The Cross Unifies Opposites

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” These must be the most recognized words of the gospel in the United States. We see John 3:16 everywhere: on bumper stickers, t-shirts, in cartoons. I recently saw a coupon that offered $15 dollars off a full-service oil change if the customer could quote John 3:16.

At some point, almost everyone in America has probably looked up this verse. I once heard a priest quip that maybe it’s time we start writing John 3:17 everywhere. Then, after a while, we could move on to John 3:18, and so on. That way, maybe, before they die, people would make it through a whole chapter of scripture.

We quote John 3:16 in our Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom just after the “Holy, Holy, Holy….” These words have been popular among us Byzantines since before there were chapters and verses to cite.  

And they tell us that God loves the world. We hear these words so often that maybe they go in one ear and out the other. We might begin to lose a sense of their significance, even of their scandal. 

The word for world here in Greek is κόσμος. God so loved the cosmos. This word is potent and loaded in the Christian tradition, and particularly in John, who uses it more than anyone. Its meanings are complex and varied and seemingly contradictory. The lexicon gives it no less than eight definitions.

Today we hear from Jesus that God loves the world. But John tells us in another place “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” And, “If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). This is confusing. We’ve just heard that the Father loves the world, but now we hear if we love the world we do not love the Father?

And anyway, how can God love this world? In this world, children are abused. In this world, men crash airplanes into skyscrapers. In this world, we drop nuclear bombs. The ruler of this world is the devil. We see this wickedness all around us and we don’t love it.

At the root of all these evils is our passions. St. Isaac the Syrian writes that “The world is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world.” The passions, you know, are like greed and sloth, lust and vainglory, envy and resentment, and so on. So, when we say that God loves the world are we saying that he loves these things? That he loves the passions and the horrors that impassioned people carry out? God forbid the thought. The word “world” carries many senses. And we must carefully consider what is meant. 

Jesus is not of the world but is above the world (John 8:23). He creates the world and yet becomes of the world to save the world. We are taught both to love the world and to hate our lives in the world (John 12:25). The devil is the ruler of the world but Jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords. The world brings up these parallels and opposites. And only Jesus Christ and his cross can reconcile opposites. 

It’s like we have two worlds here. And I think that’s it really. We live in two worlds at the same time. There’s the world as God creates it and there is the fallen world, enslaved to sin. We must be aware of both worlds – both the cosmos and the chaos – both the way of life and the way of death.

God enters into the midst of both of these by becoming man. By his humanity, he saves, redeems, glorifies, and brings us humans into unity with God - us and also the cosmos. By his incarnation, Christ is cosmically present to the universe. And the whole universe stands in need of his salvific presence, because the whole universe is disordered and suffering from destruction and death of many kinds.

Death is what we’re being saved from. God gave his only Son so that we would not perish but have eternal life. Death is an evil. Some of us are accustomed to thinking about moral evil only and we forget about physical evil. We fail to understand physical evil as evil. We even call it good.

And it has been made good in Christ and in his cross. But we must not forget that this is a paradox, lest we forget all our Lord has done for us. In Christ, all things are new. In Christ, death becomes the means of life, because in him, life goes into the place of the dead, into Hades, so that there is nowhere God is not. God is even where God is not.

God is impassible, yet in his humanity he suffers the passion. God is immortal, yet in his humanity he dies. God creates the cosmos, yet in his humanity he is created in the cosmos. God loves the world.

The world is the whole cosmos that God creates. Yet the world is also the passions, the sins, the suffering, and the death. So it gets convoluted sometimes when we’re talking about the world. We see the passions and the weakness, the suffering and the death, all of which is evil, and it gets hard to see what’s good about the world. 

All of this is reconciled only in the cross. We exalt the cross when we say that we love the world. When we say that God loves the world – that can only make any sense in the context of exalting the cross. God is making the sign of the cross over the whole world. He is blessing us with the cross.

