Orthodox Veteran (Updated 22.11.2011)

We have received an email from Glen Barrett (not his real name). With his permission we print it, slightly edited, and provide our answer. However, we must point out that we are not a medical doctor or lawyer and cannot provide personal advice to anyone; our answers must be taken only in the most general terms, as applying to anyone who might be found in a situation such as the one described. Here is the email:

Dear Orthodox Monk:

I have recently discovered your blog and it has been a source of great education and edification for me, so thank you for that. Before I get into the substance of my question I’ll give a little background. Some years ago I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy from Protestantism. I did so after reading for some time about Orthodoxy and taking catechumenical classes at the nearest canonical Orthodox Church. I felt drawn toward Orthodoxy then, both spiritually and intellectually, and I still do today. However, at the time I was a member of the US Armed Forces and not long after my conversion I had to deploy to the Middle East and wasn’t able to attend services for upwards of eighteen months. Upon my return, I slowly began making my way back into Orthodox practice during which time I was diagnosed with a series of injuries that precluded my continued service in the military. Not long after my medical retirement from the military I accepted a position working outside the US as an instructor for the military. It pays the bills, and for that I am thankful, but the area I am in is remote and doesn’t offer me the opportunity to take part in Orthodox services, as the nearest canonical Church is several hours away and presents multiple language barriers.

Background offered, here is the substance of my question:

God’s will, as related to an individual, seems to have two aspects: general and specific. In general, as I understand it, God’s wants all of us to live moral lives and grow to know Him. By living moral lives, I mean following morality as it is understood by the Orthodox Church in Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture. But what of the specific, more personal aspects of God’s will? Growing up as a Protestant, I was taught, in as much as generic Protestantism teaches, that God has a specific, particular will for every Christian. Go here, do this, go there, be that; very scripted and divinely managed. Does Orthodoxy teach something similar and, if so, how does one discern God’s particular will for himself? Less abstractly, here is my personal dilemma and the situation I am trying to make sense of.

My background in the military was very tactically-oriented and in that environment I flourished. In that environment, I felt a sense of belonging and accomplishment and felt as though my particular talents were being used to their best. It was a hard life, physically, mentally and spiritually, but I enjoyed the challenge of it. I was sad to leave the military but understood the necessity of it as I had injuries that precluded my continued service. Since leaving that environment I have been listless, to the point of ennui. I would like to rejoin that community or one similar, albeit in a different capacity, but have had great difficulty in gaining admittance. So, my question: how should an Orthodox Christian (i.e. how should I) discern the difference between a door that is temporarily closed and one that is closed permanently? How should an Orthodox Christian discern in himself between persistence and stubbornness?

I understand that this is a complex issue and one that would be best served by working with a spiritual father or Church Elder but as I said those options are not available to me at present. I am hesitant to engage in more advanced spiritual practices to assist with this issue, as I am not actively practising the liturgy and I understand that spiritually speaking a young Orthodox should not run off into the numinous without the guidance of a more experienced member of the Church.

I apologize for laying this burden on you, but I do not know where else to turn in this, as I am the only Orthodox member of my family and, forgive my lack of charity, the pat Protestant answers that served in my youth no longer satisfy.

God Bless and Thank You,

Glen

This is a very complex issue. Let’s start from the beginning. A man has found fulfilment in the military in a ‘very tactical’ assignment. In a classic description of the esprit de corps of an elite military unit he writes, ‘I felt a sense of belonging and accomplishment and felt as though my particular talents were being used to their best. It was a hard life, physically, mentally and spiritually, but I enjoyed the challenge of it.’ But now the man has been injured and has been obliged to leave his unit. He wants to return to it in any capacity at all but has not been allowed. Should he keep trying?

We don’t know. We don’t know what injuries Glen has suffered even at a lay level of description. We don’t know the medical and administrative policies concerning medical discharges of the particular branch of the US Military to which Glen was attached. We have no idea whether anything would come of it if Glen were to write to the Secretary of the Army (or equivalent) or to the Secretary of Defense or to the President. Maybe yes, maybe no, depending on the circumstances. Short of a revelation, there is no way we can answer the question.

