On Tears

Tears are natural to fallen human nature. Before the fall, that nature knew no tears—it knew only the purest enjoyment of paradisiacal blessedness. It lost that blessedness; tears were left to it as an expression of sympathy toward blessedness, as a testimony of the fall, as a testimony to the condition of being under the wrath of an offended Deity, as a hope of one day recovering blessedness. This hope is faithful: because sympathy toward blessedness has not been effaced from nature. This hope is faithful: because the mourning over the loss of heavenly blessedness cannot be satisfied by any temporal satisfaction; remaining unsatisfied, it awaits satisfaction and proclaims the existence of satisfaction. In tears there lives mysteriously a consolation, and in weeping—a joy. A man, whatever earthly prosperity he may enjoy, whatever height he may stand on, whatever abundance he may swim in, meets and lives through moments, hours, and days in which he needs the consolation afforded by tears—and finds consolation in nothing else. Each of us has barely entered the land of our exile and affliction, the land of sufferings and weeping, when we already mark this entry, the beginning of our existence, with a tearful cry. “Blessed is the man whose help is in You”, marked by tears at his prayer! Such are the invisible, spiritual ones who “have set in their heart the ascents”, passing through the “valley of weeping”—earthly life, which You have appointed for repentance: “for the lawgiver” who gives us weeping and tears “will bestow His blessing”. Those who purify themselves through weeping and tears “will go from strength to strength, and the God of gods will be seen in Zion”—in the human spirit made ready to receive God by true repentance (Ps. 83:6–8). “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy”. Those who “go out” on the path of earthly life, who “walked” along the narrow and sorrowful way, “and wept as they went, casting their seeds, will come back rejoicing, carrying their sheaves” (Ps. 125:5–6).

Tears, as a property of fallen nature, are infected with the disease of the fall, like all its other properties. A person may by nature be especially prone to tears and shed them on every available occasion: such tears are called natural tears. There are also sinful tears. Sinful tears are those shed from sinful impulses. Such tears are shed in great quantity and with particular ease by those given over to sensuality; tears like those of the sensual are shed by those who are in self-deception and spiritual delusion; tears flow abundantly from vanity, hypocrisy, pretense, and people-pleasing. Finally, malice also sheds tears: when it is deprived of the opportunity to commit a wicked deed or to shed human blood, it pours out tears. Such tears Nero had—in whom the Christians of his day, on account of his cruelty and hatred of Christianity, thought they saw the Antichrist.[1] Natural tears include tears from offense; but when the offense has a sinful character, the tears of offense become sinful tears. Both natural and sinful tears, immediately upon appearing, are directed by the holy Fathers to be transformed into godly tears—that is, the motive of the tears is to be changed: one is to call to mind one’s sins, the inevitable and unknown death, the judgment of God—and to weep for these reasons.[2]

A remarkable thing! Those who by natural inclination shed streams of effortless, meaningless, and fruitless tears, and likewise those who shed them from sinful impulses—when they wish to weep in a godly manner, suddenly discover in themselves an extraordinary dryness, and cannot draw from their eyes a single tear. From this we learn that tears of the fear of God and of repentance are a gift from God, and that to receive them one must first take care to acquire the cause of them.

The cause of tears is the sight and acknowledgment of one’s sinfulness. “Streams of water flow from my eyes”, says the holy prophet David, “because I have not kept Your law” (Ps. 118:136). The cause of tears is poverty of spirit: being in itself a blessedness, it gives birth to another blessedness—weeping (Mt. 5:3–4), nourishes, sustains, and intensifies it. “Weeping does not come from tears, but tears from weeping,” said the Venerable John the Prophet.[3] “If a person, being in the midst of the brotherhood, cuts off his own will and pays no attention to the sins of others, he acquires weeping. Through this his thoughts are gathered together, and being gathered thus, they beget in the heart grief (weeping) according to God, and grief begets tears.” Tears, as a gift from God, serve as a sign of God’s mercy: “Tears in prayer,” says Saint Isaac the Syrian, “are a sign of the mercy of God, of which the soul has been deemed worthy through its repentance, and that it has been received and has begun to enter the field of purity through tears. If thoughts are not torn away from passing things, if they do not cast away from themselves hope in this world, if contempt for it is not awakened in them and they do not begin to prepare provisions for their departure; if thoughts of the things belonging to the age to come do not begin to act in the soul, then the eyes will not be able to produce tears.”[4]

