When God Shuts, None Can Open

“These are the words of the Holy One, the True One, who has the key of David, who opens and none shall shut, who shuts and none shall open.” — Revelation 3:7

There are moments when the soul stands before a closed door, not one barred by sin or negligence, but sealed by a providence that is at once inscrutable and tender. All one can do is stand, palms open, heart emptied of expectation, and let the silence do its slow work of purification.

For the first time in a long while, I understand why the Fathers said that exile and affliction are the school of obedience. It is not only that one learns patience, it is that the will itself is tested to the core, whether it seeks the Giver or the gift.

St. John Chrysostom, writing from his place of banishment to the deaconess Olympia, said, “When I was driven from the city, I felt no distress, but said to myself: if the empress wills it, let her drive me forth, I will not resist her, for only if she wills it does she drive me forth. But if God does not will it, she cannot move me. This is what gives me peace, that all things are governed by God’s providence.”

Those words pierce the heart. For in exile he found not defeat but the perfect confirmation of faith, that nothing, no injustice, no misjudgment, no human refusal, lies outside the will of God. The door closed by men becomes the threshold of divine intimacy.

I see something of that now. Letters arrive, decisions are delayed, communications falter, yet behind it all there is a hidden mercy. The will of God is never in the swiftness of approval but in the crucifixion of our impatience. His word to the soul is often a silence that burns away every form of self-will until the heart begins to love even that silence as communion.

St. Isaac the Syrian wrote that when God wishes to purify a soul, He hides it from the praise of men and buries it in obscurity. “He deprives it,” he says, “of all outward consolation, so that its love might be entirely for Him.”

To care for another in hiddenness, to live each day unseen except by God, is not a departure from priestly life, it is its secret fulfillment. The altar is no longer built of stone but of human frailty and love. To serve one suffering heart with gentleness is to enter into the liturgy of divine compassion itself.

Archimandrite Zacharias writes that obedience, when freely embraced, becomes a personal Pentecost. The Spirit descends upon the soul that ceases to defend its own plans. The more I resist the urge to act, to justify, to hasten outcomes, the more I begin to perceive, faintly and quietly, the peace that surpasses understanding.

The modern world prizes movement and outcomes. God seems to prefer stillness and surrender. The Holy Spirit often arrives not as fire but as the quiet certainty that nothing has been lost in loving obedience.

In the desert, the Fathers did not demand that their path be completed. They only prayed that their hearts remain faithful. One of them said, “He who has attained prayer has attained everything, even if he dies on the road.”

Perhaps holiness is always unfinished on this side of the veil. The saints who walked before us often died amid confusion, exile, or misunderstanding. They were not vindicated; they were transfigured. What the world calls incomplete, heaven receives as total surrender.

There is a strange joy hidden here. When a man ceases to insist on his own resolution, the light begins to return. He no longer measures grace by what is accomplished but by what is offered.

Christ waited thirty years before a single public word. He waited in Nazareth, obscure, obedient, content that His Father’s hour had not yet come. If the Son of God could live in hidden preparation, who am I to resent the long silence of God.

Waiting becomes sacramental when it is filled with love. To care for my mother, to pray the psalms alone, to bow before an unopened door, all these are acts of faith. The silence itself becomes communion.

St. Sophrony wrote that the true measure of a man is how he stands before God when there is no consolation, no visible path forward. “There,” he says, “is the hour when the soul learns eternity.”

Perhaps God withholds clarity so that we might learn to love Him without condition. Perhaps He lets us taste helplessness so that we may be united to the helplessness of the Cross. Perhaps He allows ecclesial and canonical confusion not as punishment but as a stripping of illusion, until all that remains is Christ alone.

To live in this unknowing is not failure. It is the poverty of spirit that opens the kingdom.

Lord, You have hidden the road from my sight, yet You have not hidden Yourself. You have closed the door, but the sound of Your breath still fills the silence.

Teach me to wait without resentment, to serve without recognition, to pray without seeking reward. Let my obedience be pure, not the pursuit of what I desire, but the acceptance of what You permit.

