Aspects of the Orthodox Monastic Vocation

We have received an email from Gordon Philips (not his real name) from London, UK (not his real address). The email reads:

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Just came across your blog this evening. Here is my question, please forgive my long-windedness!
My son expressed an interest in monasticism at a very young age and I laughed about it, thinking, “You don't know what a monk is...” However, one of my closest friends, a Serbian priest, who is quite a kidder himself, chastised me for laughing at this. I was taken aback at the time when he said, “You don't know what God has put into his heart, even at such a tender age! Never laugh at such things.” This having been said, my son is now 13 and we are looking at high school, preparing for college, etc. The other day, he told that he saw himself being part of the clergy. His mother and I are both professional musicians, so I had hoped that he would make the most of his talents; I also hoped he would be chanting with me in the strana more... however, each time he tells me he wants to visit the monastery, I remember the little boy saying, “I want to be a monk.” I know that the Lord calls whom He calls, but what would you recommend I do as a father to neither artificially promote this nor inhibit it?

To which we replied:

Our policy is only to discuss emails we receive publicly on the blog after removing all identifying information. Is this acceptable to you? Thank you very much.
Orthodox Monk

We received a positive reply.

Now we believe that Gordon is not a member of the Orthodox Church. So the first issue is, ‘How could your son become a Christian monk, or even a Christian priest, without first being a member of a Christian church which has a monastic or priestly order?’ And if you are not Orthodox, how will you prompt your son to become a monk or priest in the Orthodox Church? If it’s good enough for your son, isn’t it good enough for you and the rest of your family? Or is it all the same? A Christian cafeteria? The Orthodox Church makes claims about being the true Church founded by Jesus Christ on Pentecost; properly it does not treat all Christian denominations as being on the same dogmatic plane. Your Serbian Orthodox priest friend certainly knows this—if he is following the teachings of the Serbian hierarchy—and certainly can explain these matters to you and even to your son.

So the first issue is to clear up the confusion surrounding your present Church affiliation and your own dogmatic beliefs. And saying, ‘We don’t have any dogmatic beliefs; we only have Jesus’ is a dogmatic belief in itself, and indeed not one that the Orthodox Church holds. If this is your position, sending your son blithely to the Orthodox Church to become a monk while believing ‘It’s all the same whether he’s Protestant or Orthodox’ is going to be a personal disaster for you and the son and the rest of the family. Because it’s just not going to work and he’s going to wonder why you prompted him to go down such a treacherous and slippery path. Because when he wanders off to become a monk he’s ultimately going to encounter the teachings of the Orthodox Church and he’s going to be split between what you taught him and what he suddenly grasps is the historical dogmatic position of the Orthodox Church. This could cause serious damage to him, and in consequence of his distress, to the Orthodox Church. We could foresee an evolution where in his anger and despair the son ended up a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

So what’s the solution? After your Easter and after Orthodox Easter, have a serious conversation with your Serbian Orthodox priest friend about what it means to become Orthodox.

Would it make any sense to try to keep your son Protestant, avoiding discussion about monasticism and ridiculing his interest in monasticism or otherwise trying to keep him within the orbit of your own confession (which we understand to be anti-monastic in its historical origins)? This has never worked; it has only led to martyrdom and distress and family explosions.

Start with your position vis à vis the Orthodox Church.

Let us now continue with an email from John Collins (not his real name) from Paris, France (not his real address). The email reads [material in square brackets added by Orthodox Monk]:

