Speaker 1: 0:00

So everyone who would follow our Lord, jesus Christ, is engaged in spiritual warfare. The saints by long experience learned from the grace of the Holy Spirit how to wage this war. The Holy Spirit appointed their footsteps and gave them understanding and the strength to overcome the enemy. But without the Holy Spirit, the soul is incapable even of embarking on the struggle, for she neither knows nor understands who and where her enemies are. Blessed are we Orthodox Christians? Because we live under the protection of God's mercy, it is not difficult for us to wage this war. The Lord had pity on us and gave us the Holy Spirit who abides in our church. Our only sorrow is that not everyone knows God and how greatly he loves us. The man who prays is conscious of this love, and the Spirit of God bears witness in his soul to salvation. Our battle rages every day, every hour. If you have uprated or passed judgment on or vexed your brother, your peace is lost. If you have been boastful or have exalted yourself above your fellow, you have lost grace. If you did not drive away forthwith the wanton thought that came to you, your soul will lose love for God and boldness in prayer. If you are fond of power or money, you will never know the love of God. If you have followed your own will, then you are vanquished by the enemy and despondency will come upon your soul. If you detest your brother, it means that you have fallen away from God and an evil spirit has taken possession of you. But if you will do good unto your brother, you will gain quiet for your conscience. If you subdue your own will, your enemies will be driven off and you will receive peace in your soul. If you forgive your brother the affronts he puts upon you and love your enemies, then you will receive forgiveness for your sins and the Lord will give you to know the love of the Holy Spirit. And when you have entirely humbled yourself, you will find perfect rest in God. All right, so that's the first excerpt. Any questions or thoughts on what we've just read? The excerpt that we have just read on spiritual warfare, the first few lines of the chapter.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Already, in St Siloan, the feature, one of the main themes is love of enemies, brotherly love. How important that is. Forgiveness, forgiving from the heart. A number of fundamental themes are already being mentioned here by St Siloan. Of course, the difficult thing is that he says if you do this, then you will have the grace of God. If you do that, then you will receive the peace of God, and so on. Of course, the question is how and St Siloan will go into that and give us a little instruction on how to deal with awkward situations.

Speaker 1: 5:13

We know the commandments of Christ in general terms. They are known to us, but how do we apply them? How do we respond in a Christian way, in other words, as Christ would respond in any and every situation that we find ourselves in, particular situations? St Sophrony used to say that there is no situation in life where it would be impossible to live the commandments of Christ. Of course, the highest commandments on those of love, and the highest commandment of love is love for one's enemies and contained within. That is the fundamental question which, of course, we all find challenging.

Speaker 1: 6:25

How do we accept injustice To quote Father Zechariah on this point, how do we take the injustices that we experience in life, misfortunes and so on, and how do we transform them into spiritual states? How do we use our heart, as it were, as a transformer, instead of reacting as the world would have us react, and that would be based on the instinct for survival and the fear of death. How do we resist that temptation and respond instead with the love of Christ, which is all-inclusive? How do we transform that experience into a dialogue with God and how do we learn? I'm posing a number of questions now. How do we learn to accept the injustice and actually to appreciate that through pain and suffering we are enabled to enter into a deeper and more true relationship with God? How do we begin to recognize that pain and suffering are actually an occasion, an opportunity for us to become true disciples of Christ? If they persecuted me, the Lord says to His disciples, they will persecute you.

Speaker 1: 8:46

The life of the Christian is not to escape suffering, pain and suffering, but the life of the Christian is about becoming true disciples of Christ, and what that means is repeating in our own person the saving work of Christ. That's quite a bold statement, right? But the saving work of Christ is recapitulated in the saints, so it's repeated in the images of Christ. Christ is the uncreated image of God, the Father, and we become as created images, true images of the uncreated image. And that is what St Paul is referring to when he speaks of becoming heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. So, yes, I'm saying what.

Speaker 1: 10:05

I'm saying in order to give you a little context and a background to where St Siloane is coming from. I don't want to spend too much on my own commentary at this point. I want to encourage you to listen more closely to the words of St Siloane, to what is being said and, as you absorb them, to reflect on them and if you have any comments, if you have any questions, of course we will do our best to address them and to discuss as a group. How do you drive away intrusive thoughts? The answer is in the next chapter, because this chapter is on spiritual warfare and, yes, intrusive thoughts are extremely important. It's part, a big part, of spiritual warfare. How to deal with intrusive thoughts and, god willing, we'll come to that in due course. So that's all I'll say on that for now.

