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THE STRUGGLE with GOD by Paul Evdokimov

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THE STRUGGLE WITH GOD by Paul Evdokimov Translated by Sister Gertrude, S.P. PAULIST PRESS (Paulist Fathers) Glen Rock, New Jersey ————————————————— An Exploration Books Edition of Paulist Press, 1966, by special arrangement with Desclée de Brouwer, publishers of the original French Edition, Les âges de la vie spirituel. Copyright © 1966 by The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle in the State of New York Cover Design: Claude Ponsot Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-24895 Published by the Paulist Press Editorial Office: 304 W. 58th St., N.Y., N.Y. 10019 Business Office: Glen Rock, New Jersey 07452 Manufactured in the United States of America by Our Sunday Visitor Press Note regarding this electronic edition: Missing page numbers indicate blank pages in the original. Contents INTRODUCTION I I The Encounter 1. Atheism 9 2. Faith 33 3. Dimensions of the Spiritual Life 41 4. The Dangers of Ignorance and the Ascetic Art 45 5. Essential Elements of the Spiritual Life 49 6. The Nature or Essence of the Spiritual Life 53 7. The Different Ages of the Spiritual Life 57 II The Obstacle and the Struggle 1. Negations of Evil and Affirmations of Good 63 2. Three Aspects of Evil and the Evil One 71 3. Hell and the Infernal Dimension of the World 77 4. The Suffering of Men 83 5. Message of Pentecost 87 6. The Fathers of the Desert 93 7. Monasticism Interiorized 111 1. The Transmission of Witness 111 2. The Universal Character of Spiritual Monasticism 113 ————————————————— vi 3. The Three Temptations, the Lord’s Three Answers, and the Three Monastic Vows 116 4. The Vow of Poverty in the Interior Monasticism of the Laity 122 5. The Vow of Chastity 124 6. The Vow of Obedience 127 7. Christian Liberty and Monastic Freedom 129 8. The Human Being 131 9. The Ascesis of the Spiritual Life 135 10. The Ascetic Effort 139 11. Progression of the Spiritual Life 141 12. The Passions and the Technique of Temptation 145 III The Charisms of the Spiritual Life and the Mystic Ascent 1. Evolution of the Spiritual Life in the East and in the West 153 2. Passage from the Old Testament to the New 157 3. Charisms of the Spiritual Life 161 1. The Spirit of Discernment, Impassibility, Silence, Vigilance, Repentance and Humility 161 2. The Charism of “Joyful Dying” 171 3. Prayer 176 The State of Prayer 176 The Degrees of Prayer 178 The Forms of Prayer 180 The Prayer of Jesus 181 Liturgical Prayer 183 Liturgical Prayer, the Rule of All Prayer 185 Difficulties and Obstacles 186 4. Lectio Divina: Reading the Bible 189 5. Universal Priesthood of the Laity in the Eastern Tradition 195 6. The Mystic Ascent 211 vi ————————————————— Introduction If we know how to listen, we can hear above the noise of the world the questions put to us by the meaning of things. More than ever before, human existence entails the need for clarity and asks the sole question that can be addressed to every man. Beyond all catechetical or propaganda literature, and at the level of a conscience freed from every prejudice, the 20th-century believer is invited to ask: “What is God?” and the atheist, the one who denies, is invited to make clear the object of his negation. The question causes surprise, and if the answer is slow in coming, the silence is refreshing. This question is revealing for man himself; it is also a way of saying: “Who are you?” The one who would say God is creator, providence, savior, reviews the chapters of a textbook or gives testimony to a theory, to a dialectic distance between God and himself. God, in this case, is not the All, passionately and spontaneously grasped in the immediate content of his revelation. St. John Climacus, one of the most severe of the ascetics, said we should love God as a young man loves his betrothed.1 A lover who is passionately in love would say: “But that is all. That is my life. There is nothing but that; the rest does not count; it is non-existent.” St. Gregory of Nyssa, at the height of his emotion, let these words escape him: “Thou whom my soul loves...”2 Atheism rejects only an ideology, a system, a theory, which man has too often misused; it never rejects divine reality, which is revealed only through faith. Patristic tradition does not attempt any definition of God, for God is beyond all human words. “Concepts create images of God, 1 Ladder, XXX, 3; col. 1156C. 2 P.G., 44, col. 801A. 1 ————————————————— 2 