Thoughts for the Lenten homestretch

  • So here we are in the home­stretch of Lent. Pass­ing the fifth Sun­day, we bear down on Lazarus’ tomb and Christ’s tri­umphal entry into Jerusalem. The Holy Week ser­vices are lengthy, to be sure, but they don’t seem like work. The Church has done the work. The stand­ing, the pray­ing, the chant­ing, read­ing, lis­ten­ing, repeat­ing don’t seem like work — they seem like breathing.

    But I’m not quite ready to take my leave of the Lenten jour­ney yet. I wanted to write down some things I picked up when Pro­tec­tion of the Holy Vir­gin Monastery in Lake George, CO came to speak to our women’s group. I’m being self­ish by blog­ging this: it’s really just a way to have it all in one place so next year I can remem­ber it. But maybe it’ll be worth­while for oth­ers as well. You never know. Dif­fer­ent jour­neys — one destination.

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    The Lad­der of Divine Ascents — “Don’t read this book!”Mother Cas­siana had a strong word of warn­ing for us all that I’ve never heard any­one say before — “Do NOT read ‘The Lad­der of Divine Ascents.’

    I know that that is far from being a con­sen­sus opin­ion in the Ortho­dox world. (Father Thomas Hopko, just to name one, has a pod­cast on Ancient Faith Radio where he extols the virtues of the book and says that laity can read it.) And lest I inad­ver­tently scan­dal­ize any­one, I has­ten to add that her warn­ing may have been meant specif­i­cally for lay-women. But in any case, when she gave her rea­sons I could see her point. I pass it along in case it’s a word of wis­dom for any­one else.

    Mother Cas­siana said that she’s seen ter­ri­ble dam­age done in this coun­try by peo­ple read­ing a book that was writ­ten BY a male monk FOR male monks and then try­ing to have the same expe­ri­ence in their very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances. She was par­tic­u­larly adamant that women should not try to have the same rela­tion­ship with a spir­i­tual father that St. John Cli­ma­cus out­lines for monks in the Ladder.

    So is that shock­ing? Maybe. But boy, do I find myself agree­ing with her. I haven’t seen the dis­as­trous results that she has, and I’ve never tried to read the Lad­der (the “easy reader” ver­sion called “Ascend­ing the Heights” was more than enough to con­vince me that I wasn’t ready for the big time.) But in my VERY pal­try attempts to man­u­fac­ture the degrees of holi­ness that I can read about in Ortho­dox books, I’ve got­ten myself into some pretty unholy messes. It’s very, very easy to delude your­self both about how well you’re doing and how poorly you’re doing. It’s taken some spir­i­tual coun­sel­ing to work through both of those extremes.

    And look­ing out­ward, I see that oth­ers have issues as well. I recently read a book called “Short Trip to the Edge” about an Ortho­dox con­vert — involved in his Greek Ortho­dox Church here in Mis­souri — who went to Mt. Athos on sev­eral trips as a per­sonal pil­grim­age to find a spir­i­tual father. Now, this is a good book for any­one who wants to hear the ser­vices on the Holy Moun­tain described, as well as its scenery and peo­ple. But I found myself draw­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from the author, espe­cially as his suc­ces­sive trips met with a firm but gen­tle ‘no’ from the monks he encoun­tered. One of the monk-priests that he had been secretly hop­ing would be “The One” told him point-blank: “You need to find some­one closer to home.” So why didn’t he lis­ten? I have a feel­ing it was because of the sort of thing that Mother Cas­siana talked about. We Amer­i­can con­verts can so eas­ily get into a kind of gray area where we say, as St. Zosi­mas did before meet­ing Mother Mary: “Is there a monk on earth who can be of use to me and show me a kind of asceti­cism that I have not accomplished?”

    So I think Mother Cas­siana is onto some­thing. There may be great ben­e­fits to read­ing this jewel of ascetic instruc­tion, but there are also hid­den risks. It seems more hum­ble to just read any short excerpts that come your way (or any that your priest gives you to read) but under­stand that there are some things that are just too much for most of us to handle.

