How to Turn Everyday Tasks and Things to Spiritual Profit

Saint Tikhon prompted me to the following useful direction for you—namely: how to turn every thing into a preacher of divine truths and a reminder of God.

You wrote that household occupations draw the mind away from God. I showed you how to prevent them from doing so. But you did not mention another thing that can and does actually draw the mind away from God. This is the fact that every external object that acts on the senses draws our attention to itself and tries to tear it away from God. Yet there is a certain method by which visible things will not draw us away from God but will actually draw us toward Him. How can this be?

You need to interpret all the things that come before your eyes in a spiritual sense, and to fix this interpretation so firmly in the mind that when you look at any object, the eye sees the physical thing while the mind contemplates the spiritual truth. For example, you see stains on a white garment and you feel how unpleasant and grievous it is to find them. Interpret this to mean how grievous and unpleasant it must be to the Lord, to the Angels, and to the saints to see the sinful stains on our soul—a soul whitened by being created in the image of God, reborn in the font of Baptism, or washed in the tears of repentance. You hear small children who have been left alone break into running, noise, and tumult. Interpret this to mean what noise and tumult rises up in our soul when attention to God with fear of God departs from it. You smell the fragrance of a rose or some other flower and it is pleasant to you, but coming upon a foul odor you turn away and hold your nose. Interpret this as follows: every soul gives off its own fragrance[1] (2 Cor. 2:15)—a good soul gives off a good fragrance, a passionate soul a foul one. The angels of God and the saints, and often earthly righteous people as well, perceive this fragrance, and rejoice over a good one while grieving over a foul one.

I say this to you only as an example; every thing can give rise to various spiritual thoughts—one thought for one person, another for another. Interpret everything around you, and everything you are liable to encounter beyond that, in whatever way you find most fitting. Begin with your home and interpret everything in it: the house itself, the walls, the roof, the foundation, the windows, the stoves, the tables, the mirrors, the chairs, and all the other things. Move on to the people in your household and interpret your parents, children, brothers and sisters, relatives, servants, visitors, and the rest. Interpret also the ordinary course of life: waking, greeting one another, dinner, work, departures, returns, tea-drinking, hospitality, singing, day, night, sleep, and so on, and so on, and so on.

As an aid, take Saint Tikhon once again. He wrote four entire books of such interpretations, under the title “The Spiritual Treasury, Gathered from the World.” Take them and read them. Once you have read them and seen how he does this, you will learn to do the same on your own. Or you may simply appropriate his interpretations directly for yourself. If reading those books seems to you too long an undertaking, he also has a condensed version of all these interpretations under the title “An Occasion and a Spiritual Reflection Thereon” (vol. 2). There he briefly interpreted one hundred and seventy-six occasions. It will not cost you much effort to look through them attentively; and yet they cover everything you will need to interpret. But in any case, however you like—only be sure to do it, just as it is proposed to you.

When you have done this, every thing will be for you like a holy book or an article in a book. Then every thing will bring you to the thought of God, just as every occupation and task will. And you will walk amid the sensory world as though in a spiritual realm. All things will speak to you of God and sustain your attention to Him. If each time you join to this reminder the fear of God and reverence before His majesty, what other teachers and instructors could you possibly need?

But of course, labor and effort are needed—both mental and heartfelt. And do not spare yourself. If you spare yourself, you will ruin yourself. If you do not spare yourself, you will save yourself. Cast aside that wrongful tendency which so often overtakes us—and hardly anyone is exempt from it—that while we spare no effort for every other task, we do spare it for the task of salvation. We imagine that here it is enough merely to think and to will it—and all is done. But in reality that is not how it is. The work of salvation is the foremost of all works. Consequently it is also the most demanding. The effort is proportionate to the importance of the work. Labor, then, for the Lord’s sake! You will see the fruit very soon. But if you do not labor, you will be left with nothing and will be good for nothing. God forbid that this should befall you!