon physics and chemistry revolve within matter alone, expanding knowledge of its use for the temporal, earthly needs of man and human society. Less rigorous than the sciences mentioned is philosophy, of which fallen man is especially proud. The natural sciences constantly rely on material experiment, by which they prove the correctness of the theories they have adopted, theories that without this proof have no place in science. Philosophy is deprived of a decisive means for constant verification by experience. The multitude of different systems, inconsistent with one another and contradicting each other, already convicts human philosophy of lacking positive knowledge of Truth. What scope philosophy affords to arbitrariness, fantasy, fabrication, grandiloquent raving—all intolerable in an exact, definite science! For all that, philosophy is usually very well satisfied with itself. With its deceptive light there enter the soul an overabundance of self-conceit, high-mindedness, boastfulness, vainglory, and contempt for one’s neighbors. The world in its blindness showers it, as its own, with praise and honors. One who is satisfied with the knowledge that philosophy furnishes not only fails to acquire correct notions about God, about himself, about the spiritual world, but on the contrary becomes infected with perverse notions that corrupt the mind and render it incapable—as something infected and damaged by falsehood—of communion with Truth (2 Tim. 3:8). ‘The world through wisdom did not know God’ (1 Cor. 1:21), says the Apostle. ‘The mind set on the flesh is death,… the mind set on the flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be’ (Rom. 8:6–7), for this is not proper to it. ‘Brothers, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col. 2:8, 3). Philosophy, being the offspring of the human fall, flatters that fall, masks it, preserves and nourishes it. It fears the teaching of Truth as a mortal sentence against itself (1 Cor. 3:18). The condition into which philosophy brings our spirit is a condition of self-delusion and soul-destruction, as is fully evident from the words of the Apostle quoted above, who commands all who desire to acquire true knowledge from God to reject the knowledge furnished by the love of wisdom of fallen humanity.[2] ‘Let no one deceive himself,’ he says, ‘if anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may become truly wise’ (1 Cor. 3:18). True philosophy (the love of wisdom) is encompassed in the one teaching of Christ. ‘Christ—the wisdom of God’ (1 Cor. 1:24, 30). “Without Christ there is no righteousness, no sanctification, no redemption, and all wisdom without Christ is folly. Every sage without Christ is senseless, every righteous man is a sinner, every pure man is unclean… What is our own?—weakness, corruption, darkness, malice, sins”.545. Whoever seeks wisdom outside of Christ renounces Christ, rejects wisdom, and acquires and assimilates to himself a falsely named knowledge—the possession of rejected spirits. Of geography, geodesy, of linguistics, of literature, of the other sciences, of all the arts—there is no need even to mention them: all of them belong to the earth; man’s need for them ends with the end of earthly life—for the most part much earlier. If I spend the entire time of earthly life acquiring knowledge that ends with earthly life: what shall I take with me beyond the bounds of crude matter?… Sciences! Give me, if you can give, something eternal, something positive, give what cannot be taken away and is certain, worthy to be called the possession of man!—The sciences were silent.”

For a satisfying answer, for an answer genuinely necessary and vital, I turn to faith. But where do you hide yourself, true and holy faith? I could not recognize you in fanaticism, which bore no imprint of Gospel meekness; it breathed with overheating and self-exaltation! I could not recognize you in self-willed teaching that separates itself from the Church, forms its own new system, and vainly and arrogantly proclaims the discovery of a new, true Christian faith—eighteen centuries after the Incarnation of God the Word.546.[3] Ah! in what grievous perplexity did my soul swim! how terribly it was tormented! what waves of doubts assailed it, born of distrust of myself, of distrust of all that clamored and cried out around me—of not knowing, of not seeing the Truth.

And I began frequently, with tears, to beseech God that He would not give me up as prey to delusion, that He would show me the right path along which I might direct my invisible journey—in mind and heart—toward Him. Suddenly a thought presented itself to me… my heart moved toward it, as into the arms of a friend. This thought prompted me to study faith at its sources—in the writings of the holy Fathers. “Their holiness,” it said to me, “is a guarantee of their fidelity: choose them as your guides.”—I obey. I find a means to obtain the works of the holy servants of God; with thirst I begin to read them, to investigate them deeply. Having read some, I take up others; I read and re-read and study. What was it that first struck me in the writings of the Fathers of the Orthodox Church?—It was their agreement, a wondrous and majestic agreement. Eighteen centuries, in their words, bear unanimous witness to a single teaching—a Divine teaching! When on a clear autumn night I look at the pure sky studded with innumerable stars of such different sizes, all emitting a single light, I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers. When on a summer’s day I look at the wide sea covered with a multitude of different vessels with their unfurled sails, resembling white swan wings, vessels running under one wind toward one goal, toward one haven, I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers. When I hear a harmonious and numerous choir, in which different voices sing a single Divine song in exquisite harmony, I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers. What teaching in particular do I find in them?—I find a teaching repeated by all the Fathers, the teaching that the sole path to salvation is unswerving obedience to the instructions of the holy Fathers. “Have you seen,” they say, “anyone deceived by false teaching, perishing through a wrong choice of ascetic struggles—know: he followed himself, his own reason, his own opinions, and not the teaching of the Fathers”,547 from which is composed the dogmatic and moral tradition of the Church. By it, as by a priceless inheritance, she nourishes her children.[4]

This thought was sent by God—from Whom every good gift comes, from Whom every good thought comes as the beginning of all good. So the Fathers affirm, and so the very nature of the matter makes plain3.[5] This thought was for me the first resting-place in the land of truth. Here my soul found repose from the waves and winds. A good thought—a saving thought! A thought that is a priceless gift from the all-good God, Who wills all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth! This thought became the cornerstone for the spiritual building of my soul! This thought became my guiding star! It began to illuminate for me, without ceasing, the laborious and sorrow-filled, narrow, invisible path of the mind and heart toward God.—I looked upon the religious world from the vantage of this thought, and I saw: the cause of all errors consists in ignorance of, forgetfulness of, and the absence of this thought.

Such are the benefactions with which my God has enriched me! Such is the incorruptible treasure, guiding toward blessed eternity, sent down to me from on high from the heavenly throne of Divine mercy and Wisdom. With what shall I repay my Benefactor?—Only, perhaps, by dedicating my entire earthly life to the inquiry and seeking of Him, to service to Him! But is this repayment?—It is only another, greatest benefaction to myself. God—God Himself—has already, by a good thought, separated me from the vain world. I lived in the midst of the world, yet I was not on the common, wide, well-beaten road: the good thought led me by a separate path, toward living, cool springs of water, through fertile lands, through picturesque—yet often wild, dangerous, cut through with chasms, utterly secluded—terrain. Few travelers journey along it.

