The Ordering of External Life in the Spirit of the New Life

All that pertains to ordering external life according to the spirit of the new life can be called withdrawal from the world, or the expulsion of the worldly spirit from the entire course of our external life. “I chose you out of the world” – that is, I removed you – this the Lord said to the Apostles (Jn. 15:19). The same He does to every believer with His Divine grace: He removes his spirit from the world. Conversion itself consists of turning one’s mind away from the vain world and opening before it another world – a spiritual one. But what is accomplished invisibly in the spirit at first must then be carried out in deeds in life, must become a constant rule. One who seeks the Lord must withdraw from the world.

By “the world” is understood all that is passionate, vain, sinful, that has entered private, family, and social life and has become custom and rule there. Therefore, withdrawing from the world does not mean fleeing from family or society, but rather abandoning morals, customs, rules, habits, and demands that are completely contrary to the spirit of Christ accepted and growing in us. Civil society and family are blessed by God; therefore, one should not withdraw from them or despise them, nor anything that belongs to their essential good order. But everything additional to them – all the passionate and lustful – like a growth that harms and distorts them, must be despised and rejected. To flee from the world means to establish oneself in true family life and citizenship; all else we must so treat as if it were not ours, did not touch us. “Let those who use the world do so as though they were not using it” (1 Cor. 7:31).

Why this must be done is evident of itself. All that is vain and saturated with passions inevitably transmits the same to our soul, stirs up or implants passion. As one walking around soot becomes blackened or one touching fire gets scorched, so one participating in worldly things becomes saturated with the passionate and opposed-to-God. Therefore, when caught in the world, the repentant falls again, while the innocent becomes corrupted. This is almost inevitable. At once the mind is darkened, forgetfulness is born, weakness, captivity, and plunder follow, and then the heart is wounded, after which comes passion and deed – and the person has fallen. Witnesses to this are all the histories of corruption; and equally, witnesses to how inevitable and necessary it is to abandon all these customs are all the converted, who flee these habits as if from fire.

But what precisely to abandon and how is taught more by experience than by our writings.

The law is this: abandon all that is dangerous to the new life, that kindles passion, brings vanity, and extinguishes the spirit – and in all this what variety there is!.. Let each person’s own heart be the measure – the heart of one genuinely seeking salvation without deception, not just for show. In the present time, theaters, balls, dances, music, singing, drives, walks, acquaintances, jests, witticisms, laughter, idle time-wasting, and even the time of waking, sleeping, eating food, and so forth – all of this must be renounced and changed. In other times and in other places, there might be other things. But the measure is always the same: abandon what is harmful and dangerous to life, what extinguishes the spirit. But what precisely? For one person it might be something very trivial, perhaps even a walk in a certain place with a certain person… “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial” (1 Cor. 6:12).

From this it follows that abandoning the world is nothing other than thoroughly cleansing your entire external life, removing from it everything passionate, replacing it with what is pure and does not hinder spiritual life, but helps it – in family life, private life, social life; establishing generally the manner of your external conduct at home and outside, with others and in your duties; determining everything by rules according to the demands of the new life’s spirit, establishing order in the home in all respects, order in your duties, order in your acquaintances and relations with whom, when, and how.

How to do this? As each person is able – only do it with counsel and discernment, under the guidance of a spiritual father or one whom you trust. Some do this suddenly, which seems better, and others gradually. One must only from the very first moment hate everything worldly and sinful in one’s heart and be estranged from it, not want it and not delight in it. “Do not love the world or anything in the world” (1 Jn. 2:15). Following this inner abandonment of the world, the outward abandonment can follow either suddenly or gradually. A person weak in spirit cannot endure a prolonged change, will not hold firm, will weaken and fall. These are especially those possessed by fleshly passions, which acquire the force of a second nature. Therefore, such people must inevitably break away from everything at once, withdraw from the place where they wallowed in sin. A person with strong spiritual zeal can endure even a gradual change; but for both the one and the other, from the very first moment of conversion, complete severance from all contact with the sinful world and with all things worldly is absolutely necessary until the forms of the new life are established. This is like protecting a newly transplanted tree from wind, which, though not strong, can blow it over because its roots are still weak.

The thought that one can live as a Christian and yet hold to the world and worldliness is an empty, delusional thought. Whoever lives by it will learn nothing but Phariseeism and a life of opinion – that is, he will be a Christian only in his own estimation, but not in fact. At first he will destroy with one hand what he builds with the other – that is, what is gathered in withdrawal from the world will again be scattered at the first entry into it, and from this comes a direct transition to mere opinion. What is lost from the heart may still remain in memory and imagination. Now, remembering and imagining how it was before, the person may think that it still truly is, whereas it has vanished, and only its trace remains in memory. And he will imagine he has what he does not actually have. Here is his judgment: “Even what he thinks he has will be taken from him” (Mt. 25:29). From mere opinion it is but a step to Phariseeism. Hardened Phariseeism is a terrible state. One may fear, however – how is it to abandon the world? This is fearful only outwardly; inwardly, abandoning the world is entering paradise. Outwardly – at once afflictions, sorrows, losses: what then? – strengthen yourself with patience. What is more precious: the world or the soul, time or eternity? Give up the small – and take what is immeasurable in all dimensions. It does happen, moreover, that the world’s strong pressure exists only at first, then diminishes, diminishes, and one who has abandoned the world is left in peace, for in the world people rarely value or remember long – they speak, speak, and then forget. It is with those who abandon the world as with the dead. Therefore, one need not fear the world’s enmity so much, because of its frivolousness and pride – because it loves what is present and forgets everything else. It is a spectacle: it is concerned only with or holds those who are in it; it cares little about others.

Thus, by these means – occupations directed toward building the soul’s powers, mortification of the flesh in all its parts, especially those that are the soul’s immediate organs, and the cleansing of the external order – a person who seeks well and solidly fortifies his interior. Strengthened within by the first spiritual and soul-building occupations in solitude, with the flesh mortified, he goes forth to family matters or civic matters, or to communal life, to pure and saving deeds according to God’s will, and is built up in spirit by all of these, or at least is not destroyed.

One more thing can distract him – the constant sight and hearing of things – sometimes worldly, sometimes ordinary – which, simply by acting on the soul, draw it out through attention to them and disperse it. If these openings could be closed, inner peace would be unbroken. Clearly, the most reliable and decisive means to this would be the closing of the senses, but this is not possible or necessary for everyone. Therefore, the holy fathers devised a saving means: to undergo the impression of external things and yet not be distracted, but to build up the spirit. It consists in giving every thing, everything seen and heard, a spiritual meaning, and in so establishing oneself in contemplation of this spiritual meaning that, in looking at something, it is not the thing itself that touches your consciousness, but its spiritual meaning. Whoever does this for everything encountered will constantly walk as if in a school… And light and darkness, and people and beasts, and stone and plant, and house and field – absolutely everything down to the least thing will be a lesson for him; one need only interpret it to oneself and become established in that. And how saving this is!.. “Why are you weeping?” the disciples asked an elder who saw a beautiful, gaudily dressed woman. “I weep,” he answered, “for the perishing of God’s rational creation and because I have not such concern for the soul’s salvation as she has for the body’s ruin…” Another, hearing a woman’s weeping at a grave, said, “Thus a Christian should weep over his own sins.”