The following in an excerpt from “Eros of Orthodoxy,” translated by Fr. Nicholas Palis and written by Mr. Pantelis Paschou.
Basil the Great in one of his homilies says, “It is difficult to enter into the word of truth.” This saying refers to those who don’t gravitate to the truth with the faith that the Gospel so richly granted us. A Christian can locate the word of truth in the place Christ prepared for those who love Him. There, the Gospel tells us we will see Christ, the self-truth, not “in a reflection” or “as an enigma,” but “face to face,” “directly before Him,” as our Church’s hagiographers say. However, for centuries, Christians interpret the Lord’s saying, finding their own road in which they feel safe, in order to reach the truth, the Kingdom of the Heavens.
Most people say that it’s enough for one to believe and be baptized and be saved, stressing the words of the Lord to extreme: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved, while he who disbelieves will be condemned.” Faith and baptism alone can’t save a soul that is indolent and has not experienced the benefit and progress derived from the struggle for virtue. If we go with empty hands, we will find the doors of the heavens shut, and Christ will tell us: “Go bring oil,” or “Go away, I don’t know who you are or where you came from.”
Many read the Gospel but ignore Saint James. If they paid attention to his words, they would see the deficiency: “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If faith does not have works, by itself it is dead … show me your faith by your works” (James 2:14-18). Furthermore, by paying more attention to the words of the Gospel, they would hear the Apostle Paul say: “They confess to seeing God, by their works they deny it, being abominable and disbelieving and untried in any good work.” And if they had this epigrammatic saying: “Not everyone who tells me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the Kingdom of the Heavens, but he who does the will of my Father in the heavens.”
Most people not discerning the true meaning of the words of the Gospel have each found their own road to reach the salutary truth of the heavens. Satan clouds our minds, and we find our personal opinion on the Gospel’s topics as correct. The demons don’t disturb our heretical ideas and interpretations: “Wickedness never ruins wickedness,” says Abba Poemen. In the end we lose our orientation, turning to bare philosophies and different organizations, where we feel no warmth or security.
When the temptations of the spirit and body surrounded St. Arsenius and closed the door (on him), he advised himself with strictness: “Oh Arsenius, labor to finish that which you had in your mind when you left the world.” What should we do, who at every hour and moment are in a much more difficult position than that of St. Arsenius? Do we know if we have escaped the traps that Satan sets in the world, every day? Do we know in what a grievous spiritual state we are in? Do we know what we want? Do we know what road we must take to find what we long for?
Those of us who don’t know what we want and don’t attempt to learn the road we should take to get there will never make progress, says Abba Dorotheos in his “Compunctionate Sermons,” and we will continually be afflicted in our lives.
Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy
Here we should comment that today as well, many “prophets and teachers” appear to show us the road of truth that brings us to the Kingdom of the Heavens. But the word of truth appears “difficult to pursue” amongst contemporary teachings. Many attempt to win us over with a philosophical interpretation of the Holy Scripture. Others with a sociological nature, others with different content presented as a reflection of Orthodox experience. Under this umbrella, many groups and teachers present themselves, who think that they alone teach the correct Orthodoxy.
Thus we have a plethora of people who on the surface orthodoxologize (i.e., speak of Orthodoxy), and if all of these were not fanatic followers of Orthodoxology but of Orthopraxy, which our holy Orthodoxy wishes, then things would be much better. God’s peace and love would permanently reign amongst us. And the presuppositions to find the correct road leading to the self-truth, to Christ, would be easier for us to find.
The Orthodoxy of words seems to blossom with boldness and great audacity. Throughout many centuries the tradition of our Holy Church knows only one holy Orthodoxy: that which is accompanied by Orthopraxia, the Orthodoxy that is followed by the homologous action. In order to avoid misunderstandings, we will conclude this commentary.