Reading the Fathers convinced me with complete clarity that salvation is undoubtedly found within the Russian Church—something that the religions of Western Europe lack, having preserved neither the dogmatic nor the moral teaching of the original Church of Christ in their integrity. It revealed to me what Christ accomplished for humanity; wherein consists the fall of man, why a Redeemer is necessary, wherein lies the salvation that the Redeemer has brought and continues to bring. It insisted to me: salvation must be developed, felt, and seen within oneself—without this, faith in Christ is dead, and Christianity is a word and a name without realization! It taught me to regard eternity as eternity, before which even a thousand years of earthly life are nothing—let alone our own span of some half-century. It taught me that earthly life must be spent in preparation for eternity, as one prepares in an antechamber before entering a magnificent royal hall. It showed me that all earthly occupations, pleasures, honors, and advantages are empty toys with which grown children play—and in which they gamble away the blessedness of eternity. What is all the earthly before Christ? Before Christ, the Almighty God, Who gives Himself as possession, as an eternal gift and property, to a speck of dust—a human being?… The visible world is not worth serving or busying oneself with! What does it bestow upon its servants? First, toys; then the grave, decay, the dim uncertainty of the future, the weeping of those near—and soon their forgetfulness. Other rewards belong to the servants of Christ: they pass through this present life in the study of truth, in forming themselves by it. Transformed by it, they are sealed by the Holy Spirit, they enter eternity already closely acquainted with eternity, having prepared for themselves blessedness within it, assured of salvation: “The Spirit” of God,—says the Apostle,—“searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:10): the knowledge of these things He imparts to those who partake of Him. This the holy Fathers set forth with complete clarity in their sacred writings.

My heart grew cold toward the world, toward its services, toward its great things, toward its sweetness! I resolved to leave the world and to dedicate my earthly life to the knowledge of Christ, to the assimilation of Christ. With this intention I began to examine monastic and secular clergy. Here too labor met me; my youth and inexperience made it all the heavier. Yet I saw everything closely, and upon entering the monastery I found nothing new or unexpected. How many obstacles stood in the way of this entry!—I shall leave mention of them all aside; the body itself cried out to me: “Where are you taking me? I am so weak and infirm. You have seen monasteries, you have come to know them well: life in them is unbearable for you—both on account of my weakness and on account of your upbringing and all other reasons.” The reason confirmed the arguments of the flesh. But there was a voice—a voice in the heart—the voice, I think, of conscience, or perhaps of the guardian Angel, who was making known to me the will of God; for the voice was resolute and commanding. It said to me: “To do this is your duty, an unconditional duty!” So powerful was the voice that the representations of reason and the seemingly well-founded, pitiable persuasions of the flesh appeared as nothing before it. Without impulse, without ardor—as one enslaved, drawn by an irresistible feeling of the heart, by some incomprehensible and inexpressible calling—I entered the monastery.

[1] Professor Mikhail Feodorovich Soloviev of St Petersburg University taught physics in the lower and chemistry in the upper officers’ classes of the Chief Engineering School, now the Nikolaev Academy.

[2] Saint Tikhon of Voronezh, vol. 15, letter 11.

[3] Reference is made here to certain religious parties that attracted the attention of the northern capital in 1823 and 1824.

[4] Venerable Abba Dorotheus, Instruction 5.

[5] Saint John Chrysostom, 7th prayer before sleep, second half, petition 4.

My Lament (Part 2)

I entered the monastery as one astonished might fling himself—eyes closed and deliberation set aside—into fire or a whirlpool; as a soldier, drawn by his heart, flings himself into bloody battle and open death. My guiding star—my good thought—came to shine upon me in solitude, in stillness, or more accurately, in the darkness and storms of monastic life. According to the teaching of the Fathers, the mode of monastic life uniquely suited to our times is life under the guidance of the patristic writings, with the counsel of more advanced contemporary brethren—counsel which again must be verified against the writings of the Fathers. The Fathers of the early centuries of the Church particularly counsel one to seek a God-inspired guide, to surrender to him in complete and unconditional obedience, calling this path—as indeed it is—the shortest, the surest, and the most pleasing to God. The Fathers who were separated from the times of Christ by a millennium, repeating the counsel of their predecessors, already lament the rarity of God-inspired teachers, the emergence of a multitude of false teachers, and propose Holy Scripture and the patristic writings as a guide. The Fathers nearer to our own time call God-inspired guides a heritage of antiquity, and already categorically bequeath as a guide Holy and sacred Scripture, and the counsel of contemporary and fellow-dwelling brethren—verified against these Scriptures, received with the greatest prudence and caution. I desired to be under the guidance of a teacher; but it was not given to me to find a teacher who would fully satisfy me, who would be a living embodiment of the Fathers’ teaching. Yet I heard much that was profitable, much that was essentially necessary, which became the foundational principles of the edification of my soul. May the Lord give rest, in a place of verdure, a place of refreshment, a place of light and blessedness, to those who have fallen asleep—the benefactors of my soul! May He grant greater spiritual progress and a blessed end to those still running the course of earthly pilgrimage and labor!

I shall say here my poor word concerning Russian monasteries—a word that is the fruit of many years of observation. Perhaps, set down in writing, it will prove useful to someone!—Monastic life has grown weak, as has Christian life in general; monastic life has grown weak because it stands in indissoluble connection with the Christian world, which, sending weak Christians into monasticism, cannot demand of monasteries strong monks such as those of antiquity—a time when Christianity, dwelling in the midst of the world, abounded in virtues and spiritual strength. Yet monasteries still, as an institution of the Holy Spirit, send forth rays of light upon Christianity; still there is nourishment for the devout; still there is the keeping of the Gospel commandments; still there is strict, both dogmatic and moral, Orthodoxy; there, though rarely—extremely rarely—are found living tablets of the Holy Spirit. It is remarkable that all spiritual flowers and fruits have grown in those souls which, in withdrawal from acquaintances both outside and within the monastery, have cultivated themselves by the reading of Scripture and the holy Fathers, with faith and prayer animated by humble yet powerful repentance. Where this cultivation was absent, there was barrenness.

