Prayer is Infinite Creation

The Struggle in Prayer

Elder Sophrony



O Holy Spirit, Eternal King
and Giver of life incorruptible:
Look down in Thine infinite mercy
on the infirmities of our nature.
Illumine and hallow us.
Let the light of Thy knowledge
shine forth in our darkened hearts.
And in the earthen vessels of our nature
manifest Thine invincible strength.

Prayer is infinite creation, the supreme art. Over and over again we experience an eager upsurge towards God, followed only by a falling away from His light. Time and again we are conscious of the mind’s inability to rise to Him. There are moments when we feel ourselves on the verge of insanity. ‘Thou didst give me Thy precept to love but there is no strength in me for love. Come and perform in me all that Thou hast commanded, for Thy commandment overtaxes my powers. My mind is too frail to comprehend Thee. My spirit cannot see into the mysteries of Thy will. My days pass in endless conflict. I am tortured by the fear of losing Thee because of the evil thoughts in my heart.’

Sometimes prayer seems to flag and we cry, ‘Make haste unto me, O God’ (Ps. 70.5). But if we do not let go of the hem of His garment, help will come. It is vital to dwell in prayer in order to counteract the persistently destructive influence of the outside world.

Prayer cannot fail to revive in us the divine breath which God breathed into Adam’s nostrils and by virtue of which Adam ‘became a living soul’ (Gen. 2.7). Then our regenerated spirit will marvel at the sublime mystery of being, and our hearts echo the Psalmist’s praise of the wonderful works of the Lord. We shall apprehend the meaning of Christ’s words, ‘I am come that (men) might have life and that they might have it more abundantly’ (John 10.10).

But this life is full of paradox, like all the Gospel teaching. ‘I am come to send fire on earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? (Luke 12.49). Unless we go through this fire that consumes the decaying passions of nature, we shall not see the fire transformed into light, for it is not Light that comes first, then Fire: in our fallen state burning precedes enlightment. Let us, therefore, bless God for this consuming fire. We do not know altogether but we do at least know ‘in part’ (1 Cor. 13.9) that there is no other way for us mortals to become ‘children of the resurrection’ (Luke 20.36), to reign together with Christ. However painful this re-creating may be; however it may distress and lacerate- the process, agonising as it is, will be a blessed one. Erudition requires long labour but prayer is incalculably harder to acquire.

When the Gospels and Epistles become real for us we see how naïve were our past notions of God and life in Him, so far does Reality surpass man’s imagining. ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him’ (1 Cor. 2.9). Even a whisper of the Divine is glory beyond compare to all the content of life lived apart from God.

Strait is the way, and thorny and sorrowful. We shall heave many a sigh as we go along. The peculiar fear which is ‘the beginning of wisdom’ (Ps. 111.10) will clutch at our heart and twist our whole being outside in to concentrate attention on what is happening within. Impotent to follow Christ, we stop short in dread. ‘Jesus went before (the disciples); they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid’ (Mark 10.32).

None of us can escape suffering if we would be born into a new life in God- if we would transform our natural body into a spiritual body. (As St Paul said, ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body’ (1 Cor. 15.44).). Only the power of prayer overcomes the resistance of matter and releases our spirit from this cramped, inert world into the vast open spaces radiant with Light.

The mind is bewildered by the trials that befall in our struggle for prayer. It is not easy to identify their cause or their kind. Until we go ‘into the sanctuary of God’ (Ps. 73.17) we shall often hesitate, unsure whether our works are pleasing to the All-Holy. Since we are not exempt from sin we can only think that it is our wrong-doing which provokes the storms raging around us- though St Peter reminded the early Christians in their despair that ‘the spirit of glory’ (1 Pet. 4.14) rested upon them. One thing, however, is not open to doubt: the hour will come when all our trials and tribulations will disappear into the past. Then we shall see that the most painful periods of our life were the most fruitful and will accompany us beyond the confines of this world, to be the foundation of the Kingdom ‘which cannot be moved’ (Heb. 12.28).

The omnipotent God summoned us from the void. By nature we are of the void; yet even from God we expect consideration and regard. Suddenly the Almighty reveals Himself in boundless humility. The vision floods our entire being and instinctively we bow in adoration. Even this does not seem enough but however much we try to humble ourselves before Him we still fall short of His humility.

Prayer to this God of love and humility rises from the depths of our being. When our heart is filled with love for God we are wholly aware of our closeness to Him- although we know full well that we are but dust (cf. Gen. 3.19). Howbeit, in the visible form of our nature the immortal God described the likeness of His invisible Being, and thus we apprehend eternity. Through prayer we enter into Divine life; and God praying in us is uncreated life permeating us.

In making us in His image, after His likeness, God placed us before Him, not as action of His, entirely subject to Him, but as fact (datum) even for Him- as free beings And by virtue of this, relations between man and God are based on the principle of freedom. When we take advantage of this freedom and commit sin, we thrust God aside. This liberty to turn away from God is the negative, tragic aspect of free will but it is a sine qua non if we are to take hold of the life which is truly divine, life which is not predetermined.

We have the diametrically opposite alternatives: either to refuse God- the very essence of sin- or to become sons of God. Because we are made in the likeness of God we naturally desire the divine perfection which is in our Father. And when we follow Him we are not submitting to the dictates of some extraneous power: we are merely obeying our own impulse to assimilate His perfection. ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect’ (Matt. 5.48).

