Author: prayerfullife7

The Wretched

The Wretched

St Paul says that we are the most to be pitied among all men if our hope in Christ is only for this life, and if there is no victory over death, and no resurrection.

We don’t need Christ in order to enjoy the beauty of this world, nor do we need him in order to explain creation. We don’t even need Christ to enjoy this life, or find purpose and meaning in our lives.

In fact, morality, virtue and ethics are not exclusive to followers of Christ, and this fact is evident to everyone. Good living is not dependent on Christ.

The only thing that can come to us in no other way is a good eternal life; with Jesus alone we are promised victory over death, and an eternal life to anticipate with joy and thankfulness.

But where is our salvation? How can I know this promise is true, that I’m not being duped. We’ve heard the story, the eyewitness accounts to His resurrection, the hundreds of people who staked their reputations and their lives upon this account, even on what they witnessed first-hand with their own eyes.

But that was two thousand years ago. It starts to sound a little like a fairy tale. Is Jesus my imaginary friend? Even if the accounts are true, and it happened just like that, somehow the waiting is demoralizing and frustrating.

We wait upon God’s perfect timing and we trust in Him. We live by faith, and are justified by this. Perfect endurance will have its perfect reward and those who endure to the end will wear the crown—the crown of eternal life.

Meanwhile here I am, waiting in this valley of tears, under the shadow of death. I sit in my room trying to communicate with God, but without the apparatus to do so. I’m a radioman without a radio, an internet surfer without a computer (or smartphone). My prayers, like sonar, bounce off the walls and echo back inside my head.

Why is it so hard?

Well, I’m not ready to see him anyway, most likely. I’m filthy and shameful and need more time. But what do I really do with all this time? I watch television. I earn money and spend it. I eat far more than I need. And I struggle.

Oh wretched man that I am. One moment talking to an empty room inside my soul, the next running in circles trying to get somewhere; anywhere, just not here. What a way to spend the day.

I know I’m not alone

October 16

A person is humble when he knows that his very being is on loan to him.

…both God and the devil naturally impart their qualities to those who approach either of them: God bestows eternal life on those who love Him, while the devil, operating through temptations that are subject to our volition, causes the death of his followers.

~St Maximos the Confessor

October 11

Spiritual knowledge unites knower and known, while ignorance is always a cause of change and self-division in the ignorant. Hence nothing, according to sacred Scripture, will shift him who truly believes from the ground of his true faith, in which resides the permanence of his immutable and unchanging identity. For he who has been united with the truth has the assurance that all is well with him, even though most people rebuke him for being out of his mind. For without their being aware he has moved from delusion to the truth of real faith; and he knows for sure that he is not deranged, as they say, but that through truth–simple and always immutably the same–he has been liberated from the fluctuating and fickle turmoil of the manifold forms of illusion.

~St Maximos the Confessor

October 10

Just as the gardener who does not weed his garden chokes his vegetables, so the intellect that does not purify its thoughts is wasting its efforts.

Search the Scriptures and you will find the commandments; do what they say and you will be freed from your passions.

When you have been given faith, self-control is demanded from you; when self-control has become habitual, it gives birth to patient endurance, a disposition that gladly accepts suffering.

~St Thalassios the Libyan

A Complaint and A Requiem for a Rose

Rage leads to shame­­,

anger begetting ignominy—

a fire that ends in embers.

 

What more must we endure?

 

I want to thrash and scream,

and make my displeasure known

to the universe.

 

The cold dark emptiness

dampens my cries,

absorbs my wails,

and ignores me.

 

Too many tears

like so much rain,

is tedious,

and erodes the slopes

within me.

 

A fire now rages—

hot and angry,

consuming everything,

engulfing homes,

and devouring my heart.

 

After a flood,

a fire feels good,

until it doesn’t.

 

A comforting warmth,

which burns,

intensifies, and destroys—

then covers us in a smoky

shroud of misery,

and shame.

 

What more must we endure,

yet again?

