PIKHRISTOS AFTONF!

“Abba Isidore the priest said, ‘If you keep the fast strictly, if you give great alms to the poor, and regularly attend all the hours of prayer at church, and think it is you keeping the fast and you helping the poor and you praying as you ought, it is better never to fast or give alms or pray.’ ”—from The Sayings of the Fathers

The Great Fast ends in a few hours. Has it been worth it?

Are you different than you were forty days ago?

For the past forty days we’ve pondered how God deals with us as we try to follow Him. We’ve seen how He dealt with the Abbas and Ammas (the fathers and mothers) who followed Him into the desert, determined to find Him in the sand that stings the face and the heat that blisters the feet. Sometimes, as the hot wind swirled around them they heard His stern voice; sometimes, in the cool waters of an oasis they knew the gentleness of His Spirit. Through both the desert’s ferocity and subtle beauty they learned His ways.

Abba Isidore’s words seem to me good ones with which to end our Lent. “If you keep the fast, if you give alms, if you pray regularly, and think you’re doing these things, they’re better left undone.”

But it has been me. I am the one who’s done these things.

If, at the end of Lent, I can tell myself, “I’ve done it!”—it would’ve been better for my soul, Abba Isidore says, if I’d failed. A satisfactory Lent, one flawlessly “kept,” is a misspent Lent.

The “journey” through Lent, like the life-long search of our Christian fathers and mothers in the desert, is a quest for God, not self-mastery. At the end of Lent, as at the end of our lives, we hopefully see all is Grace. Everything and everywhere, in the cry of a newborn, the tears of a bride, the sobbing of the widower, God is present. He shows Himself in unbounded joy of a new graduate and the fierce mercy of a cancer diagnosis. All is Grace.

Sometimes it’s hard to see the Grace: so hard that many of us don’t believe it exists. We need something more.

And so there’s Easter: Light from darkness, Life from death, Joy from tears. Then we see plainly that which has been hidden from our minds but whispered to our hearts—all is Grace. “And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”



Christ is risen. Christos Aneste. Christus resurrexit. Pikhristos Aftonf. Al-Masīḥ qām. Christus ist auferstanden. Kristo Amefufukka.

Happy Easter!

SALUS

“Christ is discovered in the sufferings of the Cross.”—Abba Isaac the Syrian

“Do you know Jesus as your personal Savior?”

I can’t count how many times I’ve been accosted by some well-meaning evangelical with that question. In my university days, it was an unusual day when someone didn’t interrupt one of my walks across campus to ask me about my eternal status.

Growing up in the south, where Baptist is as close as we come to having a State Church, I’ve heard it at all times and in all places: football games, hospitals—even once when I was—as we used to euphemistically say—“parking” with a girl!

Most of the time I politely smiled to keep the questioner at bay. Occasionally I’d ask what they meant by the question, but that was almost always when the inquisitor was a pretty girl. When I did bite, we’d review what I recall were titled the Four Spiritual Laws. In essence these boiled down to accepting Jesus as “my personal Savior.” When I questioned what that meant, what it actually entailed, invariably the answer would be “that’s all there is to it. Ask Him to be your Savior and you’re saved.”

Turns out, that’s not quite all there is to it. Such confident answers don’t match the reality of life—or meet the challenges of the Gospel.

Our Baptist friends are right to say we need to accept Christ. But “accepting Christ,” “knowing Him as our personal Savior,” isn’t a process of formulaic repetition. Salvation is an ongoing process. I’m “saved,” transformed, not with a statement but by life-long growth in Grace—the life of God, lived out in me. My salvation comes as I continually, over the course of my life, follow Christ where I often don’t want to go.

Sometimes, I refuse to follow. That’s what sin is.

Salvation—which comes from the Latin word salus, “health”—is the daily plodding after the Lord Jesus. Sometimes the days are brilliant with beautiful vistas and dazzling sunsets; we dance along His path. Some are heavy and gray and we barely move. Most of the time, someone like me plods along in guarded hope, not knowing what’s coming next but with a slow certainty that He is there. We’re all damaged from life. Our salus—restoration as His sons and daughters—is His goal. Whatever that requires, He’ll do.