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name
Thou hast given me to perceive Thy holiness, and I would fain be holy in Thee.

Thy Kingdom come
May Thy glorious life enter into me and become mine.

Thy will be done
in the earth of my created being, as it is in heaven, in Thee Thyself, from all eternity.

Give us this day our daily bread
‘the true bread which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world’ (John 6.32-33).

And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trepass against us
By Thy Holy Spirit grant me so to forgive others that nothing may prevent me from receiving Thy forgiveness.

Lead us not into temptation
Thou knowest my perverseness; that I am ever ready to transgress. Send Thine angel to stand in the way for an adversary against me when I would sin (cf. Num. 22.22).

But deliver us from evil
Deliver me from the power of the mortal enemy, the adversary of man and God.

At first we pray for ourselves; but when God by the Holy Spirit gives us understanding our prayer assumes cosmic proportions. Then, when we pray ‘Our Father’ we think of all mankind, and solicit fulness of grace for all as for ourselves. Hallowed be Thy Name among all peoples. Thy Kingdom come for all peoples that Thy Divine life may become their life. Thy will be done: Thy will alone unites all in love of Thee. Deliver us from evil- from the ‘murderer’ (John 8.44) who, far and wide, sows enmity and death. (According to our Christian interpretation evil- like good- exists only where there is personal form of being. Without this personal form there would be no evil- only determined natural processes.)

The problem of evil in the world generally and in mankind particularly poses the question of God’s participation in the historical life of the human race. Many lose their faith because it seems that, if God existed, evil could not be so rampant and there could not be such widespread senseless suffering. They forget that God cares for man’s freedom, which is the root principle of his creation in the Divine image. For the Creator to interfere when man inclines to evil would be tantamount to depriving him of the possibility of self-determination, and would destroy him altogether. But God can and does save individuals and nations if they tread the road He designates.

Christ said, ‘I came not to send peace, but a sword’ (Matt. 10.34) and ‘division’ (Luke 12.51). Christ summoned us to war on the plane of the spirit, and our weapon is ‘the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ (Eph. 6.17). Our battle is waged in extraordinarily unequal conditions. We are tied hand and foot. We dare not strike with fire or sword: our sole armament is love, even for enemies. This unique war in which we are engaged is indeed a holy war. We wrestle with the last and only enemy of mankind- death (1 Cor. 15.26). Our fight is the fight for universal resurrection.

The Lord justified and sanctified the line of His forefathers. Likewise, every one of us, if we follow Christ, can justify ourselves in our individual being, having restored the Divine image in us through total repentance, and by so doing can help to justify our own forefathers. We bear in ourselves the legacy of the sins of our ancestors; and, by virtue of the ontological unity of the human race, healing for us means healing for them, too. We are so interjoined that man does not save himself alone.

I found that the monks of the Holy Mountain understood this well. A monk is a man who has dedicated his life to God; who believes that if we want God to be wholly with us and in us, then we must give ourselves to Him completely, not partly. The monk renounces marriage and the fathering of children in order to observe and keep Christ’s commandments as fully as possible. If a monk does not achieve his true purpose- to live his life on earth in the spirit enjoined by Christ- his monasticism has not been duly implemented. In other words, he neither assists in the continuation of the human race by procreating children, nor does he entirely further immortality through resurrection. He drops out of the historical plan by his refusal to take positive historical- not to say, political- action, yet he does not transfer existence to the spiritual, meta-historical plane. Having gained no victory on the universal plane of spiritual warfare, he is not helping his fellow-humans to attain the divine plane. However, though the monk may not realise Christian perfection, his striving, even so, helps the whole world.

O Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit,
The only Truth and God;
Ever-living and all-powerful,
Who alone dost give strength to the troubled
and upholdest the weak;
O Thou without Whom the strong shall weary
and the firm grow feeble,
those who are full shall hunger
and young men shall bend:
Hear us in our affliction
and raise us to worthy service of Thee.
We beseech Thee, be swift to hear and have mercy.
 
When by the grace of the Holy Spirit it is given to a man to ‘come…unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ’ (Eph. 4.13), such an event reflects in the most decided fashion not only on the destiny of all mankind- its influence reaches beyond the confines of history and reflects on the whole of cosmic life, for the world itself was created for man.
When we turn away from the path indicated by Christ- that is, from the deification of man by the power of the Holy Spirit- the whole point of man’s coming into the world disappears.
 
Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov (2001) (2nd ed.) His Life is Mine. Chapter 8: The Struggle in Prayer. New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Saint Paraskeve



From the Teachings of St. Kosmas Aitolos
LET US SAY something about the good earth. St. Paraskeve was a twelve-year-old maiden from a noble house. Left an orphan, she divided up all her possessions among the poor, and with these she purchased paradise. In place of cosmetics, she wore tears, remembering tier sins. In place of earrings, she kept her ears open to hear the sacred Scriptures. In place of a necklace, she fasted often, which made her neck shine like the sun. In place of rings, she acquired calluses on her fingers from the many prostrations she made. In place of a golden belt, she had her virginity which she guarded all her life. In place of a dress, she was covered by modesty and fear of God. This is how the saint decked herself.
If there is any maiden who wishes to adorn herself, let her consider what this saint did and let her do the same if she wishes to be saved.

