Orthodoxy and Mysticism - The Transformation of the Senses

7/29/2019 Orthodoxy and Mysticism - The Transformation of the Senses

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Orthodoxy and Mysticism:

The Transformation of the Senses

by Hieromonk Irenei SteenbergPodcasts from the Ancient Faith Radio

Source:http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_1http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_2http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_3

Part 1The life in Christ is a mystery. Its something that cannot be explained. It

cannot be rationally comprehended to a degree that ever begins to articulate

what it actually is. This has been the problem of theologians from day one,

literally from day one. From the first moment that Christ opens his mouth

and preaches, theologians have misunderstood what Christianity is about.

That misunderstanding leads to the crucifixion. It leads a little while later to

schisms and controversies. It leads a little while later to an abundance of

terrible theology books, many of which can still be found in libraries all

throughout the civilized world.The problem isnt that trying to understand is wrong. The problem isnt

that seeking to articulate is a bad thingthese are wonderful things. Thescriptures themselves are an articulation of the divine, and we know them to

come from God. So we must accept, as a basic premise, that it is possible to

speak about this life. And yet, for all that we could ever say, all that we could

ever speak, the fact remains that the life in Christ is a mystery. It ultimatelygoes beyond the things we say.

And it is on this notion that Christianity is mystery that I would like us to

focus in our time together tonight and tomorrow. What does it mean?To begin my talk with that phrasethe life in Christ is a mysteryis

homage to a departed monk who, when he heard years ago that I was going

to start lecturing at the university, was not terribly happy about this. He said,

These secular institutionstheyre no good! Theyre no good! His one

condition for giving me his blessing was, You must begin every lecture withthe phrase The life in Christ is a mystery. which I have tried to do.
http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_1http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_1http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_3http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_3http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_3http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_3http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_3http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_3http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eastern_orthodoxy_and_mysticism/orthodoxy_and_mysticism_part_1


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For us, it serves perfectly. What does it mean to say this? What does it

mean to speak of Christianity not as a faith or a religion but as a life? And

what does it mean to say that this life is bound up in Christ? We dont saythe life of Christ. We say the life in Christ. What does it mean to say thatsuch a life bound up in the Lord is mystery?

Im brought to this thememysterybecause mysticism is a verypopular word in our world today. I must say that, having moved from

England to California, Ive noticed it a lot more than I used to. We talk aboutmysticism, mystical experiences, mystical visions, mystical encounters, and

mysterious moments. What are we talking about? What does this word

actually mean? Mysticism is one of these lovely slate of words that fills our

general spiritual vocabulary that means basically whatever we want it to

mean at the moment we utter it. Usually it means something that I cantdescribe by any other words.

The problem with words that mean anything is that they also mean

nothing. If it can mean anything that you want it to mean then it has no

meaning. Yet we continue to use a word which has no definition, at least in its

common usage.In particular, Orthodoxy is described very often as a mystical

Christianity, a Christianity that has not lost a sense of mystery, Christianity

with a mystic dimension. I am always on the one hand pleased to hear thisand troubled. Pleased, because its good that there is an understanding andapprehension that there is something different about Orthodoxy. Yet I am

always a little troubled, because if someone says its mystical, that meanssomething to them but what? You laugh, but Im going to ask you in a fewminutes. So you just get ready.

I want to start though by telling some stories. I have four stories that I

want to tell and one hour in which to speak. So, if Im lucky, I dont have tosay anything of my own devising. But I do want to tell stories partially

because I think that stories are an effective way of conveying truth. The Lord

himself preferred this means and method of conveying his own truth. He

infuriated his apostles by almost never directly responding to a question with

a clear answer.Its a fact that we know it infuriated them from a gospel reading that we

had according to the Old Church calendar, just the one my church keeps, only

a week or two ago. The very famous parable in St. Lukes gospel of the seedscast on different types of soil. You get to the end of the story, and there is a

sort of implied lull in the conversation before the apostles turn to Jesus, when


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the other crowd isnt looking, and sort of whisper under their breath, Whaton earth are you talking about?, and he explains it to them again in adifferent way.

But the Lord knows that a story teaches something that plain statements

dont. And there is something in that that I think is significant. So let me beginwith a few stories if youll permit.

The first begins like many good stories doA long time ago and (frommy vantage point here in Southern California) very far away. In anafternoon, beside a lake, a man talks to a group of his followers. These men

have followed him from their homes, into the city, into the countryside.

Theyve seen him loved, and theyve seen him hated. They have watched himheal the sick. They have watched the dead brought back to life. They have

watched him see into the hearts of men and women. They have watched himcontrol the cosmos itselfstopping a storm by a single word, walking uponthe sea. After all of this, he takes them aside one afternoon and he turns to

them, and he asks them point blank, Who do people say I am?I can imagine the apostles all trying to vie for the right answerSome

say you are a prophet, some say you are John, some say you are Elijah. Theylist off all of the possibilities. Christ doesnt say anything, but he turns to oneof these men, the one whom he has chosen to be, in a sense, their leader, and

he changes the questionWho do you say that I am? In that moment, St.Peter gives an utterance which Christ himself identifies as divine. He says,

You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.Standing before a mana man of flesh and blood; theyve seen him eat;

theyve seen him sleep; they know that when he is cut he bleeds; theywatched him weep for his friend. Ultimately, this is a man who, when

tortured, dies. And yet, looking at this man, they see something that cannot be

human in all its humanity. They see something that has to be identified as

divine, as God. You are the Christ, Son of the living God. Thats the firststory.

The second is a little bit different. It takes place a short time later. We

dont know quite how long, but a handful of years. The second story is wellknown to everybody, I hope. Maybe not. I shouldnt presume that. It is awell known story. On a certain afternoonwe can presume the year wasA.D. 35 or 36during a journey otherwise routine, we are told that journeyslike this happened before. We are also told that it happened midday. A small

caravan suddenly comes to a halt on a desert road, and one of its members

falls to the ground in a state of apparent ecstasy. He looks as if he sees


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something, and yet no one else sees anything. He converses as if he is talking

to somebody, but no one sees an interlocutor. Some hear a voice, but they

dont see another person.Now this experience, this event, we have no idea what it appeared to be to

the people around him. In their later memory, they would all recall it as being

a divine visitation. But whether thats what they thought in the moment, itshard to say, as this man collapses to the ground and starts to speak to

somebody who doesnt appear to be there. The event couldnt have lastedmore than a few moments. Only a few words were exchanged. Yet in this

brief instance, in this paucity of words, a mans life is completely transformed.In a very real way, in that encounter, one man dies and another is born.

Between the act of falling down and getting back up, a new person stands in

the midst of his colleagues.What could account for this, and what could it possibly mean? Lets look

at it from a slightly different perspective. Ive just been speaking in acomfortable, objective, or at least appearing to be objective, academic way of

the story. Imagine it from the first person.This is, of course, St. Paul traveling on the road to Damascus. Hes

engaging on a journey that, by his own admissions, is familiar. Hes outhunting people. Hes out to get them. He is a devout follower of the Jewish

Law. Hes a Phariseea group of people who believed that the Law was giftof God, a gift to be cherished, a gift that when it was defaced or deformed

should be protected, not because they were legal-minded and enjoyed being

bound in by regulation. But because God had said that this Law gave them

life and directed their steps.He believed this with his whole heart, and he saw in this groupthis little

sect that had formedwhat he believed to be a perversion of this divine gift.He would stop at nothing to hunt out those who defamed God. As he himself

noted and recorded in St. Lukes account of the Acts of the Holy Apostles:This I did in Jerusalem. Many of the saints I shut up in prison, havingreceived authority from the chief priests, and when they were put to death, I

cast my vote against them. I punished them as often as I could in every

synagogue. I compelled them to blaspheme. And being so exceedingly

enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities.So on this day he was traveling to a foreign city. Who knows what his

heart was like? What thoughts were in his mind as he was traveling toward,

as he viewed, a sacred mission? Was he looking forward to the task? Did he

feel that he was doing Gods work, that God would support him? Whatever


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his precise state of mind, whatever his thoughts, they are interrupted. The

midday sun is completely overwhelmed. Light no longer seems to come it but

from something else. Everything in this mans experience is changed.Paul, many, many years later before a local tribunal on false charges, he

gives an account of this experience to his accuser. He characterizes it in this

way: At midday, O my king, along the road I saw a light from heaven,brighter than the sun. It shone around me and those who journeyed with me.