In what does the monk’s ascetic struggle consist—the very thing for which monasticism exists? It consists in the study of all the commandments and all the words of the Redeemer, in their assimilation by the mind and heart. The monk becomes a beholder of two human natures: the damaged, sinful nature, which he sees in himself, and the renewed, holy nature, which he sees in the Gospel. The Decalogue of the Old Testament cut away gross sins; the Gospel heals nature itself, sick with sin, having acquired through the fall sinful properties. The monk must, in the light of the Gospel, enter into combat with himself—with his thoughts, with the feelings of his heart, with the sensations and desires of the body, with the world hostile to the Gospel, with the princes of this world, who strive to keep a person in their power and captivity. The all-powerful Truth sets him free (Jn. 8:32); the all-good Holy Spirit seals, renews, and brings into the lineage of the New Adam the one freed from the bondage of sinful passions. The perfection of Christianity is attained in monasticism, and monks serve as a light to their brethren who live in the midst of the world—occupied, distracted by its cares and services, unable either to penetrate deeply into the Gospel or to bring it to life within themselves in its due development and fullness. Only one who, though calling himself a Christian, has the most superficial and dead conception of Christianity can think lightly of—or with contempt about—monasticism.

In order for the evangelical virtues to grow strong and mature in the monk, trials and temptations are indispensably necessary. His meekness must be tested; his humility must be tested; his patience and faith must be tested. It must be tested whether the Gospel, the words and commandments of Christ in which eternal life abides, is dearer to him than the advantages, comforts, and customs of the world—dearer than life itself. Entry into temptations seems burdensome at first; but without them it is impossible to learn the forgiveness of all offenses, love for enemies, and the beholding of God’s providence in all things—these highest and ultimate commandments of the Gospel with respect to one’s neighbor. But if the inner man is not formed by all the commandments, he cannot become a dwelling of the Holy Spirit. “I drew in the Spirit”, says holy David, “because I longed for Your commandments” (Ps. 118:131). Without the descent of the Spirit there is no Christian perfection. Trials and temptations are acknowledged by Holy Scripture and by the Fathers as the greatest gift of God; they serve as preparatory training for stillness, in which the monk attains a more exact purification and thereby a more abundant illumination. The Fathers compare the monk’s trials that precede his entry into stillness with Christ’s sufferings before the Cross, and stillness itself with crucifixion on the Cross and burial—to which will follow resurrection.

This I came to know in good time from the patristic writings. The sacred order—the sacred system—which Divine Providence had traced out for the servants of God struck me with wonder. I was drawn by heartfelt love to the contemplation of this wondrous system. I was especially fond of the teaching on this subject by Barsanuphius the Great. It seemed to me that it was being spoken to me: it was assimilated of itself into my soul. “Heeding the Apostle’s words: ‘in everything give thanks’ (1 Thes. 5:18), ‹prepare yourself to give thanks for everything›—the Great One wrote to one of his disciples, whom he was preparing in the furnace of community life for life in seclusion—‹and whether you are in trials, or in need, or in distress, or in bodily illness and labors, give thanks to God for everything that befalls you. I hope that you too will attain ‘His rest’ (Heb. 4:3): for ‘through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God’ (Acts 14:22). Therefore, do not waver in your soul, and do not grow faint in your heart for any reason whatsoever, but call to mind the Apostle’s word: ‘even though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day’ (2 Cor.Reply 2:4:16). If you do not endure sufferings, you will not be able to ascend the Cross. But when you have first borne the sufferings, you will enter the haven of rest and dwell in stillness without any cares, possessing a soul established in the Lord and always cleaving to Him›.” Another brother expressed before the Great One his desire for stillness. The Great One answered him: “Brother! A man who has debts, if he does not first pay them off, remains a debtor everywhere he goes and wherever he takes up residence—whether in a city or in a village. Nowhere does he have the possibility to live at peace. But when, on account of his debts, he suffers abuse from people and, ashamed, obtains money from somewhere and pays off his debts—then, having become free, he may with boldness and great confidence either dwell among human society or live in solitude. So likewise the monk, when he strives with all his strength to bear insults, reproaches, and losses, thereby learns humility and spiritual struggle. For his humility and struggle his sins are forgiven him, as Scripture attests: ‘Look upon my humility and my toil, and forgive all my sins’ (Ps. 24:18). Consider how many insults and reproaches our Lord Jesus Christ endured before the Cross: having endured them, He then ascended the Cross. In like manner, no one can attain true and fruitful stillness, no one can ascend into the holy rest of perfection, unless he first suffers with Christ and endures all His sufferings, keeping in mind the Apostle’s counsel: ‘if we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified with Him’ (Rom. 8:17). Be not deceived:[1] there is no other path to salvation apart from this. May the Lord help you, according to His will, to lay a firm foundation for your building upon the solid rock, as He commanded in the Gospel. ‘The rock… is Christ’ (1 Cor. 10:4).” Shortly after my entry into the monastery, tribulations poured upon me like cleansing water. There were interior conflicts and the onset of illnesses; there was the oppression of need and the upheaval from my own ignorance, inexperience, and imprudence; the tribulations from people were moderate. To experience them, a particular arena was needed. By the incomprehensible ways of Providence I was placed in that hermitage neighboring the northern capital—the very one which, when I lived in the capital, I had not even wished to see, having considered it altogether unsuitable to my spiritual aims. In 1833 I was summoned to Sergiev Hermitage and made its abbot. The hermitage—Sergiev Hermitage—received me inhospitably. In the very first year of my arrival there I was struck by a grave illness; in the second year by another; in the third year by yet another: they carried off the remnants of my scant health and strength, leaving me exhausted and incessantly suffering. Here envy, slander, and calumny rose and hissed; here I was subjected to heavy, prolonged, and humiliating punishments—without trial, without the slightest inquiry—as though I were a dumb animal, a senseless idol; here I saw enemies breathing implacable malice and thirsting for my destruction; here the merciful Lord vouchsafed to me an inexpressible joy and peace of soul; here He vouchsafed me to taste spiritual love and sweetness at the very moment when I encountered my enemy who sought my ruin—and the face of that enemy appeared in my eyes as the face of a radiant Angel. I came to know by experience the mysterious meaning of Christ’s silence before Pilate and the Jewish high priests. What happiness it is to be a victim—like Jesus! Or rather: what happiness it is to be crucified near the Saviour, as once the blessed thief was crucified—and together with that thief, from the conviction of the soul, to confess: “I receive what is worthy” of my deeds“:… remember me, Lord,… in Your kingdom” (Lk. 23:41–42).

Having reached the age of forty, laid low by illnesses, shaken by many tribulations, weakened, and incapable by the very exhaustion of my bodily strength of an active life—what shall I say of my lot?—I see before me no one whose lot I would desire or envy. I am a sinner, deserving of both temporal and eternal punishment; yet the lot of no one among men is enviable to me. When I look upon my sins, they fill me with dread; but even for dreadful sinners there is a Redeemer.