In the care of my mother, in the stillness of these hidden days, let me offer You the liturgy of love and find beneath every uncertainty the quiet certainty of Your will.

Filling the Void: Directionless Modern Spiritualities

Discussions about the spiritual life in modern times rarely seem to give attention to purity of mind and heart.  We expose ourselves indiscriminately to a plethora of distractions - each strengthen the grip of the passions upon us.  And even when attention is given to the subject it is typically amorphous - lacking the clarity and structure of the Fathers' thought.  Yet without such attention given to the interior life men and women are left to wander aimlessly - seeking to fill the void with various popular spiritual practices but never coming to know the healing needed and desired.  

St. Isaac the Syrian in the following brief summary captures the essence of the struggle: If the mind is made pure through guarding the senses through ascetical practices like fasting, vigils and the study of scriptures, one can begin to know a surface level purity - the mind is cleansed of former thoughts and the imagination and memory are gradually made whole.  Such purity, he warns, may be short lived if due diligence is not maintained.  The mind will be quickly soiled again.  As the author of Proverbs writes: "As a dog returns to his vomit, so the sinner returns to his sin."

The purification of the heart, Isaac goes on to explain, only comes through affliction - where attraction to the things of the world is lost and one becomes, as it were, dead to all thing or as St. Paul wrote: "It is no longer I who live I, but Christ who lives within me."  One puts on the mind of Christ.  Few are willing to walk this narrow and difficult path or have the stomach to endure the dreadful conflicts and trials that produce such freedom.  When one clings only to God and his will, the assaults of the world endanger but a little.  

The path put forward seems so simple but it is avoided and ignored but those ruled by their passions and desires for the things of the world.  May God give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear. . .  .  


Purity of mind is one thing, and purity of heart is another, just as a limb differs from the whole body.  Now the mind is one of the senses of the soul, but the heart is what contains and holds the inner senses: it is the sense of senses, that is, their root; but if the root is holy, then the branches are holy.  It is evident, therefore, that if the heart is purified, all the senses are made pure.  Now if the mind, on the one hand, is a little diligent in reading the divine scriptures and toils a little in fasting, vigil, and stillness, it will forget its former activity and will become pure, as long as it abstains from alien concerns.  Even so its purity will not be permanent, for just as it is quickly cleansed, so too it is quickly soiled.

But the heart, on the other hand, is only made pure by many affliction, deprivations, separation from all fellowship with the world, and deadness to all things.  Once it is purified, however, its purity is not soiled by little things, nor is it dismayed by great and open conflicts (I mean dreadful ones), inasmuch as it has acquired, as it were, a strong stomach capable of quickly digesting all the food that is indigestible to those who are weak.  For so it is said among the physicians, that all meats difficult to digest, but it produces great strength in healthy bodies when a strong stomach takes it.

Even so, any purity that comes quickly, with little time and slight labor, is also quickly lost and defiled.  But the purity that comes through many afflictions and is acquired over a long period of time in the soul's superior part is not endangered by any moderate assault.

Desire Purified: Cassian on Grace and Married Love

According to St. John Cassian, those who are married must embrace the spiritual disciplines that foster chastity; for many are not lovers of marriage but slaves of lust.  Marriage in and of itself is not a cure of the passions and spouses who neglect the spiritual life may endlessly continue in the struggle against themselves for purity of heart.  Within them may remain the conflict between sexual habit and continence of heart.  In many ways sexuality is a perfect mirror of the human self and a lens through which we see the contortions and distortions of human motivation.  The desire for chastity must precede the bond of marriage and continue to grow by the grace of God into the perfection of love and purity.  Indeed, the desire for chastity and its pursuit should only lead spouses to embrace married love and each other with still greater affection. Through it one comes to recognize and experience one's spouse as helpmate.  Couples must strive then not to see the sacrament of matrimony as given to them as making the passions licit and so a means of defrauding themselves of the salvation offered them in Christ.  The law commands that marriage be pursued as a great good.  Yet, grace encourages us to an everlasting and incorrupt purity and chastity in every state of life.  

