God In Extremis

If you stand in Church after Liturgy, you know that Something has happened. Do we have any real cognizance of WHAT has happened? We are mere mortals, human beings, flawed, imperfect, weak, distracted, sinful. And yet we believe — sometimes even know — that Something has happened. Our faith tells us. We sing about it. We pray as if it were true. God Himself has come into our midst, we have given ourselves to Him, we have taken Him into ourselves. SOMETHING has happened. GOD has happened, the creator of the universe, God become man for salvation from death, God the beginning and end of all things, every last atom, organism, place, time, galaxy, and supernova. That God has Happened, to us.

We live in a spiritually perilous world, no different from any other historical age perhaps, and yet, very perilous, perilous not because of overt evil, not in our country, not usually. But because of distraction, lack of acknowledgment of God or of anything beyond our daily duties and interests. If would be one thing if God weren’t known. We could go along blithely. But He is. He’s done everything to make Himself known, without compromising Himself or our freedom to know Him fully as He is.

Mothers, Christian mothers especially, have the duty (some say privilege) of raising children and taking care of a husband and home. This is a good thing, clearly. It’s a hard thing in this perilous age, even to keep our families “decent” — maybe even to keep them alive! We don’t want our kids to end up on drugs or have abortions or raise babies outside of wedlock. We want them to grow up to attend church and “believe in something” (preferably our own creed). We want them to be “nice”. We want them to be financially secure (if not successful), have a good education, get a good job, make a nice family of their own, contribute something to society if they can. There are so many risks to the family today, is it not enough to aim to achieve these most basic, good goals?

No. I would argue no. Not only are these not “the goals,” they maybe aren’t even achievable in themselves without The Goal. If we really care, if we really don’t want our kids ending up on drugs or having abortions, maybe we need to look beyond trying to provide them with a “nice” life.

How many mothers (and fathers) — good Christian parents — end up giving their all to provide for all their children’s worldly needs: material needs (food, clothing, home, health) and immaterial needs (education, morals, emotional stability), and still in the process lose their own souls and thereby their children’s souls?

Now I don’t mean that God doesn’t want us to be good mothers and fathers. I don’t mean that He won’t “reward” us for so being. I don’t mean we shouldn’t sacrifice for our families. But we can do all that, and still not make it. It’s not necessarily enough.

No, there’s not some single standard (monkish) to which all people have to live up to, or else not be saved. God saves, we don’t. Thank God! We can’t judge the lives of others, what God calls them to or gives them to achieve. St. John Chrysostom is reputed to have said that it’s the struggle that counts, not where we start or where we end up. Everyone’s struggle is different. For some it may be turning to God IN their drug addiction. For some it may be giving up a wild life to make a barely stable family. And yet, there’s no clear end, no limit. There’s no single standard, even of domestic bliss. It doesn’t stop there. It never stops! The goal is God, God in extremis, God as far as we can stretch or fathom or hope. This God, this saving God in extremis, isn’t found in the “nice family” because the nice family stops at being “nice”. God goes beyond nice, and He is what we’re struggling for.

Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all else will be added unto you. Seek FIRST the Kingdom — the ultimate. Not seek first to get off drugs, then find a nice girl to marry, then raise your kids decently, then go to church, then maybe start thinking about God in old age. No, seek first the KINGDOM. What is this Kingdom? How big are we talking here? Isn’t it what happens in the Liturgy? Isn’t it that presence of God, multiplied a million-fold so as to conquer death itself, that we’re seeking? We’re supposed to start with our eyes on the furthest thing, on a God so good we can’t fathom. Seeking Him, we go through a life’s way that will include whatever other worldly goods God Himself chooses to give us. All else will be added…

If we don’t seek God in that way, then how are our kids going to seek Him? How will they even know He exists in that way? (We barely even know.) If God and His Kingdom are what really matter, then how are we loving our kids if we try merely to give them a “nice family”? It’s not enough to keep our kids off drugs and away from abortion! Yes, that’s already a hard goal, given our perilous times. But if we stop there, can we even succeed there? To be blunt, who cares if we do? What if our kids are meant to struggle further and harder? What if they are meant to know God in extremis, to become saints, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, become martyrs for Christ? What if they can’t get there because we are so worried about painting their bedrooms and getting them to soccer practice?

There is conflict, conflict with the world, even the good parts of it, even the Christian parts of it. Even for the sake of our families (not to mention our own souls and the world itself), what ought we to be doing??

Flesh, Pride, and Fog Revisited

I’m almost convinced that pride, to a large extent, holds our world together. Did you ever read any Ayn Rand? I read her when I was fairly young. I wasn’t swept up in it or anything, but you could acknowledge some of the empirical truths she observed about how some people, the truly competent ones, “make the world go round.” Fr. Schmemann has a passage, I think in his journals, where he talks about all sin boiling down to three things: flesh, pride, and “fog”. All sins ultimately have to do with either 1) gratification of the flesh; 2) pride; or 3) self-deception, delusion (allowing ourselves to be in a fog about stuff). I thought it was very perceptive at the time, and I remember it in this context now.