Rulers of the earth, Pastors of the Church, Fathers and Brethren! I am already no longer fit for service to you. To what service is one fit who is bound by infirmity, chained to his bed, kept without escape in his cell? Cast me out—cast me out as an unprofitable servant, who serves only as a burden to you! I will not trouble you with any petitions, or with any care on my behalf. I have no need of a garden with luxuriant shade and fragrant flowers; I have no need of many servants; a humble monk will serve me for the sake of Christ’s name; a lover of Christ will send me food and clothing; I have no need of spacious rooms, no need of any earthly amusement or diversion. Release me—release a sick man fit for nothing! I shall find for myself a quiet and solitary refuge, far from the noise of the capital, far from cities and villages, little known to anyone: there, in solitude, I shall drag out my days to the grave. My infirmity makes the stillness of solitude a necessity for me. You will wish to know: does not some desire lie hidden in my soul?—I can satisfy your curiosity. I am a sinner: I thirst for repentance.

I leave people aside: they are blind instruments in the almighty right hand of Providence; they carry out what He commands or permits. In turning to people I wished to render a tribute of love and respect to my neighbor—a most precious tribute, gladdening the heart of the one who offers it. The world, occupied with its own vanity, its cares, its distractions and advancement, will not even take notice of my words: the voice of a soul that has felt the need for repentance and stillness is incomprehensible and strange to it.

Incomprehensible, all-powerful, all-good, all-wise God and my Lord, Creator and Saviour! In tears and in the dust before You stands a worthless speck of dust—I, called by You into existence, into feeling, admitted to thought and desire! You behold my heart; You behold whether it is truly that word which I intend to utter with mind and lips that is preserved in its hidden depths! You know before my petition what it is I desire to ask; in Your decrees it is already resolved whether to grant or to refuse my petition. But You have given me free will, and I dare to bring before You, to utter before You, the desire of my wretched, my afflicted, my wounded heart! Do not heed my heart, do not heed the words of my prayer, do not act according to my will; but do what is pleasing to You—what Your all-holy, all-wise will chooses and appoints for me. Nevertheless I shall speak the desire of my heart; I shall express in words the striving of my free will!… “Open to me the doors of repentance, O Lover of mankind”! I have lived my life prodigally, I have reached the eleventh hour; all my strength is exhausted; I am unable to fulfill the commandments and services with my weakened body: grant me at least to offer You repentance, lest I be compelled to depart from the inn of this world utterly without hope. You behold my weakness—the weakness of soul and body! I cannot stand against the face of the passions and temptations! Lead me out into solitude and stillness, that there I may be able to plunge wholly—with mind, with heart, and with body—into repentance… I thirst for repentance!… Merciful Lord, quench my unquenchable, consuming thirst: grant me repentance! You Who have poured out upon me so many, so countless benefactions—crown and complete them with the gift of repentance! All-holy Lord! Do not deprive me of the gift for which, in my folly, I have so long entreated You—not knowing what I ask, not knowing whether I am capable of receiving the gift, not knowing whether I shall preserve it if I receive it. One of Your servants, sanctified and illumined by the Holy Spirit, said: “Outside of stillness there is no true repentance.” This word struck my sinful soul;[2] it fixed itself in my memory; it pierces me like a sword each time the recollection of it is renewed. Not seeing repentance in myself, I fall into perplexity; I compel myself toward repentance, but I involuntarily encounter cares and distractions—they rob me of repentance. I cannot hold it amid tumult and agitation: it departs, it slips away, leaving me with emptiness and despondency. Most merciful Lord! Grant me the repentance that is given by stillness—a constant repentance, a repentance capable of cleansing the defilements of soul and body, the repentance that You have granted to all whom You have chosen and called to Yourself, whose names are appointed to be written in the book of life, to whom You have destined to behold Your glory eternally and to glorify Your mercy eternally. The gift of repentance is to me more precious and desirable than the treasures of the entire world. Cleansed by repentance, may I behold Your blameless will, the unerring path to You, and may I proclaim them to my brethren!—And you, my sincere friends, bound to me by the bonds of friendship in the Lord, do not be grieved at me, do not sorrow over my departure. I depart in body in order to draw near in spirit; in appearance I am lost to you, but in reality you gain me. Commit me to repentance: it will return me to you cleansed, illumined, and I shall proclaim to you the word of salvation, the word of God.—“Open to me the doors of repentance”, O Lover of mankind, grant me eternal salvation together with all my friends who have loved me in You—that all of us in eternal blessedness, in joy and unspeakable delight, may glorify the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, God, One and Three-Personed, Who has shown to the human race love and mercy surpassing all words, surpassing all comprehension! Amen.

End of the First Volume.

[1] Reply 342.

[2] Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 41.

Scripture Index

Every Scripture reference identified in this book, sorted in canonical Bible order. Tap a reference to jump to the verse where it appears.

Genesis

Genesis 1:2913. On Fasting (Part 1)

Genesis 2:1720. The Eight Principal Passions, With Their Subdivisions and Offshoots

Genesis 2:2572. On Monasticism (Part 2)
Genesis 3:59. Truth and the Spirit
Genesis 3:1335. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)
Genesis 3:14–1552. On Purity (Part 1)

Genesis 3:1980. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Genesis 6:320. The Eight Principal Passions, With Their Subdivisions and Offshoots; 65. A Meditation at Sunset

Genesis 9:313. On Fasting (Part 1)

Genesis 39:944. A Rule of Attentiveness to Oneself for One Living in the Midst of the World

Exodus

Exodus 2:23–2440. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 9)

Exodus 15:164. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 15:264. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 15:3–464. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 15:664. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 15:864. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 15:14–1564. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 15:1664. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 15:16–1764. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 15:20–2164. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross

Exodus 20:199. Truth and the Spirit
Numbers
Numbers 20:10–1277. Faith and Works (Part 2)
Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 3:2615. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)

Deuteronomy 15:932. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Judges
Judges 1:1531. On Tears
1 Samuel
1 Samuel 2:919. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2)

1 Samuel 2:3078. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

1 Samuel 15:2212. On Love of God

1 Samuel 16:715. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1); 85. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

1 Samuel 17:2885. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

1 Samuel 25:2448. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

2 Samuel

2 Samuel 11:252. On Purity (Part 1)

2 Samuel 12:16–1715. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)

2 Samuel 13:1510. On Love of Neighbor (Part 1)

2 Samuel 16:10–1223. A Meditation on Faith

1 Chronicles

1 Chronicles 21:182. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 1)

Job
Job 1:572. On Monasticism (Part 2)
Job 1:2186. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)
Job 15:1566. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Job 41:2657. The Sea of Life

Job 42:5–684. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1)

Job 42:638. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)
Psalms
Psalms 6:731. On Tears
Psalms 6:9–1031. On Tears
Psalms 8:957. The Sea of Life
Psalms 11:265. A Meditation at Sunset

Psalms 15:525. A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

Psalms 15:823. A Meditation on Faith; 62. Glory to God!

