Passions and Virtues according to St. Gregory Palamas

 

GREAT LENT: The Nineteenth Day

Dear Parish Faithful,

As we leave behind the week of St. Gregory Palamas, and press on toward the Sunday of the Cross, I would like to share a few insightful passages from the book Passions and Virtues according to St. Gregory Palamas, by Anesris Keselopoulos. In these fine passages, he is essentially summarizing St. Gregory's teaching on both the passions and the virtues, and in so doing, offering excellent summaries of our entire spiritual tradition:

 

 

"The first aspect of the spiritual struggle is the wrestling for freedom from the passions, which leads to purification. The second is the acquisition of the virtues, which culminate in the heights of that 'divine passion' called theosis.

"In patristic teaching, it is commonly held that sinful habits reveal the soul's sickness, whereas virtues reveal its health and natural state.

"For the Fathers and St. Gregory Palamas, the word 'virtue' has a far richer meaning than what is commonly encountered in ethical teachings. They view the human person as 'the one who by virtue becomes like unto God Himself'.

"Besides natural revelation, which directs human beings towards God, the human person is also given the innate moral law of the human conscience. Palamas characterizes the conscience as a judge who is quite difficult to deceive, as well as a teacher with whom one cannot be unreasonable.

"In the work of our salvation, we see that if grace is essentially the action of God, then virtue is the joint-action of the human person and grace. And even though God is the One Who bestows the virtues, the human person is called to offer up his sweat for each of them.

"Indeed to speak about the imitation of the virtues of Christ apart from participation in the mysteries of the Church is from an Orthodox perspective impossible. The flesh of the Lord, as the Body of the Incarnate Word of God is, for Palamas and the Orthodox tradition, the point of contact between the human person and God, and it shows the way toward existential communion with the virtue of Christ."

 

Lenten Reflections on 'God, Man & the Church'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

GREAT LENT: The Eighth Day
 

Vladimir Solovyov

 

I have been reading the book of an Orthodox religious  philosopher, Vladimir Solovyov who, in this particular book (God, Man & The Church), writes in a straightforward style that is not speculative or overly-laden with difficult concepts and vocabulary. He is outlining a life of prayer, almsgiving and charity within a biblical understanding of these practices. He begins the book with the type of statement that we do not encounter much of today, because he speaks openly of truth and immortality - almost taboo subjects within our secular world and postmodernism, and hardly even approached by today's "wise men." Then Solovyov sets out some of the basic principles of his approach in these few excerpts:

 

"Endless life without truth and perfection would be an eternity of torment, and perfection without immortality would be rank injustice and an indignity beyond measure. But if our better part, the soul, desires eternal life and truth, the order of nature as we know it deprives us of both. Left to himself, man is able to conserve neither his life not his moral dignity, he comes upon bodily death and spiritual death."

"Man the animal submits to such a fate in spite of himself, but the human heart will not do so, for it has within itself the pledge of another and different life."

"First of all man has to have a loathing for evil, to know it to be sin; then he has to undertake an interior fight against it; lastly, convinced of his own insufficiency in the contest, he has to turn to God and ask his help. So in order to receive grace there are required a reprobation of moral evil or sin, an effort to get free from it, and a turning to God ("conversion")."

"The human will cannot be forced: a man may be driven by fear or violence to do a wicked deed but he cannot be driven to have a wicked will, for the will is independent of external force; in the same way it is only of his own volition that man can turn his will from evil towards the only good ... If we don't want to believe, then we shall not believe: God does not will to be an external fact forcing himself upon us, but an interior truth whom we are morally obliged freely to recognize. To believe in God is a moral obligation: if man does not fulfill his moral obligation then he of necessity loses his moral dignity."

"We must, then, believe that good exists in itself, and that it is the one truth: we must believe in God. This faith is both a divine gift and our own free act."

