Monasticism: The imitation of Christ

Imprisoned within man’s limited vessel of clay is a wonderful mystery which we are only with difficulty able to approach. This mystery is the spirit of man, through which he perceives, to the best of his ability, the material world that surrounds him. The spirit of man cannot be objectified like matter; its existence is not detected through the senses. But, although it remains elusive to the senses, it is nonetheless the measure of all their objects. Although it is unseen and intangible, and hence non-material, it is more real than anything which the senses perceive.

The more man penetrates into the mysteries of the natural world, the more deeply he appreciates the truth of the words spoken by the Saviour Christ regarding the human soul – its reality is more profound and its value more precious than anything in the entire world. “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? ”¹ What is implied here? There is nothing in the world of a value equal to that of the human soul. There is nothing by means of which it could be evaluated or purchased.

The life of man is founded upon his spirit. Through it the perceptions of the senses are transformed, in a way which we cannot conceive, into thoughts. Any serious observer of the world, from whatever perspective he approaches intellectual and material realities, feels the presence of this boundless mystery. A correct orientation in this enigmatic world is dependent upon the spirit, which guides mankind. This constantly longs for the infinite, eternity, life. With whatever resources it possesses, this is its chief aim: to overcome the temporal and to gain the eternal.

This longing in man manifests itself in the variously-named religions, philosophies and intellectual disciplines. “He is a heavenly creature and not an earthly one”², proclaims the philosopher Plato in regard to man. And he discerns that man’s ultimate goal is likeness to the divine, and says: “Therefore we ought to try to escape from here and flee to there as swiftly as possible. This flight is to become, as much as possible, like God; And likeness to God is to become just and holy, with wisdom”³. And the poet and philosopher Aratus says “For we also are His [God’s] offspring”⁴.

It is likewise evident that this desire was not imposed upon man from without, since all the things which surround him are transient and know nothing of immortality and infinity. Man’s yearning for infinity and immortality is in the very nature of his spirit.

What, then, is it which prompts man to seek after infinity and eternity? How is it that this desire is to be found amongst the most illustrious philosophers – and, moreover, to a greater degree than amongst more simple folk?

Man continues to be possessed of this desire because he was fashioned “according to the image and likeness” of God. This God-like element in man urges him towards a yearning for the boundlessness of God.

The immersion of the holy Fathers of our Church in the words revealed to us by the Word of God has yielded the sweetest of fruit and the sharpest of insights into man as a creation in the image of God. Thus, St Gregory Palamas applies the phrase “according to the image” primarily to the mind of man, since the intellect is the most lofty element in the human soul. He writes:

“For it is not the frame of the body which is ‘according to the image’, but the nature of the mind, better than which there is nothing by nature. For if there were something better, the phrase ‘according to the image’ would apply to that.”⁵

Subsequently he stresses that: “The intellectual and rational nature of the soul, which alone possesses mind and reason and life-giving spirit, this alone has been fashioned by God according to His image, even more so than the bodiless angels.”⁶

Adam, the first-created, being in communion with God, enjoyed the gifts of the Holy Spirit in uncreated light. His Fall lies in his distancing himself from communion with God through the false promise of the devil: “You will be as gods”. The essence of his sin is pride. Pride is the device and prompting of the devil, the enemy of human nature.

Contemporary man feels the deep emptiness into which he is driven by the Fall, and he strives in vain to fill it. He assumes that the purpose of his life is realised if he succeeds (as we see among artists) in surpassing and outdoing the mass of mankind by his brilliance and originality.

But in such poverty, of what eternity and immortality can one speak? Those who are held captive by materialism and vanity have an attitude of the greatest scepticism towards the eternal. Confined in the bonds of time and space, they are unable to cope with anything beyond time, anything beyond space, anything eternal. They consider such concepts aggression and threaten to fight back. The humanistic man loses heart in the presence of the divide between time and eternity. He views it as impassable since he lacks the ability and power necessary to span it. And all this is the work of mankind’s unsleeping and inexorable enemy death, who turns all things to his own purposes and mocks at anything that is eternal. The secular humanist interprets mankind through his bodily perceptions and ridicules the notion of immortality.