And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me in

the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Is it hard foryou to kick against the goads? And I said back, Who are you, Lord? and hesaid, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand on your feet,for I have appeared to you for a reason.

Since that afternoon, this event has been taken by the whole Christianworld as a kind of paradigm for conversion, of a heart utterly changed, of

being united to the life in Christ. Not by some little class that we took that

somehow made us ready and now somehow we are worthy, but by change,

not of what we think but who we arebecoming someone new, even if weare not divorced from our past.

St. Paul so much becomes an apostolic witness that we call him often

simply The Apostle despite the fact that, of the Apostles, he never knew

Christ in the flesh. Yet we call him The Apostle. Hes become such a zeal formission that he travels literally the whole world as it is known to him to

spread the faith and becomes an example for mission ever since. All this and

we are given to know that this is theonly time that St. Paul has such an

experience. A few seconds, one day, and life is different.Story number three. Fast forward. A young boy by the name of Francis is

born of Greek parents in the village of Paros, Greece in 1898. I have to give

you the date early on or you all will think that I am talking of St. Francis of

Assisi. This is a different Francis. From the age of twenty-three this Francis

begins to read the writings of the Church Fathers. Particularly, he is

captivated by the ascetical writings on the monastic spiritual life. He decides

that he wants to know this God and live this life, and he begins to practice his

own ascetical discipline in his parents small farm yard. He tries this for sometime before literally running away and making his way to the famous

Athonite peninsula of Mt. Athos. Here, on a granite peak that shoots 2,000

meters directly up out of the Aegean Sea, Christians have been living

effusively ascetical life, by the time he is there, for at least 1,100 years.


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This is a mountain that has always been prone to big ideas and big feats.

Alexander the Great commissioned his chief architect to come up with

plansto carve out of the Athonite peak an enormous statue of Alexanderhimself, holding his open hands out, big enough to have a small settlement in

each open hand. To the great glee of Athonite monks this was never realized.

But others, almost as ambitious, were. King Xerxes carved a canal through Mt.

Athos. You can still see it today. Its long since silted in but still clearly visible.This is a mountain which, according to the tradition of our Church, was

turned into a spiritual battleground for the monastic life by none other than

the Mother of God herself. And it there that young Francis went, eventually

migrating down to the southernmost tip, the most fierce of all the terrainaplace called the desertin order to live out this spiritual life.

Francis aim since his youth had been to know GodI want to knowGod. But his path toward this was fraught with difficulty and frustration. Aslater he was to say of those early struggles, I was almost inconsolable,

because I was longing so ardently to find what I had set out in search for, to

find God. But not only was I not finding it, but the people who I thought

would help me were not even being helpful. Hes frustrated. If he continuedto seek, he did not lose heart simply because the circumstances around him

were difficult. God rewarded him for that perseverance. As he would say

later to some of his disciples, on one day he began to experience real prayer.In his words, I was at once completely changed, and I forgot myself. I wasfilled with light in the depths of my heart, and outside my heart, and

everywhere. I was not even aware anymore if I was in the body. And then the

prayer began to say itself within me.This experience is not an uncommon one in the Orthodox Church, but we

would hardly call it normal. It reminds me of St. Simeon the New Theologian,

one of the great Byzantine fathers of the 10th and 11th centuries who, having

heard that God reveals himself in light, stood up in his room and said, Showme yourself! Im not going to sit down until I behold you. And he beheld theDivine Light. I dont recommend trying to emulate that as a strategy. Its notalways the case that we are as prepared as Simeon might have been in his

youth.The young man of whom I have been speaking is better known to

Orthodox by another nameJoseph, Elder Joseph the Hesychast, FatherJoseph of Mt. Athos. He was one of the greatest figures of monastic life on

Athos in the last centurya man who almost single-handedly by the grace ofGod saw the life of the Holy Mountain turn around. Disciples gathered


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around him who went out transfigured by the same God and repopulated

monasteries that had been dormant, in decay, physically as well as spiritually.

The Holy Mountain in all its history had never been so depleted of monks,

and yet by this mans prayers it is today thriving and growing.So we have three stories: disciples at the side of a lake, Paul on the road to

Damascus, and Elder Joseph alone in his cell praying to God. What binds

these together? Outwardly, these stories are radically different. They take

place in different times and cultures. Even their contours are not really in

common one with the other. The point that I would like to emphasize tonight

is that the theme which binds them together is encounter. In each of thesestories, what changes people is an encounter with God himself.

St. Peter and the apostles are not convinced that this man, this Jesus of

Nazareth is the Messiah, because hes rationally argued them into submission.The Sermon on the Mount is a beautiful pastoral homily. Its not a logiclesson. Its not a theological tract. They are not convinced to believe that this isthe Son because he has told them. They are not convinced because there is a

specific set of scriptures that says A + B + C = Jesus of Nazareth.Later on, they will discern that the scriptures did point to him. But they

dont believe he is the Messiah because of some scriptural formula. Theydont believe it because of some rational analysis. They believe it because they

have seen him, known him, have eaten bread given to them from himenough to feed thousands coming from five little loaves. They have been on

the boat when he calms the storm. They were there when he walks on the

water. They were there and watched him heal the sick and cast out demons.

And because of that experience they are able to say, I think that they dontunderstand you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And I say thatthey dont understand it, because scripture makes it very clear that theydidnt.

St. Peter, who makes this confession, minutes later, gets a pretty firm

rebuke, if you remember the gospel. A few moments later, everyone is feeling

pretty good about this and Christ says, Now it is time to go to Jerusalem sothat I can be sacrificed. And Peter says, May it never be, Lord. This is theman who just said that he is the Son of God, refusing to let him do what God

wants him to do. And you remember what Christ said to him? Get behindme, Satan! Let that be a warning the next time you feel youve got everythingworked out.

He doesnt understand it in a rational sense, but he knows it. Thats adistinction thats hard to articulatethat something can be known


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completely, intimately, and still not understood. St. Paul does not change

from a Pharisee to an apostle because God has told him adequately and

amply why pharisaical Judaism has had its run and is now over. He is not

convinced by some rational argument. He knew the argument. St. Paul was

one of the most educated men of his dayeducated by Gamaliel himselfaJew of the Jews, of the tribe of Benjamin. He knew what he was fighting

against.Hes changed because he meets a person, and that event utterly

transforms his view of himself and the world. Until that moment on the road

to Damascus, St. Paul, then Saul, had been persecuting a cause, an idea, a

concept, a movement. In one moment, he is made to understand that who he

is persecuting is a person. I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. And that

changes everything for the Apostle. Suddenly, God is not an idea to bedefended but a person to be known, and loved, sacrificed for, shared, died

for. That is a very different kind of belief.Similarly, Elder Joseph in his prayer does not finally find out how to pray

because he has read all the right handbooks, hes finally made it throughvolume five of the Philokalia, he knows all the instructions and he can

assemble the parts in all the right order and create interior prayer. Thats notwhat does it. He hasnt been given the right lessons in the right classes. He

hasnt heard the right lectures or the right speakers. The prayer began to sayitself in me.

Remember the words of the Apostle Paul to the church of RomeWhenwe dont know how to pray, the Spirit prays in us with words and utteringstoo deep for the human heart. When we dont know how to pray, the Spiritprays. Thats what Elder Joseph experiencedthat God could come to him.He had spent his whole youth trying to get to God, and in a quiet moment the

Holy Spirit comes into his heart and reveals his presence. And the man is

changed.In all of these stories, the encounter with God is what does it. What it does

is alter a life. It alters a life so that this life, this person, sees what before he

could not see. He hears what before he could not hear, something that Christ

had vaguely promised to them in an ambiguous way many timeslet himwho has ears to hear, hear; let him who has eyes to see, see. These people didnot have ears to hear until their engagement and encounter with the Lord

changed their eyes, and they saw, as Elder Joseph said, Lights everywhere;love everywhere; hope in everything. St. Paul became a man who would

joyfully go to his own execution, because he could see the grace of God even


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there. Imagine that! It is the encounter that changes the senses, the

perceptions, of these people.My fourth story, I hope you all know it. Its one of the most famous. Can I

see a show of hands of those who have read Metropolitan Kallistos Orthodox

Church? One or two of you. If you havent, I believe they are selling copiesoutside, and Ill tell him I expect a commission on every sale now. The rea sonI raise this book is that he talks about the event that I want to share as do

many others. Its one of the more famous, historical moments in thedevelopment of the Church in the Russian lands.