Psalms 15:8–950. On Patience (Part 1)

Psalms 17:26–277. On Reading the Holy Fathers

Psalms 18:568. A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 1)

Psalms 18:978. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Psalms 18:1019. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2); 50. On Patience (Part 1)

Psalms 22:513. On Fasting (Part 1)
Psalms 24:1889. My Lament (Part 2)
Psalms 25:223. A Meditation on Faith
Psalms 30:2126. A Reflection on the Seashore
Psalms 33:1219. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2)
Psalms 33:1511. On Love of Neighbor (Part 2)
Psalms 33:2261. A Meditation on Death
Psalms 34:1039. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)

Psalms 34:13–1482. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 1)

Psalms 36:1180. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Psalms 37:931. On Tears

Psalms 38:132. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Psalms 39:966. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Psalms 41:431. On Tears
Psalms 41:526. A Reflection on the Seashore
Psalms 43:2657. The Sea of Life
Psalms 48:1357. The Sea of Life

Psalms 49:2345. The Praying Mind Seeks Union With the Heart

Psalms 50:620. The Eight Principal Passions, With Their Subdivisions and Offshoots

Psalms 50:782. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 1); 88. My Lament (Part 1)

Psalms 50:1836. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

Psalms 50:1931. On Tears; 34. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 3); 36. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5); 63. The Snares of the Prince of This World; 80. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Psalms 50:2136. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)
Psalms 54:715. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)
Psalms 54:2350. On Patience (Part 1)
Psalms 55:931. On Tears
Psalms 55:1226. A Reflection on the Seashore
Psalms 75:339. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)

Psalms 77:30–3116. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

Psalms 79:631. On Tears
Psalms 83:339. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)
Psalms 83:6–831. On Tears

Psalms 88:89. Truth and the Spirit; 15. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1); 19. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2)

Psalms 88:16–1732. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Psalms 88:2185. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

Psalms 88:2383. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 2)

Psalms 93:17–1832. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Psalms 93:1931. On Tears; 48. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Psalms 96:1052. On Purity (Part 1)

Psalms 103:2518. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Psalms 103:25–2657. The Sea of Life

Psalms 103:2657. The Sea of Life

Psalms 114:325. A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

Psalms 114:6–831. On Tears

Psalms 114:825. A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

Psalms 115:115. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)
Psalms 115:29. Truth and the Spirit
Psalms 115:486. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)
Psalms 118:186. On Reading the Gospel

Psalms 118:542. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Psalms 118:869. Truth and the Spirit

Psalms 118:9666. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Psalms 118:1052. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Psalms 118:10850. On Patience (Part 1)
Psalms 118:127–12812. On Love of God
Psalms 118:13189. My Lament (Part 2)
Psalms 118:13631. On Tears

Psalms 118:14547. A Proof of the Resurrection of Human Bodies, Drawn From the Working of Mental Prayer

Psalms 118:17169. A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 2)

Psalms 118:17550. On Patience (Part 1)
Psalms 125:1–231. On Tears
Psalms 125:5–631. On Tears
Psalms 136:940. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 9)

Psalms 141:225. A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

Psalms 141:725. A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

Psalms 141:825. A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell; 35. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)

Psalms 142:125. A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

Psalms 142:335. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)

Psalms 142:425. A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

Psalms 142:1048. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Proverbs
Proverbs 4:2332. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)
Proverbs 11:110. On Love of Neighbor (Part 1)
Proverbs 11:157. On Reading the Holy Fathers
Proverbs 14:2558. The Conscience

Proverbs 15:2719. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2)

Proverbs 24:1682. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 1)

Proverbs 25:867. The Pharisee (Part 2)
Proverbs 26:125. The Vision of Christ
Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 11:641. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

Ecclesiastes 11:973. On Monasticism (Part 3)

Isaiah

Isaiah 1:620. The Eight Principal Passions, With Their Subdivisions and Offshoots

Isaiah 1:19–202. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Isaiah 12:2–532. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Isaiah 14:13–1536. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

Isaiah 26:832. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Isaiah 42:1–248. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Isaiah 53:766. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Isaiah 66:26. On Reading the Gospel
Jeremiah

Jeremiah 12:1339. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)

Jeremiah 46:2731. On Tears
Lamentations
Lamentations 1:131. On Tears
Lamentations 1:231. On Tears
Ezekiel
Ezekiel 18:21–224. On Repentance
Ezekiel 18:314. On Repentance
Ezekiel 33:114. On Repentance
Daniel
Daniel 3:26–2950. On Patience (Part 1)
Hosea
Hosea 5:1158. The Conscience
Wisdom
Wisdom 1:352. On Purity (Part 1)
Wisdom 8:2–473. On Monasticism (Part 3)
Sirach
Sirach 6:18–1973. On Monasticism (Part 3)

Sirach 6:18–2041. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

Sirach 7:3961. A Meditation on Death

Matthew

Matthew 4:174. On Repentance; 16. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2); 36. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

Matthew 5:336. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5); 66. The Pharisee (Part 1); 80. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Matthew 5:3–431. On Tears

Matthew 5:431. On Tears; 80. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Matthew 5:580. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Matthew 5:680. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Matthew 5:780. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Matthew 5:880. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1); 83. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 2)

Matthew 5:980. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Matthew 5:1666. The Pharisee (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:1778. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:1978. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:2078. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:21–2278. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:23–2418. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Matthew 5:2478. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:2558. The Conscience

Matthew 5:2778. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:2852. On Purity (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:31–3278. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:39–4078. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:4478. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1); 86. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

Matthew 5:4518. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 5:4818. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 80. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

Matthew 6:1–1978. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 6:366. The Pharisee (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 6:618. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Matthew 6:7–816. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

Matthew 6:14–1578. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 6:1718. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Matthew 6:1878. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 6:1978. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 6:2172. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Matthew 6:22–2378. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 6:2378. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 6:242. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Matthew 6:24–3478. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 6:31–3369. A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 2)

Matthew 6:3372. On Monasticism (Part 2); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:178. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:550. On Patience (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:713. On Fasting (Part 1)

Matthew 7:7–852. On Purity (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:872. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Matthew 7:1178. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:1278. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:1378. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:13–1432. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Matthew 7:1432. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:1546. Render True and Peaceable Judgment in Your Gates, and Love No False Oath, Says the Lord Almighty (Zech. 8:16–17)

Matthew 7:15–1678. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 7:1685. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

Matthew 7:2152. On Purity (Part 1)
Matthew 7:235. The Vision of Christ
Matthew 7:2633. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)
Matthew 8:8–139. Truth and the Spirit
Matthew 8:2657. The Sea of Life
Matthew 9:1166. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Matthew 9:1236. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)
Matthew 9:12–1366. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Matthew 9:136. On Reading the Gospel; 18. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 36. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5); 48. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Matthew 9:179. Truth and the Spirit; 37. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 6)

Matthew 10:29–3050. On Patience (Part 1)

Matthew 10:3062. Glory to God!