One of the reasons the fall was so deadly was that at the same time it was the FALL (separation from God, a turn to our own flesh and our own prideful selves) it was also the world’s SOLUTION TO the fall. The world runs “well” (if you can call it that) largely because of all of our activities on behalf of our material interests, and because of our human competence, independence, knowledge, technology, etc. (all of which we “rightly” take “pride” in). And we are ignorant/deluded about God, either through forgetfulness, heresy, or downright atheism. Flesh, pride, and fog. They are the source of all sin, and they are the source of the “survival” (if you can call it that) of our entire world and civilization. They are the human means of holding it all together. Think about it. It’s a little scary. And it begins to make you see how, in the end, there will have to be a totally new creation and a new earth.

The Focus of Love

The newest Berzonsky Thought.

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To a friend, both of us struggling with household difficulties and weakness —

The thing with Christian strength is that it is love. I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately.

First is the difference between natural (or worldly or earthly) love and perfect love, the greatest love, as in John 15:13. The former is the love we have even if we’re not Christian, for spouse, children, friends, family, work, and other affections and worthy causes. Fundamentally I think what perfect love is, and how it transcends earthly love (which can be very strong, even self-sacrificial to a high degree), is that it is concerned with the salvation of another. Yes, it is concerned with his material welfare (and emotional, cultural, intellectual, social welfare) but more directly with his salvation. It is concerned with his soul and where he is going spiritually — even if that means some degree of material, emotional, intellectual, cultural, or social discomfort or hardship. Also, it means laying down one’s life for the sake of another’s salvation. This is what Christ does. What does it mean? It doesn’t mean "material" sacrifice necessarily, although it could. It means always pointing to Christ, to God, to the truth about salvation. We can’t save others. Only God can. So that means that the way we lay down our lives for others is to give our whole lives to God, so that God can save. Christ, for the salvation of the world, lays down his life, and He gives His life to God. He takes up all of humanity — through his whole earthly life, but culminating on the Cross — and takes all of humanity into divinity, and takes divinity into hell and conquers, then raises humanity from death, and takes it to the Father (ascends). It is a total and complete salvation of human life. Then He sends divinity (following on His taking the totality of human life into God) into the world, so that we in the Church, we Christians, who try to follow the way He leads, can do the exact same thing He has done. We take on divinity through the Spirit as He took on humanity through the flesh. If we do this, it IS to bring the salvation of God into the world. It is to lay down our lives for others, and to take them up and to find salvation ourselves. Is this not a strong Orthodoxy? Is this not the greatest love?

Second, I’ve been thinking of our problem of late with kids, house, etc. and the tendency to get distracted and preoccupied with the complexity of too many problems. I laid awake last night worrying about what to do with the cat, the carpets, the kids, cleaning, my own failures to be a "homemaker", and on and on. I tried to pray and no solutions presented themselves. Finally I realized that my focus is all wrong. It’s all about focus. I kept looking for "solutions" to my earthly problems. What happens is that we focus on the world, and we take oblique glances at Christ. He is in the periphery. We call on Him when we think of it or when we need help. It’s not nearly enough, because our focus is still on all our problems. They are what is most present to us, here, now, important, all-consuming. But such a preoccupation is fundamentally wrong. Here is the meaning of the command to pray ceaselessly. Where our focus needs to be is on Christ. He should be all-here, all-now, all-present, all-consuming. If we put Him in front of us, and let everything else (kids, houses, cats, carpets, chores, tasks, and even work and marriages, all earthly loves) take the periphery, to be seen in and through Him, then whatever happens, for good or ill (from a worldly standpoint), it will all be right. It will be salvific. It will be the best we can do. It will be enough. There will be peace. Last night, as I realized this and tried to re-focus, I didn’t have solutions to my pet-kid-house problems, but I did have peace. :)

Perfect Love

The following is in response to a friend who struggles with the passivity of not loving actively. Active love risks sin, risks being overtaken by the passions, but at least it does something. It tries. It does not succumb to an opposite passion of laziness or "apathy". To do nothing because of fear of sin is just as bad, if not worse, than to love boldly and risk a fall.

Yes, that active vs. passive thing. Well, it always occurs to me that passive and passion have the same root meaning. :)

The key, I think, is in what you said about love. Yes, perfect love casts out fear. The key is love. My big revelation lately is that I have to relearn how to love. All my old loves are highly imperfect loves. Christ’s love is perfect. His love is the kind I need.