Hello Orthodox Monk,
I honestly stumbled upon your blog and have read a few of your entries. Last April, I entered into the Roman Catholic Church and arrived there from Reformed Protestantism from Atheism. During that time, I have tried to find a spiritual director and have found it to be a challenging endeavor because of my desire for doctrinal orthodoxy. I suffer from OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder] and as I became more committed to Christ and the Church, I found this to have manifestations of scrupulosity [in Roman Catholic spiritual theology, scrupulosity is an over-attention to minor details, something clearly related to OCD]. I eventually acknowledged this as being unhealthy and began seeing a Catholic psychologist who would be able to help me through psychotherapy to navigate these manifestations. Several months ago, I was encouraged by a dear friend (who I consider to be of solid doctrinal mooring) to speak with a priest at my local parish because she understood him to be doctrinally sound. I did so, and explained to him my mental state and the recent manifestations of my OCD, after which he recommended a book to me, Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird. In this book, Fr. Laird seeks to reconcile the concept of contemplative prayer with the spirituality of Western mystics and the Hesychastic tradition. His emphasis is on silence coupled with a detachment from the recursive “videos” we play in our heads. I have taken the advice of my priest and the book and have attempted to daily practice this silence while utilizing breathing techniques and repetition of the phrase, “Lord Jesus Christ.” I have experienced profound peace of mind and have had experiences of profound pleasure while doing this. I am concerned, however, that because much is made in your posts about the contradiction between Thomistic spirituality and the traditions of the Eastern Churches, that I am not faithfully honoring the Roman Catholic Church. I am also concerned that I have a sort of patchwork bastardization of The Jesus Prayer and Hesychasm and could be potentially causing myself serious spiritual damage. If you find you have the time at some point, your thoughts and insights would be much appreciated. May God bless you in your walk with Him.
John

To which we replied:

Our policy is only to reply to emails publicly on the blog after removing all identifying information and, perhaps, correcting for grammar, syntax, spelling and style. Is this acceptable to you?
Orthodox Monk

We received a positive reply.

Now we had never heard of Fr. Martin Laird, OSA, Associate Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, Villanova PA, USA. This site seems to indicate that Professor Laird teaches a form of Centering Prayer, founded by Fr. Thomas Keating OCSO and related to the system of the late Dom John Main, OSB. We discussed the system of John Main in post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, and post 6 in the order given.

From the little that John Collins writes and the little we’ve seen in the last few minutes browsing the Internet for information on Professor Laird and his system, we would think that what Professor Laird is teaching might or might not be good and might or might not be suitable for members of the Roman Catholic Church but it’s a bastardized form of Hesychasm if any claim is being made to a connection to the tradition of the Orthodox Church called Hesychasm.

So this brings us back to the email above from Gordon Philips, which discusses his son’s interest in monasticism. What is monasticism? What connection does it have to the things that Professor Laird is teaching? In other words, do we go to the monastery to practise a form of Centring Prayer with greater assiduity? Now, clearly, in his email John Collins has expressed no interest in becoming Orthodox and no interest in becoming a monk. So we’re not suggesting that that’s why he’s interested in Professor Laird’s system. Quite the contrary, he’s interested in it because of his problem with OCD.

But here’s the point. In America today there is such spiritual confusion that we don’t know why we go to a monastery. We don’t even understand what sound doctrine means as a concept—much less where we might find sound doctrine. And that extends right up to spiritual practice. We think that we can abstract a few key concepts from Evagrius and package them into a system for modern Americans thirsting for God.

John Collins writes: ‘I have experienced profound peace of mind and have had experiences of profound pleasure while doing this [i.e. practising Laird’s system of contemplative prayer].’ Now we’re not God and we can’t judge another person’s experience and we don’t doubt at all that John Collins has had those experiences. But we wonder whether they have anything to do with what the Orthodox understand to be the pursuit of God in the Hesychastic tradition.

In this we would suggest that John Collins very carefully read the Gnostic Chapters by St. Diadochos of Photiki together with our commentary (look for Diadochos under ‘Topics’ in the right margin of the blog.). We have passed our translation over to someone else and he has improved it, but John Collins will we hope be able to find something relevant in our own translation and commentary. The main thing is that St. Diadochos is very clear that spiritual experiences that involve the senses are suspect. This would take a long time to develop analytically and Professor Laird might object; however we would be willing to debate him on the matter.

There is something quite different going on with the Jesus Prayer in the Orthodox Church than what we understand Professor Laird to be teaching.

John Collins wants our advice what he should do. Well, he’s got a Roman Catholic priest; he’s got a Roman Catholic psychotherapist. Where’s Orthodox Monk going to fit into all of that? We’re not knocking it—John is being very prudent and very careful; we felicitate him—but how many advisors can a man have? That having been said, our own view is that if John Collins wants to be Roman Catholic he should stick to a traditional Roman Catholic method of prayer. There are Carmelite third orders; there are Cistercian monasteries; and so on and so forth. He should leave these syncretistic Roman Catholic systems based ultimately on a faulty understanding of the relationship between Christianity and Oriental religions (vis à vis contemplation) and stick to something Roman Catholic. But if he’s interested in the Jesus Prayer in and of itself, then he should start with a conversation with an Orthodox priest about what the Orthodox Church teaches. In other words, if he wants to be Roman Catholic he should leave this stuff alone but if he wants to get involved with the Orthodox aspects of it for their own sake then he should consider becoming Orthodox.