Abba Isaac says we “discover” Christ. We ferret Him out of the stuff of our lives. He’s with us—always has been—Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Baptist or even Anglican. He is with us, drawing us to Himself. The question isn’t “have you accepted Him?” but “will you accept Him today, right now?” Today will you pick up the Cross, the burden of your life which you were created to bear, and follow Him?

If you do, you’ll discover Him in unexpected places. In fear, if you plod after Him, you’ll find your faith. In sorrow, you’ll discover joy. The Gospel isn’t the sentimental shlock of cute internet postings or lugubrious hymns. It’s the growing certainty, built over a lifetime, that all that is, is Grace. Nothing that comes to us, no matter how dreadful, no matter how much it hurts, no matter if it kills us, for those who follow, “nothing can separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus.”

Our sufferings become Christ’s. He takes them and makes them holy, good, useful. He takes what is broken and makes it whole—restores it to salus. It takes a lifetime—but He’s forming us for eternity.

WASHING DOOLITTLE'S FEET

“It was said of Abba John the Persian that when some evildoers came to him, he took a basin and washed their feet. This filled them with confusion. They confessed to him their evil intent and he spoke to them of God’s mercy and forgiveness. The brigands repented and left in peace, but two of them remained to become his disciples. They both were noted for their lives of penance.”—from The Lives of the Desert Fathers

In the movie My Fair Lady, there is a fun scene wherein Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father, presents himself to Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering and essentially offers to sell his daughter to them. While they debate the pros and cons, Doolittle states his unembroidered reasons: “I ask you, guvn’r, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means…I’m up against middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: 'You're undeserving; so you can't have it.' But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's…I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more…”

Doolittle is a grand caricature of those who aren’t worth our trouble. We see them all the time, they populate our lives. Alcoholic, sponging uncles, perennially angry neighbors, martinets at work—all people not worth our time.

Anyone who’s dealt with an alcoholic close up knows the intricate and unending games they play—with themselves as much as with everybody else. A habitual liar teaches everybody who knows him one lesson: Keep Away. The creep who sees every woman as an object of lust exudes a rotten-egg stench nobody can stand.

After many years as a parish priest, I’ve learned there is no such thing as a “normal” family. All families have their secret shames, no household escapes the clutch of corruption. Every child-molester is somebody’s son.

I worked for a year, during my seminary training, at an addiction center in New York. Day in and out, I listened to one version or another of the same tale spun by a strung-out addict of whatever kind, and wished I was back in the seminary library, reading Latin liturgical texts. It pleased God, though, to put me somewhere I didn’t want to be, with people I didn't want to be around.

Abba John the Persian was in his desert cave when trouble came a-calling. He welcomed it, as His Master did—and as I never could.

At that time and place, foot-washing was a sign of welcome. The traveler had dusty feet; part of the expected duty of a host was to have a servant wash his guest’s feet. When the Lord Jesus girded himself with a towel and washed the feet of His disciples, He was literally taking the role of the lowest member of the household staff. When Abba John poured water over the feet of the men who came to beat and rob him, he was welcoming them.

We’re well-advised to avoid the human wrecks that float by us in our lives, but sometimes we can’t. Sometimes they’re our sisters or sons. God has placed them there—for their salvation and for ours.

God doesn’t explain what He’s doing to us or with us. He tosses us in His crucible and turns up the heat. If we try to put ourselves in His place—as Healer and Lord—we’ll get burned to a crisp. If we leave Him to His place and we take ours—as the foot-washer, doing what He would have u to do—He will turn tears to laughter, sorrow to joy and death to life. That’s what this coming Feast is really about.

PRAYER AND HATE

“One of the brothers said to Abba Zeno, ‘When I pray, my thoughts turn to things of this world.’ The old man replied, ‘If you would be heard before God, pray for your enemies before you pray for yourself. This will amaze the angels and the Lord will hear your prayer.’ ”—from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

There are people I despise. I don’t actually hate anybody, at least I don’t think I do, but that’s because the people I despise really aren’t worth hating. This isn’t good for a Christian. It’s worse for a priest, who stands at God’s Altar to reconcile men and women to God.

That failure is a reality of my spiritual life. It’s lessens my usefulness to God. It hinders my prayer.

I’ve prayed for those I despise. Many years ago, when I confessed the fact that there was a person I loathed, my confessor had me pray for them every day, in the morning and at night, for a month. At first, I could barely bring myself to say his name to God. I did it out of sheer obedience. As the month progressed, I discovered I could not only say his name, but pray that God would give him good things.