To relate perfect vs. imperfect love to the passions… what I have found is that imperfect love means I have to struggle, to fight. A "passion" is basically an imperfect love, a "passionate" love, one that, while it IS love and good because it is love, is slightly disorderly or disproportionate. In and of itself it is not sin. Take my love for my husband, for example, or my kids — my existing love for them, as it is right now, which I have even apart from Christ. It’s human love. It’s good! It IS love. However, it is a "passionate" love in that it causes me to have to struggle. Because it is not PERFECT love, there is fear also, and that means I can be tempted. There can be jealousy, insecurity, anger, selfishness, impatience, all these "things" (off-kilter emotions, goals that aren’t quite right, personality conflicts, etc). The door is ajar, and the devil can enter in. It doesn’t mean the devil wins, but it means I have to fight him. And of course I’ll lose sometimes.

I have asked God to help me learn perfect love, esp. for all the people and things, including my studies and interests and so forth, that I love now imperfectly. I ask so that I am not swayed so completely by my passions, so that I can learn not to fear, so that I won’t have to struggle so hard against sin — and lose so badly sometimes, and hurt the people that I love! That is what is so painful.

There is no fear in perfect love because there is no room for the devil to work. It is not a fight. It is pure. One can see how it casts out fear. It operates with the love of God, in complete trust. This kind of love is not "passionate" in the sense that it is not disorderly, disproportionate, off-kilter, prone to emotions that cause me to have to struggle. It is "passive" in the sense that it is GOD’s love. It is totally open and unafraid. You see and love Christ in the other person, and you become Christ (Christ-like) to that person. Or… maybe it is totally and completely active love. If it is the love we have through participation in God’s energies, this is His "action," His dynamis, His energeia, His "activities".

It’s funny you should quote that particular verse. I hadn’t remembered it, but it speaks volumes.

So, to get back to your point…. I would say that yes, one can be "passionate" and love. And one then fights against sin. And this is acceptable. To give up the fight when one loves imperfectly is highly, highly dangerous. I’m not sure a person ever reaches perfect love in this lifetime, so that means there will always be that fight. But in the ideal, there can be dispassion and perfect love which is fearless and victorious and sinless. I think Christ does want to teach us this kind of love.

I would say that Christ Himself had both kinds of love, including the "passionate" kind, because that is part of fallen human nature, which He takes up. He is tempted by the devil. He feels things. He can get angry or afraid. He feels weakness. He hungers and thirsts. He is human! So He fights, but He does WIN. Unlike us, He doesn’t sin. He can be tempted, but He is without sin.

Christ also has perfect love, the kind that casts out fear. This is the love He has from His Father. He gets this from prayer, and from His own divine nature. He uses this to heal and to show who He really is. Perfect love is divine. God IS love.

So Christ is both. He has both kinds of love — by nature. We, by nature, have passionate love. And so we struggle not to sin. But we are also called to live in Christ. And there is the call to purity, to perfect love, to theosis, to sharing in God’s love.

Practically speaking, I think the perfect kind is always a gift from God. He decides how much we’ll have to fight. Basically we have to fight until He gives us perfect love — that is, Himself. We love passionately, and we fight against sin. We fight until we are so tired that we can’t fight any more. And then God has compassion (<— there’s another word with the same root <g>) on us and raises us up.

Creation

From Fr. Schmemann:

Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, personifies the whole of mankind and also each man, as Bethany — the home of Lazarus, — stands for the whole world — the home of man. For each man was created as a friend of God and was called to this friendship: the knowledge of God, the communion with Him, the sharing of life with Him: "in Him was Life and the Life was the light of men" (John 1:4). And yet this Friend, whom Jesus loves, whom He has created in love, is destroyed, annihilated by a power which God has not created: death. In His own world, the fruit of His love, wisdom and beauty, God encounters a power that destroys His work and annihilates His design. The world is but lamentation and sorrow, complaint and revolt. How is this possible? How did this happen? These are the questions implied in John’s slow and detailed narrative of Jesus’ progression towards the grave of His friend. And once there, Jesus wept, says the Gospel (John 11:35). Why did He weep if He knew that moments later He would call Lazarus back to life? Byzantine hymnographers fail to grasp the true meaning of these tears. "As man Thou weepest, and as God Thou raisest the one in the grave…" They arrange the actions of Christ according to His two natures: the Divine and the human. But the Orthodox Church teaches that all the actions of Christ are both Divine and human, are actions of the one and same person, the Incarnate Son of God. He who weeps is not only man but also God, and He who calls Lazarus out of the grave is not God alone but also man. And He weeps because He contemplates the miserable state of the world, created by God, and the miserable state of man, the king of creation… "It stinketh," say the Jews trying to prevent Jesus from approaching the corps, and this "it stinketh" can be applied to the whole of creation. God is Life and He called the man into this Divine reality of life and "he stinketh." At the grave of Lazarus Jesus encounters Death — the power of sin and destruction, of hatred and despair. He meets the enemy of God. And we who follow Him are now introduced into the very heart of this hour of Jesus, the hour, which He so often mentioned. The forthcoming darkness of the Cross, its necessity, its universal meaning, all this is given in the shortest verse of the Gospel — "and Jesus wept."

