And straightway Jesus constrained His disciples to get into a ship, and to go before Him unto the other side, while He sent the multitudes away. And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, He was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered Him and said, Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water. And He said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped Him, saying, Of a truth Thou art the Son of God. And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret (Mt. 14:22-34).
Walking on the Water. Artist: Ivan Aivazovsky As we read the story of the Lord’s walk through the raging waters of Lake Gennesaret and the Apostle Peter’s unsuccessful attempt to follow Him, we should ask ourselves: why did Christ do it? Why did He first send the disciples to swim across the “sea” against the wind alone? Why did He walk towards them after a while? Why did He let the Apostle Peter walk on the water and almost drown?
I have one answer to all these questions: He did all this in order to teach us a lesson of attention—in faith, hope and love for God.
After all, without attention, without full concentration on who or what we believe in, our desires, efforts and actions will not achieve the desired goal—they will all be doomed to failure.
We know from the Scriptures and our own experience that success in any work and in life always depends on faith, while failure is caused by lack of faith. A believer is able to move mountains (cf. Mt. 17:20). An unbeliever is incapable of anything. Faith is the beginning, the foundation and the power of activity and life, the source of hope and love.
We know from the Scriptures that there is dead faith, and living faith.
Dead faith is exclusively intellectual, theoretical, inactive, dreamy, and “Manilovian”.[1] Such faith is no different from the faith of the demons, who believe, but tremble (cf. Jas. 2:19). They do not follow the Lord, because they do not listen to Him but to their own lord—satan.
Living faith is a practical faith that is embodied in concrete deeds. Faith without works is dead (Jas. 2:20)—the Apostle James says. Without works, faith is not visible to anyone, because it is fruitless, which means that it does not actually exist.
Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire (Matt. 3:10). Similarly, people who live fruitless lives are condemned to eternal unquenchable fire in hell.
In order to be saved it is not enough just to believe with your mind. It is necessary to show and confirm your faith by deeds of fulfilling the commandments of Christ. Only a living, active faith unites us with the Lord.
What makes faith living? Attention and determination to live up to what you believe in. These things turn faith from theory to practice, from death to life. Thanks to attention and determination, a genuine living faith is born, thanks to them it grows, becomes strong and develops, overcoming everything on its way. Once attention and determination grow weak, faith grows weak too. If we lose them, we also lose faith.
In Orthodox asceticism, attention to your spiritual life, to your salvation is called the virtue of watchfulness. Without it no other virtue, or righteous spiritual life is possible. Its most important components are:
- Paying close attention to all thoughts that enter our mind, distinguishing good thoughts from God and evil thoughts from the enemy, cutting off tempting thoughts;
- concentrated unceasing prayer;
- the unceasing remembrance of God and our impending death, after which we will have to answer for our life to the Lord;
- The humility of the spirit, the soul and the heart.
Thanks to these, watchfulness allows us to preserve our mind and purify our heart from sinful passions rooted in them, and fill them with Divine contemplation, knowledge of God and Communion with Him.[2]
Slackening or loss of attention and determination gives way to doubts, or even complete oblivion and forgetfulness, to the point of total unbelief, godlessness and spiritual blindness.
How does it happen? Why do we lose attention? Because we get distracted. Distraction from God in the Christian faith is nothing but the beginning of sin. Doubt and sin always begin when a person distracts his attention from the Lord and directs it to something else: to himself, to material or spiritual things, or the circumstances of his earthly life. When we are distracted from Christ, we immediately forget about Him and about His presence in our lives. At the same time, according to the Apostle John the Evangelist, all our attention is focused on worldly passions: the lust of the flesh, or the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life, or all of them together (1 Jn. 2:16).
We get distracted from God because someone or something influences us. Such events, thoughts or states that serve as motives, incentives to divert our attention from God are called temptations.
The main and original source of temptations is satan and his subordinate demons, who always try their best to distract our attention from the Savior, switching it to this world (cf. Jn. 18:36), earthly needs and desires.
Every human being is unique and has unique physical and mental properties. The demons try to find an individual approach to everyone, sending the temptations that will be attractive or effective to a given person. Like professional burglars, the demons choose for us precisely those temptations that, like lockpicks, will unlock the doors of our souls for subsequent robbery and murder.
The major types of demonic temptations are fright, seduction, praise, and blame.
First, the demons distract us from faith in Christ by frightening and intimidating us in every possible way, filling us with fear and horror in the face of suffering, torment and death. An example of the effects of this type of temptation can be seen with the Apostle Peter, who, when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid and began to sink. Because of the fear of death, he was distracted and began to look at the storm raging around, and not at Christ.
In this case, the devil took advantage of a real natural disaster, a real difficult and dangerous situation the apostles were in, and played on the human instinct of self-preservation. There are numerous cases in the Lives of saints when demons tried to frighten and confuse ascetics with the help of all sorts of terrible visions.
Secondly, the demons try to distract believers from God, promising them all kinds of sensual pleasures and earthly happiness, which, according to their assurances, can be attained by living a sinful life. Sin is shown by demons as a source of bodily pleasures. Thus, they play on the lowest component of the human being—the body, its instincts, sensations and needs.