One who has acquired the sight of his own sinfulness, who has acquired the fear of God, who has acquired the feeling of repentance and weeping, needs to ask of God the gift of tears through diligent prayer. So Achsah, the daughter of Caleb, when she was given in marriage and received a plot of land as a dowry, on sitting upon the donkey to set out for her husband’s house, cried out with sighing and lamentation to her father to add to the plot given her another plot abounding in waters. “You have given me dry land; now give me also springs of water” (Judg. 1:15). Caleb fulfilled his daughter’s desire.[5] The holy Fathers understand in the person of Achsah the soul that sits, as it were upon a donkey, upon the irrational impulses of the flesh. The dry land represents activity under the guidance of the fear of God; and that Achsah began with sighing and lamentation to ask for springs of water signifies the extreme need for tears in every ascetic, who must ask with sighs and heartfelt pain for the gift of tears from God. Alongside prayer for the bestowal of tears, a personal effort to produce them is also indispensable. This personal effort or labor comes both before the outpouring of tears and accompanies that outpouring.

The labor that precedes tears consists in prudent abstinence from food and drink, in prudent keeping of vigil, in non-acquisitiveness, in withdrawing attention from everything that surrounds us, and in gathering it toward ourselves. Saint John of the Ladder said in his Homily on Weeping: “Repentance is the voluntary deprivation of every bodily comfort.” Saint David describes the state of one who weeps thus:[6] “I am struck down like grass and my heart has withered, for I have forgotten to eat my bread. By reason of the sound of my groaning my bones have cleaved to my flesh. I have become like a pelican in the wilderness; I have become like a night raven on a ruin. I lie awake and am become like a solitary sparrow on a rooftop”… “I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping” (Ps. 101:5–8, 10). Without dying to the world it is impossible to acquire weeping and tears: we acquire them in proportion to our dying to the world. — The labor that accompanies weeping itself and the outpouring of tears consists in constraining oneself to them, in magnanimous endurance of the dryness and drought by which the blessed struggle is sometimes assailed, and after which the patient laborer is always rewarded with an abundant outpouring of tears. As earth that has long awaited irrigation and finally received it in abundance suddenly covers itself with tender, vivid green: so the heart, wearied by dryness and then enlivened by tears, puts forth from itself a multitude of spiritual thoughts and feelings, adorned with the common color of humility. The practice of weeping, being inseparable from the practice of prayer, requires for its progress the same conditions of which prayer stands in need. Prayer requires patient, constant perseverance in it: so too does weeping. Prayer requires the wearying of the body, and produces the exhaustion of the body: weeping also produces this exhaustion, standing in need—in order to be born—of the labor and wearying of the body. “I am weary with my groaning”, says the great Laborer of weeping, “every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping” (Ps. 6:7). Constraining oneself and laboring must be measured against one’s bodily strength.[7] The Venerable Nil Sorsky commends and blesses weeping and tears. “This is the path of repentance and its fruit,” he says. “He who weeps before the goodness of God concerning every affliction that comes upon him and against every hostile thought, that it might help him, will quickly find rest, if he prays with spiritual understanding.” However, even this Venerable man, having advised that the practice be guided by the instructions found in the books of Saint John of the Ladder and Saint Symeon the New Theologian, gives a caution borrowed from Saint Isaac the Syrian, lest the weak body be disordered by immoderate constraint. “Then,” he says, “it is not profitable to war against nature.[8] When the frail body is forced to deeds beyond its strength, darkness upon darkness is brought upon the soul—it is thrown into confusion.” Yet even with a frail constitution and health, some constraint proportioned to one’s strength is necessary. The proportionateness is easily discerned from a few trials. The infirm should bring themselves to weeping and tears chiefly through attentive prayer and should strive to acquire weeping in spirit, in which quiet tears flow and the pain of heart is not so intense.[9] Every spiritual practice, being properly a gift of God within us, inevitably requires our own constraining of ourselves toward it, since constraint is the active manifestation and witness of our good will. Constraint is especially needed when some sinful impulse or agitation arises from fallen nature or through the wickedness of demons: then it is necessary to utter the tearful words of prayer partly aloud. Material, mechanical, vocal weeping—especially forced and violent weeping—is not appropriate for the infirm, as it shakes the body and produces excruciating weariness and suffering in it. This weariness and suffering is likened by the Fathers to the pangs of a woman in labor;[10] the consequence is significant exhaustion even in strong ascetics. For monks of robust constitution, a more intensive constraint toward weeping and tears is both possible and beneficial; for them it is needful, especially at the beginning of their struggle, before they have acquired the weeping of the spirit, to pronounce the words of prayer in a mournful voice, so that the soul, fallen asleep in the sleep of death from intoxication with sin, may be roused to the voice of weeping and may itself feel the sense of weeping. So wept the mighty David. “I roared with the groaning of my heart” (Ps. 37:9), he says of himself—“I roared” like a lion filling the desert with its cry, in which both the expression of strength and the expression of grief are terrible. For vocal prayer and weeping, solitude is indispensable—at least the solitude of the cell: this practice has no place among the brethren. From the lives of the holy Fathers it is evident that those among them who had the opportunity engaged in vocal weeping, which sometimes involuntarily carried beyond the walls of the cell, although they took every care that all their practice should remain a secret known to God alone. As an accumulation of gases in the air breaks forth in thunder at a heavy rain, so an accumulation of the feelings of weeping in the soul breaks forth in sobbing with loud cries and abundant tears. This happened with the monk whose ascetic struggle is described by Saint Isaac in his tenth homily. After thunder and rain there is a special mildness of the air: and the soul, having relieved its grief by sobbing and been cooled by tears, tastes a special stillness and peace, from which, as though fragrance from aromatic substances, the purest prayer arises and acts. — In general it is profitable to learn from Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers the various methods of the monastic practice, to try them out, and to choose for oneself that practice which proves most fitting. Human beings are constituted in such variety, and their capacities and qualities are so various, that one and the same practice or method, when employed by several ascetics, acts in each of them with considerable difference. For this reason experience is indispensable, as the Apostle also advises: “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thes. 5:21).

