Healed of Our Sins, Healed of Our Passions

Sunday, August 24, 2008: 10th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — Tone 1. Hieromartyr Eutychius, disciple of St. John the Theologian (1st c.). Translation of the Relics of St. Peter, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia (1479). Ven. Arsény, Abbot of Komel' (Vologdá—1550). Martyr Tation (Tatio) of Claudiopolis (305). Virgin Martyr Cyra (Kira) of Persia (558). St. George Limniotes the Confessor of Mt. Olympus (8th c.). St. Kozma of Berat, Evangelizer of Southern Albania (18th-19th c.). Repose of New Hieromartyr Cosmas of Aetolia, Equal-to-the-Apostles (1779). The "PETROVSKAYA" Icon of the Most-Holy Theotokos.

And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him." Then Jesus answered and said, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me." And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?" So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting. Now while they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up. And they were exceedingly sorrowful.

(Matthew 17:14-23)

We need to be careful in how we understand the idea that illness (whether physical or mental) is the result of sin.

While it can be, and at is, the result of my personal sin, for the Fathers of the Church sickness is a symptom of the fallen condition of all humanity. In other words, while I might be sick because of something I did, it is also possible that my sickness is the result not of my personal actions but rather a consequence of Adam's transgression all those many years ago in the Garden.

And even here, with the idea that illness is a result of our fallen condition, or of human sinfulness, we must exercise great caution. Again for the Fathers, illness, like physical death and all our other experiences of our own limits, is not a punishment. Rather sickness is given to humanity by God to help remind us of our absolute dependence on Him and our relative dependence upon each other. In other words, physical and mental illness are therapeutic, they are part of how God heals us--personally and communally--of our sinfulness.

With this in mind we can turn to the Gospel for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost. In line with the general patristic understanding of sickness, in his own comments on this passage, Origen (Commentary on Matthew, 13.4) says that "every disease and weakness which our Savior cured" during His ministry on earth "represents different symptoms in the soul." So, for example, "the paralytics" represent those who paralyze the soul by wedding it to the desire of the flesh. The "blind" symbolize for Origen those who are indifferent, and even hostile, to the "things seen by the soul alone," for example, faith, hope and love the three great virtues of the Christian life. (see, 1 Cor 13.13) The "deaf" remind us of those he says of those who close their hearts and will not receive "the word of salvation."

For Origen, as for the Fathers of the Church more generally, the meaning of the material world was found on two levels simultaneously. The physical (which includes the body and society) and the spiritual (which permeates the physical and both undergirds and transcends it). As with paralysis, blindness and deafness, so to with epilepsy, it has a physical, or we might say medical meaning, but also a spiritual meaning that transcends (but does not minimize or invalidate) the physical meaning. Origen tells us:

On the same principle it will be necessary that the matters regarding the epileptic should be investigated. Now this affection attacks the sufferers at considerable intervals, during which he who suffers from it seems in no way to differ from the man in good health, at the season when the epilepsy is not working on him. Similar disorders you may find in certain souls, which are often supposed to be healthy in point of temperance and the other virtues; then, sometimes, as if they were seized with a kind of epilepsy arising from their passions, they fall down from the position in which they seemed to stand, and are drawn away by the deceit of this world and other lusts.

In other words, Origen see epilepsy as symbolic of the passions.

We hear a great deal about the passions in Orthodox theology and spiritual writings but often we might not know what the word means. The word itself comes from the Greek word, pathos, meaning to suffer. It has the connotation of something in the face of which I am passive. So a passion is something that controls me that can come and (like an epileptic seizure) take over my life and rob me of my autonomy.

In coming then to heal the epileptic boy Jesus demonstrates His desire as well to heal all humanity of our passions, of those things in our life that rob us of self-possession, that enslave us and rob us of our freedom.

Thinking about it for a moment, the connection between my passions and my own lack of inner freedom should become clear to me. For example, I might be the nicest guy in the world (I am not I assure you. Nor, I hasten to add do I aspire to be, but that is for another day). But (and we all know someone like this, we might be related to this person, or even be this person) there are just little things that set me off--cause me for example to fly into a rage or sink into depression. When these things happen, I am no longer in control of my actions or (especially in extreme cases) my thoughts. What is in control? anger or despair.

Likewise we can see something similar happening with lust, or envy, or greed, or any of the Seven Deadly Sins in classical western theology or the eight evil thoughts about which Evagrius warns his monastic readers. Whatever list we use, the point is the same: We need to struggle against those habits of thought and action that have the power to rob us of our ability to act freely.

