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.

A SELFISH GOD

A brother came to Abba Mark and said, “Afflictions and sorrows have come on me in times of joy, stealing God’s grace and unsettling my prayer. What can I do?” The old man said, “Each thing comes to us in the right time. God’s Grace is not a possession but a gift He gives of Himself. Your prayer, made when you are at peace or when you are troubled, is the gift you give to Him.”—from Words of the Desert Fathers

“Bad things come in threes.” I’ve heard that since I was a boy. I’ve also heard “When it rains, it pours.” We count blessings individually, but problems and sorrows by the bushel basket.

It’s not because God doles out good things by the thimbleful, but because we’re surrounded by so many good things we become blind to them. It’s not the girl’s beautiful face we remember but the mole on her neck. Our childhood delight in birthdays becomes an adult certainty we don’t have many more of these left. Pre-nuptial eagerness fades to the seven-year itch.

“Everything comes to us at the right time,” Abba Mark says. Perhaps we’re not too impertinent if we ask “The right time for what?”

When is the right time for sorrow or pain? When’s the right time for cancer? For $5.00 a gallon gasoline? I need money for my son’s tuition now, but money’s tight. Is this the right time?

Given my druthers, the time I choose for sorrow and suffering, for disappointment and tears is—never. The world of my choosing is one where I’m Emperor of Byzantium, surrounded by golden domes, beautiful women and philosophers of intricate wisdom.

The world I would create would be intolerable for you and everybody else. That’s because I’m selfish to the core (of course, I’d be no more interested in living in the world you’d create than you would in mine, for the same reason—I wouldn’t be in the center of it).

The world each of us would create would be intolerable because it would be a world of spoiled brats: a world much in need of a Flood to wash clean its face.

Joys and sorrows come not when we choose but “in the right time.” In God’s time.

They come to build His Grace in us, to make us His own. That’s why we’re here. God doesn’t care about my Byzantine fantasies or Warren Buffett’s financial empire. He cares about whether you and I—and Warren—are willing to give ourselves up. He wants us to hand our lives over to Him. And He’ll allow sorrow to shake us to the core if that’s what it takes to get our attention.

Is God that Self-centered?

That’s the conclusion a lot of us come to. “Eat, drink, and be merry, because someday He’s gonna leave you a broken cripple breathing through tubes.”

It’s easy to understand that point of view—it’s one we share every time we sin. God isn’t going to give me what I want—so I better grab it while I can.

Is God that Self-centered?

“In the right time,” in God’s Time—in the fullness of time—God came down. He gave Himself up to us as He now asks us to give ourselves up to Him. We tortured Him and killed Him, just like we sometimes do to each other. What came out of Him wasn’t self-centered bitterness, but Love. He gave Himself up and showed us what Love looks like in this fallen world.

What is the “right time” for sorrow? When God knows I'm ready to be dropped into the cauldron of His Love.

WHY?

“Abba Anthony pondered the depth of the judgments of God and asked, ‘Lord, how is it that some die when they are young, while others continue on to old age? Why are some poor and some rich? Why do the wicked prosper and the just suffer?’ He heard a voice answer him, ‘Anthony, attend to yourself; these things are in the keeping of God. What you do not know, you do not need to know.' ”—from The Lives of the Desert Fathers

We’ve all asked these questions.

Sometimes we ask them out of mere curiosity. It’s not fair when bad things happen to good people. When we ponder why the theoretical Mack truck runs over the theoretical little girl crossing the street with her grandmother, the injustice makes us wonder about God’s goodness.

Sometimes we ask them because something bad has happened to us, we hurt, and there’s nobody else to blame. If my boss fires me, I can blame him. If I finally accept that my daughter’s an alcoholic, I can blame her. If I get caught taking home a boxload of office supplies from work, I can blame everybody else ‘cause everybody else does it, too.

But when something bad happens—when it just seems to fall from the sky and hits me—then I start to wonder why this is happening to me. Why have I been singled out? What sort of God does such things?

It’s one thing to wonder why babies are born with cleft palates. It’s another question entirely when MY baby is born with a cleft palate. That’s when we simmer at injustice.

We’re right to simmer. The voice inside that asks “Why would a God Who is supposed to love me allow Alzheimer’s to steal my memories?” asks a question that should be asked. It’s not wrong for us to put hard questions—gut questions—to God.

If we really want to ask the tough questions, don’t take the cheap answers.

We ask these questions because we know something’s not right—a world where a happy college girl gets raped is a world that has something fundamentally wrong with it. So it’s not enough to say “some people are rapists,” or “she shouldn’t have gone out walking alone after dark,” though both these things may be factually true. They don’t answer the soul’s cry—“Why did I get raped?”

Abba Anthony put the question before God. “Why injustice? Why pain? Why sorrow? Why death? Why, Lord?”

In a sharp response, the Lord replied, “Attend to yourself.”

Did the Lord avoid Anthony’s question? Does He avoid yours? Because it’s a question every person, smart or stupid, kind or bitter, good or bad, has asked—and not one of us, ever—has received an answer that allows us to explain it to everybody else. It remains THE unanswered question about life, though it’s asked in a million different ways.

There’s no answer that will satisfy the mind, because at its roots, it’s not an intellectual question. It’s a question not so much of the mind but of the heart. Not “why?” but “why me?” “why the one I love?”

The Voice said to Anthony, “These things are in the keeping of God. What you don’t know, you don’t need to know.” That’s the harsh Voice of the desert. But there’s the other side of those words: “What you need to know, you know already.”

To find what you seek, look inside. Ponder your life. Discover God there. Hidden in harshness is mercy; coursing through pain, is Grace. “Attend to yourself.” God waits there.

GOBBLING THE GOAT

“When the brothers came to Abba Mark to confess their sins, one said, ‘I have no great sins, Father. I have murdered no one, I have stolen nothing, neither have I committed fornications. All my sins are small ones.’ The old man replied, ‘The devil belittles our small sins so he can lead us on to greater ones. If I violate my fast eating a single pea secretly, someday I will violate it by eating a whole goat.’ ”-from The Sayings of Abba Mark the Greek

The devil doesn’t advertise. He does his best business on the sly, cut-rate, at bargain prices. He’d prefer it if we didn’t even realize who we were doing business with.

Hell isn’t principally peopled with Adolf Hitler, Don Juan and Caesar Borgia, but with the countless, nameless souls who came cheap, who traded eternity for trash. Mothers who teach their children to steal, husbands who abandon their vows for a new red sports car and a twenty-two year old floozy, the accountant who builds a business by shifting figures, the manager who browbeats employees just because he can. It’s not so much the Great Sins which damn us but the smaller ones we take for granted; the ones we think don’t matter, the ones we tell ourselves aren’t really sins at all. Most of us go to hell by baby steps, not giant leaps.

St Teresa of Avila, that wonderful Spanish woman with whom Someday I hope to spend an afternoon, says “God only shows us our sins as much as we can bear them.” If we could see into the cob-web corners of our souls, we might be driven to despair. “My own heart,” the Psalmist says, “shows me the wickedness of the ungodly.” I don’t need to look elsewhere for why the world is in the sorry shape it’s in. A mirror will suffice. I’m already eating the goat.

Abba Mark, like St Teresa, says that the sins we see are the ones we should deal with. Don’t worry about what you don’t know. Deal with what you do know and let God worry about the rest.

Fighting sin seems scary because we don’t know how to do it. We don’t do it by trying real hard not to sin, by trying to think about something else, by taking a whole lot of cold showers.

We do it without drama, without trumpets, in the secret place of the heart where temptation is trying to insinuate itself. We pray.

No temptation can overcome prayer. If we call on the Lord Christ, saying no more than “Jesus, help me,” He will. The problem isn’t that He won’t hear my prayer—it’s that I don’t want to pray in the first place. I don’t want His help—or interference. I may even tell myself “I can do this myself.”

Every time I do, I end up eating the goat. That’s because—even when I resist temptation by my own will-power (which any of us can do under the right circumstances)—all I’ve done is pushed aside a small sin to embrace a greater one. I, Me, by Myself, I turned aside the temptation to steal—I did it Myself. I resisted the pea of thievery to gobble the goat of pride.