But this again returns us to Gordon Philip’s email. Let us look at what is implied by the above about the spiritual atmosphere of American Christianity. Religion among many American Christians has become experience-orientated. Whence Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal; whence Centring Prayer and similar. Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong or even remarkable with this shift in cultural mood. But an over-emphasis on experience leads to an indifference to dogma—so-called cafeteria Catholicism extended to an experiential cafeteria Christianity. And it leads to an approach to religion and even monasticism as the pursuit of one more experience. But as Diadochos teaches, such a path is fraught with serious danger. The cultivation of spiritual experience received by the senses (and this is technical terminology in Diadochos) leads to opening oneself to false spiritual experience.

Much of what is happening on the Christian Right in America can be understood on this plane: spiritual experience that is not based in spiritual reality. To give an indication of just how serious this can get, before he announced his candidacy for President, Rick Perry was given a prophecy that seemed to say that he was called to be President of the United States of America, and his wife was later recorded on video as strongly encouraging other Christian candidates for President to drop out of the Presidential race because Rick had the true and real anointing to be President. Moreover, it seemed to us that Mrs. Perry was conflating ‘Christian’ with ‘conservative’—i.e. it seemed to us that the two words were synonymous in her mind. For better or for worse Rick ultimately dropped out of the 2012 Presidential campaign. The prophecy? Well, maybe it was misunderstood. This is the road of spiritual experience without discernment: fraught with serious and present danger.

To return to a more personal level, if Gordon Philip’s son is formed psychologically (i.e. raised by his parents) with this or a similar point of view and goes to an Orthodox monastery, two things are possible. One he won’t be able to hack it because they don’t pray in tongues (we’re being a little sarcastic but the point is valid); or two they will pray in tongues and the son will waste his life and soul in spiritual deception.

It is important to realize that in the Orthodox Church, monasticism and spiritual experience are grounded in Orthodox dogma and participation in the Orthodox mysteries (sacraments) starting with baptism. And there are two thousand years of the experience and teaching of Saints and Fathers of the Church that inform Orthodox monasticism’s understanding of these matters.

Let us now look at another email, from Ronald James (not his real name) from Ajax, Kansas (not his real address). The email reads:

Hello
I suppose all I want to ask is, How does someone know if they should become a monk?
I have had thoughts about it and mentioned it to my spiritual father and he advises me. I am obedient to him, is that all I can do? Will I know if it is what I am called to? Thoughts that go through my head are things such as if I'm not married by the time I'm 30 then that's when I should become a monk, or I shouldn't waste another moment and seek it out as soon as possible.
I suppose my mixed up thoughts are a sign that it is either not for me or I am not ready.
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.Wishing you a glorious and fruitful Lent.
Confidentially,
Ronald James
Ajax, Kansas

To which we replied:

Our policy is to answer emails only publicly on the blog after we have removed what we think are all identifying marks that would tie the email to a specific person, also correcting the email for what we think is good grammar and spelling. Is this acceptable?
Orthodox Monk

To which Ronald replied positively. So we put his email in the hopper for processing.

And here’s what we thought. Ronald writes: ‘Thoughts that go through my head are things such as if I'm not married by the time I'm 30 then that's when I should become a monk, or I shouldn't waste another moment and seek it out as soon as possible.’ Now this is a dead give-away that Ronald is being tempted. This is not the form of a vocation but the form of tempting thoughts (Evagrius again). This does not exclude a vocation but it is not how a vocation works. So the Devil is up to something in putting these ideas about monasticism into Ronald’s head. By definition the Devil is up to no good, so there’s something wrong here with this enticement to monasticism. As we said, this does not exclude a vocation but this is not it. Ronald should confess the thoughts to the confessor and be strictly obedient to the confessor. If the confessor makes a mistake, God will protect Ronald, especially if he does have an underlying vocation that the Devil is monkeying about with.