In this way, brethren, St. Paraskeve acquired learning and became very wise. Because of her purity, God found her worthy to perform miracles. She cured the blind, the deaf she raised the dead.

Two Jews, sons of the devil, seeing the saint perform miracles, envied her and betrayed her to King Antoninus as Christian. So the King summoned her and asked her to deny Christ and to worship the gods and she would become queen.
The saint replied: "I am not foolish like you to deny my Christ and to go to the devil; to leave life and go to death. you leave the darkness and come to the light." you hear, my brethren, how outspoken a young girl a king?

Whoever has Christ in his heart fears nothing in the world. If we too wish not to fear either people or demons, let us have God in our hearts.

King said to the saint: "I'll give you three days to obey; if you don't you'll be put to death."
The saint replied: "O King, what you wish to do in three days time, do it now, for I will not deny my Christ."
The King then ordered a big fire to be lighted and over it was placed, filled with tar and sulfur. Seeing the pot, the saint rejoiced, for she was to depart from this false world and to go to that which is real and eternal.
The King ordered the saint to be put into the pot to be boiled. The saint made the sign of the Cross and got in the pot. The king waited two, three hours and seeing she was not being boiled, he said: "Paraskeve, why aren't you burning?"
The saint said: "Because Christ cooled the water and I don't burn."
The King replied: "Sprinkle me with the water so I can see whether it burns or not."

The saint took some water in her two hands and threw it, into his face, and immediately behold the miracle - he became 'blind and his face was flayed. The King then shouted: "Great is the God of the Christians. In him I also believe. Come Out and baptize me."

The saint got out and baptized him and his entire kingdom. 'Later another king beheaded her and she went to paradise to rejoice forever. This woman yielded a hundred, according to the Lord's word.

St. Athenagoras the Athenian: The Resurrection

Nor again is it the happiness of soul separated from body: for we are not inquiring about the life or final cause of either of the parts of which man consists, but of the being who is composed of both; for such is every man who has a share in this present existence, and there must be some appropriate end proposed for this life. But if it is the end of both parts together, and this can be discovered neither while they are still living in the present state of existence through the numerous causes already mentioned, nor yet when the soul is in a state of separation, because the man cannot be said to exist when the body is dissolved, and indeed entirely scattered abroad, even though the soul continue by itself--it is absolutely necessary that the end of a man's being should appear in some reconstitution of the two together, and of the same living being. And as this follows of necessity, there must by all means be a resurrection of the bodies which are dead, or even entirely dissolved, and the same men must be formed anew, since the law of nature ordains the end not absolutely, nor as the end of any men whatsoever, but of the same men who passed through the previous life; but it is impossible for the same men to be reconstituted unless the same bodies are restored to the same souls. But that the same soul should obtain the same body is impossible in any other way, and possible only by the resurrection; for if this takes place, an end befitting the nature of men follows also. And we shall make no mistake in saying, that the final cause of an intelligent life and rational judgment, is to be occupied uninterruptedly with those objects to which the natural reason is chiefly and primaily adapted, and to delight unceasingly in the contemplation of Him who is, and of His decrees, notwithstanding that the majority of men, because they are affected too passionately and too violently by things below, pass through life without attaining this object. For the large number of those who fail of the end that belongs to them does not make void the common lot, since the examination relates to individuals, and the reward or punishment of lives ill or well spent is proportioned to the merit of each.

For the entire treatise please see: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/athenagoras-resurrection.html

The Face of Christ through the Ages

4th. Century Roman Catacombs

6th/7th Century Sinai

12th Century Cappadocia

13th Century Mt. Athos

20th Century Greece

21st Century Greece

Understanding of Christian life by St. Nicholas Cabasilas and its Contemporary Significance

Priest Demetrios Bathrellos

In his outstanding book Histoire des idées politiques, Philippe Nemo presents a very interesting review of the anthropology of Nicollo Machiavelli, the famous author of The Prince. Machiavelli has a very pessimistic view of human nature. Human beings are irredeemably corrupt. They are ‘good’ only when this serves their interests. Nemo observes that Machiavelli’s pessimism regarding human nature is related to ‘the instability, the insecurity, and the violence that characterized Italy at his times’ (early 16th century)[1]. 

This may well hold true for his namesake, Nicholas Kabasilas too. In his youth Cabasilas lived a tumultuous political life. His experience of the civil wars of the 14th century and of the atrocities committed by the so-called ‘zealots’ in his native city, Thessalonica, must have contributed to his pessimistic view of humanity.

In his celebrated book The Life in Christ, which was written at a later stage of Cabasilas’ life and which will be the focus of our attention, Cabasilas expresses this pessimism in very explicit terms. In this work, which discusses the significance of the sacraments of Baptism, Crismation, and the Eucharist, Cabasilas argues that man, before baptism, is nothing, he is non existent[2]  –  and we should not fail to notice here the typical patristic link between non existence and sinfulness. According to Cabasilas, man outside of the church is darkness[3] and possessed by demonic forces[4]. 