Our spiritual lives succeed not when we win victories over the devil, but when we surrender to God.

We don’t have to beat back all the snarling hosts of Satan—as the matter of fact, we can’t. That’s God’s job. Ours is to find our place under His banner, put on the armor of prayer, and follow where we’re led.

HOW TO SET OTHERS STRAIGHT

A monk asked Abba Mark the Greek, “If I see one of the brothers do something contrary to what is right, what should I do?" The old man said, “Be careful that your concern is according to God; before all, that you take no pleasure in his sin or correction. To speak of his sin to others is far from the Gospel; to speak to him alone is to obey the Gospel law; to speak to him of his sin not at all, but to cry to God on his behalf—this is the work of angels."—from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

As soon as God dusted His hands off after making Adam, Scripture says He thought “It’s not good for man to be alone.” He took some more dirt and formed Eve, plucked out one of Adam’s ribs, and began the human race.

This story from Holy Writ is meant to tell us more than how we came to be men and women. That rib tells us we’re part of each other in the most basic of ways. The ancient story of God’s breathing life into a man and woman from whom we all come may seem quaint, but only a few decades ago geneticists made an identical claim—less poetic than Genesis—but pointing to the same truth. Australian aborigine, Louisiana Cajun and Boston socialite, we’re part of each other, linked at the most basic levels by our Creator Himself.

That genetic truth isn’t the point of the Bible story. “It’s not good for man to be alone,” means “It’s good for us to be with someone.” We need each other.

As much as I may think I don’t, I need you. Without my parents, I would have no existence. Without my teachers, I’d have no knowledge. Without my family and friends, I would have no love. God made us to be with each other and we need each other in ways we don’t understand.


Our word intercession comes from Latin; it means “to stand between,” to act on behalf of someone else. Intercessory prayer is what we do when we pray for each other. If I ask you to pray for me, I’m asking you to be my intercessor. I’m asking you “to stand between” God and me, to pray on my behalf.

We can fulfill such a request by saying the person’s name to God. Christians for many centuries have kept lists of names, families and friends, sometimes even people they’ve never met, people living and dead, which they regularly say before God. We bring such names to Mass and fulfill out duties as intercessors for those we’ve been asked to remember. Such remembrances rise to Heaven like fine incense.

Intercession, though, isn’t just rattling names off a list. The monk asked Abba Mark what to do when he saw someone misbehave. “What am I bound to do for my brother?”

First Abba Mark tells him what not to do. Don’t delight—even secretly—in his sin. Don’t be glad you’re better, because you aren’t; your sins may not be the same, but they’re just as deadly. When I talk to you about somebody else’s sins, I’m letting you know I’m better than them.

Speak to the sinner privately, if you must, Abba says. You evidently think you have something of value to say.

But he suggests a higher way. Become their intercessor. Stand between the person and his sin before God. This is what Christ does—He is, St Paul says, “the Mediator between God and men.”

We’re not competent to be judges of each other—our knowledge is incomplete and our hearts imperfect. The world has enough judges. But we can be intercessors, pleading the case of others before the All-Just Judge. In so doing, we can open the gates of mercy and Grace into the lives of others—and be ourselves drawn deep into the Heart of God.

"ONLY LET THEM BE TRUE"

“Some of the brothers went to Abba Macarius and said, ‘How should we pray?’ He answered, ‘It is not necessary to say many words, only let them be true. Turn your face to God and say “As You will, Lord, do to me. As You do, let me follow.” This is prayer.’ ”—from the Sayings of Abba Macarius

“Only let them be true.”

God knows who I am. He doesn’t have to wonder about it, I never puzzle Him, He knows me as I can never know myself. The problem I have with praying is me. It’s not so much that I don’t say the truth to God, as it is I don’t say the truth to myself.

I don’t say it because I don’t know it—or don’t want to own up to it.

As soon as my prayer moves beyond a childish “gimme, gimme, gimme,” I bump into a problem. It’s theological. Who am I praying to? Who is God? What’s He like?

One of the Commandments, etched by the fiery Finger of God onto the stone tablet, says “Thou shalt have no other gods but Me.” The more we learn about God, however, the more we’re inclined to trade Him in for another. Much of the story of the Old Testament is how the Jews kept turning from the God Who chose them to gods they chose for themselves. Those stories from long ago still ring true when they’re read among us today, because we still do the same thing.

When I pray, what I believe about God, who I think He is, will determine how I pray. If I think God is Santa Claus, I’ll tell him how good I’ve been and how deserving I am of the things I want. If I think God is a high school principal, I’ll try to keep the rules, remembering the long paddle that hangs outside his office. If I think He’s like “the Force” in Star Wars, an impersonal Power that generally oversees things, then I’ll try to be philosophical about everything and my “prayer” will be a vague sort of “hoping for the best.”

Who God is matters very much for a very practical reason: Who He Is determines who I am.

Those who find God in the Testaments lay aside all other gods. The One Who burned his words onto the Tablets at Sinai looks to write His words on our hearts. Prayer is us telling Him whether or not we’re willing to let Him do it.

Abba Macarius says, “Not many words, only let them be true.”

We learn from Scripture that God usually speaks to us, not in words we hear with our ears, but with words so subtle they can be discerned only with the mind and heart. Prayer isn’t prattling. I can prattle at God, but just saying words isn’t speaking. It’s reciting a monologue. “Let them be true.”

Prayer isn’t me flattering God (Whose angels see Him as He Is and forever cry “Holy, Holy, Holy” because in His Presence, there’s nothing else to say); nor is it me demeaning myself. It’s me saying to God who I am, warts and all, and God revealing to me Who He Is, as much as I can bear to know (which isn’t very much, but as much as He reveals it’s always more than I can take in).

To the extent I tell God the truth about myself, to that degree will I grasp the Truth about Himself He whispers to me. We will become friends.

When that happens, as happens to us when we find that rare true friend here, the day will come when silence is more eloquent than speech. I begin to see: prayer isn’t about asking but giving.

THE GOD OF THE DESERT

“One of the brothers asked Abba Daniel, ‘What shall I do, father, for I am not acting like a monk at all. I eat, drink, and sleep carelessly, I have evil thoughts and when I say my prayers my mind wanders from one thing to another. I came to the desert but remain a worldling and will never know the peace of the fathers here.’ The old man said, ‘Sit in your cell and do what little you can do untroubled. By remaining in your cell for the name of God, and guarding your conscience, you will find the same peace Abba Anthony has.’ "-from The Lives of the Desert Fathers

For years I lived in the desert of southwest Texas. I was a Boy Scout there. While other boys scaled the mist-shrouded heights of Pike’s Peak and explored the rocky coastlines of Maine, my troop went on desert hikes. Others remember tracking animals through thick forests or setting up camp in view of Crater Lake. The most notable day of my scouting career was when our troop was, to a man (or “to a boy” I guess), routed by a pack of angry and ugly javelina hogs. I don’t like the desert.

The desert doesn’t compromise, doesn’t yield; it’s harsh and hot by day and harsh and cold by night. The abbas and ammas who went into the desert (and they still go there, today) went because it’s harsh and unyielding. They didn’t want compromises, they weren’t interested in balancing the various aspects of their lives; they went to find, amid the blistering rocks and waiting scorpions, the Fire that burns everything unnecessary from the soul.

For all the several score of famous saints whose holiness was hammered out on the desert’s anvil, there were countless thousands whose lives consisted, not of heavenly visions and demonic temptations, but of plodding, daily, unexciting virtue.

Abba Daniel received one such. “I don’t act like a monk at all,” he moaned. “I came to the desert to be like Abba Anthony but I behave more like my cousin Joey in Cairo.”

The knowing abba replied, “You have a place to be: be there. You have things to do: do them. Be there and do them in the Name of God, and God will see. Persevere in what you can do, and God will give you the peace you seek.”

A kind verse in the Psalms says: “He knows whereof we are made; He remembers that we are but dust.”

You and I may believe we’ve achieved some knowledge of God and spiritual insight in our lives, but most of what we think we know is illusory. The truths about God aren’t found on the backs of cereal boxes or in cute internet stories.

