Undertaking your spiritual struggle without force

  • st-jo_oct-05-riverbank-w-dog.jpgMy Chicago god-daughter Car­rie sent me ‘Wounded by Love’ by Elder Por­phyrios, and it’s been an incred­i­ble jour­ney. He’s a fairly recent lumi­nary in the Church — he joined a Mt. Athos monastery in 1918 at the age of 12 and passed away in 1991. I have enjoyed his par­tic­u­lar voice, com­ing through auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal details and col­lected essays, and per­haps never as much as in one essay that car­ries the head­ing “In the spir­i­tual life, engage in your daily con­test sim­ply, eas­ily and with­out force.”

    Elder Por­phyrios gives advice that is dif­fer­ent than any I’ve heard, and I imag­ine that it’s not for every­one. But it has been very help­ful for me to reflect on. … sim­ply, eas­ily and with­out force …  Here’s what he says:

    There are two paths that lead to God: the hard and debil­i­tat­ing path with fierce assaults against evil and the easy path with love. There are many who chose the hard path and ‘shed blood in order to receive Spirit’ until they attained great virtue. I find that the shorter and safer route is the path with love. This is the path that you, too, should follow.

    I cer­tainly know what he means about the hard path. It’s espoused in many Ortho­dox writ­ings, from St. Theo­phan the Recluse to St. John Cli­ma­cus. Take for exam­ple this advice from St. Seraphim of Sarov about how to attack despair: “And so, broth­ers, St. Anti­och teaches, when despair attacks us, let us not yield to it, but being strength­ened and pro­tected by the light of faith, with great courage let us say to the evil spirit: “What are you to us, estranged from God, a fugi­tive from heaven and evil ser­vant? You dare do noth­ing to us. Christ, the Son of God, has author­ity both over us and over every­thing. It is against Him that we have sinned and before Him that we will be jus­ti­fied. And you, destroyer, leave us. Strength­ened by His ven­er­a­ble Cross, we tram­ple under foot your serpent’s head.”

    I’m embar­rassed to say that I actu­ally tried this (I feel like I should’ve real­ized that it was some­thing that a true ascetic might’ve been able to put to good effect, but not for a begin­ner like me), and do I need to men­tion that the results were not pos­i­tive? So what is the alter­na­tive? Again, from Elder Porphyrios:

    You can make a dif­fer­ent kind of effort: to study and pray and have as your aim to advance in the love of God and of the Church. Do not fight to expel the dark­ness from the cham­ber of your soul. Open a tiny aper­ture for light to enter, and the dark­ness will dis­ap­pear. The same holds for our pas­sions and our weak­nesses. Do not fight them but trans­form them into strengths by show­ing dis­dain for evil. Occupy your­self with hymns of praise, with the poetic canons, with the wor­ship of God and with divine eros … When you devote your­self to this effort with intense desire, your soul will be sanc­ti­fied in a gen­tle and mys­ti­cal way with­out your even being aware of it. …

    Do not choose neg­a­tive meth­ods to cor­rect your­selves. There is no need to fear the devil, hell or any­thing else. These things pro­voke a neg­a­tive reac­tion. … Your most intense effort should be how you will encounter Christ, how you will be united to Him and how you will keep Him in your heart.

    I know there are peo­ple who take the hard way and it works for them. But per­son­ally, I know from expe­ri­ence that when I go march­ing off in a sol­dierly way, think­ing to com­bat my demons head on, I usu­ally end up a day or week later, lying in a ditch some­where (fig­u­ra­tively, at least) and won­der­ing what hap­pened. All the progress I’ve been able to make comes more in the way that Peter was able to walk on the water as long as he looked only at Christ. As soon as he took his eyes off Him and began to assess the dan­ger, he began to sink. Or, as Elder Por­phyrios says:

    Don’t strug­gle directly with temp­ta­tion, don’t pray for it to go away, don’t say, ‘Take it from me, O God!’ Then you are acknowl­edg­ing the strength of the temp­ta­tion and it takes hold of you. … Let all your strength be turned to love for God, wor­ship of God and adhe­sion to God. In this way, your release from evil and from your weak­nesses will hap­pen in a mys­ti­cal man­ner, with­out your being aware of it and with­out exertion.

    st-jo_oct-05-riverbank-w-dog.jpg

    Does this feel like cheat­ing some­how? We’ve heard so much in Ortho­dox writ­ing about doing bat­tle, and I hope I wouldn’t walk away from a fight. But the point of the fight is to achieve vic­tory, and if I can do that bet­ter and with less risk of spir­i­tual pride by focus­ing my efforts on sacred writ­ings that elicit the love of God, who am I try­ing to impress by march­ing into bat­tle with guns blazing?

    The soul, espe­cially when it is sen­si­tive, is filled with glad­ness and enthu­si­asm through love; it is strength­ened and trans­forms, alters and trans­fig­ures all the neg­a­tive and ugly things.

    For this rea­son, I pre­fer the ‘easy path’, that is , the way that leads through the med­i­ta­tion on the poetic canons of the saints. In these canons, we will dis­cover the means employed by the saints, the ascetics and the mar­tyrs. It is good to ‘steal’ their wis­dom, that is, for us to do what they did. They cast them­selves on Christ’s love. They gave their hearts. We must steal their method.


    Related posts:

    1. Feel the truth
    2. Pray­ing for the prayer-challenged
    3. For the love of God
    4. Spir­i­tual Coun­sels by Fr. John of Kronstadt
    5. The cult of pundits

    June 27th, 2010 | Grace | 8 Comments |

8 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 06.27.2010

    “Wounded by Love” is one of the best books on earth. The ego and delu­sion of being a “war­rior” using the weaponry of the Philokalia is like giv­ing a Samuri sword to a 3 year old. Elder Por­phyrios’ mes­sage is a good bal­ance to the vogue mate­r­ial we seem to grab onto.

  • Mimi

    Wow. Thank you!

  • Dn Charles Joiner

    Excel­lent! The path of love ver­sus works and knowl­edge. It seems the dif­fi­culty in all them is over­com­ing the ego or the pas­sions With­out this it is even dif­fi­cult to love, I think. Your prior efforts may have pre­pared you for this path.

  • Grace

    Phew! Glad to know it’s not just me. This seems to run counter to so much of the gritty ascetic lit­er­a­ture I’ve read, but it has been a real relief — and a break­through — for me to change gears this way.

  • James the Thickheade

    Won­der­ful, thanks! Another book for the stack.
    “Let in the light” fits very nicely with Met. Anthony’s com­ment from my recent read­ing about empha­siz­ing what res­onates within us, what we hear that we like.… as where Christ speaks to us in scrip­ture. Of course, he’s clear the parts we don’t like are also very much the same too. So I guess there’s no free lunch. The point is that these things are appar­ently clear (good and bad) to our hearts… while the rest… the fast­ing bit… is just so… so… so “confusing” ?

  • Chris­tine

    Grace,
    Every once in a while I drop by your blog, and every time I am lifted by your posts.
    This one in par­tic­u­lar is very encour­ag­ing.
    Thank you for sharing!

  • Chris­tine

    p.s. Chris­tine Gilbert in CA :)

  • Grace

    Chris­tine:
    I’m really touched that you say that. It means a lot to me to feel like the things that help me are out there help­ing some­one else.

    So hard to stay in touch with all the good peo­ple I’d like to live next door to (in a per­fect world), but maybe some of this online com­mu­nity stuff helps. :-)

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