Whoever, then, mounts to this summit of gospel perfection is, by reason of his great virtuousness, raised far above the whole of the law. Despising everything that Moses commanded as insignificant, he knows that he is solely under the grace of the Savior, by whose help he realizes that he has arrived at this most sublime condition. Sin, then, has no dominion over him, `because the love of God that has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us,' excludes every disposition of any other kind. Nor can he desire forbidden things or disdain things that are commanded, since all his concentration and all his longing are constantly fixed upon the divine love, and to such a degree does he not take delight in base things that he does not even make use of those things that have been conceded him.  In the law, however, in which the rights of spouses are observed, it is impossible for the stings of carnal desire not to flourish, even though a roving lasciviousness is restrained and given over to only one woman. It is difficult for the fire, to which fuel is purposely added, to stay within defined limits such that it does not break free and set ablaze whatever it touches. Even if there is always something to block it, so that it is not permitted to flare up outside, it still burns while restrained, because the will itself is guilty and its familiarity with sexual intercourse quickly carries it away to the excesses of adultery. But those whom the grace of the Savior has inflamed with a holy love of incorruption burn up all the thorns of carnal desires with the fire of the Lord's love, such that a dying ember of vice does not diminish the coolness of their integrity.

Doctor of our souls

Cassian, the great teacher that he is, makes it clear that both internal and external disciplines are needed in the spiritual life and the quest for purity of heart.  Above all, humility stands above all the rest because it leads us to distrust the self and place ourselves completely in the care of the "Doctor of our souls." 

Bodily fasting alone is not enough to bring about self-restraint and true purity; it must be accompanied by contrition of heart, intense prayer to God, frequent meditation on the Scriptures, toil, and manual labor. These are able to check the restless impulses of the soul and to recall it from its shameful fantasies. Humility of soul helps more than anything else, however, and without it no one can overcome unchastity or any other sin. In the first place, then, we must take the utmost care to guard the heart from base thoughts, for, according to the Lord, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adulteries, unchastity, and so on” (Matthew 15:19).

The Doctor of our souls has also placed the remedy in the hidden regions of the soul, recognizing that the cause of our sickness lies there when he says: “Whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). He seeks to correct not so much our inquisitive and unchaste eyes as the soul that has its seat within and makes bad use of the eyes that God gave it for good purposes. That is why the book of Proverbs in its wisdom does not say, “Guard your eyes with all diligence” but “Guard your heart with all diligence” (Proverbs 4:23), imposing the remedy of diligence in the first instance upon that which makes use of the eyes for whatever purpose it desires.

St. John Cassian
I, On the Eight Vices”

Purity of Heart in the Writings of the Philokalia

What is the purpose of the asceticism and repentance that have been described in the previous posts?  Again, it is a question the Fathers often asked of themselves, realizing how easy it is to make these practices ends rather the means to an end.  As with so many things in life we can be investing a lot of energy, working very hard but lose sight of where we are heading or what we are seeking.  In this the spiritual life (as we often make it) can become, strangely enough, analogous to an infatuation.  The word infatuation comes from in-fatuous which means “false light”.  Following a false light is the experience often had by those traveling in the desert at night.  They believe they see a light in the distance and so set out to reach it and find warmth and comfort for themselves.  However, it is actually an optical illusion and more often than not they would travel a great distance, expending much effort, only to realize that what promised light and warmth was nowhere to be found.  

Thus, knowing what our immediate purpose and ultimate end are in the spiritual life is essential and there is no better place to begin than with those who walked the path, the “narrow way,” before us.  In particular, there is a notable conversation on this very subject in the Philokalia.  John Cassian and his fellow monk and friend Germanus travelled from Gaul to Egypt in the 4th century to live with the Eastern monks in the Nile delta in order to bring back the wisdom of the Hesychast tradition to the West.  For nearly 20 years they lived with the monks and hermits in order to observe their way of life and learn from their collective wisdom.  