Then we got this second unexpected email from Ronald:

Hello
I am writing a second email regarding a separate topic. I feel that I am alone in my sin.
Last week I was off work for the whole week so that I could attend the daily services of my parish. First week of Lent is such a crucial time. The week went well and I did much reading. On Sunday on the way home from church I started having thoughts of monasticism. Yesterday was my first day back at work and in the “real” world. I work in a supermarket and I found myself looking at every single pretty woman that came into the store. I don't think I had an actual improper thought. Later that night I had to send an email to my brother using the family computer (my old computer from university) and I had a thought about some pornographic videos I had downloaded years and years ago. I did a search of the computer’s content and found them. I ended up committing the sin of self abuse and then I cried. My question is this. This sin, before I returned to my Father's house, was part of my every day life. This has made it very difficult for me to reject the thought of doing it. All this and the fact I even had thoughts of monasticism the day before make me very sad. I suppose I want advice on how to combat such a deep rooted passion that I was so mindlessly committing on a regular basis less than two years ago. Also I suppose I also want to know what would happen if a monk committed this sin? Is it something that would never happen? Please please please post this email.

First of all, one such instance of this particular sin does not preclude, exclude or forbid a subsequent monastic vocation, or even, for that matter, a priestly vocation. However, putting the two emails together we have the following remarks. Ronald is clearly going to have to spend some years stabilizing his moral life before he even considers a monastery. He is going to have to learn to live in chastity as a lay member of the Orthodox Church. We realize that this can be difficult, especially if there is a previous history of enslavement to a passion. However, we believe that with Christ’s help all things are possible and doable. Usually an isolated sin like this occurs—if we understand St John of Sinai in the Ladder of Divine Ascent correctly—because of pride. That of course would lead to the question of whether pride and vainglory entered into Ronald’s concentration on the spiritual in the first week of Lent. We don’t have an answer to this; this is something that he should discuss seriously with his confessor. In the years that Ronald will have to live as a maturing Orthodox layman, he will have to assess with his confessor how well he can control his urges. If he cannot control his urges, no visions or voices or dreams or whatever can constitute a vocation to the monastic life: he must get married. This is not something that should distress Ronald. He should in such a case have the humility to recognize that God has not called him to the monastic life and that he is called to marriage. Moreover, as we pointed out a single fall such as Ronald documents is not in itself a barrier to a monastic vocation. However, the question has to be raised—and will be raised in the monastery when he presents himself as a postulant—whether Ronald can control himself in a vocation to life-long chastity. Monks retain free will and can be tempted, although the consequences of a sin against chastity for a monk under vows can be dire, as St John of Sinai documents in the Ladder. As the service of tonsure itself says, better not to vow than to vow and not to fulfill. You’re better off being a moral married layman and going to Heaven than an immoral tonsured monk and going to Hell.

So let us go back again to Gordon Philip’s email about his son wanting to be a monk. We can see that becoming an Orthodox monk is a serious business, one not to be trifled with. Gordon and his son should think about what an Orthodox monastic vocation entails. It is not a matter of practising Centring Prayer with greater dedication. It is a matter of being an angel of God. It’s a serious business. As the Gospel says, you must count the cost.

Here is what we said on the topic some years ago; since we think it's very relevant to the emails we are discussing today we repeat it below in full:

The central problem of the monastic life is the nature of the passions, the nature of the battle against the passions and the nature of dispassion. This has nothing to do with the proper way to meditate.

When the modern reader reads the Ladder, he is ‘freaked out’ by the severity of the Prison. What we should understand is that the passions are very deeply rooted in the human person, that their eradication is very difficult and that the spiritual damage sin does to a Christian is greater than realized.

Why would anyone become a monk? After all, he could, presumably, repeat ‘Maranatha’ twice a day in the married state.

The angel is the light of the monk and the monk of the layman. The ideal of the monk is the angel; the ideal of the layman is the monk.

In the monk, the movement from passion to dispassion—in Western terminology, the ‘conversion of morals’: the passage of the soul through the purgative stage, then the illuminative stage, then into the unitive stage of the mystical life—is a passage, ideally, from an ordinary human condition to the condition of an angel. This is explicit both in Evagrius’ Monk and in St John’s of Sinai’s Ladder.

It is not by accident that in the late step of the Ladder that discusses Hesychasm, the Hesychast is described as ascending through the angels until he reaches the Seraphim.

Consider again St John’s definition of the monk:

1, 10 A monk is the order and condition of the bodiless powers accomplished in a material and sordid body. A monk is he who has only the commandments and words of God in every time, place and thing. A monk is continual violence to nature and a faultless guard of the senses. A monk is a purified body, a cleansed mouth and an enlightened mind. A monk is a soul full of pain that is occupied in the uninterrupted memory of death both awake and sleeping.