The cross unifies opposites. There’s a vertical bar and there’s a horizontal bar, intersected. The divine intersects the human, in Jesus Christ. Heaven comes down to earth. Life enters into death. Unified, death becomes the way to life through resurrection. The cross is the cosmos as it really is. All of it, in all of its senses, unified.  Opposites are made one in the cross, this wonderful and holy sign. 

Holy Repentance leads to Holy Communion.

St. Mary of Egypt
19th century

Our holy mother Mary of Egypt is a glorious example of repentance, and she shows for us, I think, the deep connection that exists between Holy Repentance and Holy Communion.

In her youth, Mary was brazenly impenitent. She was nymphomaniacal, jaded, and profane. For seventeen years in Alexandria, she lived a dissolute and promiscuous life. It is not known how she began to suffer from this “insatiable desire and… irrepressible passion”[i] but I suspect that she had suffered from the sins of others. It is hurt people who hurt people.

Anyway, upon hearing of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem from her home in Alexandria, Mary resolved to accompany the pilgrims, not as a pilgrim but rather to use them to satisfy her lusts.

By choosing young pilgrims to the Holy Land to be her sexual partners and conquests, Mary heaped evil upon evil. These were people who were trying to repent and experience God and Mary resolves to do her best to distract them from that purpose and to seduce them. She is successful, too, and by prostitution, she pays for her passage to Jerusalem. Beyond even this, she “frequently forced those miserable youths even against their own will [into every] mentionable or unmentionable depravity.” So her sins here are manifold and one sin begets another, just as it does in our own lives.

But the grace of God is all-powerful and God's love for us is not diminished by any of our sins. Mary pays for her passage to Jerusalem with sin, and yet in Jerusalem, despite her own impure intentions, she experiences God. She was “hunting for youths,” but God was hunting for her and “seeking [her] repentance. For He does not desire the death of a sinner.” God brings good out of evil. He does it all the time. Listen to what happens next.

Mary is so jaded and free of compunction for her sins, she is so impenitent about what she has done and is doing that, following everyone else, she marches right up to the doors of the Church of the Anastasis – the place of Christ's resurrection – the Holy Sepulchre – and intends to go in among the pilgrims as if she is one of them – though in her heart there is no piety or fear of God – she is following the crowds for her usual reasons.

God sees through our masks – straight into our hearts. There is nothing Jesus hates more than our hypocrisy. He condemns it again and again with vivid language. We are whitewashed tombs (cf. Matt 23:27). Don't say, “Oh, he's only talking about the Pharisees, not me.” Don't look at Mary's sins and say, “Thank God I am not like her.” Let us remember our own sins and repent of them like the publican (cf. Luke 18:11).

God – who is not mocked and is not fooled by our pretensions – sees Mary coming (cf. Gal 6:7). And, out of love for her, does not let her in. She finds that she cannot walk into the holy place. She tried three or four times to enter but each time was repelled by a mighty force. This is a great mercy from the Lord because this spiritual force opens her eyes to her own sin and brings her to repentance in which is her one hope for salvation – without which we cannot be saved. Take this seriously: St. Mark the Ascetic says, “There is a sin which is always ‘unto death’ (1 Jn. 5:16): the sin for which we do not repent. For this sin, even a saint’s prayers will not be heard.”[ii]

Mary is a creature of extremes. She had sinned boldly and now she begins her repentance with an even greater zeal. After she repents before an icon of the Theotokos and promises to “never again defile [herself] by… fornication,” she is able to enter the holy place. Mary experienced the great mercy of a physical manifestation of the spiritual reality. None of us who are impenitent are welcome in the holy place. Spiritually, we are not in the holy place.

If we are impenitent for our sins, especially if we do not love one another – if we are resentful and unforgiving of those who have wronged us, how can we approach Holy Communion in the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ? Communion in the Lord is also communion with the whole Church. And who's in and who's out of the Church is not a judgment we're competent to make. When we invite the people of God to Holy Communion in the Lord, we proclaim, “Approach with fear of God and with faith.” If you do not fear God or if you have no faith, do not approach! If you do, you will eat and drink condemnation upon yourself because you are not truly discerning the body (1 Cor 11:29). As I say, the force that prevented Mary's approach was a great mercy.