Speaker 1: 11:27

And I say is there a difference between losing one's peace versus losing God's grace? No, I don't think so. I don't think there's any sort of fundamental difference. The grace of God is experienced to varying degrees and it is true that the peace of God is a gift of a more advanced experience of the grace of God. I hope that makes a little bit of sense so you can experience the grace of God and still not have the peace of God to the degree that St Siloan means. When St Siloan says the peace of God, it has a greater significance. However, what we would say is that the grace of God, the peace of God, these are synonyms, and each one of us knows from experience what it means to lose the grace of God.

Speaker 1: 12:53

Sometimes we're not always aware of when we are blessed with the grace of God, and that could be because God is protecting us. We may have the grace of God, not be fully aware of it, but then, when we lose it, then it becomes abundantly clear to us that we've lost something very special, that you begin to think to yourself what's happened? Why is my heart troubled now? What happened? And then, as you examine yourself, not analytically, not psychologically, but prayerfully, and you ask God to reveal to you the reason why your heart is troubled, then the Lord, in His mercy, gives us to understand the cause of the loss of grace, the cause for the loss of peace. Yes, it's a good question and it's a very important thing.

Speaker 1: 14:08

We learn through the life of the church. We learn to become more and more sensible to our conscience, to the voice of God in us. St Gregory Palmas defines conscience in a spiritual way. He says it's the voice of God in us which, when we sin, when we disregard the will of God, we tend to trample on the foot. But as we live the life of the church and as we grow into the image of Christ, as we grow spiritually, we acquire a certain sensitivity, which is extremely valuable.

Speaker 1: 15:04

The irony is that in acquiring that sensitivity, life actually becomes more painful, because things that we didn't used to notice we notice. We notice more and more, we notice increasingly, and so that experience is actually a painful one, but it's a necessary pain, because it's the pain of rebirth, regeneration. You know we have to be cleansed of the passions, purged, and then that will facilitate illumination, the grace of God in which our minds and our hearts become gradually more purified. The more purified we become as spiritual beings, the more sensitive we become, and the more sensitive we become we experience more pain. It's the mystery of the cross. If you're bold enough to stick with me, I'll talk a little bit more in detail about the mystery of the cross and how the fathers teach us the value of the cross, and we all know you know as well as I do that it's through the cross that we come to the resurrection. So our purpose is not to escape suffering, it's not to escape pain but, by following the path of our Lord, god and Saviour, to grow into His likeness and to become ever-increasingly like Him. Of course, this is a journey and a growth, a growing which knows no end, because the perfection of Christ is infinite.

Speaker 1: 17:27

So let's go back to another passage of Saint Siloane, continuing this theme of the spiritual warfare. Yes, and when you have entirely humbled yourself, you will find perfect rest in God. How simply Saint Siloane says that. And yet, well, in the very next paragraph he says when the soul is humbled and the Spirit of God is in her, man blissfully rejoices in spirit, in the love of God. The soul, when she feels the Lord's mercy, knows no fear of any earthly calamity. Her longing is to abide forever in humility before God and to love her fellow men. But if her soul be puffed up, then her day of rejoicing is over, for grace forsakes her and she can no longer pray with a pure heart and evil thoughts come to harass her. Our purpose is to become like Christ. That's the reason why we were created in His image to grow into His likeness.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Our earthly purpose is not to escape pain and suffering. In fact, the irony is and I'm sure that we all know this from personal experience you become orthodox, you find the truth, you rejoice because you found a great treasure, and then suddenly life becomes more difficult and you wonder what went wrong, what happened? Everything was easier before, life was lighter, and so on and so forth. Our purpose is not to escape pain and suffering, but to learn how to embrace it and, through it, to become more perfectly like Christ. And in fact, what happens is that great pain and suffering is given to many of us, but surprisingly, we are able more and more to endure it. We are given the grace to negotiate that pain and suffering. And this is what Saint Siloane is referring to when he says learning humility, the humility of Christ, forgiving the other even when the other is in the wrong, and you know you are in the right, and loving even those who hate us, who persecute us, who would harm us. This is, in worldly terms, this is crazy, this is insanity, but it's the only way to true peace, the fullness of the life of Christ, to the resurrection. So we're starting with a tough, challenging subject, you know.