Contrast this to the instructions that St John gives to laymen:

1, 38 I heard some men who were settled in a negligent state in the world asking me: ‘How can we, living together with spouses and surrounded by public cares, follow the monastic state?’ I replied to them: ‘All things good that you can do, do. Revile no one. Steal from no one. Lie to no one. Be arrogant with no one. Hate no one. Do not separate yourselves from the services of the Church. Be sympathetic towards those in need. Cause scandal to no one. Do not approach the portion of another and be satisfied with the wages that your wives can give you. If you do thus, you are not far from the Kingdom of the Heavens.’

St John views the monastic state as violence to human nature so as to attain to what is above human nature, the angelic state. He views the lay state as a matter of attending Church and living a just life. This is very similar to Jesus’ advice to the rich young man: If you want to inherit eternal life, keep the commandments. You have done all these since your youth? Then if you want to be perfect, sell all that you have, give to the poor and come follow me. St John of Sinai is emphatic that it was not for the sake of baptism but for the sake of the monastic vocation that the rich young man was called upon to sell his possessions and give to the poor.

The monastic calling is a calling of perfection. The monk works at eradicating his passions so as to become angelic. Here we understand ‘passion’ to be an emotional tendency to sin founded on a pleasure of the senses. Our Episcopalian reader is right: it is our desires that are at the root of the passions; and we cure our passions by refusing desire. However, in the classic analysis of the Orthodox monastic Fathers (articulated originally by Evagrius but enunciated by many other Fathers, especially including St John of Sinai), it is the demons that excite the passion, awakening desire in us. In the practice of the Jesus Prayer, the inception of a tempting image in the mind is due to the demon that has approached and excited our passion, our desire. This is true of any of the eight passions. It would be impossible to understand the School of Sinai, especially St Hesychios, St John of Sinai’s disciple, without understanding this analysis.

The ‘fundamental theorem’ of this school, recapitulated by St Maximos the Confessor in his ascetical writings, is that you cannot see God before you have eradicated your passions. In the Monk, Evagrius says this:

61 The mind will not advance nor depart that good departure and come to be in the land of the bodiless [powers] if it has not corrected what is within. For the disturbance of the familiar [parts of the soul] is accustomed to return it to those things from which it has departed.1

What Evagrius is saying is that the monk will not be able to enter into the illuminative stage of the mystical life (here identified with ‘the land of the bodiless powers’, i.e. the condition of the angels) until he has passed from his impassioned state to a state of virtue. That is what it means to have ‘corrected what is within’. The ‘disturbance of the familiar parts of the soul’ is the disturbance the monk experiences in his consciousness due to passions that he has not yet eradicated. Evagrius is saying plainly that a person who enters into contemplation before he has got rid of his passions will be obliged to return to the earth, to his impassioned reality, because of disturbances of soul caused by his uneradicated passions.

It is not easy for us to eradicate the passions.

In the doctrine of St John of Sinai in the Ladder, the layman does not attempt to eradicate his passions; he attempts to live a just life. We might say a virtuous life.

But someone might object: well, that’s just what Evagrius says in the precondition for me to enter into contemplation.

Not quite.

Evagrius has a doctrine of purity from the passions, and of virtue, that goes far deeper than anything that could be expected of a layman. The virtuous layman continues to have a residue of the passions within. Indeed, in his married state he can work on a complete eradication of the passions only if he voluntarily accepts to live with his wife in chastity. But that is not a condition for his salvation and it is not imposed on him by the Church.

When we are discussing the eradication of the passions we must understand that the ideal is the monk who has become the equal of an angel: he no longer has any passions at all. He has a complete accession of virtue.

Most monks start off in the coenobium. The Ladder itself is intended for coenobites and not for Hesychasts, even though its author was a Hesychast for forty years. If we think that the Ladder is severe even though it is only for coenobites, we should consider the standard that St John of Sinai is setting for Hesychasts. Absolute purity, including in thought.

The steps of the Ladder are intended to purify the coenobite of his passions. They prescribe largely external means. By and large they do not enter into the issue of purifying the coenobite in his thoughts. That is reserved for the Hesychast.