After she did repent, Mary was able to enter the holy place – the Church of the Resurrection – and there venerate the holy cross and she then went the Church of the Forerunner and received the holy mysteries of the Church. Holy Repentance leads to Holy Communion. You can't really have one without the other.

So clearly and emphatically did our holy mother Mary of Egypt understand this, that she then began a life of severe repentance for many years. For seventeen years, she battled the wild beasts in the desert – that is, her own mad desires and passions. When you go to a place of isolation and quiet, you will see more clearly the battle being waged over your own heart.

St. Mary was not a frequent communicant. Only after more than seventeen years of repentance in the desert with severe fasting, ceaseless prayer, and self-discipline did Mary finally again receive Holy Communion from the priest Zosimas.

I'm not going to recommend this degree of severity to anyone. I believe a more frequent nourishment from the body and blood of Christ is helpful and even necessary for most of us as we seek and strive by the grace of God for ever greater union with God.

However, I am going to insist that for the most part, we Catholics have been taking Holy Communion far too lightly for many years – and we do so to our peril. Frequent reception of Holy Communion without holy repentance – will not save us. You can't have one without the other. The first word Jesus preaches to us is, “Repent” (Matt 4:17).

An essential – that is to say, not an optional – part of repentance is the holy mystery of repentance, which our holy mother Mary received in the Church of the Forerunner the evening she began to repent. Whatever you want to call it – going to confession, the sacrament of penance, reconciliation – we can't skip over this entirely and remain in good with the Church. This must be a part of our lives as Orthodox Catholic Christians. This doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from the Holy Spirit through the Church and through the Scripture. We can't live without it. I'm serious – there is no life without it. 

How often you need to go personally is a discussion that you need to have with your spiritual father or mother. A good general guide is to go four times a year – once during each of the four fasts. If you haven't been to confession in a long long time, please make a point of going before the Great Fast ends. It's not going to hurt you. It's only going to help you. It's sin that hurts us, not repentance. As St. John Chrysostom says, “Sin is a wound; repentance is a medicine.” Do not be ashamed to repent. Be ashamed to sin.[iii]

Do not utterly neglect to confess. Do not fail to repent. Let us be inspired by the example of our holy mother Mary of Egypt – by her fervor and zeal for repentance – and let us not take too lightly the discipline of God (cf. Heb 12:5). Let us repent and approach with fear of God and with faith.

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[i] The Life of Our Holy Mother Mary of Egypt. http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/st.mary.html

[ii]No Righteousness by Works 41, The Philokalia, London, 1979, v. 1, p. 129.

[iii] John Chrystotom, Homily 8, On Repentance and Almsgiving

Weeding our own Garden - or - Don't Garden Drunk

To be honest, most of us have had the experience of having too much to drink. Many people have experienced this, of course. It's a rather common phenomenon for a person who has never had alcohol before – and who doesn't yet understand how it affects people – to drink a bit too much at first and to become drunk.

Well, Noah was apparently the first person to ever drink wine. He was the first to plant a vineyard (Gen 9:20) and when he drank the wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent (9:21). Given his inexperience and the inexperience of the whole human race at this point, this is really an unsurprising and predictable result.

Nonetheless, it is a shameful and embarrassing situation for a father to be discovered drunk and naked by his son and this is what happened to Noah when Ham walks in (9:22). Further unspeakable indecencies may be hinted at by some Hebrew euphemisms in the text but the situation is difficult enough without all that. And, regardless, if we have ears to hear, I think this story teaches us both the importance of sobriety and the proper way to regard others in their sins.

Deliberately getting drunk is a sin. As Catholics, and therefore as adversaries of teetotalers and Puritans, we may not say this often enough for fear of being lumped in with them, so I'll say it again: deliberately getting drunk is a sin. Alcoholism is a disease. Accidentally getting drunk is an involuntary sin or an infirmity.

