St. Peter of Damascus on Patience and Humility

“The signs that a person has patience and humility are tears, contrition of soul before God, flight into stillness and patient recourse to God, a diligent enquiry into the Scriptures and a desire, based on faith, to accomplish God’s purpose. When, on the other hand, a person lacks patience and humility, the signs of this are doubt with regards to God’s help, being ashamed to ask questions humbly, avoidance of stillness and the reading of Scripture, a love of distraction and of human company, with the idea – entirely misguided – that one will attain a state of repose in this way.”

St. Peter of Damascus.

The Hiding God

Today has been an eventful day.  We had a hierarchical liturgy, before which some good friends of mine were chrismated, and during which our sub-deacon was ordained a deacon.  There is so much on my mind today that I can hardly keep my mind focused on one subject about which I want to write.  But the convergence of all of these great things brought to my mind a number of things.  I hope to post a number of posts today, but I just had to make this my first.

Last night, Emmy was having a hard time understanding prayers and such, and why we talk about talking to Jesus.  She said, “Jesus isn’t really real really.”  I could tell what she meant.  It wasn’t that He was a cartoon or imaginary, but the thought all of us have had from time to time “why do I spend this time talking with no audible response.”  It seems strange considering every day normal discourse never takes this form.  But, there were  a number of lessons for she and I to learn, and todays liturgy solidified them all

1. God likes playing hide and seek.  God is humble, and He loves us.  These two things mix together in a peculiar way in the life of a creature seeking his/her God and the relationship for which the soul longs.  Being humble He is not easy to find.  Partly because we people, especially here in America, are not humble enough to understand the kind of humility the does not want to be a disturbance, an attraction, or an exhibit.  We cannot understand that there could be a God so humble that He cannot be seen or heard often.  He doesn’t seek a spotlight and He doesn’t desire being the object of people’s pride.  He generally remains hard to find, but not because He is unapproachable or distant, but because the seekers are not seeking a humble God and they miss Him when He shows up.  They go for the one in kingly robes, and pass by the child laid in the feeding trough.

The flip side of this is that He loves us.  Not only is He humble and therefore easy to miss, He also loves us and desires that we be saved.  “Saved” as a word bothers me these days because it almost always stands in the mind for “go to heaven when you die.”  But, God does not desire that we go to heaven when we die primarily, as far as I can tell.  God desires that we be saved, that we be redeemed, that we achieve in ourselves what we were created to be.  He desires that we achieve passionless love and self-emptying life.  It is by hiding that He draws this out of us.  When He hides from our eyes, a child-like faith says, “ready or not here I come.” It is thus through His hiding that we are spurred on to grow, to seek after Him, to love Him.  It is by this game of hide and seek that we are wooed into love by our glorious creator.  Some of us from time to time – I am chief of sinners – get to the point where we feel His hiding place is just too good and we just don’t have what it takes to find Him.  We claim He is too hard to please, too distant, or most terribly angry at us and taking His revenge.  But, this is simply not the case.  He sits in His place whispering to us “you are getting colder, colder…you’re freezing!”  He lures us back into hide and seek.  And just when we think we have looked everywhere…we find Him.  We are aroused with love, faith and hope, and then, with this desire rekindled He begins again to woo us in still greater ways.  His ultimate goal is to woo us into total love with Him, and if we appreciate His love it is downright exciting.

2. Being Orthodox, ordinations are rather strange.  The soon-to-be-ordained person stands in front of the people, with his back to them, looking at an icon for about 45 minutes (and that’s a conservative estimate).  The priests and Bishop worship the Lord, and walk by Him as though he isn’t there.  Suddenly they acknowledged him, washed their hands with his help, and left him again for at least 15 minutes.  It is strange to me, this being my first ordination service.  But it occurred to me today, that this is the lesson I gave to Emmy last night as well.  We stand before the icon of Christ, praying, seeking God and as time passes we wonder, “what in the world is going on!”  We pray, and it seems as though it goes unnoticed.  However, nothing goes unnoticed by the Lord, and He does not overburden us by this waiting. It is simply that God is wise.  He knows the proper liturgical time for our request and it he will not be a moment sooner or later than perfect.  He does not speak, but one day He will speak.  Today we stand on this side of the Iconostasis waiting for the Bishop and High Priest of our souls to say something and let us know when He intends to raise us up and allow us to enter into His full presence.  We wait on the Lord.  And suddenly He comes, but perhaps not yet to raise us up. And at once, unknown to those unfamiliar with the liturgy He celebrates, He turns, comes from behind the iconostasis and dwells with us forever.  Emmy learned this last night with the answer to her question, and I learned it today in Divine Liturgy.