How do we do this? There are I think four things we can do.

There is first of all Holy Confession. When I come to confession I do so not simply to say what I have done wrong (much less what my spouse, children or co-workers have done wrong), but also to seek the help of Christ and the priest to understand why I have behaved as I have. In other words, not just what sins have I committed, but what are the particular passions that have control over me? This is what the father does when he confesses to Christ his own unbelief.

Second, it is important that as I come to understand what particular passions have gripped me, I need to learn two things: when are these passions likely to be aroused in me and how do I avoid feed into them when they do? The second of these is by far the harder of the two tasks since, especially early on, I am often unaware that I am consenting to the passion until it is too late. As a quick aside, this is why we have in the Church formal periods of communal fasting--so that we can slowly wean ourselves from our addictions to different passions.

Third, I must pray. Not only do I have to ask God, like the boy's father, to heal me, I also must be in the habit of setting aside time to simply sit in the presence of God with a listening and obedient heart. It is all too easy for me to always run to God with the things I want, asking Him in effect to bless my passions (especially if I have a passionate need to be seen by myself and others as a "good Christian"!). While it is good and proper to ask for what I need (as the father does, "Help my unbelief!"), it is also important that I allow God to instruct me in how He would have me live. I should ask Him to make me a good Christian, but to be a good husband or priest according to His will for my life.

Fourth and finally, I must be willing to bear patiently with not simply the will of God but the timing of God. Often it seems God allows me to suffer my own passions as a way to break me of my habits. In effect God seems to practice the spiritual equivalent of aversion therapy with me. There are times when God will keep giving me what I want until I realize I really don't want it. This actually seems to be Origen's opinion. He writes:

Perhaps, therefore, you would not err if you said, that such persons, so to speak, are epileptic spiritually, having been cast down by "the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places," (Eph 6:12) and are often ill, at the time when the passions attack their soul; at one time falling into the fire of burnings, when, according to what is said in Hosea, they become adulterers, like a pan heated for the cooking from the burning flame; (Hos 7:4) and, at another time, into the water, when the king of all the dragons in the waters casts them down from the sphere where they appeared to breath freely, so that they come into the depths of the waves of the sea of human life. This interpretation of ours in regard to the lunatic will be supported by him who says in the Book of Wisdom with reference to the even temperament of the just man, "The discourse of a pious man is always wisdom," but, in regard to what we have said, "The fool changes as the moon." (Sir 27:11) And sometimes even in the case of such you may see impulses which might carry away in praise of them those who do not attend to their want of ballast, so that they would say that it was as full moon in their case, or almost full moon. And you might see again the light that seemed to be in them diminishing,— as it was not the light of day but the light of night,— fading to so great an extent, that the light which appeared to be seen in them no longer existed. But whether or not those who first gave their names to things, on account of this gave the name of lunacy to the disease epilepsy, you will judge for yourself.

Again, while it is important to distinguish physical and spiritual illness, it is clear that for Origen, the spiritual epileptic is so as a result of his own foolish desires. God has given him over to what he (imagine) he wants until, finally, he repents.

My friends, Christ has offered us, and through us the whole human family and indeed the whole creation, the possibility of being free. This freedom does not come as the result of human action, I don't make myself free. It comes rather as a free gift of divine grace. When you or I struggle against are passions what we are really doing, is struggling against our own tendencies to reject the gift of freedom and divine life. Again as Origen says in his sermon, "they are free who abide in the truth of the word of God, and on this account, know the truth, that they also may become free from sin. If, any one then, is a son simply, and not in this matter wholly a son of the kings of the earth, he is free." Let us turn from our own willful, and unintended, rejection of divine grace and instead, with open and obedient hearts, stand together in Christ in Whose will for us personally and as a community we can find true freedom and life everlasting.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

O Fathers, Where Art Thou?

Gabriel on the blog "Going Along" offers what I think is an insightful critique of how the fathers are often [mis-]used in contemporary Orthodox theology. He puts into words something that I sensed in my conversation with many Orthodox Christians but haven't been quite able to put into words. There is a tendency among Orthodox Christians--both on the "right" and the "left" as he says--to elevate the fathers to the point where they are viewed effectively as themselves revealed . Yes, as Gabriel say, the fathers are godly, but they are godly commentators on revelation and not themselves revealed.

I have reproduced the whole post here, but please go, read what is posted on Gabriel's site and leave a comment there (and here if you would).

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

O Fathers, Where Art Thou?

