Thoughts

The priest must be “dignified yet modest, impressive yet kindly, masterful yet approachable, impartial yet courteous, humble but not servile, vehement yet gentle.” He must be armed with “earnestness and constant sobriety of life.” [1]

In these extracts, there is a striking similarity between St John of Kronstadt and Fr Arseny, both of whom live up to St John Chrysostom’s description of what a priest should be. One almost gets the impression that the one in the other’s (very different) place would have fulfilled the priestly vocation in a very parallel way. St John of Kronstadt describes how in prayer, when fully convinced in true faith of God’s action in response, God will accomplish everything: “at such a time there is no interval between God and yourself”[2]. Similarly, when Fr Arseny, out of his love for his fellow prisoners and his great faith simply calls on God commanding the prisoners to stop fighting, God answers his call, the fighting stops and the wounded are helped.[3]

Fr Arseny continually centres himself with the Jesus prayer, and by calling upon the Theotokos. St John of Kronstadt says that to call with faith and love upon the name of God and the name of the Mother of God will “enliven, hallow and comfort”[4]. The prayers of the Church are seen as a great blessing. St John of Kronstadt admits the temptation sometimes to shorten or rush the public prayers “wishing to finish the holy work the quicker that we may hasten after worldly vanity.”[5] By so doing, we neglect what is the source of peace, joy and health for ourselves and for those praying with us – “enlivening, strengthening and healing our body as well as our soul.”[6] Fr Arseny understands the value of these prayers. Without access to a church, service books, vestments or any material thing that he was accustomed to using in his priestly work before his arrest, he would recite the matins service, the akathist to the Mother of God, to St Nicholas and to St Arseny all by heart.[7] In fact, so strong was the power of his prayer and so fully did his prayer represent that of the Church, that on one occasion, an officer in the camp saw in him suddenly not “an old man in a patched up vest and torn pants, but a fully vested priest, who was performing the sacrament of prayer to God.”[8]

St John of Kronstadt emphasises that during the celebration of the Liturgy, the whole Church – in heaven and on earth – is assembled around the Lamb of God. He sees this holy assembly, he sees his brothers and sisters in the Church gathered among the saints and angels, and he wonders at the fact that he too is there, celebrating for his neighbour as for himself[9]. The awareness of the tremendous grace of being permitted to share in such a gift opens his heart “to love all, to care for all, to seek the salvation of all.”[10]

This love and care for all is demonstrated in Fr Arseny’s constant care for the sick prisoners, sharing his own meagre ration with them, and persevering in this care despite the lack of gratitude (and even contempt and mockery) on the part of the sick.[11] This love goes along with humility as he quietly takes abuse and derision, which St John Chrysostom says can make even the most valiant ascetic lose his head.[12] This love is also demonstrated in Fr Arseny’s full use of all the gifts he was given for the benefit of the souls in his care: “It is essential that even the ‘silly priests,’ as you call them, understand the soul of Russian art and, being shepherds of souls, they must show their flock the truth as it is in reality.”[13] Especially in a world where truth has been subjected to ideology, the priest has a particular responsibility to try to understand the direction of the culture that surrounds the Church, and to communicate this understanding to his people, that they may understand true reality.

The world of Fr Arseny is strongly in contrast to that of St John Chrysostom, where a man might seek out the priesthood for worldly reasons. Who would seek out the kind of priesthood that Fr Arseny found himself serving in? St John Chrysostom says, “the weakest athlete can keep his weakness secret as long as he remains at home and pits himself against nobody; but when he strips for the contest, he is soon shown up.”[14] What kind of preparation is there for the contest that Fr Arseny had to face? Yet in all that he did and all that he experienced, Fr Arseny found that the root of his life was the same: “I had my faith in Christ out there in freedom and I have it here within myself.”[15] He lived his life so much in the light and presence of God, and in service to others, that even some of the most hardened criminals and atheists were able to say “but you… I trust. I know you won’t turn your back on me. You live in your God…”[16] Truly it was with Fr Arseny as St John Chrysostom said it ought to be with any priest: “the beauty of his soul must shine out brightly all around, to be able to gladden and enlighten the souls of those who see.”[17]

[1] Priesthood p93, p86

[2] Counsels p68

[3] Fr Arseny p22-23

[4] Counsels p71

[5] Counsels p64

[6] Counsels p65

[7] Fr Arseny p12

[8] Fr Arseny p26

[9] See Counsels p63

[10] Counsels p78

[11] Fr Arseny p10, 12-13

[12] Priesthood p83 – those who cannot “bear insult and abuse and vulgar language and taunts from inferiors” must be barred from the priesthood.