In each case, we stand in need of healing. Our Lord, who alone can heal us, offers us this healing both directly and through one another, through our prayer and support for one another, through the Holy Mysteries of repentance, of anointing, and of communion in his holy body and blood.

Sobriety, however, does not only refer to the moderation of our use of alcohol. First of all, there are many other addictions. I think almost everyone is addicted to something: to alcohol or drugs, to pornography or sex, to food or sugar, to video games or social media, or to our countless passions. All these things offer us a momentary release or escape from our pain. Those who suffer less are less susceptible to addictions, by the way. There's always a pain at the root of an addiction. So, we addicts stand in need of a healing of the root.

Yet, the way to healing and to life shown to us by Jesus Christ is counterintuitive – it is the way of the cross. We're more inclined to run to our addictions and away from our pain, but the way out is through. This is the only real way out to where we want to go – to "a place of light, joy, and peace where there is no pain, sorrow, nor mourning" – through the cross. We must deny ourselves and embrace the very thing that hurts us – as Jesus embraces his cross (Mark 8:34). Usually, this means loving and forgiving an enemy, just as Jesus forgave those who were crucifying him, even as they were driving the nails into his hands and feet (Matt 5:44; Luke 23:34). He did not wait for them to apologize. This is the way of the cross – the way to healing and everlasting life. Unforgiveness, on the other hand, is a kind of drunkenness of the soul.

Sobriety is a spiritual condition. In the spiritual life, sobriety is also known as "watchfulness" or "νῆψις". This is the opposite of a drunken stupor. We must stay awake, be alert, vigilant, and watchful over our own hearts, lest we get drunk on our passions.

When the weed of unforgiveness or resentment, or anger (like the anger of Noah when he knew what his youngest son had done to him) begins to take root in our hearts, we must pluck it out before it has time to grow deep roots (Gen 9:24-27). If, for example, we wait for someone to apologize before we will forgive them, we may find that, even if they do eventually apologize, our resentment will have by then grown too strong for us to overcome – its roots too deep for us to dig up. If we are drunk like Noah was drunk – that is, if we are deeply imbued in our passions and addictions – we will lack the careful attention needed to weed the garden of our hearts without uprooting the herbs and vegetables and flowers of holiness and virtue and goodness which the Lord has planted in us.

We must always keep careful watch over our own gardens, but it is not our business to go rooting around in someone else's garden. "Yes, O Lord and King, let me see my own sins and not judge my brothers and sisters" (The Prayer of St. Ephrem). Ham looked upon the nakedness and drunkenness of his father and he told his two brothers about it – instead of keeping his mouth shut (Gen 9:22).

"A prudent man conceals his knowledge,

           but fools proclaim their folly...

He who guards his mouth preserves his life;

            he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin" (Prov 12:23;13:3).

"Lord and Master of my life, spare me from... idle chatter" (The Prayer of St. Ephrem).

Shem and Japheth, on the other hand, acted rightly and with respect for their father. They "took a garment, laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness" (Gen 9:23). We must never look greedily upon the sins or weaknesses or infirmities of others, whether it is to laugh at them or to puff ourselves up – saying like the Pharisee "Thank God I am not like this sinner" (Luke 18:11). Rather, like Shem and Japheth, let us avert our eyes from the sins of others and focus on repenting for our own sins.

This is not to say that there is never a time to lovingly admonish the sinner or correct the wayward, but these actions are always taken for the good of the other and never for exalting the self by comparison. That is how we can discern whether or not we should say something.   

Rise

Christ is risen! And now Jesus is telling us to rise. The Risen Lord raises us.

To the paralytic, Jesus says "Rise – take up your pallet, and walk” (John 5:8). Jesus says "Rise" to a paralytic in each of the four gospels.

To Aeneas, Peter says, "Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed” (Acts 9:34).

And to the disciple Tabitha, Peter says, “Tabitha, rise” (Acts 9:40).