In the first volume of the Philokalia we find Cassian and Germanus engaged in a discussion with Abba Moses who puts this question to them:

“‘You have given up your country, your families, everything worldly in order to embrace a life in a foreign land among rude and uncultured people like us.  Tell, what was your purpose and what goal did you set before yourselves in doing all this?’  We replied: ‘We did it for the kingdom of heaven.’  In response Abba Moses said: ‘As for the goal, you have answered well; but what is the purpose which we set before us and which we pursue unwaveringly so as to reach the kingdom of heaven?  This you have not told me.’  When we confessed that we did not know, the old man replied: ‘The goal of our profession, as we have said, is the kingdom of God.  Its immediate purpose, however, is purity of heart, for without this we cannot reach our goal.  We should therefore always have this purpose in mind; and, should it ever happen that for a short time our heart turns aside from the direct path, we must bring it back again at once, guiding our lives with reference to our purpose as if it were a carpenter’s rule. . . .If we forget this purpose we cannot avoid frequently stumbling and losing our way, for we will be walking in the dark and straying from the proper path’” (Philokalia, Vol. 1, 95).

Yet, what is this purity of heart of which Abba Moses speaks?  Throughout the Philokalia it is described in various ways but most often the Fathers speak of purity as having God at the center of all of our thoughts, words and actions - having God as our one true desire, our beginning and end.  Anthony Coniaris captures this with great clarity and simplicity: 

“Purity of heart is not, first and foremost, a matter of avoiding all sorts of bad things; it is more so, desiring one supreme good above all.  It is to want one thing, to focus our whole life on that one thing.  What is that one thing?  It is to know God, love HIm, and serve Him with all our mind, heart and soul and strength.  When you are pure of heart, you place all your focus on what God wants of you.  You want to be godly, a person of integrity.  Your deepest desire is for God, not for the approval of people.  Thus, purity of heart means loving all people and having a single supreme purpose and direction, not being double minded and unstable (James 1:8).  Such purity or singleness of heart leads  to illumination which, in turn, leads to glorification and union with God” (Coniaris, “A Beginner’s Introduction to the Philokalia”, 122-123).  

Here we begin to see why purity of heart is so important, why it is the purpose of our asceticism, and something to which we must be entirely and exclusively consecrated.  Alphonse and Rachel Goettmann in their work “Prayer of Jesus, Prayer of the Heart” express it ever so pointedly: 

“To be on the way with a divided will, a small fraction of our energy and a mental hesitation, leads nowhere!  We must break radically with our habits, with our way of being and introduce into ourselves - through a decisive act which shakes our whole nature - a new idea force, a consecration of our energies to Jesus Christ so complete that to live from Him becomes for our heart the only desire, and for our will the only activity in all that we live and do. . . .all life becomes a single adoration.  Behind everything, there is the presence: we must feel it always and everywhere, awaken to its constant, intimate, enveloping nearness, intensely perceive it and commune with it in every moment.  To turn all our emotions toward the presence of Christ is the most intense way of purification for the heart.  Sooner or later ‘the pure in heart will see God,’ will feel Him, touch Him, hear Him, smell Him” (155-156).  

Indeed, the more we are purified the more we shall see.  This is captured in exquisite fashion by St. Maximus the Confessor who wrote in the 7th century: 

“If, according to the words of the Divine Apostle, Christ dwells in our hearts by faith and in Him ‘are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’, then in our hearts are to be found all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  And they (these treasures) are revealed to the heart according to the measure of purification of each person by the commandments.  This is the ‘treasure hid in a field’ of your heart, which you have not yet found because of your inaction.  For if you had found it, you would have sold all that you had and bought that field.  But you have abandoned that field and work nearby, where there is nothing but thorns and thistles.  Therefore, the Savior says, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.’  They will see Him and the treasures that are in Him, when they purify themselves by love and self-mastery; the more they are purified, the more (of God) will they see.”  