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GREAT LENT: The Ninth Day

I am staying with the Orthodox religious philosopher, Vladimir Solovyov, a bit longer as he writes about prayer, almsgiving and fasting in his book, God, Man & the Church. Solovyov understands that the realization that God is the source of all goodness, and that the will of God is essential in guiding our own wills toward our immersion in the good. This realization, in turn, will lead us to prayer. He openly states that self-autonomy is nothing but "lunacy."  We can ask ourselves during Great Lent: what is the "highest wisdom?"

"He who does not associate his will with the Supreme Will, or who lacks faith in it, does not believe in good, or else esteems himself the absolute possessor of it, exalting his own will as perfect and almighty. Not to believe in good is moral death; to believe oneself the source of good is lunacy; the highest wisdom and the principle of moral perfection is to believe in the Divine Source of good, to pray to him, and to abandon oneself utterly to him."

 

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GREAT LENT: The Tenth Day

In this brief passage, Vladimir Solovyov places almsgiving in the context of God's unmerited "charity" to all of us for the gift of grace and salvation:

 

"When God helps and saves us he does not inquire if we have a right to help and salvation; and when we give to one who asks, without enquiring whether he is deserving or not, then we are doing as God does: true alms-giving is the extension to others of the grace which God sends to us in answer to sincere prayer.

 

 

GREAT LENT: The Second Day

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

Great Lent: The Second Day

 

 

I just received this from our good friend, Mother Paula. For those who never met Mother Paula, but who hear about her occasionally from me, she is a former parishioner who became a nun and is now living at the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Elwood City, PA. She explains the source of these brief, but very much-to-the-point insights that we would do well to follow during Great Lent.

Dear friends, 
   

Praying  that we will all have a blessed Lenten season and that the time given to us will be a one of joyful repentance, bringing us closer to Christ and to each other.

A few of my notes from +Fr. Thomas Hopko's past homilies from Forgiveness Sunday:

 

• Just live one day at a time. All of our problems come from thinking, analyzing, figuring things out. Instead, we should think of God and have an awareness of Him. Don’t look back and don’t be anxious for tomorrow. 

• Forgive, fast with joy and lay up yourselves treasures in your hearts. 

• Pray to God to show mercy to one another, constantly forgiving. 

• Lent is a gift from the crucified Lord. Take it and say thank you! 

• Lent is a gift given to us by God for our salvation and for the glory of God. 

• We learn during Lent, hopefully to have a broken and contrite heart and to come to realize that it is all grace.

 

Bless and Forgive

Yours in Christ,

Mother Paula

 

Taking Lent Seriously

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

 

The gateway to divine repentance has been opened: let us enter eagerly, purified in our bodies and observing abstinence from food and passions, as obedient servants of Christ who has called the world into the heavenly Kingdom. Let us offer to the King of all a tenth part of the whole year, that we may look with love upon His Resurrection.

(Sessional Hymn, Matins of Cheese Week)

 

 

As Orthodox Christians, we will be pretty much on our own through this year's lenten journey, as the Western lent is already well along its course and the Western Easter will be on April 4 - only our Third Sunday of Great Lent! We have to "stay the course" as well as possible, by the grace of God.

Great Lent is the “school of repentance.” It is roughly equivalent to an“annual tithe” in which we offer ourselves back to God so as to be received with love as was the prodigal son. As such, Great Lent is a gift from God, guiding us toward a way of life we may be reluctant to assume on our own, suffering as we often are from spiritual apathy or a simple lack of focus. Great Lent is also goal-oriented, for it leads us on a spiritual pilgrimage of preparation toward the “night brighter than the day” of Pascha and the Risen Lord. Great Lent is “sacred” and “soul-profiting.” It is a key component in the Orthodox Way of living out the Christian life we have been committed to in holy Baptism.

During Great Lent we will recover the essential practices of prayer, almsgiving and fasting. These practices are the tools that can assist us in returning and remaining close to God. Liturgical services unique to Great Lent immerse us in a way of communal pray that is solemn and penitent; but which also lighten and unburden the soul through the mercy and grace of God so abundantly poured out upon us through these inspired services. You leave the church tired in body perhaps, but brighter inside – in the mind and heart.