However, we can make some general observations. There are really two possibilities: either the man should and can, through persistence, return to his unit; or he should drop the matter and move on with his life. That of course is Glen’s issue with the discernment of the will of God for him.

Assuming that none of Glen’s listlessness and ennui is due to his injuries, Glen is essentially suffering from a form of grief. His listlessness and ennui—one might think ‘mild depression’—are the result of his bereavement in being separated from his unit. This is perfectly natural, we think, so long as it does not go on an inordinate length of time. However, we are not a medical doctor.

Moreover we think that the transition from a very intense life to a rather more sedentary life is also causing Glen’s ennui: when we transition from a very intense way of life to a less intense way of life, there is necessarily the feeling of listlessness and ennui that Glen refers to. This again is natural; it is only overcome when we begin to transfer our psychic energy to new endeavours. This can take some time and implies that we find other endeavours which interest us to the same degree that the old endeavours did.

Should Glen write to the officials mentioned above? Assuming that his injuries do not objectively preclude his returning to his unit—he will have to be honest with himself—there is no reason not to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is that the officials either ignore his appeal or say no.

However, before he writes, Glen might wish to think about the following issues. If we assume that Glen’s injuries do in the final analysis constitute a barrier to his returning to his unit in any capacity, then he has just found out the will of God for Glen: objective circumstances which either impose a duty on someone or prevent him from doing something are the will of God for that person.

Let us explain. Let us suppose in a first hypothetical case that the unmarried Glen has fathered a child with an unmarried woman. Then the will of God is that Glen marry the child’s mother. Case closed.

Let us suppose in a second hypothetical case that Glen is happily married and his wife dies. Then the will of God is that Glen live without his wife. Glen is going to experience grief for a time and then must move on with rest of his life. Glen’s present predicament vis à vis his military service is that he doesn’t know whether he’s in the position of a man who has lost his wife or whether persistence will pay off in his returning to the unit.

Let us look at broader issues that Glen should think about. First of all, conversion to the Orthodox Church by an American Protestant, especially from an Evangelical (including charismatic or Pentecostal) background is very difficult. The basic problem is that such people have a spiritual experience—either being ‘born again’ or ‘being baptized in the Holy Spirit’—before entering the Orthodox Church and that prior experience seems to them to be a touchstone for all further religious experience even in the Orthodox Church. The experience of joining the Church seems to them to have been accomplished in their being born again or in being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Hence conversion to Orthodoxy is often seen as merely the culmination of an authentic spiritual life already lived long before entry into the Orthodox Church.

But that means a number of things. These people bring a lot of evangelical or charismatic spiritual baggage with them into the Orthodox Church. They have a tendency to remake their local Church into an idealized version of what they think the Orthodox Church should be based on their pre-Orthodox Protestant spiritual experiences. They have a tendency to pick and chose from Orthodoxy since they received the Holy Spirit long before they entered the Orthodox Church and have the spiritual discernment to purify Orthodoxy. They tend to impose their will on their fellow parishioners. Much of the disarray in the Orthodox Church in America can be traced to this.

Properly, a conversion to the Orthodox Church implies a spiritual death to all that has gone before and a learning of the authentic patristic interpretation of Orthodoxy. Properly, it entails being ‘born again’ in baptism. Hence, in being born again in baptism, the new convert encounters a life that is Orthodox, and learns how to live that life from his priest and from the Fathers of the Church.

We are not suggesting that Glen comes precisely out of this background. However we want to make clear that conversion from Protestantism in America to the Orthodox Church is problematical.