As creatures, we cannot escape creation. As a good friend of mine says, "There is no pie in the sky." We don’t get to escape to some other existence through religion, or death. Creation is one, and we are here. God has placed us here. He has made us here. He gives us life here.

But what is this creation we inhabit? What is it really? That ought to be a simple question to answer, but it is not.

First off, God made this world. He made creation orderly and beautiful and good — full of potential. It was a Garden in which man and God could walk together. One imagines God and Adam having long, intimate conversations as they walked in the Garden. How ought Adam to till and keep the Garden? What should the animals be called? How are things going with Eve? (God would ask Eve, when He walked with her, how things were going with Adam.) God and Adam knew each other well, and they kept getting to know each other better. This is the way things ought to have been. This is the way they were meant to be. The Garden is Nature. Adam conversing and growing with God is natural. To walk with God is in Adam’s essential human nature.

Then something happened. Sin entered the Garden. Death entered. The serpent entered. Adam and Eve fell, and a pall descended on everything. God could not find Adam anywhere to walk with him and talk with him. Adam, where are you? God made Adam and Eve garments of skin to cover their nakedness. He told them they would return to the earth. They would succumb to diseases, and their bodies would corrupt. As with Lazarus, creation began to stink. God wept.

But not everything was lost, because God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden and made them work and suffer. He made them beget children to keep the race alive, so that the memories of Adam and Eve would not be forgotten, and so that in time a New Adam and a New Eve might try again. He allowed all creation to fall with them so that it might become for them food. Adam and Eve would need a comfort, a temporary sustenance to survive, even if only for a brief span of years, even if their earthly lives were only as grass.

The world became a comfort, an enticement, something to take the place of the lost Walk with God in the Garden. Adam still carried his essential human nature with him. He still needed something to fulfill himself. God was no longer there, not in the same way, the same intimate way. Adam had become separated from Him and from the Life He offered. So Adam turned to the world. Soon he began worshipping the creature over the Creator. It seemed to him that his life had to come from the world, but the world was reluctant to give it. The life of the world itself grew paltry. God was no longer in it, either. So the world needed to be appeased to give up its meager life to Adam. Adam began to worship it and to appease it, the Sun, the Mountains, the Rivers, the god of rain, the god of harvest, the gods of death and of generation, of fire and of war. Give me life, cried Adam.

Thus the world became what Eve and Adam had chosen for it to be: "pleasing to the eye, and good for food," but at the same time disobedience, and separation from God, and death. "You shall surely die." This world of our choosing is with us even today, even after Christ.

Finally, though, in the fullness of time, the New Adam did come. God sent His Son to bring back fallen Adam and Eve, to comfort them and walk again with them. The world became His Kingdom, a place where Christ can reign again, will one day reign again. Even now it bears the first fruits of His Coming. The Vineyard has at last been visited by its Owner. The wicked Tenants have been given notice. Branches have been grafted back into the vine. They have been pruned and cultivated and given time to bear fruit. Man has again walked with God, and God with man. The Garden returns.

The great challenge of Christian life is to keep straight all four of these worlds: to know and appreciate the beautiful world that God made in the beginning; to see that there is sin and death, that despite its primordial beauty, all creation now "stinketh" because of the fall — and with God to weep over it; to acknowledge the temptation of a world that is "pleasing to the eye" but not good for real food, a world whose appeal is temporary and whose life is meager; finally, above all, to keep one’s eye on the Kingdom, the world as it will become — has already become — once again, creation as restored by Christ, a Paradise in which there is eternal Life, ever-flowing water, burdens cast off, and union with God once again, even as Adam himself never knew. 

Assaults

Spiritual assaults and worldly assaults are not the same thing. Sometimes they go together, sometimes they are separate, sometimes they work against each other.

If I am weak physically due to (relatively mild) sickness or lack of sleep or too much going on, it is easy to get "attacked" by irritations, despair, laziness, and all kinds of "stuff." Why does all this spiritual "crap" bother me now of all times? Because if I’m paying attention to my body (self-pitying "woe is me" for this pain or fatigue or stress), then I’m not strong against spiritual temptations. They have a greater chance of succeeding against me. I’m fighting a double-fronted war, against the "flesh" and against the demons, all at the same time.

Very often, worldly stuff simply goes on as it does, every day, day after day, and  it seems to have very little to do with the spiritual life at all. Maybe it’s a misperception on my part (probably!), but if there is any temptation coming from the world at this point, it’s the "benign" pull to get distracted from prayer and remembering God altogether. The world doesn’t seem "hostile"; it’s just "there". Or, maybe it’s the temptation to be content with leaving worldly stuff in the worldly realm and spiritual stuff in the spiritual realm and never the twain do meet. It is to be a dualist, double-visioned in the worst un-integrated way. Here the battle is to stay in the battle at all!