Prince Vladimir of Kiev and of all of Rus wanted to find a religion to unite

his imperial court. Any religion would do. He just wanted to find the right

one. So he did what a good ruler would dohe took emissaries from the

royal court and sent them out and said, Find out about all the religions outthere and come back and tell me which one is best, and thats the one welluse.

They went out and visited many different religions, many different forms

of Christianity. Christianity was not yet firmly divided in the way we think of

it today, but there were already longstanding schisms by the time of the

conversion of Russia. We often think of the Great Schism as being the schism

between the Roman West and Constantinopolitan East. But this was a late

schism, much sadder. More divisive schisms had happened long agoschisms, for example, at the time of Chalcedon (451 A.D.). Schisms which, lest

you think history is all in the past, still divide us today in 2010. Lord, have

mercy.So he sent out his emissaries and they visited here and there. By one

tradition, they went to the Islamic court, asked about Islam, and wrote back to

Vladimir and said, Its a nice religion, but they dont allow alcohol, and thiswould never go over with Russians. They went to Germany, Europe andthroughout the world.

One group of envoys went to Constantinople. This is what they wrote in

their own words, When we stood in the temple *this is Hagia Sophia whereyou can still go today, the Church of Holy Wisdom], we hardly knew whether

we were in heaven or on earth. For in truth it seems impossible to behold such

glory and such magnificence on earth. We could not possibly relate to you

what we saw in that place. But one thing we know, there God dwells among

men, and all the worship of other countries is to us, forevermore, as nothing.

We cannot forget that beauty which we saw. Whoever has enjoyed so sweet a


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sight will never be satisfied with anything else; nor will we consent to remain

any longer in paganism as we are now.What does this story tell us about the life in Christ? Firstly, it has always

struck me that the envoys comment is about beautyIt was beautiful. We

cannot recount that beauty which we saw. The thing that affects them firstand foremost is vision, experience. Its not intellect. Bear in mind, these werenot Greek speakers. They wouldnt have had any idea what was being said.And yet, they were convincedOne thing we know. We know in that placeGod dwells with men. No system of catechesis was provided, noindoctrination. Yet through the beauty of that moment, of those experiences,

something furrows its way into their heart. They are engaged with something

that they did not anticipate. Something becomes real, tangible, visible, and

touchable. Many would call this experience mystical. They had a mysticalexperience.

Okay, now its interactivity time. This is where I prove that Im auniversity professor after all. I would like you to take a moment and turn to

the person next to you and define mysticism. Dont come up with the rightanswer. Come up with what you really think it is, and talk to the person next

to you and share your definitions.Im delighted that on a Friday you are all so enthusiastic to talk about

such deep things. Who would like to be the first to be ritually humiliated andstand up and tell us what mysticism is? Great will be your reward in heaven.

Dont be shy. As my tutor once said to me, There are no stupid questionsonly stupid students.

[First respondent]: Something which is knowable but not by the mind or

the intellect.

[Second respondent]: An encounter with the Lord.I think I should have asked this before I told the stories! Your answers are,

from my point of view, sadly accurate and therefore I cant taunt you.Mysticism is often simply used as a kind of general term to mean something

thats not intellectual, something that isnt purely rational. I am very happy tosee that in both of the straw poll answers just taken that there was a sense not

of just being utterly general, but of being general in a Christian wayencountering Christbut in a way that we cant understand or cant articulate.

But in popular speech, mystery and mystical often just meansanything that goes beyond rational description. Im living in San Francisconow, which is a very odd place, and I heard one time a certain type of special

coffee drink described as a mystical experience. This reinforces my general


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belief that the word is useless by and large. I dont like it. I find it disruptive,because it infuses discussions with ideas that have no shape.

Mysticism, by the way, isnt an Orthodox term, at least if by that we meana word that in its own right has much place in the history of Orthodox

vocabulary. There is another word that doesmysteryand an adjectivemystical. But mysticism, as a thing in its own right, is a kind of odd

anomalythe idea that experience can be extracted away. Its no longer anadjective that describes how you experience something, but it is the very

notion of experience in its own right. Thats strange, because, as someoneonce said to me, Who cares about your experiences in their own right? Allthat matters is what you experience and how that experience affects you. If

you extract those ingredients and just come down to the feelings I have or the

idea that Im getting out of my head and out of my mind and intellect, whocares? As one former student of mine put it, A few glasses of wine andanyone can be that sort of mystical.

In the encounter with Christ that weve seen in the stories that Ive told,something rather different happens. They each have experiences that are

definable in different ways that in many cases are miraculous, are

extraordinary. Yet they serve a purpose of uniting the lives of these people to

the life of Christ himself. That is the ultimate fruit of these encounters.

Through these experiences, the Apostles, St. Paul, Elder Joseph and ultimatelyyou and I have the ability for our life to come in contact with the life of God,

to be changed by being in union with God himself, to become different than

we are now.These are experiences and encounters that are open to us by experience,

because we are experiential creatures. We live in history. God gives us skin

and bones and eyes and ears. What is it that these apostles and

disciples see when they encounter Christ, when they look at him? What is it

that they see that is so transformative? Its not just a great magician andmiracle-worker. There were a lot of magicians and miracle-workers in the

ancient world. There were lots of ways to do miraculous things. Someone

once said, There are more spirits than just the Holy Spirit. There is thepower to do the miraculous, not to good but to evil.

Its not the magic act dimension that is the focal point of their attention.They see something they have craved and never found. They see the kingdom

of God made real in the world around them. They see the end, the fulfillment

of all things, walking in their midst. They see someone who shows them the

end of the story, a story that involves growth and pain, joy and profound


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sorrow, a story that shows ups and downs and ins and outs, some of which

are pleasant and some of which are most certainly not. In the midst of all of

that, the normal human response is to despair. The fact that there is some joy

in this experience doesnt stop the despairit makes it worse. If I can feel joyand still suffer, what good is the joy? It would be much easier if it was all

pain.Yet Christ comes into this and shows the fulfillment of creation, that God

reigns, that the devil loses, that the Father wins, that creation is redeemed,

that life is eternal, that sorrow is finite, that pain is a drop that passes, joy is

eternal, that sins can be overcome, that death can be defeated. They see the

end of all things, and it gives them hopea hope that cannot come fromanything else. That is what they experience. How they are brought to that

experience varies, but that is what they encounter. That is what enables St.Peter to look and say, You are the Messiah.

As Orthodox Christians, we live in that corporate experience of the

kingdom of God made real in Christ. We view history from the end of history,

not from the now, not from the beginning. From our point of view as

Orthodox people, historians biggest problem is that they read historybackwards. They are committed to the great fallacy of thinking that you

should start at the beginning. It makes for a lovely song (you all know the

musical which I am referring to), but it doesnt make for good theology.Theological history starts at the end and looks backwards. My life now is

a cause for great despair if I just look at it now, look at all my sin, look at my

complete inability to do anything holy. Look at the fact that for all my desire,

for all my intention, I fall at the first hurdle every time. Thats not a hop efulsign. Yet if you look at life from the empty tomb, this suffering, this sorrow,

has meaning.This is why as Christians, as Orthodox Christians, we dont pretend that

we dont know how the story ends. Our Holy Week services are a wonderfulexample of this. We dont start Holy Monday and pretend that we are unsureas to what is going to happen, which happens sometimes in certain traditions

and locales. We sort of put on a drama that leads you to this amazing

revelation.We know how it ends, and we start by singing Christ is risen from the

dead! Some of the most moving services of the whole year are found onHoly Saturday where Christ is entombed in the middle of the church.