Matthew 10:34–352. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Matthew 10:34–3610. On Love of Neighbor (Part 1)

Matthew 10:3848. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Matthew 10:38–3966. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Matthew 11:1250. On Patience (Part 1); 53. On Purity (Part 2); 79. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 2); 86. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

Matthew 11:28–3019. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 11:2941. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10); 48. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Matthew 11:3055. One’s Own Cross and the Cross of Christ

Matthew 12:266. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Matthew 12:766. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Matthew 12:18–1948. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Matthew 12:4541. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

Matthew 13:2541. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

Matthew 13:29–3074. On Monasticism (Part 4)
Matthew 14:2734. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 3)
Matthew 15:19–2052. On Purity (Part 1)

Matthew 15:22–2816. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

Matthew 15:2748. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Matthew 16:365. A Meditation at Sunset
Matthew 16:666. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Matthew 16:1266. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Matthew 16:2410. On Love of Neighbor (Part 1); 55. One’s Own Cross and the Cross of Christ; 72. On Monasticism (Part 2); 85. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

Matthew 16:24–2576. Faith and Works (Part 1)

Matthew 16:2648. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Matthew 18:1718. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Matthew 19:4–978. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 19:11–1252. On Purity (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 19:1272. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Matthew 19:16–302. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Matthew 19:1772. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Matthew 19:2132. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1); 50. On Patience (Part 1); 72. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Matthew 20:2386. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

Matthew 21:31–3278. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 22:11–135. The Vision of Christ

Matthew 22:3738. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)

Matthew 22:4010. On Love of Neighbor (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 23:1666. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Matthew 23:2378. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 23:23–2466. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Matthew 23:2632. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)
Matthew 23:33–3666. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Matthew 24:1263. The Snares of the Prince of This World

Matthew 24:1351. On Patience (Part 2); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Matthew 24:1665. A Meditation at Sunset

Matthew 24:4245. The Praying Mind Seeks Union With the Heart

Matthew 25:1258. The Conscience

Matthew 25:2352. On Purity (Part 1)

Matthew 25:343. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 2)

Matthew 25:4011. On Love of Neighbor (Part 2)

Matthew 26:3987. The Cup of Christ (Part 2)

Matthew 26:4159. On the Distracted and the Attentive Life; 87. The Cup of Christ (Part 2)

Matthew 26:5386. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

Matthew 27:3484. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1)

Matthew 28:19–2071. On Monasticism (Part 1)
Matthew 28:205. The Vision of Christ
Mark

Mark 1:154. On Repentance; 76. Faith and Works (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Mark 1:2476. Faith and Works (Part 1)

Mark 7:20–2332. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Mark 8:34–352. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Mark 8:3518. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)
Mark 9:2918. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)
Mark 10:1972. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Mark 10:2118. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 32. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1); 50. On Patience (Part 1); 72. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Mark 10:46–5240. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 9)

Mark 10:4845. The Praying Mind Seeks Union With the Heart

Mark 11:2415. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)

Mark 11:2578. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Mark 11:25–2615. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)

Mark 12:29–3038. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)

Mark 12:29–3178. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Mark 13:3345. The Praying Mind Seeks Union With the Heart

Mark 13:35–3619. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2)

Mark 13:3759. On the Distracted and the Attentive Life; 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke
Luke 1:1533. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)
Luke 1:1718. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)
Luke 2:1472. On Monasticism (Part 2)
Luke 3:932. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

Luke 4:785. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

Luke 5:246. On Reading the Gospel
Luke 6:1216. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)
Luke 6:2513. On Fasting (Part 1)
Luke 6:3618. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Luke 6:3778. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 6:37–3878. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 6:4838. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)
Luke 7:3666. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Luke 7:3966. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Luke 7:4266. The Pharisee (Part 1)
Luke 7:4766. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Luke 8:1539. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 10:1862. Glory to God!

Luke 10:2738. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)

Luke 11:1378. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 11:2341. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

Luke 11:34–3678. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 11:412. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Luke 12:166. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Luke 12:3232. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 12:3372. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Luke 12:33–3478. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 12:35–3678. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 12:4823. A Meditation on Faith
Luke 13:2450. On Patience (Part 1)
Luke 14:2672. On Monasticism (Part 2)

Luke 14:26–272. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Luke 14:3318. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Luke 16:1–312. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Luke 16:92. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1); 7. On Reading the Holy Fathers

Luke 16:1521. On the Virtues Opposed to the Eight Principal Sinful Passions; 48. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1); 66. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Luke 16:2929. A Voice From Eternity (A Reflection at the Grave)

Luke 16:3129. A Voice From Eternity (A Reflection at the Grave)

Luke 17:418. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)
Luke 17:2116. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)
Luke 18:115. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)
Luke 18:315. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)

Luke 18:79. Truth and the Spirit; 15. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1); 37. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 6); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 18:7–816. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)
Luke 18:871. On Monasticism (Part 1)
Luke 18:10–1466. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Luke 18:1137. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 6); 66. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Luke 18:1466. The Pharisee (Part 1)

Luke 21:1778. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 21:1862. Glory to God!

Luke 21:1950. On Patience (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Luke 21:3413. On Fasting (Part 1); 59. On the Distracted and the Attentive Life

Luke 22:5186. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

Luke 23:41–4248. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1); 84. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1); 86. The Cup of Christ (Part 1); 89. My Lament (Part 2)

Luke 24:499. Truth and the Spirit; 10. On Love of Neighbor (Part 1); 74. On Monasticism (Part 4)

John

John 1:12. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

John 1:465. The Vision of Christ

John 3:29. Truth and the Spirit

John 3:612. On Love of God; 80. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

John 3:20–2176. Faith and Works (Part 1)

John 3:2178. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

John 4:23–2432. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1); 38. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)

John 4:489. Truth and the Spirit

John 5:1332. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

John 5:442. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1); 66. The Pharisee (Part 1)

John 6:4723. A Meditation on Faith

John 6:565. The Vision of Christ

John 6:602. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

John 6:632. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1); 76. Faith and Works (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1); 80. On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

John 6:68–699. Truth and the Spirit

John 7:2485. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

John 8:31–329. Truth and the Spirit

John 8:3235. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4); 89. My Lament (Part 2)

John 8:4435. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)

John 10:3–42. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

John 10:43. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 2)

