Weakness

Prayer is an expression of weakness, not strength. Before the Lord Almighty we have nothing. He has everything. But so often I feel that it is the other way 'round. If it were not for the mercy of Jesus I would be dead in sin, a slave to evil. Thank you Jesus for your mercy. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

Transform My Heart - Transform The World

The surest way to the transformation of the heart of another is through the transformation of one’s own heart. Let us sweep our own house before we sweep that of another. Always be about the business of removing the plank. God desires pure and unhindered channels for the streams of His great love.

The Cost of the Holy Spirit

[The following was presented at the House of St Michael the Archangel Devotional Conference in January of 2013]

If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.

We have received a Spirit whom the world neither sees nor knows.
Are we prepared to accept the consequences of that?

I worked for a time under a pastor who, among his other duties, led a weekday service at a residential facility for the physically and mentally challenged. There are many people who attended that service whom I will never forget. Our friend with autism who insisted every week that he had thirteen prayer requests. The man who could not speak but always came forward to light the candles. The man who came occasionally to sit in the corner and insist out loud and repeatedly that we did not love him – no matter what we said or did. The woman who clapped with happiness from the time she walked in the door clear through til the benediction.

One of the most beautiful, and one of the saddest, parts of the service came every week during the time for prayer requests. When we asked if anyone who had come needed special prayer, Minnie always came forward. Minnie was an elderly woman who had spent her life confined to a wheelchair. She had two badly twisted legs and one of her arms was bent so that it was permanently frozen by her face. She was blind in one eye. Every week, Minnie would drive her motorized wheelchair to the front of the chapel with her one good hand and ask us to pray for her legs to be healed. And every week, we would pray. The pastor with whom I was working had been praying for Minnie for years.

I have yet to read or hear a theology of healing prayer that has made sense in a comprehensive sort of way to the deep places of my heart, so I do not profess to be an expert on the subject. I have, however, witnessed people being healed by the prayers of others. And I have prayed for my patients at the hospital and seen some of them become well in ways that cannot be accounted for by medical knowledge alone. So I also do not profess myself to be absolutely unknowledgeable with respect to God’s willingness and ability to bring healing in response to our prayers. What I would like to lift up today is a particular aspect of healing prayer – or of any other work we do in God: the willingness of our spirit to cooperate with the will and action of the Holy Spirit.

I asked the pastor once how he understood the relationship between his prayers and Minnie’s health, and he replied with a candor for which we should praise him – for truth cannot come out of politic half-truths and lies: “I have often wondered if the reason Minnie is not healed is that I don’t really want her to be healed. Because if she suddenly stood up out of that wheelchair, what would happen next? What would I say to the people here at the home? What would they say to me? If word got out, what would I say to my congregation? To the TV news? I’m not really sure that I want to be the pastor who healed a crippled woman. There’d be no getting off the hook after that. It would change the course of my life.”

My temptation in that moment was to judge him. To say, “What do you mean you won’t want to see God’s presence revealed in the world? Don’t you want the darkness and sadness in that home to be replaced by happiness and light? You know, that’s just the problem with the church today.” But Jesus, who is the rightful judge of the words of human beings, has something else to say:

All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when the time comes, you will remember.

Jesus knows that the response to the presence and moving of the Spirit is not likely to be unambiguous joy or pleasure. It was not when He acted, and He was the sweetest, most beautiful man who ever lived. Indeed, through the power of the Spirit with whom He is One, Jesus did the sweetest, most beautiful things ever done by human flesh, and they nailed Him to a tree for it. And He sweated blood in the Garden in dread of those nails. Jesus, unlike my judgmental self, is not naive about the consequences of bringing Light into the darkness.

We have received a Spirit whom the world neither sees nor knows. Are we prepared to accept the consequences of that?

Whether that pastor ever said consciously to himself, “I fear persecution for righteousness sake,” his anxiety was tapped into a real spiritual reality. “The true light that gives light to every man [came] into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.”

Why? Why did humankind not recognize or receive the very One is whose image they were made? The answer is sin. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the light comes into the light, that it may be plainly seen that what he has done he has done through God.”

The question is one of authority. The presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the world raises the question of God’s authority. The role of the Holy Spirit is not just to comfort and to guide but to reveal the rightful order of the universe and convict humankind of our disobedience. If that pastor had healed Minnie, he would have revealed himself as one in league with the rightful Ruler of the universe. For only creation’s rightful Lord can restore a broken bit of creation with the touch of a hand.

