23rd Sunday After Pentecost-- Defilement, Purification and the Purpose of Prayer

THREE DEFILEMENTS

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

Today’s Gospel reading, the Lucan version of the cure of the Gadarene demoniacs, gives us an opportunity to meditate on the concepts of defilement and purification.  In the symbolical system of ancient Israel, swine are the symbol of uncleanness and defilement, but we see the defilement destroyed by baptism in water. 

     The teaching of the Lord Jesus is that all true defilement has its source within us, just as the Kingdom of God is also within us.  We are defiled by what comes out of our hearts, not by what enters our bodies from the outside.  According to the tradition of the Church, defilement comes to us through the passions.  The demons introduce temptations into our thoughts, which stir up passions in our souls.  The passions that come out of our hearts defile us, as they influence our words and deeds.  We can think of defilements as being of three different types.  First, there is the defilement that arises from willful ignorance.  We know that must pray, read and meditate on the Gospel, but we do not.  We know that spiritual strength comes through the practice of our faith, but we do not do so, because we are lazy or busy and preoccupied with worldly things.  We should remember the purpose of our prayers.  We usually remember that we pray in order to worship God and to petition Him for the things that we need, but we should remember that we pray in order to form our hearts.  More often than not the answer to our prayers is the change that occurs within our hearts.  Every word that we say in prayer with attention changes our hearts, forms our hearts.  It is through the daily practice of prayer that our hearts become conformed to Christ; Christ is born in our hearts, and we grow towards our goal of becoming God by grace.  For this reason, many of the Fathers assert that most of our religion is the recollection of Christ through prayer.  When we remember Christ, our hearts are conformed to Christ.  When we remember Christ constantly, our hearts are conformed to Him perfectly, and we share the Life of God perfectly. 

     The second kind of defilement comes from anger.  There is a family of passion, which are called “the irascible passions” because they are related to anger.  They defile us, because they destroy our peace in the present moment, and nullify our submission to the Will of God.  They create resentment in us by inducing us to think about the events of the past, and lead us to despair through a ceaseless contemplation of an uncertain future. 

     The third kind of defilement comes from grasping.  There is also the family of the “concupiscible passions,” those passions that are related to our desire to acquire things.  Through the temptations of these passions, we grasp after all sorts of things: money, pleasure, reputation and status.  They too inspire the spirit of dissatisfaction in us, as we continuously examine and appraise a past, in which we have not achieved everything that we would like to have achieved.  On the other hand, these passions defile us with anxiety, as we ceaselessly attempt to plan for a future we cannot know. 

     All of these defilements need to be washed away.  The washing that we received in Baptism gives us the ability to continually wash away the soul’s defilements with the water of Divine Grace through watchfulness and prayer.  Watchfulness is the forgotten virtue of the Christian Life.  Christ does not tell His disciples simply, “Pray!” No, He says to them, “Watch and pray!” Watchfulness means simple attention on the duties and circumstances of the present moment, while prayer can be understood as recollection of the Lord Jesus, calling upon Him constantly. 

Evening Sermon: Lessons from the World that Perished

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

We should give thanks to God for the great sublimity of our evening sacrifice.  But, undoubtedly, the objection will immediately be raised, “Ah, but Father, it is not as great as the Mass.” Yes, indeed, it is not as great as the Mass, and attendance at the evening sacrifice is not as great as attendance at the Mass, but does that mean that the Church can do without this solemn service that closes the day? Can the Church do without the sorrow for sin and the return to God in repentance?

     Sorrow for sin and return to God in repentance—this is the meaning of the evening sacrifice.  Yesterday, we talked about Adam our first father weeping before the closed gates of Paradise.  We contemplated the orderly and beautiful world that God had created, as it is described in Psalm 103, but we also reflected upon the fact that Adam (representative of our fallen human nature) is exiled from that orderly world that God had intended.  In the Church’s Lenten book, the Triodion, we hear Adam himself say again and again expressions of his sorrow for sin, as he stands weeping outside, far from the presence of God.  At times, his expressions echo the words used later by his first-born son Cain: My punishment is too heavy to bear!