God isn’t an indulgent uncle who slips us a C-note now and then, saying “Go out and have a good time.” He’s God of the harsh desert, Who burns and scalds and hammers our souls out on His anvil of love—if we have the guts for it. But He’s the God of rushing mountain rivers and gentle spring breezes, too. “He remembers we are but dust.”

Sometimes you and I can follow Him for forty days into the desert, imitating Jesus, squaring off against temptations. Other times, we just need to be where we are, doing what we do, like the nameless monk. When we pick up the kids and cook supper and wash the clothes for Jesus’ sake, there is in that a reward. Not the fiery reward of the desert (that will come later), but it turns out “the Peace of God, which passeth all understanding ,” isn’t a reward at all. It's a Gift, coming from the Lover of Mankind, to all who look to find it, plod they never so slowly.

LEARNING LOVE

“We fear what we do not know. Is it to be wondered then, that we trust God so little? Learn these words: ‘Perfect love casts out fear.’ ”—Abba Mark the Greek

“Learn these words” doesn’t mean “memorize this.” Abba Mark means “discover the meaning of these words in your life. Put them to the test, try them out, make them your own.”

Fear freezes us up. When I give way to fear, it moves in like a particularly bossy and unpleasant relative and takes over my house. When I'm afraid I ruminate on my fears, turning over and over in my mind the reasons I should be afraid. I fret over them, unfaced . When I fret, I don’t think—I only dither. And when I don’t think, I don’t act—I only react. The irony is, I'm reacting against something which hasn’t happened.

Abba Mark says “we fear what we don’t know.” I’m ignorant about the future. What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen to me?

Down the highway from my little ranchito is a big sign: “Indian Spirit Guide-Consultations, $25.” Religious statues populate the property outside the Spirit Guide’s house. The Blessed Virgin, the Lord Jesus and numerous angels are in prominent view, obviously vouching for the reliability of the Spirit Guide. The advertising signs around the property have been showing signs of wear, and several weeks back, one of the largest was blown apart by high winds. The other day, all the old signs disappeared; now, new ones are in place. The statues have been freshly whitewashed. It’s 2011 and business is booming for the Spirit Guide.

We turn to Spirit Guides and Ouija boards because we’re afraid. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us and so we look for some kind of Cosmic Assurance that things will be okay. We turn to alcohol and food and drugs and sex—and some people turn to religion—because we want to hide from fear.

But fear knows where we are all the time, it doesn't move on because we pretend it's not there. The angry aunt still occupies our parlor, scowling and forever muttering, “You just better be careful, little mister.” We can’t hide—so we twist alcohol and food and drugs and sex, yes, and religion, too—all potentially good things, into substitutes for God.

To grasp the meaning of “perfect love casts out fear” isn’t to know what’s going to happen. The person of faith has no more idea of what the future holds than does the Spirit Guide down the road. But they are certain of this: fear can’t stay in the same room—not even the same house—as love. “Perfect love” doesn’t know everything, but it firmly grasps the One Necessary Thing: I belong to God. He creates me, redeems me and sanctifies me, day by day.

What comes next, regardless of what it is—winning the lottery, having the person you love tell you they love you too, having a flat tire, or being diagnosed with cancer—assures us God is good.

We’re not made to tremble in silent fear at the disaster lurking just around the bend. You and I were made to sing hymns of praise to God, not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow, but certain that whatever it is, God’s love will be there waiting for us. Hidden? Probably. Understood? Rarely. But always present, the One Thing that never changes.

ONE FOOT AFTER ANOTHER

“Do not be surprised if you fall into sin, even that you fall every day. The great danger of sin comes not when we fall, but when we refuse to get up.”—Abba John of the Ladder

Lent is just long enough to be boring.

A week’s worth of Lent would produce a different crop of results. Everybody can persevere for a couple of days. Three days—a week, even—without television or two weeks without going to the movies—well, there’s not too much struggle in that. I can keep a New Year’s resolution longer. A chocolate-free two weeks might be just enough to convince me I have pretty impressive will-power. Maybe I can find a diet I’ll stick to after all.

Forty days finds most of my easy resolutions dropped somewhere behind me in the dust. I proved my point ten days ago: I can give up whatever I need to whenever I need to. That’s why I give stuff up, isn’t it? To test my will-power?

Will-power and Lent don’t really have much to do with each other—not much useful, anyway. If I fast for forty days, if I go without my favorite programs or sugar in my tea or even forty days without a taste of beef brisket (there’s a true Texas Lent!)—if I do all these things and tell myself come Easter Day, “I did it!” then it’s all better left undone.

Abba John says, “Don’t be surprised if you fall every day.” We don’t grow very much from our contests won, but those lost.

It’s not the falling, Abba says, but the getting up that matters. Far more Lents are dropped than “lost.” A lot of people give up on Lent, not because it’s too hard but because they’d rather do something else. Lent’s greatest lesson can be that the spiritual life we think we want just isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Lent isn’t a spiritual sprint, but a spiritual plod: one day follows another, the drama of the Ashen Cross on our foreheads fades, it’s just not—well—interesting—any more.

Then Abba John’s words come to life: “the great danger is not falling, but refusing to get up.”

That’s the real contest of the spirit. Lent can prove of most value to me, not when I successfully keep it, not when I’ve mastered it, but when I lose it. When I fail, when I realize I could have kept my Lent successfully if I’d given up boiled okra rather than fried, then Lent’s real challenge presents itself.

The real question Lent poses is not “Is my will-power stronger than fried okra?” but “What do I do when I fall?”

Eating fried okra isn’t a sin, and I don't give it up to prove I can: it’s not a contest of will. It’s a gift. I offer to God all the uneaten fried okra I would have eaten for these forty days as my forty-day gift. We’re not giving up sin for forty days, like the Irish thief who refused to steal on fast days or the Italian prostitute who resolutely refused any Sunday fornication whatsoever. I give up my okra, not to prove I can but because, as much as I love okra, I love God more.

So in Lent, as in life, I plod along struggling with my temptations every step of the way. Sometimes I stumble. Well, usually I stumble. The stumblings other people will notice. The standings up are what God is watching for.

Plod, beloved.

AN ANGEL IN THE DESERT

“The brothers said of Abba Macarius that as God protected the world and bore the sins of men so Abba covered the faults of others as if they did not exist, refusing to cast blame on any but only pointing out his own faults. Whatever things he saw and heard, it was as if he heard them not. To them he was an angel walking the earth.” –from The Lives of the Desert Fathers

I have a favorite sin. It’s not the only one I commit—I’m an efficient sinner across the board—but it’s the one I most relish. I know it’s bad for me: it corrodes my soul, weakening my mind and dulling me to the feelings of others. I know that. I know what it promises is a lie, that its allure is false and its results hollow. Yet it tempts me daily—and the temptation “works”: after all these years of fighting it, my soul still savors its sweet smell.

What is it? Before I let you in on that, I’ll let you in on this: you have a favorite sin, too. Like me, it’s not your only one, but also like me, you like the way it makes you feel more than any of the other Six Deadly Ones.

Specialists in the study of the spiritual life call this favorite sin a “besetting sin.” It “besets” us throughout our lives. We may spend our lives combating it, winning some victories over it and losing some battles to it, but as long experience teaches us, it never surrenders.

We fight most effectively when we understand that, as the alcoholic never ceases to be an alcoholic, we never cease to have a soft spot for our favorite offense against God.

My besetting sin is called “vainglory,” an unhappy child of pride and vanity. It leaves me hungry for praise, the love of respect, of being well-thought of to the point of courting admiration. It’s the poison of my soul.

I fight it as I can. If my goal, though, is only to beat down my love of myself, I fight in vain. God offers me more. My besetting sin can become a habitual grace. Through prayer, through the sacraments, following as best I allow myself the spiritual teachers like those in the desert, my sin grudgingly gives ground to Grace. Charity and patience and humility slowly rise from the ashes of my vanity (those who know me know how far I have yet to grow in these gifts, but here and there they peek through in my life). Where Grace, God’s presence and power, finds a home, sin melts like wax.

It’s easy to believe in hell: we see it around us all the time. Watch an evening newscast. Little hells and big ones, most of human devising.

