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I feel bitter at times when, during Confession, I encounter people who’ve been in the Church for decades but who have stopped in their spiritual development. Not because they have no opportunity to spiritually prosper and fulfill the commandments of our Lord, Who is our complete sanctification, but because of their spiritual sloth and despondency. They stop growing spiritually like a water mill that must rotate all the time, yet it doesn’t. It’s agonizing for me to see how professing Christians live as if they never had confession. They walk away from the analogion as if nothing happened. Everything remains just the same and, as soon as they come home from the temple, they pick fights with their wives and argue with their children. Where did the grace of Holy Communion go? Isn’t it there? It is, but we treat Holy Sacraments inappropriately and, as the result, we live in a state of spiritual schizophrenia: We think of one thing, but we do another, we want to do something, but we can’t do it and thus grow despondent, reach a tipping point and say:
“Now what have I managed to do in my life? I give up.”
We despair, stop growing and don’t move ahead spiritually.
We are often tempted by thoughts that “whisper” to us:
“Put Christ to the test! What good has He done for you? I want to go back to the worldly life!”
And they do go back.
So, why don’t people succeed in the spiritual life? First, we are descendants of the old Adam. Through the Fall of our fore-parents, we have all been wearing the flesh of corruption and mortality. And as the Holy Apostle Paul says, But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind (Romans 7:23). We are tormented and come to the point of saying along with the Holy Apostle Paul, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Romans 7:24). If we say this humbly, then we are saved, if we say it despairingly, we perish. This moment is very important exactly when we are in despair. Despair can lead us to a great blessing, but it can also lead to the depths of hell.
Remember what the Lord said to St. Silouan the Athonite, when he had been praying diligently for twelve years and slept a mere hour a day, but who fell into despair because he prayed, made prostrations and saw demons in front of him, who wanted to distract his attention from prayer? He was filled with despair and said:
“Lord, Thou art inexorable!”
At this very moment the Lord appeared to St. Silouan and said:
“Keep thy mind in hell and despair not!”
“Keep thy mind in Hell and despair not!”
I think this is the most contemporary message Christ can ever give us. We are seething with sins, falls, and passions, but we are also blessed with the opportunity to cast off all that bondage of the old Adam. We take off the old garment of the old Adam and put on a new garment. This requires some struggle, and that is what I want to talk about.
When Abba Sisoes was asked how we can get rid of passions, he replied, “To shed its old skin, the serpent must pass through a narrow crevice.” It’s impossible to do otherwise—such is the spiritual law. To remove the old garment of corruption, we must pass through the crater of asceticism.
But you’d answer to this:
“Father, it is good for you here, in the monasteries, as you are monks, you gave vows of сhastity, obedience, and poverty. You keep vigil, you are like that, but we are different, we live in the world. How can we struggle?”
Remember what Abba Longinus told another brother monk:
“Give blood and receive the Spirit!”
The Holy Apostle Paul says just the same in his Epistle to the Hebrews: Without shedding of blood is no remission (Hebrews 9:22).
The Holy Apostle Paul In the New Testament, the shedding of animal blood has ceased and the fore-image was superseded by the essence. The shadow gave place to grace—we must shed blood of another kind, that is, (spiritually) kill ourselves and our desires. This presents the most difficult sacrifice; it constitutes our sanctification. Naturally, we are sometimes repulsed by the very word “asceticism” and say:
“What asceticism? What am I to do now? What is my measure? I can neither fast, nor sleep; I can't do anything!”
So, failing to recognize our capabilities, we fall into despair and give it all up.
This way, not only do we fail to excuse ourselves, but we also don’t excuse the body of the Church, which expects sanctification from us. We don’t justify the very Incarnation of our Lord, but we existentially and ontologically renounce Him. Why did Christ become man? Precisely because we couldn’t remove this garment of skin ourselves, and so He Who is without sin has put on our garment of skin to help us. It is similar to an old man who can’t walk on his own, but he walks arm-in-arm with his daughter, or his son, or someone else who can walk and who leads him along the road. It is the same with Christ, Who took our arms and took all human nature to lead us to His Heavenly Father. We must seek the way for our personal asceticism. But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk (1 Corinthians 7:17), says the Holy Apostle Paul. Such is the reality.
It is easier for us in monasteries to ascend and to overcome our passions, because we do not have external circumstances that hinder and bind us hand and foot. There are many obstacles in the world, while the monastic life is easy. I am sure of this and the monks say so. Life in the world is hard and requires a greater sacrifice. We don't need to sacrifice much—only our will. You, in the world, have to give up so many things in order to struggle! But even your smallest deed that you perform, the love of God that you express, Christ will accept as a thousand of our deeds. A single deed of yours will be equal to a thousand of our deeds. And you can be saved by just that single deed! You can enter heaven having just one-pound sterling, but with thousands of millions of pounds sterling, you can be left outside its gate. Why? Because the Lord will demand much from him who knows much.