Cabasilas thinks in very negative terms of humanity as a whole. According to him, before the incarnation humanity went from bad to worse. Its spiritual condition constantly deteriorated. Human beings were so corrupt that they did not even desire to free themselves from the tyranny of sin[5].  The sinfulness of humanity was so deep and all-pervasive that even the Old Testament righteous were captives to it. For Cabasilas the Old Testament righteous were subject to the law of sin almost as much as everyone else. The main difference between them and all other sinners was that the latter felt comfortable and happy with their sinfulness, whereas the former were sighing and desired to see the destruction of their bondage to sin[6]. For Cabasilas these righteous Old Testament figures prepared themselves for the future righteousness, which is the only true righteousness[7]. What this amounts to is shown by an example that Cabasilas puts forward. There are two categories of sick people, he writes. The members of the first category are looking for a doctor and feel very happy when they see him arriving. The members of the second category are not even aware of their illness and feel aversion to medicines. The doctor, writes Cabasilas, calls the former healthy, not because they are healthy, but because they will become healthy, in contradistinction to the latter. The Old Testament righteous belong to the first category[8]. They are healthy only proleptically and righteous only in comparison with the other people of their times. Their righteousness is only relative[9].

Cabasilas is a pessimist also with regard to the effects that words can have on the souls and the lives of people. He clarifies his view with reference to the lives of the apostles. As long as the apostles were simply hearing the teaching of Christ they made no progress and exhibited nothing new and worthy of admiration regarding virtue[10].  The failure of the apostles was similar to that of the Old Testament righteous, who were also assisted only by the word of God[11] and as a result could not achieve true righteousness.

Cabasilas’ emphasis on the one hand on the sinfulness of human beings and on the other hand on the inability of words to heal their spiritual wounds serves his purpose to emphasize the efficacy of the sacraments, namely of baptism, chrismation, and the eucharist. Cabasilas believes that baptism gives man a new life. Chrismation gives him the capacity to move, it endows him with a new spiritual activity. Holy communion is the food that sustains him in his new life in Christ[12].

These three sacraments bring about an almost complete transformation in one’s identity and life. The grace they confer is abundant and most powerful – Cabasilas sometimes presents it as almost coercive and irresistible[13]. Man contributes nothing to his spiritual birth as is the case also with his natural birth[14]. This new birth is exclusively the work of God[15]. Man should, of course, co-operate with Christ for his salvation, but his co-operation takes place only after he has received the sacraments, and often appears to be rather easy. The victory, writes Cabasilas, belongs to Christ, not to us[16]. We participate in this victory only because we applaud Christ and we celebrate his victory[17]. He won the victory but we are crowned too. Our co-operation with him for the purpose of our salvation consists only in this, in not removing from our heads the crown of glory that Christ had placed there, in non committing spiritual suicide by turning the sword against ourselves[18]. Later in his On the Life in Christ, however, Cabasilas will show in some detail how a Christian should act and fight in order to keep the candle of grace lit[19].

In order to convince his readers of the reality of the transformation that only the sacraments can bring about, Cabasilas refers to the martyrs of the Early Church. These martyrs not only bore the sufferings inflicted upon them but also felt a great love and desire for these sufferings as well as for the very death that would bring them closer to Christ[20]. Cabasilas gives a more specific example by referring, among others, to martyr Porphyrios[21]. Porphyrios was a mimic. Once he performed a mock ceremony of Christian baptism. In the course of the performance the audience was laughing, but for Porphyrios this mock ceremony became a true regeneration. He immediately confessed the Christian faith and was executed on the same day. This mimic who attempted to ridicule Christian baptism, eventually became a Christian and a martyr. This was due not to the power of Christian teaching, with which he was familiar, but to the overwhelming power of the sacrament of baptism[22]. 

However, there is an objection against what Cabasilas writes. How is it possible, the objection goes, that so many Christians live such sinful lives in spite of their having received sacramental grace? Cabasilas counters this objection by saying that this is so because they have in fact freely denied and opposed this grace in their lives.

Cabasilas argues that the fruits of the grace conferred by the sacraments are unspeakable joy, supernatural love and admirable works[23]. His view that sacramental grace leads to and shines through admirable works is further elaborated in the 6th chapter of On The Christian Life. There Cabasilas explains what Christians should do in order to remain in communion with Christ and to keep experiencing the abundance of his grace. It is here that Cabasilas elaborates his moral teaching. For example, a substantial part of this chapter is an analysis of the blessings that form part of the Sermon on the Mount.

The 7th and last chapter of On The Life in Christ bears the title ‘what kind of person will become the initiated Christian who has kept sacramental grace through his efforts’. Both the title and the content of the chapter make it clear that, for Cabasilas, the end of the life in Christ is the sanctification of the Christian, the formation, we might say, of a holy character. So, the whole process begins with the sacraments, continues with ethics, and results in personal holiness. This process will be completed only in the eschaton, because, as Cabasilas states already in the very first sentence of his work, ‘The life in Christ is planted in this life and receives its beginnings over here, but is perfected in the future, namely when we reach that day [of the eschata]’[24].

II

This has been a short summary of the fundamental aspects of Cabasilas’ theology as this is expressed in his important work On the Life in Christ. But let us now turn our attention to the implications of this theology for the Christians’ moral life. In what follows I will point out seven important implications of Cabasilas’ theology for the way in which we should live our Christian lives in the contemporary world.