Now, the issue we would like to pose to Glen to think about is this. It is perhaps possible for you to return to your unit and the Orthodox Church does not forbid military service. However, you have just converted to Orthodoxy and perhaps it is time for you to concentrate not on rejoining your unit but on becoming a mature Orthodox? We don’t have an answer to this. It is conceivable to us that a Spirit-bearing Orthodox Elder might to one person counsel return to the unit and to another person leaving the military to concentrate on the Orthodox spiritual life.

And here we get to the substance of Glen’s question—how can we discern the will of God for us? God’s will is not quite as rationalist as Glen’s description of the Protestant understandings of the will of God that he encountered in his youth. However, as part of a personal relationship between the Orthodox believer and God, God does have a will for each person. Sometimes we learn the will of God situationally, as we described above, and sometimes we learn it charismatically—but charismatically from an Orthodox Elder. This usually involves Life and Light. That is, when in discussion with an Orthodox Elder we discover the will of God for us, the experience is that of meeting the Light and Life and Love of God in the person of the Elder. One common problem Westerners have in meeting such an Elder is that they tend to over-interpret his words as if the Elder were an oracle. What must be received is the sense of what the Elder is saying as he is illuminated by the Holy Spirit concerning us. The Spirit gives life. The letter kills.

(Update 22.11.2011: Here is what we wrote in an older post:

Let us look at the full definition that St John of Sinai gives of discernment, to be found in Step 23, 1 of the Ladder of Divine Ascent:

23, 1 Discernment, first, is in beginners the true deep knowledge of things which pertain to themselves; in intermediates, then, the spiritual sense which faultlessly discriminates among that which is really good, that which is naturally good and the opposite (i.e. the bad); in the perfect, finally, that spiritual knowledge existing within the perfect which comes about through divine enlightenment and which is strong enough to illuminate that which exists darkly in others.

O perhaps most generally this is known to be and in fact is discernment: the sure possession of the will of God in every time and place and thing, which exists only in those who are pure in heart and body and mouth. Discernment is an unspotted conscience and a pure sense.

First, it should be obvious that the degree of discernment that St John assigns to the perfect is rare.

Next, from what we have said it should be clear that this has nothing to do with the exercise of reason by the mind or nous, although the mind or nous certainly has the faculty of reason. However, what is involved is a higher faculty of the mind or nous, what the philosophers call ‘intuitive cognition’. That means ‘seeing directly without using the reason’. So when the Holy Spirit illuminates us, we see directly what it is that we see. This seeing is knowing. It is a spiritual seeing that becomes a spiritual knowing.

We can further see that there are stages in the evolution of the charism of discernment in the man as he proceeds on his spiritual road, and that personal purification plays a very important role.

Wounded by Love contains spiritual reminiscences by Elder Porphyrios, who had the gift of clairvoyance in power. Elder Paisios of Mount Athos is quoted as remarking about his own gift of clairvoyance in relation to Elder Porphyrios’ gift: ‘I have a black and white television set, but Elder Porphyrios has a colour television set.’

On pp. 27 – 33 of Wounded by Love, Elder Porphyrios describes his reception at the age of 16 of the Holy Spirit in power, his resulting illumination, and his simultaneous reception of the gift of clairvoyance. These things were transmitted to him through another Athonite Elder, Elder Dimas, without Elder Dimas’ having anything to do with it: the Holy Spirit ‘jumped’ from Elder Dimas to the young monk without Elder Dimas’ knowledge. Why? How? Who knows?

The translation of the Greek text of the passage has a few problems, but the essential message gets through. Note that ‘clear sight’ in the text is clairvoyance; the original Greek is to dioratiko.

Here we have an account by a modern Elder of how he received the gift of clairvoyance, and if what he says isn’t clear, we are not in a position to make it any clearer.