We can’t do that. I work in a hospital. I help care for the sick. I see, daily, what we can and cannot do. We can patch up broken people. We can replace worn out or diseased bits of them with new bits we’ve gathered from other people or fashioned ourselves out of synthetic materials. We can ease their pain and try to encourage their natural healing processes. But we can’t with a touch – just like that – make them new. Only creation’s rightful Lord can do that. And if creation has a rightful Lord, then all the schemes of mortal human beings stand doomed to fail.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about meeting the doom of my plans. That’s why the most controversial part of Jesus’ ministry was not that He could heal: it was that as He healed, He proclaimed the forgiveness of sins, revealing Himself as the One who had the right to commute the curse that has been placed on us. When people saw Jesus heal, they saw One to Whom they were accountable for their participation in the sickness and brokenness and evil of the world. In the shining of Jesus’ light, they saw their own darkness.

And Jesus, entrusting us with the ministry of reconciliation, has given us the power to bring healing and to forgive sins in His name. When we speak and act in Jesus’ name by the power of the Holy Spirit, we stand in the same controversial place in which Jesus stood, as signs of the rightful order of the universe – as little lights shining in a dark and reluctant universe.

We of course pray and work for the salvation of all, but whatever may happen in the world to come, it is clear that – although He desires it – Jesus does not expect for everyone to accept His kingship here on earth. The fact that there remain people who do not know Jesus has two consequences for us: a lesser and a greater. The lesser is that we will not always be understood. As Jesus tells Nicodemus: The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. This does not mean that those who are Spirit-filled are incomprehensible, but that to those who do not share our birth from above, the source and cause and reason for our actions will be as invisible as the source of the wind.

We have received a Spirit whom the world does not know. Are we willing to accept not being understood? We are, in a sense, spending these two days playing with fire. It is easy to desire the presence of the Spirit in a place where people are of relatively like-mind. It is, in my experience, much more difficult to desire the presence of the Spirit when it makes you an unreadable, incomprehensible sign. Have you ever read the prophets? Fallen and weak – as are we – they are not always glad to be called, though they in the Spirit were given the gift to foresee the Consummation of all things. To be a prophet is not to be a popular person. They were – and are – often despised and mocked. Indeed, one of God’s chief complaints is that Jerusalem is a city where prophets not only undergo the lesser consequence of service to the Spirit – being misunderstood – but where they undergo the greater consequence – death.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing…

The pursuit of the Holy Spirit is a beautiful thing, but also a dangerous one. I am entranced by the way Symeon speaks of the Holy Spirit, but I’m not sure I would have wanted his life. Have you been listening to what he says? His purchase of the pearl of great price cost him exile from the world. It cost him Everything.

What will it cost us?

We don’t always live like it, but there’s a war going on, a war as ancient as – or older than – time. I don’t know if you’re all Christians. But if you are a Christian, you have sworn allegiance to one of the sides in that war. The winning side, the Scriptures say and the power of the Spirit demonstrates. If you are not a Christian, I invite you to join us in swearing your allegiance to the rightful Lord of all, for to Him belongs all praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever. Amen.

But I would also invite us all to be aware of the cost of our allegiance, and aware of our perception of that cost. We do not, perhaps, all have the gift of healing the sick. We are not all prophets or writers of great hymns. But all Christians are called to participate in the ministry of the Spirit. Do you know the sound of His voice? The pressure of His invisible hand guiding your heart? The way He lifts the veil from your eyes? His urgings – so dire, so sweet that they are almost irresistible, but not quite, to let us maintain our free will. If not, ask Him to make Himself clear to you. We should all be asking for His voice to become clearer. If you do know it, be aware and be honest in those moments when you feel His prompting. Be aware of the battle, for it is much easier for us to win fights of which we are aware, than those of which we are not. Ask yourself when you feel the Spirit leading you as you go forth from this place, “Is my response to the guidance of the Holy Spirit being limited by my fear of ridicule? By my fear of death?”

And then remember the victory of Jesus and the ministry with which He has entrusted us – that He is willing to let us be like Him in the world. Remember that it was by ridicule and death that He overcame. And then, when given the choice to choose between being light in the darkness and letting the darkness alone, choose to be Light. If you find you have not the strength to choose, be honest with Jesus about that. He is gracious to forgive and to heal, to encourage and to strengthen. Friendship with the Holy Spirit is more difficult that we could imagine because God’s ways are not our ways, and we are both mortal and sinners. But it is also easier than we could guess, for He desires us so.