Great Lent invites us to see our neighbors as children of God and of equal value in the eyes of God, and thus deserving of our attention, patience and care. Charity can be distributed through material means or through an encouraging and warmly-spoken word. Great Lent liberates us from the excessive appetites of our bodies through the discipline of fasting. 

Our diet essentially becomes vegan as we seek to be less weighed down by a body overly-satiated with food and drink. This is healthy for both soul and body. The human person does not live by bread alone as the Lord taught us as He Himself fasted in the desert for forty days. 

We also fast from entertainment, bad habits, obsessions, useless distractions, vulgar language and the like. We try and simplify life and redeem our newfound time through more focused and virtue-creating tasks. If approached seriously, perhaps we will be able to carry some of this over into the paschal season – and beyond.

What can we do? How do we not squander this time set aside for God?

 

• Prayer - Make provision to be in church for some of the Lenten services. Start with the first week of Great Lent and the Canon of Repentance of St. Andrew of Crete. Assume or resume a regular Rule of Prayer in your home. Read the psalms and other Scripture carefully and prayerfully. Pray for others.

 

• Charity – Open your heart to your neighbor. If you believe that Christ dwells within you, then try and see Christ in your neighbor. Make your presence for the “other” encouraging and supportive. Restrain your “ego” for the sake of your neighbor. Help someone in a concrete manner this Great Lent.

 

• Fasting – Set domestic goals about the manner in which you will observe the fast. Test yourselves. Resist minimalism. If you “break” the fast, do not get discouraged or “give up,” but start over. Assume that your Orthodox neighbor is observing the fast. Seek silence. Allow for a different atmosphere in the home.

 

Jesus set the example of fasting for forty days. We imitate Him for the same period of forty days. If it was hard for Him, it will be hard for us; but not as hard as it was for Him. Jesus went to the Cross following His “holy week” in Jerusalem. We follow Him in our holy week observance and practices. Jesus was raised from the dead following His crucifixion, death and burial. We seek the resurrection of our spiritual lives here and now as we await our own death at the appointed time and the resurrection of the dead at the end of time.

“Taking Lent seriously” (Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s phrase) is a concrete sign of taking God seriously. Our surrounding culture is not serious about taking anything too seriously. When serious issues arise, however, people have a difficult time dealing with them. Yet Jesus was very serious. Especially when it came to issues of life and death – and God and salvation, and so forth. Great Lent helps us to focus on these very themes, therefore making it meaningful and important for our lives.

 

May God be with you and with our entire parish community!

 

- Fr. Steven

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The living God who 'does not throw away people'

 

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

 

I was thinking about the words of Christ from the incomparable Gospel teaching that we call the Discourse on The Last Judgment heard this last Sunday:  "Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." (Matt. 25:40) In the words of Jesus, the "least" would include people who do not have enough food to eat; or enough drink to satisfy their thirst; strangers in need of hospitality; those lacking proper clothing; those sick in hospitals; or those languishing alone in prison. We like the sound of this coming from Christ: His universal love for all of humankind. His identification with those Dostoevsky called "the insulted and the injured" (or sometimes "the humiliated and the wronged"), is deeply moving. His refusal to ignore those with no status and thus with no protection awakens our Christian sense of equality and justice.

But upon further reflection our ardor for these compassionate words of Christ may cool when we attempt to further objectively identify those described as "the least" in our contemporary setting. Just who are these "least of my brethren" - and "sisters," we should add, for the sake of clarifying the inclusiveness of the Lord's embrace? Are they the "unwashed/uneducated masses?" Perhaps the "proletariats" of George Orwell's 1984? Prisoners, drug addicts and/or prostitutes? Unwed mothers with nowhere to turn? The chronically unemployed? Neglected minorities? Undocumented immigrants? Even perhaps those dismissed as the undifferentiated "riff raff" drifting along the margins of society. These are descriptive terms for those countless human beings that are both neglected and dismissed as not counting for much. Or, with a bit more respect and regard, are "the least" just "simple people" who go through life without leaving a memorable trace (this possibility might be getting uncomfortably close). 