     Perhaps we as a culture have become very distant from sorrow.  Perhaps we do not really understand sadness any longer.  Perhaps because we are surrounded by sufficiency we have lost the power of longing, the ardour of desire.  If this is so, then we should mourn the passing of sorrow in our lives, for nothing is more useful than sorrow.  We should not be able to hear the words of the 103^rd Psalm without a longing in our hearts for the world that is there described—the world that perished because of sin.  The fact that we commemorate it everyday in the context of the evening sacrifice is a reminder and an incentive for us to revive in our hearts that longing, desire and sorrow.  The words of the Triodion, although they have nothing to do with the Nativity Fast, are a perfect meditation in conjunction with the Evening Psalm:

O beloved Paradise, beauty of Springtime and divinely created abode, unending joy and delight, the glory of all the just, the enchantment of the prophets and the dwelling-place of the saints, by the rustling of your leaves, implore the Creator of the universe to open the gates that I have closed by my fault; let me partake of the Tree of Life and share the joy that I once found in you.

Adam sat before Paradise, sighing and weeping over his nakedness: Alas! I was seduced by craftiness and stripped naked, and I am now separated from glory. Alas! In my simplicity, I was naked; but now I do not know what to do. O Paradise, never again shall I taste your joy; never again shall I see the Lord, my Creator and my God, for I must return to the earth from which I was taken. O merciful God, I cry out to You: I have fallen: have mercy on me.

Justice and Mercy are the Same in the Wisdom of God?

The Wonders of the Justice of God--St. Ephrem the Syrian Nisibis XI

In traditional spiritual writers, very often the justice of God is made to seem opposed and contrary to the mercy of God.  Often we think of the two attributes in the sense of a scale.  God, in other words, may grant us mercy (gifts which we have no right to receive) but ultimately His justice is going to have to be satisfied as well.  In the Christian West this dichotomy between God’s mercy and justice gives rise to the belief in “temporal punishment” the temporary punishment which a soul must under go in Purgatory in order to satisfy the justice of God, even though God has forgiven the sins of the individual in question.  In this way of thinking there is clearly a wide divide between the Lord’s mercy and His justice. 

Some readers who are very well read in the sciences may be aware of a thing known as the Unified Field Theory.  The idea behind this theory (as yet unproven) is that all the various kinds of energy that we experience in the world are in fact the same, even though they may seem different in nature.  Well, in a similar way, Our Holy Father Ephrem the Syrian has a Unified Grace Theory.  He believes, and argues persuasively that the justice and mercy of God are in fact the same.  His argument is one from experience.  All of us are qualified to make similar observations from our experience too, since all of us have experienced the justice and mercy of God in our individual lives. This is the way that he describes his own knowledge from experience:

Thy chastening is, as a mother of our infancy:-- her rebuke is merciful, in that thou has restrained,-- the children from folly, and they have been made wise.  Glory be to thy justice.

2. Let us search out Thy justice: for who is sufficient-- to measure its help? since by it the wanton are oftentimes made chaste.

In other words, St. Ephrem is observing that the

vice of lust has often been corrected by God taking action, perhaps in his own life, or in others he has known. How many other vices are cured that we know of by the action of what Ephrem is referring to as justice?

We cannot help but think that, in many ways, what Ephrem is describing has more in common with what we call “mercy.” Nevertheless, it becomes more and more clear as we continue to read that Ephrem’s “justice” is definitely a “tough love”. 

Oftentimes Thy hand, O my Lord, has made the sick whole,--for it is the healer in secret of their diseases,--and the fount of their life.

4. Exceeding gently, the finger of Thy justice, in love and compassion, touches the wounds of him that is to be healed.

5. Exceeding mild and merciful, is her cutting to him that is wise: her sharp remedy, in its mighty love, consumes the corrupt part.

Here we have Ephrem referring to the justice of God as a surgeon.  Often in the Eastern Christian tradition Christ is referred to as “The Divine Physician” but here we have Ephrem extending that metaphor even further.  Here, God in His justice is the surgeon excising the cancerous tumor. 

6. Exceeding welcome her wrath, to him who is discerning: but her remedies are hateful to the fool who has delight in the trouble of his limbs.

