In our time, many laypeople ask the question: Why should people of
the twenty-first century act according to rules written by monks and for monks
in deep antiquity?. Why should they read monastic books in which there isn’t
even a remote mention of the problems that we face today?.
Here it is, the fourth Sunday of Great Lent, dedicated to a monk
who lived one and a half millennia ago. Just how relevant are the writings of
St. John, abbot of Sinai, to the twenty-first century?. Could there really be
something of value?.
“Asceticism irritates and even
angers some people, because it disrupts the momentary comfort that doesn’t want
to know anything about eternity.”
Priest Dimitry Shishkin, rector of the Church of
the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Pochtovoe, Bakhchesar
region (diocese of Simferopol, Crimea).
The main problem of our times is man’s loss of understanding
of his higher calling. More and more the idea is spreading in the world that
the meaning of human life consists in living here, on earth, with the maximum
comfort and happiness. And by happiness is meant some average set of
emotional-physical joys and conveniences. Having “waved away” the ascetical
experience collected by the Church over the centuries, man handicaps himself,
makes his life catastrophically truncated, because he rejects help in the most difficult
and most important work- discovering the fullness of love and harmony with
God. Moreover, having completely immersed himself in emotional-fleshly life,
man completely loses the true concept of spiritual life. He may even know about
it from books, can think about it and discuss it, but no more than that. This
is because the living experience of discovering the grace of the Holy Spirit,
the experience of growing in the knowledge of God is acquired in no other way
than by “love for the very venerable commandments and sacredly fulfilling
them.” Without this experience, eternal grace-filled life becomes a certain
culturological fact, and nothing more.
Any arch-complex and ultra-modern
problem, if we look at it strictly, has its own spiritual dimension. And the
laws of cause and effect in spiritual life have not changed since the time of
Adam and Eve. Only the external trappings change. The holy fathers’ deep
penetration into the essence of human life is just what’s needed to help each
one of us to better understand ourselves, to make sense of the causes of many
personal problems, and find the path to their proper resolution.
The written experience of ascetic
life is under no circumstances an example for mindless imitation, but rather a
spiritual compass toward which all we Christians should strive, by which we
should test all the many forms of our emotional and bodily life. You could call
it a spiritual lighthouse that enables us to stay on course and not get lost
forever in the darkness of this mad world.
Departure from an understanding of
the true dimensions of human life, from the awareness of what it should be in
eternity, leads to a person’s shameful shallowness. The person lowers himself
to the level of an irrational creature, differing only in that every irrational
creature knows no sin, because it abides within the boundaries determined for
it by the laws of nature. But a man who has become an irrational beast sins by
defiling himself, by trampling the image of God in himself. And this question,
the question of the dimension of life itself, is an eternal question. That is,
having the calling to attain perfection and sanctity, hearing the call to become
an heir to the Kingdom of Heaven, everyone should consciously make their own
choice, and respond to that call here and now. And this call is a perfect,
eternal, and irrevocable given for every person, relative to which we will
spend our earthly lives in time.
An emotional-fleshly way of life
means man’s renunciation of his own higher calling, the lack of desire to
clearly and honestly look to the future. Reaching for God unavoidably
presupposes self-limitations, and conscious restraint from sin. An experience
of Christian life reveals to us such limitless heights unimaginable to us as
long as we do not make this choice and begin, with God’s help, to embody, to
realize this higher human calling—“to be co-participants in Divine nature.”
 |
| Saint John Climacus. |
This is why the God-bearing elders,
monks, who lived many centuries ago and put all their effort into attaining
oneness with God, become inevitably close to every believing person. These
ancient monks preserve and transmit to us not dead rules, words, and letters,
but a living and true experience of acquiring meaning and fullness, the
unutterable joy of human life.
In the Psalter are these
words: With the elect man wilt thou be elect. Knowing more about
one or another saint, reading his works, we enter into communion with him, and
make a spiritual connection; this is not a metaphor but the reality of a higher
order, because there is none dead in God. Besides being alive in eternity, the
souls of the saints are filled with great grace for their faithfulness to
Christ, for their ardent love and yearning for Him. What is more—and very
important—they have experience of bodily life with all its sorrows,
temptations, sicknesses, and even falls, but also repentance and the knowledge
of truth. When we through prayer or reading their Lives and the works of the
holy fathers enter into association with them, we, at least, to some degree, participate in their sanctity, their grace, and gain them as helpers and living
intercessors before God. Every attentive Christian can tell about examples of
help from one or another saint in all kinds of work and situations, when a
person, even if briefly, but ardently, prayed to that saint for help. And these
are not exclusive or rare cases, but it could rather be said that they are the
norm of Christian life.
When we learn about the life of
such a great saint as St. John Climacus, we first of all must understand that
his sanctity, is to a great extent, exclusively the result of faith, many labors
and sufferings, tears, and overcoming obstacles. And every word he said is
truly worth its weight in gold. But St. John’s exposition of ascetical
experience is not only his personal experience, but in the broad sense, the
story of man’s ascent to God, linked with the torturous transformation of
fallen nature for the sake of acquiring a supernatural, paradisal state. And
this call to sanctity, the path of ascent to God, is something that touches
every one of us, regardless of what times or circumstances we live in,
regardless of whether we believe or not—because there is the reality of a
higher order to which we can relate in different ways, but which we are not
capable of changing or eliminating.
It is precisely for this reason that
the teachings of such great saints as John Climacus irritate or even anger some
people—this teaching disrupts the organic, momentary comfort that doesn’t want
to know anything about eternity, or the grandeur of our human calling. It
reminds us of the calling that no one can wave away and for which each of us,
one way or another, will have to answer. It is precisely the need of an answer,
if not the recognition of it, then the feeling of its imminence that irritates
those who do not want to know anything about this calling, who would like to
remain irrational (read: irresponsible) animals, albeit endowed with reason,
will, and the ability to express themselves in human language. But speech is a
divine gift, which indicates a speaking person’s living connection with a
speaking God, and the possibility of a reasonable answer to the most important
questions of existence.
St. John Climacus dedicated not
only his entire conscience life to learning the
path of human ascent to God,
but he also applied every effort in his power to actually perform this work of
ascent; to respond to that Fatherly call, and, by God’s mercy but also with
extreme effort on his own part, to attain the goal of human life: “To enter
into the joy of our Lord”. This astounding, difficult, much-sorrowful, but also
bright and joyful experience of ascent is what the great St. John Climacus
narrates to us. And this narrative is not a history of events in former times,
but a revelation about our nature, our calling, and the way to make this ascent
happen. Here everything is very specific, exact, and clear. If only we would
not remain deaf, if only we would respond to the divine calling, if only we
would begin to walk this path—and the Lord in His mercy and love for us,
through the prayers of St. John Climacus, will not abandon us. He will support,
strengthen, and teach us. If only we would strive for Him, seek Him, and apply
efforts to acquire His grace, remembering that this is only possible for us “in
Christ Who strengthens us.”
That is why St. John says that
being a Christian means, for a man, as much as possible, to emulate Christ in
words, deeds, and thoughts, sacredly and immaculately believing in the Holy
Trinity.”
Let us remember this, let us check
our lives against the priceless experience of great ascetics, let us remember
our Christian calling, which is the highest, brightest, and most joyful calling
there can be on earth!.
Reference:
Orthodox Christianity.http://orthochristian.com/102181.html