Let us return to the present post:)

There is another way to learn the will of God which is more difficult. That is to pray. Not to hear a voice or see a vision—God forbid that Glen should do that—but if we pray sincerely and insist, then God will hear our prayer. We will understand our way. It is important to be decisive and to insist—not with arrogance as if God owes us great guys something but rather like the widow in the Gospel Parable. Remember the widow who hassled the wicked judge until he gave her justice—her persistence is what paid off. The wicked judge figured that she wasn’t going away and that to be done with her he had to give her what she wanted. God tells us that we have to do the same with Him. We think that Glen should do this humbly and without getting into an anxiety state. The very act of praying is in some sense an answer. Even if objectively the answer takes time, God knows what he’s doing by delaying. Remember, in the ‘Our Father’ we pray, ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.’ Given that Glen has a job at the moment that keeps food on the table—not to be sneezed at in this day and age—we would think that he should continue doing what he is doing while he prays.

Additionally, since Glen is living overseas, he might consider visiting Mt. Athos. Who knows, maybe a conversation with a Spirit-bearing Elder will happen and he will see what he is to do.

We give him our best wishes.

Commentary on the Our Father

Here is a little commentary on the Our Father.

TEXT:

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς,

Our Father, you who are in the Heavens,

ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·

May your name be sanctified;

ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·

May your Kingdom come;

γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.

May what you will come to pass, as in the Heavens so upon the earth.

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον·

Give us today our daily bread;

καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,

And forgive us our debts,

ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν·

As we also forgive our debtors;

καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,

And do not lead us into temptation,

ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.

But deliver us from the Evil One.

COMMENTARY:

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς,

Our Father, you who are in the Heavens,

Unusually in the history of religion, the fundamental Christian prayer begins in the plural. One possible explanation is that the text that we have is actually a liturgical text. Such a liturgical text would necessarily be in the plural because it would be part of the practice of group worship. That this might be so is witnessed by the liturgical doxology which follows the prayer. And indeed the Our Father is prayed corporately in the Divine Liturgy.

However, there is no tradition in the Orthodox Church that the Our Father is merely a liturgical prayer; rather the Fathers consider the prayer the fundamental prayer of Christians, a prayer taught by God.

And, indeed, it seems to us that the Our Father contains the Gospel in a nutshell.

Hence, we must take the plural as conveying something deeper than merely an original liturgical setting of the Our Father.

The basic message we take from the plural is that we are not saved as isolated individuals but as members of the Church. The Church is so fundamental a concept in Christianity that it behoves us to pray for all members of the Church even when we are praying just for ourselves.

Next, is the appellation of God, ‘Father’. We are able to call God ‘Father’ because we are baptized. As we have learned, in baptism we have received the Holy Spirit and it has taken up its abode in our nous, our created spirit, restoring in us the image of God. This restored image of God is not a mere resemblance but so close and intimate that we are able to address God as our Father.

This is not metaphor: in Baptism we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God. But as we have learned, with baptism we have not acquired the fullness of adoption as sons and daughters of God, the fullness of the ‘in the likeness’. Rather, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit we struggle in our personal ascetical endeavour to realize our calling.

We can see, however, that it as members of the Church that we engage in this personal ascetical struggle.

Not only is this a matter of social solidarity—say, going to Church on Sundays—but a matter of participation in the mysterial or sacramental life of the Church: we engage in our personal ascetical effort to pass from the ‘in the image’ of the baptized Orthodox Christian to the ‘in the likeness’ of the sanctified Orthodox Christian by participating in the mysteries or sacraments of the Orthodox Church according to the rules and norms (typika) of the Church. We do not cut our own road, being smarter than the Fathers who wrote the rules under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That is foolish. That is not consistent with our praying the Our Father.

Another way to put this is that through entry into the Orthodox Church in baptism having been adopted as sons and daughters of God, we must struggle to become sons and daughters of God in fullness: with the assistance of Grace we must struggle to become sons and daughters of God in the sense that Jesus taught: be ye therefore perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. We must come to be sons and daughters of God who share in the love of God perfectly and who give that love of God perfectly to their neighbours and especially to their brothers and sisters.

‘Neighbour’ includes those who are not in the Church; ‘brother and sister’ refers to those in the Church.

