A Meditation Drawn From the First Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to Timothy, Relating Chiefly to the Monastic Life
The Word of God is a testament: to those who have received the Word of God it brings salvation and blessedness (I, 5).
Love is born of a pure heart, an undefiled conscience, and a sincere faith (I, 5).
Cultivate these virtues, preserving attentiveness to yourself and silence, so that you may attain to love, which is the crown and sum of Christian perfection.
Purity of heart is violated by the reception of sinful thoughts, especially lustful ones; the unblemished conscience by voluntary sins; faith is weakened by reliance on one’s own reason, by insincerity and self-love.
Whoever wishes to reason about truth without illumination from above will only engage in empty talk and contention, will stray from the path leading to love (I, 6-7).
From untimely, presumptuous reasoning about truth that exceeds understanding, heresies, errors, and blasphemy have arisen.
Steadfastness in Orthodox confession of the dogmas of faith is nourished and preserved by the works of faith and the unblemished conscience.
Those not guided by faith in their deeds, and who violate the unblemished conscience by voluntary turning to sin, will not be able to preserve their knowledge of the dogmas in the proper purity and correctness: this knowledge, as knowledge of God, requires a necessary purity of mind, which is proper only to the virtuous and chaste (I, 19).
There is One God and One Mediator between God and men—the God-man, Jesus Christ (II, 5). No one can approach and draw near to God without this Mediator. He who rejects the Mediator rejects God. “He who denies the Son also denies the Father. He who does not believe in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (1 Jn. 2:23; Jn. 3:36).
Spiritual understanding consists in the knowledge of Truth by faith. First, the knowledge of faith is acquired; faith, having been appropriated to the Christian, changes his understanding through revealing to him the Truth, which is Christ.
Those who have attained manhood in Christ receive unceasing prayer, which they perform in secret in the chamber of the soul at all times and in all places. The Christian obtains unceasing prayer when his will and the activity dependent upon it are absorbed in understanding, desiring, and fulfilling the will of God. By this there is established in the heart a living faith, Gospel simplicity, the peace of God, free from all disturbance.
Such a rational infant continually sees his weakness, continually believes, continually hungers and thirsts for divine righteousness, and therefore continually prays (1 Tim 2:8).
The virtues especially necessary for the hermit are: meek submission to God, inclination toward silence, withdrawal from conversations, even beneficial ones, but which remove from converse with God and disturb the silence of the heart. Especially at the beginning of his struggle the hermit is apt to be drawn away by external impressions. Careful abiding in the cell, withdrawal from meetings with acquaintances, and from all kinds of distraction counteract this weakness (II, 11, 12).
A newly tonsured monk should not be entrusted with positions of authority in the monastery, for he might easily be puffed up with pride and subjected to other schemes of the devil (1 Tim 3:6-7).
The mystical knowledge and experience of faith is preserved by the purity of conscience.
The Church of the living God is the pillar and foundation of truth. Therefore God is called living here because He acts. He acts in all believers through the mysteries, and in the chosen ones, beyond the mysteries, through many diverse obvious gifts of grace. This proves the firmness and immovability of the Eastern Church in truth. On the contrary, the heterodox Churches, though they adorn themselves with the name of Churches of Christ, though they acknowledge God, they acknowledge Him not as acting, as if dead (for the dead, the living is also dead!), which shows that they have wavered, have not stood firm in truth.
The great mystery of godliness (III, 16)! God appeared in flesh; He proved that He is God by the Spirit, that is, by His teaching, which is Spirit and life; by His deeds, accomplished by the finger of God; by the giving of the Holy Spirit to men. Having clothed Himself in flesh, He became visible not only to men but also to the Angels, to whom by His Godhead He is invisible.[1] The heathens, perishing from ignorance of God, heard the preaching of salvation. The teaching about God is received not by worldly wisdom, not by elevated reason, not by vast learning, not by the rich and exalted and glorious of this world, but by the humble pledge of the heart through faith. Those who believed in God enter into appropriation to Him and, raised by grace above all temporal things, receive mystical, experiential knowledge that He has ascended to heaven and raises there with Himself those who truly believe in Him.
Those who have not established and grown their faith from hearing by the works of faith are easily deceived by the teaching of falsehood, which deceitfully takes on the appearance of truth (1 Tim 4:1).