Heaven is harder to believe in because we see it so infrequently. But the Lord, in His love, won’t leave us without glimpses, enticements, promises of Good Things to come. A baby’s gurgling laugh, the palate of a sundown, the clasped hands of an old married couple: these are hints of heaven.

But now and again, Heaven blazes forth in unmistakable, unmuted glory. When the brothers talked about Abba Macarius, they spoke about him as if, through his actions, Heaven had come down. Not only did he not condemn or judge them, they felt that he, like God, protected them.

That Heavenly charity came at a cost. The cost was unseen, the hidden warfare that took place in Abba’s soul. Because he was willing to fight his sin, the ones around him tasted Heaven.

When next you hear the tempter’s whisper, remember Macarius, an angel who walked the earth. We can still follow his path.

A WHISPER IN THE DESERT

The brothers sought a word on prayer from Abba Evagrius. He answered them, “When I was a young man, I was given to easy anger, so I asked the Lord for His Grace to put it away from me. He did not. I turned to Him for many years, with prayers and fastings and vigils, asking for the gift of patience, but His back was always from me. Now I am an old man and the Lord has granted me that for which I so long asked. While I pondered on the years of empty asking, a Voice said ‘I wanted you to pray.’ ”—from Abba Evagrius’ Texts on Prayer

This is what God wants from us. We are each made, St Thomas Aquinas says, to be “friends of God.”

Fr Glenn Spencer, an old friend of mine, convinced me a couple of years ago to sign up for Facebook. He’s one of those bright, techno-savvy priests who’s up on all the latest trends and how to use them every one. He’s a techno-hare. I, conversely, am the technologically timid turtle, who gets baffled every time I have to get back into Facebook. Once I’m there, I still can’t quite figure why. What’s the point of announcing to the world that I believe Jezebel is the best movie Hollywood ever produced?

One of the things it took me a long time to figure out is who all these people are who want to be my Facebook “friends.” Evidently what this means in not so much what you and I—and, more importantly, Cicero and St Thomas Aquinas mean by “friends”—today a “friend” seems to be more like a “contact.” I receive several “friendship” requests a week from people I don’t know and when I look now and then at who some of these actually are, other than the fact that we’re Adam’s descendants, I have nothing in common with many of them.

God has called us to be His friends—not His contacts or nodding acquaintances—but His intimates. This is why He made you and—sit down—not much else matters to Him. He will do with us, Abba Evagrius learned, whatever it takes to get us to pay attention. He seemed to turn His back on Abba’s prayer for patience—certainly a good thing to pray for—so Abba would keep praying. To forge the bond He wants to create between your soul and His, the Lord will give you gifts or strip them from you.

Why do good things happen to you? Because He is the Lover of souls and wants to draw you to Himself as the source of all good. Why do bad things happen? Because He is the Lover of souls and wants to draw you to Himself as the only True Joy there is.

He is indeed, as Scripture says, the all-consuming Fire. He burns everything away but your soul—who you really are—to bring you to your knees.

You and I were created to be His sons and daughters, priests and priestesses of His Creation. That’s why He made Adam and Eve and set them in the Garden. But we, like they, fritter away our High Calling and grub after the tinsel of the world—pleasure or power, possessions or pride.

So He does whatever it takes to get our attention, to wake us up from the nightmares we create in our lives and to which we so tenaciously cling.

Even the good—the patience Abba sought, our families, our health, our much-knowing, the peace of our favorite room, the love of a spouse—all these will be stripped from us. Only prayer—the cry of the soul—will be left us.

And, like Abba Evagrius, we too will someday hear the Voice whisper: “I wanted you…”

SANDALS IN THE DESERT

Abba Evagrius said, “When Moses sought to approach the Burning Bush, he was told to take off his sandals. When you seek to pray, bear in mind the sandals you wear which prevent your approach to God.”

I’m a sinner. I know it, but don’t like to think about it. I don’t like to think about it so much that I can turn even the forty days of Lent, a time to ponder sin, into something else. I can make it about me and how successful I am in keeping the disciplines of the season. I can change this time, given to “afflict my soul,” into a matter of liturgical colors and outward observances.

I’d be hard-pressed to blame anybody else for doing that when I do it myself so easily. But I’m efficient enough of a sinner that I can. I can blame you for sins I myself commit all the while telling myself you’re in far worse shape than I am.

The Pharisee in the Lord’s parable, who thanks God he’s better than everybody else, rings true because he says out loud what I think to myself. Each of us knows we’re better and more important than anybody else. We don’t like Lent, at least not the Lent that isn’t about liturgical colors and special hymns, because it’s rude enough say aloud the private truths we keep to ourselves.

You and I are sinners, and not delicate ones. The sins Lent strips away aren’t thoughts of taking an extra dessert now and then or smiles at an occasional risqué innuendo. When my sins are laid bare, they reveal a man who’ll claw at others to get something for himself. I’ll use you for me.

A Lent that holds up such a mirror to my soul is a Lent worth keeping.

Lent isn’t an end in itself, though. It means to help me see my sins, and seeing them make me sorry for them, and sorrowing for them fight them. From the day you begin to do that until the day you die, you’ll be fighting. Abba Anthony said “Expect temptations till your last breath.”

We fight for a reason. Abba Evagrius said, “When you seek to pray, bear in mind the sandals you wear.” When God spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush, he first ordered him to take off his sandals, “for this is Holy Ground.” Nothing wrong with sandals. But Abba Evagrius sees them as standing for sin.

The goal of our lives is prayer. Prayer isn’t long words and complicated religious ideas; it’s living as God’s friend. Sin stands in the way of that, so Abba says, take it off, toss it aside.

A really close friend, a companion of your soul, is someone you can share yourself with. You can reveal the secrets of who you are. If I betray such a friendship, the pain is profound. Until it’s openly and fully shared, until I own up to my betrayal, the friendship cannot be repaired.

That’s what sin is. Lent is the uncomfortable reminder that you and I have betrayed our friendship with God. The purpose isn’t to make me feel bad, but to push me to restore the friendship: own up to what I’ve done, say I’m sorry, repair damaged love.

“Bear in mind the sandals you wear.” Take them off. Toss them away. Then step closer to the Fire.

A PALACE THE DESERT

Abba Germanos asked Abba Moses, “My thoughts often take me, unbidden, to unsavory places. How am I to keep them in control?” Abba Moses answered him, “Our thoughts wander like dogs from place to place, sniffing at things good and bad. We cannot stop this. Like the dog, the mind goes where it is fed. If we feed our minds with things of the Spirit, there they will go. If we meditate on ourselves and our comforts and the delights of the world, there will our minds build a home.”-from The Sayings of the Fathers in Sketis

Holiness is a habit. It grows slowly in us, purposely planted and constantly cultivated.

When I was a child, I was taught how to brush my teeth. Steady strokes up and down clean teeth more thoroughly, but since strokes back and forth are easier, back and forth I stroked. Throughout my early years, I built a dental habit. When one of the adults who had charge of my life occasionally corrected my brushing (as they did), I would comply till they were gone, and then do as I pleased. They didn’t know, as I did, my way was better. But those repeated corrections nestled into my brain, and when I became a man, I put away childish things. I brush my teeth now, not because somebody tells me to, but because I need to take care of my teeth. I'm now a confirmed up and down stroker.

Holiness is a choice, built on an accumulation of habits: daily prayer, weekly worship, regular, frequent reception of the sacraments, the pondering of Scripture; these form some of its essential components. Acts of kindness, the discipline of desire and the struggle with sin are no less necessary. All of us do some of these things now and then. Some of us do all of them occasionally. But when we build these practices into daily habits our spiritual lives blossom. Holiness is taking root.

“An old abba of the desert was asked, ‘How can I find God?’ He answered, ‘Fasting and prayer are necessary, but learn this: many of us know the Scriptures by heart, our mouths smell bad through constant fasting, we recite all the Psalms of David in prayer, but lack that which God seeks: charity and humility. Without these things, all else achieves us nothing.”

Holiness, living our lives in the presence of God, isn’t an accidental achievement but a conscious pursuit. It requires firm dedication and constant practice.