Part of giving that love perfectly to our brothers and sisters is to pray ‘Our Father…’

The next part of this petition is ‘you who are in the Heavens’. It might be more exact to translate the beginning of the prayer ‘Our Father in the Heavens’.

Why would ‘you who are in the Heavens’ have been added by the Word of God made flesh to the Prayer he taught?

To which father are we praying? To our earthly father? To a political leader? To ‘Il Duce’? To a guru?

We are praying to ‘Our Father in the Heavens’, him who made Heaven, him who made the earth; him who made each of us, fashioning each of us in the womb when we were conceived. This it is to whom we are praying.

To invoke something in prayer is to render it present to us charismatically; it is to commune with it. Hence, when we pray ‘Our Father, you who are in the Heavens’ we are invoking the God of Gods, the Lord of Hosts, Him Who Is; we are rendering that God charismatically present in our hearts and minds; we are communing with him.

But if this is so, then immediately after we cannot turn to the Devil and the works of the Devil. That is to say, by invoking God in this way, we are purifying ourselves. We turn away from the profane to the holy, from sin and evil to justice and the good. We are sanctifying ourselves.

Our God is a holy God; our God is a jealous God. Before him there are no other gods. Hence, praying this way we develop an attitude of deep reverence for our Father, him who is in the Heavens.

When we are spiritually infants we might have a childish boldness before our Father in the Heavens, but when we mature, we must develop a profound reverence for the holiness of God, for Our Father, him who is in the Heavens.

This is the ‘idea of the holy’.

St Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews makes the observation that we have not been to the Mountain of Sinai when God descended and even a wild animal that approached the Mountain was to be stoned—stoned because that was the one sure way to put the animal to death without touching it—, and what was seen was so frightful that Moses himself said: ‘I am frightened and trembling.’ Instead, St Paul says, we have been called to myriads of angels and to the festival and assembly of the first-born who have been registered in the Heavens. Even though this is true, however, St Paul would not obliterate the notion that God is holy in the traditional Jewish sense conveyed by his description of the scene on Mt Sinai.

‘The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.’ The reverence we have for God must include the fear of him: not the slavish fear a demon or sinner might have that knows that it or he is going to suffer eternal punishment, but the fear that is engendered by holiness: we have tasted the holiness of the Lord and know that he is holy, the Fear of Isaac.

Here is what Psalm 118, 120 says:

Nail my flesh with your fear[1]; on account of your judgements I have feared.

ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·

May your name be sanctified;

When we speak of something’s name, we are speaking of what conveys that thing’s true inner essence.

There is no sense in this epoch that a name is merely a convention pointing to an object in a language game the rules of which have been arbitrarily set. Such an analysis of ‘God-language’ has nothing to do with Christianity.

No, when we pronounce the name of someone, we mean his nature—who he really is. Recall that Moses asked the voice in the Burning Bush what his name was. ‘Who shall I say has sent me?’ Moses asked. And the answer came: ‘Say that “I am” has sent you.’ (This is the Septuagint rendering.)

That is why icons of Christ Pantocrator (‘The Ruler of All Things’) have Ὁ ὬΝ (‘He Who Is’) written above Christ’s head in the halo: As the Word of God made flesh, Christ is ‘He Who Is’, the ‘I am’ who sent Moses.

That is why Christ himself says in the Eighth Chapter of the Gospel of John that ‘…you will die in your sins if you do not believe that “I am”.’

That is why when the crowd came to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked them who it was they wanted. The crowd replied ‘Jesus, the Nazarene’. He replied ‘I am’ and they fell to the ground, before their Creator.

Hence, what is it that we are asking? We are not really asking anything. We are blessing God. We are saying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts’, but in a voice suited to a mortal upon the earth.

We are blessing God.

When we bless God in this way, there is a self-negation that we assert: when we pray that God’s name be sanctified, we are denying our own self-love; we are denying ourselves. We are negating ourselves so that God might be sanctified, so that his name might be made holy.