 

But to what end are all these tears,

and all this rage?

  

After all of this—

embarrassment and

humiliation.

 

Emotions to no purpose.

 

Even so

the earth endures—

 

green grass will emerge

through charred ruins.

 

And the beautiful rose

will bloom again.
~FS

October 8

Nature itself gives no small token of the knowledge of providence planted naturally within us whenever it urges us instinctively towards God through prayer in times of sudden crises, and makes us seek salvation from Him. For when we are suddenly overtaken by violent events, before thinking of anything else we involuntarily call upon God. Is is as if providence itself, without any conscious thought on our part, were drawing us to itself, outstripping the speed of our noetic faculty and showing us that divine help is stronger than anything else. Nature would not lead us purposelessly to what does not naturally exist. It is clear to everyone that whatever is a natural consequence of something demonstrates its own authenticity with the force of truth.

~St Maximos the Confessor

October 7

I do not think that the end of this present life is rightly called death. More accurately, it is deliverance from death, separation from corruption, liberation from slavery, cessation of turbulence, destruction of wars, dispelling of darkness, rest from suffering, calming of turmoil, eclipsing of shame, escape from passions and, to sum up, the termination of all evils. The saints who have achieved these things through voluntary mortification live as strangers and pilgrims in this life (Hebrews 11:13), fighting bravely against the world and the body and the assaults stemming from them. And, having stifled the deceit which both of these engender because of the close connection existing between the senses and sensible objects, they keep the dignity of this soul unenslaved.

Using the mellow thought of pleasure as if it were a sword, the passion of gluttony makes many virtues childless. By means of dissipation it kills the seeds of self-restraint; through greed it corrupts the equity of justice; with self-love it severs the natural bond of compassion. In short, the passion of gluttony destroys all virtue’s offspring.

~St Maximos the Confessor

October 6

God did not order the sabbath, the new moons and the feasts to be honored because He wanted men to honor the days themselves: this would have been tantamount to decreeing by the Law that men should worship creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25), and should regard the days as holy in themselves and therefore to be venerated. On the contrary, He indicated that He Himself was to be honored symbolically through the days. For He is the sabbath, as the soul’s repose after its exertions in the flesh, and as the cessation of its sufferings in the cause of righteousness. He is the Passover, as the liberator of those held in the bitter slavery of sin. He is the Pentecost, as the origin and consummation of all created beings, and as the principle through which all things by nature exist. Thus the Law destroys those who apprehend it in a literal or outward way, leading them to worship creation rather than the Creator, and to regard as holy in themselves things that were brought into existence for man’s sake; for they remain ignorant of Him on whose account they were created.

~St Maximos the Confessor

October 5

Everyone who has fallen away from divine love is ruled through sensual pleasure by the carnal law. With such a law, he cannot keep a single divine commandment, nor does he wish to: preferring a life of pleasure to a life ruled by virtue and lived in the Spirit of God, he embraces ignorance instead of knowledge.

To treat one’s neighbor as oneself is to be concerned simply with his existence. This pertains to the natural law. To love one’s neighbor as oneself is to care, in a way that accords with virtue, for his well-being. This is prescribed by the written law (Leviticus 19:18 & Mark 12:33). To love one’s neighbor more than oneself is a prerogative of the law of grace.

~St Maximos the Confessor

October 3

The patient endurance of the saints exhausts the evil power that attacks them, since it makes them glory in sufferings undergone for the sake of truth. It teaches those too much concerned with a life in the flesh to deepen themselves through such sufferings instead of pursuing ease and comfort; and it makes the flesh’s natural weakness in the endurance of suffering a foundation for overwhelming spiritual power. For the natural weakness of the saints is precisely such a foundation, since the Lord has made their weakness stronger than the proud devil.

 

The written law, by preventing wrongdoing through fear, accustoms one to do what is right. In time such custom produces a disposition filled with the love of righteousness, and this in turn produces a settled state of goodness, obliterating the memory of past sins.

~St Maximos the Confessor