Praying in the Rain

If deception is so deceptive, how does one know if one is being deceived?

Spiritual Letters is a collection of letters written in the early part of the twentieth century by a Roman Catholic priest—and I highly recommend it to English speaking Orthodox Christians who want to be encouraged in prayer.

"As Christians we are all called to be of one mind, but that one mind is not your mind or my mind or somebody else’s—no matter how holy or important that person is or how much authority he or she has. The one mind we are called to have is Christ’s."

"Even if I feel I must oppose in some specific ways someone whose sin, for the sake of Christ, I cannot tolerate; still I must weep, weep as one who also is laden with sin—even if my own particular sins, at least the ones I recognize in myself, are not so socially repugnant."

Concern over God’s judgement has nothing to do with striving to be better. Concern over God’s judgement is to continually strive to enter God’s rest, to humble ourselves and feel sadness over our wretchedness, and to offer that wretchedness to God as prayer. This is what concern for God’s judgement looks like according to St. Isaac the Syrian.

What should lay people do when they have a priest whose words or behaviour is unworthy of the grace of the priesthood? What should any person in authority do to better hear the voice of those under their care, especially when that voice is critical of them?

"Most of us most of the time will be attending to the first stage of the spiritual struggle: the purification of our senses through ascetic discipline, the control of the passions and developing the habit of attention. But even as we are focused mostly on this first stage, it does not mean that, by God’s Grace, we might not also have small clumps, small glimpses of illumination here and there growing in the field of our soul also. And who knows, maybe with time and continued struggle, deep in the heart of one of those little groves, in the darkest, most undisturbed part, who knows maybe the seedling of a great cedar is taking root."

It seems the future of the Church, the future of the next Great and Holy Council (or the continuation of the one that has already begun) depends mostly on us, the people: the moms and dads, the brothers and sisters, the laity in general and the married priests and simple monastics. We’re the one’s whose holiness or lack thereof determines the holiness of tomorrow’s generation of leaders in the Church.

A very wise nun once said something like this: “If you have an evil thought, dismiss it; but if you can’t dismiss it, don’t dwell on it; but if you can’t stop dwelling on it, don’t speak it; but if you can’t keep from speaking it, don’t act on it; but if you can’t keep from acting on it, don’t do it again; but if you do do it again; seek help to find repentance.” The point she was making was this: salvation starts where you are.

St. Isaac the Syrian refers to zeal as a guard dog. He refers to sinful and unwanted thoughts and impulses as birds that fly around our soul. Zeal is the guard dog that barks and warns us that these unwanted thoughts are there and motivates us to chase these birds away.

If we are really interested in helping others who are sick, who are in sin, and who have fallen, then St. Isaac tells us, “know that the sick are in greater need of loving care than of rebuke.”

When I can just be at peace with the fact that I am a mess, but that I am God’s mess (God’s beloved mess), then I don’t have to prove anything. Rather, I can just be my broken self.

We all benefit when we receive one another, when we recognize and encourage the strengths in others, when we submit to the maturity and giftedness of others, then the Church is the Church and we are all saved together.

Too often we say that we love the sinner but hate the sin; however in practice, I don’t think the sinners can tell the difference. May God help us to care for the bodily needs and to lovingly honour our neighbours, especially those we disagree with, and let us strive in appropriate measure to be diligent in our life of prayer and in our ascetic disciplines so that even without a word we may influence our neighbour to turn from what is evil to what is beautiful.

Deciding to follow Christ or repenting from a besetting sin is only the first step in a very long journey. St. Isaac the Syrian likens this walk with Christ to a soft drop that hallows out a hard rock. It is not the gush of water caused by a sudden cloudburst of enthusiasm that actually changes us (although it often sets a direction). It is not the dramatic move that forms us into the image of our Master. Rather, it is the “small but always persistent discipline” that carves away the hard stone of our sinful passions and smooths our rough edges and undermines the foundation of our delusions about ourselves, about the world and about God. This is why St. Isaac tells us that patience, actually, is the evidence of God’s consolation received secretly, or in a hidden way, in our souls.