The plashchanitsa () or epitaphios () the burialshroud of Christhas been taken in procession, a funeral procession. It has


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been ceremonially buried in the middle of the temple. Then there is this

wonderful Service of the Lamentations. Thats what we call it in English. Theword in Greek is praises, where we stand by the tomb of Christ and we singthe most bizarre intermixture of psalms and hymns youll find at any point ofthe year. Utter sorrow and sublime joy interwoven. We weep and we rejoice,

and the reason for that is summed up in my favorite hymn of the yea r. Ivebeen told before that Im not supposed to say thatyou cant have favoritehymns; you cant have favorite saints. So taking all that on board, my favoritehymn in the entire year is this most remarkable hymn from Holy Saturday.

Weve been singing to Christ and about him. Suddenly, we sing in his voice,in the first person. We are Christ lying in the tomb, and his mother is weeping

over him. The words of the hymn are, Do not weep for me, my mother,

seeing me in the tomb, for I will arise and be glorified! Knowing how thestory ends is important to Christians.

The miracle of this is that knowing how the story ends paradoxically

shows us how it began. It gives us a vision of beginnings that we never had

before; a vision that itself changes our perception of the world.Genesis


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We hymn over and again that creation fits together like a puzzle. And like

a jigsaw puzzle which reveals a picture, the picture at the end is a cross, the

empty tomb, and you and me. We are told that we are made we are madeby God, and that means something critical to us. In the life of Christ, creation

is filled with meaning. We love creation. We cherish Christian historythehistory of creationbecause it is not just about history. It is the story of myredemption. Without that segment in the story, we miss part of our own life

as we live it now.One of the things that we miss, and that the world around us misses, is

who we are and what we are. We are told in so many ways, some of them

directly (those of you who have had any experience perhaps with the New

Age movements), the idea that Im not really methis is not really me. I am

spirit, ethereal spirit, part of a larger spirit, etc. There are so many variationsthat it is hard to boil them down into one. But there is a very popular

distinction that this isnt methis is a little shell that I wearuntil such atime as I can at last be liberated from this. This is a demonic idea, because it

divorces us from the very thing that God has fashioned us to becreatures.When we read Genesis in the light of Christ, we see that the very physicality,

the dustiness, of our body is integral to who we are. We are material beings

through and through. In Orthodox icons of Genesis 1, Christ is the one who

fashions us from the dust. You see Jesus walking along, picking up the sandand breathing into it. The ultimate revelation we have that our materiality is

important is that God takes it as his own. He becomes a man, flesh and blood.Theres a wonderful story in the 8th or 9th chapter of Johns gospel where

a man is born blind, and Jesus gives him back his sight. He does this in a

strange way. He spits into the dirt and makes mud and rubs it in the manseyes and says, Go, wash it.

In the second century, my patron saint, Irenaeus of Lyons, commented on

this gospel. He said, Some people would ask, Why doesnt God just goPOW! and your eyes are fixed? Obviously, he could have done that. Godcan do anything, why not? Why go through this strange ritual of spitting,

making mud, and smearing it in someones face? The answer, he said, is thatChrist wanted us to know that matterdust, mud, flesh, bones, the thingsthat the world tries to tell us are coarse and meaninglessthese things matter.They can be holy. They can be avenues by which we encounter Gods grace.

The human person, the creature that experiences God, experiences him

with its senses. We sing in the Divine Liturgy, Taste and see that the Lord is

good. We conclude the Divine Liturgy by shouting aloud, We have seen the


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true Light. We receive into our mouths the flesh and blood of the Lordhimself. We surround ourselves with images that flood the eyes. We sing so

that our ears are filled with the sounds that lead us to God. We burn incense

so that even our nostrils dont escape. Then we prostrate ourselves and makethe sign of the cross so that even our bodies are involved. No sense is left

untouched, because we know something. We can sense God. The senses that

he has given us are holy, if we use them in the way they have been fashioned

to be used. That is something that must be done in cooperation with God

himself. When we encounter him and experience him, our senses are changed.

Im going to talk more about that tomorrow.The human heart is what the Fathers call or identify as the center of our

human existence. Its not exactly the physical heart that pumps blood through

our bodies, but it is connected to that. It is not to be divorced from that. But inthis they see condensed everythingearth and heaven, the past, the present,and the future, life and deathall are centered right here in the person. Andonly that creature can know God in his fullness.

If we try to divorce ourselves from ourselves and say, I am pretty muchjust mind, therefore I will know God with my mind, you will know a littlebit about Godbut not very much. If you try to pretend that you have nomind at all, you will know maybe a little more about God than if you went

with option A, but still not very much. But if we approach God in our fullpersonal authenticityas creatures tip-toeing on the earth (as St. Clementcalled it), clinging to heaventhen we can know him in his fullness. Withoutthat, our knowledge is shallow. But with it, our knowledge is deep. That

brings me back to mysticism and mystery.In Greek, the root mu- or my- means depth or the deep. That which is

mystical is something which goes to the very depths of reality, beyond the

surface things that we see day to day, to the very depth of what really is. This

is what makes life mystical when it is lived in Christ. The human person

united to his God has the ability to see what cannot be seen, to hear what

cannot be heard, to have access to that which cannot be accessed, toin his orher own heartovercome the seemingly impossibility that God cannot beseen and yet we have seen the true Light.

Without communion in God, these things dont work together. Its one orthe other. In the life in Christ, they are both true. We behold Christ himself.

The goal of our life in Christ, of this mystery, is to experience the kingdom of

God in its fullness, at every moment, to live now, today, that which is coming.

Christ calls himself at one point the One who is to come ho erhomenos. It


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is better translated out of the Greek as the Coming One. He is here now.The One who is to come is already here. We attempt to live our life taking

seriously what Christ said to the repentant thief: Today you can be with mein paradise.

Mysticism, as Orthodoxy might appropriate the term, has to mean the

struggle to gain the experience, the encounter in Christ with the eternal

kingdom of God. But, as I said, mysticism is a term kind of foreign to us. It

doesnt really appear in our Fathers or in our writers with any sense ofregularity. But we have it as an adjectivemystikos, or mystikosdeipnos ()the mystical supper. There it is.

What makes it mystical? In this moment, we see what cannot be seen. We

see that bread is the body of the Lord, that wine has become the blood of the

Lord, that Christ is here right now. A person who is not living in this mysterywill stand right beside you and not see it. They will watch Christ walk across

the water, and, like the apostles, will say, Who are you? But the person wholives in this mystery beholds these things and says with the Apostle Peter,

Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.I started off with one linethe life of Christ is a mystery. Maybe we can

now understand what this means a little more. The coming of Christ into the

world means that God is accessible, sensible to the human person. Indeed, the

very reason we are created as we are is to meet him, to have at our disposablewhat is necessary to meet him. That encounter grounds not a religion arenot a religion. It doesnt ground a faith either. We possess faith by the grace ofGod, but we are not of faith. Christianity is a life. It has to be lived. There is no

other way to do it.It is a very peculiar life. It is a life bound up in Christ himself. We get that

image most potently from St. John of Kronstadt, whose memory we kept very

recently. His spiritual diary was called My Life in Christ, which if you haventread you should. When our life is bound up in Christ, it attains a depth, an

engagement with reality, with creation, with God and with ourselves that can

come from nothing else; that goes beyond experience and yet involves

experience; that is grounded in time and yet meets eternity. This is what it

means to speak of mystery. This is what it means to speak of a mystical life -

the life of God that has been made the life of the human person; the life that

leads to the kingdom of the Father. Amen.