Speaker 1: 21:46

I wanted to say a lot by way of introduction and I just wanted to start reading Saint Siloane, because Saint Siloane, his words, will direct us accordingly. So I'm on page 424 in Saint Siloane's chapter on spiritual warfare, difference of judgement and criticism. Saint Gregorius Palamas criticizes by law. Is this judging? No, there is an honest conversation, an honest dialogue. As far as the saints are concerned, when they criticize, and sometimes they insult, they insult in inverted comments. They can write certain harsh things because they want to shake up their opponents, sometimes to make them think what they're saying, what they're doing, this is not because of the passion of anger or revenge. This comes out of love, love of Christ, who is the truth. Christ is the truth and the way, and so, in various ways, the fathers do say what needs to be said, particularly when they are defending the faithful. They're defending the faith. What that means is they're not defending some abstract body of theories, they're defending human beings, they're defending the way to salvation.

Speaker 1: 23:55

Saint Gregory Palamas, for example, he did as a hierarch of the church, as a bishop, in other words as a shepherd, a true shepherd to his people, as an image of the great shepherd who protects his flock. You must be careful. There is a distinction to be made. Saint Gregory argued against Palamas. He argued against the Kindness. He argued against Gregory. He had three main theological opponents and all of their followers. But when the time came and he was asked to defend the church, the people of the church, the people of God, he did so. I don't want to say too much. I'm producing some presentations on Saint Gregory Palamas and making them available in YouTube and his podcasts, so please feel free to avail yourselves of them.

Speaker 1: 25:05

The way that Saint Gregory did it this is the amazing thing. He preserved his peace, preserved the grace of God. You know what that means. He did it with love. He did it with love for his brother. He didn't do it to destroy the people that he was arguing against and to make them look ridiculous. If something bad happened to them and if they did look ridiculous in some ways they did it was because of what they said and how they said. What they said and how they behaved. Saint Gregory had the prayer. He had the prayer of the heart before he even arrived on Athos. That reminds me of Saint Saphroni. That was the case with Saint Sophrali, you know. He had Naitik prayer, the prayer of the heart the Jesus prayer. It was active in him even before he went to the Holy Mount, but we'll talk about that more in due course.

Speaker 1: 26:29

How does one willingly endure long term injustice without becoming psychologically vulnerable? Yes, is there a difference between enduring by God's grace and enduring injustice due to cowardice, psychological weakness? Yeah, that's a very good question. Look, unless our response is on the spiritual level, it's almost inevitable that if we try to do the things that we read about in the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, it's almost inevitable that we will become unwell. We need to operate. Remember what I said about, quoting Father Zacharias, transforming psychological states into spiritual ones. We need to learn how to do that. It's not hard. Well, let me rephrase that it's easy to understand how we should do that. It is hard to do it, okay. But when we learn, begin to learn how to do it, we see the benefits and then we are more courageous about doing it. So what am I referring to?

Speaker 1: 27:58

So if something negative happens to you in life some misfortune, an injustice and so on the temptation is to respond in a human way, and when that temptation comes, it also tempts us away from prayer. What is prayer? Prayer is dialogue with God. Prayer is turning to God, entering into a communion with God. So instead of accepting the temptation of despairing, right when you have difficult situations, you're tempted to despair. Despair is prayerless. The temptation is to forget God, forget prayer. Let's do what needs to be done on a human level. But when we resist that and we respond instead by turning to God and entering into a prayer, dialogue with Him, then we begin to transform the psychological, the emotional, whatever it may be, into a spiritual state. And that is the proper way. And the proper way is healthy. The other way is unhealthy. There's a lot to be said on that. I recognize that and here in our introductory meeting we have the opportunity just to raise some of the basic themes that will become more prominent as we go along.

Speaker 1: 30:01

And St Sillaon, in the very next section again on page 424, he asks the question why is it that man suffers on earth and is beset by affliction and adversity? And he gives the most succinct and accurate answer we suffer because we lack humility. The Holy Spirit dwells in the humble soul, bringing freedom, peace, love and blessedness. We suffer because we do not love our fellow men. The Lord said Love one another and ye shall be my disciples. God's love comes with loving one's brother. God's love comes with loving one's brother. Sweet is the love of God, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit and made known in full only through the Holy Spirit. But there is a lesser degree of love to be found in the man who strives to observe Christ's commandments and goes in fear of grieving God in any way. And this love too is good. Every day we must urge ourselves towards what is good, and with might and main seek after the humility of Christ. And he goes on to say the Lord said to his disciples my peace I give unto you. We'll come to that in a moment.