Warren Buffett, whose name you may recognize, speaks about business success in terms which might have come from the desert fathers: “Learn the fundamentals and practice them with ruthless discipline.”

We accept the necessity of discipline in other aspects of life: the athlete trains his body, the pianist masters the keyboard, the cowboy knows the cow. St Paul says, “I discipline myself lest…I become a castaway.”

Abba Germanos asked Abba Moses how to control his wandering thoughts and Moses replied, “We can’t control them, but we can guide them.” We direct our minds where we want our souls to go.

Where does your mind wander? What draws your heart? That’s where your soul is building its home, not just for now, but for forever. Is it the home you want?

A FIGHT IN THE DESERT

“Some people living in the world asked me: ‘How can we lead the solitary life?’ I replied to them: ‘Do all the good you can; do not speak evil of anyone; be content. If you behave in this way, you will not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ”—Abba John of the Ladder

We follow Jesus into the desert for Lent: forty days, then we leave. The men and women who’ve stayed there live the Lenten struggle year-round. Abba John condenses the wisdom of those who remain, to those of us who don’t, into a few short words. “Do good to all, speak evil of none, be content.”

The Lord Jesus was even more succinct: “Be perfect.”

Okay.

And that means…?

We become what we do. God made us—not just generically, but personally. “Before I formed you in the womb,” God said to Jeremiah the Prophet, “I knew you.” Every human being, each soul, is formed by God, an individual creation. We come into this world of beauty and corruption, good and evil, kindness and cruelty: it forms us, too. And from all this, we form ourselves. We chose who and how to be; who we are.

Yes, there’s more to it than that. Much of who we are we didn't create. The current—and boring—homosexual controversy about “nature versus nurture” is the same old question posed yet again: "Given that I didn't create the world into which I was born, can I really be held responsible for who I am?"

The short answer, the Lenten answer, is “yes.”

Yes, regardless of all the extenuating circumstances I can march out to show I did this for that reason and blah, blah, blah. “Without temptation,” Abba Evgrius says, “there is no salvation.” We all know people whose lives are little more than a string of excuses and indulgences. There’s no challenge, nobility or heroism to such lives. You’ve been created for more. You and I were made for a fight.

In each of us there’s One Great Fight of our lives. We fight it from life’s beginning to its end, over and over. Sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t.

My problem with this is that I usually mistake the enemy. I think it’s you, or the people who work in the driver’s license office, or “the whole, stinkin’ system.” But all the time I’m chaffing against somebody else, I’m the problem.

Lent comes around every year to gently prod us in the right direction. It reminds us Who made us, and the reason He did and what we should do now. Then, like a good coach, Lent says “If you want a real fight, here’s the enemy,” and pushes us into the ring with ourselves.

My One Great Fight is with me. The Fight is between “what I was made to be,” versus “what I’ve become.” What are my punches, what’s my strategy?

My right is “do good to all.” My left is “speak ill of none.” My footwork is “be content.”

Do this, Abba John says, and the Fight is yours.

EMBRACING AFFLICTION

Abba Mark the Greek said, “If we accept the afflictions that come to us with patience and prayer, blaming no one, we discover them to be blessings."

The words of Lent are grim: affliction, fasting, penitence, grief, sorrow—to name just a few. The first step we take into Lent we’re met with these stern words of the Prophet Isaiah: “Is this how you afflict your soul, by putting on sackcloth and covering yourself with ashes? Do you imagine the Lord takes this for the penitence He requires?”

“Affliction” comes from Latin. It means “to beat down.”

The Biblical phrases Christians adopt for Lent call on us to “afflict our souls.” To beat them down. We’re told to weep for our sins, to abstain from pleasures and fast from foods. No wonder Lent isn’t as popular as Christmas.

Let’s consider Christmas—here in the middle of Lent. We know the theological meaning of Christmas: “and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” When we hear those words, we fall to our knees. But Christmas also means fun and frolic: garlands of green and festal carols, gatherings of families and friends to eat, drink and be merry, Yule logs ablaze “to drive cold winter away.” Echoing the Christmas angel we say, “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.” We want Christmas to be magical and joyful, but how often it disappoints. It becomes a mad rush of fulfilling obligations, sending cards and gifts to people whose names we vaguely recognize, going places because we’re expected to put in an appearance, straining our budget to keep up our appearance.

We’re forgetting how to Feast. Maybe it’s because we’ve forgotten how to Fast.

I’m not talking about the rules, but the reasons. Why do we feast and fast? Easy: we feast for joy; we fast for sorrow.

I don’t want to “afflict my soul.” “Beating myself down” doesn’t have a lot of attraction for me. But what is it I’m beating down? Is it joy? Happiness? The pleasure of friends and family? No. None of those.

Lent challenges me to beat down my selfishness and arrogance, my viciousness and greed, my hypocrisy and cowardice. These are the things that I’m supposed to afflict. Lent isn’t long faces and hollow groans, but the calisthenics of the soul. I stretch the atrophied muscles of my spirit to bring them back to life. Afflictions are blessings unseen.

A close friend wrote me yesterday. He said, with a terse, wry humor I couldn’t rise to, “My Lenten sacrifice is…shingles.” Its timing, he tells me, fits just within the Lenten framework—it should disappear just about Easter. He didn’t choose it, but having accepted it as a Lenten affliction, he’ll derive the Lenten benefit.

“Accept the afflictions that come with patience and prayer,” Abba Mark says, “and discover God’s blessing.”

I don’t know what blessing will come from the unsought suffering of my friend. I know that bearing it as he is, God will bless him through it. And my friend’s suffering, offered as a Lenten sacrifice, will benefit others, too. He may never know how; that’s not the point. When we offer ourselves to God, giving Him even our pain and sorrow, we become part of His plan of Redemption. “I make up in myself,” St Paul says, “what is lacking in the suffering of Christ.”

Your Lenten sacrifice will blossom into your Easter blessing. Your Fast will become a Feast. If your Lenten offering is paltry—well, you have an idea by now what to expect. “The measure you give,” the Lord Jesus says, “is the measure you get.”

I hope the Lent you’re offering God is proving a hardship. Lent is forty days. Easter is forever.

SOMEONE HATES YOU

Abba John the Short said, “Each time the tempter speaks, the whole world hangs by a thread.”

The devil speaks for one reason: to tempt us. He tempts us for one reason: to ensnare us. He ensnares us for one reason: he hates us. The hatred that old serpent has for you is personal. He hates you, hates who you are, hates why you are. His hatred is personally directed at each of us, and he uses whatever temptations and snares he can to hook us, reel us in, and filet us for his dinner.

The teachings of the fathers and mothers of the desert, passed on to us in a handful of terse phrases, are like scalpels in the hands of a skillful surgeon: they slice through whatever they must to lay bare the disease that festers within our souls. For this reason Christians have cherished their words for almost two thousand years.

Yesterday Abba Anthony’s words warned: until we grasp that we really don’t love God, we can’t really start to love Him. It’s His love we’re each personally created to share.

Abba John’s words today tell us the grim side of that truth: if God loves you personally, and created you personally, you are also personally hated. Satan wants to chop you up into bits like cheap catfish. He’s determined to do it whether you’re too smart or too jaded to believe in him or not. The devil doesn’t need—or even particularly want you—to “believe” in him. His interest in you now is only for the purpose of teaching you, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, to sin at his suggestion. He wants you to continue to weave a web of self-delusion that you’re entitled, deserving of special consideration, that when you sin it’s really not sin but sophistication.

“Each time the tempter speaks,” is like the first time. When the serpent hissed his words to Eve, when he wrapped his coils around Adam, it brought you and me to grief. The Church teaches us that the first man and woman set in motion a cycle that continues today. Left to our own devices, you and I make the same choice they did. What I want over everything. Me over goodness. Me over you. Me over God.

Every time you and I are tempted, regardless whether it’s to spurn the greatest commandment or the least, it’s us in the balance, being weighed, measured and tested. The next time I’m tempted to ignore someone’s suffering, to make light of their sorrow, to know that I’m better than she is, it’s the same old serpent hissing to me the same old thing he’s been hissing all along to each and every one of us. “For you, it’s okay. You’re better. You’re important. God ahead and take a bite; you’ll love it.”