Rise. Rise. Rise.

Saint Augustine says that this is the word of healing - "the conferring of the cure."[i] To rise is to be healed, made whole, restored to the fullness of life. This makes a lot of sense if we are illuminated. And by that I mean baptized, chrismated, and communed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s not happenstance that the healing of the paralytic in John takes place next to a pool, which, when stirred by an unseen spirit, brings healing of body to one submerged in it (John 5:4). This is a type or prefiguration of baptism. We are buried with Christ in death by being submerged in the waters of baptism, which have been stirred and "sanctified by the power, action, and descent of the Holy Spirit,"[ii] so that we will rise up with Christ out of death into everlasting life by rising up out of the waters of baptism.

Several of the fathers[iii] also point out that this pool is where the priests would wash the animals to be sacrificed to the Lord in the temple. This further strengthens the image of baptism evoked by the Sheep Pool. Because we who are baptized are baptized into the sacrificial death of Jesus, the Lamb of God – whose death destroys death and raises us up from death to everlasting life.

You see, when we are baptized, we are like the paralytic hearing the word of the Lord - "Rise". Before baptism, we are still paralyzed – that is restricted, not free, but enslaved to death and to the consequences of our mortality – to the bodily passions and sin. But through baptism, God fills our lives with grace – with the life of God, with his own energies, which free us from our enslavement to these things.

Maybe we lose sight of our own freedom sometimes. Because we often fall again, pining after the fleshpots of Egypt, wishing we were enslaved again with full bellies, or wishing we were paralyzed again, because when we were paralyzed all we had to do was lie around. Now that we can walk, we must carry our pallet. And that's hard work. We must do the work of living the life in Christ. And it isn't always easy. So sometimes like a dog returns to its vomit we return to our sin, even after we've been baptized and freed from it.

But if we do, our Lord who loves us unconditionally comes to us again in the second baptism of holy repentance. In this holy mystery, it is as if he says to us again, "Rise, take up your pallet and walk." Again healing us with the word "Rise." And again he follows that with the commission to be about the work of God.

This is like when he forgives the adulterous woman (John 8:1-11). He forgives her saying, "Neither do I condemn you; go." She can go. She is free to go. She will not be subjected to punishment for her sin. But he continues, "and sin no more." Now that we've been forgiven, we are free to live a sinless life – a holy life – a grace-filled life – a life impossible without grace but made possible by grace. It is God's own life he invites us to live.

This is part of what Jesus means I think by telling the paralytic to take up his pallet and walk. This is a meaningful command. We know that this healing takes place on the Sabbath. And we know that the Jews said it was not lawful to carry a heavy burden on the Sabbath. Did Jesus forget? I don't think he did. I think every word he speaks is well thought-out, profoundly meaningful, and inspired.

It is worth recalling that Torah nowhere explicitly forbids carrying an item from one place to another on the Sabbath. Torah forbids work on the Sabbath. But what is work? Later, Mishnah strives to answer this question. Mishnah developed to serve as “a fence around Torah”[iv] – to make it so that if a pious Jew follows Mishnah, he cannot come even close to breaking Torah. So later, after the time of Christ, Mishnah would outline 39 types of work forbidden on the Sabbath including carrying an object from one house to another.[v] But all this was still in dispute at the time of Jesus. And, in any case, these are human laws built around Torah and not Torah itself. Jesus above all has the authority to supersede Mishnah. And he himself is the word of God before all ages and is himself the source of Torah.

Jesus knew he was commanding the paralytic to break this Mishnah regarding the Sabbath. He does know everything after all. So I believe he had a good reason for telling him to do this. Or many good reasons.

Saint Ephrem the Syrian points out that it would have been a great miracle just for Jesus to say to the paralytic, "arise and go" even if he had not also had him take up his pallet and walk "Would it not have been a miracle that he, who was not able to turn himself about on his bed, should arise easily and go?" But he also makes him carry his bed. Why? Ephrem writes that this is "to show that he had given him a complete healing..., not like the sick who come back to health gradually.... Even if he were silent," Ephrem writes, "his bed would cry out."[vi] So the carrying of the bed demonstrates to all the totality and immediacy of the healing available in Jesus Christ.  