[13] Fr Arseny p19. Note that St John Chrysostom says that piety is not enough for a priest, he needs to combine piety with “considerable intelligence”, Priesthood p89. Part of this is manifested in the priest’s responsibility to teach (especially in the absence of miracles – p115), to which St John Chrysostom devotes most of Book IV of his Six Books.

[14] Priesthood p85

[15] Fr Arseny p15

[16] Fr Arseny p21

[17] Priesthood p85

Reflection 1 on Counsels on the Christian Priesthood (St John of Kronstadt) chapters 1-3

The extract from this book continues the basic theme of the other readings in demonstrating both the extreme weight of responsibility of the priesthood and also its glory. The strongest impression from this text is the intensity and sincerity with which St John prayed for his people (“he was above all a ‘genius of prayer’”[1]). Out of his prayer, miracles came. In his prayer, he worked tirelessly for the benefit of the souls who were entrusted to him – there was no opposition between his prayer and its practical outplaying in his life’s work. How much this convicts us when we read of someone living out our faith this deeply: “we all shrink from the fundamental demands which the Christian faith… makes upon us” and, phrased as a greater challenge, “He was a man of outstanding faith… and I, alas, am not… why am I not?” [2] The answer to this latter question is provided by St John himself who says that it is essential to “live in a state of constant watchfulness”, “without ceasing praise and thank the Lord” (cf. 1 Thess 5:17), and “always be striving after holiness, with fasting… with humility of mind, obedience and patience.”[3]

In order to be able to heal others, a priest must “strive to be free himself from spiritual infirmities”. Attachment to ‘earthly cares’ needs to be laid aside: “If he is frightened of man, it means that he does not yet entirely cleave to God.”[4] He describes this attachment as a “wall” which we have to “pierce” by prayer.[5] But earthly cares are not the only difficulty: St John points out that the more holy the task, the greater the temptation and attack of the devil, whether it be through sloth, depression, despair or just doubt over the purpose of long prayers[6]. But the priesthood is not only a harbinger of greater spiritual attack, it is also a provision of weapons to use in the conflict: invoking the Holy Spirit over the Holy Gifts in the Liturgy brings confidence that he will come also in other situations[7]. The work of a priest is full of reminders and experiences that should bring him close to God, and if he can live a holy life, his prayer can “work wonders”[8].

[1] p11, Grisbrooke quoting G.P. Fedotov

[2] p16 and p27

[3] p35

[4] p38

[5] p54

[6] See pp43-44

[7] p54

[8] p56

p1/2 – Harakas pp82-104; Hymn of Entry pp17-40;
p2/2 – “Art, Music, Gossip”

This chapter from Harakas discusses ’Ethical Relations with the Self’. As he points out, as well as being explicit in the New Testament, this is also implicit in one of the most widely-known quotations from the Gospels: “love your neighbour as yourself” – the love of self being a given. However it is also clear that love of self can be unethical, for example in the case of pride, sometimes considered the “proto-sin”[1]. St Maximos the Confessor sees this sin as result of ignorance: a true knowledge of God and ourselves would leave no room for pride. Apart from this comment and a hint in the quotation from the Philokalia (“pride corrupts the whole soul”[2]), Harakas does not discuss the reasons why pride is a sin, nor the effects of the sin. It might have been useful to draw from this mention in the Philokalia of the corruption of pride the fact that as ‘corruption’, it is associated with death and antithetical to life, and from the comment of St Maximos, it is associated with a lack of knowledge of God – both of which facts clearly pit it firmly against any movement towards union with God. The proper aspect of self-love, as Harakas discusses in the subsequent section, is “heed thyself”[3]. A good spiritual self-love is a proper “attention to the virtues of the soul”[4] which in turn enables a loss of focus on the self, and an ability to focus on both God and neighbour.