Moreover, when we bless God’s name in this way, we are denying the evil in us. For us to pray from the heart that God’s name be sanctified is to deny sin. It is to say that we have turned to God and away from the Devil, away from his pomps.

There is a sense in which we are in fact petitioning God that his name be hallowed: we are asking that in a world in which darkness is the norm, in an impure heart such as our own, that the name of God be hallowed: that the name of God be hallowed by the advent of justice both in the world and in our own being.

ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·

May your Kingdom come;

This is more clearly a petition. However, it also contains an element similar to the preceding: for us to wish and ask God that his Kingdom come is to deny ourselves and our own petty kingdoms; it is to turn ourselves over to the Kingdom of God; it is to open our hearts to God and to his Kingdom. Recall that the Kingdom of God is within you. There is no sense in the Our Father that we are to engage in a holy war to bring about God’s Kingdom on earth. There is no sense that we are committed to the forcible conversion of the pagans. For recall that entry into the Kingdom of God is something that begins with a voluntary approach to the baptismal font and continues with a fundamental reorientation of all one’s life so as to pass from the ‘according to the image’ received in baptism to the ‘according the likeness’ that we accomplish through the Grace of the Holy Spirit when we are willing co-workers with the Holy Spirit in our ascetical endeavours. All of this is implied in the petition.

This is not to deny that the Church has a missionary role to play in the world. It is to deny that the petition is for the establishment of a worldly kingdom that is to be accomplished by violence. ‘For my Kingdom is not of this world.’

In praying ‘May your Kingdom come,’ we recognize that we ourselves can not bring about the passage from the ‘according to the image’ to the ‘according to the likeness’; this is something that ultimately and fundamentally must be wrought by God. Recall that the culmination of the ascetical ascent is the Divine Illumination by the Holy Spirit that confers a participation in the Divine Love, so much so that we are no longer subject to the eight passions. If the Kingdom of God is within us, then it might be thought that in such a case that the Kingdom of God has come. This is true, but to the extent that this is possible for a person on earth before departure from the body.

Indeed, that is how the Fathers interpret the Transfiguration of Mt Tabor: The Transfiguration occurred a week after Christ said that ‘there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God coming in power.’ The Fathers understand that this reference is to the event of the Transfiguration.

As St Peter said, ‘It is well for us to be here.’ As the icons of the transfiguration portray, the three apostles are struck by the revelation of the Trinity but St John, the author is the Fourth Gospel, is particularly lost in reflection: it is he who will convey the deepest sense of the revelation.

It might be remembered that St Gregory Palamas prayed continually to be enlightened by the Light of God and other saints have prayed similarly: in praying the Our Father we too are praying God to grant us this Divine Illumination that will transform us fully into sons or daughters of God by grace, when the Kingdom of God has come within us and we no longer are subject to the passions but participate in the Love of God that Jesus had and conveyed to his disciples when he washed their feet; when he came to them on the evening of the first day, the doors being barred, and said ‘Peace to you;’ when he asked them after a fruitless night fishing, ‘Children, do you have anything to eat;’ when he himself prepared a meal for them on the beach while they were hauling in the catch.

γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.

May what you will come to be, as in the Heavens so upon the earth.

We have translated more literally than is customary. This is so we can discuss the deeper meaning of the petition with greater clarity than might be possible with the customary translation.

The Greek word θέλημα conveys the thing that someone wills, not the faculty of the will that all men have. That is, if it is my will to go to New York, then that is my θέλημα. My faculty of will is called my θέλησις.

So what is it we are asking in this petition? Let us suppose that it is my will to go to New York tomorrow. Well, I can get in my car or boat or airplane or whatever and go to New York. But let us suppose that I pray the Our Father in earnest. Then what I am praying is that what God wants be done. Now some people say that God is most often indifferent if we go to New York or not; it’s how we live when we go to New York that is important.