The Spirit wants to teach your heart to be obedient and to turn us ever more into the likeness of Jesus, that more and more people, seeing Jesus’ likeness revealed in us, may make their choice about, may be drawn to, Him.

We have received a Spirit that the world neither knows nor receives, but the Spirit wants them to receive Him. He wants to so transform us that Christ is visible in us – His death that means the death of sin and His life that means His breaking of the curse. The Spirit wants to be so clear in us that seeing us the world sees its judgment and redemption. The Spirit wants to so rule your heart that the gospel is written on your flesh, and is the only language of your tongue. This is the path He has set up for the redemption of all things. And if you have any inclination toward it at all, He will do it in you. He will give you the obedience of Jesus. I can’t promise that the consequences of that won’t be terrible. But I can promise that they will be glorious.

Lord, have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Come, Holy Spirit.

Amen.

by Lisa Sayre

Hymns

Check out my new album. It is meant to lead you in prayer from beginning to end. Here is the website for the House of St Michael the Archangel, where you can listen, download the album and chord charts, or buy a physical copy: http://houseofstmichaelthearchangel.org/music/

Jesus Rains

“The more the rain falls on the earth, the softer it makes it; similarly, Christ’s holy name gladdens the earth of our heart the more we call upon it.” St Hesychios the Priest, #41, p.169. The Philokalia
“When combined with watchfulness and deep understanding the Jesus Prayer will erase from our heart even those thoughts rooted there against our will.” #137, p.186.
“Let us hold fast, therefore, to prayer and humility, for together with watchfulness they act like a burning sword against the demons.” #176, p. 193.

Agriculture was the major catalyst toward the technologically advanced societies of today. When people are able to plant and harvest things from the ground, and produce massive amounts of food, populations explode and life flourishes. However, there are several key components that, if not present, hinder the growth of plant life, and thus human life. The first is water. If there is no water, the ground is made hard and plants are deprived of nourishment. The second is someone to till the ground. Without the work of humans agriculture cannot even begin. Further, when a society has a bad harvest it is all the more susceptible to outside attack. The people are weakened and thus less able to fight against those who would seek to destroy them. So, a thriving crop is vital to the protection of life as well as its nourishment.
St Hesychios reminds us of the agricultural nature of soul work when he says, “The more the rain falls on the earth, the softer it makes it; similarly, Christ’s holy name gladdens the earth of our heart the more we call upon it.” The rain, for Hesyshios, is the name of Jesus. Without this name the ground of the human heart becomes dry and hard, unsuitable for the fruits of the Spirit to be produced therein. This barrenness in turn leads to a lack of joy, and thus a lack of motivation or ability to defend our land against demonic attack. What about the human toil necessary for a successful harvest? Hesychios says we must “call upon it.” In order for the rain to fall we must ask for it. Not only that, but we must increase the frequency of our asking, and thus procure more rain.
Farming is hard work. Lack of rain, nobody to work the fields, and the threat of outside attack are ever present; but, unlike real farming, we have control over these factors in our spiritual labor. Every time we call upon the name of Jesus the soil of our heart is watered. We have the Spirit, the prayers of Jesus, the prayers of all the saints and angels, and each other to help us work the field of our soul. Hesychios argues that the Jesus Prayer, watchfulness, and humility become a “flaming sword” with which to slay the demons (# 176). Though the demonic forces continue to lay siege against our heart in order to kill us and steal the harvest, Jesus’ name becomes the walls of defense and the flaming sword in our hand.
Many in the house have commented on how they sing the Jesus Prayer song during the day. Indeed, this song is a powerful tool for keeping the Lord’s name on our lips and in our hearts at all times. I find myself humming it or singing it as I walk across campus or drive to work. Hesychios, however, challenges us to supercharge this discipline by combining this prayer with “watchfulness and deep understanding.” (#137) It is not that saying Jesus’ name is not enough. Rather, saying the name ought to lead to greater spiritual attentiveness and clarity. The coalescence of these virtuous disciplines will inevitably lead to the uprooting of all evil thoughts that have become weeds in the garden of our heart. So let us attend to the garden. May we pray the name until the soil is drenched. May we till the soil alongside the saints and protect the harvest with the flaming sword, which is the name of Jesus.

