Knowledge of Personal God
Saint Sophrony the Athonite.
The
true Creator disclosed Himself to us as a Personal Absolute. The whole of our
Christian life is based on knowledge of God, the First and the Last, Whose Name
is I AM. Our prayer must always be personal, face to Face. He created us to be
joined in His Divine Being, without destroying our personal character. It is
this form of immortality that was promised to us by Christ. Like St Paul we
would not ‘be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up
of life’. For this did God create us and ‘hath given unto us the earnest of the
Spirit’ (2 Cor. 5.4,5).
Personal
immortality is achieved through victory over the world – a mighty task. The
Lord said, ‘Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world’ (John 10. 3 3), and we
know that the victory was not an easy one. ‘Beware of false prophets … Enter ye
in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth
to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the
gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that
find it’ (Matt. 7.13-115).
Wherein
lies destruction? In that people depart from the Living God.
To believe in Christ one must have either the
simplicity of little children – ‘Except ye be converted and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18.3)-or else,
like St Paul, be fools for Christ’s sake. ‘We are fools for Christ’s sake … we
are weak … we are despised … we are made as the filth of the world, and are the
offscouring of all things unto this day’ (1 Cor. 4. 10, 13). However, ‘other
foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 3
.11). ʻWherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me’ (1 Cor. 4. 16). In the
Christian experience cosmic consciousness comes from prayer like Christ’s
Gethsemane prayer, not as the result of abstract philosophical cogitations.
When
the Very God reveals Himself in a vision of Uncreated Light, man naturally
loses every desire to merge into a transpersonal Absolute. Knowledge which is
imbued with life (as opposed to abstract knowledge) can in no wise be confined
to the intellect: there must be a real union with the act of Being. This is
achieved through love: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart …
and with all thy mind’ (Matt. 22.37). The commandment bids us love. Therefore
love is not something given to us: it must be acquired by an effort made of our
own free will. The injunction is addressed first to the heart as the spiritual
centre of the individual. Mind is only one of the energies of the human. Love
begins in the heart, and the mind is confronted with a new interior event and
contemplates Being in the Light of Divine love.
A
Difficult Task
There
is no ascetic feat more difficult, more painful, than the effort to draw close
to God, Who is Love (cf. i John 4.8, 16). Our inner climate varies almost from
day to day: now we are troubled because we do not understand what is happening
about us; now inspired by a new flash of knowledge. The Name Jesus speaks to us
of the extreme manifestation of the Father’s love for us (cf.John 3.16). In
proportion as the image of Christ becomes ever more sacred to us, and His word
is perceived as creative energy, so a marvelous peace floods the soul while a
luminous aura envelops heart and head. Our attention may hold steady.
Sometimes we continue thus, as if it were a perfectly normal state to be in,
not recognizing that it is a gift from on High. For the most part we only
realize this union of mind with heart when it is interrupted.
In
the Man Christ Jesus ‘dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily’ (Col.
2.9). in Him there is not only God but the whole human race. When we pronounce
the Name Jesus Christ we place ourselves before the plenitude both of Divine
Being and created being. We long to make His life our life; to have Him take
His abode in us. In this lies the meaning of deification. But Adam’s natural
longing for deification at the very outset took a wrong turning which led to a
terrible deviation. His spiritual vision was insufficiently established in
Truth.
Our
life can become holy in all respects only when true knowledge of its
metaphysical basis is coupled with perfect love towards God and our fellow-men.
When we firmly believe that we are the creation of God the Primordial Being, it
will be obvious that there is no possible deification for us outside the
Trinity. If we recognize that in its ontology all human nature is one, then for
the sake of the unity of this nature we shall strive to make love for our
neighbor part of our being.
Our
most dire enemy is pride. Its power is immense. Pride saps our every
aspiration, vitiates our every endeavor. Most of us fall prey to its
insinuations. The proud man wants to dominate, to impose his own will on
others; and so conflict arises between brethren. The pyramid of inequality is
contrary to revelation concerning the Holy Trinity in Whom there is no greater,
no lesser; where each Person possesses absolute plenitude of Divine Being.
The
Kingdom of Christ is founded on the principle that whosoever would be first
should be the servant of all (cf. Mark 9.3 5). The man who humbles himself
shall be raised up, and vice versa: he who exalts himself shall be brought low.
In our struggle for prayer we shall cleanse our minds and hearts from any urge
to prevail over our brother. Lust for power is death to the soul. People are
lured by the grandeur of power but they forget that ‘that which is highly
esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God’ (Matt. 16.15). Pride
incites us to criticize, even scorn our weaker brethren; but the Lord warned us
to ‘take heed that we despise not one of these little ones’ (cf. Matt. i8.io).
If we give in to pride all our practice of the Jesus Prayer will be but
profanation of His Name. ‘He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to
walk, even as He walked’ (1John2.6). He who verily loves Christ will devote his
whole strength to obeying His word. I stress this because it is our actual
method for learning to pray. This, and not any psychosomatic technics, is the
right way.
Not
a Christian Yoga
I
have lingered on the dogmatic justification for the Jesus Prayer largely
because in the last decade or so the practice of this prayer has been distorted
into a so-called ‘Christian yoga’ and mistaken for ‘transcendental meditation’.
Every culture, not only every religious culture, is concerned with ascetic
exercises. If a certain similarity either in their practice or their outward
manifestations, or even their mystical formulation, can be discerned, that does
not at all imply that they are alike fundamentally. Outwardly similar
situations can be vastly different in inner content.
When
we contemplate Divine wisdom in the beauty of the created world, we are at the
same time attracted still more strongly by the imperishable beauty of Divine
Being as revealed to us by Christ. The Gospel for us is Divine Self-Revelation.
In our yearning to make the Gospel word the substance of our whole being we
free ourselves by the power of God from the domination of passions. Jesus is
the one and only Savior in the true sense of the word. Christian prayer is
effected by the constant invocation of His Name: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the
Living God, have mercy upon us and upon Thy world.
Though
prayer in the Name of Jesus in its ultimate realization unites man with Christ
fully, the human hypostasis is not obliterated, is not lost in Divine Being
like a drop of water in the ocean. ‘I am the light of the world … I am the
truth and the life’ (John 8.12; 14.6). For the Christian-Being, Truth, Life are
not ‘what’ but ‘who’. Where there is no personal form of being, there is no
living form either. Where in general there is no life, neither is there good or
evil; light or darkness. ‘Without him was not any thing made that was made. In
him was life’ (John 1:3).
When
contemplation of Uncreated Light is allied to invocation of the Name of Christ,
the significance of this Name as ‘the kingdom of God come with power’ (Mark
9.1) is made particularly clear, and the spirit of man hears the voice of the
Father: ‘This is my beloved Son’ (Mark 9.7). Christ in Himself showed us the
Father: ‘he that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (John 14:9). Now we know
the Father in the same measure as we have known the Son. ‘I and my Father are
one’ (John 10.30). And the Father bears witness to His Son. We therefore pray,
90 Son of God, save us and Thy world.’
To
acquire prayer is to acquire eternity. When the body lies dying, the cry ‘Jesus
Christ’ becomes the garment of the soul; when the brain no longer functions and
other prayers are difficult to remember, in the light of the divine knowledge
that proceeds from the Name our spirit will rise into life incorruptible.”
Reference:
His
Life is Mine by Archimandrite Sophrony, trans. Rosemary Edmonds, St.
Valdimir Seminary Press, pp112-120