But sometimes worldly assaults, esp. if they are "sent by God", actually help in the spiritual realm. They can help a lot. I remember last summer when we were up in the air as to home, job, where in the world we would live. I felt like a yo-yo as we considered moving to California or Pennsylvania or perhaps back to New Mexico. In the end, we stayed in Kansas City! This  was a tough time to get through, but looking back, I am so thankful for it! Coming so soon after my chrismation, I am sure those external tough times saved me from what I otherwise would have been dealing with "internally". That came later! (And is still coming.) In the face of worldly assault, whether it’s (relatively severe) sickness, joblessness, homelessness, or any other kind of major life trauma, the spiritual mandate is simple: endure with as much patience as you can. It’s time to learn to trust. You don’t have to struggle. Just stand there. Stand. That’s enough. As hard as it is… I think this kind of battle may be the easiest of the three to fight.

Or, maybe the hardest battle to fight is always the one you’re in at the moment!

Or… knowing the mercy of God… maybe your current battle, whatever it is, is truly the easiest… :) Be thankful.

Of Wooden Nickels and Railroad Tracks

A friend and I are struggling with the whole western/eastern notion of the Cross and of sacrifice. Will I ever get this figured out!? It’s SO hard to talk about, because the words slide around. I love the concrete imagery of the Church’s liturgical hymns. Here’s my own attempt at a couple concrete metaphors perhaps useful to explain. They are very poor in comparison with the Church’s hymns, but the liturgical language is so high! Heard in the services of the Church, it so easily passes over my head. Its very richness becomes undigestable.

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Talking about martyrdom (as the extreme) and sacrifice, giving up something…

Maybe it’s like plugging a wooden nickel into a slot machine where the odds of winning are 100% and the payoff is billions. Who wouldn’t “sacrifice” the wooden nickel!? And yet, we’re so fond of our wooden nickels! We don’t want to plop that wooden nickel into the slot because… why? Because it’s “ours”, we like it in our pocket, to rub our fingers over it, it’s weight and smoothness there. It’s a familiar, comforting presence, and we know we won’t get it back if we give it up. We’re attached to it, plain and simple! Besides, wooden nickels are “useful”. They “buy” you things in the game which deals in wooden nickels as currency, and these are the games we like to play. To give up that dang wooden nickel becomes a real sacrifice and a struggle!

Most of all, however, suppose that we, somehow, eventually come to the realization that all we have in our pocket is nothing but a wooden nickel. Even then, we just can’t believe our luck, or that the world could be sooooo good as to give us billions for a wooden nickel!

This is what we can’t wrap our minds around, how God could be that good, that He would be worth that kind of behavior (giving up one’s very life in the case of martyrdom). And the heart of the problem is our very misperception about Who God is because we think that what He really wants is “sacrifice”, understood in the ingrained, old, western way. We cannot help but be suspicious of Him. How the delusion goes in a circle!

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What about the sacrifice of Christ?

What Christ did is to, first of all, TAKE UP a human body (a human nature, body, soul, will, mind, an entire human existence, from the very beginning to the very end, from conception all the way through death, nothing whatsoever left out except sin). This, first of all, was a huge “condescension” on God’s part, so a “sacrifice” on His part to “come down from heaven”. The Son of God, the Word, consents to ally and unify himself with his creature permanently — and do it while he was yet fallen (“in his sins”). (Rom 5:8) “The uncreated becomes created…” as it says in one of the hymns of Annunciation.

Having taken up human nature, Christ goes through every single part of our life. This, too, is “offering” humanity (human nature) to the divine. Mary gives humanness to God (“her flesh”), which He then takes through every part of human life. By living through all of human life as both human and divine, Christ “offers” the human part continually to the divine part for healing and salvation.

It’s kind of like…. laying two railroad tracks through rugged, rocky, mountainous terrain. The one track is guaranteed perfect, the other track will always get messed up. But in laying the track down always together, the messed-up one will always be put exactly right!

The last step in the whole process is the final “offering” of the humanity Christ has taken up to God (the Father) for the healing even of death, the last enemy, the last separation, the last mountain. The cross-continental railroad finds its completion in meeting the track coming from the other side. In Christ, our life is joined at its end with eternity, with eternal life, with the far country.

The good to be gained is totally integral to what God does. Humanity gets taken up, through and through, into the divine, for its salvation; and salvation itself consists in reunion with the divine because that’s what Life IS. God IS Life. God IS Love.

Thoughts on Confession

It’s been almost a year since I was chrismated. What a year it has been! I have come a long way… been through a lot! I have more than a sneaking suspicion that the way I have yet to go is infinitely as long.