But the boundless love of God for man has not abandoned him, his creation according to His own image, even after the Fall. He has not let him put off his God-like character and the characteristics of his spirit entirely. These have remained so that they might endure even in man’s humanistic errancy in the form of a yearning for an infinite existence which belongs to him. Consciously or unconsciously, in all the struggles in which he engages with his humanistic spirit, man inclines towards the rediscovery in himself of the lost God-like quality. In the end, through all his errant yearnings, man cries out with a mighty voice for God Incarnate.

The Incarnation of our Saviour Christ, His earthly life of some thirty-three years, His preaching, His Passion, His Death and His Resurrection have as their purpose the healing of wounded Adam, his restoration to the ancient beauty of his first creation. On Mount Tabor we received a faint impression of the glory awaiting the sons of God. In this the beneficent Word “revealed the archeetypal beauty of the image, taking upon Himself human nature and deifying that which He had taken up”.

With this revealed truth as a foundation, a truth encountered in various ways in Holy Scripture (as, for example, “I said, ‘You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High’”⁷, and “But as many as received Him, to them he gave the right to become children of God.”⁸), an understanding of the genesis of monasticism becomes possible. It is the fruit of the quest for God as revealed in Christ, and of seeking to be like Him.

Monasticism has no other aim than this imitation of Christ and life in Christ. It is not an end in itself. It is not an exclusive path. It is not the product of religious fanaticism. The Gospel is the same for all, both lay people and monks. In monasticism a person may, if he or she wishes, find the most suitable conditions for the healing of the wounds of the soul, far removed from the causes which bring about the descent into sin. At the same time, it is possible to discover systematic methods and wise programmes which render easier the imitation of the life of Christ, who lived in virginity, in poverty, in humility. Monasticism, and especially coenobitic monasticism, is none other than a continuation of the life of the first Christians, among whom all things were in common.

Throughout the passage of the sixteen or more centuries from the foundation of monasticism in its institutional and organised form, which was revealed by God Himself to the God-bearing Fathers, among whom is our holy father Pachomius, we are able to behold the mighty acts of God. These acts are accomplished in the communion of brothers living the common life, according to the saying of the Lord: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them”⁹.

Monks of their free will surrender themselves fully to a spiritual elder, who has the Spirit of God, and the wisdom, discernment, grace, peace, long-suffering, love, and every virtue which stems from Him. Through obedience, they put to death their will, knowledge, pride and self-conceit, imitating the gentle and humble Jesus, who was obedient to his own Father “to the point of death, even death on the Cross”¹⁰. For his disciple, the elder is in the place and is the type of Christ: “He who hears you”, says the Lord, “hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me”¹¹. You will see the disciple serving his brothers as he would the Lord Himself. Labouring in brotherhood and love, according to the command of his father, whether in the guesthouse, the refectory, or elsewhere, he subordinates his own way of thinking to the thinking of his virtuous father, not merely superficially but within himself. And through the mystery of obedience and prayer he wards off every disordered impulse of his soul selfishness anger, an unbridled tongue, etc.) from whatever pretext it arises. “Obedience is the tomb of self-will and the awakening of humility”¹² according to St John Climacus. This awakening of humility is the redemption from our original sin. The holy father Theodore the Studite says of the obedience of a monk:

Come here, fighter, stand before me with

   ardour.

Bend your shoulders submissively,

All humble…

You come before all, as has been divinely

   written,

For you cross the threshold of the first of the

   martyrs¹³.

As an artist in the workshop of the coenobium, the monk is able, by focusing on Christ as his model, to paint the virtues of God upon the icon of his soul.

From our birth, all of us Orthodox Christians were deemed worthy of divine baptism. This is a gift which was given to us through the Incarnation of the Word of God, so that by it we can achieve likeness to God. All men retain the quality of being created “according to the image of God”, however tarnished. However, those who are baptised in the truth of the Orthodox Church possess the potential of likeness to God. Through divine grace, with the co-operation of the human will, this likeness is again achieved.

All of us, as descendants of Adam, have been defiled by sin and, for this reason, there is a need for repentance. The very first public preaching of the Lord testifies to this: “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand”¹⁴. Through repentance, which is literally the turning of the mind away from disordered desires and towards what is supremely desirable, our Lord Jesus, the faithful man may become ‘lord’ by grace.