But Abba warns us it’s even more insidious: “the whole world hangs by a thread.”
John Donne, the seventeenth-century poet and priest said it differently, but as truly: “no man is an island.”

We’re bound together, you and I, whether we like it or not. You and I share the sin of Adam and Eve, but I share something of your sin and you of mine. God has made us so that we can’t escape each other. We’re not meant to. “When one suffers,” St Paul said, “we all suffer. When one of us is exalted, we all rejoice.” God has bound us together in suffering and sin, because he means to raise us together in glory.

God has bound us together in the Greatest Mystery of all: the Mystery of Love.

At the core, the center of all that Is, Is God. At His heart, God is Love. Not a feeling or emotion, not even an action, but Love is the Father eternally giving Himself to the Son and the Son eternally giving Himself to the Father. The Love that binds Them and permeates Them is the Holy Ghost.

You and I have been made to enter and find ourselves in that Uncreated Love.

We’re bound together in this Mystery of Love. You were made for this. And the devil, who was too, hates you for it. Because he hates you, he wants to ensnare you. To ensnare you, he tempts you. When he does, remember Abba John’s words. Remember why you were made.

And pray for me, that I remember it, too.

DESERT SIMPLICITY

Abba Pambo asked Abba Anthony, “What ought I to do?" He answered, “Do not trust your own righteousness, and do not worry about the past, control your tongue and your stomach."

God’s request is simple: give Me everything, all you are, all you have, all you hope to be.

It takes us awhile to realize that. Some of us never do. None of us hand ourselves over without a fight.

Those who’ve followed Jesus into the desert go looking for a fight. They want the same things you and I do: family and friends, a sense of place and purpose, food and shelter, security for the future. Those are good, reasonable things to want and work for.

But those who God calls to the desert bury their wants to uncover the Kingdom hidden within. They go to the desert leaving not only the corruptions of “the world, the devil and the flesh,” but every good and normal desire we each have so they can hunt God down.

The various books that have come down to us of their lives and teachings all say the same thing: the fight from beginning and so to the end is with himself. Their desert discovery is the same thing you and I find out still living “in the world”: I love myself, my wants and desires, my pleasures and comforts far more than I love anything else, God included.

When we accept that truth, our spiritual struggle begins in earnest. Until I see that I don’t love God or my neighbor, all my spiritual efforts are, as St Paul says “boxing with the air.”

I can be friendly and good-natured, I can wish people well (“if wishes were fishes…”) and hope, like a beauty-contestant, for “universal peace.” I can follow Dale Carnegie’s doctrine that it’s good business to care about others. But none of this has anything to do with my salvation. Loving God first and my neighbor as myself puts me at war with myself every second of every day. It also means I’m going to lose most of my battles.

Knowing the cost of the soul’s contest, Abba Pambo sought out Abba Anthony in his desert cave. “What am I to do?” he cries.

Abba Anthony’s words apply to every soul, wrestling in the world or striving in the desert: “Don’t ever fool yourself into thinking you’re holy, that you’ve achieved spiritual respectability. From first to last, life is Grace.”

“Don’t worry about the past,” Abba continues. The devil twists our memory against us. Not that we forget, but what we remember. The old serpent reminds us of our failures and sins, playing them before us over and over. Even if we’ve heard the priest’s words of absolution, the gnawing regret, the sense of failure and the shame of self-disappointment linger. The demon whispers, “This is how you are, how you’re always gonna be. Pack it in, pal. C’mon. There’s a party you’re missing.”

The tempter uses an opposite strategy to produce the same result. Calling to mind the pleasures of sin past: the satisfaction we felt when the jerk at the office got fired or when the head cheerleader got pregnant and had to disappear for five months. He tricks us into fresh sins over stale temptations.

“Forget the past,” Abba Anthony says. Don’t cling to it. Give it to God.

“Control your tongue and your stomach,” he concludes.

The tongue praises or condemns, builds others up or tears them down. The stomach is either master or servant. Abba says give it to God.

God gets it all.

When it finally dawned on the Lord Jesus' disciples this is what He expected, they sputtered “What shall WE have, therefore?” If we give God everything, what’s left for us?

Old Abba Anthony knew only when we give God everything do we discover how to use anything. Till then, like grubby misers, we hoard what seems to be ours.

It was all God’s to begin with, including the dust you and I are made of.

When we grasp that, we can sing with St Paul: “All things are yours, the world or life or death or things present or things to come, all things are yours—and you are Christ's—and Christ is God's.”

TEMPTED IN THE DESERT

“Abba Evagrius said, ‘Without temptations no one will be saved.’ "

I like some sins more than others. There are a few I’ve never been tempted to commit, but even some of the more unlikely have flitted before me at one time or other, promising unthought of delights.

I’ve never considered worshiping Ishtar or forsaking the Faith for the enticements promised in the Afterlife by Islam, but before I can safely say I’m immune from temptations to Idolatry, I have to admit I put myself in the place of God all the time. If I’d composed it, the Lord’s Prayer would read “MY will be done on earth as it is…”

I may not be seriously tempted to steal stuff but there are all kinds of things I want I don’t need; I don’t have to think back very far to recall the whispered temptation that I deserve better.

Most of us aren’t tempted to murder anybody, or lie under oath and so take God’s Name in vain. Few of us have coveted our neighbor’s ox, but how many times have I wished somebody would just go away, or told myself that since “everybody” bends the rules now and then, I can decide what rules apply to me and what ones don’t. While I may not want your ox or ass, I have little doubt I’m much more deserving of admiration than you.

Whether I look at my sins from the perspective of the Ten Commandments or the Seven Deadly Sins, after not too-much reflection, I come off guilty.

The pathetic thing about my sin is that as much as I enjoy the temptation, as real as the pleasure of sin promises to be, it’s rare, after the fact, that I don’t feel as if my mouth is full of ashes. Sin doesn’t deliver on its promise. The result of sin is disappointment and regret, even if I don’t stop to notice.

The battle with sin isn’t with sin itself, but with the temptation to sin. The battle isn’t with my bloated and aching stomach on Thanksgiving night, but with the assumption as I go down the Thanksgiving buffet that a three-pound plate of food is what I really need. The danger isn’t the regret I feel after I’ve told somebody off, but the delight I take in fantasizing how great it will be when I finally put that person in their place (and, of course, if the devil plays me just right—and I so want to be played!—I’ll unwittingly sign on to continue in my sin by replaying in my imagination how clever I was when I did it).

“Abba Evagrius said, ‘Without temptations no one will be saved.’ "

Our spiritual lives, most of the time, are about temptation. That’s where we grow in Christ. Immediately after His baptism, the Gospel tells us, “Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” The Lord Christ’s temptations tested His human nature.

He was as much a human being as you and me. His humanity was subject to the same temptations you and I face. He overcame His temptations the same way you and I, if we want to, can overcome ours. He surrendered His humanity to His Father. We can surrender our love of sin to Him.

Abba Evagrius doesn’t tell us to go looking for temptation to face it down and conquer it. It’ll come of its own, without us having to look for it, and it’ll be tailor-made for you. The devil has impeccable credentials for his work. A verse in the Psalms says “He” (meaning God) “knoweth whereof we are made.” The devil has a pretty good idea of how we’re made, too, and he knows how to play us like the proverbial violin he’s reputed to play so well.

We don’t have to be masters of psychology to wrestle with temptation, but practitioners of prayer. Abba Evagrius knows temptation comes to us all; he knows temptation is overcome only by surrender, following the Lord Jesus in His time temptation, placing ourselves in God’s keeping and giving ourselves to prayer.

THE SWORD OF FIRE

“One day Abba Arsenius consulted an old Egyptian monk about his prayers. Someone noticed this and said to him, ‘Abba Arsenius, how is it that you, with such a good Latin and Greek education, seek instruction from this peasant?' He replied, ‘I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet this man has to teach.' ”

For the past few days, we’ve considered humility—not as an inoffensive virtue but the very foundation upon which Christian growth depends. Without the firm under-girding of humility, all faith, hope and charity are built on sand.