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    The themes

    Mother Cas­siana got into so many top­ics I wouldn’t have been able to name them all, let alone take notes. But I was par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in her break­down of the themes of the Sun­days of the Lenten Tri­o­dion. Here’s a very dis­tilled version:

    • Sun­day of Zac­cheus — Desire. Do I have the desire to meet Jesus Christ? What would I be will­ing to do for the King­dom of Heaven?
    • Sun­day of the Pub­li­can and the Phar­isee — Humil­ity. Do I have the humil­ity to under­take the Lenten journey?
    • Sun­day of the Prodi­gal Son — Repen­tance. Am I will­ing to come to my senses, to really repent of my sins?
    • Sun­day of the Last Judg­ment (Meat­fare Sun­day)– Do I remem­ber that we will all be judged?
    • Sun­day of Expul­sion from Par­adise (For­give­ness Sun­day) — Godly sor­row. Do I real­ize what I have squan­dered? Do I remem­ber where I came from?
    • Sun­day of Ortho­doxy — Obe­di­ence to the Church.
    • Sun­day of St. Gre­gory Pala­mas — Prayer. We can recover the Uncre­ated Light — how can I make my whole life a prayer?
    • Sun­day of the Holy Cross — Encour­age­ment. This is the very Tree of Life from Eden.
    • Sun­day of St. John of the Lad­der — Acquir­ing virtues. The virtues are acquired one at a time to those who strug­gle for them.
    • Sun­day of St. Mary of Egypt — The fruits of repen­tance. It is pos­si­ble! The worst sin­ner can enter the Gates of Par­adise if they truly repent. (Mother Cas­siana pointed out that the fifth week of Lent is also the week the entire Akathist hymn is sung in order to put the exam­ple of the Theotokos before us as well.)

    Related posts:

    1. Got a favorite Lenten book?
    2. Two thoughts about time
    3. Fine lit­tle Lenten sandwich
    4. Harry Pot­ter thoughts — w/o spoilers
    5. Saint Fyo­dor

    April 14th, 2008 | Grace | 8 Comments |

8 Responses and Counting...

  • DebD 04.14.2008

    This was very good stuff. I have also been told (and heard in other places) that laypeo­ple should not be read “The Lad­der…” — espe­cially new con­verts (like myself). I’ve also seen (and heard) some of the con­se­quences for those who did not heed their spir­i­tual father’s advice and have stayed away.

  • Mimi

    I have also heard the same thing about The Lad­der and have not read it (although there is a book that parses the infor­ma­tion for laypeo­ple that looks good)

    What a won­der­ful retreat, thank you for your notes!

  • s-p

    Amen Amen Amen. I’ve dealt with so many goofy goo­gly eyed deluded vain­glo­ri­ous humbly arro­gant monk­abee con­verts.… don’t get me started. This post should be a bill­board at the entrance to every Ortho­dox Church.

  • Tanya

    Thank you — Mother Cassiana’s rea­son­ing makes sense. I could eas­ily see myself falling into this state that Steven describes above…

  • Grace

    s-p:
    I think we start sim­ple. Say, a t-shirt in bright col­ors that says “Don’t be a monk­abee.” It gets issued right away to any­one who gets mad that every­one else isn’t fast­ing strictly enough.

    My expres­sion for the same thing is “Ortho­dox­ier than thou.” And the irony, of course, is that those that were the most Ortho­dox­ier than thou now aren’t Ortho­dox at all.

  • Grace

    Tanya:
    It’s a hum­bling thing to have to admit. I’m afraid that my incli­na­tion may be to have erred in the oppo­site direc­tion, try­ing so hard to avoid shal­low acts of pietism that I don’t apply myself to the “hard stuff” nearly vig­or­ously enough.

    May God have mercy on both our struggles.

  • Christo­pher Orr

    I used the themes of the Sun­days of the Tri­o­dion in my own lenten homily this past week­end. I posted it here:
    http://orrologion.blogspot.com/2008/04/pan-orthod…

  • s-p

    YES, read Christopher’s homily! And yes, Grace, I have a whole line of “monk­abee prod­ucts” we could sell. Also check out Benedict’s youTube
    “How to be not very Ortho­dox” if you haven’t already http://benedictseraphim.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/…

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