Fr. Tim is always talking about Confession. It’s one of the two key sacraments for our everyday life as Christians, the other being Communion. (Baptism, Chrismation, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Holy Unction are once-in-a-lifetime events.) Confession and Communion go together, of course. It’s not that you must confess every time before you commune, whether it’s twice a year or weekly. It’s not that you may commune regularly without confessing — you may not! It’s that regular Confession is required in order to be able to approach Communion at all — if you understand what Communion IS and the potential danger it holds for those who are unprepared. From the other side, Communion is the completion of Confession. After Confession, I never feel it’s quite “done” until I’ve gone to Communion, and that is always the greatest joy! It’s to be fully welcomed back into the Church, the Body of Christ, by receiving the Body of Christ!

I’ve learned a lot about Confession over the last year. I’ve got a long way to go… But I am learning, and I wanted to record a few thoughts, to remind myself, if for no other reason.

First off, I really can’t go to Communion in good conscience without regular Confession. It’s not a legalistic thing. It’s a “feeling”. I look at the icon of Christ while I’m standing in the Communion line, or before I get in line, and I ask Him whether I may approach or not. He either says to me, “Come!” or he says nothing. It’s that Nothing that tells all. (He never rejects me.) Even if I can’t think of anything awful I’ve done, I “just know” that it’s time for a check-up with the Physician. Since I love to receive Communion, it’s always a cue to me that I better spend some serious time preparing for Confession and then actually go before the next Liturgy.

(This is not to say that I never refrain from Communion for other reasons, being unprepared in some other way. Perhaps I was unable to fast, for example. I try hard to avoid situations like that, but it happens.)

Another way I find out I need Confession is that something big blows up in my life. Then it’s obvious. I’ve screwed up majorly. I’m upset. It’s time to repent and let that puppy go! I do need to spend enough time in reflecting first to be sure I’m truly repentant. If I got really hoppin’ mad, for example, I better know not only that uncontrolled “anger is bad,” but also that I have calmed down enough to see that in this particular instance I crossed the line. I have to be sorry for this specific instance, I have to see my own sin as it stands out in this particular case.

Yet a third way I realize I need to Confess is simply that time goes by. It feels so wonderful after Confession (usually after some few hours of “aftermath”) to be forgiven, to be making a new start, that I don’t think about Confession at all again for at least a week or two (unless there’s some sort of blow-up). Slowly but surely, though, as time goes by, I begin to feel more deeply the “Lord, have mercies.” When I pray and look at Christ’s icon, what comes out first is, “Lord forgive me.” When the “Forgive me!” comes out faster than the “Thank you!” then I know it’s time to start figuring out what specifically I need forgiveness for.

This can be hard! I mean, it’s never hard to find stray sins. I got impatient with one of my kids. I said something awkward without thinking. I got irritated. I’m not saying these are petty sins. But they are still so ingrained in my basic personality that if I tried to confess every one of them, my formal Confessions would be very long, very boring, and I’d have to go every half hour! For this kind of stuff, I have to realize “I’m workin’ on it, I’m workin’ on it.” I have to apologize to Christ, ask the Theotokos for protection, and move on. This is good material for routine end of the day review, if not on-the-spot acts of mini-repentance going on constantly. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner! When it comes time for sacramental Confession, I can say that I’ve had a particularly hard time with my impatience or controlling my tongue or whatever. Father has heard it before. “Keep pluggin’ away” is the inevitable counsel. And I do, with God’s help, and (ideally) with as much patience as I can muster.

But this isn’t enough. Or, well, sometimes it is. But most often it’s not. If I truly am plugging away then I don’t usually hear the deafening silence of Christ not telling me to “Come.” I don’t feel the “Lord have mercies” so keenly. I don’t feel the deep-down plea for Him to “Forgive me!”

So how to go deeper? I don’t know! Over the months, I have tried so hard to figure this out. One learns from her mistakes. My biggest mistake is to think too hard, to try to do too much self-analysis. “This is the way I am… my personality… my hang-ups…” “These are my character flaws…” “Here’s some pattern of behavior that I don’t like in myself…” All this can give a clue, I suppose, but it inevitably ends up causing me to think way too much. And the focus is always on me, me, me — which, right there, is fodder for the devil to begin having all kinds of fun. There’s nothing like being tempted by him to “make up” all kinds of dramatic sins in order to have something — anything! — to confess. It seems I can talk myself into just about anything (short of murder, maybe ) if I try hard enough! Blah. This is not the road to clarity, or repentance.

When dealing with the murk of my own soul, I have found about the only thing I can do — not surprisingly — is to pray. “Lord, show me my sins, show me my Confession.” “Most Holy Theotokos, help me.” Then I have to be really patient. This is hard! What I have found, though, is that if I keep praying, and keep waiting, and try to pay attention, it works! After a few days (or a week or at most two), my Confession “congeals,” very often all of a sudden. One day I don’t know how or what to confess, exactly. All I have are vague anxieties. And the next day I have a “list” of seven things! Sometimes they are simple. Other times, they are things that come to my mind from my past. Or they can be hints of underlying, major problems, things I can’t see very well, but which I know are deeply there and deeply destructive.

