There is one thing that we should know: Once we find a spiritual father, we must fully trust him. We should open all of our spiritual infirmities to him and never hide anything from him.
Do you know that sometimes even a tiny speck of dust can get inside a computer or a part and cause great harm? This happens in the secular life, but even more so, in the spiritual life. We have to be attentive to every minute detail. We must sincerely confess to our spiritual father, like when we visit a doctor and expose our innermost secrets to him. If we don’t tell him about the passions tormenting us, how will he arrive at diagnosis, help us and say:
“Be careful with this passion, do this, don’t do that!”
If we don’t open our heart to him, he won’t be able to help us.
We aren’t doing what we should be doing: despite being busy all the time, we arrive nowhere. And this is a very important thing—having a complete trust in your spiritual father. When you come to me, or to another elder, and confess under the cover of the epitrachileon, you come to Christ Himself. We are simply the hands that Christ in all His love of mankind is using so that we all could inherit our salvation.
Pay less attention to the minor faults a spiritual father may possess, but seek the divine element in him or the elder you trustingly commit yourself to. The more sincerity and love you show to your spiritual father, the more he will also devote himself to you. The Holy Spirit will enlighten him and, as we know from the spiritual law, it will result in spiritual unity. If you live this way, you will often notice how the words of your spiritual father reverberate in your ears:
“Don’t do this! Don’t do that!”
Live the way I am describing here and, if you have no opportunity to send me a letter to Mount Athos, remember me in your prayers from afar! Try to feel how great is the unity of souls! You will feel that when the confessor is praying for you, and when his prayers protect you, something great is happening. A great mystery is taking place, something like a spiritual fatherhood and sonship. If we do not fully trust the spiritual father, our inner conflicts will spiritually paralyze us and we will be unable to do anything. We will continue fighting a relentless and fruitless struggle.
If we do not fully trust our spiritual father, our inner conflicts will spiritually paralyze us and we won’t be able to achieve anything
Another thing we must strive to receive from our spiritual father is a prayer rule according to our measure. You often come to your spiritual father and say:
“Father, I am a great sinner, give me a really difficult prayer rule!”
Brother, I don’t know what rule to give you, I only know that before I came to hear confessions at the analogion, I didn’t say prayers, I didn’t fast the previous evening, I didn’t have prayer vigil, I didn’t make prostrations so that God could enlighten me, a wretched one… And do you really think I can serve for the salvation of your soul? If I did so, I would be a murderer, a spiritual murderer, unworthy of the confidence the Lord had in me and benefaction of the epitrachileon given to me. Therefore, I don’t know what rule I am to give you. But be careful—we are often tempted psychologically when we think of ourselves as being more capable than what the spiritual father sees in us and what he tells us. For example, he tells you to make twelve prostrations, but you protest:
“But, Father, twelve prostrations isn’t enough. Let me do five hundred prostrations!”
“My child, make twelve prostrations a day! And if you keep doing twelve prostrations every day, I will tell you myself or rather the Holy Spirit Himself will tell you: make thirty-three prostrations! Make a hundred prostrations!”
We should always act with the blessing of the elder, the spiritual father, and not at our own discretion, because we sometimes harm ourselves by trying to do excessive feats. But this way we can hurt ourselves And then just try doing ascetic feats with bad health! We need to be extremely careful—and we must find our measure. How much can we run? A hundred meters? Let’s run this much! If we can run a thousand meters, let’s run that far! Can we run a marathon? Let’s do it! But we have to find our measure. We need to discuss it all with our spiritual father and then do everything we have agreed upon. We shouldn’t say right off that you could do four hundred prostrations and then say later:
“Oh, I can’t do four hundred prostrations today, I’m tired!”
Why then did you ask your spiritual father for a blessing to make four hundred prostrations and didn’t allow him to help you?
What would I advise you to do every day in order to see God? For example, to observe the fasts established by our Church. If a doctor tells us:
“Be careful! Don’t eat eggs because they will raise your cholesterol!”
And so we say, “But it’s what the doctor told me!”
Then an angel of God descends from heaven and tells us:
“Eat this Easter egg, Christian, today is the Feast of the Resurrection! Eat just one egg!”
“No, no!” you protest. “The doctor told me not to eat eggs. They raise my cholesterol!”
I follow my family doctor’s opinion, but I don’t listen to my spiritual doctor. I don’t listen to God, Who has established fasting for us. We think of it as something insignificant, yet it is a truly important thing. The Lord’s first commandment to mankind—and you should always remember this—was the commandment to fast. He told the first people created in paradise:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it (see: Genesis 2:17).
What is this? Isn’t it fasting?
Next, you are to read the Holy Scripture. It is a misfortune for us Orthodox who have the true faith that we do not read the Holy Scripture much. It is a shame. How shall we become wise and accept Christ’s word and Christ Himself if we don’t know what He has said to us? You meet Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Pentecostals—I look at them and often weep for myself. They live in spiritual delusion, yet they study the Scriptures. You’ll tell me that they study it like, say, parrots… Well, my Orthodox Christian brother, you should also study the Holy Scripture like a parrot, and you will see how wonderful it is!
Along with the Holy Scripture, we should read the writings of the Church Fathers, as they are a continuation of the Holy Scripture. The same Holy Spirit Who enlightened the Holy Apostles to write the biblical texts also enlightened the Church Fathers to interpret them. We must read patristic writings often. By doing this, we can clear any possible misunderstanding left after we have read the Holy Scripture, since they present a profound analysis of the evangelical Epistles in the Holy Spirit.