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Part 2We began yesterday with a discussion of what mystery means and what the

life in Christ may mean from the perspective of mystery. I tried to put some of

this into the framework of the popular language and vocabulary of mysticism

and why I am nervous when people try to describe Orthodox Christianity as a

mystical religion or try to compare it with other forms of mysticism, as ifconsolidating mystery into a thing were a possibility. Orthodoxy, as we

discussed last night, sees mystery everywhere, if we understand mystery to

be the true depth of creation that God has fashioned which goes beyond what

our senses normally perceive, beyond goes beyond the very shallow and

superficial understandings of creation, of the person of God that we normally

hold within us and normally foster.Yet, for Orthodoxy, mystical is almost always an adjective. It describes

somethingit isnt a thing in its own right. I referred last night to the iconabove the Heavenly Gates in the Orthodox Church ormystical supper. We use mystical in this wayto describesomething like communion or to describe life. There is a great deal of

language in Orthodox literature of the mystical lifea life thats lived to itsfullness in Christ. This makes it not a distinct thing from ordinary life but

simply suggests to us that the way we live life normally is a shallow reflectionof what life actually is. Life, if lived to its fullness, is intrinsically mystical. Life

lived in its fullness is a life that joins the human person to God.Mystical life is not a life that you learn to fasten on to who you are. It is a

life that discloses who you actually are. All you have to do to live a mystical

life is to live a human life, or, more properly, to stop living a

subhuman existence, which is the way most of us pass our daysliving out alife that is more defined by our sin and our limitation than it is defined by the

fact that we are creatures fashioned into Gods glory in his image capable ofliving in communion with himself. That is true human nature.

When we see great saints transfigured (Ill talk a little bit this afternoon ofSt. Gregory Palamas, St. Simeon the New Theologiansaints that are veryfamous in the Orthodox world for visual transfiguration and transformation),

the important thing to remember is that what one beholds in those moments

is not some supernatural phenomenon, but it is actually a normal, human

person. What makes the person look different, miraculous and wonderful is

that we behold the human person in the full glory of God rather than in the

debased limitation of sin, which is how we normally see one another.


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What I would like to talk about this morning is some of the practical

manners in which the traditions of Orthodox Christianity go about

encouraging the living of this natural life, this normal life, which is by

definition the mystical life. I want to look, for various reasons, at a specific set

of Orthodox traditions and personalitiesthose known to most people as theDesert Fathers. One of the main reasons that I am choosing to talk about the

Desert Fathers is that they are very, very popular. Many people have heard of

them, many people have read them, and many people like them. Can I just

see a show of hands of people here who have read or heard some snippet of

the Desert Fathers? A fairly good showing. Can I see a show of hands of the

number of people who have read the corpus of St. Maximos the Confessor?

Aha. Four or five. This is about right. The Desert Fathers are in many ways far

more accessible to us, or they seem more accessible. They are simple and briefsayings gathered together that seem very applicable to our life. The question I

want to ask is, How? How are they applicable to our life?One of the best studies in the English language of monastic traditions in

the Early Church is a book by the Anglican vicar and scholar Derwas Chitty.

In 1966, he published a volume entitled, The Desert a City. The book and the

study were not very popular in his life. No one paid it a considerable amount

of attention. Only at the end of his lifehe died rather suddenlyand after

his death did the value of the book, to historians and religious scholars, startto become clear. It is now, although quite old by academic publishing

standards, still a seminal and classic text on what happened with the rise of

the monastic movement.He took for the title of the bookThe Desert a Citya line out of the

pages of St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria who was himself a

biographer, a spiritual hagiographer of St. Anthony the Great, one of the

founding fathers of monasticism. Chitty took this line where St. Athanasius

writes, under the influence of St. Anthony, The desert became like a city,filled with monks leaving the cities to populate a new city as their spiritual

homeland. Chitty, when writing about the advent of monasticism, found inthis image of a barren, deserted, lifeless place, suddenly teeming with life, the

absence of civility suddenly becoming a city itself all eager for citizenship in

the Kingdom of Heaven, a vision that he felt would encapsulate or could

encapsulate the whole phenomenon surrounding the rise of what we now call

simply desert monasticism.There is an endless series of paradoxes to the desert life. One finds life in a

place that is normally associated with death; joy in a place that requires


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physical toil and labor. Yet, as Orthodox Christians, we hymn from every

Pascha until the Ascension that the world has been transformed. Death isntwhat we think it is. Death has been defeated. It has been trampled down. It

has been conquered. Life is what reigns, and it reigns in the most impossible

of placesin a tomb, which is not normally the home of life. However, in ouricons, the tomb and the cave of Christs birth are indistinguishableiconographic entities. They look the same. The place of death has become the

place of life.Life can blossom where you dont expect it. This is really what is implied

when the angel says that phrase that starts off the fullness of Christian belief,

He isnt here. He has risen! The world is a different place. Christian peopleare able to stand before the empty tomb and say with Paul, I am persuaded

that neither death nor life, angels or principalities, powers, or things presentor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be

able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8).The mystery that is manifested in the utterly simple words of the angel,

which is proclaimed in the unwavering words of the apostles and handed

down through history, comes to us in a variety of different ways. The Church

espouses a broad selection of means of handing on what it has received. One

of the fundamental tenets of Christianity in the Orthodox understanding is

that it is something that is handed on. You cannot invent it. You cannot createit. You have to be given it. You have to receive it. Christ hands it to his

apostles and they hand it on to the followers surrounding them. They in turn

hand it down to us, and we, here in the twenty-first century, receive it. It is a

gift given to us.The word to hand on in Latin is tradizione (tradition). It is a verb

to tradition something. We often think of tradition in a very debased sense,as if its a kind of a thing to set alongside with our favorite thing to compare ittoScripture and traditionas if they were both entities in and ofthemselves, and we would then decide whether we like this one or this one

more. Or are they equal? Sometimes the Orthodox, for lack of a better way of

explaining it, say, They are equal for us. No theyre not. Theyre not thingsthat can be compared. Tradition is an action, a handing on. The Scriptures are

part of the fruit of that act of handing on an experience of God to another

generation.The Church has other ways that this has been handed on over timethe

canonical corpus of the Church, lots and lots of canons. These exist not simply

to be rulesyou must do this and you mustnt do thatbut to give shape to a


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life that allows for authentic experience. The canons are pastoral tools. They

exist in order to help us live a life where the experience of God is possible and

to help prevent us from the pitfalls that normally stand in the way of that life.

We have long, patristic tractslong patristic tracts in some casesthatdefend in minute detail very specific dimensions of that confession so that,

when it is handed down, it is not perverted and it remains the same

confession that Christians have always believed.This even happens in our iconography. We see icons all around us. Icons

are not free form paintings. They follow rules that are designed to ensure

what they convey to us is true, that what we receive from them is not

falsehood but the truth. So there are very strict rules on why Christs coronahis halolooks different from everyone elses. Theres a reason why the

phrase Yahweh (in Greek Ho n) is always in his halo. Theres a reason thatthe Mother of God, the Theotokos, wears certain colors in a certain order.

These things exist to ensure that we receive truth.For all its organizationall of its rubrics, canons, scriptures, patristic

texts, iconography, hymns and liturgical typikawith all of this, the core ofOrthodox Christianity still rests with that which gives meaning to all of these

things, which is the human encounter with the living God, the fact that my

heart and your heart can receive Christ and know him. The Church, quite

rightly, lives out its calling to be universal, catholicwe believe in onecatholic Church, universal. Our mission is to the whole world, as Christ

himself says in the Great Commission. It touches all of creation, not just

people, but our mission is to sanctify the worldthe plants, animals, trees,the rocks, and the water are made holy in this confession.

But at the core of this universality is the person. Christianity starts with a

person in every act, with my heart, with your heart. All of creation is centered

precisely there in the human heartwhat St. Maximos calls the microcosm ofthe entire universe. It is the person who receives the Holy Mysteries. It is a

person who receives into her body the blood and body of the Lord. It is a

person who receives anointing. It is a person whose sins are offered up in

confession. These cosmic mysteries that literally change the universe always

exist in the heart of a person.So, for the Fathers of the Church, the human heart is an important thing. I

touched on it a little last night. I want to give you a definition of the heart that

comes from one of the Desert FathersMacarius the Great. I think its the bestdefinition of the heart in terms of it being a practical definition.


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The heart itself is only a small vessel, yet dragons are there and lions. There

are poisonous beasts and all the treasury of evil. There are rough and uneven

roads in that little place. There are precipices, thoughts. There too are God

and his angels. There is life. The Kingdom is there. There too is light, the

Apostles, the heavenly cities, the treasures of greats. All things lie within

that little space.