Ultimately, the importance of purity of heart lies in our destiny.  “The more of God’s love and mercy we receive, the more we commit ourselves to Him, the more we love Him and serve Him, the more we shall be able to experience His kingdom within us, and the better prepared will our eyes be for the brilliance of heaven” (Coniaris, 132). 

"He who humbles himself will be exalted"

"He who humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt. 23:12).  To understand such a teaching, we look first to He who spoke the words - to Christ.  Our Lord humbled himself, took the form of a slave and became obedient unto death - death on a Cross.  This is the Master we follow and the model for our life.  This virtue is exalting, Hesychios tells us, because it destroys all those things that are evil and hated by God.  Humility strips us of all self-will and so all pride in ourselves and deeds.  Even after endless struggle, it leads us to say, “We are worthless servants, we have only done our duty” (Luke 17:10).  Humility acknowledges that all is grace; that all that we do comes from God’s hand.  It is the extreme and perfect humility of Christ that destroys all sin and when it is found in our hearts it strips away all that is contrary to God and his will.

Yet, surprisingly, Hesychios tells us that it is barely to be found among the ascetics (Philokalia, Vol 1, 173).  One may have a partial embrace of the ascetic life and so produce many virtues, but stop there.  Virtue itself can be sought as a possession, used to adorn oneself and exalt oneself in the one’s own eyes and the eyes of others. Humility only comes through great labor and is perfected only through suffering and trial; through self-emptying.  It is what most conforms us to the Lord and its opposite, pride, makes us most like Satan and unclean in the eyes of God:

“Scripture refers to the devil as ‘unclean‘ because from the beginning he rejected humility and espoused arrogance.  As a result he is called an unclean spirit throughout the Scriptures.  For what bodily uncleanness could one who is completely without body, fleshless and weightless, bring about in himself so as to be called unclean as a result? Clearly he was called unclean because of his arrogance, defiling himself thus after having been a pure and radiant angel.  ‘Everyone that is arrogant is unclean before the Lord‘ (Prov. 16:5), for it is written that the first sin was arrogance . . .”(Philokalia, Vol 1, 173).

How is it, then, that this gift of humility is to be acquired?  First, by recognizing that it is indeed a gift.  We are made humble by the mercy of God.  What we can do involves mostly acknowledging the truth about ourselves and our lowliness.  Hesychios writes:

“[We] can recollect the sins we have committed in word, action, and thought; and there are many other things which, reviewed in contemplation, contribute to our humility.  True humility is also brought about by meditating daily on the achievements of our brethren, by extolling their natural superiorities and by comparing our gifts with theirs.  When the intellect sees in this way how worthless we are and how far we fall short of the perfection of our brethren, we will regard ourselves as dust and ashes, and not as men but as some kind of cur, more defective in every respect and lower than all men on earth” (Philokalia, Vol. 1, 173-174).

While Hesychios’ words are terse and while we must be able to distinguish between the kind of mourning for sin that true humility produces and that leads to greater dependence upon God and the self-contempt that leads to depression and unholy sorrow, the counsel here is necessary given the pernicious nature of our pride and of the Devil’s temptations.  It is humility and the ascetic discipline of watchfulness that free a man from his sins and cut out the passions of his soul.  The fruit of this, Hesychios tells us, is purity of heart.  Those who have purified their hearts of all pride and the passions will see God and the greater the purity the “more they will see” (Philokalia, Vol 1, 175).

Of Theology and Theologians: The Science of the Saints and the Fruit and Method of Spiritual Healing

I have always been struck by the patristic understanding of the nature of theology.   One of my earlier posts touched upon the necessity of “becoming theology”, stressing the need to assimilate the words and teaching of the scriptures and the fathers so that our very beings express their truth.  Here, however, I would like to expand upon this notion and address more directly how the Fathers understood the idea of theology itself.  In the glossary of the first volume of the Philokalia we are told that theology “denotes . . .more than the learning about God and religious doctrine acquired through academic study.  It signifies active and conscious participation in or perception of the realities of the divine world. . .  . To be a theologian in the full sense, therefore, presupposes the attainment of the state of stillness and dispassion,  . . . of pure undistracted prayer and so requires gifts bestowed on but extremely few persons.”  The present day idea of schools of theology where one pursues a degree abstracted from the absolute necessity of spiritual formation and the active pursuit of the life of holiness would have been completely foreign to the Fathers.  The study of the patristic texts and particularly those of the hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia reveals that theology is both a fruit and a method of spiritual healing through which one is brought into communion with God.