We look at the matter somewhat differently. Jesus said that he came not to do his own will but the will of his Heavenly Father. When we pray the Our Father we are asking that what Jesus wanted happen to us to: that we no longer seek to do our own will, but the will of our Heavenly Father.

Hence, what this petition requires is a continual struggle of ‘kenosis’ or emptying. This is a big Greek word. What it means is that we empty ourselves of ourselves so that God might fill up the empty space that we have left by getting rid of ourselves. Each time we pray that the will of God be done, we are emptying ourselves, negating ourselves, turning ourselves over to God in trust that what he wants is better than what we want; we are passing from being spiritual children to spiritual adults who no longer have temper tantrums is they do not get their way, but love their Father and revere his name.

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον·

Give us today our daily bread;

We all have needs. One of the deepest messages of the Gospel is to trust in the Providence of God. This is a very deep lesson for the Christian. Early Christians sometimes took it to mean that they didn’t have to work; St Paul in Thessalonians was obliged to combat this false notion. There was a tradition in Syrian and Sinaite monasticism that the monk would not work but wait on the Providence of God; we have discussed this. However, even if we work according to strength, we have to change our orientation. Yes we work, but it is not ‘all about us’ anymore. It is about God’s providence which provides for our needs. It is no longer an ego trip, no longer a matter of my inheritance, my salary, my income, my astuteness as an investor or designer of financial instruments—it is a matter of the love of God for us and what he provides us. It is clear that this orientation has been lost in America, even among Protestants.

Moreover, there is a false doctrine among Calvinists that wealth is a sign of God’s smile upon us, a sign of our election to salvation. There is no such doctrine in Orthodoxy. It is true that sometimes God showers material blessings on a Christian just as he did on Job both before and after his trial; it is also true that sometimes God allows the Christian to be tempted by poverty so that he might see whether he or she really loves God—and not just the material possessions that God has given or allowed the person to gather.

However, a much more fundamental doctrine in Orthodoxy is that personal wealth is no particular indicator of sanctity and value in the eyes of God: it is possible to be wealthy and a friend of God; it is possible to be poor and a friend of God; the opposite in each case is possible. What matters is our spiritual wealth, our virtue. We can’t take our material possessions with us, but we can and do take our virtue—or lack of it—with us when we die. And we all surely must die. In Orthodoxy the wealthy man is the man of love, the man who cares.

Recall that one of the Beatitudes is ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.’ What this means is that the humble inherit the Kingdom of God.

Finally, it should be noted that the petition we have is not for fast cars and women and motorcycles and speed boats—it is for our daily bread. This petition entails humility: we have to humble ourselves and realize that just like anyone else we are in need of our daily bread from God. Not for anything fancy or special—let them eat cake!—but for our daily bread, the food of peasants and the poor of the earth.

So in praying this petition we are humbling ourselves before our Creator and asking him for our basic needs.

In common with the patristic understanding, we take praying for our daily bread as being to pray for our shoes, our heating bill, our rent, our kid’s clothes, and so on and so forth: for our genuine needs. It might be worth reflecting on among those of our readers who are unemployed and with no prospects of employment: Jesus Christ taught us to pray to our Heavenly Father for our daily needs; he taught us that God hears our prayers; he went so far as to speak the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge: the widow never gave up. Hence, we must continually pray to God to provide for our daily needs with the faith and hope that he will be faithful to his word—and he cannot be unfaithful to himself—and provide us our daily needs.

We had the occasion to speak to a priest recently about the burden of his pastoral duties. He remarked that the economic crash has come very heavily and very quickly, so much so that people are out on the streets without a place to live anymore, so much so that people are committing suicide.

For those in despair over their economic situation, trust in the Providence of God is very important, as is prayer for their daily bread.

καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,

And forgive us our debts,

Now we come to the heart of the Gospel. This is a very, very deep petition. Who can say that he is without sin? Who has repented from the depths of his heart so that he no longer needs to repent? Who is so humble that he no longer needs to humble himself to ask forgiveness for his sins? And God will hear us.

