We have reached Rung 25,
which has been a struggle for me. You are reading these as they were written
and finished, but I must admit as I was writing these it took me some time to
finish the final six rungs. The first twenty-four have been relatively
difficult to produce a solid article for, as I have been feeling more tired and
restless the more, I write. Whether that be as my friend Yianni says, “Snitches
get stitches” or simply me struggling by my own feebleness and passions I
cannot say. However, I can rest assured that I have not reached humility and
that I have not destroyed the passions. I have not become dispassionate and am
to judge things clearly and effectively without putting my own biases into the
matter. St. John in the 25th rung becomes even more serious as we near the end
of the journey. We have climbed so far and can look back on everything that we
have overcome, but still though without overcoming the last six rungs, we have
yet to complete our journey. The 25th rung is destroying the passions.
St. John writes, “Let all
who are led by the Spirit of God enter with us into this spiritual and wise
gathering, holding in their spiritual hands the God-inscribed tablets of
knowledge. We have met, we have investigated, and we have probed the meaning of
this precious inscription. And one said: ‘It means constant oblivion of one’s
achievements.’ Another: ‘It is the acknowledgement of oneself as the last of
all and the greatest sinner of all.’ And another: ‘The mind’s recognition of
one’s weakness and impotence.’ Another again: ‘In fits of rage it means to
forestall one’s neighbour and be first to stop the quarrel.’ And again another:
‘Recognition of divine grace and divine mercy.’ And again another: ‘The feeling
of a contrite soul, and the renunciation of one’s own will.’ But when I had
listened to all this and had attentively and soberly considered it, I found
that I had not been able to comprehend the blessed sense of that virtue from
what had been said. Therefore, last of all, having gathered what fell from the
lips of those learned and blessed fathers as a dog gathers the crumbs that fall
from the table, I too gave my definition of it and said: ‘Humility is a
nameless grace in the soul, its name known only to those who have learned it by
experience. It is unspeakable wealth, a name and gift from God, for it is said:
Learn not from an angel, not from man, and not from a book, but from Me, that
is, from Me indwelling, from My illumination and action in you, for I am meek
and humble in heart and in thought and in spirit, and your souls shall find
rest from conflicts and relief from arguments.” We must learn from the fathers
of the church. In the west, learning and speaking about the Church fathers will
get you a lot of looks. In fact many will question why I quote more of the
Church fathers than scripture. While scripture is certainly a factor in how we
live our lives, we also know that scripture is to be lived. Those who have came
before us have lived the scriptures with their whole hearts and their writings
can be very valuable. Here St. John explains that seeking humility he went to
the different opinions on humility and divine grace. In it we see that St. John
finally sees that humility and the power to overcome our obstacles in life are
to allow the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. You can read the scriptures and as
many books as you want, but without the experience and indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, overcoming the passions will not be achieved. We must rest within
Christ. Only then can we achieve that which is to destroy the passions.
Secondly St. John writes,
“Painstaking repentance, mourning cleansed of all impurity, and holy humility
in beginners, are as different and distinct from each other as yeast and flour
from bread. By open repentance the soul is broken and refined; it is brought to
a certain unity, I will even say a commingling with God, by means of the water
of genuine sorrow. Then, kindled by the fire of the Lord, blessed humility
becomes bread and is made firm without the leaven of pride. Therefore when this
holy three-fold cord or, rather, heavenly rainbow, unites into one power and activity,
it acquires its own effects and properties. And whatever you name as a sign of
one of them, is a token also of another. And so I shall try to prove what I
have just said by a brief demonstration” Here I will take my liberty and use
the bread as my example as well, but try to further explain it more precise
terms. When one makes prosphora, the person goes into it with prayer and
repentance. This is the first step in that we must make a true repentance. So
too when a baker makes bread, they prepare themselves by gathering the
ingredients. We have been gathering the ingredients by climbing the ladder and
learning how to control ourselves with the different areas of our lives that
hinder our relationship with God. We must repent and begin with a clean heart.
We must make sure that our flour is pure and white before we begin. Secondly,
we add the yeast, which the Holy Spirit. For most of us this at birth, when we
are entered into infant baptism. For someone like me, this occurred in 2017
when I entered the Church through Chrismation. I received the gift of the Holy
Spirit and partook of Holy Communion for the first time. The Holy Spirit
entered my body and began to make the bread rise and grow towards spiritual
maturity. From there, the bread needs time to rise. You put in a warm, dark
place. You let it rise and proof as you wait. So too, as a Christian through
prayer and the divine services the bread of our lives is put in a warm place to
grow and mature. Over time it gets bigger and bigger until the devil comes
along and punches us back down, deflating our spirits and weakening us. But God
is allowing us this time to grow once again. You might have let your bread rise
several times before it is ready for the oven. Once it is ready for the oven,
God allows us to enter the heat of the battle, the oven. From there we enter
the fray, and we begin to be heated. This is the most crucial stage. If we have
been strong in our faith and are pure of heart, the oven will heat us, but with
the Love of Christ. We will turn out perfect and will enter heaven. If not, the
fires of the world will burn us, and we get scorched. Some of us will be burnt,
but not too burnt and will still be good enough to serve at the Divine Liturgy.
Others however will crumble and break and be inedible. Even still the worst of
us will be burnt and blackened and not worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven and will
be cast out from heaven and into the fires of Gehenna. Though we might take
lumps along the way it is the calling of all of us to be perfected in love by
God. To let our bread rise and become the very chamber of the Holy Spirit and
the Body of Christ. I pray that during Lent this season we have grown and
become more like Christ.
St. John also says,
“Humility is a divine shelter to prevent us from seeing our achievements.
Humility is an abyss of self-abasement, inaccessible to any thief. Humility is
a strong tower against the face of the enemy.1 The enemy shall not prevail
against him, nor shall the son, or rather, the thought of iniquity do him evil:
and he will cut off his enemies from his face and will conquer them that hate
him” Humility is like the grand castles we see dotting the landscapes of
Europe. Built strong and fortified they are difficult to overcome even in the
best of weather. So too, when we enter into the Church we begin building our
own castle, we must build it with the strongest of materials, the stones that
the ladder is built on. When we build the castle, we know the devil will try to
assault it. If we have used the information from the Ladder and the scriptures,
we are able to combat the devil with every available tool that we have in our
arsenal. Some will be better equipped at this, but this comes with experience.
The only way in which one truly achieves the grace of God is living. We are not
called to be isolationists and remove ourselves from all things, only to detach
ourselves from the value that we find in this life. We must practice our faith
for it to grow.
Amen.
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