One of the most important and life changing moments concerning the spiritual life for me was when I read the book “Wounded by Love” by St. Porphyrios. Based on his divine teachings, combined with how I have attempted to live the spiritual life over the years, and how others, both spiritual children of mine, and other Orthodox Christians with whom I have spent time discussing living the spiritual life, I was encouraged by what St. Porphyrios wrote.
Therefore, I want to share with you a little bit of what I’ve seen and heard over the years as a priest and father confessor from spiritual children and other Orthodox who have struggled, become frustrated, discourage and faint-hearted in their attempts to follow Christ and grow in the likeness of our Lord.
Most of what I’ve experienced and have heard from others is more about “doing” the Orthodox spiritual life (fasting, keeping a rule of prayer, etc.) not so much about “being” in Christ. For many, the concern boils down to how they are “performing” as an Orthodox Christian. Are they praying enough, or praying in the right way? Are they following the dietary rules of the Church good enough? Are they reading the Scripture daily, or the lives of the Saints each day? Are they fighting off evil and struggling well enough against sinful inclinations? Prayer, fasting, and reading are all good and necessary, but when a person “fails” to be consistent in these, they can become ridden with guilt, see themselves as failures, and the spiritual life all of a sudden becomes too difficult and they lose heart. This puts them in even a more difficult situation because now they are faced with Acedia, spiritual despondency, which leads to spiritual listlessness, aloss of interest in spiritual things. In a sense, they begin to give up. And where do you thing this comes from? Not the Holy Spirit.
Living in a performance-based world, you can see how easy it can be to apply performance to the spiritual life. After all, in the world we live in as students and employees, we are continually graded and evaluated. After all, how well we perform leads to good grades and promotions or failing grades and demotions. Applying this to the spiritual life, however, if very dangerous for the reasons just mentioned, but we still do it. Imagine if God said, “I will send my Son to you when all of you get your act together and show me that you’re worth dying for and saving.” But this isn’t what He said, instead read that “God showed His own love for us in that while we were still sinful, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). We didn’t have to perform, instead, we simply have to make ourselves available to His mercy, kindness, and love, and this will transform us into true and authentic human beings, just as Christ was.
The issue, as I see it, is that one, we still operate out of the place of performance in our life in Christ, needing to be “good enough,” and two, we make the spiritual life so complicated. What we need instead is simplicity. Enter in St. Porphyrios who instructs us to “engage in our spiritual life, simply and easily and without force.” In his writings he speaks about the small things we must do to cultivate love for Christ. He says, “the soul is sanctified through studying the words of the Holy Fathers, memorization of the Psalms and passages of Scripture, singing hymns of the Church, and through the repetition of the Jesus Prayer.” We don’t need to perform or fight against, but rather accept Christ’s love, His gift, and simply set aside a little time each day to “devote our efforts to these spiritual practices and ignore all the other things for a time.”
When we do this, St. Porphyrios says, “we can attain to the worship of God easily,” and he knew this first hand because he discovered the way to accomplish this, it was to be wounded by the love of God. He also tells us, “there are two paths that lead to God. The hard path of fighting against the assaults of evil or the easy path where we focus our efforts on growing in our love for Christ. He says, “there are many who choose the hard path and ‘shed blood in order to receive the Spirit,’ until they attained great virtue.” But he found that, “the shorter and safer route is the path with love,” and says, “this is the path that you, too, should follow.
When we focus on loving Christ, thinking about all that He has done for us, and what He is offering us (Eternal Life), and we spend a little time each day in prayer, read a little bit of the Bible and the life of a Saint or their writings, and go through our day thinking about “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable” (Phil. 4:8), then the sins we once fought against will slowly die off.
St. Porphyrios exhorts us to “stop fighting to expel the darkness from the chamber of our souls, instead, open a tiny window for light to enter, and the darkness will disappear.” He also says, “the same holds for our passions and our weaknesses. Don’t fight them but transform them into strengths by occupying yourself singing hymns, and worshiping God with divine love.
“All the holy books of our Church – the Book of Hours, the Psalter, Scripture, the Lives of the Saints, contain holy, loving words addressed to Christ.” He says to “read them with joy, love, and exaltation. When you devote yourself to this with intense desire, your soul will be sanctified in a gentle & mystical way without even being aware of it. By reading these books you will gradually acquire meekness, humility and love, and your soul will be made good. Don’t choose negative methods to correct yourselves. There is no need to fear the devil, hell, or anything else. These things provoke a negative reaction. I, myself, have a little experience in these matters.”
I have experienced many people who focus so much of their time and attention on all the evil in the world. They become consumed with it, they obsess about it, and they feel the need to warn other people about it. All of this does nothing more than create anxiety for the person who focuses their attention on it, and spreads that anxiety to others. St. Porphyrios warns us to not “afflict ourselves with these things, and constrict ourselves, force ourselves to improve. The object is to live, to study, to pray and to advance in love – in love for Christ and for the Church. What is holy and beautiful and what gladdens the heart and frees the soul from every evil is the effort to unite yourself to Christ, to love Christ, to crave for Christ and to live in Christ. This should be your aim, love for Christ. Let this be in your thoughts your heart, and your will.”
He says, “Your most intense efforts should be how you will encounter Christ, how you will be united to Him and how you will keep Him in your heart. Forget about all your weaknesses so the evil spirits don’t see what’s going on and grab you and pin you down and cause you grief. Make no effort to free yourself from these weaknesses. Make your struggle with calmness and simplicity, without contortion and anxiety. Don’t say: ‘Now I’ll force myself and I’ll pray to acquire love and become good.’ It’s not profitable to afflict yourself to become good. This will only cause your negative response to become worse. Everything should be done in a natural way, calmly and freely. Nor should you pray, ‘God free me from my anger, my sorrow, etc.’ It’s not good to pray about or think about the specific passions, because something happens in our soul and we become even more enmeshed in the passion. Attack your passion head on, and you’ll see how strongly it will entwine you and grip you and you won’t be able to do anything. Don’t struggle directly with temptation, don’t pray for it to go away, don’t say, ‘Take this from me, O Lord!’ Because then you are acknowledging the strength of the temptation and it takes hold of you. Your desire to be free of the passions will always be there, but they will exist in a hidden and discreet way. They are there, but you don’t focus on them.
“Let all your strength be turned to love for God, worship of God and clinging to God. In this way your release from evil and passions will happen in a mystical manner, without exertion. This is the kind of effort I make and have found that it’s the best way of sanctification. It’s better to devote ourselves to love through the study of the hymns and psalms. There are other ways, such as remembrance of death, of hell and of the devil, of all the evil going on in the world.”
In his own life, St. Porphyrios said, “I have never used these methods because they are exhausting, cause a negative reaction and produce the opposite of the desired effect. The soul is filled with gladness through love. It alters and transforms all the negative and ugly things. For this reason I prefer the ‘easy path, ‘to be wounded by love in order to love.”
As I said at the beginning, these divine words of St. Porphyrios have changed the way I approach living the spiritual life in a most positive way. I pray they will change your approach as well.
With love in Christ,
Fr. Timothy