Recall that St Silouan wrote that before he went to the monastery he met a convicted murderer who after he had served his time was gaily dancing at a party. Intrigued, St Silouan asked the fellow how, a murderer, he could dance so gaily at the party. The man replied: when I was in prison, I prayed and prayed and prayed for God to forgive me my sin, and he heard me and now I can sing and dance.

So we must be: while we are yet in prison, we must pray and pray and pray for the forgiveness of our sin so that God might hear us and grant us forgiveness. For as the ascetical Fathers teach, in whatever condition God finds us at the hour of our death, in that condition we will go to eternity. Hence, before we die we must pray for God to forgive us our debts. Moreover, the Fathers such as St John of Sinai are clear that without such a sure sense of the forgiveness of our sins and of the concomitant presence of the grace of the Holy Spirit, we are in trouble if we die unless we are distinguished by our humility. It is now that is the time of our prison, now the time that we must implore God to forgive us our sins. And here is that petition.

ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν·

As we also forgive our debtors;

This is God’s ‘catch-22’ for us sinners. We want to obtain—if we are serious Christians—the forgiveness of our sins and bold assurance before God. But we can attain to this only if we forgive our own debtors. God is very clear on this. We forgive; he forgives; we don’t forgive; he doesn’t forgive. Nothing in the Gospel could be clearer. That’s the deal. Take it and forgive to receive forgiveness; or don’t take it and enter eternity without bold assurance before the Lord of Hosts, the Creator of your soul.

This is a very deep struggle. For while we are sinners, that does not mean that we can’t be sinned against, wounded, sometimes seriously, sometimes grievously. But there’s no other way: we have to purify our hearts and forgive. This can be a great struggle.

καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,

And do not lead us into temptation,

A humble man who has ‘been around the block’—who has some experience—will pray this petition with feeling. In fact, an index of spiritual maturity is how seriously a man will pray this petition. The more serious he is, the more he will get down on his knees and ask his Heavenly Father not to lead him into temptation. He has learned. There is no longer any time for fooling around.

What are these temptations?

As we have learned, there are eight passions. These passions map into eight types of sin. Hence, there are eight basic types of temptation. We are praying in utter sincerity for God not to lead us into temptation.

Recall that we learned in the petition above to subordinate our own will to the will of God. Perhaps God does not want us to go to New York. More importantly, whether or not we go to New York, the Devil will find a way to meet us on the way. When we pray that God not lead us into temptation, we are praying that he guide our steps so that we not run into the Devil on our way. Those of us who are spiritually blind, and don’t know where to go and where they are going, for those of us who are wandering like lost sheep must pray that God not lead them into temptation. The spiritually mature, those who see their blindness, will pray not only that God’s will be done completely in their lives, but also that God not lead them into temptation.

ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.

But deliver us from the Evil One.

This is even more important. This is not only a matter of being delivered from the human condition of bondage to sin so as to attain to the fullness of the ‘in the likeness’ of a son or daughter or God who manifests a likeness to God in all the virtues, especially the virtue of love. It is a matter of being delivered from the Devil. Just as in the previous petition, the sensible Christian and monk will pray to be delivered from the Devil. The Devil, to use a metaphor, has many tentacles and gets mixed up in many things. Sometimes we don’t realize that we have been affected by evil, by the Devil, by our passions, by the demons, put it how you will. But here we pray seriously to our Heavenly Father for him to deliver us from the Evil One.

It is no longer a matter of me, but of the Lord: To pray the Our Father in utter seriousness, I have to convert; I have to be baptized; but above all I have to repent.

And here we can see what repentance is: it is an emptying of ourselves, of our pride and egotism so that God be all things in all.

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[1] Thus the Septuagint. A translation based on the Hebrew would more likely read ‘My flesh bristled with the fear of you; on account of your judgements I have feared.’