The Holy Fathers as interpreters of the Gospel
On the issue we previously mentioned regarding the personal viewpoints and interpretation of the Gospel, we must say it is egotistical. There is little hope for the sinner to approach it alone, if he doesn’t resort to the natural interpreters of the word of God, the holy Fathers. Just as the Orthodox Church can’t be understood without the Tradition of the Holy Fathers, thus it is not permissible for us to search for the way to salvation and of finding the truth without the light of the holy experience of the Fathers of our Church.
The road which they show us, exclusive of the way each expresses it, is that which is enlightened with this Patristic saying: “Give blood and receive spirit”; in other words, struggle with the commandments of Christ to achieve the attainment of the virtues, and thus you will reach the vision of God. In other words, praxis becomes a step for man to ascend to vision.
“But it is a step, when man keeps the commandments and lives by the commands. Then he becomes a theologian worthy of divinity. He reaches to the Kingdom of the heavens, which is none other than to ‘succeed in the purest and most perfect knowledge of God, the most perfect of beings,’ a work which begins in this life and is completed in the other life” (B. Tataki, “The Contribution of Cappadocia in Christian Thought,” p. 161).
Most of the Holy Fathers show this union of vision and praxis as a secure road through which we gain our salvation. Vision elevates us towards the heights, leading us to the holy of holies, “it returns our mind to the familiar. Praxis receives Christ, it serves Him, and it shows the power of her love towards Him” (op. cit., p. 169).
The union of praxis and vision
If one wanted to simplify these thoughts, we would have to note that praxis and vision are two actions: the act of will and the vision of thought. If under the word vision we understand simple knowledge, vision is a projection of praxis and has a close relationship with our will, our appetitive aspect. This vision reflects our experience.
Beyond this vision, however, which is defined as opposing praxis (a meaning used by most people today in theoretical philosophy, scholarship, art, etc.), there exists the vision which concerns the mystical philosophers of Orthodoxy and which is the gladsome result of the purified soul of the believer encountering the Holy Spirit. If the soul does not return to its first purity and ancient beauty, it is impossible to reach this vision.
If the Christian, however, has as his ultimate aim his theosis, to become “conformed” to the image of Christ, and if he believes that Christ mystically exists behind the commands He gave us and is revealed to us in the measure of the working of his divine commands, then we must believe that only by praxis may one enter into the impenetrableness of “knowledge” and of mystical vision. The truth of Christianity rests exactly on Christ “who acted and taught” the self-truth in which the praxis and vision the Saints of our Church entered into “having acted and taught.”
The Holy Fathers proceeded down this divine road, holding the sword which the Gospel tells us, not only when others go astray but for their personal sins, crying for God to forgive them: “Cry over sins,” says Basil the Great. “This illness of soul is the death of the immortal, this is worthy of mourning and unceasing wailing.” They did not feel ready or worthy to approach Christ in vision, if they didn’t wear the spiritual garment. And the spiritual garment and garb is woven “when by the didactic word, praxis, is knitted.”
The divine Maximos the Confessor analyzes this very deeply in his “theological” chapters. Since the intellect has the memory of God alive, it seeks to approach the Lord not only in vision but also with fear of God, in other words with the exercising of His commandments. Whoever wishes to find the Lord by vision alone, without praxis, will never find Him. Whoever seeks Him with actualized vision, Christ teaches him how to do the commandments and reveals the truth of beings, words and things.
Here we must recall the profound saying of Abba Philemon, which seems incomprehensible to most people. The saying refers to those who struggle and are in a continual spiritual battle. Abba Philemon says that the virtue and evil make the intellect blind: the virtues prevent him from seeing virtues, and evils prevent him from seeing evils. When the battle stops and “he is made worthy of spiritual gifts, then he becomes surrounded by light, heavily worked upon by grace, and has stood unyielding in the vision of spiritual things. Such a one is not tied down to things here but has moved from death to life.”
Furthermore, we must note that in this present life, with all our progress on the way to perfection, up to the highest achievable measure in praxis and vision, we receive knowledge, prophecy, the betrothal of the Holy Spirit only in part and not in the fullness we will acquire when “we end up,” in the Apostle Paul’s expression, “to be a perfect man, to a mature age, of the fullness of Christ, in which the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.” Then “the things in part” will be abolished.