1. From the way in which Cabasilas understands the condition of human beings before baptism (and probably also, at least to some extent, of those who through their sinful way of life have deprived themselves of the grace of God), it becomes obvious that non-Christians cannot keep God’s commandments – something that, according to Cabasilas, is true even of the Old Testament righteous. Therefore, although the commandments of God are mandatory for all, they can be kept by Christians only. This means that we cannot expect from people in general to do what they should do, simply because they cannot do what they should do as long as they are not transformed by the grace of God through the sacraments. Christian ethics, therefore, is not applicable to everyone, simply because only Christians can live up to its standards. It is by becoming a member of the Christian community, of the Christian Church, that one is enabled to live in a truly human, namely in a holy manner. This, of course, makes mission imperative for the life of the world.

2. Cabasilas clearly states that the impact that words can have on people’s lives is limited. People do not change simply by words; they change by the grace of God, which is given primarily through the sacraments. This is not to say that preaching and teaching are useless. If this were the case, Cabasilas would not have written his book. Education and wisdom are important. This is why in an early work of his Cabasilas argued that uneducated Saints are inferior to educated ones and must seek their advice[25]. However, the Church should not understand itself primarily as a religious ideology or as a philosophical or religious ‘school’, but rather as a Eucharistic community. Christian preaching must be rooted in the Eucharistic experience of the Church. Moreover, Cabasilas’ limited trust in the power of words may help Christians question the authoritarian claims of human logos either in terms of logic or in terms of ideological, political, or other rhetoric.

3. For Cabasilas, sacramental grace is very, very powerful. Man can do nothing to save himself before he is baptized. But after baptism, chrismation, and communion, the grace he receives, albeit not irresistible, is so powerful, that man only needs not to oppose it in order to gain salvation. Even the knowledge of God, which leads to salvation, is not that much a matter of thoughts and words, as it is a matter of sacramental experience. For Cabasilas the most important practice of the Christians is their participation in the holy sacraments, in the sacrament of the Eucharist in particular. Everything else depends on this. A Church life organized on the principles of Cabasilas’ theology must give to practices such as the daily celebration of the liturgy and the frequent participation in the sacrament of the Eucharist a central place.

4. Cabasilas’ aforementioned attitude distinguishes sharply his theology from moralism. Cabasilas is not an antinomian. He firmly believes that man should obey the commandments of God. The keeping of the commandments, however, must be placed within the context of man’s sacramental unity with Christ. Man is transformed by Christ through the sacraments and only then is he able to keep Christ’s commandments. By doing this, he maintains his life in Christ, which he has received through the sacraments[26]. But, although ethics is important, man’s unity with Christ is not this kind of external, forensic, moral unity which is exhausted in man’s keeping God’s law. By contrast, it is an ontological, organic unity, on account of which man is a member of the body of Christ, he is a holy vessel of Christ’s blood, and therefore his moral life is the outcome of his Christocentric identity.

5. Cabasilas is very much in tune with some insights of the so-called called ‘virtue ethics’. Christian life is not primarily about doing but about being. Doing is a result of being. Sin is not only an act but also – I would say primarily – a condition, a state of corruption and sickness[27].  Christian transformation, which begins with man’s participation in the sacraments, is the healing and the sanctification of man, which cannot be reduced to the improvement of behavior. The aim of the Christian life is to make people holy. Holy persons will perform holy acts. These acts will in turn make Christians holier. Holiness of character is the basis of moral behavior. This holiness is both given and sustained by the sacraments. It is kept by man’s keeping of God’s commandments and leads to a mature, holy Christian character.

6. Cabasilas’ emphasis on the centrality of sacramental life qualifies the emphasis of the hesychasts on several monastic practices. Cabasilas was a friend of Gregory Palamas and of other distinguished leaders of the hesychastic movement, whereas his uncle, Neilos Cabasilas, archbishop of Thessalonica, was also a supporter of the hesychasts. However, in Cabasilas’ theology we do not find the typical emphasis on monastic practices such as the unremitting recitation of Jesus’ prayer[28], fasting, vigils, the importance of the departure from the world, or even the significance of the vision of the uncreated light, which was a burning issue in the course of the 14th century hesychastic controversies[29]. In a famous passage Cabasilas writes that every Christian can have his mind focused on Christ without needing to move to the wilderness or to eat an unusual kind of food, or to be dressed differently to other people, or to damage his health, etc. On the contrary, one may well stay in his home and continue his profession: the general may well continue to be a general, the farmer may well continue to be a farmer and so on, and yet live fully the life in Christ.

  These remarks constitute an implicit but very clear qualification of the emphasis on a peculiarly monastic spirituality that was so widespread and powerful in the Byzantine world and that often gave the impression that there are two classes of Christians: the monks, who are called to perfection, and all the others, who are a kind of second-class Christians who cannot aspire to the heights of Christian perfection. Cabasilas’ theology is more catholic. Sacraments are for all Christians and no one has a privileged access to them. Since all else, including Christian teaching and monastic life, is of lesser importance than participation in the sacraments, and since monks living in monasteries and people living ‘in the world’ are equal to each other in terms of their sacramental incorporation into the body of Christ, there is no reason to overemphasize the monastic practices as the main, let alone the only, way to Christian perfection[30]. 

