Ladder of Divine Ascent: Rung 24

 

            “The morning light precedes the sun, and the precursor of all humility is meekness. Therefore let us hear in what order the Light arranges these virtues, for He says: Learn of Me, for I am meek and humble in heart.4 So then before looking at the sun, which is humility, we must be illumined by the light, which is meekness, and then we can look with a clear gaze at the sun. For it is impossible, absolutely impossible, to gaze upon the sun before we have experienced that light, as we have learnt from the order in which the Lord has put these virtues.”  That’s how St. John of the Ladder begins this rung of the Ladder as we are now well into our journey and climbing the ladder in earnest. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the epitome of humility and love. His example is a witness to us all that we should be filled with the Holy Spirit and the love that passes all understanding. In doing so, we must learn how to control ourselves and our pride if we are to make it any further up the Ladder. Let’s look at few statements made by St. John and expand further on how to become a humble person.

            First St. John says, “Meekness is the buttress of patience, the door, or rather, the mother of love, and the foundations of discernment, for it is said: The Lord will teach the meek His way. It prepares us for the forgiveness of sins; it is boldness in prayer, an abode of the Holy Spirit. But to whom shall I look? Even to him that is meek and quiet.”  I would like to point out something regarding the above statement. St. John calls this boldness in prayer. The reason today we do not have the things that we ask for, is not because God does not love us. It is also not because we are not worthy of them. It is because we are not bold enough in our prayer. Being bold in our prayer doesn’t mean we ask for fancy things, or special blessings, but rather that we hold God at his word. That everything and anything we ask in His name will be given to us. Especially because it benefits our salvation and our walk on the straight and narrow path. By being bold in prayer, and learning to be humble and meek, we prepare an abode within our hearts for the Holy Spirit to dwell and rest. The Day of Pentecost comes alive for us again as we enter into the fullness of faith and love. God allows us to work with Him in contemplating our salvation and the acceptance of the gifts, or the rejection. Every day we must make a conscience effort to restore ourselves in the grace of God. Doing so only comes with boldness in prayer.

            The second statement from St. John that I would like to expand on is this, “Meekness is the fellow-worker of obedience, the guide of the brotherhood, a curb for the furious, a check to the irritable, a minister of joy, the imitation of Christ, something proper to angels, shackles for demons, a shield against peevishness.” In our ascent up the ladder, we have discussed a great deal about obedience and imitating Christ. As Christians we are to be mini-Christs we are to unite ourselves with the Holy Spirit in that the mortal can become the divine. Our humility and our meekness is the only way in which one is able to achieve this. As we have seen through the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, and the fall of Satan and his legions of angels, pride is the cause of the fall of all things. We have been granted so much from God that we become greedy and want more. Instead of allowing God to work in our lives, we allow the enemy to protrude our thoughts and to seep his lies into hearts. We want to take from the tree of good and evil, and we want to become greater than the Creator. In doing so we lose this meekness that God wants to see from us. He wants to us to be a minister of joy, rather than ministers of death. St. John of the Ladder says, “God is called love, and also justice. That is why the wise man4 in the Song of Songs says to the pure heart: Justice has loved thee. Also the father of the wise man says: Good and just is the Lord. And of those who are His namesakes He says that they are saved: Who saves the upright of heart; and again: His countenance sees and visits those who are honest and just.” We must constantly remember that we are the namesake of Jesus Christ, the light of light, true God of true God. If we refuse that moniker, then Christ will refuse us. He will say to us that he never knew us. Many will call on his name but only those who live in Christ, i.e., the faithful of the Orthodox Church, will be able to truly grasp the fullness of meekness and live according to the will of Christ. Those of us who have left father and brother and mother and sister to be joined with the Church forsaking all others will be greatly rewarded if we keep on the path. We will not just call on the name of God, but live with God in both spirit and truth.