The Macarius who penned these words (there are several saints Macarius

of the desert) is a great Syrian master of spiritual writingsone of the lastingfigures of that movement in the desert which so moves and inspires people in

our own generation. The definition of the heart that Macarius gives us is

something which reveals the intense mystery of human life. There is more to

us than we see. Dragons and lions, God, and apostles, mountains are often

tamed within. This is why St. Isaac of Syria, for example, would say, If youwish to find the Kingdom of God, look deep into your heart, and there you

will find the ladder that leads you to the Kingdom.This emphasis on the heart and how it can be discovered and liberated,

made whole, and redeemed, is an important part of the life of what we think

of as the desert monastic community. The sayings of this community (and we

shouldnt say this communitythere were many communities over a large

geography and over several centuries, but we will think of them as a wholefor the sake of brevity this morning) and our main witness to this life is

the Apophthegmatathe Sayings of the Desert Fathers. They are available inEnglish in a very good translation by Sister Benedicta Ward in England. If you

dont have this, I would be surprised and you should get a copy.The Sayings of the Desert Fathers are sometimes single sentences and, at

times, are very short sentences. Some of the longer might be a paragraph in

length. These are not things that the Fathers and Mothers of the Desert wrote

down. They are sayings heardwhat is called in Greek a word. Intradition, you would go to a wise elder and say, Give me a word, Father,some spiritual advice. And the Father would give a word and leave youalone. You would digest it and then go and ask for another word. The Sayings

of the Desert Fathers are the collection of these words as they wereremembered by the disciples of these fathers over time.

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers is probably the singular most popular

collection of ancient writings among Orthodox Christians and, indeed, among

many non-Orthodox Christians as well. Its interesting and somewhat


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revealing that something in our culture, from the twentieth and now twenty-

first centuries, that these writings above all strike interest.Another set of writingsat least the first sections of itcome from this

period. This is the Philokalia, which was not very popular until recently

when, in 1979, Bishop Kallistos and others (Palmer and Sherard) produced an

English translation of the first through fourth volumes with the fifth still

pending. Now this has probably become the second most popular collection

of patristic text among a wide readership, despite the fact that

the Philokalia is, within the Orthodox tradition, considered an extremely

advanced text which monks are normally forbidden to read until they have

advanced to a certain degree. On a popular level, everybody reads it. That is,

unless you come to me for catechesis, and I add it to the dont read list. This

is not because its badits a very holy collection of texts. But its a practicalhandbook, and the thing that we need to admit (and we dont l ike to admit, Ithink, because it somehow feels out of our grasp) is that thePhilokalia is a

monastic bookits for monks! That doesnt mean it cant have value forother people, but its written for monkshow to live the monastic life well.Even the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, despite the fact that theyre pithy,short and brief and therefore they seem very accessible, we have to

acknowledge is a monastic handbook. This is how to live out the monastic life

of renunciation. Yet more people read these texts than in any generationprevious today.

So, there is a great and vexed question that emerges out of thisWhatare we to do with these monastic texts so that they have a healthy value for us

who strive to live the life of Christ in the world, not in the enclosure of the

monastery? Granted, there is value thereof course there is. We have to bewise enough to see it and not to simply take on board a life that is not our

own. Its no good to play monk. If you want to be a monk, there are placesyou can go, there are things you can do. But its no good to play monkanymore than its good to play family or play marriage. These are both veryspecific callings. Pick one! Then, when you are in it, realize that its blessed byGod, and its holy. One of the things that I find very annoying and frustratingas a monk are people constantly trying to play monkto absorb as much ofmonasticism as they can. It defaces the sanctity of marriage, which is the first

thing that God blessesthe married life. God calls us to different things, andwe should respect and love them in their integrity and take from the other

traditions what can help us live within our own context and callingthe lifethat leads to communion in Christ.


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So, how do we do that with the desert? How do we find in the Desert

Fathers an avenue towards the mystikos viosthe mystical life ofcommunion in Christ? If the writings of the Desert Fathers are simply

historical documents that told us how they lived and what they did and what

they said, they could almost certainly be relegated simply to the annals of

interest for historians. But thats not what they do. Theyre not the type ofhistory that just satisfies the intellectual curiosity. They recount an

engagement with God of a radical sort. To me, what is remarkable is not the

fact that they often recount quite radical practicesfasting from everythingfor weeks before receiving communion, never speaking a single word to a

family member, living in caves in complete isolation. In many ways, these are

radical things. Thats not really what makes the Desert Fathers unique. What

makes them unique is their radical insistence that the life in Christ is possible,that a transformed life is attainable. End of story.

Theres a stark, simple, literality to the belief in the Desert Fathers that, ifyou follow Christ, he will draw you to himself. No questions, no doubts, no

attempts to soften the blow of whats required. If you do it, he will receiveyou fully into his life. Theres an insistence on the practical possib ility of atransfigured life, and an insistence that a transfigured life really means

a transfigured life!One of the most touching stories from the Desert Fathers is the story of

Abba Joseph of Panephysis. He went on to become a very respected elder of

the desert, but the story is about his youth. He was a novice at one of the

monasteries. He went to an elder of that community and said in the

traditional way, Father, give me a word. He wanted advice. The accountgoes like this. Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph, and he said to him, Abba*Abba means Dear Father, as far as I can I say my little office *i.e., themonastic rule of prayer]. I fast a little. I pray and I meditate. I live in peace as

far as I can. I purify my thoughts. What else can I do? Theres nothing in this saying that leads us to believe that he is lying. Weregiven to believe and, indeed, in his later lectures, he was a devout, humble

man. Hes not bragging. Hes confessing to his elder that he really is trying todo everything set before himI fast as far as I can. I try to be at peace witheverybody. I really try. I say my prayers. I go to the services. The problem

isnt that he is confessing what he does. The problem is that last sentenceWhat else is there? This is the Christianlife. I fast, Im kind, I live in peace,and I go to the services. Thats it, isnt it? Thats the holy life we want. Thenthe old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers


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became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to Joseph, If you would only willit, my child, you could become all flame! Wow! When I was younger,I loved that image.

That the desert became a city that so many people went to and enrolled in

the monastic life is a miracle in its own right. But the deeper miracle is the

approach to divine communion and transfiguration that enabled this barren

desert to become such a place. This is the inner message of the Desert

Fathersyou can live a Christian life. And if were honest with ourselves, ifwere really honest with ourselves, most of us doubt that a lot of the time. Icould, but


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They went because they wanted to fight. The desert is a place where walls

and houses can no longer protect you. Thats where the voice of the will ismagnified, because there are very few other voices around. Oftentimes, in the

midst of the world, we dont confront our will, because were too busy

confronting everybody elses. So our will, which is broken and pained andhurting, doesnt get looked at. In the desert, you cant avoid it. It is a placewhere delusion runs rampant, where people start to believe things that arenttrue. A classic example is seeing an oasis where there isnt one. Its true on aninterior level also. It is a battlegroundspiritual as well as physical. You haveto fightliterallyfor every mouthful of food that you receive. The earlymonks viewed themselves as spiritual warriors, not afraid of the fight, but

precisely desiring to take it up and be warriors for Christ. This is why monks

have always in the Orthodox Church been paralleled to military soldiers. Thisis the spiritual infantry of the Church.

I remember how confused I became one time when I was serving vigil.

When you serve vigil, vestments come on and off, back and forth, and I had to

put on the phelonion for the next part. As I walked back toward the altar, the

bishop who was standing to the side whispered to me in very quiet tones,

Dont forget your sword! I thought, What? Surely this is a problem oftranslation into English. Dont forget your sword. A soldier cant be without

his sword. He meant thisI had left my chotki on the table. I hadnt put itback on. Pick up your sword! Monks were not about just living a nice,quiet, peaceful existence. They were about fighting.

The contest, the battle, is what we call asceticism. If this is not a word yet

in your religious vocabulary, it needs to beascesis, asceticism. Its the heartof Christian life. Ascesis is an old sporting word. It comes from ancient Greek

games. It is the preparation an athlete would go through in order to prepare

himself to compete effectively in the sport or games. That preparation

required training, self-denial, self-controlyou cant just eat anything youwant if you expect to be a good runnerand it involved oftentimes quitedemanding physical labors, strict regimens that were given for what you

could and could not do, and what you must do. It was oftentimes quite

painful. Many of you who are sporty people at all know that stretching mayfeel good in the long run, but it can be quite painful in the short term.