7. Although Cabasilas moves beyond an at times excessive domination of monastic spirituality over Christian theology and life by emphasizing the centrality of sacramental life, which is equally open to both monastics and seculars, he is not always successful in overcoming the traits of monastic spirituality in his wider moral theology. It is to his credit that in his youth he wrote a couple of works castigating the practice of usury, which had led many Christians of Byzantium to financial misery. In these works Cabasilas’ moral discourse reaches politics and economics, and aims at the transformation of society and its institutions in a way that is simultaneously radical and prophetic. Cabasilas made a similar attempt to deal with issues relevant to politics and economics in his wrongly so-called ‘anti-zealot discourse’[31], which he also composed at the first part of his life, when he was still politically active. There he criticised the expropriation and heavy taxation of monastic properties by both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. However, as the O’ Donovans have shown, in this work we may discern an one-sided interest in protecting the property rights of monasteries on the basis of appeals to Roman secular law – totally disregarding the theological question of whether it is legitimate for monasteries to be land-owners in the first place. Moreover, we may even discern some indifference for the common good at a time when Byzantium was in desperate need of funds in order to defend itself (including its monasteries and religious institutions) against Turkish aggression, which would soon destroy Byzantium[32].  

  Be this as it may, we must point out that in spite of his partly successful and perhaps also partly unsuccessful engagement with politics, economics, social ethics, etc. in his early years, in his later mature works Cabasilas adopted a more ‘monastic’ theological attitude. In his great theological synthesis, which is crystallized in his On the Life in Christ and in his Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, and for which he is mainly remembered, Cabasilas remains within the typical context of ‘spirituality’, without sufficiently expanding his theological vision of the Christian life to areas such as politics and economics.

Moreover, Cabasilas overlooks some important moral questions. For instance, we saw earlier his failure to discuss the question of whether it is legitimate for monasteries to own large properties. We also saw that in his On the Life in Christ he claimed that a general does not need to change his profession in order to live the Christian life. But how is this profession compatible with the Christian life given Christ’s non-violent example of life as well as his command to love our enemies? That is, how is it possible for a general, namely a professional killer of his (or of his Empire’s if you wish) enemies to be at the same time a Christian, let alone a good Christian, namely someone who is called not only not to retaliate but also to forgive and love his enemies? As far as I am aware of, Cabasilas fails to raise this question either in his ‘anti-zealot discourse’ or in his later works. Saint Symeon of Thessalonica, another important figure in the area of sacramental theology who would become the bishop of Cabasilas’ beloved Thessalonica a little after Cabasilas’ death, would almost turn the killing of Turks into a Christian virtue and would go as far as to anathematize all those who even considered the option of peaceful surrender to the Turks[33]. It seems that here we come dangerously close to an overturning of Christian values. He who opts for peace and refuses to defend himself and kill his enemies is anathematized, but he who fights and kills is praised as a faithful member of the Empire and the Church.

The fact that Cabasilas first overlooked questions like the above-mentioned, second did not always deal with moral questions in a satisfactory manner (for instance in his ‘anti-zealot discourse’)and third did not manage to incorporate his earlier moral theology (against usury, for instance), written when he was politically active, within his later great theological synthesis, written after his retirement, perhaps in a monastery, shows the limits of his moral theology in a way that has been typical of a large part of Byzantine and in general Orthodox theology for centuries.

In our days, if Orthodox theology wishes to avoid withdrawal within pietistic surroundings and to become instead more catholic and transformative of the world, it must find ways to address the whole human life, including politics, economics, bioethics, environmental ethics, sexual ethics, etc. and not only its strictly speaking ‘spiritual’ dimensions. All this must be done of course within a wider framework of biblical and patristic theology and of liturgical – sacramental spirituality. In this endeavor, St Nicholaos Cabasilas’ work may constitute both a great source of learning and inspiration, and an invitation to expand it to all areas of Christian moral life. Source: http://www.bogoslov.ru/en/text/1243132.html (Go for footnotes)

Philotimo According to the Blessed Elder Paisios

The translator here uses the word responsive greatfulness for Philotimo which elder Paisios understood so much more then gratitude.  He said Philotimo is: "the reverent distillation of goodness; the radiant love of the humble man bereft of himself, but with a heart full of gratitude to God and his fellow man; because of his spiritual sensitivity he tries to repay even the slightest good that others do to him."

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Elder Paisios stressed that our acts are worthwhile only if they are done out of a grateful predisposition. He always urged us not to struggle out of self interest, but rather out of responsive gratefulness. Even our faith in God should be based on our gratefulness. He used to say:
- The person who asks for miracles in order to believe in God lacks dignity. God, if He wishes to, can make with one of His miracles everybody instantly believe. However, He does not do so, because He does not wish to exercise force on man’s free will; man will then end up believing in God, not out of gratefulness or due to God’s excessive kindness, but due to His supernatural power.

What God respects and values most is love Him just because He is kind. Christ was incarnated, mocked, whipped, crucified, out of His extreme love for humankind; He shed His blood for us. All these facts explicitly indicate to everyone that He is the true love. Impelled by the fact that “God is love” (1Jn 4:8), we should love Him in return and believe that He is our God, for “we know no good apart from Him”.

If someone, who sees Christ’s sacrifice and love, does not believe that He is our God and in order to believe asks for miracles, he will neither be able to truly love, nor to truly believe in Him.