At the same time I was recently thinking of the dedication of Sister Verna Nonna Harrison's remarkable book, God's Many Splendored Image. I am currently reading my XU students' reviews of her book. My students have a genuine positive experience reading this book for the simple fact that they are reading about things they have never thought about up to this point in their young lives. And that would include the notion of human beings made "in the image and likeness of God." Or that not all Christians look at human nature as debased and inherently sinful. (This book is a "must read" for Orthodox Christians, in my humble opinion).

Getting back to her heartfelt dedication, Sister Nonna writes: "This book is dedicated to all those people whom other people have thrown away. It shows that God does not throw away people." What a unique and deeply moving dedication! A good part of human history is a dreary chronicle of horrific human suffering, as the strong throw away the weak with impunity and hardly a second thought: Man is a wolf to man as it has been said. Recent history makes this terrifyingly clear: Two World Wars; the Holocaust; the Gulag; the Cultural Revolution; Cambodian genocide. Step back one more century, and we face our own unconscionable national examples of slavery and the near-genocide of native Americans. Step into the contemporary world and we see slums, massive poverty, child abuse, human trafficking and endless other examples of "people whom other people have thrown away." We live with this, just glad that we and our loved ones are not part of this discarded humanity. 

The positive side of Sister Nonna's dedication is "that God does not throw away people." Each human person is as worthy as the next in the eyes of God - and the "range" traversed is from saint to sinner. Our eschatological hope is for the great reversal when the "least of these my brethren" are embraced by the love of God, transforming their sorrow into joy, "where the voice of those who feast is unceasing, and the sweetness of those who behold the ineffable beauty of thy countenance is beyond telling." (St. Basil the Great). What a wonderful expectation! But Christ in His teaching in Matt. 25:31-46, is concerned with how we treat the "least" here and now within the context and confines of our earthly existence.

The question that looms over us is this: Are we, as Orthodox Christians and members of the Body of Christ, torn between our commitment to the Gospel, but also to an ideology - political, social or cultural - that does not leave much room in our minds and hearts for those considered "the least."  Are we indifferent to our fellow human beings who are marginalized and disregarded? Even worse, do we look down on them with (unspoken) disdain or contempt? Are we open to acknowledging that each and every human person is made "in the image and likeness of God," including those "whom other people have thrown away?" Do we resent it when our hard-earned "tax dollars" that may go to supportive programs for those in need - meaning the poor, the unemployed and the homeless? (Yet, are we as resentful toward the wealthy who know how to avoid paying their fair share of taxes or who are corrupt and steal the needed resources of others?). Am I troubled by childhood poverty though I live in the wealthiest country in the world?                                                           

I maintain that these are legitimate questions in the light of Christ's teaching that we just recently heard in the great Discourse on the Last Judgment found in Matt. 25:31-46. These words are directed to us as we stand in church and hear the Gospel proclaimed. The merciful and loving God that we believe in is also the One who will judge us, or perhaps we should say who will pronounce the sentence that we have "earned" throughout the years of our earthly existence. The Gospel is not about social programs but about the heart of each of us and how we treat "the least" that are so dear to Christ. If we fail to be neighbors to those in need, it is then that we need "safety nets" coming from our religious, social and political leaders.

On a personal level, we need to help the "the least" of Christ's brothers and sisters. And we need to feel deeply in our hearts a painful recognition and sorrow for "those people whom other people have thrown away." Can we even grasp for a moment what it will mean for us to hear the words of the glorified Son of man: "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." (Matt. 25:34) For we worship "the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," the living God (Matt. 22:32) who "does not throw away people." I, for one, am deeply grateful to Sister Nonna Verna Harrison for bringing this to our attention through her heartfelt dedication found at the beginning of her marvelous book. 

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