            Being humble is a difficult calling. We constantly see people wanting credit for the work they’ve accomplished and for the things they’ve achieved. Rather than seeking the glory from men on social media, it is better to receive the glory from God in secret. I have been writing for almost two months now trying to decipher the meaning of the Orthodox Church and how to practically embrace it in everyday life. I have discovered that it is best to be experienced and not read. Though there is nothing wrong with books. Through these articles, I have experienced the faith in such a way that has had a profound impact on me. As we climb the ladder towards its final destination, I see that we have yet to come to a realization that humility and meekness in all things are the root of a solid relationship with Christ. Pray for me dear brothers and sisters as I pray for you, hoping that I can rightly teach the words of Jesus Christ for the benefit of all people.

Amen.

Ladder of Divine Ascent: Rung 23

 

As I have said many times, St. John of the Ladder tends to bring about the last chapter in the Ladder with continuation into the next chapter. While there is a possibility that you could have combined these two chapters into a single step, separating vainglory and pride as two separate rungs of the Ladder allows for a more thorough approach to life and to give the reader an opportunity to prepare themselves for future assaults of the devil as well as the rest of the rungs that we have yet to climb. If we have made it this far up the Ladder as few have, then the view below will begin to give us a picture of the stench and the destruction that we have left for the glory and rewards of heaven that we are approaching. Yes, yes, things are going to be harder here from the top. The more we have climbed the harder the fall from here, but it is not all lost. We can pick ourselves up and we can get back on the Ladder, we just might have to go through a few extra rungs by returning to the place from where we fell.  With that said, we need to explain the heart of the matter of this particular issue and rung on the Ladder. Yes we discussed vainglory in the previous post, but this is all about pride. St. John says, “Pride is denial of God, an invention of the devil, the despising of men, the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of sterility, flight from divine assistance, the precursor of madness, the herald of falls, a foothold for satanic possession, source of anger, door of hypocrisy, the support of demons, the guardian of sins, the patron of unsympathy, the rejection of compassion, a bitter inquisitor, an inhuman judge, an opponent of God, a root of blasphemy”  He also says, “The beginning of pride is the consummation of vainglory; the middle is the humiliation of our neighbour, the shameless parade of our labours, complacency in the heart, hatred of exposure; and the end is denial of God’s help, the extolling of one’s own exertions, fiendish character.”  St. John also says, “It is shameful to be proud of the adornments of others, but utter madness to fancy one deserves God’s gifts. Be exalted only by such merits7 as you had before your birth. But what you got after your birth, as also birth itself, God gave you. Only those virtues which you have obtained without the cooperation of the mind belong to you, because your mind was given you by God. Only such victories as you have won without the co-operation of the body have been accomplished by your efforts, because the body is not yours but a work of God.” Lets go ahead and discuss these two thoughts

First, we have to understand that pride is the denial of God. Satan and his legions of angels that fell with him denied that God was the ruler of all and thus they fell from Heaven and were cast out. Thus when we are full of pride, we are cast down into the pits of hell and our souls are tormented by the pains we have heaped on ourselves. Nothing we have comes from our own merits, and thus we must understand that is by the grace of God that we achieve all things. When God allows us to suffer for our benefit, then we must do so with humility. When we curse and drag God’s name through the mud, we only heap more pride on ourselves and continually condemn our immortality to hell. When we repent, we repent not just for ourselves but for every generation and every person in the world. When we fall, the whole world falls. If the world could fall through one man, what makes you certain that the world doesn’t fall again every time you sin? Your pride is what makes you blind. It is what keeps others from accepting the truth of Orthodoxy. It was has weighed the world down for all these millennia and yet, we continue to stand here, day after day and build our pride up because we do not wish to see the benefit of humility. With humility comes grace, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the forgiveness of our sins. Without cooperation with God and without fostering the virtues within yourself how do you expect to serve God with a full and pure heart? You just can’t, it is impossible. Therefore shed off your old yoke, the yoke of pride, and turn around your shameless parade of labours into fruitful productive labours and live a shame free life.

Was not expecting such a direct attack again on myself and my heart. The pride that wells up inside of me is immense sometimes and it is hard to control. I have been trying my best to rid myself of all forms of pride and I have not yet succeeded. I pray that through your prayers dear brothers and sisters, that I might overcome this struggle. I cannot seem to do so on my own and ask the Lord to help me.

Amen.