Being able to discern the loving actions of God, especially in the sufferings of our life is a sign of the wisdom from God.  The sort of discernment that Ephrem is talking about is a gift, and if we do not have it (if we are the fool that Ephrem is referring to) or if we have it only intermittently, then we need to pray for the gift of that discernment.  God has a loving design for our lives.  Because of our many sins and disorders that loving design has much to do with unpleasant treatment at the hand of God.  It would be easy for us (without discernment) to become convinced that the Divine Physician and Surgeon hates us and in fact wants to destroy us.  Having received the gift of discernment, we are able to see God’s loving design. Ephrem teaches us to be glad for our sufferings: “a cause of negligence is Thy indulgence to the careless; a cause of profit is Thy rod among the slothful--so that they become as seasoned merchants.--

Evening Sermon-- Psalm 103 Penance and the Desire for God

     In the Vespers service of the Byzantine Rite, after the introductory prayers, the priest is directed by the liturgical books to stand before the Royal Doors with his head uncovered while he recites the Prayers of the Evening.  During this time, the choir or the people are singing Psalm 103. 

     The Church has long understood this simple gesture as having a deep mystical meaning.  The priest, standing with his head uncovered before the closed doors, represents our forefather Adam, weeping outside the gates of Paradise.  Having the head uncovered is a symbol of mourning in the ancient Near East, we think, for example of the Prophet King David, who could be seen ascending the slope of the Mount of Olives, weeping and with his head uncovered, as he and those who were loyal to him evacuated the Holy City on account of the approach of David’s rebellious son Absalom.  The priest, here in the Vespers service, adopts a posture of mourning, just like Adam before the gates of Paradise.  He is mourning on account of his sins, and the sins of all the people, for it is sin that puts us at a distance from God. 

     This simple gesture of repentance takes on all the more meaning during the days of the Nativity Fast, the forty days of fasting by which we prepare for the feast of the birth of our Saviour.  In the figure of the priest, there is Adam, our father, weeping before the entrance to Paradise (thrust out from the presence of God), while the choir sings the words of Psalm 103, which is often referred to as “the Evening Psalm.” What makes this the Evening Psalm par excellence is the fact that it includes a description of the whole of God’s creation as it prepares for the rest of night.  The Psalm’s description is harmonious and ordered; everything works together like a machine.  Yet, Adam is alienated from this order.  It is an order that is largely hidden from him; in which he can no longer play a part.  Nevertheless, he takes a sad pleasure in beholding it, and he can still learn, and thus also love, something concerning the Living God from it. 

     There is no better thought for us to begin the Nativity Fast than the remembrance of Adam thus cast out of Paradise. In this way, we begin to appreciate the great aspirations of mankind before the coming of Christ—the longing to be saved from “something,” the longing to inherit “something,” the burning desire that could not be defined, and could not be quenched.  Although we now possess Christ by means of the fullness of Revelation, we still know this longing, for our destiny in Christ has not fully been revealed or realized.  Although Christ has revealed to us the way of freedom from sin and death, many are still enslaved to the tyranny of entrenched vices, struggling along the way of perfection.  They feel most deeply, most exquisitely, their exile from the harmony and order of the universe that God has made.  We, who so struggle, have our own prayer that rings out from the verses of the same psalm.  We cry out: “Would that my thoughts be pleasing to Him.” Then follows the firm resolution: “I will rejoice in the Lord.” Let us not be discouraged.  Let us rejoice in the Lord. Then, indeed, our thoughts will be pleasing to Him.

22nd Sunday After Pentecost-- The Rich Man and Lazarus

THE LORD’S PARABLE: A LESSON ABOUT AVARICE, NOT ABOUT THE FATE OF THE DAMNED

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

In the library of the Royal Academy of Physicians and Surgeons in Ottawa, there is a fascinating Coptic manuscript of a work by the second century medical doctor Celsus. The manuscript is referred to as Coptic Celsus 137.  That manuscript has a gloss, or marginal note, written by some interested but anonymous reader, that refers to today’s Gospel reading.  The note explains the problems and pitfalls of accepting too literal an interpretation of this parable of the Lord Jesus.  The note states right from the start that it is important for the reader to remember the central point: Jesus is explaining, as He does in several other places, that the obstacle to the Jewish authorities believing in Him is not some high-flown theological position, but their avarice.  The parable is a continuation of the previous section of the Gospel in which Jesus warns the people that they cannot serve God and money. Luke’s Gospel then says: “Now the Pharisees, who were covetous, heard all these things; and they derided him. And he said to them: You are they who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is admirable to men, is an abomination in the sight of God.” The Pharisees had been blinded by their greed (their love for worldly things) and, as a result, they had not believed Moses and the Prophets, and they would not believe even if someone should rise from the dead.  This is the point of the story, and herein lies its value also for us, because we can ask ourselves whether our attachment to worldly things has deadened or destroyed our faith.