St. Symeon on Love

St. Symeon, following St. Paul, certainly speaks of himself when he confesses: “I know a man who would desire the salvation of his brothers with such ardor… that he would not even wish to enter the kingdom of heaven if in so doing he would have to separate himself from them.

St. Symeon (as quoted in Ages of the Spiritual Life)

St. Nilus on Love

Such a passionate lover “does not condemn either sinners or the children of this world… He desires to love and venerate all without any distinction”, for “after God he esteems all men as God himself”.

St. Nilus (Quoted in Ages of the Spiritual Life)

Divine Love

“What is a charitable heart?  It is a heart inflamed with charity for the entire creation, for men, birds, beasts, evil spirits, all creatures… moved by an infinite pity that is awakened in the hearts of those who are like to God.”

St. Isaac the Syrian

(Quoted in Paul Evdokimov’s Ages of the Spiritual Life)

Love and Mercy

The Gospel ascetic is a witness and an apostle. That is why the monastic tradition, later than that of the desert, dwelt upon the letters of St. John, and insisted on love of neighbor and the ascesis of the heart. It is striking in its excess, not of fear, but of overflowing love and of cosmic tenderness “for every creature, even for reptiles and demons”

The “individual salvationist” who is concerned only with the salvation of his soul manifests a dangerous distortion. We can never keep ourselves alone before God; we are saved only together, “collegially”, as Solviev said: he will be saved who saves others. St. Dorotheus gives a beautiful and clear picture of salvation under the form of a circle. Its center is God, and all men are on the circumference. In directing themselves toward God, each one follows a ray from the circle, and the nearer he approaches the center, the nearer the rays are to one another. Thus the shortest distance between God and man passes through the neighbor. Those exclusively devoted to action should understand that the hermits, by their incessant prayer, intervened actively in history. The efficacy of all human action is dependent on the intercession of their prayer, on the flame of their prayer that they send into the heart of the world. They know that man cannot respond to the entreaties of earth, and that is why they become hermits. St. Isaac the Syrian (in his Sentences) said so to his disciple: “Here, my brother, is a commandment that I give you–let mercy turn the balance of your scales until the moment that you feel in yourself the mercy that God feels toward the world.” At this moment of maturity the recluse can return to the world.

Paul Evdokimov – The Ages of the Spiritual Life

From Patrum Vitae

“If you see a young novice mounting by his own will to heaven, seize him by the feet and throw him on the ground, because his action would be of no value to him.”

St. Herman of Alaska on Sin and Life in Christ

“A true Christian is made by faith and love toward Christ. Our sins do not in the least hinder our Christianity, according to the word of the Saviour Himself. He deigned to say: ‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance; there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.’ “

St. Herman of Alaska.

Buildup in the Calvinist Filter

There is a strange thing that I do from time to time.  Occasionally, when I am contemplating how I fell into some sin or am debating some theological topic, I will begin to imagine talking to my confessor priest about it.  In the course of this fiction, I will imagine what he would say in return.  Now, I am not under the delusion that this is confession or that my mental opinion of what he might say is as authoritative or meaningful as his actual words to me, but I am willing to say that I am blessed by this strange occurrence.  It always causes me to catch myself, and say “what am I doing?” It almost always leads me to prayer on the topic of my imaginary discussion.

This morning I received an answer to this prayer in the form of an article from orthodoxinfo.com.  Thanks God for this!  This article diagnoses me well, coming as I do from a Calvinist background, and helps immensely in the way of teaching me to acquire an Orthodox mind.

St. Anthony on Contentment

Any circumstance in which a man finds himself unwillingly is a prison for him. So be content with whatever circumstances you may now be in, lest by being ungrateful you punish yourself unwittingly.

St. Anthony the Great
commemorated 17 January

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