Inward peace

  • I just posted a quote from St. Seraphim of Sarov that’s one of the best-known in Ortho­doxy. As I’ve men­tioned, I have to pub­lish them as an entry in order to add them into the Quotes side­bar at right, and that sec­tion doesn’t allow for a very long quote. But my Daily Lives cal­en­dar had a bit more to it, so I thought I’d give the whole thing here as well:

    “When the Spirit of God descends upon a man and over­shad­ows him with the full­ness of His out­pour­ing, then his soul over­flows with a joy not to be described, for the Holy Spirit turns to joy what­ever He touches. The King­dom of Heaven is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Acquire inward peace, and thou­sands around you will find their salvation.”

    That’s one of the real dif­fer­ences, I think, between the way Protes­tants view evan­ge­liz­ing and the way we do. (And I don’t know what the Catholic POV is.) And that is that we think that it has two parts to it that can’t be sep­a­rated: (1) you grow in the faith your­self, doing all the things that need doing — strug­gling, fast­ing, pray­ing, read­ing, par­tak­ing of the sacra­ments, med­i­tat­ing, con­fess­ing and so on — and (2) you reach out — doing good works, pray­ing for oth­ers, talk­ing about the faith, being salt and light. The Protes­tants talk of giv­ing wit­ness, giv­ing tes­ti­mony. We Ortho­dox know we need to do that more. But we also think in terms of being a wit­ness, of being a tes­ti­mony.

    It’s much harder that way. But it makes a lot more sense. Just as I can’t take the mote out of my brother’s eye while the plank is still in my own, I would think I wouldn’t really be equipped to show him the way to heaven unless I’d at least taken a step or two myself.


    Related posts:

    1. Today in Beth­le­hem hear I
    2. On curios­ity
    3. Two wolves
    4. Prayer request
    5. On silence (again)

    February 7th, 2006 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 02.07.2006

    Very good point — I con­sider my evan­geli­cism to be liv­ing a Chris­t­ian life. And get­ting up when I fall down (which is often)

  • s-p

    Yeah, its bizarre and its hard not to won­der if I’m being decieved by Satan or get­ting the straight dope from peo­ple. I don’t know how many times I’ve had clients, strangers and casual aquain­tances out of the blue tell me stuff like “You just radi­ate peace…” or “There’s some­thing spir­i­tual about you.…” or “When I’m around you I feel so calm and grounded…” etc. etc. And with­out me ever say­ing a word about being a Chris­t­ian, church or spir­i­tu­al­ity. I recall a line from a John Den­ver song “seek­ing grace in every step he takes” hav­ing an impact on me a long time ago. I made it my spir­i­tual quest way back them to man­i­fest God in EVERY­thing I do includ­ing things as sim­ple as walk­ing and open­ing and clos­ing doors and set­ting gro­ceries down and push­ing a shop­ping cart etc. So, yes…aquire the Holy Spirit and don’t sweat what to say. I don’t evan­ge­lize, peo­ple just ask.

  • Greg

    You know, this is another great post — and, more to the point, a great point to make. I con­sider myself the liv­ing patron saint of nom­i­nal­ism, and I still see Protes­tant and Roman Catholic acquain­tances sur­prised by the depth of my spir­i­tu­al­ity. That’s not a com­ment (as those who know me) will say on my spir­i­tual depth — it is a com­ment on what sort of surface-level nod to spritu­al­ity passes for reli­gion among much of the mod­ern Chris­t­ian flock.I used to throw out “com­mu­ni­ca­tions is a process, not an event” as a sort of wise-sounding con­sul­tant chest­nut, but if you sub­sti­tute “sal­va­tion” for “com­mu­ni­ca­tions,” the state­ment makes more sense.

  • s-p

    Hi Greg, I con­cur that it may not be so much “our spir­i­tu­al­ity” that is so deep, but what passes for spir­i­tu­al­ity among the masses. I’ve worked with soooo many new age peo­ple (have you ever noticed that “new age-ism” is the prove­nance of rich peo­ple? How many poor new agers do you know?.…) any­way, when push comes to shove their spir­i­tu­al­ity is but a thin veil over their egos, nar­cis­sism, anger, con­trol freak­ism, and goofy human­ity. As a friend of mine used to say “They are faux nice”. So, yeah, per­haps any­one who is REALLY grounded in ANYTHING stands in relief to those who are tap danc­ing around the fringes of their sychretis­tic per­sonal philosophies.

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