In the story above, Abba Arsenius, who was reputedly one of the best-educated of all the Fathers of the Desert, puts himself to school under a peasant to learn the basics of prayer. He does this, not in some show of how humble he is, but because he wants to pray better and as a good pupil, he seeks out the one who can best teach him.

Here is the embodiment of humility. Abba doesn’t coyly reply to his questioner, “Well, my education isn’t really all that good.” He replies truthfully. “I’m well-educated in the arts of rhetoric and grammar, of mathematics and philosophy” (that’s what a “Greek and Latin” education in his day meant) “but in the school of prayer, this peasant knows far more than I.” Humility is the disposition of heart which frees us from the illusions of sin. It enables us to see more clearly.

Sin is a lie.

When I sin, I convince myself that something which isn’t true is true. I convince myself that something which belongs to you should rightfully be mine. That the pleasures of the flesh—whether of the table, the bedroom or the inviting couch—will answer the needs of the spirit; that you exist to serve me; that if God would only take my advice, everything would be better; and finally, the first, most basic sin, the sin for which humility is the genuine antidote and only real medicine—my pride: I want to be like God.

Before I can sin, I have to agree to sin, in theological language, I “assent” to sin. For any of my actions to be sinful, they have to be mine. I have to agree to them. If a bandit holds your spouse hostage and demands you lie to the police about whether you’ve seen him or not, your complying words are not sinful, because they’re not really yours. Your words are deceitful and untrue, but your will has been usurped, co-opted by the bandits threat (now if you’re holding your spouse hostage and lie to the police, your words are sinful, but in such a situation that’s probably far down the list of the sins you’re in the process of committing!).

When I sin, I’ve convinced myself that this action, which might be technically sinful, is okay for me. Or that I don’t care whether it’s sinful or not, my desire is more important. I sin because I convince myself that the result of my act will be good for me. It puts me and my wants above anything else. That’s the sin of Pride.

Pride isn’t being pleased I’m from the Great Lone Star State, or thinking the Dallas Cowboys are the Greatest Football Team in the history of all human athletics. When I say I’m proud to be an citizen of the United States, there’s little sin in such a patriotic notion. We use the word “pride” about such things, but this pride isn’t the Pride of the Seven Deadly Sins. That first sin, the sin Satan whispered into the ears and went straight into the hearts of Adam and Eve, was “You can be like God.”

It’s the root of every sin you and I commit. I set my wants above everything; “Me” above everything, God included. It’s the ultimate idolatry.

You and I do it every day, multiple times.

To be humble is to have open eyes. Humility enables us to see that the way we think things are—or ought to be—that life is “all about me,” is a lie. When I believe the lie, I sin with easy abandon, all the time thinking I’m making myself happy.

Humility, the quiet teacher of the soul, the warrior of the desert armed with a sword of fire, tells me this false happiness is buying me an eternity of grief. Sin is a lie and its ultimate payoff is unutterable sorrow. Humility says, there is another way: choose me and choose life.

Humility is seeing things as they are.

A TASTE OF HUMILITY

“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."—Abba John of the Ladder

Few of us, like the Australian monk depicted in the video to the right of this page, literally follow the Lord Jesus into the desert. During Lent we spend forty days imitating His desert pilgrimage, but our desert wanderings take place in the wilderness of air-conditioned living rooms. We’re not imperiled by scorpions and salamanders but computer crashes.

The challenges and temptations that face us today may take different shapes than those demons swirling in the desert sandstorms of Egypt and Syria, but they are temptations no less real or less challenging. Our world of instantaneous communication and information overload, of immediate physical gratification of any desire or need, of easy fact and shallow knowledge, these perils draw us as far from God as any fleshpot of Egypt.

The battleground of the spirit remains the same now as then. It’s us. Temptations remain the same, though they dress differently; virtues then and now are identical. Humility was the sword used against self-centered pride by Abba Anthony; today our weapons must be as deadly, because the enemy we fight against is the same.

We’ve spent two days considering the central place of humility in the Christian's arsenal. How do we use it?

Abba John’s words push us towards the answer. The person who tells you they’re imperfect doesn’t reveal their humility. It’s not words, but deeds, that are the proof of the pudding. I’ll criticize myself and do so openly enough—it reveals my psychological maturity and a level of self-knowledge. The test comes, not when I criticize myself, but when you criticize me. How do I respond to that?

Abba Anthony tells us we should respond joyfully when we’re poorly thought of; Abba John says criticism, which we normally respond to by various ploys of self-defense, is best answered by a robust love for the person who looks to take us down a peg or two.

In church, especially during this Lenten season, Christians seem to be forever confessing and acknowledging our manifold sins and trespasses. Would I be so heartfelt in my contrition if I heard a person in the pew in front of me criticizing me to someone else? I don’t think my first reaction would be to thank the Lord that someone else sees my sins and they’re willing to talk about them openly.

Yet there is the story of Abba Copres, who while traveling with his disciple to a monastery one day met a group of monks headed to the same place. The two groups came together for the journey. When Abba Copres asked of what they spoke, one of the band said, “Abba Copres lives in the caves of those nearby mountains. While he has a great reputation as a man of fasting, I’m told he eats secretly of all sorts of delicacies.” Abba answered, “I know the man. What you say would not surprise me.” “Further, it is said he prays long hours, rarely allowing himself to sleep, but many suggest that when he is alone in his cell, he sleeps both night and day.” Abba said again, “That Copres would love to do such is quite in keeping with his character.” Finally the monk said, “It is also said that when Copres goes into Alexandria, he frequents taverns and brothels.” Abba Copres replied, “This, too, does not surprise me to hear.” Later Abba Copres’ disciple asked why he spoke thus. Abba said, “I prayed God to grant me humility. As He has kindly answered my prayer, can I now tell Him I dislike its taste?”

Humility, given to most of us in that dose, would probably not go down well. But as with any combat of the spirit, the Lord will give us a taste of humility if we ask Him for it. We may not relish its taste, but alcohol burns as it cleans our wounds.

THE HUMILITY OF THE DESERT

Abba Anthony said, “I saw the snares the enemy spread over the world and I said groaning, ‘What can get me safely through such snares?’ Then I heard a voice saying, ‘Humility.' "—from The Sayings of Abba Anthony

Abba Anthony, who we call St Anthony the Great, lived in Egypt seventeen hundred years ago. When he was 34 years old, he heard the Gospel read at Mass: “Jesus said, If you would be perfect, go and sell what you have and give it to the poor. You will have treasure in Heaven: then, come and follow me.” He took the Lord Jesus’ words to heart, gave away everything he owned, and went into the Egyptian desert to follow his Master.

Abba Anthony lived in the desert, facing temptations, living a life of prayer and self-denial, never willing to compromise the demands of the Gospel made on him. His fame as an athlete of the Christian spirit, determined to follow his Lord regardless of the cost, drew many into the desert to follow his example and benefit from his teaching. His sayings were collected and his life was documented by an equally famous fellow-Egyptian, St Athanasius the Great, the Archbishop of Alexandria and hero of the Nicene Council. Anthony died in his 105th year, having followed the Lord Jesus in the desert for more than 71 years.

Yesterday I quoted Aristotle, giving his opinion of the virtue of humility.

“Humility is the virtue of slaves and the low-minded,” he wrote, “to whom it is most appropriate.” In saying this, Aristotle was giving voice to what most people of his day believed; this was the world in which Abba Anthony lived. When he insisted that the athlete of the Christian spirit must live in humility, must struggle with himself to acquire “the virtue of slaves and the low-minded,” he had no illusions this would be popularly received.

Anthony’s long years of spiritual wrestling with himself taught him humility was utterly necessary for the Christian determined to follow the Lord Christ. It wasn’t an optional virtue.

Abba Anthony’s quote at the top of the page reflects this. Seeing sin’s temptations everywhere, he cries, “How can anyone get through all this?” There comes a single word in reply: “Humility.”

Aristotle sees humility as the least of virtues, indeed, as a false one. Abba knows it to be the greatest. How do they come to such different conclusions?

The answer lies in their definition. What is humility? What does it look like? How does it show itself? What does it do?

