A Discourse on How, for Fruitful Repentance, the Renunciation of Self-Conceit Is Necessary (Part 2)

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, calling all to repentance, has not fallen silent even now. The lips of John have been sealed by a martyr’s death, but he does not cease to cry out from the Gospel. To hear him requires good will: without good will, people “seeing see not, and hearing hear not, nor do they understand” (Mt. 13:13), “but those with a good heart and a good” character hear the word, they hold it fast, “and bear fruit with patience” (Lk. 8:15). With good will let us receive the preaching of repentance. Having received it, let us not abandon it to forgetfulness through negligence or enchantment by passions; let us preserve it in memory and in our heart, “bearing fruit worthy of repentance”. First, let us reject self-conceit and fleshly wisdom, which persuade us to pride ourselves on noble descent from a noble or priestly family, on noble and wealthy kinship, on our own eminence and wealth, which we possessed when living in the world, on various mental and bodily capacities, on our learning and erudition. All these goods, given to man for a time, are of no account before the dignity granted forever. Our eternal, essential, spiritual dignity consists in this: that we are Christians. The price at which this dignity was purchased for us is beyond all price. “You are not your own”, the Apostle tells us, “for you have been bought with a price”, exceeding all price: with the most precious blood of Christ. “Therefore glorify God in your body and in your soul, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19–20). Since one price was paid for each of us, the spiritual dignity of each of us is equal. “There is neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all” (Col. 3:11). “It is great for me”, said the holy martyr Peter Damascene, “that I am called a Christian and a monk, as You have said, O Lord, to one of Your servants, ‘It is great for you that My Name is called upon you.’ But this is even greater than all earthly and heavenly kingdoms, only that I not be separated from being called by Your most sweet Name.” This dignity requires that we revere it, and because of it we must revere ourselves as vessels in which is preserved an invaluable and priceless treasure, as temples of Godhead. We must carefully guard ourselves from all evil, as from a humiliating defilement, despise all fleshly advantages as insignificant before our spiritual dignity and unsuited to it. Such must be the holy pride of renewed nature, as the blessed Isaiah the Hermit said: it must protect this nature from moral degradation. The beautiful, exalted natural quality of contempt for sin became, in fallen nature, contempt for our neighbours, vicious self-conceit, self-love, and pride.

Before concluding the discourse, let us return once more to John’s preaching, let us renew in our memory its content, so that we may be not only hearers of it but also doers of it, “bearing fruit worthy of repentance”. The holy prophet Isaiah, seven centuries beforehand proclaiming the ministry of the Forerunner, set forth the content of his preaching in the following manner: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill brought low; and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Behold, your God, behold, the Lord: the Lord comes with might, and His arm rules for Him’” (Is. 40:3–5, 10; Lk. 3:4–6). Already we have seen that Holy Scripture calls the way and paths of the Lord the corresponding manner of thinking and the feelings of the heart in human souls. To acquire them, one must fill all valleys, that is, in all the low, impassable places one must make embankments for the easy passage of the Lord: one must abandon drunkenness, gluttony, fornication, carnal pleasures, so-called innocent games and amusements—in a word, all that constitutes a carnal and sinful life, which brings man down to the level of unreasoning beasts and animals. One must replace them with the opposite virtues: temperance, sobriety, chastity. Sinful and carnal life blocks the Lord’s way into the human heart. Furthermore: one must humble or level every mountain and hill, that is, erase from the soul self-conceit and pride in all their forms, both the seemingly significant and the most trivial. Finally, one must reject all incorrect and willful ideas about faith, these crooked and rough paths, completely submitting to God’s teaching as preserved in purity by the Orthodox Eastern Church. Then all crookedness will be straightened, all roughness smoothed: the path for the Lord will become completely clear; every man will easily receive salvation. Salvation enters the soul along with the Lord who enters it. Amen.

Written upon arrival at the Nicholas Babayevo Monastery in 1861.

(Job 42:6). On how the saints of God attain such a state, see the holy Isaac the Syrian, Homilies 48 and 49.

Bergier. Dictionnaire Theologique, Sadducees

The holy Tikhon of Voronezh. Volume 15, Letter 32

Peter Damascene. On How to Acquire True Faith. Philokalia, Part 3, Book 1

Homily 2