     The gloss goes on to explain that it is impossible to derive information from the parable concerning the sufferings of those in Hell, or the blessedness of those in Heaven. As proof of this statement, the author of the note refers to the words of the rich man concerning his father’s house and his five brothers.  Indeed, in the story, the man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house in order to warn his brothers, so that they will not meet the same fate of punishment. The author of the note points out that this is an act of charity on the part of the rich man (he is thinking of someone else, rather than himself), and that this is clear evidence that the Lord is not speaking literally of the conditions of those suffering in Hell, since those who are so condemned are no longer capable of any act of charity. The note then goes on to describe at length what this lack of charity must entail. First, those who have been condemned are not aware of a particular past.  They are only aware that they exist and that they have rejected God, since they are eternally fixed in the moment at which they rejected Him. Memory is a good. No matter how miserable or abject one’s history may be, one is always able to recall certain goods as a part of that experience.  Those who have been eternally condemned are deprived of this good, as they are deprived of all good. Existence is a good, but the rejection of all good leaves these souls in a state of everlasting hatred of self, as well as of God.

     We might well imagine that those who are condemned might derive some consolation from the remembrance of their previous life, but this is not the case, since they have no recollection of these things whatsoever. They exist only in that moment at which they rejected God at the moment of their deaths.

     The marginal note then speaks concerning knowledge and the way that we know things. It describes the way that the human mind perceives an object by means of the senses, and that the mind intends that object (that is, the mind brings that object into itself), so that the object has an intentional existence within the mind. The damned are no longer capable of this entire process, since their minds cannot admit the intentional existence of any other being. Although they continue in being, because God willed the human being be immortal, they exist in total isolation from all other beings, since they are not capable of intending anything that is good. Their suffering is derived from their deprivation of every good, on account of their rejection of Good.

     Fittingly, the gloss goes on to a reflection on the nature of generosity, and that when we are generous we actually receive much more than we give. This is true on account of the fact that when we give to others for the love of God, we dissolve the attachment that created things have on us, while increasing our attachment to that which is Eternal Good, namely God. The gloss then concludes with a short but fervent prayer for God’s help against the two things that ultimately result in our damnation: namely, the inordinate love and attachment to created things, and rejection of God Himself.

     We should also make this prayer our own. We cannot afford for our affections to be divided between our God and His creatures, especially at this time in history in which the world and its ways are proving so unreliable and unstable. Rather, we need to turn to God, one in the Holy Trinity, for solutions to the conundrums of our lives.  Rather than a commitment to a life of avarice and greed, we ought to be solidly committed to a life of prayer in which our peace in God is our treasure rather than our earthly possessions. Not even death will be able to deprive us of this treasure.

Tyranny of Thought-- Part III: A Thought-Provoking Book, A New Classic of the Spiritual Life

Another item in my reading list for overcoming the tyranny of thought in the spiritual life has been Christ the Eternal Tao by Hieromonk Damascene.  This book is, of course, more recent than de Caussade, or Irala.  It was first published in 1999.  Hieromonk Damascene is a student and spiritual son of the late Fr. Seraphim Rose, a very well-known Orthodox orientalist.  He has been called the Orthodox version of Fr. Bede Griffiths.  The book is a Christian commentary on the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu's classic, the Tao Te Ching.  The book is fascinating on many levels, but especially in the areas wherein the issues of prayer and watchfulness are discussed.  Hieromonk Damascene has very penetrating insight into some very difficult passages and expressions from the Fathers of the Church, which, in the past, have served to confuse the question concerning the role of thought in the Christian spiritual life.  In fact, I have found no clearer clarification of the Fathers' teaching than his citation and subsequent elaboration of the spiritual counsel of Elder Silouan of the Holy Mountain.  He quotes Silouan:

"The experience of the Holy Fathers show various ways of combating intrusive thoughts but it is best of all not to argue with them.  The spirit that debates with such a thought will be faced with its steady development, and, bemused by the exchange, will be distracted from remembrance of God, which is exactly what the demons are after-- having diverted the spirit from God, they confuse it, and it will not emerge clean."