Ascesis, as a theological concept, comes out of this. In order to attain the

Kingdom of Heaven, the ultimate prize, as St. Paul calls it, preparation is

required. You dont just walk on in. You get yourself ready. This is notbecause there is some complex set of entry requirements to get into the


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Kingdom of God. But the Kingdom of God is about a transfigured lifea lifedrawn into Christ. The way I live my life right now prevents that. It doesntassist it. So ascesis is what we do in order to change our life, by Gods graceand by our efforts, to become a person capable of receiving Christ fully into

my day to day life.If you want to think of ascesis in the classical sense, there is a lovely, sort

of moan that St. Anthony gives to God. Hes locked himself up in a barn fortwenty years in order to battle the demons. He walls himself up so that

nobody can get in. His disciples come and, through a window, pass him a loaf

of bread every so often. For twenty years he lives in this isolation, praying

and fighting the demons. After this long, long period, one afternoon

something happens. Ill read it to you. This is from The Life of St. Anthony

written by St. Athanasius:Looking up, he saw the roof as it were opened up and a ray of light

descending to him. All the demons around suddenly vanished. The pain of his

body immediately ceased. The building which, to his vision, had appeared

broken from the battle, now was again whole. But Anthony, feeling this help,

besought the vision that had appeared to him. He said, Where were you?

Why did you not appear to help me at the beginning of my quest? Why did

you not appear and make my pain cease? A voice came to him and said,Anthony, I was here, but I was waiting to see your contest. And since you

have endured and have not been worsted, I will always be your help and your

succor. I will make your name known throughout the world.

Two things stand out to me from that encounter. One is that Anthony had

achieved such a level of holiness that he could raise a finger to God and say,

Where were you? and God answers! So the man is obviously developed in

the spiritual life. But the message we have to take away from this is thatstruggle and pain and work and labor are not signs that God is absent from

our life. The growth into holiness is often a painful, fatiguing process. We

have so conditioned our lives to living in a fallen, broken way, that to get out

of that is hard.To put it in practical terms, most of us eat too much. Let us say that, from

tomorrow morning, were only going to have a banana in the morning andthats it. Nothing else. It hurts! Its not just Oh, I really want more food.Your stomach hurts. Theres pain. Your mind constantly thinks about food.We are trapped by the way we live our life.


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To get out of it is a process that involves work and struggle. And one of

the most common pitfalls in the spiritual life is that we associate struggle and

pain with the absence of God. If God were really here, if he really loved me,

he would help me. But as this story from St. Anthonys life shows that is theway God helps usto assist us in our suffering so that we suffer in aredemptive way, so that the suffering doesnt destroy us but redeem us.

It is here, I think, that the modern world has the ability to take from the

Desert Fathers wisdom for its own day to day life. How to do it? How do we

make a realistic beginning in taking the wisdom of these people and infusing

it into our day to day life?If the writings of the Desert Fathers are defined by any singular

characteristic, its their practicality. They dont talk a lot about theories,

theologies or philosophies. They talk a lot about how to weave a good basket,how to bake bread, how to make prostrations. Theres an utter practicality tothe desert approach to the spiritual life. When were talking about mysticismand spirituality and other very strange words that we use without it meaning

anything in the modern world (spirituality means something that comes from

the Holy Spiritnothing else), were sometimes frustrated if the guidancecomes in things like, forgive people, work with your hands, be obedient,

because these are not the things we associate or expect to hear. But the

testimony of the Desert Fathers is that these are the way into a transfiguredlife. Practical.

St. Anthonys life in the desert began when he walked into church (ratherlate, the case seems to be, so hes following good Orthodox custom as he wasshowing up a ways into the service, just before the Gospel was to be read),

and he hears Christ in the Gospel. He says, It was as if, when I walked intothe church, the Gospel was being read only to menobody elsejust to me.Christ was speaking to me, Anthony, and he said, Anthony, if you want to beperfect, go and sell everything that you have and give it to the poor. Then

come and follow me.Anthony did. He walked out, sold what he had (It took a little while for

him to do ithe struggled at first. He sold most of what he had. He regrettedthat, and then he sold the rest.), and he went. How many of us when we hear

that commandment try to spiritualize it away. It means I shouldnt cling tothings the way I normally do. It means I should be more self-sacrificialIshould give more. I shouldnt be bound by the things of this world. For St.Anthony, it meant go, sell all you have, and give it away! Simple advice. Not


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easy advice, but simple. It demands a radical sacrifice. But its not hard.Painful, but not hard.

So, with so many Fathers in the tradition of the Church who, when they

hear you must not come to the Eucharist if you harbor hatred against a

brother, would literally walk across the empire to find someone they hadwronged and beg their forgiveness, then walk back, and then receive

Communion. Who, being told that anger prevents one from worthily

receiving Communion, actually believed that thats what it meant.This practicality marks out the Desert Fathers in a remarkable way. If its

to be practically significant for us, if the mystical encounter with the

Redeemer that they lead towards is to have a place in our life, to shape us in

the cities, we have to start by being as practical as they were. One of the

biggest problems in the spiritual life is we like to theorize about it. We like totalk about it. This sounds a little odd coming from someone who is leading a

lecture at a seminar. Theres a place for it perhaps, but the place is to prepareus for the action for the work, to help us get ready to go out and do the work

that needs to be done.The world around us, more and more, is a place totally enslaved by the

intellect. Life as we live it is defined by what we think and feel. We are

told explicitly in society that what we think is what makes the world for us.

We can define our own morality, our ethics, society, legal systems, even goodand bad by what we think. You can grow by thinking in a certain way. Mind,

mind, mind, intellect, intellect, intellect and we never do anything.The Desert Fathers give us practical advice on how to live a holy,

transfigured existence. Heres the first bit of advice that comes directly out ofthe Egyptian desert. Its an anonymous saying. I find its a good way to beginthe spiritual journeyone sentence: You need a spiritual pilgrimage: begin

by closing your mouth.Theres hardly a more fitting saying for the Fathers of the Church to give

the twenty-first century than this one. Like most of the sayings of the Desert

Fathers, its pithy and witty. You can remember it. Its not a book that youhave to find your way through if you want to find the good bits again. Itsshortyou can commit the whole thing to memory and put it into action. Ittalks about really making a beginning. If you want to grow, youve got to startsomewhere. This is the right place. Turn this off and growth can begin.

We live in a modern world that is fascinated with talking. We talk all the

time. We are told if you dont have something to say, youre not important.You should always have something to offer any conversation on any topic,


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however trivial and pointless. Society is so crafted that, if we are in a context

of trivial conversations which we realize are trivial and pointless, we still feel

odd if we dont contribute something. We find ourselves contributingunwittingly to things that we know have no value whatsoever. Talk, talk, talk.

How can you ever hear anything from God if youre always talking? How canyou ever create the stillness and silence in the heart that is needed to receive

the Lord if your mouth is constantly venting out whatever thoughts happen

to be crossing your mind at the moment? Simply learning to be still and quiet

opens the path towards transformation.Similarly, we are not going to be able to hear things if we stop up our ears.

Theres a wonderful saying to this affect by Abba John of Aponia from thedesert: If we purify ourselves of wickedness, then we will start to see

invisible realities. But there is no point, while we are still blind, to questionwhy we cannot see the light. Theres no point in stuffing up our ears andthen moaning about the fact that we cannot hear. We live in a life where we

are constantly doing things that prevent us from seeing God. Yet we moan,

Why cant we see him? Why arent I changed? Why do I not have theexperience of God that I so desire? We moan as if it was almost unjust.Surely God should do something about this! He should help me out. But

Abba John says, We plug up our ears and then complain that we cant hear

God saying anything to us. We talk constantly so that, even if God were nextto us speaking, we wouldnt hear him. But our conversation is about Godsseeming absence.