I never wanted to invite him for dinner and I never did. But God healed the rancor of my heart. My loathing gave way to pity. When pity took root, I found the pleasure I took in hating him was gone. I didn’t like him, I kept my distance, but I knew he was God’s child as much as I, and in as much need as I of mercy.

It’s not always so easy. Some people we can’t stand we can’t avoid. They may be co-workers, family members (“you can choose your friends…”), or the people who live next door. The Lord Jesus didn’t say, “Love your enemies or at least, keep ‘em at a distance.” He loved those who pounded nails into Him; He prayed for their forgiveness not after the fact, but while they were killing Him.

When I can’t escape the person I despise, my prayer—even if it’s no more than saying their name to God through gritted teeth—will be difficult. God knows. He expects it anyway. We see only what we can wearing the blinders we do. That’s true of me, of you, and the person I can’t abide. That gritty and imperfect charity we show when we pray for our enemies is a sweet savor to God, the Lover of All.

He knows you and I love and hate. He doesn’t want Polyanna’s of the spirit, but men and women who will follow where the Gospel leads. Those who can pray for their enemies, and release the floodgates of His charity into the lives of those round them.

SWEET WATER IN THE DESERT

Abba Doulas, the disciple of Abba Bessarion said, ‘One day when we were walking beside the sea I was thirsty and I said to Abba Bessarion, “Father, I am very thirsty." He prayed and said to me, “Drink some of the sea water." The water proved sweet when I drank it, so I poured some into a leather bottle. The old man asked me why I was doing this. I said to him, “For fear of being thirsty later on, Father." Abba replied, “God is here with us now to care for us; He will be with us later.”

God is always present. He cares for us.

I believe the two above sentences are true. You probably do, too. Our daily experience, though, suggests otherwise. Our world spins on, often in foolishness, injustice, and brutality. God seems more absent than present. While there are good things all around us, while we’ve been born into a world still fragrant with the scent of Eden, evil is here, too. Where there is evil, there is fear.

Fear is our response to the reality of evil.

Strut as bravely as we can, fear lies like a coiled serpent in every human breast. We fear different things, but all of us know its icy clutch.

We get used to living with fear. It becomes a part of how we function—or, perhaps how we don’t function. It keeps us from picking up rattlesnakes lest we get bit, but it also keeps us from telling the truth lest we get criticized. In our fallen world, fear has its uses. Bad things happen; it’s wise to be cautious.

When Brother Doulas, the young disciple of Abba Bessarion, filled his canteen, it was a smart thing to do. He knew he’d be thirsty later. Note that Abba Bessarion didn’t tell him to empty it. What he did do, was point his disciple to something more important than sweet water—even in the desert.

“You’ve entrusted yourself to God,” he told Brother Doulas. “So trust Him.”
He didn’t say they’d find more water ahead, or that God would again make bitter seawater sweet. He didn’t say they wouldn’t get thirsty again. Only this: “He is with us now, He will be with us later.”

Abba Doulas tells the story on himself. He learned what the old man carried with him as a daily reality: I get thirsty, I have needs and there is God. Abba Doulas doesn’t tell us—perhaps he didn’t know—what Abba Bessarion’s prayer was. We have a good hint though—and it’s not the wondrously sweetened seawater. He says to Brother Doulas “God is with us now, God is with us later.” That’s a prayer of trust.

Fear lurks in our souls, whispering all the evil possibilities. Faith, our trust in God, insists only this: that God is with us now, and always. We don’t know what’s going to happen. The things we’re afraid of may come—the job is lost, the diagnosis is cancer, he does want a divorce—and as they come, they go, leaving pain in their wake. Trusting God doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen. It means when they do, His Presence takes the fear and the pain and transfigures them: He makes the evil holy, the bad good, the fear faith.

What did Brother Doulas expect to taste as he put his cupped hands full of saltwater to his mouth? If he was like you and me (and I think that’s the point of the story), saltwater. But he drank in faith, and found it miraculously sweet.