Once my list “congeals”, then I have to hightail it to Confession as fast as possible. Why? First off, because once I “see” myself, I want all this stuff cast away from me! Also because… the longer I stew over my list, the more I will think about it. I keep reviewing it so I don’t forget. I’ll try to figure out how to say what I need to say. That’s OK. But it’s so easy to go beyond that! To start trying to figure out why I did such and so. Why do I always seem to do such and such? What does it mean? How do these things relate to one another, or to my past sins, or to other worries, or to other people!? Do I really need to confess this? Surely Father doesn’t want or need to hear this one. And on and on and on. I’m still working on this.

The last thing I want to mention, something I’ve learned (from very early on), is that there is always an “aftermath” to Confession, and it’s extremely important to pay attention to. I very often learn as much about where I’m at after Confession as before. I need to think over what Father has said to me, especially which parts of his counsel stand out bright as day. I need to think over what I ended up actually saying in Confession, as opposed to what I thought I was going to say. Sometimes I simply gain a huge insight after the fact into what is really wrong. I don’t feel guilty at that point for not confessing this new thing I get insight into (how could I have known?), but it sure is useful information for the future, for going forward. Sometimes I need a follow-up conversation with Father, or I need to make a resolution to myself. It’s a key time for learning.

All in all, I begin to understand how Confession is a mystery. It is very much an act of grace on God’s part, to show us ourselves, to forgive us, to help us move forward and learn to give more of ourselves to Him. May all Christians learn to appreciate better the sacrament of Confession! How difficult it is, yes. But may we all take courage, and may it give us joy!

Looking to Christ

Looking to Christ for discernment, what do we see? The first thing is that He lived a remarkably short (and difficult) life in this world. Long life, comfort, health, happiness, are not necessary the lot of life lived fully as a creature of God. The martyrs knew what they were about. There is nothing “contrary to nature” in an earthly life cut short for the sake of Christ.

But if Christ is Life Himself, then there is also “proof” in Him of an ongoing existence and reality outside the obvious, outside everyday worldly life. Ongoing life, “eternal life”, is not only possible, but it is more real, more substantial than what we experience now. Neither is it escape from creaturehood. Creatures we remain, even eternally.

During His earthly life, Christ follows and exemplifies His own commandments. He loves His Father by constantly praying to Him and seeking to show Him to those in the world who would see Him. He teaches, He heals, He loves the people, his neighbors, by being with them, by walking among them, by taking all of their fallenness into Himself and His life, including even laying down His life for them and taking it back up again. He leads them through Pascha, the passover, out from Egypt, through the Red Sea, through the desert, and into the Promised Land, through and out from the Hades of fallen creation and death itself to Paradise and heaven, where He sits now at the right hand of the Father.

What can this mean for us? Esp. what can this mean for those of us living in a fallen world of good and evil? Just as Christ shows the way and follows His own commandments, so we must follow Him and obey His commandments, to love God, to find our creaturehood in Him; and to love our neighbor, all the others like ourselves. Christ gives His life for the world. We do the same. What does this mean? Is it only on the Cross? Only by becoming a martyr? No, those are only culminating acts of self-giving. The giving of our whole lives in love to God our Father, and to each other, begins long before that. With Christ it begins in His Incarnation. With us it begins when we enter the Church and begin seriously to live as Christians according to His example. And what does it mean to give oneself, to give one’s life? How best can we love God and others? By giving our whole life to God so that it may be saved, so that we may be illumined by Him, brought into communion by and with Him, made whole by Him. This is His desire for us as well as our own. The only way to become who we are is to GIVE ourselves totally to Him who has made us and remade us, in whose Image we are created and whose Likeness we must recover. WE cannot accomplish our own deification, so we must give ourselves to Him who can.

The same giving of self — wholly to God — is required to love our neighbor as well. There is no better way to serve and love our neighbor than to give ourselves totally and completely to God. Then we can become lights not hid under a bushel. Then the mercy of God can move through us out into the world. Then we can be strengthened and empowered to give only good things, only according to His will, only for His sake, in the most effective way towards the salvation of all. Christ ascends the Cross in order to give Himself completely to the Father for our sakes. He also gives Himself completely to humanity, and also to the devil as “just recompense”, who deserves nothing less than to swallow Life itself and to be destroyed by it! Christ lays down His life and then, at the Resurrection, takes it up again and ascends to heaven as the first-fruits, the first perfected creature, the new Adam made totally whole and alive. We, too, must do the same thing in order to love God and to love our neighbor, to obey Christ and follow Him and find our life IN Him. We, too, must be willing to take up our cross, not only in a martyric end, but daily, every day giving ourselves to the Father for our healing, strengthening, and protection, so that He can make us capable of serving Him in the world, of taking on the sins of the world and meeting them with the power of God in us. Our “sacrifice” is no sacrifice at all except insofar as it is a giving up of sin, of worldly distractions, of the knowledge of evil, of passions and desires focused solely on the pleasures and necessities of this world and not on God. And yet, this is a sacrifice. It is to be willing to die to this world for the sake of Life in Christ and for the sake of becoming deified, living in total communion with God, according to His will and for the good not only of ourselves but of our brothers and sisters as well. This is love, to live wholly with God and to share His Life with all. For the sake of our salvation, we are commanded to love.