John 10:52. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

John 10:92. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

John 10:382. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

John 11:2535. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4); 77. Faith and Works (Part 2)

John 12:256. On Reading the Gospel

John 12:262. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1); 86. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

John 12:35–3665. A Meditation at Sunset
John 12:366. On Reading the Gospel
John 12:4676. Faith and Works (Part 1)

John 12:486. On Reading the Gospel; 65. A Meditation at Sunset

John 14:118. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 48. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

John 14:232. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

John 14:13–1432. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)

John 14:215. The Vision of Christ; 71. On Monasticism (Part 1)

John 14:2378. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

John 14:23–2412. On Love of God
John 14:245. The Vision of Christ
John 14:2618. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)
John 15:250. On Patience (Part 1)
John 15:45. The Vision of Christ

John 15:105. The Vision of Christ; 12. On Love of God; 76. Faith and Works (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

John 15:18–1972. On Monasticism (Part 2)

John 15:18–2048. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

John 15:18–2533. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)
John 15:1957. The Sea of Life
John 16:139. Truth and the Spirit
John 16:2332. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)
John 16:2432. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)
John 17:350. On Patience (Part 1)
John 17:179. Truth and the Spirit
John 17:2111. On Love of Neighbor (Part 2)
John 18:1186. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

John 19:1085. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

John 19:2484. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1)

Acts
Acts 3:632. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)
Acts 4:19–2032. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)
Acts 4:29–3032. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)
Acts 5:4186. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)
Acts 10:316. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)
Acts 10:1116. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

Acts 10:1478. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Acts 13:2–313. On Fasting (Part 1)

Acts 14:2286. The Cup of Christ (Part 1); 89. My Lament (Part 2)

Acts 20:20–2171. On Monasticism (Part 1)
Acts 20:2176. Faith and Works (Part 1)
Acts 22:2116. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)
Romans
Romans 1:2065. A Meditation at Sunset
Romans 2:44. On Repentance
Romans 2:5–94. On Repentance
Romans 3:11–1865. A Meditation at Sunset
Romans 3:1276. Faith and Works (Part 1)

Romans 5:55. The Vision of Christ; 16. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

Romans 7:2353. On Purity (Part 2)

Romans 7:23–2420. The Eight Principal Passions, With Their Subdivisions and Offshoots

Romans 8:62. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1); 35. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)

Romans 8:6–72. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1); 88. My Lament (Part 1)

Romans 8:78. On Avoiding the Reading of Books That Contain False Teaching

Romans 8:1789. My Lament (Part 2)

Romans 8:1854. A Word of Consolation to Grieving Monks

Romans 8:2618. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Romans 8:26–2739. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)

Romans 8:2718. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Romans 10:9–1076. Faith and Works (Part 1)

Romans 10:179. Truth and the Spirit; 77. Faith and Works (Part 2)

Romans 11:3462. Glory to God!

Romans 12:1878. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Romans 12:1954. A Word of Consolation to Grieving Monks

Romans 13:1410. On Love of Neighbor (Part 1)

Romans 16:1846. Render True and Peaceable Judgment in Your Gates, and Love No False Oath, Says the Lord Almighty (Zech. 8:16–17)

1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 1:107. On Reading the Holy Fathers

1 Corinthians 1:182. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1); 41. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

1 Corinthians 1:2188. My Lament (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 2:978. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 2:1088. My Lament (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 2:1118. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 3:29. Truth and the Spirit

1 Corinthians 3:1888. My Lament (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 3:198. On Avoiding the Reading of Books That Contain False Teaching

1 Corinthians 4:723. A Meditation on Faith; 36. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

1 Corinthians 6:1552. On Purity (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 6:1640. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 9); 52. On Purity (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 6:1752. On Purity (Part 1); 64. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross; 71. On Monasticism (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 6:1831. On Tears

1 Corinthians 7:32–3371. On Monasticism (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 9:2233. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)

1 Corinthians 10:489. My Lament (Part 2)

1 Corinthians 10:1318. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 54. A Word of Consolation to Grieving Monks

1 Corinthians 10:2313. On Fasting (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 11:3188. My Lament (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 14:1938. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)

1 Corinthians 14:2016. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

1 Corinthians 15:4165. A Meditation at Sunset

1 Corinthians 15:4576. Faith and Works (Part 1)

1 Corinthians 15:476. On Reading the Gospel

1 Corinthians 15:5020. The Eight Principal Passions, With Their Subdivisions and Offshoots; 35. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4); 88. My Lament (Part 1)

2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 1:8–936. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

2 Corinthians 2:15–166. On Reading the Gospel

2 Corinthians 3:1816. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

2 Corinthians 4:1689. My Lament (Part 2)

2 Corinthians 6:1654. A Word of Consolation to Grieving Monks

2 Corinthians 6:16–1872. On Monasticism (Part 2); 73. On Monasticism (Part 3)

2 Corinthians 6:1713. On Fasting (Part 1)

2 Corinthians 7:152. On Purity (Part 1)

2 Corinthians 10:136. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

2 Corinthians 10:536. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5); 63. The Snares of the Prince of This World

2 Corinthians 11:13–1484. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1)

2 Corinthians 11:1433. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2); 35. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)

2 Corinthians 11:2036. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

Galatians

Galatians 1:833. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)

Galatians 1:8–933. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)

Galatians 2:238. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)

Galatians 3:2710. On Love of Neighbor (Part 1)

Galatians 5:2418. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 37. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 6); 53. On Purity (Part 2); 55. One’s Own Cross and the Cross of Christ; 64. A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross; 65. A Meditation at Sunset; 72. On Monasticism (Part 2); 82. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 1)

Ephesians

Ephesians 4:1463. The Snares of the Prince of This World; 65. A Meditation at Sunset

Ephesians 4:3065. A Meditation at Sunset

Ephesians 5:1860. On Habits

Ephesians 5:1939. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)

Ephesians 5:3272. On Monasticism (Part 2)
Ephesians 6:1272. On Monasticism (Part 2)
Philippians

Philippians 1:2986. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

Philippians 2:5–884. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1)

Philippians 2:838. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)

Philippians 2:9–1033. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)

Philippians 3:5–678. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

Philippians 4:739. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8); 48. On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

Colossians
Colossians 1:27–2871. On Monasticism (Part 1)
Colossians 1:2865. A Meditation at Sunset

Colossians 2:185. The Vision of Christ; 36. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5); 63. The Snares of the Prince of This World; 84. On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1)

Colossians 3:1168. A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 1)

Colossians 3:12–1318. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 78. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians 4:3–552. On Purity (Part 1)