Hieromonk Damascene goes on to elaborate as follows:

Struggle against thoughts is vain and futile. It is enought simply to observe the thoughts as they arise, as St. John Climacus teaches, then let them go without reacting to them or following them... Many ancient Christian teachers speak of the struggle with thoughts. It is vital that we understand what they mean by this. Our struggle is not against the thoughts, for as Christ said, "Resist not evil." Rather, our struggle should be to rise toward our source of knowing, the Tao/ Logos Who is beyond thought. In other words, we not engage the thoughts, but instead struggle to keep our attention lifted above them, in the stillness of the higher mind.

Each time we catch ourselves in a thought, we just return our tattention to what is above it: to our spirit and to God. We do not validate the thought by giving it any more attention. This is already to repulse or cut off the thought without directly struggling against it.  It is active, not passive; but the action does not involve movement towards the distracting thought. Rather, it is like a train that has been switched to a sidetrack and must simply be switched back to the main track, which alone leads to one's destination.

     The clarity of this description is a great gift, because it shows the proper place and role of mindfulness meditation (nepsis) in Christian practice.  Earlier, in fact, at the beginning of this same fascinating section of the book, Hieromonk Damascene interpreted the Lord's words to the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Watch and pray," as referring to the virtue of nepsis and its essential connection with the practice of prayer.  The meditation practice of the Eastern religions amounts to and ends with nepsis, mindfulness meditation, because they have no knowledge of the Incarnate Logos, but in Christian practice nepsis is only the first part in a two stage process: first we watch, then we pray. He says simply:

"Prayer cannot be pure if the mind is actively engaged in following thoughts. For prayer to be pure, it must arise from a pure spirit; and this can only occur when one first stands watch and thus rises above thoughts and images. That is why Christ said, "Watch and pray": prayer and watchfulness are inseparably bound. As St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, a nineteenth-century Russian ascetic in the Philokalic tradition, writes: "The essential, indispensable property of prayer is attention.  Without attention there is no prayer."

Prayer cannot be separated from nepsis.  Prayer must be offered in nepsis, for the one who practices watchfulness knows from experience what it means to be able to rise above thought, observe one's own thoughts, and effectively be the judge of thought (that is, to be able to see oneself as distinct from his or her thoughts).  From this vantage point of detachment from thought, even the person who is very hardened in vice is able to feel the innocence of the higher mind, while beholding the muck that continuously threatens to pull it down. 

The Tyranny of Thought: Part II: Nepsis and Mindfulness

The insight of Father Narciso Irala concerning the concentration of attention in the present moment continues a long tradition in the Church.  The best known author to our contemporary Church is the 18th century French priest Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, who wrote a book called Abandonment to Divine Providence.  De Caussade's book expresses the necessity of working out one's salvation in the present moment by fullfilling the obligations and duties of the present moment without reference to the past or to the future.  The argument is very simple and straightforward. The past does not exist any longer (it belongs to the Mercy of God), and the future does not exist yet (it belongs to the Providence of God).  Only the present moment actually exists.  It is for Caussade "the acceptable time...the day of salvation" since its duties and obligations are given to us as the means to salvation.  The present could perhaps be termed "the theophantic moment" since it is the present that reveals God to us, and it is in our present that He dwells.  It is our moment of contact with Him.
     Yet, in order to take advantage of the advantages that the present offers to us in our relationship with God, we need to be free from thought's tyranny.  Why would this be so essential? Because thought has us constantly living outside the present in the bitterness of the past, or in the uncertainty of the future.  The world of thought is an illusory world in which we can plan the future in every detail and we can change the past by entering into discourse with it in the present.  According to the universal teaching of the Fathers of the Church, this same world of thought is also extremely dangerous to human beings on account of the fact that the demons have free access to it.  They are able to actually send us thoughts.  It is true that we have the ability to either accept or reject those thoughts, but there is no such thing as a wall that will not collapse under constant and unremitting bombardment.  The world of thought is the perfect playground of the demons, since they take such an interest in distracting us from what actually exists, in order to convince us to focus our attention on what does not exist.
     Under the constant bombardment of thought after thought, the wall of the mind will eventually collapse.  In fact, many of us live from day to day an existence that is permanently supine.  We perform our duties with little attention, as our thoughts wander in the hurts and injuries of the past, or we plan our successes and the fulfillment of our desires in the future.  As the researches of Father Irala showed, when life is passed with this kind of inattention, the world becomes a very dark place that is filled with resentment (on account of attention to the past) and attachment and grasping (on account of attention to the future).  This combination of resentment and dissatisfaction in effect makes the world a hellish place, because although we are living in the world, the mind is continuously elsewhere, trapped in its own imaginings.
     According to Our Holy Father Isaias the Solitary, what is needed in order to solve the problem, and cure the tyranny of thought is the virtue that is called nepsis.  Nepsis means "watchfulness." Isaias uses the image of the man, whose vineyard is under attack, so he withdraws into the tower.  The tower is raised above the level of the attackers, and provides the man a view of 360 degrees, so that he can observe and note the movements of all his enemies.  Nepsis is the virtue that in other traditions is referred to as "mindfulness," that is, attention upon the present moment.  For St. Isaias, as for many others in the Christian tradition, this attention upon the present moment is effected by concentration of the mind upon the prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, the sinner." In other words, St. Isaias strives to replace his thoughts with the prayer.  The result is that thoughts still continue to arise, but attachment to them is broken.  From his position "above his thoughts," Isaias is able to observe the thought dispassionately, and dismiss it.  If he were not in the tower, in a position above his thoughts, but in the midst of them (and in the midst of the various passions they carry), those thoughts and their attendant passions would actually form his reality. 
     The various ways that thought serves to form and determine reality, as is evident from various researches in modern psychology, deserve their own consideration...