To enlarge on what has been said we do well to look to the teaching of the Holy Fathers relating to theology and theologians.  Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos in his work “Orthodox Psychotherapy” shows through the Fathers’ writings how theology is first and foremost a therapeutic science - principally a science that cures, that heals, the soul.  He writes:

“I think that we should begin with St. Gregory Nazianzen. . . [He] writes that it is not for everyone to theologize, to speak about God, because the subject is not so cheap and low.  This work is not for all men but ‘for those who have been examined and are passed masters in the vision of God and who have previously been purified in soul and body, or at the very least are being purified.’  Only those who have passed from praxis to theoria, from purification to illumination, can speak about God.  And when is this?  ‘It is when we are free from all external defilement or disturbance, and when that which rules within us is not confused with vexations or erring images.’  Therefore the saint advises: ‘For it is necessary to be truly at ease to know God.’

Neilos the Ascetic links theology with prayer . . . : ‘If you are a theologian, you will pray truly.  And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.’

St. John Climacus [writes]: ‘Total purity is the foundation for theology.’  ‘When a man’s senses are perfectly united to God, then what God has said is somehow mysteriously clarified.  But where there is no union of this kind, then it is extremely difficult to speak about God.’  On the contrary, the man who does not actually know God speaks about Him only in ‘probabilities’.  Indeed, according to patristic teaching it is very bad to speak in conjectures about God, because it leads a person to delusion.  This saint knows how ‘ the theology of demons’ develops in us.  In vainglorious hearts which have not previously been purified by the operation of the Holy Spirit, the unclean demons ‘give us lessons in the interpretation of scripture’.  Therefore a slave of passion should not ‘dabble in theology.’  

The saints lived a theology ‘written by the Spirit’.  We find the same teaching in the works of St. Maximus the Confessor.  When a person lives by practical philosophy, which is repentance and cleansing from passions, ‘he advances in moral understanding.’  When he experiences theoria, ‘he advances in spiritual knowledge.’  In the first case he can discriminate between virtues and vices; the second case, theoria, ‘leads the participant to the inner qualities of incorporeal and corporeal things.’

It must be emphasized that a theology that is not the result of purification, that is, of ‘praxis’, is demonic.  According to St. Maximus, ‘knowledge without praxis is the demons’ theology.’ 

In the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas it is those who see God who are properly theologians, and theology is theoria.  ‘For there is a knowledge about God and His doctrines, a theoria which we call theology. . . .’  Anyone who without knowledge and experience of matters of faith offers teaching about them ‘according to his own reasonings, trying with words to show the Good that transcends all words, has plainly lost all sense.’  And in his folly ‘he has become an enemy of God.’  

Thus, Vlachos tells us, theology is not abstract knowledge or practice, like logic, mathematics, astronomy, or chemistry . . .  .  A theologian who is not acquainted with the methods of the enemy nor with perfection in Christ is not only unable to struggle against the enemy for his own perfection, but is also in no position to guide or heal others.”  

 

Interiorizing the Monastic Vows: Chastity, the Sacredness of Creation and the Virginity of Heart That Should Belong to All

Continuing our reflection on monasticism interiorized, we follow Evdokimov’s analysis of the Christ’s temptation in the desert.  The ordered love of a chaste and pure heart touches upon every aspect of our lives and our relations with God and others.  We find here the expression of the freedom that belongs to us as children of God as well as how we can be tempted to violate the mystery of nature, profane the sacredness of the cosmos, and the creation of God.