There are certain conditions in the matter of getting rid of garments of skin, that first one being having a spiritual father. If we don’t have an experienced driver at the wheel of our soul, if we don’t have a driver in our car to guide us, we will ruin ourselves. We should never make the slightest move in our spiritual life independently, because there is a risk of falling into delusion. You know that the monks and the great fathers humbled themselves and, even after seeing great visions, they always turned to their neighbor for advice, even if he was the lowliest monk, and said:
“Brother, I had a vision, I saw angels, I saw such-and-such saint, the Most Holy Mother of God. What do you think of it? Is it a vision or a spiritual delusion?”
They never believed in their abilities and their holiness, but they considered themselves totally unworthy of such visions and things. And we, who possess many sins, when our spiritual eyes are clouded, filled with the “pus” of passions, cannot regain our eyesight unless we appeal to a spiritual doctor to prescribe us a remedy or proper glasses. Otherwise, we will perish spiritually. But we must be very careful here. We should look for a spiritual doctor who is right for us, because there are doctors with varying levels of spiritual “degrees.” But just as we try to find a good family doctor to whom we can entrust our lives and the treatment of our illnesses, we must also find a good spiritual father.
You may ask me: “Where can one find such a spiritual father?” Thank God, we have some here. I know a lot of monks, fathers who possess the judgment, kindness, love, understanding, and the fear of God who can guide you. They who have no spiritual father will definitely find such a spiritual doctor. Why? Because without a spiritual father you will end up at the psychiatrist. There is no intermediate decision. It is either a spiritual father or a psychiatrist.
The stress you are dealing with in your daily life will lead you to such desperate situations that you will be unable to cope with them on your own. Don’t harm your soul, don’t destroy yourself, but show humility before your spiritual father and tell him:
“Father, I have sinned!”
Show humility before your spiritual father and tell him, “Father, I have sinned!”
No matter how many medicines your doctors have prescribed, they can never administer to you the grace of a priest’s epitrachileon as you humbly stand under its cover. The grace the Lord has given us is great and we must thank and glorify Him.
Have you met at least one spiritually-gifted man suffering from psychological problems? If you find such person, be sure to introduce him to me, for I have never met one. Have you met anyone who prays and experiences stress? Have you met anyone who willfully takes communion and has problems? It makes it easier even to overcome health problems. Have you met anyone who reads the Psalter and falls into rage? Or, someone who reads the Scripture, but who was falsely сharged? Why? Because by way of all these means we acquire the Holy Spirit.
A person who lives according to Christ to the best of his abilities in his current life is a perfect man. Christ tells us, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). The more we unlock our hearts before Christ and receive Him as our personal Savior and our personal Redeemer, the nearer we draw to Him and have fellowship with Him, becoming Christ-like and worthy of God. Then our whole life is spent under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, when our words, thoughts, and our hearts are striving toward God. But we cannot gain all this without an experienced spiritual mentor.
Some might argue: “How can a spiritual father help me more than a psychiatrist? I can take a sedative and fall asleep.”
I agree; do take pills prescribed by your psychiatrist, but also try the remedy offered by our Church. I am not against psychiatrists, especially if they have the fear of God, as that’s when they can greatly help our troubled soul. But a psychiatrist without faith in God and the fear of God, without faith in the existence of a human soul is similar to a neutralized beast. Draw closer to Christ, pray more and confess more, stand humbly under the epitrachileon and you will see how worries and anxieties disappear from your life. You will see how the Lord, in the midst of challenges of your life, opens the way for you.
The psychiatrist may help us within the limits of our biological survival. Thanks to antidepressants, we can feel good for sixty, seventy, or eighty years. But what will happen to our soul afterwards? We should always think about life after death. To reach eternity—this should be our goal.
You may say to me:
“Father, how well you talk about all that! But we often receive a difficult legacy. My father was an alcoholic and I was born to be an alcoholic, my mother was neurotic and I inherited her flaws and shortcomings.”
I will say the following in response. Let us humbly accept our condition. How are you, brother? You can only see with one eye. You have completely lost your eyesight. It is good that you can’t see and you long to see the sun. Christ is the Light of the world. He is for the blind and those who see. The eyes given to us by the Lord can either help us to find salvation or to cast us into the ocean of perdition. Let us all accept our true state. Sure, it is hard to do. I notice during Confession how some people voice their desire to improve spiritually, but the legacy they have received from their parents and the suffocating feeling inside their souls stays.
But how can they disappear? Taste Christ and see who you would become? We see this in monasteries. Do you think all those who come to monasteries are angels? No one comes to a monastery as an angel. We are all sinners and that's why we go to the monastery to be saved and to be healed. All kinds of people go there. So, those who really live a spiritual life undergo change. They as if grow wings like birds and they soon begin to fly.
Let us humbly accept what the Lord has given us, never envying others, saying, “Why should my neighbor be smarter than me?” Perhaps it’s because if you were to possess that person’s intellect, you could turn into a modern-day Hitler. And so, instead of being good you would harm yourself and others.
“Why don’t I have a lot of money?” Because if the Lord were to give you a lot of money, you would abandon and reject Him, and destroy your soul.
We should throw away all those “why’s.” They are not in keeping with our Christian affiliation, and we must humbly glorify God for what He has given each one of us, and ask Him to give us the strength to carry our personal cross.