The ways to begin to ascend into the Kingdom of God are to close the

mouth and open the ears and use the eyes. To attain real prayer which leads

to a transfiguration of life, we have to start with the practical measures

around us with the body and the mind together. Once we make a beginning

in this way, John says, you then have to target the things going on in the heart

that are poisoning it. The idea of the heart being poisoned and cold is a

consistent theme in the spiritual writings of the Church. Once youve slowedit down, you have to remove the poison.

One of the chief ways of doing this, according to the Desert Fathers, is to

combat something. Know what it is? Pride? Thoughts? Passions? Anger. Of all

the things that we expect, anger isnt usually one of them. But for the Fathersof the Desert, it is an overriding spiritual viceto harbor anger. Its one of thechief stumbling blocks towards following Christ. If you are angry, you cannot

follow him. You just cannot. We need to take that seriously in the modern

world. Our anger always, always separates us from God, no exceptions. The


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righteous anger that we hear about in God is Gods property, not ours. Weturn anger into a passionsomething that controls us.

This is something that the Fathers need to tell us who live in the world.

This is a passion that we have ample opportunity to succumb to in the world.

There are many opportunities for anger. We are thrust into relationships that

we dont want with people at work. We might have to get on with peoplewho irritate us tremendously. We live in a society that does things of which

we do not approve. Even the people close to us do things that make us mad.

They betray us. They sin against us. They slander us. They hurt us. And thatswhat our friends do! We have enemies as well.

Anger is always around. The danger with anger is that we dont seriouslythink to combat it. We think to combat the obvious sinslying, cheating,

stealing, murdering, whatever they may be. Were going to get rid of thosefirst and then Ill work on my heart. Then Ill get to that. Ive got to get the bigthings out of the way, and then Ill get to my heart, eventually.

This is what St. John Cassian says:If we take St. Paul literally, we are not allowed to cling to our anger for even

a single day. [Hes referring to Ephesians 4:26.] I, however, would like to

make a comment. Many people are so embittered, so furious, and in a state of

eternal anger that they do not only cling to their anger for a day but drag iton for weeks. I am at a loss for words to explain people who do not even vent

their anger in speech, but erect a barrier of sullen silence around their hearts.

They distill the bitter poison into their hearts until finally it destroys them.

They could not have understood these peoplehow important it is to avoid

anger. Not merely externally but even in our thoughts, because it darkens the

heart with bitterness. It cuts us off from the radiance of God, from spiritual

understanding. It deprives us of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

If were talking about the mystical life as a life in which we are joined to Godthrough the Spirit, the Desert Fathers are telling us that the presence of anger

immediately makes that impossible. Anger takes the place in the heart where

the Spirit wants to dwell and fills it with poison, bitterness and guile. St. Paul

says to get rid of it, immediately, the same day, and dont let the sun go downon it. Yet, as St. John says, many of us have perfected the art of just burying it

insideas long as I dont say anything to anyone


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Anger is the first stepChristian anger managementinto the Kingdomof God. As I say, this is advice that the desert has to teach us in the city. We

have to learn to take this seriously. Its not something that we combat downthe road in the spiritual struggle, but up front. If you want to live themystical life, if you want to attain the Kingdom of God, start by closing your

mouth and learning how to forgive.Forgiveness is the way in. Forgiveness is the antithesis of anger.

Forgiveness is what allows us to be wrong and respond in love. If we dontdevelop and foster that as our chief aim in our spiritual life, in our ascesis

with one another, the battle can never begin. You cant fight the enemy ifyouve become your own enemy. You have to get rid of that first.

Heres another saying from a Desert FatherSt. John of the Ladder,

whom we commemorate during Lent: When you are ready to stand in thepresence of the Lord, let your soul wear a garment that is woven throughout

from the cloth of your forgiveness of other people. Otherwise, your prayer

will be of no value whatsoever. St. John of the Ladder is not one for mincinghis words. If youve ever read The Ladder of Paradise, its a pretty forthrighttext.

But this is something that the Fathers of the Desert tell us. These are not

little games we are playing. This is life! You may not want to forgive another

person, but, from a theological point of view, who cares? Do it! Learn how todo it. Beg forgiveness as a first Port of Call. Offer it every time its demandedof you. Theres nothing worse for the spiritual life than for someone to comeand ask for forgiveness and for you to deny it. You do them no harm. They

will only grow. But you kill yourself! Your heart becomes stone hard.These arent games that we play. Otherwise your prayer will be of no

value whatsoever. We dont believe that. We dont take that seriouslyenough in the world. Well, Im really angry.Im upset, but Ill just stand hereand grin and bear it. There is a way out of anger. We have confession in theOrthodox Church that helps us discover in the heart where anger lives.

Sometimes anger has burrowed itself so far in that we cant find it anymore.We just know that something is wrong. Part of what confession is for is to be

guided through your own heart, to have someone help you to see whatsthere that you have become so accustomed to that it no longer bothers you, or

it bothers you without being able to be identified. Use this gift. Confession out

to be something that we run to with joy, because its an opportunity to findthat which needs to be healed and to heal it.


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Start the spiritual, mystical life with forgiving your brethren. In doing

this, this city is a completely authentic arena for spiritual warfare. One of the

temptations in the spiritual life is to think, I could do it better somewhereelse: if only I lived by that big cathedral


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great experience, the next spiritual rush or spiritual high. Those are delusions

as well. Is that really what we think Christianity is aboutfleeting momentsthat we really like? Christianity is about a whole life change.

This leads me to the next great theme from the desert that can be used in

the city to help us attain sanctification which most people will find even less a

likely candidatehospitality. St. John called our life the hard struggle ofcompassion, a life that is lived in society amongst our neighbors. If ourcalling is not to run away from this but to live within it and be transformed in

it and to transform it, then our relationship to our neighbor is an essential part

of our own spiritual growth. It starts with forgiveness and compassion, but it

cannot end there. It has to build into a relationship of hospitality, which is one

of the highest virtues in Orthodox Christianity. Im not talking about how

about coming over for a cup of tea hospitality.I should have had a closer look about this space before I started this talk.

Do you have an icon of the Trinity somewhere? Ah, yes. In that sort of

diamond-shaped collection theresecond from the top, the big one. What isthe name of that icon? Rublevs Trinity, yes. But whats the actual name of theicon? The Hospitality of Abraham. Weve removed most of the story fromthe icon. If you look at all the bigger versions, you have Abraham on one side

and his wife on the other and a house. Hes entertaining these three

mysterious visitors (Genesis 18).For us, the best picture we can draw of God is a picture of hospitality.

Thats the closest you can come to articulating the Trinitymutualhospitality, an interconnection of love, of being in communion, where the life

of each is defined by the life of the other, given to the other, received from the

other. The closest approach we can have to such a God is to ourselves be

hospitable, which is not about offering nice luncheons every once in a while

to the book club.Thats not really what were talking about. Were talking about an

approach to the other person which, starting from forgiveness and

compassion, leads to other self offeringIm am willing to give myself toyou, to offer myself for you, to receive myself you, when you come to me, to

actually hear who you, to see who you are, to have a conversation, an

encounter between us, not just an exchange of words, but two lives coming

into communion with one another.We intuit this in the world by certain experiences of life. When someone is

grievingreally in painwhat do they want more than anything else? Notsomebody to talk to them. They want someone to be with them. We often say


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to listen to them, but often a person in intense grief doesnt have to haveanything to say. But they want somebody to be with them, to see them, to

give something, even if its silence, to them. We intuit this reality even insecular situations.

But this hospitality, this offering of a life, my life for you, and for you to

give your life back to me, and to come into communion in this way, is the

closest that we can come as creatures to emulating the life of the Trinity,

defined precisely through an image of hospitality.A great desert writer, Bishop Theodorus the Ascetic, took special note of

this and said the following:The patriarch Abraham [who is theoretically in that icon] undertook the

labor of hospitality, and he sat by his tent door welcoming anyone whowould pass by. His table was open to everyone, even to the uncouth and the

unworthy. He set no limitations on his hospitality. This was why he was

counted worthy to receive God himself, to be present at that most wonderful

feast when he enterta

Orthodoxy and Mysticism - The Transformation of the Senses

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