Currently, we in the Orthodox Church are still in the midst of Lent. A lot can be said about fasting during Lent. At a time this year when many of us are faced with a constant desire to fly into the future or return to the distant past, Lent asks us to live and embrace the present. Our present discomfort leads to the reality of the experience of God. now we need our suffering now.
The pangs of hunger, the loss of the analgesic distraction that food and drink provide even when hunger is far away, these things are but the early forms of self-denial and repentance that fully bloom in the heart; That’s where we meet God. Our heartache on behalf of the world.
It requires humility and insight, both politically and spiritually.
In this experience, we come to know that our hearts are the very temples of the Lord, similar to churches and monasteries created for the same purpose: to unite us with God. .
This process can and often does consume an entire life and ‘lifestyle’, but may be taken up by spiritual athleticism or asceticism that pushes the mind, soul, and body to its limits. . Just as athletes train and test themselves and each other, the Orthodox are also encouraged to improve themselves. The limits of divine deprivation and abandonment of comfort, passion, pleasure, and even sensation are found only in the greatest love, lying down. sacrificing one’s life for others.
At the same time, Orthodoxy is reminded of the great danger of pushing oneself too hard, too far, and too fast – a great spiritual danger. Like many other sins born of temptation and delusion, pride always invites us to take on more than we are worthy of, given our level of spiritual strength and development. The devil loves nothing more than when a Christian discovers with horror that he is suffering an irreversible act of self-destruction. Such moments can tempt even the most faithful person to abandon all hope and all discipline.
This lesson is very applicable to Lent itself. Fasting too severely can lead to sin, delusion, confusion, failure, and despair. It is often even more dangerous than fasting too loosely.
Failure due to weakness or incompetence is painful enough, but it should never come as a surprise. The remedy is always clear and always the same. It is self-reproach, repentance, prayers for forgiveness and mercy, and a resumption of spiritual warfare. When you fail because of pride, it’s much harder and more painful to climb back out with reliable remedies, and it’s harder to trust.
It invites a strange vanity that judges oneself as unworthy of God’s mercy, a judgment that belongs only to God, or a preemptive rejection of God’s forgiveness, an even more serious evil. Its intensity can be tantamount to the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
To avoid these nightmarish consequences, there is only one course to take: humility. Without the discipline of humility, we cannot carefully discern our own levels of spiritual strength and weakness.
The acquisition of such discernment may be aided or supplemented by reading and contemplating spiritual writings, but even the best of them can never be used on one’s own. Nothing can replace the development of one’s own spiritual experience. In this sense, humility is not an abstract virtue or ideal, something that can be approached by remembering past examples or imagining future achievements, but an experience. nowfalling, falling, falling, year by year, day by day, moment by moment.
This is a spiritual battle strengthened and clarified by Lenten fasting, which should extend beyond food and drink to encompass everything visible and invisible. There is, and we create it into an earthly den of false and fleeting comfort.
This includes politics that are especially distracting at what we rightly recognize as a moment of crisis for our country and society. It’s tempting to withdraw from the discomfort of the present and seek solace in dimly remembered pasts and unimagined futures. A frenzied acceleration into sudden, total change, whether “forward” or “regressive,” seems preferable to remaining in this unbearable tension.
But the reordering of earthly events is no substitute for the reordering of our hearts. In training us to attend to our inner and spiritual turmoil, Lent brings us closer to the most pressing source of our pain: the woefully inadequate home we have prepared for the King of all. face
Our shame and wounded pride can also lead us to extreme psychological states. Here, as with penitents in the midst of Lent, humble discernment is key, allowing us to judge and accept the degree of intensity we can endure and allow for the healing of body and soul. so that it can be used as intended.
In other words, we must pray to God as we are. We must pray like tax collectors. we He might accept you — back to our heartsIn other words, it’s like a father accepting his prodigal son.
Here we find the only true salvation, an eternal union with God made possible to us by the grace of the God-Man Christ.