Speaker 1: 32:07

But notice, there is divine love and there is ascetic love. Saint Sophrony, who really introduced the world to Saint Siloane, is also the greatest interpreter of his word, and that is because Saint Sophrony knew what Saint Siloane was talking about, writing about, from his own personal experience as well. So here love is described in two ways there is divine love and there is an ascetic love. There is a charismatic love, the divine love which is a pure gift of God to the humble soul and we'll talk about that in Jude course that St Sillon experienced when he beheld the living Christ in glory. That love was transmitted to him at that point.

Speaker 1: 33:48

Then there is ascetic love, which is characterized mainly as man's spiritual efforts, the efforts that we make. We are where required. God wants us to make an effort to come into contact with him. God wants us to strive in order to enter into communion with him. This is required of us. He wants us to be stretched, so to speak, to be exercised, to be trained. But that is characterized, as I said, by our own efforts. We have people who are great ascetics. They fast strictly, they keep vigil, they pray throughout the night, they give alms. These are all very, very good things and of course no good thing can be done without God's help. But in and of themselves they are not yet on the level of the charismatic love of God.

Speaker 1: 35:22

Divine love, because divine love is the very life of God himself. It's another name, another description of how God lives, and in that word love, it's an all-embracing. It's one of those all-embracing terms. Humility is another one. They contain all the virtues. When love is referred to the way that St Siloan refers to it, it's an all-embracing virtue, it contains all of the virtues. So we suffer because we do not love our fellow male. And St Siloan goes on to say we can only do this when we have the love of God. We can only do it perfectly. And in the meantime we strive right, we strive, we try.

Speaker 1: 36:31

We are ascetics in the sense that Father Saphoni used to say what is asceticism? Some people think asceticism bites, it's for the monks. Asceticism is spiritual labours, st Saphoni says. And what are spiritual labours? Living the commandments of Christ. Living the commandments of Christ. This is the Gospel, and the Gospel is for everyone. We've all been called to be ascetics in that sense, but we have not all been called to live one way monastic way of life. There are many ways we can live a married life, we can live an unmarried life, living in the world, and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1: 37:28

The important thing is to discover God's will for you personally, and that is the best right. Whatever God wills for each one of us is the best. If it's God's will for me to be married, that is the best for me. There's no better and worse. In the abstract, we say that Orthodox theology is personal. Well, here's an example where it is indeed personal. The object of the exercise, as it we said, is not how you live. These are means to an end, the vehicle by which we are sanctified and we become Christlike. This is very important for us to understand, because there are some people out there. I'll tell you straight, some people out there. They think we're all supposed to be monks. It's not true, it's not correct. And there are people there who have the opposite view too.

Speaker 1: 38:47

The important thing is to discover the will of God for each one of us and then, in that context, to practice the humble way of Christ, to learn the humble way of Christ, to become more and more like Christ, christlike. So the Lord said to His disciples my peace I give unto you. This is at the top of page 425. Now we must entreat God, says St Siloan, for this peace of Christ, and the Lord will give to Him who asks. And when we receive it, we must watch over it with care. You know what happens. If you give a lollipop to a child and he throws it away. What are you going to do? You're going to think twice about giving him another lollipop, right? It's not enough. We ask God, we want the grace of God. We beseech God to give us His grace, his peace. Yes, but then we have to learn how to preserve it. And this for St Siloan and perhaps we'll finish with this thought today Theology for St Siloan is how to attain the grace of God, how to attract the grace of God and then how to keep it.

Speaker 1: 40:52

For St Siloan, this is theology, this is true theology, our theology. You see, we could call it ascetic. It's ascetic, it's charismatic, it's based on experience. Do you have the grace of God? If you are a theologian, you pray. If you pray, you are a theologian. You know, most of us know the saying which goes back to Evagrius of Pontus If you pray a right, you are a theologian. If you are a theologian you pray a right, you pray correctly.

Speaker 1: 41:47

St Siloan, in one of his chapters here he goes one step further and actually it's much more correct than Evagrius he says if you have pure prayer, pure prayer, you are a theologian, and if you are a theologian, you have pure prayer. You know I don't mean to shock you what is pure prayer? What is St Siloan talking about? Half the time we don't know what he's talking about.

Speaker 1: 42:29

But what St Siloan means by pure prayer is the prayer that is described by St Paul when he says I know a man who was taken up into the third heaven where he heard unspeakable, ineffable words. One of my professors God rest his soul, father John Romanides used to say ineffable words and speak. These are uncreated words, divine words. This experience, whether he was in the body or out of the body, he didn't know. The Lord knows this. Being wholly and entirely given over to God and experiencing reality, the reality of God, in this way, as St Paul describes. This is a description of pure prayer. So what does it mean to pray a right? Saint Sylvain corrects it by saying pure prayer. This is a hard saying, but listen, we're all on the road right. The important thing is to be on that road, which is an unending road, begins in this life, continues in the next, towards becoming Christ-like, towards the realization of why we were created in the image of Christ, in order to become like Christ. And Saint Sylvain brings it down. It seems, on one level, that he's simplifying the peace of God, humility, love for Enem.