To Scorn All Vanities

“For if with God’s help we make progress daily by means of our watchfulness, we should not behave indiscriminately and damage ourselves through a host of random meetings and conversations. On the contrary, we should scorn all vanities for the sake of the beauty and blessings of holiness.” – St. Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, no. 125 / p. 184

During Lent, many Eastern Christian churches pray a particular prayer by St. Ephrem the Syrian. One line of that prayer says “give me not a spirit of sloth, vain curiosity, lust for power, and idle talk . . .” The words idle talk are particularly striking to me. Today idle talk could refer to far more than just casual conversations. In our information-saturated culture, we are inundated daily with words that lack genuine value and substance. Think of the media: television, newspapers, magazines, radio, email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, movies. Then there’s the advertising: commercials, billboards, brand logos, product placement, other subliminal forms of marketing. And these are just the forms of idle talk which we tend to absorb passively. Some of this communication certainly has value, but it must be sifted carefully to find what is worthwhile. Compared to the depth of truth found in the Scriptures, so much of the communication we receive and participate in today is hollow, shallow, ultimately meaningless.
This is dangerous, because all this vain communication destroys our ability to listen. Dizzied by a barrage of information, we lose the ability to discern what is true and what is not. Accustomed to distraction, our attention spans shorten and our ability to listen, to God and to one another, grows shallow.
St. Hesychios offers us an alternative: watchfulness. He asks us to step away from the cacophony of voices around us, and listen instead to our own minds. Listen to the chatter inside you own head. What of it is true? What of it is a lie? What of it is glorifying to God? What of it is leading you further from God? Is there too much noise inside to be able to tell? Pray the Jesus Prayer. Call upon the name of the Lord, and he will come to your aid, grant you discernment, and quiet the voices that are not his own.
This is watchfulness. Hesychios tells us that wactchfulness ”completely frees us with God’s help from impassioned thoughts, impassioned words and evil actions” (no.1 / p. 162). But such freedom comes at a cost. As he goes on to say, “watchfulness is to be bought at great price”. To “scorn all vanities for the sake of the beauty and blessings of holiness” is akin to selling all one has in order to purchase the pearl of great price.
What vanities must we scorn today in the pursuit of watchfulness? Hesychios knew nothing of the technological wonders of our day. But he knew the challenges the world poses to the practice of such watchfulness. For him, idle talk came in the form of “random meetings and conversations”. He sensed that banal, purposeless chit-chat does not lead to the Kingdom of God. Perhaps as the leader of a monastic community, Hesychios found that meetings and administrative duties became an obstacle to his own watchfulness. If Hesychios was concerned that indiscriminate conversations and random meetings could disrupt his watchfulness, perhaps we should think more carefully about the purpose behind each of our social interactions. Does each conversation we participate in have the Kingdom of God as its ultimate end? Regarding technology, surely there is potential for good within the myriad forms of communication available today. But such media should be engaged mindfully. Will turning on the television or checking Facebook or pressing play on your mp3 player aid your pursuit of holiness, or multiply the noise you must already sort through in search of God’s voice?
These are demanding and challenging questions. But, thanks be to God, there is grace. Hesychios says that it is with God’s help that we make progress daily by means of watchfulness. That is why he constantly falls back upon the use of the Jesus Prayer in the pursuit of watchfulness. It is in and through the mercy of the Lord that we are granted strength to be watchful and to scorn all vanities. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.

-Chris Brown
This post can be found at http://houseofstmichaelthearchangel.org/2011/04/to-scorn-all-vanities/

Trees

While the diabolical tree of bitterness, anger and wrath has its roots kept moist by the foul water of pride, it blossoms and thrives and produces quantities of rotten fruit.” –Mark the Ascetic, Letter to Nicolas (p. 154)

“Keep the humility of the Lord in your heart and never forget it.” –Mark the Ascetic, Letter to Nicolas (p. 154)

Trees have always held special significance for Christians. We hear about them in Genesis when God places two trees in the midst of the Garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2.9). In Psalm 1 we are told that the one who meditates on the Law of the Lord day and night is like a tree planted by streams of water that bears fruit in season. And, John, in his revelation, proclaims the presence of the tree of life in the heavenly Jerusalem, which is for the healing of the nations (Rev 21.2, 14).