The gift of “weeping” and “tears” is one of the greatest gifts of God. It is a gift essentially needful to us for our salvation. The gifts of prophecy, clairvoyance, and miracle-working are signs of a special pleasing of God and of God’s good will; but the gift of compunction and tears is a sign of accepted or being-accepted repentance. “The sorrow of the mind is an honorable bestowal from God; he who has it and guards it as he ought is like a man who has holiness within him.[11] Bodily ascetic struggles without the sorrow of the mind are like a body without a soul.” Tears shed for sins are bitter at first, and flow with pain and anguish of spirit, which the spirit communicates to the body as well. Little by little consolation begins to unite with tears—a consolation consisting in a special calm, in a sense of meekness and humility; at the same time, proportional and corresponding to this consolation, the tears themselves are changed: they lose much of their bitterness, they flow without pain or with less pain. At first they are scarce and come rarely; then little by little they begin to come more often and grow more abundant. But when the gift of tears grows strong in us by God’s mercy, the inner conflict is subdued, the thoughts are stilled, mental prayer or the prayer of the spirit begins to act in special development, nourishing and gladdening the inner man. Then the veil of the passions is removed from the mind and the mysterious teaching of Christ is opened to it. Then tears are transformed from bitter into sweet.[5] Then spiritual consolation sprouts in the heart—a consolation that has nothing like it among earthly joys, and which is known only to those engaged in the weeping of prayer and possessing the gift of tears. Then the promise of the Lord is fulfilled: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Mt. 5:4). Then the ascetic greets himself, at the prompting and assurance of the Holy Spirit: “The Lord keeps the simple; I was brought low, and He saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you: for He has delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling” (Ps. 114:6–8). Then the ascetic, perceiving the powerlessness of sinful thoughts and feelings over him—vainly straining to subject him to their influence—speaks boldly to them: “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication; the Lord has received my prayer” (Ps. 6:9–10).