The lives of the saints are a continuation of the Scripture—they are the living Gospels. We feel stunned by simply reading about their lives. You read how one saint fasted and you say to yourself, “I will also fast just like him!”
You read of another saint who was striving in vigils, self-deprived of sleep, and so you say, “I will be like this saint, I’m going to do nightly vigils.”
You read in the biography of a third saint how he endured the cross of martyrdom, and you say, “I, too, will bear the same cross of martyrdom like this saint.”
You read in the hagiography of the fourth saint about his mercy and say, “I, too, will forgive what’s owed me for the love of God.”
The saints put in practice everything the Gospel tells us. So, when we read from the lives of the saints, we observe the living Gospel. If you can, read from the Synaxarion and the lives of the saints every day. I would also add this: Don’t do anything else—don’t read prayers, don’t do vigils, don’t pray with prayer beads, don’t read the Holy Scripture, but read the hagiography of one of the saints and you will see how your heart will stay “gentle” throughout the day. As for your thoughts, they will remain “anchored” to God and the love of God. You will see how not only your spiritual perspective will expand in all of its entirety, but also life’s problems will be replaced by the loftiness of your soul and the strength you will receive from reading the hagiography of the saints.
The saints put in practice everything that the Gospel tells us. So, when we read from the lives of the saints, we observe the living Gospel
Regarding the participation in the holy Sacraments. I must talk about this. If we want to live a spiritual life, we need to participate in the holy Sacraments with the blessing of the spiritual father. He will explain to us how to receive Communion, how to recieve Holy Unction, how received blessed water, and so on. We must have the blessing and opinion of our spiritual father regarding it. If we do it on our own, they may become poison, venom, instead of acting as salvific medicine.
Another thing is the memory of death. Our epoch is the most difficult in relation to death. We could go outside and enjoy ourselves without a care, while some others might stay out until dawn, fall asleep at the wheel of their car, get in a car accident, and turn into mush. And then death comes after us. An electrical cable breaks, falls on us, and we die. A drug addict chances upon us on the street, pulls out a knife and kills us. We hear daily of things that were unheard of before. We are constantly in grave danger, yet we don’t have the remembrance of death. We must remember about death, but not the kind of death that chains us and grieves our heart; this is not remembrance of death, but devil’s memory of death.
We must remember death as Christ taught us and think that we are of this world, from the temporal realm; about how at this moment and at this hour Christ can call us to His Judgment Seat and how we will stand before Him. If we have remembrance of death, we will always carry inside our hearts what the Holy Prophet David said: I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved (Acts 2:25). In other words, I always know that I am in the presence of God and I don’t commit sin. This is a major admonition in our spiritual life—to have remembrance of death, but so that it would not dash our spirits. A Christian isn’t afraid of death, but he sees it as it really is; after Christ’s Resurrection we no longer fear it. This is what we should strive for—to never fear death, but as St. Anthony says, to love death.
The Holy Prophet David Let’s talk about unceasing prayer. If an electrical plug isn’t in the socket, the television won’t work. It’s impossible. It is the same with our “spiritual TV”—our spiritual life can’t develop unless the plug is plugged into a socket of the divine grace of our Lord, the so-called “heavenly socket,” where prayer is the plug. Without it, nothing happens.
I mentioned other minute details, like making compromises in our families and daily interactions instead of stomping our feet and saying:
“No! I’m right!”
We should always stand down to the other person. When we humble ourselves before our brother, a spouse, or a child, then God’s grace, the grace of our humility and compromises will return to us.
I am reminded of one elder Aglaius from the Constamonitou monastery. One day I brought him firewood for his stove. He was very advanced in years—he was eighty-six years old. The elder came to me and said:
“Geronda Athanasios, let me say something to you!”
“Yes, I am listening!”
“Why did Moses receive such tremendous grace from God?”
I replied to him:
“Because he had to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to Israel!”
“No, because he humbled himself before God. Remember, when the Lord God called him to be the guide of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt to the land of Canaan, Moses said to Him, “Lord, do not choose me, for I am a stutterer; choose my brother Aaron. You must choose him to be the guide in this exodus, as he has the gift of speech.” But the Lord rebuked Moses, saying, “No, My Spirit rests on you!”
D. Gerhartz. “Deliverance”
“Because he showed humility,” repeated the elder.
We must be careful when we acknowledge that someone else is ranked above us, or this superiority will come down to us. We do honors to ourselves and set ourselves up over others. Always remember this. And don’t assume that if we claim our rights, we will achieve something. We may excuse ourselves, compose ourselves psychologically, but we will lose spiritually. Therefore, let it be your wife’s will, or your child’s—of course, when it doesn’t contradict God’s will. Beware, or you’ll go and mess things up. For example, a wife tells her husband:
“Put this cup here.”
But her husband takes it and puts it in another place.
“Don’t put the cup there, but where I told you!”
Or:
“The vase is filled with red carnations, there are no white ones there, so don’t buy me any white ones!”
Great, and what will happen next? If you don’t buy red carnations or place that cup in another place, will the world perish? Are these minor things worthy of ruining our relationships? If we offend our neighbor, would we be able to pray in peace? Shall we be able to safely read spiritual writings? Or prosper in spiritual life? Will the Holy Spirit act in us? No. It is impossible.
To be continued...