Remember Dickens’ character Uriah Heep from David Copperfield? Heep embodies all that Aristotle despises about “humility”: a cringing figure, constantly wringing his hands, ever protesting his “…umbleness” to his superiors, all the while plotting their downfall.

Uriah is a creepy caricature, but the power of caricature is its similarity to truth. When we think of someone who’s humble, we often have in mind the person who says he's not as good as most other people, has no real talents or gifts to speak of, a person who presents himself as of no account. He may not be quite so obvious as Uriah but such a person is uncongenial, unlikeable and unpopular. We know he's faking. The person who says “I know I’m not really very handsome,” says it, not because he thinks he’s ugly, but because he wants you to tell him that he is handsome, very handsome indeed!

This doesn't have anything to do with humility.

Aristotle despises the cloying humility of the slave, because he understands it masks the slave’s true thoughts.

The humility of the desert, Christian humility, doesn’t hide, but reveals. It shows us who we really are.

My old confessor, Fr Homer Rogers, used to say the root word of humility, humus, is the Latin word for soil. A humble man, Father Rogers insisted, was “a man whose feet were on the ground.” He knew who he was and he knew who God was, and he didn’t have any illusions about which one was which.

This is the desert humility for which you and I must strive, struggle to achieve and fan to a burning fire within us. Only this fire, which only God can give, is able to burn hot enough within us to cauterize the wounds of our soul-destroying pride.

Take it from me, who knows how much he is in need of God’s consuming flame.

THE FIRE OF THE SPIRIT IN THE HEAT OF THE DESERT

A brother came to Abba Anthony and said, “Tell me what I can do, that I may find life." The Abba replied, “If you can bear to have your words and thoughts treated as of no account, and find joy in this, you will cause the angels to wonder."-The Sayings of Abba Anthony

Traditionally, we list Seven Christian Virtues as opposed to Seven Deadly Sins. The sins we’re familiar with, if not from memory, then by experience: pride, envy, anger, greed, gluttony, lust and sloth. The Virtues corresponding to these sins are: humility, kindness, patience, charity, temperance, chastity and diligence. This means that the “offsetting” virtue to sloth is diligence, of gluttony, temperance, and so on.

The wisdom embodied in these simple lists, and the understanding of human temptation and spiritual combat they teach has been lost of late. They’ve become the subjects of clever cartoons in Playboy and witty essays in The New Yorker. The Deadly Sins have become human foibles. The “post-Christian” world is in the not-too-slow process of transmuting the Deadly Sins into the New Virtues.

If old Sin becomes new Virtue, what of the old Virtues?

If we can’t quite bring ourselves to banish virtue, we can at least relegate it to inoffensiveness. Some of the harder to grasp virtues—chastity and humility, for example—are best ignored, in hopes they’ll go away. Others, like temperance and diligence, can be made into civic virtues—AA or one of its offspring, for example, can become a pigeonhole for temperance. The rest, if not good for everybody (because nothing’s bad for everybody), are good for some people—patience and kindness, for example, are good for grandparents.

Of all the Christian virtues, the most understood of the list is humility. Humility makes us uncomfortable, mostly because we don’t know what it is. Instead of being the highest of virtues—fierce in its combat with pride, the deadliest of sins—humility is the virtue of the milquetoast, the refuge of the anemic.

So read what Abba Anthony has to say about humility. His words breathe fire: “Can you bear to have your words and thoughts, to have even your presence treated as nothing?”

Take that notion into your heart and mind and ruminate over it for a few minutes. How would you respond if you were treated that way? How do you respond when somebody cuts you off in traffic or interrupts you in conversation? Our response to these things is instantaneous and visceral. We snap and snarl at what we perceive as mistreatment.

Abba, however, doesn’t only say, “Can you take it?” He presses harder: “Can you find joy in it?”

What kind of disordered psychology is this? Take pleasure from being disregarded, when all our lives we’ve been taught to stand up for our rights? When every third best-seller on the New York Times Bestseller List insists that we “Learn the Power of No!”

We don’t need somebody to tell us to “love ourselves” or “forgive ourselves” or “value ourselves.” We do those things naturally (not the same thing as saying we do those things “healthily” but that’s because of that Inconvenient Truth—Original Sin). In Abba Anthony’s day, people then were just like us, in all the essential, unchangeable ways of our race. They had their own versions of Oprah and Dr Phil, etc.

Aristotle (who I do not equate with either of the last-mentioned), said that humility was “the virtue of slaves,” not to be counted as a virtue by the wise. It was for milquetoasts and cripples.

Abba Anthony has a different vision—a Gospel vision—of humility. He sees humility at the center of the arsenal of spiritual combat; the invincible weapon with which God has armed each soul in its warfare against “the world, the devil and the flesh.” Humility is a weapon so powerful, few Christians have the courage to wield it. Each who does quickly discovers the identity of his greatest, most deadly foe: himself.

(Part Two tomorrow)

THE GLORY OF THESE FORTY DAYS

Abba Moses said, “In all trials and troubles that afflict you never point at others in blame, but be still in your heart. Say only this to yourself, ‘It is because of my sins that this has happened.’ "

Abba Moses seems to be saying, “Regardless of who’s to blame for the bad stuff that happens to you, when bad times come, shut your mouth, take the blame on yourself, and say, ‘this happened as a punishment for my sins.’ ” He seems to be saying that, but he’s not.

Sometimes bad things happen to me directly as a result of bad or stupid or thoughtless things that I’ve done. If I scream and shout at my spouse, and she sets my hair on fire the next time I fall asleep, it may very well be the law of cause and effect coming into play. If I leave the water running in the bathtub, intending to take a bath, but then go the movies, it’s a certainty I’ll return to see water running under the front door. If I forget to make my car payment to the Fast and Easy Credit Company, it’s safe to assume the fact that my car is not in the driveway one morning is related to the forgotten payment.

Sometimes, though, bad things happen when I intend—and perhaps even carry through with—virtuous or kindly acts. A beggar asks for money and when I stop to give him some from my wallet, he grabs it and runs away. I go to visit a sick friend in the hospital and a four-ton crate of syringes falls from the roof and smashes my car to bits.

Abba Moses says, “never point at others in blame, but be still in your heart.”

His words aren’t intended as Words to the Stupid, but counsels for the wise. When he says never point at others in blame, he’s not unaware bad things may indeed happen to us because of the actions of other people. Abba Moses is telling us regardless of the person “at fault,” God is to blame.

“Be still in your heart.” The thing that has happened is sent to you by God, and the purpose is the training of your soul. In times of trial, many people, struggling to make sense of hardships, say “I’m supposed to ‘learn’ something from this.” Well, sort of. It’s not so much that God wants us to ‘learn’ a Mystic Cosmic Lesson as it is He wants to form our souls as His companions.

The Lord Christ was hauled before a night-time court for a midnight trial on trumped-up charges. The Scribes and Teachers of the Law who presided over the session broke Jewish Law by the bushel-load to condemn Him. He knew it. They knew it. And “as a Lamb before is shearers, He opened not His mouth.” He cast no blame, pointed no fingers. He took the crimes of His accusers on His own back and carried them with Him to the Cross. He made our sins, and theirs, His own.

That’s what Abba Moses has in mind. In times of trial and trouble, he says, follow in the footsteps of Him Who carries all the trials and troubles of the world. We can embrace life’s afflictions and transfigure them (they’ll come anyway), or we can blame everybody in sight, whine and moan like spoiled children, and redemption passes over our heads, unnoticed.

The life of the Spirit is a life of temptation, trial and sorrow. It’s also a life of growth, joy and peace, in the fellowship of the Saints and the friendship of God. In one of the most wondrously shrouded but profoundly insightful statements in all his writings, St Paul says, “I rejoice in my sufferings, as I make up in myself what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.”

Here is the heart of Christian life: for us to share our life with Christ and for Christ to share His life with us. When suffering comes, not only, Abba Moses says, are we to bear it manfully. We take it to ourselves as the Lord Jesus did. Don’t look to blame, don’t start to whine. In the secret prayers of your heart and the Common Prayer of the Church, lay it before God. He will take the pain and bless it.

If you are game, He’ll give it back. Nobody said this would be easy. It’s Glory He’s out to form in us.