wonder alone grasps something,” confessed St. Gregory.3 For the Fathers, the word God is a vocative addressed to the Ineffable. The difficulty in regard to man is just as great. It caused Theophilus of Antioch to say: “Show me your man and I shall show you my God.”4 The divine mystery is reflected in the mirror of the human mystery. St. Peter speaks of homo cordis absconditus, the hidden man of the heart.5 Deus absconditus, mysterious and hidden, has created his vis- a-vis, his other self, homo absconditus, mysterious and hidden. The spiritual life springs forth in “the pastures of the heart”,6 in its free spaces, as soon as these two mysterious beings, God and man, meet there. “The greatest thing that happens between God and the human soul is to love and to be loved,” affirm the great spiritual writers.7 “No man sees me and still lives.”8 For the Fathers, this biblical warning meant that we cannot see God with the light of our reason, and that we can never define God, for every definition is a limitation. However, he is closer to us than we are to ourselves. In the depth of his astounding proximity God turns his face to man and says to him: “I am... the Holy One.”9 He chooses among his names the one that veils him most. He is even “thrice holy”, as the angels proclaim in the Sanctus, thus throwing in relief the incomparable and absolutely unique character of divine holiness. Wisdom, power, even love, can find affinities and similarities, but holiness alone has no analogy here below; it cannot be either measured or compared to any reality of this world. Before the burning bush, in the face of the devouring fire of “Thou alone art holy”,10 every human being is but “dust and ashes”. For this reason, as soon as the holiness of God manifests itself, the hagiophany immediately arouses the mysterium tremendum, a sacred fear, an 3 P.G., 44, cols. 377B, 1028D. 4 P.G., 6, 1025B. 5 1 Pet. 3, 4. 6 St. Makarios, Spiritual Homilies. 7 Kallistos, P.G., 147, col. 860A-B. 8 Ex. 33, 20. 9 Hos. 11, 9. 10 Apoc. 15, 4. ————————————————— 3 irresistible feeling of the “wholly other”.11 This is not a fear of the unknown, but a characteristic and mystic awe that accompanies every manifestation of the divine. “I will have the fear of me precede you”,12 God says; and again: “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”13 Having thus marked off the uncrossable abysses that separate the divine from the human, God immediately reveals their mysterious conformity: “Deep calls unto deep,”14 and “As in water face answereth face.”15 God, the lover of man, transcends his own transcendence toward man, whom he draws from his nothingness, and calls him in his turn to transcend his immanence toward the Holy One. Man can do this because divine holiness has willed to take on man’s face. Even more, the “Man of Sorrows” shows us the “Man of Desire”, the eternal magnet that attracts all love and enters into us in order that we may live again in him. He says to every soul: “Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for stern as death is love... its flames are a blazing fire.”16 This is why Scripture tells us: “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”17 When Peter wishes to define the aim of our Christian life, he speaks of our participating in the holiness of God.’18 Likewise Paul, speaking to the Christians, addresses himself to the “saints” of Rome or Corinth. Would he still address himself today to the “saints” of Paris or London? Would the modern believer recognize himself among this group? As soon as anyone speaks of sanctity, a psychological block is formed. We think of the giants of former days, the hermits buried in caves, stylites perched on columns. These “illuminati”, “equal to the angels”, no longer appear as belonging to this world. Sanctity seems out-of-date. It belongs to a past that has become strange to us and unadapted to the discontinuous forms, the syncopated 11 See R. Otto, Le Sacré (Paris, 1929), p. 22. 12 Ex. 23, 27. 13 Ex. 3, 5. 14 Ps. 42, 8. 15 Cf. Prov. 27, 19. 16 Canticle of Canticles 8, 6. 17 Lev. 19, 2. 18 2 Pet. 1, 4; Heb. 12, 10. ————————————————— 4 rhythms of modern life. Today a stylite would not even arouse curiosity. He would provoke the question: “What good is he?” A saint is no longer anything but a sort of yogi, or perhaps to put it more crudely, a sick or unadjusted person; in any case, a useless being. Before our eyes the world is losing its sacred character without meeting any resistance.
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