Harakas goes on to discuss the proper context of life in the light of the life-giver, and the way in which spiritual life “in the world” plays itself out in a particular form of “obedience, purity and poverty”[5] involving ascesis, repentance and control of the passions. In order to live out this ethic, true self-knowledge is necessary (though very difficult to attain – Harakas speaks of the attentiveness, sobermindedness, discernment and humility which play a part in acquiring self-knowledge, though he could also perhaps have gone back here to obedience and made some mention of the role of the Church – the Christian community should play a significant role in enabling the individual person to come to self-knowledge given that in seeking to know oneself, the chance of self-delusion is so great).

Harakas notes, in considering emotional well-being, that it has often been too easy to see demonic possession in the mentally ill and fail to realise that “all disorders on the personal, social, and cosmic level are also the consequences of the condition of disorder that arises from our ontological separation from God.” Watchfulness is so important because not only our passions but our reason and intellect (nous) will lead us away from truth and life if they are separated from God. Hence the desirable state of apatheia, when the passions are so well disciplined that they do not disturb constant attention to God.

The beautiful thing about Hymn of Entry is the way Archimandrite Vasileios shows the essential unity of all aspects of the Christian life which we so frequently artificially divide into separate disciplines. “How beautiful it is for a man to become theology,” he writes.[6] From the beginning he points out that the Gospel is “not a systematic exposition”[7] of teaching because Christianity is not a philosophy nor a body of knowledge nor even a religion, but the content and locus of our faith is personal: “He left His body and sent His Spirit”. Thus a true understanding of Orthodox ‘ethics’ is the “unity of life and truth”[8] – there is a unity of theology and “reasonable worship” and “theology becomes holy action”. All of this is in the ecclesial context (the context of “His body”) – there is a continuity between the “personal consciousness” of each of the faithful and the Church as a whole[9] and through living in this life, one may become a theologian[10]. ‘Ethics’ are implicit in this life because there is no division between love and faith[11] and finally because of the life of Him who is Life: “Fortunate is the man who is broken in pieces and offered to others, who is poured out and given to others to drink.”[12]

Victor Keegan presents the “parallel universe” of virtual worlds in a largely positive light – or at least in terms of opportunities. Yet in a context where truth is largely irrelevant[13] how can love be possible? How can self-knowledge be attained? He comments that in the virtual world you are connect to those who share your interests rather than your geography. In other words, it is the ultimate in ghettoization. He acknowledges that it may be “partly” escapism, but this is accepted since “above all, it is fun, in three dimensions”. Keegan anticipates that children will grow up accepting “virtual worlds” to be “a normal part of their lives” – but is it a “part” of (real) life, or is it really a “second life”? Is it something that can be integrated into real life? The divorced couple he mentions did not seem to manage it. If one spends a lot of time in a “second life” in which one is masked, with the ability to present oneself not as one is but however one wants to be, what dangers are there spiritually and psychologically? What does it mean to relate to other faceless people when one is faceless, or worse, other masked people when one is masked? How can one have a personal relationship without the true person being known? Keegan comments on the business meetings that take place in Second Life – it would be interesting to know whether any studies have compared interaction in ‘virtual’ meetings with that which takes place in meetings where people are really face to face. Given the difference between emails and letters, and the difference between how people present comments on a blog or news item and how they discuss similar issues in real life, we should anticipate that there will be significant differences. Apart from all this, the economic questions are also significant. His comment “the production of extra units of virtual goods costs nothing” is telling – one could expect that the production of something without real existence would cost nothing; the remarkable thing is that it comes to have a value which can be priced in real currency: how perfect for a nihilistic age, materialism without even the material!

[1] p83, the sin that caused the fall.