I have long held some hard reservations about making any of my posts deal with concrete issues in Orthodox theology. This is an extension of an even deeper reserve when it comes to the Church Fathers themselves. I have long thought that it would be worth the efforts of some enterprising soul to write a comprehensive account called, "The Use and Abuse of the Fathers of the Church in Contemporary Orthodoxy." I think it could be written in a non-polemical manner, charitable to well-meaning missteps, and brutal in exposing what has become a loathsome enterprise of proof-texting and fideism. That this has occurred on both the "right" and the "left" is not surprising since, with the exception of a few current writers, the dark clouds of historicist thinking have crept over Orthodox Patristic (or neo-Patristic) thought. The one "escape" which has been utilized more than proposed and examined is to interpret the Fathers as in no small sense divine, i.e., lift their thought out of the historical context not on the basis that they might have understood themselves to be confronting permanent questions of theology and morals, but on the basis that they were divinized insights which, by virtue of that divinization, renders them ahistorical. This line of interpretation has been put into practice with such Fathers as St. Symeon the New Theologian and even St. Basil the Great, a Father who—right or wrongly—tends to be interpreted in a far less "mystical" manner than St. Symeon. The logic behind this interpretation stems, I believe, from the Church's recognition of these men as Saints. Since saintliness and godliness are coeval, the "natural" extension is that their thought is godly, divine, even revelatory. Some critics of Orthodoxy have pointed out that this line of interpretation collapses the distinction between Biblical Revelation and the interpretation of that Revelation by the Fathers. That critique could be pushed a bit further, I think. At what point does it appear illogical to cease understanding what the Fathers have to say as a "new revelation"? Defenders of Orthodoxy would, of course, reject such a notion just as they reject the Roman Catholic notion of Development of Doctrine. Yet the lines are not clear when the writings of the Fathers take on a revelatory character, when they are deemed authoritative by the Will of God, and seen as the manifestation of supernatural experiences.

I say all of this not to reject the notion that any one Father or all of the Fathers had supernatural experiences. I do not mean to falsely separate their sanctity from their writings as some scholars are wont to do. Yet at the same time it seems too easy, nay, too simplistic, to use their relationship with God as an "escape" from the historicizing of other scholars. The ill effects of this attempted "escape" is the indiscriminate doctrinization of what the Fathers have to say. But nobody who isn't hopelessly naïve can successfully assert anymore that there exists universal agreement on all pertinent problems in the writings of the Fathers. (This is true whether or not one is inclined to exclude "heretics" such as Cyril of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Augustine, Theodoret of Cyrene, etc.) What, then, do we make of these "differences of opinion"? And on what basis can we call them "opinions" if we are already disposed to hold that their writings—all of their writings—come from the inspiration of God? Is it possible that some are rooted in divine experience and some to that fallacious instrument known as human reason? Are the former privileged over the latter? And, assuming this is a privilege worth bestowing, do we have any meaningful way to discern now which writings come from divine experience and which are merely the products of some rationalization, i.e., a working through of problems in a manner that is logical, orderly, and without, apparently, the requisite "mysticism" that may be taken in a spiritually-starved age as proof positive of holy worth? If arbitrariness is not to be extended as a sanctified outcome of the Church's "spiritual theology," then some criterion must exist—be it rational or otherwise. Perhaps the less rational is, the more likely it is to gain purchase.

As convenient as it no doubt is, a "return to the Fathers" is a fairly recent phenomena. The "right" in Orthodoxy may find comfort in the continuity thesis, but the "left" is still fairly certain that for hundreds of years, most ordained priests lived without access to most Patristic texts. (Cf. Triodion of the seventeenth-century Russian Church and the conspicuous absence of St. Gregory Palamas's commemoration.) Whether or not this calls into question the veracity of Holy Tradition in Orthodoxy seems, to me, to be a separate question altogether which ought to be answered in the negative. The only matter worth reflecting on here is the possibility that the Church went on absent a "Patristic consciousness" drawn from the sources themselves but, rather, maintained in other integral ways. The "left" call that nonsense, speaking so often as they do of distortions, interpolations, and that dreaded "Western captivity" (when, of course, the Church itself wasn't ambling through history under a cloud of total darkness). Today's return or, if you will, amplification of the Church's sure Patristic roots (which are, actually, its clear Apostolic roots) should not be lamented. What ought to be questioned is whether or not this has even really begun or, perhaps, if Orthodoxy is still not laboring under a false belief that historicist readings, spiritualized defenses, and more than a taint of triumphalism amounts to the same thing.

Unless other wise noted, everything posted here is © 2007 Gregory R Jensen