Monasticism is a life of constant repentance. In gatherings for worship at the hour of common prayer, as well as in every activity in the coenobium, the monks are ever aware that God has called them in order that they might co-operate with Him in the fashioning of immortal gods. Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, one sees the Elder and the Abbot enduring the shortcomings of their young and still ignorant disciples. Through the working of this same Comforter, the Spirit, one sees souls which were formerly borne down by a multitude of sins, and thus filled with sick depression, leaving the coenobium filled with joy after their visit as pilgrims and the remission of their sins in the sacrament of confession. Through the working of the same Comforter one hears those who visit the Holy Mountain and its communities for the first time saying among themselves “We have found what we longed for”.

Through this same Spirit one sees men in the coenobium, drawn from different places and walks of life, men of altogether different character, who are able to live together in harmony according to the Word of our Lord “that they may be one, as we are”¹⁵.

He is first who is “the last of all and the servant of all”¹⁶. Any coenobitic monk who has experiential knowledge of the grace of the Holy Spirit will have discovered that even the slightest love of self (and I do not mean unrestrained selfishness, but simply minor self-centredness) causes temporary abandonment by God until, through repentance, he returns to humility and the communion of love with his brothers.

The coenobium has been called “a heaven on earth”. From the very first visit, even the most imperceptive become aware of a love whose character stems from resurrection emanating from the peaceful faces of the fathers leading the ascetic life within it.

St John Chrysostom, who had experience of the monastic life – for, as we can see from his biography, he lived for six years as a hesychast and ascetic – speaks of it in charming language: wishing to edify his Christian flock, he compares the life of monks to life in the world. He writes: [The monastery] is a tranquil harbour; it is like so many signal torches placed in a harbour which appear on high in the distance to those travelling from far off, drawing every traveller to their serenity and preventing shipwrecks among those who look towards them… The flight of a holy man to a monastery is as a flight from earth to heaven… the concepts ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ do not exist there… And they do not require, as we do, many hours to throw off sleep and drowsiness. For when we rise up from sleep we draw things out considerably. We attend to our necessities, and then wash our face, our hands. After this we put on our shoes and clothing and so much time is consumed. There they have none of this… for they do not, of course, have many garments… No one hears snorers there, no one hears wheezers; nor do you see them tossing and turning in their sleep or lying uncovered. Rather, they are more composed while asleep than men who are awake. And when they sing with the angels (for the angels too sing at that hour) saying ‘Praise the Lord from the heavens’, we are yawning, sleeping, snoring or simply lying on our backs and thinking of ten thousand deceits… Worldly men sleep even in the daytime, while they are awake even in the night. They are truly sons of light. When evening again prevails, worldly men hasten to the baths and recreations, but they release themselves from their labours and then attend the refectory. Nor do they make a commotion or serve up large meals for themselves. Shrieking and wailing cannot be heard there; their house is pure of such disgusting things… Among them people die, for their body is not immortal, but they do not acknowledge earthly death to be death. They send their departed on their way with hymns¹⁷.

To conclude these few words, we will quote from some of the beautiful sayings of our Father among the Saints John of Sinai a few words about what a monk is:

A monk is untroubled ecstasy, and sorrow for life. A monk is shaped by virtues in the way that another is shaped by pleasures. A monk is unending light in the eye of the heart. A monk is an abyss of humility, into which he hurls and suffocates every evil spirit¹⁸.

The coenobium, even if it exists within the bounds of time and of space, even if it is in this world, is not of this world.

Notes:

1. Matt, 16:26. The translations of the quotations from the New Testament are taken from the New King James Version.

2. Timaeus, 90a.

3. Plato, Theaetetus, 176a, b.

4. Aratus, Phenomena, 5a. See also Acts 17:28.

5. Gregory Palamas, The 150 Chapters, E.P.E., Vol. 8, p. 104, 27, vss 8-11.

6. Ibid. p. 120, 39, vss 1-3.

7. Ps. 81 (82):7.

8. John 1:12.

9. Matt. 18:20.

10. Phil. 2:8.

11. Luke 10:16.

12. St John of Sinai, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 4, ‘On Obedience’, 4.

13. Theodore the Studite, To a Disciple. Iambics, PG, p. 1781, 5.

14. Matt. 3:2.

15. John 17:11.

16. Mark 9:35.

17. Oeuvres Completes de Saint Jean Chrysostom, ed. Bareille, Vol. 19 (Paris 1865-1878), pp. 490-495.

18. St John of Sinai, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 23, ‘On the many types of vainglory’, 22.