| In the Gospel of St. Luke (6:31-36), often called “the healing Gospel,” we read the words of Jesus that we have heard countless times. – perhaps even memorized. “And just as you want men to do to you, do also to them. But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you seek to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” These words, too, are healing for us.
The words of Jesus are so simple, so elementary and plain – yet amazingly profound. Perhaps that is why we cannot hear them. They can be summed up in just a few pertinent phrases: Compassion knows no boundaries; Mercy has no conditions; Forgiveness knows no limitations; and the Love of God is unconditional. Orthodox Christians who pursue the spiritual life (and not all do!) usually discover what was written in the Philokalia: “There is only one sin, that of despising anyone.” From where do you suppose the following adage comes, “God helps those who help themselves”? I am not sure, but it was never spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ. That dubious quote has become part and parcel of Americana, thanks, probably, to good Puritan ideology, but in some respects, it is very poor theology. It appears, from reading the Gospels that God helps everyone, the good and the bad alike, those who love him and those who don’t. How else could he command us to love our enemies and do good to those who despitefully use us, if He does not do so Himself? That would be hypocrisy. Who would of could believe in a hypocrite God? St. Luke was clear: Jesus of Nazareth came for the helpless, the hopeless, the forlorn, the powerless, and the physically and emotionally destitute. It is an issue of whose will we follow. The monk Thomas (Keating) wrote: “When we love God’s will we find Him and own His joy in all things. But when we are against God, that is when we love ourselves and our ego more than Him, all things become our enemies. They cannot help refusing us the lawless satisfaction our selfishness demands of them, because the infinite unselfishness of God is the law of every created essence and is printed in everything He has made. His creatures can only be friends with His unselfishness.” When we demand that others follow our will, we show that we love ourselves more than God and we make enemies of others. When we are inflexible and hard of heart, we show that we love ourselves more than God and we make enemies of others. When we pit our selfishness against the “infinite unselfishness of God” which is “imprinted in everything He has made” we cause suffering to ourselves and to others and this is not the will of God. It is not who God is! How often do we understand suffering in our lives as coming from that conflict of wills? It reminds me of a harrowing quote from St. John of the Ladder, “An angry monk in his cell is a viper spitting poison on the world.” Even monks can cause the “battle of the wills!” A true Christian cannot be mistaken. They radiate the very peace, love and joy that emanate from God. The communicate a placidness that speaks of Heaven. St. Porphyrios of Mt. Athos describes it as surrendering our will (ego) fully: “Those who desire and crave to belong to Christ and who abandon themselves to the will of God become worthy. It’s a great thing, all-important, to surrender the will. The slave has no will of his own. And it is possible for us to have no will of our own in a very simple way: through love for Christ and the keeping of His commandments.” When the passage from the Gospel of St Luke cited above refers to compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and love – all these are “ego-less”, the dynamic they reveal is emptying (kenosis), the actions they require are, as St. Porphyrios describes, love for Christ and living according to the commandments. What are the commandments, after all, but the ancient prescription for self-less living. Surely, if we begin even a little to see as God sees, our vision becomes less and less limited by our selfishness and more and more open to a divine way of seeing; like St. Nonnos in the story of Pelagia the Harlot. He alone noticed her beauty and rejoiced while his brother monks and bishops hid their faces in judgment, criticism, and horror. Why? Because only his heart among them was pure and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Only he emptied his ego and his self-occupation. “To the pure all things are pure.” God sees the truth in all of us and rejoices even when we sin. He does not rejoice in the sin itself, but in the need we have, thereby, for His love and forgiveness. The goal is not closed-minds, but open hearts. The goal is not to “make God happy” but to live in a way that we tell Him He is needed and wanted. Without God being needed and wanted in our lives – there will always be a hole in our heart! (St. Augustine) Is it so hard to understand that a healthy spiritual life does not constrict and narrow the heart and mind? Fundamentalism and extremism do that, but the Holy Spirit is not in those unbalanced expressions. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty,” says the Lord Himself. Imitating Jesus, Fr. Alexander Elchaninov, of Blessed Memory, defined Orthodoxy like this, “Orthodoxy is the element of absolute freedom.” Absolute freedom means subduing our voracious ego and self-centeredness to live compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love. Absolute freedom means being extricated from the ego which too often holds us captive. Let us ask ourselves the questions: Who sits on the throne of my heart? Is it Christ the Lord or is it my ego? Do I follow His will or insist on my own? A healthy Christian life expands and broadens the mind and heart, it does not promote rigid or static thought, it does not promote inflexibility and close-mindedness; it does not exalt the ego. Quite the opposite — for that is not who God is.. The heart and mind of the disciple following Christ grows and expands forever, opening more and more to the divine nature thus embracing all things, all persons, all of creation. The heart of the Christian, as St. Isaac of Syria says “is a veritable explosion of joy, weeps even for the demons.” Dear brothers and sisters, let us rise above ego and self-centeredness and love as God loves, have compassion as He has, show mercy as He does, bestow forgiveness with the sincerity of our heart as he lavishes forgiveness on us from the bountiful love of His own. In the end, by learning to empty our ego, our need to control, our self-centeredness, we can avoid sin, little by little, knowing it will not make us perfect on this earth, but it will makes us come that much closer to the “Throne of Grace.” In these troubled days, it is difficult to believe that there is anything worse that a human pandemic. We feel its social and financial effects intensely, we are anxious that we ourselves or members of our families do not contract the insidious virus. That is understandable. We are, after all, human beings. St. Anthony of the Optina Monastery, the birthplace of the “Jesus Prayer” in Russia, following its foundation in Greece by St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite, in the 19tht century, wrote during a severe pandemic of cholera that killed thousands. Ever true to his prophetic role as a priest and monk, he wrote: “You should be afraid not of cholera, but of sin, for the blade of death mows a person down like grass even — without cholera. Therefore, place all your hope in the Lord God, without Whose will even the birds do not die, much less a person.” Let all of us graft our will to that of the Lord making them one. Let us cease the battle of wills with God. Let us empty ourselves and our aggressive ego and instead heed the words of St. Luke’s Gospel by fervently and seriously taking to our hearts compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and love – and giving them away to any and all who need them. May the Lord of Life continue to watch over and guard you and your families. Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen! Faithfully in the Risen Lord, |
