An Instruction for the Ninth Sunday: God, the Helper of Man in His Afflictions

The holy Apostle Peter, as we heard today in the Gospel (Mt 14:22-34), once saw the Lord walking upon the agitated sea and asked Him for permission to come to Him over the waters. “Command me”, said Peter, “to come to You on the water.” Having received the command from the all-powerful Lord, Peter stepped out of the boat and walked on the waters, which seemed to become firm under his feet. As long as Peter believed the Lord’s command, as long as he kept this command in view, so long did he walk on the liquid element as on dry land. But the wind was very strong and the waves rose high. Peter turned his attention to this, allowed fear to enter him, which on a superficial view might be called natural and reasonable, and began to sink. Then he cried out to the Lord: “Lord, save me!” The Lord stretched out His hand to him, delivered him from drowning, saying: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

We all walk on the unstable waves of the sea of life, tossed and disturbed by various misfortunes. We all walk on the waves of the sea of life, journeying along them toward the gates of death and God’s judgment. What an unreliable element beneath our feet! We cannot know what will happen to us in the shortest span of time. The most violent transformations in our life occur unexpectedly and suddenly. Not death alone creeps upon us like a thief: almost all afflictions creep upon us in the same way. The sea is assailed and stirred by strong winds rising from different sides for unknown reasons; and our life is subject to varied attacks from evil spirits and the people led by them; we undergo many afflictions from unforeseen occurrences and from a kind of enigmatic confluence of circumstances. It is impossible to foresee and foreknow what malice will devise, what will serve as the occasion and means for misfortune, where temptation will arise. For the most part it is impossible either to prevent or to ward off these afflictions.

And another sea, an invisible sea, lies beneath our spiritual steps. This sea is assailed and disturbed by different winds. The sea is our heart, in which are mingled many different feelings. In fallen man the feelings are tainted with sin and therefore for the most part act wrongly. Rarely is the old man, not renewed by God’s grace, able to act according to the indication of the Gospel commandment, and even then only with violence to himself and with significant deficiencies in the fulfillment. The improper action of feelings sick with sin is most often characterized by attachments, often by passion. When the spiritual ailment acts moderately, feelings are marked by moderate impropriety, called attachments; when the ailment acts in its full development, feelings are transformed into passions. Our feelings are under the influence of thoughts arising in us ourselves and brought to us by evil spirits, enemies of the human race. Now sadness assails us, now we are disturbed by anger, now we are carried away by lust, now we are snatched up by vanity and pride. This wind—the pressure of thoughts—often is so strong that we find no means to resist it, we become confused, we fall into despondency and despair, we approach ruin.

What shall we say for the consolation of everyone who has understood that he walks by both his visible life and his spiritual life on the waves of the sea? Let us say that he walks by the command of his God. By this command, to our instruction, the holy Peter walked and did not sink until the moment he firmly believed that he was acting by God’s command. Let us also believe that God called us from nothingness into being, that He granted and appointed for us the arena of earthly life, commanding us on this arena to fulfill His will and promising unfailingly to watch over us by His Providence as over His faithful servants. Let us believe that we, His creatures, are wholly in His will, that without the least gesture of this all-powerful and all-holy will nothing happens to us. Guided by this thought, we shall walk freely and boldly on our journey across the sea. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father.” Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. “So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Mt 10:29-31).

Men are weak. For the consolation and instruction of the weak, it was permitted to the holy Peter to waver in faith and be subjected to danger. When faith in God is replaced by human reasoning, man suffers in the waves of life’s sea. He suffers! He sees no human means for extricating himself from difficult circumstances, and the memory of God is stolen away by incomprehensible forgetfulness. The Apostle Peter, beginning to sink, cried out to the Lord; and we, from amid the restricting circumstances surrounding us from all sides, must force ourselves to remember God, turn to God with most fervent prayer for deliverance. Deliverance will not be delayed. It will come, and everyone who sees it will hear in his conscience the gentle voice of conviction: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Temptations are necessary for us. They are permitted to us by God’s Providence so that, oppressed by them, we might turn to the God we have forgotten, and know Him by experience. “Call upon Me in the day of trouble,” God exhorts the sorrowful, “and I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me” (Ps 49:15). “You will glorify Me”—that is, you will know Me by experience, with living knowledge, and you will believe in Me with living faith. To dead knowledge, by letter, I appear as if non-existent. The Lord extended His hand to the drowning Peter to save him; the action of God’s Providence appears to deliver us from a difficult position, especially clear and tangible. The trembling caused by sorrows is insignificant compared to the knowledge of God they afford. Torment in sorrows is brief; essential knowledge of God, joined to union with Him, is an eternal treasure, a pledge of all eternal goods.