Bodily labors “are of little profit” (IV, 8), that is, they can only restrain passions but not uproot them. Godliness, which consists in the invisible exercise of mind and heart in Orthodox faith, “is profitable for all” (IV, 9). Only through it can man experience eternal life, tasted by the saints here in part, as in earnest, fully revealed after the separation of soul from body. Eternal life consists in the manifold action of grace in the soul, which is felt as it is purified from passions. This word, as spoken from spiritual experience, is true; it is worthy to be received as the beginning from which the Christian can ascend to the unspeakable blessings, setting his ascents in his heart.
Faith and attentiveness lead to the knowledge of the Cross of Christ, from which springs magnanimous endurance of sorrows, brought forth and nourished by hope in the living God, that is, by the action of gracious consolation in the heart of him who suffers for Christ (IV, 10).
When gracious consolation acts with the mystical knowledge of Christ and His providence, then the Christian does not judge either Jew, or heathen, or manifest transgressor;[2] but burns toward all with gentle, unblemished love. By the purity of his mind he beholds that since the coming of Christ, the dignity, worth, praise, and salvation of man is Christ, not the natural virtues of men. He constantly desires to be crucified, for his ear is opened, and he hears the voice of Christ his God, saying to him: “He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt. 10:38-39). The cup of sorrows he counts as the cup of salvation, as a testimony to his election, as the gift of God. He cannot have hatred or enemies, for those who bring sorrows upon him are in his eyes nothing other than instruments of God’s providence; he forgives them, attributing their ignorance as the cause of their justification;[3] he blesses them as instruments of God who does him good. “Can I,” he says to himself, “can I condemn those who now before me fall into manifest transgressions, when Christ has already redeemed all their sins—past, present, and future—when they already have in Christ justification and salvation which they cannot lose except by rejecting Christ to the end?”[4]
One must give no offense to one’s neighbor by one’s behavior (IV, 12). Therefore keep reverence both in soul and body. Be modest and simple in words and movements; in your household life be temperate, chaste, not bold; in your soul be meek, loving toward all, truthful, wise, do not permit yourself cunning or hypocrisy; instead of these have faith, which will teach you that the peace and destiny of each man are governed by God’s providence, not by the schemes of human reason, and that for this reason you must observe a meek Christian rectitude in deeds, words, and thoughts.
“Until I come to you,” says God’s grace to the ascetic of God, “and, dwelling in you, replace all external instruction, apply yourself diligently to reading, prayer, and be instructed by the teaching of the successful. Do not permit yourself negligence, and persist in attentiveness with constancy. Then your gradual progress will be evident; you will acquire salvation and will be beneficial to others through edifying and saving speech” (IV, 14-16).
Whoever has truly felt the poverty of Adam’s nature, who has learned that it lies in grievous fall and perdition, will certainly at the same time understand and be convinced that man needs to be united with Christ for salvation. Such knowledge is a sign of a true widow. She is permitted to enter into silence, so that she may abide in prayers and supplications day and night, so that Christ may be vividly portrayed in her (VI, 5).
As a ship’s pilot looks to the stars and by them directs the course of his ship, so too the hermit must continually gaze upon God, see Him with the eyes of faith and hope, to be preserved in constancy and patience. On the sea of silence extraordinary storms precede extraordinary calm.
A hermit drawn away by gluttony, indulging in excessive sleep and luxury, or in general by sensuality and self-love, proves by this that he is dead in soul, though alive in body (IV, 6). Christ, the true Life, dwells only in the crucified.
The age of a widow capable of silence is determined as sixty years (V, 9), which signifies in a spiritual sense the middle measure of progress, depicted in the Gospel by the numbers: thirty, sixty, and a hundred. In this middle measure are those who, though even soulish, have received the power of prayer for victory during spiritual warfare, to whom the mystery of the Cross has been opened, who feel during external tribulations the action of grace in their souls, which serves both as light and consolation for the heart.
Before a hermit enters into silence, he should have testimony from good deeds. Examine yourself, O you who wish to enter into haven, or more correctly, into the sea of silence! Have you followed every good work not according to the nature of the old Adam, but in accord with the properties of the New? (V, 10). In other words: have you taken upon yourself the yoke of humility and meekness, tasted that this yoke is good and the burden is light? In other words: have you studied the Gospel commandments? Have your mind and heart become their tablets, and your conduct their expression and consequence? Do you seek righteousness apart from the cross? If you seek it, then you are not capable, not ready for silence, into which it is disastrous to enter without condemning yourself and remaining in condemnation of your neighbors.