The Tyranny of Thought

Every priest, and perhaps every person on the spiritual path is bound to have a certain emphasis in their thinking and teaching, simply because the realities with which we are in constant conversation in the spiritual life are too great to express in words.  My spiritual father, the Archpriest Robert Anderson, who departed this life nearly a year ago on 26 December 2010, centered all of his meditations, homilies and catecheses on the Resurrection of Christ.  The reality of the Resurrection had profoundly altered all of existence.  It abrogated every fear and every evil.  We simply had to live with faith in the Resurrection, which meant recognizing that there is no reason to fear.  I do not think that there was ever a homily that Fr. Bob gave that did not return again and again to “Christ is risen from the dead!” as a refrain. 

     Our individual emphases are, no doubt, related to our experience.  My own emphasis in the spiritual life is more in the Church’s ascetical tradition.  I received Fr. Bob’s emphasis with joy, but, over time, I have come to realize that in order to live in the Resurrection as he described and taught, we have to overcome some obstacles in our current cultural context.  I have seen the widespread devastation in every quarter of our contemporary world that, I believe, is traceable to our slavery to thought.

     The tyranny of thought in our cultural context is everywhere apparent.  Most of us have, since our very earliest days, been taught to identify ourselves with our thoughts.  We are our thoughts, rather than our thoughts being among our possessions.  As a result of this erroneous belief, we see the epidemic of psychic difficulties in the world around us, as people suffer from depression, addictions and compulsive disorders. 

     It is interesting to note that in the Christian spiritual life we are constantly talking about detachment from material possessions, from persons and relationships, even detachment from certain desires, but we never talk about detachment from thought.  The sad fact is that if we began to discuss the necessity of detachment from our thoughts, it is not clear to us in what sense we would continue to exist.  If this is not tyranny and slavery, I do not know what is.

     Detachment from thought is the forgotten necessity of the spiritual life.  It is so much forgotten from the Christian Tradition that the people who raise the issue are routinely denounced as “tainted by the New Age.” Nevertheless, it is demonstrably an essential part of the Christian Tradition, and its exponents are present in the ascetical tradition both East and West. 

     One of the primary reasons why freedom from the tyranny of thought is so essential to the Christian spiritual life is because people begin to experience temptation as irresistible.  The counterargument that temptation is irresistible without grace is, in this context, needless and ridiculous. The people who are experiencing their temptations as irresistible are looking for commonsense strategies that will help them to retake control of their lives. That desire is surely impelled by grace.

     The goal is not to not have thoughts, but to become detached from thought.  One’s thoughts could be compared to the clouds in the sky.  The clouds float across the sky, but they are not the sky.  It is within our power, with some training, to form the habit of looking at the sky.  If a cloud appears, we recognize it, then we let it go.  If a thought arises, we advert to it, then we let it go.   