Saint Caesarius of Arles offers a more allegorical interpretation which I quite like. He says that taking up our pallet means to carry and govern our bodies. (Sermon 171.1) You see, before he encountered Christ, the paralytic was carried about by his pallet. It bore him. But after he encounters Christ and confesses to him his weakness – saying “there is no one to put me in the pool when the waters are stirred” – after this, Christ says to him, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” Now he carries the pallet. Now he carries that which had carried him. He bears it.

This is so like the bodily passions of our bodies subject to death. Before Christ or without Christ our bodily passions – hunger, lust, sloth, and so on – rule over us. We go where they say – do what they want - obey them. We are not free. But Christ frees us. In him, we are free. But notice, he does not tell us to cast away the pallet – the body, or even in some sense the passions. But to rise, take them up, and walk. Our bodies and even our passions can be redeemed and restored to their true nature and purpose in Jesus Christ, in whom we are free, in whom these things are not our masters, in whom we are the masters of these things.

Our passions and appetites and impulses are distorted by sin. They are run amok – drunk with power – having been given by us disordered dominion over our whole lives. As for example when we allow fear of the difficulty involved in making a virtuous choice to prevent us from so doing. And we take the easy way out. But I don't believe that the passions and impulses and appetites in us are in themselves contrary to our true nature. With Saint Isaiah the Solitary, I believe these come originally from God and so are good in essence. But we need to carry them rather than them carrying us. Our passions must, with God's help, “be educated, not eradicated…, transfigured, not suppressed…, used positively, not negatively.”[vii] Having risen in Christ, we must carry our pallets rather than being carried by them.

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[i] Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.7

[ii] special petition in the Litany of Peace before the blessing of the baptismal waters

[iii] E.g. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Augustine, Alcuin

[iv] Pirkei Avot 1.1

[v] Mishnah Shabbat 7.2

[vi] Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron 13.2.

[vii] G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrand, and Kallistos Ware, eds., “Glossary,” in The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Volume One (London: Faber and Faber, 1979-1995), 364.

Two kinds of enemies

On Matt 6:14-21

Cheesefare Sunday

There are two kinds of enemies we must keep in mind as we fast. There are the enemies we must forgive – and there are the enemies we must destroy.

First, there is the enemy we must love and forgive. Today our Lord Jesus teaches us how to fast, and he begins his teaching with talk of forgiveness. A true fast must begin with forgiveness. We Byzantines take this literally – tonight we begin our Great Fast with Forgiveness Vespers, confessing and forgiving all the wrongs that we have done.  

Just before our Lord teaches us how to fast, he teaches us how to pray (Matt 6:5-13). He teaches us the Lord’s Prayer, which we pray many times daily – and in which we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

                         

And today he elaborates on the meaning of this prayer, saying, “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but” – and this is a terrifying conjunction – “if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6:14-15).

Our Father’s forgiveness is not exactly unconditional – though he makes it always available to us, and no sin of ours can cut us off irredeemably from his mercy. But Jesus himself reveals the condition of our Father’s forgiveness – that is, we must forgive others. We must put aside all our enmity and hate and resentment over wrongs.

St Maximus the Confessor writes, “Strive as hard as you can to love everyone. If you cannot yet do this, at least do not hate anybody. But even this is beyond your power unless you scorn worldly things.”[i] Fasting rightly will teach us scorn of worldly things, which will help us put aside our hate for others. This is necessary because we are not to be an enemy to anyone.

Just because you have an enemy, doesn’t mean that you have to be an enemy. There is probably someone who hates you and opposes the good that you are and the good that you do – a person who makes himself your enemy.