Now it might be thought that St John of Sinai was ignorant. He didn’t know that with an oriental method of meditation with a Christian mantra he could enter into direct contact with God, surpassing self, in the married state.

However, poor old St John is the originator of the following remark: ‘The practice of stillness (hesychia) is the constraint of the immaterial mind in the material body, a most remarkable thing.’ He is the originator of this statement: ‘Let the Jesus Prayer cleave to your breath and you will know the benefits of stillness (hesychia).’ He has some very explicit instructions on the practice of Hesychasm. He was a Hesychast for forty years. But, strange thing, he doesn’t think that the Jesus Prayer is going to do everything in no time flat for the layman or for the monk in the coenobium. How could he be so deluded?

Eradicating our passions in our actions, which is the task of the coenobite, is hard. It requires ascesis. That is why a layman might choose to become a monk: he might decide he wants to become perfect and that he will take the hard road.

Eradicating our passions in our thoughts, which is the task of the hermit or Hesychast, is even harder. It is for those few monks who are able to carry through the Hesychast program.

Again let us quote this passage from Evagrius:

40 The mind would not be able to see the place of God in itself not having become higher than all [mental representations] which are in [sensible] objects. It will not become higher, however, if it does not unclothe itself of the passions, which are what, by means of the mental representations, bind it together with the sensible objects. And the passions it will lay aside by means of the virtues; the mere thoughts, then, by means of spiritual contemplation; and this [i.e. spiritual contemplation], again, when, during the time of prayer, that light shines upon the mind that works in relief the place which is of God.2

Starting from Evagrius and continuing with St John of Sinai and the other members of the School of Sinai, the precondition of having ‘that light shine upon the mind that works in relief the place which is of God’—of being divinely illuminated—is complete purification from the passions even in thought. Hence, normally in the Orthodox tradition, it is only the Hesychast who has this experience. This is at the heart of the Hesychast controversy on Mt Athos in the 14th Century.

Part of the Hesychast program in the Orthodox tradition is the repetition of the Jesus Prayer, but there is much more to the Orthodox tradition of Hesychasm than just the repetition of the Jesus Prayer. The tradition contains explicit instructions for combating the passions in thought so as to attain to that complete purification from the passions even in thought which is necessary for divine illumination. The end-result is called by St John of Sinai dispassion.

When he is addressing coenobites, St John of Sinai changes somewhat the traditional formulation of the goal of the monk. He makes the goal of the coenobite deep humility, not divine illumination. He leaves divine illumination to the Hesychast in the cave.

This should make us realize not only just how difficult the monastic vocation is, but just how difficult is the further vocation of the monk to Hesychasm.

1The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart, Fr Theophanes (Constantine), Vol. II, The Evagrian Ascetical System, p. 27. 2006. Mt Athos, Greece: Timios Prodromos.

2The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart, Fr Theophanes (Constantine), Vol. II, The Evagrian Ascetical System, p. 178. 2006. Mt Athos, Greece: Timios Prodromos.

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.

The Gift of Tongues

We have received an email from a man in Brazil who wishes to learn how the Orthodox Church views the gift of tongues as practised among the Pentecostalists of the ‘Assemblies of God’.  The Assemblies of God is a classical Pentecostalist church that derives from the Azusa Street Revival of the early 20^th Century in Los Angeles.  This is the church that in Wasilla Sarah Palin grew up in and was re-baptized in (she has since changed churches without publicly renouncing any of her beliefs).  However, Palin’s particular Assemblies of God church in Wasilla evidently taught a doctrine that was condemned by the majority of other Assemblies of God churches in the late 1940’s.

We have already discussed Pentecostalism a number of times.  In our post called Pentecostalism and the Jesus Prayer, we made some remarks on the contrast between the operation of the charisms among Orthodox saints and among the Pentecostalists.  We received two comments, which we printed on the post, and exchanged emails with the persons making the comments.  In those comments a variety of issues were raised, to which we responded in another post called Ecclesiological Dimensions in the Pentecostalist Practice of the Jesus Prayer.  So this is a third time in recent history that we are addressing Pentecostalism and Orthodoxy.

Here is the man’s email.  Since he is clearly a non-native speaker of English, we have had to edit his text.  We have appended his original text as a footnote.  We have changed his name both in the text and in the footnote.  The name he gives in the text does not in any event agree with the name on his email address, so it is not even clear to us that the name he provides in his email is in fact the man’s real name.