     Over the years, I have put together a reading list of books, which deal with the issue of detachment from thought.  One of the most recent of these books, and one of the most salient is Achieving Peace of Heart by the Jesuit priest Narciso Irala.  Father Irala was both a priest and a psychologist, who was sent by the Society of Jesus as missionary to China during the years before the Communist Revolution.  In China, he studied Oriental psychology.  With the onset of the unrest leading up to the Revolution, the Society of Jesus moved him to Argentina, where he taught psychology on the University level.  It was in this context that Father Irala endured the greatest hardship of his life.  Due to the strain of his extraordinarily heavy workload, he suffered a nervous breakdown.  In the months that followed, he used what he had learned of Oriental psychology in order to recover.  After this experience, teaching the methods that had been so profitable for him became his life’s work.  He found that he was able to cure countless cases of depression, chronic fatigue and addiction through instructing his patients to sit daily in a form of mindfulness meditation that he referred to as “conscious sensations.” He found that the key to the recovery of mental health for many people was the application of the ancient maxim “Age quod agis,” “Do what you are doing,” that is, let whatever task you are working on be the only focus of your attention.  In this way, Father Irala connected his teaching securely with the age old teaching in the Christian Tradition regarding living deliberately in the present moment, and fulfilling the duties of the present moment.  And it is with this thought that we should continue…

The Boat of Contemplation

I recently came across the following lines from an anonymous 20th century poet.  They are profound lines.  I distill from this an entire method of mental prayer.

"I sit in silence and peace and prepare to pray.
I have so many concerns, so many petitions,
so many cares have crowded out the tender shoots
of my thanksgiving, my meditation, my simple love.
Therefore, now I ready the vessel of my heart for prayer.
I load, as if provisions, all those cares and needs.
I stow all my little acts of thanksgiving.
I make sure that all my loved ones are aboard.
The vessel is large enough for the whole of Creation.
Then, once all is prepared and ready,
I spread the sail of my will, and then...no more of me.
That sail is filled with the wind of Your Will,
and You carry me whither I need to go."

Christianity as Spiritual Path

“Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture.” The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy.  But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

     We must avoid thinking of the parable of the sower as being about certain kinds of people.  In this sense, this parable falls into the same category as the parable of the weeds in the field.  No, in this parable the Lord shows that the decision to follow Him is the determination to embark upon a spiritual path.  By His reference to the depth of soil, the Lord reminds us that continual growth is necessary in order to survive the times of temptation, which come in the course of our lives. 

     Christianity is meant to be a spiritual path toward progress and growth.  For this reason, since the days of the Early Church, there has existed the traditional practice of “the examination of conscience,” as a daily assessment of the quality and quantity of growth and progress along the spiritual path. 

     In Psalm 31, King David bears witness to this spiritual path: “Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin in covered.  Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.  While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my moisture was dried up as by the heat of summer.”  In this passage, we see progression and growth.  Sin led to the degradation of David’s very being: moisture turned into drought.  Then, David confesses his sin, which leads to God’s forgiveness, which in turn leads to a life of intense prayer, which leads the holy king into an ever-deepening relationship with God.  In this relationship, he is personally taught by God what He must be and what he must do I order to be perfect.  King David presents our relationship with God as one that concerns a Teacher and a student, or a mentor and an apprentice.  It is a relationship that involves an ongoing personal commitment, since the teacher agrees to teach, and the student agrees to be taught.  It is a not a friendship in the strict sense, because friendship is defined as a relationship between equals.  The spiritual path is a loving relationship between a Master and a student.  Two verses later, David records the words of God the Teacher, as He intervenes in His own words.  He says: “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go.  I will give you counsel, with my eye upon you.” The parable gives us examples of the various pitfalls along the spiritual path.  For example, believers fall away from the truth as a result of the action of the demons.  Then again, at other times, followers of the Lord fall away in times of depression, frustration and despair (illustrated by the rocky ground).  Third, the faithful are sometimes overcome by the cares, or the pleasures, of this world (illustrated by the thorns).  But then, finally, sometimes the spiritual path, impelled by grace, moves forward smoothly to progress and growth. 

     Naturally, it is possible that a certain aspect of a given life could be among the thorns, while another aspect could be full of the evidence of growth, since there might be apparent growth in one particular virtue, while progress in other areas might be stagnated.  In other words, imagine if all of the seed that is described is sown in the same heart. 

     On our part, what is essential to the spiritual path is commitment and daily practice, which is specifically directed to progress and growth.  Prayer is not an obligation to be fulfilled, but a means to that growth.  A commitment to progress on the spiritual path means readiness to examine our consciences everyday to gauge our progress in the resolutions we have made.