1 Thessalonians 5:1818. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1); 89. My Lament (Part 2)

1 Thessalonians 5:1965. A Meditation at Sunset

1 Thessalonians 5:2131. On Tears

2 Thessalonians

2 Thessalonians 2:371. On Monasticism (Part 1)

1 Timothy

1 Timothy 1:1940. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 9)

1 Timothy 2:483. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 2)

1 Timothy 2:844. A Rule of Attentiveness to Oneself for One Living in the Midst of the World

1 Timothy 6:2035. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)

2 Timothy

2 Timothy 3:836. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5); 88. My Lament (Part 1)

2 Timothy 3:1257. The Sea of Life

2 Timothy 3:138. On Avoiding the Reading of Books That Contain False Teaching

2 Timothy 4:3–48. On Avoiding the Reading of Books That Contain False Teaching

Titus

Titus 1:1567. The Pharisee (Part 2)

Titus 3:52. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Hebrews

Hebrews 1:33. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 2)

Hebrews 4:389. My Lament (Part 2)
Hebrews 5:1436. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)
Hebrews 6:1–271. On Monasticism (Part 1)
Hebrews 10:2258. The Conscience
Hebrews 10:2674. On Monasticism (Part 4)
Hebrews 10:29–3065. A Meditation at Sunset
Hebrews 10:3876. Faith and Works (Part 1)
Hebrews 11:177. Faith and Works (Part 2)
Hebrews 11:676. Faith and Works (Part 1)
Hebrews 12:650. On Patience (Part 1)

Hebrews 12:854. A Word of Consolation to Grieving Monks

Hebrews 12:28–2912. On Love of God

Hebrews 12:2912. On Love of God

Hebrews 13:1345. The Praying Mind Seeks Union With the Heart

Hebrews 13:1445. The Praying Mind Seeks Union With the Heart

James
James 1:818. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)
James 2:1876. Faith and Works (Part 1)
James 2:21–2376. Faith and Works (Part 1)
James 2:2671. On Monasticism (Part 1)
James 4:315. On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)
James 4:4–518. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)
James 4:735. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)
James 5:1674. On Monasticism (Part 4)
1 Peter
1 Peter 1:1733. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)

1 Peter 2:213. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 2)

1 Peter 4:182. The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 1)

1 Peter 4:1072. On Monasticism (Part 2)

1 Peter 4:10–1178. On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

1 Peter 4:1222. The Apostle Reading for the Day, February 1, 1840

1 Peter 4:1722. The Apostle Reading for the Day, February 1, 1840

1 Peter 5:6–750. On Patience (Part 1)

1 Peter 5:6–918. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

2 Peter

2 Peter 1:216. On Reading the Gospel

2 Peter 3:108. On Avoiding the Reading of Books That Contain False Teaching

2 Peter 3:166. On Reading the Gospel
1 John
1 John 2:4–55. The Vision of Christ
1 John 2:2365. A Meditation at Sunset
1 John 3:1411. On Love of Neighbor (Part 2)
1 John 3:1586. The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

1 John 4:152. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

1 John 4:1611. On Love of Neighbor (Part 2)

1 John 4:20–2111. On Love of Neighbor (Part 2)

Revelation

Revelation 3:1618. On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

Revelation 3:1736. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)

Revelation 3:1836. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5); 56. The Dew

Revelation 3:18–1935. On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)

Revelation 3:212. On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)

Revelation 7:13–1787. The Cup of Christ (Part 2)

Colophon

Ascetic Experiences, Volume One
by Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
The Quiet Abode
by Isaac Levitan (Russian, 1860–1900), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Preface

On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ

- On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 1)
- On Following Our Lord Jesus Christ (Part 2)
- On Repentance
- The Vision of Christ
- On Reading the Gospel
- On Reading the Holy Fathers

- On Avoiding the Reading of Books That Contain False Teaching

- Truth and the Spirit

On Love of Neighbor

- On Love of Neighbor (Part 1)
- On Love of Neighbor (Part 2)
- On Love of God

On Fasting

- On Fasting (Part 1)

On Prayer: Article 1

- On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)

- On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 2)

On Prayer: Article 2

- On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 1)

- On Prayer: Article 2 (Part 2)

- The Eight Principal Passions, With Their Subdivisions and Offshoots

- On the Virtues Opposed to the Eight Principal Sinful Passions

- The Apostle Reading for the Day, February 1, 1840

- A Meditation on Faith

- A Garden in Winter

- A Tree in Winter Before the Windows of the Cell

- A Reflection on the Seashore
- The Prayer of One Persecuted by Men
- The Cemetery

- A Voice From Eternity (A Reflection at the Grave)

- The Teaching of Saint Pimen the Great on Weeping

- On Tears

On the Jesus Prayer

- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 1)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 2)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 3)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 4)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 5)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 6)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 7)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 9)
- On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

- A Rule of Attentiveness to Oneself for One Living in the Midst of the World

- The Praying Mind Seeks Union With the Heart

- Render True and Peaceable Judgment in Your Gates, and Love No False Oath, Says the Lord Almighty (Zech. 8:16–17)

- A Proof of the Resurrection of Human Bodies, Drawn From the Working of Mental Prayer

On Humility (A Conversation between an Elder and His Disciple)

- On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 1)

- On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 2)

On Patience

- On Patience (Part 1)

- On Patience (Part 2)

On Purity

- On Purity (Part 1)
- On Purity (Part 2)
- A Word of Consolation to Grieving Monks
- One’s Own Cross and the Cross of Christ
- The Dew
- The Sea of Life
- The Conscience
- On the Distracted and the Attentive Life
- On Habits
- A Meditation on Death
- Glory to God!
- The Snares of the Prince of This World
- A Song Beneath the Shadow of the Cross
- A Meditation at Sunset

The Pharisee

- The Pharisee (Part 1)

- The Pharisee (Part 2)

A Visit to the Valaam Monastery

- A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 1)
- A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 2)
- A Visit to the Valaam Monastery (Part 3)

On Monasticism

- On Monasticism (Part 1)
- On Monasticism (Part 2)
- On Monasticism (Part 3)
- On Monasticism (Part 4)

Faith and Works

- Faith and Works (Part 1)

- Faith and Works (Part 2)

On the Gospel Commandments

- On the Gospel Commandments (Part 1)

- On the Gospel Commandments (Part 2)

On the Gospel Beatitudes

- On the Gospel Beatitudes (Part 1)

The Christian’s Relation to His Passions

- The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 1)

- The Christian’s Relation to His Passions (Part 2)

On True and False Humble-Mindedness

- On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 1)

- On True and False Humble-Mindedness (Part 2)

The Cup of Christ

- The Cup of Christ (Part 1)

- The Cup of Christ (Part 2)

My Lament

- My Lament (Part 1)

- My Lament (Part 2)

Scripture Index

Colophon