In precisely the same way ought we to act when a storm of the soul arises, when the peace of the heart is disturbed and troubled by sinful thoughts. These thoughts are clothed most often in righteousness, strive in every way to deceive man; but they are recognized by the disturbance they produce, by their taking away the peace of the heart. Terrible is the storm of the passions, more terrible than all external calamities. Internal misfortune is more dangerous than external. During a visible storm the sun is dimmed by clouds; the mind is dimmed, covered by the thick cloud of thoughts, during a storm of the heart. The teachings of Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers are forgotten; the vessel of the soul is flooded by waves (Mt 8:24) of various passionate feelings. Neither conversation with friends nor edifying reading acts beneficially. A soul filled with turbid moisture receives nothing into itself. The sole means of salvation remains intensive prayer. Like the Apostle Peter, we must cry out to the Lord from the whole soul. “He will call upon Me,” says the Lord, “and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.” (Ps 90:15-16). What a consoling promise! What a multitude of consoling promises! Promise is given that He will hear the one who calls upon God. God, who foresees the future, declares that He is already present by His divine Providence with the one who calls upon Him. Further, promise is given to deliver the one who called from sorrow and to glorify him, to glorify him by the granting of divine grace. The promises are crowned with the promise of blessed eternity and the manifestation of salvation in the soul through the establishment in it of the kingdom of heaven—the pledge of blessed eternity. The Saviour of the world extended His hand to the drowning Peter to save him from drowning; He sends divine grace to His servants, touches their spirit with it, and saves those drowning and perishing from the storm of agitated passions.

When the Lord stilled the storm, “those in the boat worshipped Him, saying, ‘Truly You are the Son of God.’” When the storm of the heart is stilled by calling upon the Lord and the winds that stirred it—demonic thoughts—depart, then the thoughts of the soul render worship to the Son of God, render worship in spirit, and confess Him because of the conviction received concerning the Son of God and God, concerning the Saviour of the world, because of the conviction received in the very treasury of the soul.

External temptations furnish knowledge of God by the manifestation of His Providence for us, furnish faith in God’s Providence, instill in the heart fear of God and reverence toward God as one who sees and is seen, incline a person toward a life in accordance with God’s commandments and toward fleeing from sin which angers God. Spiritual temptations furnish more profound knowledge. And these temptations, active instruction and enlightenment by them, are especially and almost solely undergone by those servants of God who have wholly devoted themselves to the service of God and are occupied in solitude with mental prayer, which reveals to man his own soul. “Those who go down to the sea in ships, in vessels,” that is, under the guidance of the Word of God and the Church’s Tradition, not at all by means of arbitrary reasoning and effort, “who conduct business on great waters,” in the thoughts and feelings of the heart, “these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep” of the heart. In wise and all-good designs God permits man an internal struggle: “He spoke and summoned a stormy wind, and it lifted the waves high,” “they mounted up to the heavens, they went down to the depths.” From terrible agitation of feelings produced by demonic thoughts—this stormy wind—“their soul” of ascetics “melted away in misery.” They “reeled and staggered like drunkards, and were at their wits’ end,” because of the darkness produced by the storm, because of the onslaught of many heavy reflections, because of terrible confusion, because of perplexities that cannot be resolved by human reason. “Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” After internal struggle spiritual consolation is usually granted: “Then they were glad when it grew calm, and He guided them to the harbor they desired.” Those taught by internal struggles acquire knowledge of the all-holy will of God, gradually learn to remain in it. Knowledge of God’s will and obedience to it serve the soul as a haven: the soul finds in this haven quietness and assurance of its salvation. Those secretly taught by the Lord from experiential feeling in themselves the action of sin and the action of grace by which the action of sin is destroyed, “will proclaim His mercy” in prayers filled with gratitude and praise, will “declare His works” to the children of men, to their brothers, in spiritually beneficial discourses. They “will exalt Him in the congregation of the people and praise Him in the assembly of the elders” (Ps 106:23-33).

“For those who love God,” said the Apostle, “all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28)—not only external sorrows and afflictions, but also sorrows produced by the uprising and storm of the passions. They reveal to man his fall, casting him down from the height of arrogance and self-conceit into a state of self-knowledge and humility, disclose the complete necessity of a Redeemer, cast him in self-denial at the feet of the Redeemer.

Let us not be disturbed when we see the uprising of passions in ourselves, as is ordinarily the case with those ignorant of themselves. We are corrupted by sin, and passions have become natural to us, just as various manifestations of disease are natural to sickness. When passions arise, one must immediately turn to God with prayer and tears, firmly resist the passions, and in patience await God’s aid. Passions trouble not only those people who are under their dominion, but also those advanced in virtue. This happens by God’s permission so that remaining in virtue itself might not become for weak man a cause for self-exaltation and pride. Not infrequently, after prolonged calm, a terrible storm arises; those who considered themselves in a safe haven suddenly find themselves on the open, seething sea. Human impassibility can then be regarded as safe when the body rests in the grave and the soul leaves this world, filled with delusion, offense, and deception. “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” (Mt 8:25) the disciples of the Saviour cried to the Saviour of the world during another voyage on the sea, awakening Him when a great storm arose on the sea, when the boat was being swamped by waves, while the Saviour was sleeping. The sleep of the Saviour depicts our forgetting of God. Temptation destroys forgetfulness. God, remembered and called upon for help, “rebuked the winds and the sea.” All-good and all-powerful, He furnishes “a great calm” (Mt 8:26) to everyone who remembers and calls upon Him for help in time of sorrow. Amen.

Venerable Nilus of Sorsk. Homily 3.