Youths in spiritual age, though they be old in body, though they strive away from the world, and thus deserve the name of widows, should not be permitted to enter silence (V, 11). They, through lack of spiritual understanding, cannot be constant in the conviction that for salvation only Christ alone is necessary; they will not bear their deadness, will desire to enliven their ‘I’ in good works belonging to the soulish man, by which they will cast off the yoke of Christ and enter into the nature of the old Adam. It is better for them to exercise themselves in active virtues; it is better for them, turning away from all that is unnatural, to remain in their own nature, than to strive prematurely and incorrectly toward the supernatural.
They are not forbidden to strive for renewal in the Lord; but a correct striving is commanded: let them strive to correct their character according to the character of Christ, as depicted in the Gospel. With the healing of character, the mind is gradually healed. It, having received healing, that is, having become pure, clearly sees Truth, acknowledges it, and confesses it. After this, if it pleases Truth, solely through its good pleasure and election, the disciple is led up the mountain and becomes a beholder of the Transfiguration. If not thus, remain at the foot of the mountain and engage in casting the demon out of the boy. The demon is cast out by faith, prayer, and fasting. By the name of fasting should be understood not merely abstinence from excess in food, but abstinence from all sinful enterprises. He who has looked into his condition and into the condition of all the human race, infected by sin, subjected to the spirits of darkness, can understand the mystical answer given by the Saviour by the father of the demon-possessed concerning the time when the son’s illness began: “he said: from childhood” (Mk. 9:21).
An attempt at premature silence inevitably brings about harmful consequences. The presumptuous, self-confident, obscured and bound ascetic will find no food for his soul in silence, and from this will inevitably fall into despondency, which acts in hermits with special force and harm, delivering them to captivation by various wicked thoughts and fantasies. The food for hermits is the gracious, illuminating consolation through the revelation of the mystery of the Cross of Christ. It is a gift from above, not knowledge proper to human nature itself. It is impossible to substitute the soulish for the spiritual. But if anyone strives to make such a substitution, he will appropriate to himself a lie instead of truth, in the deceitful likeness of truth. The fruit of the lie is derangement, as is the fruit of despondency. But the derangement from falsehood differs from the derangement born of despondency. The first manifests itself in self-deception, in high opinion of oneself, in boasting of imagined virtues and gifts, in contempt and condemnation of neighbors, ends in pride, delusion, frenzy of mind, sometimes falling into fleshly passions, sometimes suicide, most often demon-possession and mental disturbance, which are ordinarily called madness. The second manifests itself in idleness, laziness, in abandoning one’s cell, in inclination toward distraction through conversation, frequent outings, wanderings, turning to earthly wisdom and learning. With the awakening of soulish reason according to the nature of the old Adam, faith is rejected, God’s providence is hidden from the eyes of the mind; man, as if eternally on earth, sets himself wholly to the earthly and gradually descends into a state that is subhuman, passionate, fleshly, which is, in relation to true life—Christ—the death of the soul (V, 12-13).
Whoever has fallen into derangement of either kind, especially the first, usually becomes wholly incapable of ascetic life. However, humility heals even such infirmities as are in themselves incurable, said John of the Ladder.[5]
He who wishes to be a pure fulfiller of the commandments of Christ should guard himself extremely from attachments (V, 21). When the heart is infected with attachment, it cannot fulfill the pure and holy will of Christ with the appropriate holiness and purity. Fulfilling our own will instead of Christ’s will, and stubbornly trying to show that we are doing Christ’s will, we fall into hypocrisy. Often, displaying, and perhaps even thinking, that we are doing Christ’s will, in actual fact we are fulfilling the will of the devil.
Those who strive to know Christ’s teaching not for its own sake, but with an external, earthly aim, with the aim of gaining profit or honor, will never be able to obtain true spiritual understanding, because it is God’s gift, granted to the humble in measure of their faith, purification from passions, and self-denial (VI, 4-5).