Father Paisios told me an incident from his childhood years: “When I was a child and my soul was still pure, I loved Christ very much. I used to walk in the woods carrying a cross in my hands, chanting and praying and wishing to become a monk. My parents told me that I should first grow up and then leave to go to the monastery. One day, as I was taking my usual walk in the woods, I met a fellow villager. When he saw me carrying the cross, he asked me:

- What is this?
- The Cross of our Christ, I replied.
Since he did not have any positive thoughts in his mind, he said to me:
- Arsenios, you are silly. You don’t mean to say that you believe in God. He does not exist. These religious stories are made up by some priests. We have evolved from the monkey. Christ was simply a man like all of us.

When he finished, he got up and left. His twisted thoughts filled my innocent soul with black heavy clouds. Being alone in the woods, I began to think that maybe God does not exist. As I was feeling confused, desperate and extremely sad, I asked Christ to give me an indication of His existence, so I could believe in Him. But He did not respond.

Feeling exhausted, I lay on the ground to rest. Suddenly, a positive thought, full of responsive gratefulness, entered my innocent soul:
- Hold on for a second! Wasn’t Christ the kindest man ever on earth? No one has ever found anything evil in Him. So, whether He is God or not, I don’t care. Based on the fact that He is the kindest man on earth and I haven’t known anyone better, I will try to become like Him and absolutely obey everything the Gospel says. I will even give my life for Him, if needed, since He is so kind.

All my thoughts of disbelief disappeared and my soul was filled with immense joy. The power of my grateful thought dissolved all the ambiguous ones. When I started believing in Christ and decided to love Him as much as I could, solely out of responsive gratefulness, I experienced a miracle which firmly sealed my grateful thought. Then, I thought: I do not care anymore if someone tells me that God does not exist!”

As the story of the Elder regarding his grateful thought did not completely satisfy me, I asked him with a certain curiosity to tell me about the miracle he experienced in the woods. Father Paisios was found in a difficult situation and replied that he could not tell me about it. This way, he indicated that I, too, should not look for miracles, but rather trust my feeling of responsive gratefulness, as it is the key which opens the door to every good.
Later on, Father Paisios told me that he had seen the Lord.

“The righteous Christian does not practice good acts for his own benefit, i.e. in order to be rewarded or to avoid hell and gain paradise, but rather because he prefers good to evil. Everything else is a natural consequence of the good that fills our soul without having asked for it. This way, good has dignity; otherwise, it originates from the cheap attitude of “give and take.”



The connection of the Eucharist with the original consciousness regarding the unity of the Church



John Zizioulas

The identification of the Eucharistic assembly with the Church of God herself in the use of the term church would make no sense, if there did not exist in parallel a very profound connection between the Divine Eucharist and the primitive Church's consciousness regarding unity. This connection, which extends beyond the terminology used for the Church into the early theology regarding the Church among the first Christians, is brilliantly expressed by the "theologian of unity" par excellence,³⁷ the Apostle Paul. Addressing the Corinthians, the Apostle writes: "Judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion (koinonia) in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."³⁸ In this highly significant passage, the dominant idea is that "the many" form "one body" identified with the bread of the Eucharist. Since this idea was to have a decisive influence on the whole formation of the Church's unity, it is necessary to look at it in more detail at this point while we are examining the presuppositions of this unity.

The connection of the Divine Eucharist with the consciousness that the "many" are united through it and in it into one body, and not just any body but the "body of Christ"³⁹ - thus forming not "one thing" in the neuter but "one" in the masculine,⁴⁰ the "one Lord" Himself⁴¹ - is deeply rooted right in the historical foundations of the Divine Eucharist and the Church alike. A careful examination of the texts referring to the Last Supper with which the origin of the Eucharist coincides historically⁴² shows convincingly that despite their many differences on various points,⁴³ they all agree on the connection of the Supper with the "many" or "you" (pl.), "for" or "in the place of" (anti or peri) whom the One offers Himself.⁴⁴ This relationship of the "many" with the "One"⁴⁵ who offers Himself for them connects the historical foundations of the Eucharist with the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the servant of God or servant of the Lord⁴⁶ which again is connected with Jesus Christ's understanding of Himself⁴⁷ and goes back to the people of Israel's consciousness of unity.⁴⁸ In this way, the connection of the Eucharist with the consciousness that the "many" are united to the point of identity with the One who offers himself on their behalf is shown to be as ancient as Christianity itself.

This connection of the Divine Eucharist with a sense of the unity of the "many" in the "One," effected through the tradition of the "Servant of God," is already firmly established in the consciousness and life of the primitive Church by the first century as shown by the oldest surviving liturgical texts after the Last Supper. Thus in the most ancient liturgical prayer of the Roman Church, which certainly goes right back to apostolic times and is preserved in 1 Clement (96 A.D.), we repeatedly read the phrase "of Jesus Thy Servant," clearly in connection with the hymns of the Servant of God in the Book of Isaiah.⁴⁹ The same thing can be seen even more clearly in the Eucharistic prayer of the Didache, also very ancient, where we read: "We thank Thee, holy Father, for Thy holy Name which Thou hast caused to make its dwelling in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Thy servant." ⁵⁰ This fact is of particular significance given that, as a rule, liturgical texts preserve very ancient traditions. If indeed this is coupled with the existence of the Servant of God tradition also in other very ancient hymns of worship, such as we most likely find included in Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (2:6-11),⁵¹ the connection between the Divine Eucharist and the Servant tradition should be considered something very ancient in the mind of the Church. In this way the "many" of the Servant tradition, the "many" of the Last Supper and the "many" of Paul's epistles meet and are identified with each other through the synthesis achieved by the systematic thought of the great Apostle \ when he writes, "... one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."