[2] p83

[3] p84, in the discussion of St Basil

[4] p84, quoting St Maximos

[5] p86

[6] p35

[7] p17

[8] p18

[9] See pp20-21

[10] p23 – e.g. the thief: “Remember me, Lord, in Thy Kingdom”

[11] See p26

[12] p36

[13] It is a “parallel life in which you can shape the rules.”

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. (Col. 4:2)

As it is the duty of all men and women to fulfil the same commandments of the moral law over and over again, so it is our priestly duty to repeat over and over again the same prayers, beginning with the Lord’s Prayer itself, for it is not by variety of prayers that the soul is strengthened, but by their constant repetition, and so by their being brought into our heart, into our will, and into our whole life.

***

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Heb. 13:8)

When you pray with prayers that you have grown accustomed to, from praying them over and over again, remember that the Lord is for all eternity the same. Your heart may change and grow cold, but the same words or the same prayers still have the same power with the Lord, who himself is the same, yesterday, today and for ever.

Harakas pp1-35; “The Professional Panhandling Plague”; Plato Republic Book II

In this first chapter of Harakas’s book, he attempts to outline an introduction to the study of Christian Ethics, looking at the two foundations of Theology and the theoria of Christian Ethics and how the praxis of Christian Ethics is to be built on these[1]. He also points out that to rigidly divide theology, theoria and praxis would be artificial: they are all bound up in the ecclesial life which embodies Christian ethics.[2]

Some of the key themes he covers which must always be kept in mind when considering specifically Christian ethics include

· the fact that the purpose of the ethical life is theosis[3] which implies an orientation towards the Trinitarian life (though it would be more accurate to say that the real purpose of life is Christ, theosis being an effect of moving towards that telos),

· that there is therefore an implicit call to the ethical life being formed in “patterned relationships”[4] and a central focus on a “love-ethic”,

· that when speaking of ‘freedom’ in Christian ethics, this is not equivalent in Orthodox use to self-determination (αυτεξουσιον) but to the ability to act in harmony with the divine will without conflict,

· that the Tradition of the Church has a normative character for the method of approaching ethics and ecclesial life (including but not limited to the sacramental life of the Church) is the context for living this out: where the transfigured life of the person is formed and developed in embodied relationships[5].

The extract from Plato’s Republic shows Socrates being asked to justify the goodness of justice. His pupils see three classes of good: those undesirable in themselves but desirable for their consequences (e.g. medicine); those desirable only in themselves (e.g. joy); and those desirable both in themselves and for their consequences (e.g. knowledge). They would like to think justice would be in the third class, but can see no reason for putting it anywhere but the first. Surely justice would be a good in itself, they say, and yet if someone were free of the consequences he would never choose to behave justly because it is always a disadvantage to himself.

In the fleshing-out of this idea, they describe two men: one who lives ‘perfectly’ unjustly and through indulging all his desires builds up for himself wealth, comfort and good repute, and another who lives perfectly justly and for his pains and self-sacrifice suffers poverty and the scorn of all. In this we can see the same pattern as that described in the book of Job, where the world does not reward the upright and godly life. This itself, of course, along with the ‘suffering servant’ of Isaiah, is a prefigurement of Christ himself.

“The Professional Panhandling Plague” describes how the charity of those who give to beggars is abused by “street people who have made panhandling their calling”, often giving misleading impressions of their personal situations, demanding money by aggressive means and sometimes building up to violent crime. There are many ethical questions that arise from this article, one of the more subtle being the question of whether it is permissible to manipulate laws designed for other purposes to deal with the problem of the beggars (banning motorists from giving “framing the legislation as safety ordinances”), along with more familiar questions such as what responsibility the giver bears for the way the money is used and whether giving encourages the less honest ‘career-beggar’ and even violent crime.

[1] He claims to be doing something different from St Paul and St John Chrysostom in that modern circumstances require an “enumeration” of ethics which was not previously necessary (p3). In fact, both St Paul and Chrysostom do “enumerate” practical points of life precisely because they were not necessarily clear (or at least not always followed) by their hearers. What could not be done (and still cannot be done) is to come up with some exhaustive list of right actions for all occasions.