We will have enemies, whether or not we create them by our own evil doing. Jesus assures us that if we follow him, we will be hated, as he has been hated (cf. Matt 10:22; John 15:18). Christ himself has enemies and so, if we become like Christ, we will be like him also in this. Furthermore, he commands us to love our enemies, which presupposes that we will have enemies to love (cf. Matt 5:44).

So, how do I stop being an enemy of my enemies? I forgive and seek reconciliation. I make restitution for any wrongs. If my enemy will not reconcile with me, I can still remain open to the one whose heart is closed to me. I can love and forgive the one who hates and hurts me. I can pray for those who persecute me. All this in imitation of the supreme example of Christ Jesus on the cross, who cries out, “Father forgive them.” And really, it is this cross that gives us the power to forgive. Only in Christ and in his cross can we truly offer forgiveness.

Forgiveness isn’t something entirely within our own power. When the Pharisees say, “Who can forgive sins but God alone,” they have a point (though they fail to see that they are making their point to God himself). But if you’ve ever felt like you couldn’t forgive someone because they have hurt you so deeply or because their crime is so heinous, in a way, you’re right. That is, you can’t forgive them of your own individual power, by your own unaided will. You can’t do it, but Christ can, and in Christ, you can forgive.

Forgiveness is a grace – a participation in the life of God. As they say, to forgive is divine. Only by the grace of God can we find the power to forgive, to release those whose crimes against us have bound them to death, to abandon them utterly to God’s good graces, to seek every good on their behalf.

The process of theosis – our dynamic ascent into ever greater union with God – precedes forgiveness, accompanies forgiveness, and results from forgiveness. In forgiving, we become more like God, who forgives. We are forgiven as we forgive. Forgiving and being forgiven are one action of God in us.

As we enter the Great Fast, let this be our approach and God’s approach in us and between us toward all. Let us invoke blessings and not curses upon our enemies.

St. John Chrysostom points out that “praying against one’s personal enemies is a transgression of law.”[ii] Yet, anyone who prays the psalms will soon notice that they are filled with curses against enemies. So what does this mean for us?

It means that there is another kind of enemy – one with whom we must never be reconciled. In another place, St. John Chrysostom says, “We are commanded to have only one enemy, the devil. With him never be reconciled! But with a brother, never be at enmity in your heart.”[iii]

As an exorcist of demons, Jesus teaches us who our enemies really are. Our enemies are not each other or other parties or other nations, but the demons and the evil that is in our own hearts. It is toward these enemies that we must direct the curses of the psalms and it is against these enemies that we must strive by our fasting.

Just as our fast is entered and sustained in the spirit of forgiveness and patience with others’ faults, so it is also an act of war against our true enemies – the devil and his demons and our own passions. How shall we wage this war?

St. John the Dwarf writes,

“If a king wanted to take possession of his enemy's city, he would begin by cutting off the water and the food and so his enemy, dying of hunger, would submit to him. It is the same with the passions of the flesh: if a man goes about fasting and hungry, the enemies of his soul grow weak and can be conquered thereby.”

We begin the fast by forgiving our pretended enemies – our neighbors and fellow humans – so that then, free from the distraction of focusing our energies on waging a campaign against them, we can turn that power instead against our true enemies: the demons and our own passions.

Against these enemies, let us pray with the Psalmist,

      O Lord, plead my cause against my foes;

fight those who fight me.

Take up your buckler and shield; arise to help me.

Take up the javelin and the spear against those who pursue me.

       O Lord, say to my soul: “I am your salvation.”

Let those who seek my life be shamed and disgraced.

Let those who plan evil against me be routed in confusion.

Let them be like chaff before the wind;

let God’s angel scatter them.

Let their path be slippery and dark;

let God’s angel pursue them.

They have hidden a net for me wantonly;

they have dug a pit.

Let ruin fall upon them and take them by surprise.

Let them be caught in the net they have hidden;

let them fall into their pit.

But my soul shall be joyful in the Lord and rejoice in his salvation (Psalm 34:1-9).

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[i] Fourth Century on Love, 82

[ii] Against Publishing the Errors of the Brethren, 10.