Hello,

My name is Alphonso Luis Borges and I am a Pentecostal Christian, currently attending the church called the ‘Assemblies of God’ located in Brazil.

My question is about the ‘Gift of Tongues’.

The Pentecostal gift of tongues is the ability to speak languages and/or dialects.  These dialects may be known, unknown or so-called dialects of angels.

I grew up with and lived with this phenomenon for 30 years.  I recently met a friend who is Orthodox Christian and he told me the gift of tongues is not the ability to ‘speak new languages’.

From what he told me that I could understand, the gift of tongues happens silently in the heart of every Son of God and when this person has the gift of interpreting languages, he can then through the voice build up the Church (people) with prophecies, teachings and so on.

I would humbly ask that you explain to me what then is the ‘Gift of Tongues’ in the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Hugs.[1]

First of all, let us look at what Alphonso thinks his friend is telling him about the gift of tongues in the Orthodox Church.  Now we frankly are not clear what Alphonso means or what his Orthodox friend actually told him.  It appears to us that what was said by the Orthodox friend is that through assiduous practice, the Jesus Prayer becomes automatic, repeated in the heart.[2]  Then through further grace, the practitioner of the Jesus Prayer is given the gifts of the word and prophecy in order to edify the church.  This would be the condition of an Elder of the Orthodox Church.[3]  So what appears to us to be meant is the known progression by means of the Jesus Prayer, say among the Elders on Mt Athos, or at Optina in the 19^th Century, of the monk from beginner through to the condition of Elder.  Examples would be the Elders of Mt. Athos or Optina or, most notably, St Seraphim of Sarov.  It should be noted that a monk proceeding on this road normally has an Elder to guide him.

If this is what Alphonso’s Orthodox friend means, we have no problem with any of it.  This is a well-known progression.  The only caveat that we have is that not everyone on Mt Athos is an Elder, and not everyone at Optina was an Elder or Staretz (Russian for Elder), and not everyone at Sarov was a Saint.

Next, we emphasized the historical background of the origin of the Assemblies of God about 100 years ago to emphasize the difference between such a new and young church and the Orthodox Church.

Next, we have to look at how the Orthodox Church looks at the spiritual life, the charisms and in particular the Holy Spirit.  We have discussed much of this in other posts, but we think it important to repeat all of this material in one place for Alphonso.

The Orthodox Church teaches us that we receive the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Baptism.  This Baptism cleanses the nous or innermost soul of the person from the Devil and from all demons and demonic influences.  Baptism then grants the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the innermost soul of the person.  This indwelling of the Holy Spirit is lost only in cases of denial of Christ—if we join another religion for example.  In the Orthodox Church, Chrismation—anointing with specially blessed oil—corresponds to the laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Spirit that the Apostles did after they baptized converts.  In the Orthodox Church Chrismation occurs right after Baptism, at the same time.  Since the person has in Baptism received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, this laying on of hands or Chrismation is for the reception of the Holy Spirit in the way the Apostles received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and through the laying on of hands subsequently transmitted it to others who were baptized; it is for the reception of the power and charisms of the Holy Spirit.

Even if after your Orthodox Baptism you commit murder, you do not lose the Holy Spirit—you are in bad shape but you are still Orthodox and can still repent and still go to confession and still ultimately receive communion and be saved.  But if you deny Christ, say by becoming a Buddhist—even without doing anything bad like killing someone—you have lost the Holy Spirit.  You are no longer Christian.  You cannot merely go to confession.  What happens in these cases, and only in these cases, is that the person is received back into the Church through a second Chrismation.  Normally he or she is not allowed to receive communion until he or she is on his or her death bed.

Since the Orthodox Church practises infant baptism and Orthodox receive the Holy Spirit in Baptism, all Orthodox have the Holy Spirit.  But clearly not all Orthodox are Elders.  There’s more to it.

Now it has to be understood that the interpretation of the laying on of hands for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as implying the ability to speak in tongues in the way Pentecostalists speak in tongues today derives from Protestant experiences in 19^th Century England, Wales and the United States.  There was no such doctrine or practice before that.  There are certainly episodes of speaking in tongues in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of Paul, but it is not obvious that the same thing is being referred to.