If you see those who call themselves teachers and think themselves to know Christ indulging in disputes, envy, slander, suspicion, hatred and other passions, know that they have only dead knowledge from hearing, while their mind and heart are in darkness and infirmity, as not healed and not purified by the doing of the Gospel commandments (VI, 4). Against them thunders the saying of the Lord: “I do not know you”! (Mt. 25:12, 7:23). This Truth—Christ—says of Himself to those who think they know Him not from the works of faith, but from hearing alone. Whoever has learned that the human race lies in a fallen state, that the earth is the place of our exile, our prison, where after a brief time we depart to receive either eternal blessedness or eternal punishment, has certainly also learned that man’s one treasure on earth is Christ, the Saviour of the perished. Consequently, man’s sole and invaluable acquisition on earth is knowledge of Christ and belonging to Christ. He who desires to acquire this treasure—will he desire the acquisitions and enjoyments of time? On the contrary—he will flee them, fearing lest they distract him. He will be content not only with the necessary but even with scarcity. And he who is content is richer than the rich! (VI, 6).
Brethren, we entered this world naked; departing from it, we leave our bodies in it. Why then seek corruptible acquisitions? Why seek what must necessarily be abandoned? Let us not lose precious time for corruption, lest we lose our one treasure—Christ. To Him let us direct both mind and heart; having food and raiment, let us be content with these; let us not permit luxuries and caprices to enter us, lest they, gradually drawing our love to themselves, rob us of Christ (VI, 7-8).
Those who desire to become rich fall into temptations and snares which the very striving to become rich prepares for them. The first fruit of this striving is a multitude of cares and concerns, which turn the mind and heart away from God. The soul, occupying itself little, coldly, negligently with God, becomes gross and falls into insensibility; the fear of God is erased from it; the remembrance of death departs from it, the mind is obscured and ceases to see God’s providence, from which faith is lost; hope, instead of being grounded in God, is turned toward an idol, bringing love to its feet as well. Then man dies to virtue, gives himself over to falsehood, cunning, cruelty—in a word, to all vices, and falls into complete perdition, becoming a vessel of the devil. “The root of all evils is the love of money”, as containing in itself the cause and occasion for all sins (VI, 9-10).
And even those who have not been completely ruined by the love of money, because they have not fully surrendered to it, but only sought moderate gain, have suffered many calamities. They have ensnared themselves in heavy cares, fallen into various griefs, often been compelled to violate the purity of conscience, suffered great loss in spiritual progress, and seen in themselves considerable deviation from faith and spiritual understanding. For the Christian the Gospel poverty is more desirable than all the treasures of the world, as it guides toward faith and its fruits. The ascetic of Christ—the freer he is from the world, the safer; and insofar as he is bound to the world, by that much he is already defeated.
False wisdom (VI, 20) is a manner of thinking and judgment which has attached itself to the mind as a result of man’s fall. As a consequence of the fall, it has the character of self-deception; as a consequence of falsehood and deception, it does not accept Truth—Christ; as highly valuing all that is earthly, while the earth is the place of exile for the fallen, it is opposed to faith and the spiritual understanding born from faith, which regards all earthly things with the eye of a pilgrim. The object of false wisdom is the temporal and corruptible. When the eternal and spiritual become its objects, its judgments are wholly unfounded and erroneous. It is bereft of illumination from above, which explains spiritual matters; for its own powers, without revelation, these matters are inaccessible; the alien light in it is the light of dark spirits of falsehood. All its knowledge is supplied by the bodily senses, which are corrupted by the fall. When the invisible to sensory eyes becomes accessible to it by some means, for example magnetism, this only multiplies its delusions, strengthens its obscuration and self-deception, as remaining in the realm of falsehood, as acquiring only perverted knowledge. Its followers are in continuous disagreement with one another, contradicting each other and themselves. It does not demand virtue from man; on the contrary—it grants freedom to sin. It considers itself the ruler of the world; why it rejects God’s providence, if not always in words, then always in deed. It contains within itself the principle of atheism, which constitutes the entire essence of every error, revealing itself in it more or less. Finally, it is the negative wealth of the fallen spirits and those men who are in communion with fallen spirits.
Let us abandon the wisdom of this world, let us abandon trust in it and approach with faith and humility God’s wisdom and power, to the holy Truth—Christ, who came into the world, “that through him the world might be saved” (Jn. 3:17). He is the Light which the darkness does not comprehend and does not receive (Jn. 1:5). Only he who has loved the truth is capable of receiving Him. “Everyone who does evil hates the light. He who does not believe is already condemned. And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil” (Jn. 3:18-20, 1 Tim. 6:11, 16). Amen.