The spiritual state of the monk who has seen the fall of human nature—who is not deceived by the allurements of the passing world, but has directed the gaze of the soul wholly upon that fall and given himself over in deep solitude to deep weeping—is vividly depicted in the Lamentations of the holy prophet Jeremiah.[12] “And it came to pass”, says Scripture, “after Israel had been led into captivity and Jerusalem was laid waste, that the prophet Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem” (Lam. 1). All remedies for Jerusalem have been exhausted and are now all in vain: only lamentation over it remains. The prophet once proclaimed to it, proclaimed without ceasing the prophetic word; now there is no one left to hear that word; not only are there no people—there are no buildings; only ruins remain: over them only lamentation can sound. These lamentations are intelligible to no one, and there is no need to concern oneself that they should be intelligible to anyone. By them the Prophet expresses his inexpressibly heavy grief; they sound through the desert from the ruins; God in heaven heeds them. What is the Prophet’s position! He is alone upon the vast ruins of the city; he alone is living amid the countless dead signs and witnesses of a life now past; he alone is living amid the realm of death. As one living, he raises a voice of grief over the loss of life; he calls that life to return to the dwelling it has abandoned, to replace once more the terrible death that does not feel itself. “How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people? She has become like a widow, she that was great among the nations, a princess among the provinces—she has become a vassal” (Lam. 1:1).

By the Prophet is signified the mind of the monk, enlightened by the revealed teaching of God; the great city is the whole man, created by God; the inhabitants of the city are the faculties of soul and body; the Gentiles are the demons, who were humbled before man prior to his fall and became his masters after his fall. The monk himself, and all human beings, are in a state of fallenness: the object of his weeping is himself and all humanity. But the monk weeps alone, because he alone, in the light of the Word of God, sees the fall of humanity; other people do not see it, do not share in the weeping, do not understand the weeping, and consider one who weeps to have lost his reason. The monk weeps alone on behalf of himself and on behalf of all humanity, being unable to separate himself from humanity out of love for it and kinship with it; the monk weeps for himself and for all humanity; he mourns the fallen nature common to all. He weeps alone amid insensate ruins, among scattered stones lying in heaps: the ruins and stones are an image of humanity struck with insensibility—humanity that neither feels nor understands its own fallenness and eternal death, and is in no way concerned with them. The monk weeps alone, and his weeping is intelligible only to God. “She weeps bitterly in the night”—throughout all the time of earthly life—“and her tears are on her cheeks; there is none to comfort her among all who loved her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her and have become her enemies” (Lam. 1:2). In order to weep the weeping that is according to God, one must withdraw from the world and from people, die to the world and to people, and become solitary in heart and mind. “The abandonment of all concerns will help you draw near to the city of silence;[13] if you cease to reckon yourself, you will dwell in it; and if you die to every person, you will become heir to the city and its treasures,” said the Great Barsanuphius to the monk whom he was preparing for silence and hermitage in the tomb-cell—that beloved dwelling of the weeping of prayer. The Jews in captivity and service under the Babylonians represent voluntary sorrows—that is, the bodily privations and struggles to which the monk subjects himself with a view to repentance—as well as the sorrows permitted him by Divine Providence for the cleansing of sins. The spiritual leader of the struggles—weeping—sends from the ruins of Jerusalem, where it dwells in solitude and silence, a message to them. In the message it announces to the captives, after the appointed time has passed, their liberation.[14] For bitter weeping there is its own appointed term; for the cup of voluntary and involuntary sorrows there is its own measure. These weight and measure are determined by God, as Saint David also said: “You have fed us with the bread of tears, and given us to drink tears in full measure” (Ps. 79:6); “for You ‘have counted my tears before You’” as a means of cleansing, “in Your promise” (Ps. 55:9) of mercy and salvation. There were days in which “my tears have been my food day and night” (Ps. 41:4); they were followed by days in which, corresponding to the preceding “abundance of sorrows in my heart, Your consolations have gladdened my soul” (Ps. 93:19). “When the Lord restored the captivity of Zion, we were like those who are comforted. Then our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongues with singing” (Ps. 125:1–2). “But you, fear not, my servant Jacob”, the inspired Jeremiah proclaims on behalf of God to the chosen people, to whom captivity in Babylon had been permitted on account of their sins, “nor be dismayed, O Israel: for behold, I will save you from afar, and your offspring from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be at rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid” (Jer. 46:27). The sorrows and pains of repentance contain within themselves the seed of consolation and healing. This mystery is revealed to the disciple of weeping through weeping itself. — All monks who have been cleansed from sins have been cleansed through weeping, and all who have attained Christian perfection have attained it through weeping. This practice was especially developed among the numerous hesychasts of lower Egypt, in the desert of Scetis, on the mountain of Nitria, in the Cells, and in other solitary places. It transformed the ranks and battalions of monks into the ranks and battalions of angels. When the founder of the monastic life in the desert of Scetis, the Venerable Macarius the Great—whom the other desert fathers also acknowledged as the Father of Fathers—had reached deep old age, the monks of the mountain of Nitria, very close to Scetis, asked him to visit them before his departure to the Lord.[15] Macarius came to the mountain; a multitude of monks who were practicing silence there came out to meet him. They asked him for edification. Macarius, weeping, said: “Brethren! Let us weep. Let our eyes pour forth tears until our departure to that place where our tears will scorch our bodies.” All wept, fell on their faces, and said: “Father! Pray for us.” From his own gift of tears, the holy teacher of the holy ancient monks pronounced a brief teaching on tears, combining in it all the teaching on monastic life. The hearers expressed by the manifestation of their gift of tears that they had understood the meaning and breadth of the teaching. Many words were not needed there.

