One
might ask: what is the reason that the grace of God does not abide all
at once entirely, or likewise, it does not immediately reveal the
triumph of complete communion of the soul with God? It is necessary to
know this reason in order to work against it, and work successfully; for
only by setting it aside can we attain the full in-dwelling of grace.
In order to understand why it does not
happen this way, let us observe the inner make-up of the convert. Sin
takes possession of a person and entices his attention, all his longing
and all his strength. Acting under the influence of sin, the person
permeates himself with it, and all parts of his existence, all his
powers become accustomed to acting according to its suggestion. This
alien activity that attaches itself to us, because of its extended stay,
is so grafted onto us that it becomes as if in-born, taking on an
appearance of something natural, and therefore unalterable and
necessary. Thus become intertwined, for example, arrogance with the
mind, greed with desires, lust with the heart, and with all our
endeavors: selfishness and a certain dislike for others. In this manner,
in the consciousness and will, in the powers of the soul — the mind,
will and feelings, in all bodily functions, in all outward deeds,
behavior, bearing, rules and customs — man becomes permeated with sin,
that is, selfishness, passionateness, self-pleasing. St. Macarius
expresses it thus: that sin, which entered into us at the Fall,
possesses as if the entire image of man, which is why it is called the
fleshly man, the emotional, the outer man, and why sin has robed with
its own parts of our nature: mind with mind, will with will and so on.
And, having overwhelmed the natural functioning of our own powers, it
has counterfeited for them its own unnatural functioning, meanwhile
fixing us in the belief that it is natural. In the midst of this
obscurity, under the yoke of sin, everyone who is unconverted,
unrepentant, and has not resolved to serve God in spirit and in truth
abides in the satanic realm.
The grace of God that comes — at first through
awakening, and then throughout the entire period of conversion — cuts
off one man from the other, brings him to the awareness of this duality,
to seeing the unnatural and what should be natural. It leads him to the
resolve to shake off or cleanse away all the unnatural, so that the
nature of God's image would appear in its full light. But it is obvious
that such a resolve is only the beginning of the matter. Through it the
person has only in consciousness and will left this realm of alien
unnaturalness that functions in him; he has renounced it and applied
himself to the awaited and desired naturalness. But in actual fact, in
all his make-up he remains the same as he was — that is, permeated with
sin, in soul and all his powers. Just as before, passionateness is
present in all his bodily functions, the only difference being that
before this was desired, chosen and acted by the person himself, but now
it is undesired, is not delighted in, but is hated, parried,
persecuted. The person has now come out of himself as if from a stinking
corpse and sees what kind of passionate stench comes from which part of
himself, and against his will sometimes senses to the point of mental
disturbance the entire stench that he is emitting.
So the true grace-filled life in a man is
at first only a seed, a spark — but it is the seed sown among thorns, a
spark covered from all sides with ash. It is still a weak candle
burning in the thickest fog. With his consciousness and will the man has
cleaved to God, and God has received him, united with him in this
consciousness and will-power, or mind and spirit, as it is spoken of by
Sts. Anthony and Macarius the Great. And the good, saved, God-pleasing
parts of a man are there. All other parts are still held captive and do
not yet want, are not yet able to submit to the requirements of the new
life: the mind does not want to think in the new way, and thinks as it
did before; the will is not able to want the new, it wants only the old;
the heart does not know how to feel in the new way, only in the old.
It is the same for the body in all of its functions.
Consequently, it is still impure, except for the one point which
comprises the conscious and free power — the mind and spirit. God is
most pure and unites with this one part, while all the other impure
parts remain outside of Him, foreign to Him; although He is ready to
fill the entire man, He cannot grant this because the man is impure.
Then, as soon as the man becomes pure, God manifests the fullness of His
indwelling. St. Gregory the Sinaite writes: "If our human nature is not
kept pure or else restored to its original purity by the Holy Spirit,
it cannot become one body and one spirit in Christ, either in this life
or in the harmonious order of the life to come. For the all-embracing
and unifying power of the Spirit does not complete the new garment of
grace by sewing on to it a patch taken from the old garment of the
passions." The Lord cannot abide there fully, for the dwelling is not
yet prepared; it is impossible to pour the grace to the brim, for the
vessel is still faulty. Doing that would mean squandering and killing
this spiritual treasure in vain. For what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial (II
Cor. 6:14-15)? And the Lord, promising to come with the Father and
create His habitation, places the irrevocable condition for this on the
fulfillment of the commandment, all the commandments of course; or to
put it another way, righteousness in all action, which is impossible
without righteousness of the powers [mind, will, soul]; and
righteousness of the powers is impossible without divorcement from the
unrighteousness that had overtaken them, or without cleansing away
sinfulness and passionateness.
The following passage could be applied here: If
we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie,
and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the
light, we have fellowship one with another (I Jn. 1:6-7). This
darkness is the darkness of passions, because later St. John uses in
similar verses lack of love and the three-pronged lust (I Jn. 1:2, 10,
11, 15, 16). Light, to the contrary, is the light of virtue, again
because later light is used interchangeably with virtues. From this it
is seen that it is possible to truly stand in the perfection of
communion with God only when the darkness of the passions has been
dispersed and the light of the virtues has dawned; when the virtues have
grown in us and become a part of our existence, vested us and
penetrated our powers, expelling and pushing the passions out of them,
so that no longer are we merely illuminated from without, but we
ourselves are illuminating lights. Until this time communion with God is
so hidden, so unknown, that it would seem that it was non-existent; and
to some degree it should be considered unreliable, not decisive,
incomplete, or not corresponding to ourselves.
Thus, we see that when the Lord has united Himself
with a person's spirit and does not fill it all at once or come to dwell
in it, this does not depend upon Him Who is ready to fill all things,
but upon us, or rather our passions that are mingled with the powers of
our nature, which has not yet divorced itself from them and exchanged
them for virtues. St. Anthony the Great says, "It is our own sins that
prevent God from shining within us."
If the main goal of the repentant sinner should be
total, light-bearing and blessed communion with God, then the main
hindrance to this is the existence of the passions still active and
working in him — the virtues being as yet unsealed in him — and the
unrighteousness of his powers. Therefore his main work upon conversion
and repentance should be the uprooting of passions and sealing the
virtues — in a word, correcting himself. He must remove all
unrighteousness and receive or make room for righteousness; cast out
sinful passions, habits, inadequacies — even those that are seemingly
natural, as well as other unrighteousness that is seemingly excusable —
and adopt virtues, good morals, rubrics and in general all facets of
righteousness. However, he must not withdraw his attention from the
final goal, but work with all eagerness against the passions, having the
eyes of his mind fixed on God. In this consists the initial work which
should be maintained throughout the building of a God-pleasing life, by
which he must measure the straightness or crookedness of all rules he
invents and of ascetic struggles he embarks upon. This must become a
firm conviction, for all active delusions seem to spring from not
knowing about this beginning. Without understanding the power of this,
some stop with external practices alone, others stop with good works and
expertise in these works without reaching any higher, while yet others
proceed straight to contemplation. All of this is necessary, but
everything should come in the proper order. At first all of this exists
in seed form, then it develops, not exclusively, but the majority of the
time in one part or another. Nevertheless, a gradual process is
inescapable — the rising from external ascetic struggles to the
internal, and only from one to the other, to contemplation — never the
other way around.
Assured of this, we can now easily derive a guiding
rule for a God-pleasing life, or for the spirit and character of ascetic
struggles.
Taken From "The Path to Salvation"By St.Theophan The Recluse