The first example of this type of temptation was Eve, who was tempted with the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, because she saw that it was nice to look at and good to eat. Eating that fruit also promised the acquisition of some new secret knowledge (cf. Gen. 3:6).
In addition to carnal, there are also intellectual and spiritual temptations intended for people with a rich inner world. The demons do not tempt such people with gross, sensual pleasures, but with those derived from sublime and refined pursuits of philosophy, sciences, art, education, research and creativity—from what Scripture calls the wisdom of this world (1 Cor. 3:19).
By praising and reproaching us, the demons play on human self-love, vanity and pride. The task of praising is to bring us to the state of self-exaltation, pride, self–justification and judging. The task of censuring is to cause our resentment, envy, judging, anger, sadness and despondency, even to the point of no longer wishing to live.
The demons don’t care how they tempt us. For them the most important thing is the result—when we get distracted and fall away from Christ, which leads to our eternal perdition.
And our task is to understand that your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet. 5:8), to fight his temptations, focusing all our attention on the Savior. This means to always be vigilant, not to lose attention of the heart and our active determination to be with Christ. It is possible to tempt only someone who is absent-minded, who is not focused on cleansing and healing his soul by fulfilling the commandments of God (cf. 1 Tim. 4:16).
A truly attentive believer is unassailable and invincible. All temptations break against him like waves against a rock. After all, God is always everywhere with those who obey the Lord, filling them with His omnipotent grace, like some indestructible vessel. Such believers always have one thought and one confession on their lips, in their minds and hearts: “Truly Thou art the Son of God!”
He who obeys Christ fears nothing and no one, is not tempted by anything or anyone, does not become conceited and is not saddened by anything or anyone. After all, according to the Apostle Paul: If God be for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31).
The Lord did not rescue the Apostle Peter until he remembered Him again, focused all his attention on Jesus again and prayed: “My God! Save me!”
This concerns us as well. Like the apostle, we are born and live among the raging waves of the “sea” of the world, each of which can engulf us. These waves are various temptations and the destructive sinful passions that originate from them.
The only saving haven in the sea of worldly temptations and passions is the ship of the Church of Christ, against which the furious waves beat fiercely but cannot damage it, cannot crush it, or turn it away from its promised goal—from the blessed harbor in the Heavenly Kingdom. No matter what happens around, no matter what storms and tempests rage in the world, the ship of the Church, with the blessing of Christ, steadily follows its narrow and straight path of salvation and theosis (deification).
Every inhabitant of this ship has the opportunity according to his faith to walk on the water after the Lord—the ability to be in the world, but not of the world (cf. Jn. 15:19), the power to live, preach and perform charitable acts in the name of the Savior and for His glory, despite the wild burst of worldwide satanic evil.
The most important thing is not to lose faith, not to doubt, not to take the eyes of your heart off Christ, not to be distracted from contemplating His most radiant Countenance, and to become a pure and clear mirror, a holy icon of the Savior.
Living on earth, in the Church, the faithful unceasingly engage in spiritual warfare, being soldiers of Christ. This warfare is for attention. He who controls someone’s attention controls his consciousness, and therefore his whole soul.
Our organ of attention is the heart. That is why both God with His faithful angels and the devil with his faithful demons strive to influence it. God speaks to the human heart with His Word, good images and thoughts, and providential circumstances of life. The Lord calls, My son, give Me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe My ways (Prov. 23:26). Satan tries to influence our hearts with tempting evil thoughts and images, which are cunningly disguised as kind and pleasant (cf. Mt. 4:1–11). We take one side or the other with our hearts—that is, we freely pay attention to and decide on whose advice we should follow.
This is how the Lord and the devil fight in the battlefield of the human heart for our attention and will. But neither the former nor the latter can force a person to do as they want. The final decision always rests with the person himself.
God never forces us to desire righteousness and to act righteously, because He Himself gave man freedom and wants us to follow Him voluntarily and sincerely. He needs freely loving human hearts.
Satan cannot force a person to submit to his will, because he does not have such power over us, although he would very much like to have it. When God allows it, the devil can only tempt us by suggesting that we commit a sin, luring us with false promises of power, wealth and pleasures, or intimidating us with suffering and death. The responsibility for choosing sin still lies on our shoulders. We can become slaves of the evil one, but only when we ourselves submit to him, having grown the tares of sinful passions in our hearts (cf. Mt. 13:25–30).
So, attention is the central point of spiritual warfare, the focus of Christian life, the criterion and measure of salvation of the human person, the aim and vector of his freedom and life. Misdirected attention distracts, separates a person from God and leads him away from Him, making him an unbeliever and putting him on the broad path of sin and perdition. On the contrary, attention in the Orthodox sense directs us towards God, brings us closer to Him, focuses our hearts on Him, unites us with Him, putting believers on the narrow and straight path leading to salvation.
Let us try to be attentive—first to God, secondly to our neighbors, and thirdly, to ourselves—in order to inherit eternal life.