[iii] Homily 20

The Demon Avarice

In our materialist era, it is worth considering John Cassian’s description of avarice in his treatise “On the Eight Vices.” (This treatise brought to the Latin West Evagrius' list of eight vicious thoughts and it is from this treatise that Gregory the Great would later develop the idea of the seven deadly sins). Cassian, whose feast would be tomorrow if this were a leap year, identifies the relationship between the destructive influence of demons and excessive worldly possessions. This vice, he teaches, is contrary to our true nature as creatures of God. It grows into an all-consuming passion, but we can overcome it.

Cassian does well to emphasize the role of the demonic in encouraging sinful passions. In this treatise, he begins his description of the struggle against each vice, except gluttony, the same way, as a “struggle against the demon.” In the case I am now considering, “our… struggle is against the demon of avarice.” By attributing evil thoughts instead to nature, the present age too quickly discounts the activity of evil spirits. Remembering that it is not from our selves that avaricious thoughts and desires come properly externalizes the enemy many all too readily internalize and consider to be only natural. Just as an abused child constantly told that he is useless and no good may begin to believe these lies about himself, so we become when we believe the lie told to us by demons that our sin is in our true nature.

We may have been “born this way” (Gaga), we may have been brought forth in iniquity and conceived in sin (Ps. 50/51:5), but it is not our true nature. There is a struggle within us. In that struggle, it is good and helpful to remember that we are not created sinful and avaricious, but holy and generous.

This vice is a sickness contrary to our true nature and thus needs healing. “It enters from the outside,” as Cassian writes, because it is concerned with possessions and the external things of this world. Cassian is careful not to “accuse nature of being the cause of sin.” The false belief that sin is our very nature leads to despair of the possibility of freedom from sin and the battle is lost before the fight begins.

Concerning avarice particularly, it is important to reference, as Cassian does, the scriptural description of the love of money as “the root of all evil” (1Tim 6:10). This image of the root is evocative. It is easy to pull up the roots of a very new and young plant. If the plant is allowed to grow, however, it roots grow deeper and stronger and soon it becomes difficult – eventually nearly impossible – to pull it up. It is the same way with the vice of avarice. One begins by setting aside perhaps more than they need to. Another begins by reducing, just a small amount, but for no good reason, the offering they put in the collection each Sunday. Habits contrary to a generous attitude begin to wear on the individuals that practice them. Soon, they are giving nothing and hoarding all. Instead of supporting the poor and hungry, perhaps they purchase a luxurious automobile. They convince themselves that they deserve to have fine things, even while their neighbors go without necessities. At this point, the roots of avarice are deep and strong.

The vice of avarice presents a particular problem for those of us who are living in the world rather than the monastery. Cassian writes of overcoming avarice, “This uprooting is difficult to achieve unless we are living in a monastery.” Monks, to whom Cassian primarily addresses his treatise, live in such a way that the daily necessities of life do not need to occupy so much of their attention. Those who have families to provide for or others that depend on them are unable to avoid some contact with money. Nonetheless, it is important that they do not love this money or make an idol of it. Some of what Cassian says about a monk applies also to those who are in the world. For example, “raging fury when he happens to sustain a loss,” or “gloom and dejection when he falls short of the gain he hoped for” reveals sinful and idolatrous passion in a layman as much as in a monk. Even those who have not renounced the world entirely should not have a “fear of poverty.” Such fear “comes from lack of faith.” The Lord calls all alike to trust in Him. Not only monks, but also each of us, must live in faith.

Cassian’s remedy to the vice of avarice of utterly renouncing the world and all possessions is a good one, but it is not a virtuous option for those who already have responsibilities for the welfare of others in the world. Consequently, I will conclude with some of his suggestions for healing vices generally. For example, against dejection he recommends “prayer, hope in God, [and] meditation on Holy Scripture.”  These remedies are efficacious not only against dejection, but also against the love of money. Rather than hoping in money to provide for our needs, we should hope in God and look to Scripture to teach us its proper use.