UNCOMFORTABLE WORDS

“The brothers were talking about which teaching of Christ was most important. Abba John the Dwarf, who had been silent as all spoke, said, ‘A house is not built by beginning at the top and working down. You must begin with the foundation.’ The brothers with him asked, ‘What do you mean?' He said, ‘Rather than talk about the Lord’s most important words, keep His simplest. Before you can rise to love God, love your neighbor. All the commandments of Christ depend on this one.' ”—from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

It’s not easy to love each other. It’s not easy to even like each other. The most popular sin is probably not the one you’d guess: it’s judging and criticizing each other. It’s the Pharisee’s prayer, “I thank Thee, O God, that I’m not like him.”

When I’m judged and criticized, my first reaction is usually to feel indignant, then angry. My first words will be defensive, to show I don’t deserve the criticism, or aggressive, to attack my critic.

One day I was saying the Confiteor, a prayer recited before Mass. “I confess…that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault…” While reciting these words of penitence, I wondered how sorry was I, really? How much did I really believe what I was saying? “I confess to Almighty God…and to you, my brethren,” but how would I respond if you agreed with my self-assessment? How would I take it, not if I confessed my sins, buy you did—if you told me—or others—what a sinner I was, and what my sins were?

My reaction wouldn’t be so pious. I’d attack you for saying about me what I was saying about myself.

Abba John of the Ladder says “It is not the one who criticizes himself who reveals his humility (for does not everyone have to put up with himself?), rather it is the man who continues to love the person who criticizes him.”

The most basic commandments of the Lord Jesus, the ones that lay the foundation for our love of God, aren’t hard to understand. It’s not the understanding of them that matters, says Abba John, but the keeping. It’s not when I love my family and friends, those who think I’m the cat’s pajamas that the Gospel grows in my heart. It’s when I show love to those who criticize, who judge, who condemn me.

That’s what Jesus did.

ANOTHER BORING LENT

Abba Elias the priest said “To find joy, lament your sins.”—from Words of the Desert

Lent is for sinners. When I quit sinning, I’ll quit keeping it. If my past is any guide to my future, I have as many Lents in front of me as I do years.

Lent invigorates me and irritates me. I enjoy its challenges, but tire easily of its constant emphasis on sin—especially my sin. If Lent focused on what a sinner you are, I’d love the season.

I don’t like thinking about my sins. They show me to be somebody other than the person I imagine I am; they tell me truths I don’t want to hear.

“Spiritual growth” sounds good; it sounds good for you, like the vegetarian plate at a steak house. The idea of spiritual growth is popular. Except for books about sultry teenage vampires, the majority of top-selling books on Amazon last year had to do with “spirituality.” It’s popular. “If you want the rainbow, you must put up with the rain,” or “As the purse is emptied the heart is filled,” or this banal insight: “Our first and last love...is self love.” We easily take to truths not worth considering.

The reason we keep “doing” Lent is it tells the truths we don’t want to consider but need to hear—indeed, to “learn, mark, hear and inwardly digest.” I dislike Lent because I don’t like its truth: I sin because I like to, and if I’m gonna stop sinning it’s not gonna be fun.

Abba Elias the priest (a member of a notoriously “unfun” profession) said, “To find joy, lament.” That sounds like something a priest would say. “Sorrow is fun.”

His gloomy words, though, mean just the opposite. If we want to find deep-seated joy, abiding joy, the kind that lasts, face who you are. Only when I come to terms with myself, not as a hopelessly lost sinner dangling over the eternal fiery pit, “a sinner in the hands of an angry god,” but as one of God’s creations who loves to sin but wants to love God too, only then can I begin to lay the foundation for joy.

Joy isn’t what you feel when you close the Big Deal or pick up your new truck. Those good feelings fade. Joy endures, because it’s not grounded on my emotions or my thoughts—or me, for that matter. Joy, the certainty that I’m in God’s hands and whatever comes is a sign of His love, only sin can shake.

That’s why sin is bad, that’s why we need Lent. The somber truth of Lent, the one I’m tired of hearing, is that I’m a sinner. The truth I don’t often grasp is why it matters. The most fundamental truth of Lent is not that I’m a sinner, but that sin holds me back from what I really want. Lent promises there is Something Better. “In His presence,” David sang, “is the fullness of joy.”

“Lament your sins,” Abba Elias cajoles us, “and find your Joy.”

Lent isn’t best kept with long faces but eager eyes, looking beyond sin to the Hope it hides.