In our own lives we find many trees as well. Mark speaks of one tree in particular as the “diabolical tree of bitterness, anger and wrath,” the “tree of disorder.” This is the tree that produces all sorts of fruits of unrighteousness, and it “has its roots kept moist by the foul water of pride.” We wake daily only to find that its roots have grown even deeper, making our struggle that much more difficult. We feel overcome by the desires of anger, lust, laziness, and bitterness, as this tree produces nothing but “rotten fruit.”

What does Mark suggest that we do about this? His advice is that we dry up its source of nourishment, the “foul waters of pride.” This comes only from keeping the humility of the Lord always in our heart. And, once this wicked tree has lost all life we are to cut it down with the “axe of the Spirit,” so that it may be cast into the fire. Instead of rooting ourselves in the waters of pride, we, as believers, are to root ourselves in the Scriptures. Remember Psalm 1? The one who meditates on the Law of the Lord both day and night has his roots planted by streams of water, and bears fruit in season. The Scriptures provide that nourishment for our souls by leading us to Christ.

Furthermore, the Scriptures bring us to the tree of life in the heavenly Jerusalem. It bears fruit at all times; “its leaves are for the healing of the nations” and the healing of our souls. It is the tree on which our Savior allowed himself to be transfixed as he suffered in humility. But, since we have dried up the old water of pride what are we to replace it with? As the blood and water poured forth from Christ’s side it fell upon the ground. This is what nourishes the tree that we are seeking to cultivate through dwelling in the Scriptures. So, may we allow the Spirit to transform our “tree of disorder” into a “tree of life” by rooting ourselves in the Scriptures, seeing and embracing he who humbled himself for our sake, even to the point of death, “through Christ Jesus our Lord. May He be glorified through all the ages. Amen!”

*******

“Let us thank the One Who gave to taste His Fruit on our tree.” –St. Ephrem

“His Fruit was mingled with our human nature to draw us out toward Him Who bent down to us. By the Fruit of the Root He will graft us onto His tree.” –St. Ephrem

A Broken Heart

"There is a breaking of the heart which is gentle and makes it deeply penitent, and there is a breaking which is violent and harmful, shattering it completely."
–St. Mark the Ascetic, On The Spiritual Law, 18

"A self-indulgent heart becomes a prison and chain for the soul when it leaves this life; whereas an assiduous heart is an open door."
–St. Mark the Ascetic, On The Spiritual Law, 20

My wife and I have had several discussions lately concerning how we speak to one another. We often find ourselves reverting back to our childhood habits. Being the oldest meant that we picked on our younger siblings and nagged them to death with inconsiderate words and actions. It is all too easy for Katie and me to treat each other the same way, even though we are married and "grown up." When I catch myself returning to these old habits I feel a real tension within myself. If I give in to the temptation to disrespect my wife I inevitably experience guilt and sorrow. When this happens it takes a good while for me to get out of this funk, and it seems that the same is true for Katie. I guess you could call it a "breaking of the heart."
When I give in to this sin I feel trapped. It appears as if there is no end to this labyrinth of guilt and shame. St. Mark says, "A self-indulgent heart becomes a prison and chain for the soul when it leaves this life," but it feels like that chain is already rapped around my soul when I exercise no self-control. This breaking is painful. However, when I sense that I am about to respond with harsh or sharp words and I am able stop myself before I start there is a sense of deep gratitude and penitence. I am able to confess and move on. This breaking is gentle.
St. Mark finishes his previous statement by saying that "an assiduous heart is an open door." An open door is an apt illustration for how God wants us to be. Indeed, Jesus told the church in Sardis that he was standing there knocking. If only they would open and let him in he would dine with them. The preceding verse declares, "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent." An assiduous heart is quick to see its own faults and to seek repentance and forgiveness from Christ. No matter who we are we will experience the pain of a broken heart. Nevertheless, we as followers of Christ know that when temptation comes we have a choice. We can choose to submit ourselves to those things that no longer have dominion over us and thus experience a painful breaking of the heart, or we can refuse the entrenched passions within our heart and pray that God would continue to heal us. Remember, "...the really intelligent people are those who control their own desires." It is God who helps us in our weakness. Mark comments, "Peace is deliverance from the passions, and is not found except through the action of the Holy Spirit." So, may his reproof be gentle toward us. May we be led to see that we have an infinite source of power to reject those old sinful patterns that is "hidden in the cross of Christ." Glory to Christ our God!