Evdokimov begins his analysis in this way: “‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’  To tempt is to try.  To tempt God means to try the limits of his magnanimity.  Has he not created man ‘in his image . . .   .?‘   ‘You are all gods, sons of the Most High.‘  Conscious of his greatness, this ‘little god‘ dares to claim the attributes of his high dignity.  To tempt the Lord in this case is to make use of God . . .in order to satisfy all his desires.”

This command not to tempt God, not to sully and profane chastity touches all those created in God’s image - celibate and married.  “This virtue goes beyond the physiological and expresses the entire and chaste structure of the human spirit.  It constitutes the charism of the sacrament of marriage.  In a wider sense, it inspires the meaning of the sacredness of every particle of God’s creation, inviolable in its expectation of salvation that is to come from the chaste man.  The power of chastity is the contrary of the power of magic and signifies the return to the true ‘supernaturally natural power‘ of paradise.  ‘Thou shalt not tempt thy God‘ means then that you shall not make your conformity to God the accomplice of your passions in anti-chastity.”

One begins to see here why chastity should be loved and cherish so greatly by Christians.  Our very beings become and have been made to manifest the very love of God and become the vehicles of mutual knowledge and self-donation.  “Chaste love is attracted by the heart that remains virgin beyond every corporeal actuation.  According to the Bible, there is a total ‘knowledge‘ of two beings, a conversation of spirit with spirit in which the body seems amazingly the vehicle of the spiritual.  This is why St. Paul says that man should learn ‘to possess his vessel in holiness and honor.‘  As undefiled matter suitable for liturgical use, the chaste man is entirely, body and soul, the matter of the sacrament of marriage, with the sanctification of his love.  The charism of the sacrament effects the transcendence of the self toward the transparent presence of one for the other, of one toward the other, in order to offer themselves together as a single being to God. Chastity integrated all the elements of the human being into a whole that is virginal and interior as to the spirit. . .   .”   St. Augustine speaks of interiorized chastity in this fashion: “He who is not spiritual in his flesh becomes carnal even in his spirit,” and again, “the virginity of the flesh belongs to a small number, the virginity of the heart should belong to all.”   

Christ’s refusal to cast himself down shows us the way to ascend to the Father in love.  “‘To throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple’ means to alienate himself and to render himself useless.  The answer to this temptation and to the concupiscence that inclines a man to seize the power that Christ really possesses to the point of governing even the angels, is chastity.  ‘To cast himself down’ designates the movement from the high to the low, from heaven to hell; this was Lucifier’s exact itinerary and that of the fall of man that brought concupiscence.  Chastity is an ascension; it is the Savior’s itinerary, from hell to the Father’s kingdom.  It is also an inward ascension toward the burning presence of God.  It is within one’s mind that one throws himself into the presence of God, and chastity is only one of the names of the nuptial mystery of the lamb.” 

May God’s love so shape and purify our hearts . . . 

We will return to the interiorized vow of obedience in the next post.

**All quotes from “The Struggle with God” by Paul Evdokmov

Desert Monks Living in the City: The Universal Priesthood and Interiorized Monasticism (The Relevance of Philokalic Spirituality for All Christians)

When picking up the Philokalia, we may wonder what relevance the lives and writings of the desert fathers have for us today.  Why would we, monastics, secular clergy or laity living in the 21st century, read such a work?  Especially in the West, we seem to have so clearly defined and set off one path from the other.  Indeed, there is a kind of clericalism  that exist today (among those living in the world) that perhaps inhibits a certain receptivity to the notion of the the universal priesthood of the laity.  Christ’s call goes out to all: “You are not of this world, you are in the world.” ; a special form of ministry is given - to be a sign, a reference to “the wholly other.”  While we hear of the “universal call to holiness” spoken of frequently in our day, in the West the demarcation between various states of life has often had the effect of breaking down this unique and absolute call of Christ and the Gospel.  In the East, Evdokimov writes, there is a fundamental homogeneity to the spirituality that is in essence monastic.  It is this spirituality that embodies the equivalent of martyrdom - the baptism of blood of the martyrs has passed over to the baptism of ascesis of the monks and becomes the framework for those seeking to respond to the total requirement that the Gospel address to all and everyone.  