Let us look at Acts.  On the day of Pentecost, Scripture records that the Apostles were praising God and that the Jews who came at the sound of the mighty wind heard the Apostles praising God each in his own language, which were all the languages under Heaven because the Jews had come from everywhere.  Elder Porphyrios (1906 – 1991) interprets this to mean that although the Apostles were speaking in Hebrew, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit each of their listeners heard them in his own language.  Peter speaks Hebrew; Solomon from Persia hears him in Persian; Barnabas from Cyprus hears him in Greek.

In the Orthodox Church, it is recorded that St Ephraim the Syrian visited St Basil the Great (4th Century) and the two communicated by this means: each spoke his own language and the other understood.

In the actual life of Elder Porphyrios, it is recorded that an atheist French woman visited him in Greece and the two communicated in this way: Elder Porphyrios spoke Greek; the woman spoke French; and the two understood each other.  The French woman was later received into the Orthodox Church.  She is, as far as we know, still alive.  This event would have occurred within the last 50 years.

Now in the Epistles of Paul it is recorded that a person might speak a new or even angelic language.  However, the question arises, did a Church service that St Paul attended sound like an Assemblies of God service today?  We really do not have any way to know.  There is simply not enough information for us to judge.

However, there is no recorded case that we are aware of that following voluntary Orthodox Baptism and Chrismation of an adult, that person spoke in tongues in the way people who have been ‘baptized in the Spirit’ do in the Assemblies of God or any other Pentecostalist or charismatic church or group.  It just doesn’t happen in the Orthodox Church.  Moreover, practice on Mt Athos, that beacon of discernment, is to receive members of the Orthodox Church who convert to Pentecostalism with rebaptism by the Pentecostalists and who then return to the Orthodox Church—to receive them back into the Orthodox Church by Chrismation after certain other prayers.

Hence, it is quite clear that there is no tradition in the Orthodox Church of speaking in tongues in the way that it is done in the Assemblies of God.

Now the question arises of charisms in the Orthodox Church.  Here there are two points to make.  St John Chrysostom (died 5^th Century) discusses the question of the cessation of the charisms.  We do not recall exactly what his answer was; our point is that the growing rarity of the charisms was already an issue then.

In the Orthodox Church, great Elders and great Saints do exercise the charisms of the Holy Spirit.  Great miracle workers and healers and prophets who come to mind are St Seraphim of Sarov (died early 19th Century), St John Kronstadt (died early 20^th Century), Elder Paisios (1924 – 1994) and Elder Porphyrios (1906 – 1991).  There are many others.  However, what characterizes all these great healers and miracle workers and prophets in the Orthodox Church is that before they either received the charisms or publicly exercised them they went through the preparation of a long and arduous asceticism so that they might be spiritually cleansed from their tendencies to sin.  Such Elders and Saints are characterized by great personal holiness.  Such Elders and Saints are also characterized by their rareness.

This is different from Pentecostalist circles where the charisms are acquired quickly (sometimes it seems that all it takes is to go to a revival).  The charisms are also quite common (how many persons are claiming to be Apostles and Prophets today?).  These charisms are exercised quickly after their reception (no preparation for a public ministry). These charisms are often exercised by persons who might not only lack distinction for their holiness but might even be involved in serious sin.  There’s nothing odder than a great miracle worker who gets a divorce on account of his adultery.

What Alphonso has to understand is that Orthodoxy is a completely different road from the Assemblies of God.

---

[1] Hello

My name is Alphonso Luis Borges and I am a Pentecostal Christian, currently has attended the church called the Assemblies of God located in Brazil.

My question is about the "Gift of Tongues."

In designing the Pentecostal gift of tongues is the ability to speak languages and / or dialects known (these dialects may be known, unknown or so-called dialects of angels).

I grew up and lived for 30 years this phenomenon has recently met a friend who is Orthodox Christian, and he told me the gift of tongues is not the ability to "speak new languages."

From what he told me and I could understand, the gift of tongues happens silently in the heart of every Son of God and when this person has the gift of interpreting languages, can then through the voice  build up the Church (people) with prophecies, teachings and so on .

I would humbly that you explain to me what then is the "Gift of Tongues" in the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Hugs.

[2] The reader can find much material in the early posts on the Jesus Prayer.

[3] An Elder is a senior monk in the Orthodox Church, one distinguished by his gifts of clairvoyance and prophecy.  We have various posts on the blog that discuss Elders.