 

Ladder of Divine Ascent Rung 22

 

If the 21^st Rung was where I fell off, knowing my heart and my mind, then there is no way that I have achieved victory over the last of these. Throwing off the yoke of the devil was never easy. It was always going to be a difficult decision and task set before us. Do we flee from that which appears easily and luxurious, to something that appears tiresome and poverty-stricken? Or do we go with the poverty-stricken appearance that is truly luxurious? The question and decision laid before us, is whether we are willing to sacrifice our pride for the sake of our immortal souls. Recently as I have stated, there have been issues with me and my cowardly outlook on life. I have fled from the danger God placed me in, to a place of even more suffering and pain that I could even imagine. But that is what happens when you reject God’s love. The pride that you endure makes you suffer, both physically and spiritually and I have experienced both as of late. St. John says, “With regard to its form, vainglory is a change of nature, a perversion of character, a note of blame. And with regard to its quality, it is a dissipation of labours, a waste of sweat, a betrayal of treasure, a child of unbelief, the precursor of pride, shipwreck in harbour, an ant on the threshing-floor which, though small, has designs upon all one’s labour and fruit. The ant waits for the gathering of the wheat, and vainglory for the gathering of the riches of virtue; for the one loves to steal and the other to squander.” He also says, “The sun shines on alike, and vainglory beams on all activities. For instance, I am vainglorious when I fast, and when I relax the fast in order to be unnoticed I am again vainglorious over my prudence. When well-dressed I am quite overcome by vainglory, and when I put on poor clothes I am vainglorious again. When I talk I am defeated, and when I am silent I am again defeated by it. However I throw this prickly-pear, a spike stands upright.”

So what does it meant to be vainglorious? Well in the above statements its pretty clear. We are a waste of sweat, a betrayal of treasure. We have gathered riches only for them to be stolen from us by our own pride. We are like the man who spends all his hours accumulating wealth and pleasures, only for that very night for his soul to be demanded from him by God. Prayer, fasting, love of your neighbor is good, yes, but in reality, it is not good if you do not have the light of Christ illuminating your heart. Without Christ, everything that we do is for nothing. We could give away everything, we could fast, we could pray and if we don’t have Christ then we are still without. The protestants pray, but they do not have Christ. The Catholics pray, and they too do not have Christ. The Muslims pray and they do not have Christ. Only in Orthodoxy is Christ to be found. We know where the Holy Spirit is, we cannot say where he is not. For the Holy Spirit works throughout the world, but especially through the Church and we know he is in the Church. We pray that by our struggles as we continue up the ladder that we will rid ourselves of pride. If being a coward was one of the steps to ridding ourselves of pride then we must acquire the bravery of heart to proclaim the gospel without fear or condemnation and to dare call God Father. We must pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.” Without which we cannot over come pride. We will continually swim in the cares and destruction of life, without so much as gaining ground. We have to stand firm in the faith. Neither going to the left or to the right. We must remain on the straight and narrow path, the path that leads us to salvation. St. John says, “There is a glory that comes from the Lord, for He says: Those who glorify Me, I will glorify. And there is a glory that dogs us through diabolic intrigue, for it is said: Woe, when all men shall speak well of you. You may be sure that it is the first kind of glory when you regard it as harmful and avoid it in every possible way, and hide your manner of life wherever you go. But the other you will know when you do something, however trifling, hoping that you will be observed by men.”

Oh how much sweeter is it to receive the glory from God than to receive it from men? It is the sweetest of sweet the fragrance of life. The very beginning of the transformation of our corruptibility into incorruption. Let us pray that God through the prayers that we offer to him will accept them and that God will protect us from all sort of pride and destruction. I know that God is on the side of all those who love Him and I pray that I will love Him above all else, sacrificing my own will for the sake of the Kingdom of God. I leave you with this advice from St. John. He says, “When we invite glory, or when it comes to us from others uninvited, or when out of vainglory we decide upon a certain course of action, we should remember our mourning and should think of the holy fear with which we stood before God in solitary prayer; and in this way we shall certainly put shameless vainglory out of countenance—if we are really concerned to attain true prayer. If this is insufficient, then let us briefly recollect our death. And if this is also ineffective, at least let us fear the shame that follows honour. For he who exalts himself will be humbled1 not only there, but certainly here as well”

Amen.