[2] p25, though he does sometimes tend to imply a too-rigid distinction, for example “faith is to be applied to life” (p3) – surely faith is life for a Christian, not a theory or collection of doctrines that is “applied” to a life that has in some way been constructed without it. He does get close to making this point: "… Christian truth is not a compilation of ideas and concepts, but rather, a reality experienced in the Christian community which reflects the mystical life of the Holy Trinity" (p9).

[3] p6, though rather than theosis he prefers the weaker term “God-likeness”

[4] p12

[5] p18-19, 25

Reflection on From the 25^th Hour to Eternity (Georghiu) and On the Priesthood (St John Chrysostom) chapters 4, 7. (Reflection on Counsels on the Christian Priesthood (St John of Kronstadt) chapter 3 to follow when the book becomes available.)

The basic theme of these readings is to emphasize both the extreme weight of responsibility of the priesthood, especially in terms of pastoral responsibility for the souls in the care of the priest, and also the glory of the priesthood – a glory which has to be understood in specifically Christian terms as that glory shown not only in the resurrected, glorified and ascended Christ, but also in Christ reigning in glory on the cross.

Georghiu describes his priestly father in iconic terms, from his first vision of his father as an icon to his later awareness of how his father’s mode of living out his priesthood in constant service to his flock led to both the aging and breaking of his physical body along with an illuminating radiance in his glance that would seem to light up what he observed and which led to Georghiu seeing him “as bright as an icon”. Again, the glory and the sacrifice are two sides of the same coin.

Likewise in Chrysostom: in telling of the priesthood in ways which justify his attempt to flee so great an honour, he describes both the sacrifice – how the priest must risk not only his life but even his soul in taking on the pastoral care of the flock, and the glory – “bringing down, not fire [as Elijah did], but the Holy Spirit” he notes in a beautiful passage on the role of the priest in the Divine Liturgy.

Chrysostom’s expressions of the character of the priest are enough to make most follow his example and run! The priest “needs great wisdom and a thousand eyes, to examine the soul’s condition from every angle”. He needs “a heroic spirit” and must be “as pure as if he were standing in heaven itself”. The magnitude of the task excludes most men, being open only to those who “far excel all others” and are “above the rest in spiritual stature”. Who is going to claim this for himself? The need for this heroic spirit and great stature is the pastoral responsibility of the priest for his people in discernment of spiritual disease, its effects and its appropriate treatment; the ability to discern the right path between an overly rigorous approach leading to despair and an overly lenient one leading to complacency; avoiding the temptations of the world which attempt to lead the flock and the priest himself astray; and serving as a spiritual midwife who leads those who are brought to him through the pregnancy of preparation into the new birth of baptism. In the end, according to Chrysostom, the priest as ruler exceeds an earthly king, as physician exceeds an earthly doctor, and as father exceeds an earthly parent. No man can achieve this, and yet we know of great saints who have reached such a level of humility that they have been able to accept these gifts from the one Lord who is the true priest of all.

When Georghiu complains to his father that the people do not treat the priest well, and expect more of him than a human can give, his father tells him, “the priest is not human but a sacrifice of a human that is added to the sacrifice of God.” This was also the experience of St Paul: “I rejoice in my sufferings on behalf of you, and fill up the things lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, on behalf of his body, which is the Church, of which I became a minister” (see Col. 1:24-2:3). The afflictions of the older Fr Georghiu are described in detail in the poverty of his family, the 30km daily walks in the snow to serve his people, the premature aging of his almost “immaterial and fragile” body. The glory is shown in the wearing of the priestly stole, the epitrachelion – but again this glory is described in terms of the sacrifice it represents when Georghiu tells of circumstances so severe that the only epitrachelion available is a piece of rope – worn nonetheless as that priestly stole – and worn also by those priests whose priesthood served to the last earthly sacrifice in mid-twentieth-century Romania when such a piece of rope was used to hang them.

In the imitation of his master, Georghiu tells us, sociologists have observed that the faithful servant will take on characteristics of the master. Thus a faithful priest takes on characteristics of his Lord – sharing in the glory and in the sacrifice.