Discernment

Yes, if you cry out for discernment, And lift up your voice for understanding,
If you seek her as silver, And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will understand the fear of the Lord, And find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding;

~ Proverbs 2:3-6

The problem with “double vision” is that it’s not enough. One needs a sort of triple vision. The anablep fish looks “above” and “below”, at the heavens and at the earth (at creation). But looking at creation, what he sees is both good and evil. Since the fall, all men have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of both good and evil. We see both, and too often we can’t even tell the difference.

So it’s not enough to see. One must learn to discern, to see heaven and earth and sort out good from evil — that is, to see evil for what it is and to choose therefore the good, to choose Life, to choose Paradise, which is heaven on earth.

In the context of everyday living this is most difficult! The difficulty is not only to bring the Church out into the world, to hold on to the beautiful reality of the prayer of the people; it is also to see how the devil works to prevent that beauty from ever taking hold.

A growing faith teaches how God Himself can use the devil, the prince of this world, and all his operations, to “chastise” his people, to awaken them, to get them to open their eyes, to see more clearly, to repent, and to choose — to choose God for Who He Is, the power to defeat all evil and to win Life for all creation. There is a way through. A way has been made.

So, lacking vision, lacking discernment, how do you gain it? How do you tell what is good and what is evil in the world, especially since the devil loves to appear as an “angel of light”. Evil loves to appear as good. Good things, apart from God, even though they be good, can still lead only to death, to distraction away from the All-Holy, the All-Good (and Life-Creating Spirit). Just as God can make use of the devil, so the devil constantly makes use of God’s good creation to tempt us. We are Eve.

The Jews, when they were carried away into Babylon, had only one thing to connect them to their beautiful homeland, their memory of it, their songs of its glory. The Prodigal, far from home, had only one thing to connect him to salvation, his memory of his father’s house. Adam and Eve, cast out from the Garden of Eden, still remembered what it was like to walk with God. Like the Babylonian Exiles, like the Prodigal, Adam and Eve knew of two places they might live; they knew of two forms of their own nature in which they might live, or rather, one form in which they might live, and one in which they would die (be given over to death). Powerless were the Exiles to go home, until Cyrus freed them. Powerless was the Prodigal to save himself, until he came to his senses, turned his face and feet toward home, and allowed his Father to greet him. Utterly powerless were Adam and Eve to return to Eden before the fulness of time had come, a new Eve had brought forth a child, and God Himself had come into the world as the new Adam to descend into Hades and pull them free.

To discern good from evil in the world is to see the difference between those two places, Paradise and Hades. It is to see the difference between those two forms of nature, the created (as it was meant to be) and the fallen. All human beings are fallen creatures. We partake still of the fall. The fallenness in ourselves requires repentance, healing. But in Christ, all human beings are also restored to their true natures, to true humanity, to the fullness of created being as it is meant to be. For the Christian who sees and seeks his life in Christ, to discern good from evil is to see how to be a true creature, an unfallen creature, a creature with God, a creature of God.

There is no ultimate escaping from this world in the sense of becoming uncreated. Human beings are creatures, not gods by nature. From our fallenness we can flee, but not from our true selves. The anablep fish cannot breathe outside of water. He has gills. He swims. He is a fish. And yet it is also his nature to see always above, to be connected and part of both worlds. The Jews in Exile could dream of a heavenly Jerusalem, and it was a city. The Prodigal could dream of going home, and it was a home. Adam and Eve could dream of Paradise, and it was a garden.

What does humanity in Paradise look like? Being fallen, how can we see what a true creature of God looks like? How can we strive to be such a creature? This is why Christ came, to show us a way, for He is precisely the human creature fully human, fully in communion with God, fully a creature of God, fully with God, in God, and powerful enough to save us: fully God Himself. (Only Christ is both created and uncreated by nature. Our own life in God will be by adoption, by “grace”, by participation in the divine according to His uncreated “energies”, not His uncreated essence.) In Christ there is no sin. Yet there is no aspect of fallenness that He does not take up into His divinity to heal and restore. He spares nothing, descending even into Hades itself, to our world outside Paradise.

Christ, then, is a total answer to the problem of discernment. To see both worlds, Paradise and Hades, to discern good from evil, to distinguish the life of the creature in God from the death of fallen being, we must look constantly to Him.