Speaker 1: 44:44

A great friend of Saint Sophrony said to him actually, Saint Sophrony, when he was preparing the book, he said to his friend he was very good friends with Vladimir Lossky God rest his soul and Vladimir Lossky was a great theologian. And when he read the writings of Saint Sylvain, saint Sophrony said to him what do you think? They were classmates at Saint Serge, the very first class of Saint Serge Seminary in Paris. They were together, fellow students, and so when the time came and Saint Sophrony was preparing the book, he thought I will ask Lossky what he thinks. Lossky said it's very nice, but these are the thoughts, the writings of a very devout man, man of prayer. He speaks of the love of God, of humility, love for one's enemies, peace, but it's not theology.

Speaker 1: 46:06

When Saint Sophrony heard his friend say that it was thanks to this comment by Vladimir Lossky that we have the first part of Saint Sylvain the Athonite, father Sophrony wrote in order to explain to as many people as possible why the writings of Saint Sylvain are true theology. Because he thought, if even my good friend thinks like this, I have to write something to to point to the fact that Saint Sylvain is a theologian and he is a theologian in the tradition of Saint John the theologian. Father Sophrony used to say Saint John the theologian. For him, theology was not a body of knowledge, theology was a state, a spiritual state, and that is what we see in Saint Sylvain the Athonite. Why? Because a true theologian is one who has pure prayer, and one who has pure prayer is a true theologian. Yes, I'll just ask for your prayers, and also, of course, the prayers of Saint Sylvain, that he may give us the strength, the courage, the grace and the peace to continue. I know that I've thrown quite a bit at you but, god willing, this is introductory. We can't say everything in an introduction. Now, as we go forward, we'll begin to unpack these various points more and more and, god willing, as I said before in the prayer, that each one will derive from what we read and what we say what is necessary for the salvation of each person. I see that there are more questions. The questions keep coming. Thinking we're out of time now, so we'll leave them for next time. I think Our sessions are monthly, so our next time will be a Wednesday evening, the 25th of October, god willing, and please feel free to communicate with me as you wish. I will do my best to respond to every inquiry. I wanted to leave this, let me just tell you. Let me just tell you two more minutes.

Speaker 1: 49:25

Father Sophrony encouraged us well to live by inspiration. He didn't want us to have a kind of structured, methodical, systematic approach. That's okay in the universities and colleges, that's that you need to do, that you know. You learn how to write paper and put things together in a, but he wanted us to learn how to live by inspiration. So before we started this, I didn't even allow myself to think what I was going to say, what excerpts I was going to read from Saint Siloan, and this is more challenging in this way, but it makes our presentation more a product of prayer, if you'll forgive me, this is what we we're trying to do. We turn our hearts and minds to God and we ask God to give us a word, and this is how we must learn to live in our interactions with one another. Father Sophrony used to emphasize this a lot Not to plan, not to say ah, I said this before. It was quite successful. I'm going to say it again Let God inspire you. So this is why we started the way that we started a little bit here and there and trying to find our way.

Speaker 1: 51:26

With God's help, through Saint Siloan, saint Siloan's words, we will find our way, and I hope that it's very important that when one speaks, one speaks from the heart. It's very important that when one listens, one listens from the heart. We don't listen here, it's part of it, but we listen here from the heart. That's the important thing. And that journey is the hardest journey of all. And you know what we mentioned pain and suffering. When does the mind enter the heart? When we experience pain, it's the easiest time. That's why we have asceticism, spiritual labours.

Speaker 1: 52:28

When we try to live the commandments of Christ, it's impossible, humanly speaking, it's not possible to live the commandments of Christ. So we are, we are in that tension and we see that these commandments it would be totally unreasonable if, a the person who gave us these commandments were not God and, b that only with his help can we live those commandments. This is the fact. When we try to for 10 minutes, when we try to live the commandments, we know we need the help of God, and only God can help, because this is not a human way of life. The commandments of Christ are a divine way of life and that is what is behind. Shall I say my method, quote unquote, based on the encouragement, the teachings of Saint Sophrony, by whose prayers, together with Saint Silo and the Athonite, may we all be enlightened and protected, amen.