Admittedly, this my be hard for us to wrap our minds around at first.  Evdokimov offers us a few thoughts from the Fathers to ponder.  “‘When Christ, says St. John Chrysostom, ‘orders us to follow the narrow path, he addresses himself to all men.  The monk and the lay person must attain the same heights.‘  We can see indeed that there exists only one spirituality for all without distinction as to its exigency, whether for bishop, monk, or lay person, and this is monastic spirituality. . .  .In fact, according to the great teachers, the monks were only those who wished ‘to be saved’, those who ‘led a life according to the Gospel’, ‘sought the one thing necessary’, and ‘did violence to themselves in all things’.  It is quite evident that these words define exactly the state of every believing lay person. . .  .St. John Chrysostom said: ‘Those who live in the world, even though married, ought to resemble the monks in everything else.  You are entirely mistaken if you think that there are some things required of seculars, and others for monks . . . they will have the same account to render.‘  Prayer, fasting, the reading of Scripture and and ascetic discipline are imposed on all by the same prescription.”  Furthermore, Evdokimov writes, “When the Fathers spoke, they addressed themselves to all the members of the mystical body, without any distinction between clergy and laity; the spoke to the universal priesthood.  The actual pluralism of the theologies of the episcopate, the clergy, religious and the laity, being unknown at the time of the Fathers, would be even incomprehensible to them.  The Gospel in its entirety is applicable to every particular problem in any environment” (pp. 114-115).  

Whether monk or lay person makes no difference: God wants all of us and our love.  This understanding of the call to holiness and the character of the universal priesthood, Evidokmov tells us, we find in the thought of the monks themselves.  For example, St. Seraphim of Sarov writes: “As to the fact that you are a lay person and that I am a monk, there is no need to think of that . . .The Lord seeks hearts filled with love for God and their neighbor.  This is the throne on which he loves to sit and on which he will appear in the fullness of heavenly glory.  ‘My child, give me your heart, and all the rest I shall likewise give you’, because it is in the heart of man that the kingdom of God exists . . .The Lord hears the prayers of the monk as well as those of a simply lay person, provided that both have a faith without error, are truly believers and love God from the depths of their hearts, for even if their faith is only a grain of mustard seed, both of them will move mountains.‘  Both, the monk and the lay person, are a sign and a reference to “the wholly other.”  With even greater clarity, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote: “Do not be in a hurry to multiply the monks.  The black habit does not save.  The one who wears a white habit and has the spirit of obedience, humility, and purity, he is a true monk of interiorize monasticism.”

Evdokimov sums it up this way: “The monasticism that was entirely centered on the last things formerly changed the face of the world.  Today it makes an appeal to all, to the laity as well as to the monks, and it points out a universal vocation.  For each one, it is a question of adaptation, of a personal equivalent of the monastic vows.  The three monastic vows constitute a greater charter of human liberty. Poverty frees from the ascendancy of the material; it is the baptismal transmutation into the new creature.  Chastity frees from the ascendance of the carnal; it is the nuptial mystery of the agape.  Obedience frees from the idolatry of the ego; it indicates the sonship to the Father.  All, whether monks or not, ask God for these things in the tripartite structure of the Lord’s prayer: obedience to the will of the Father; poverty of the one who is hungry only for the substantial and eucharistic bread; chastity, the purification from evil” (pp. 116-117).

I find Evdokimov’s remarks compelling for many reasons.  Chief among them is St. Philip Neri’s view of himself as a desert Father living in the city of Rome.  He sought first as a layman, and then only later as a secular priest to pursue without vow the liberty of which Evdokimov speaks as the distinct call to holiness received through the grace of baptism.  He made that personal adaptation and sought first to embrace the universal priesthood and call to holiness.  His heart burned for love of God and was truly His throne.  

In future posts, we will address in detail how Evdokimov envisions this personal adaptation and interiorizing of monastic spirituality.

**All quotes from “The Struggle with God” by Paul Evdokmov