The practical life, according to the Holy Fathers, is the keeping of Christ’s commandments, which purifies us from the passions of sin and brings us to the state of brilliance under the beneficial gentle wind of grace. The visionary life becomes whole and flawless with three things: “through faith, participation of the energy of the Holy Spirit and the notification of wisdom.” The marriage of the practical to the visionary life gives the road that the Fathers of Orthodoxy engraved, for the acquisition of salvation, for the entrance into the Kingdom of the heavens.
Certain pages from Orthodox mysticism show us that beautiful result, to which the great mystics of the Church reached. “My face shines,” says St. Symeon the New Theologian, “like the face of my Beloved, and all my members become bright. Then I become more beautiful than the beautiful, richer than the rich, stronger than the strong, greater than the emperors, and more precious than any object whatsoever, either on earth or in heaven.” With these words one may understand the definition of vision which St. Kallistus Kataphygiotis offered: “Vision is knowledge of the comprehensible things, therefore in the perceivable things.”
For the Holy Fathers, vision and praxis are two inseparable things. Just as both the soul and body together comprise man, thus praxis with vision comprises the “knowledgeable wisdom” which saves. Both are tied to a beautiful and harmonious whole. Praxis is vision “activated,” and vision is “praxis,” “leading to the mystery of faith.” Praxis is brightened with the ways of virtue; vision is enlightened by divine thoughts.
Whoever loves and struggles for his salvation must pass through praxis and vision, “each containing the other and neither separated from the other.” “Without virtue and knowledge,” says St. Maximos, “no one will ever gain salvation.” The holy Elias the Elder and lawyer says that the beginning of every good is “a practiced word and a rational work,” and for this reason praxis is not without the word good, nor is the word without praxis good. Thus there is no safe action outside of vision or true vision outside of action.
There is an analogy here relating to the praxis and vision of the spiritual person with a ship and the sails that spread out for the wind to set them in motion. If the ship (the action) is disproportionately smaller or larger than the sails (the vision), it is in danger of either remaining motionless, of being overturned by the winds, or of the sails being torn.
Which comes first, praxis or vision?
“Praxis is the mounting of vision.” But also “praxis deprived of vision withers,” according to Saint Neilus the Ascetic. “This is prudence and bravery, wisdom and knowledge unfeigned and inalienable wealth, to rise to the creator by practical virtue,” according to the word of Saint John Damascene.
Praxis, according to the Holy Fathers, is always combined with vision. But which of the two goes first? St. Elias the Elder says that to the “more reasonable,” vision precedes action. To “the crude,” praxis precedes vision. However, both end with the same “good.”
St. Kallistus Kataphygiotis says that there exists praxis that precedes vision and praxis that follows vision. First there is that which curbs the body’s drives and places it logically at the disposition of the intellect, which proceeds from the sensorial to the noetic. The second “starts from the intellect, mentally in spirit, is gathered up beyond the intellect, which is God, to whom the approaching intellect becomes one, for God is one.” However, each praxis or vision is compelled towards the One beyond the intellect, in other words God, “of which he cannot surpass and in vain will the intellect appear to act or theorize.”
Thus the mystery of our salvation is always found at the end of a bright road, through much pain and struggle, is revealed to us by the grace of God, when we pass through the correct praxis towards vision.
The present was finished, in the
years one thousand, sixty-four
and nine hundred, the First Sunday
of Lent, of Orthodoxy.
(Its second publication and in this journey
in one thousand nine hundred and seventy-three.)
If one finds in this any pages of any small value,
let him pray to the divine Omniscient One
to protect the author along with every reader.
Amen.
Compunctionate Kathisma
Tone 4 Joseph was Amazed
By the haze of the passions and the pleasures of life,
The intellect of my wretched soul is darkened,
does not come to the thought of compunction.
But have compassion, O Savior, on the fainthearted one,
And give me thought of compunction
so that I may cry out before my end
to your compassion, O Lord.
Christ, my Savior, despairing
Save me, the unworthy one.