The gift of tears—this overshadowing by the grace of God—most of all visits ascetics during attentive prayer, being its customary fruit; to some it comes during reading; to others during some form of labor. So to the Venerable Kirill of Belozersk tears came during work in the monastery kitchen. Looking at the material fire, he would call to mind the unquenchable fire of eternal torment and shed tears. Kirill, thinking that in solitude his compunction would intensify and his tears increase, desired to withdraw to his cell. By God’s providence the circumstances afforded him what he desired—and what happened? With the removal of the cause that had aroused compunction and tears, the tears diminished, and Kirill asked the prior to return him to the fire of the monastery kitchen.[16] The holy Fathers enjoin remaining in that practice in which tears come: because tears are the fruit, and the goal of monastic life is the attaining of that fruit by whatever means it pleases God to bestow the fruit. — The Venerable Theodore of Enaton used to say that “he knew a monk who practiced silence in his cell and whose handiwork was the plaiting of rope. When this monk sat plaiting rope and engaged in mental prayer, tears came to him. He would then stand up for the prayer services, but at that the tears ceased. The brother would sit down and take up the rope, gathering his thoughts within himself, and the tears would come again. Equally, when he sat and read, tears came. He would stand up for prayer, and the tears immediately ceased. As soon as he again took up his book, the tears returned.” On this occasion the Venerable man said: “The saying of the holy Fathers is just: weeping is the teacher. It teaches each person what is profitable for him.”[17]

The Venerable Theodore of Enaton used to say: “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18), because from the body the defilement flows that defiles it; so too every virtue “is outside the body”, but he who weeps daily purifies even the body: because the tear that flows from above washes the body of its impurities.[17] “A truly penitent person counts,” according to the words of Saint John of the Ladder, “every day in which he did not weep as lost to him, even though he may have done something good during it.” “Whatever exalted manner of life we may be pursuing, if we have not acquired a contrite heart, that manner of life is pretense and fruitless.[18] It is fitting—truly fitting—that those who have been defiled after the bath of regeneration (after holy baptism) should purify their hands with the constant fire of the heart and the mercy of God.” “We shall not be condemned, O friends, at the departure of our soul from the body because we were not miracle-workers, were not theologians, did not have spiritual visions; but we shall assuredly render to God an account for not having wept unceasingly”—that is, for not having abided in constant salutary grief over our sins and sinfulness.[19] Although weeping is almost always crowned with more or less abundant tears, yet some ascetics—as is evident from the consolation pronounced for them by the holy Fathers—languish either throughout all their ascetic struggle or for a considerable time under the weight of weeping without receiving tears for relief and refreshing. Let them know that the essence of repentance consists in the humility and contrition of our spirit (Ps. 50:19[20]), when the spirit weeps by reason of humility. The weeping of the spirit, when there is an insufficiency of bodily strength to express through bodily struggles and actions the repentance acting in the soul, takes the place of all bodily struggles and actions, and among them also of tears. Amen.[21]