But the connection of the Eucharist with the primitive Church's sense of the unity of the "many" in the "One" goes back to the historical foundation of the Church also by way of another fundamental tradition, that of the Lord as "Son of Man." This is especially true of the Johannine Churches, which, while not unaware of the connection of the Eucharist with the Servant of God tradition,⁵² nevertheless preferred, at least on the evidence of the Fourth Gospel, to connect it with the "Son of Man" tradition. This tradition, which also goes back to Jesus' understanding of Himself⁵³ and through it to the Judaeo-Christian foundations of the Church,⁵⁴ has justly been regarded as the source of the idea of the Church.⁵⁵ For interwoven with this tradition, we find the paradoxical relationship of the unity of the many in the one which can be seen more generally in the Judaeo-Christian consciousness⁵⁶ taken to the point of identity.⁵⁷

This unity of the many in the "Son of Man" is first clearly linked with the Divine Eucharist in the Gospel of John. In the sixth chapter of this Gospei, which obviously refers to the Eucharist,⁵⁸ the dominant figure is that of the "Son of Man." It is He who gives "the food which endures to eternal life."⁵⁹ In contrast with the manna which God gave to Israel through Moses, this food is the "true bread," which as that "which came down from heaven"⁶⁰ is none other than the "Son of Man."⁶¹ Clearly, then, it is as "Son of Man" that the Lord appears in His relationship with the Eucharist in the Fourth Gospel. Hence, communion in the Eucharist is described there as eating not simply the flesh of the Lord, but the flesh of the "Son of Man": "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you."⁶² In this capacity, as "Son of Man," Jesus appears in the Fourth Gospel not only as identified with the bread of the Eucharist ("I am the bread of life"),⁶³ but also as the reality which is par excellence inclusive of the "many": "he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him."⁶⁴ This abiding in the "Son of Man," though participation in the Eucharist is underlined in chapters 13-17 of the same Gospel, which move within the Eucharistic presuppositions of the Last Supper and are so profoundly connected with the unity of the Church.⁶⁵ The insistent appeal, "Abide in me, and I in you"⁶⁶ should not be understood without reference both to the Eucharistic presuppositions of this text, and to the Lord's property of taking up the new Israel and including it within Himself.⁶⁷

For all these reasons, the Eucharistic character of the Fourth Gospel, which is increasingly being recognized,⁶⁸ makes it a first class historical source for studying the presuppositions on which the formation of the Church's unity in the Divine Eucharist is based. Coming as an indispensable complement to those sources which inform us about the mind of the Pauline Churches, it proves that despite being expressed in ways different from those we encounter in Paul's Epistles,⁶⁹ the consciousness was the same throughout the primitive Church: through the Divine Eucharist the "many" - the new, true Israel, those who make up the Church - become a unity to the point of identity with Christ.

All this demonstrates how incomprehensible the whole ecclesiology of ancient Christianity becomes without reference to the Divine Eucharist particularly in anything to do with the notion of the Church's unity. The principal images used to depict and describe the Church in the New Testament⁷⁰ are based on the relationship of the "many" with the "One," exactly as this is dictated by the Eucharistic experience of the Church. This is especially true of the descriptions of the Church as "body of Christ," "house" or "building" (oikodomι), and "bride of Christ."

The characterization of the Church as the "body of Christ," which has provoked much discussion among modern scholars⁷¹ cannot be understood apart from the Eucharistic experience of the Church,⁷² which was most likely the source of the use of this term.⁷³ Neither the parallels to this term found in Rabbinic sources,⁷⁴ nor Gnosticism,⁷⁵ nor other ideas from the Hellenistic milieu⁷⁶ could have lent this term to the primitive Church, given that its content in the New Testament is sui generis, characterized by its emphasis not on the idea of the "body," but on the accompanying genitive "of Christ." In other words, it is not first and foremost the body of Christians, but the body of Christ.⁷⁷ This takes on its full meaning only within the context of the Judaeo-Christian tradition with which, as we have seen, the Divine Eucharist was connected from the beginning.

It is within this same tradition that the other ecclesiological images, too, take on their full meaning. Thus the characterization of the Church as a "building"⁷⁸ or "house"⁷⁹ does not imply something inanimate, but an organism living and growing⁸⁰ to "mature manhood," ⁸¹"to the measure of the stature of the fullness⁸² of Christ."⁸³ This is not unrelated to the Divine Eucharist.⁸⁴ In the spirit of the unity of the "many" in the One, we can also have a right understanding of the description of the Church as "bride of Christ," through which the faithful are understood as "members of Christ"⁸⁵ in a manner analogous to the union of husband and wife "into one flesh."⁸⁶

These ecclesiological images, of course, require special study which lies outside the scope and nature of the present work. But the point relevant to the very close connection of the Divine Eucharist with the primitive Church's consciousness of unity, is this: that all these images become meaningless outside the ontological unity of the "many" in Christ. Deeply rooted, as we have seen, in the historical foundations of Christianity, this unity found its fullest expression through the

Divine Eucharist. The ancient Church was fully aware of this when she declared, through the first theologian of her unity, "we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."