We are on our journey to encounter the holy Pascha. During this journey our holy Orthodox Church instructs us, shows us the many facets of the spiritual life through it’s wise selection of Gospel readings and themes for the Sundays of Great Lent.
The First Sunday in our spiritual journey began with the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The Fathers teach that the foundation of the virtues is the Holy Faith and the gospel appointed for that day taught us that in imitation of the holy Apostle Philip we must be strangers to guile in order to be faithful sons and daughters of God’s covenant. On the next Sunday we celebrated the memory of Saint Gregory Palamas, a man who worshipped God in spirit and truth and taught us of the workings of grace. Saint Gregory was an example of the new man in Christ, a partaker of God’s uncreated energies. We then worshipped the great Mystery of the Holy Cross and heard our Savior’s words: “Whosoever desires to come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). Our Savior calls all. No one should be discouraged, no sinner or outcast should despair, but in order to partake of the victory over sin and death, we must choose to take up our cross.
And on this Sunday of our spiritual journey to Holy Week and Pascha we commemorate Saint John Climacus. In today’s gospel passage we see a man who has a son that is under the tyranny of the devil approach our Savior, telling Him that the disciples could not heal the boy. Our Savior healed him, but later was asked by the disciples why they could not cast the demon out. Our Savior then explained to them that:
This kind can come forth by nothing, save by prayer and fasting (Mark 9:20).
The purpose of Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit and fasting and prayer are essential weapons in this struggle to become free of the influence of the evil one. Our Savior gave us instruction how we are to fast:
And when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Amen I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly (Matt 6:16-18)
Notice that our Savior did not say “if ye fast” but rather “when ye fast.” Fasting and prayer have been part of the Christian life from the very beginning.
Through fasting the Prophet Moses prepared himself to receive the law, through fasting the Prophet Elias encountered God on the Mount of Horeb. Fasting was required of faithful Israelites before the time of our Savior. After our Saviors baptism He fasted forty days in the wilderness. There are many occasions cited when He spent whole nights in prayer. All these things are recorded for us so that we come to know about the way of life we must follow if we are to progress spiritually.
Our Orthodox Church has, what has been called by some, a monastic orientation to it. This cannot be denied, but what is lost on people who say this is that monasticism sprang from the fervor of normal Christian life. It is important for us all to know the origins of Christian monasticim. In his Conference with Abba Piamun, Saint John Cassian recorded a most edifying discourse on the origins of monasticism. Abba Piamun explained:
…and so the system of coenobites [monks that live in common] took its rise in the days of the preaching of the Apostles. For such was all that multitude of believers in Jerusalem, which is thus described in the Acts of the Apostles: "But the multitude of believers was of one heart and one soul, neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common. They sold their possessions and property and divided them to all, as any man had need." And again: "For neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as possessed fields or houses, sold them and brought the price of the things that they sold and laid them before the feet of the Apostles: and distribution was made to every man as he had need." The whole Church, I say, was then such as now are those few who can be found with difficulty in coenobia.
But when at the death of the Apostles the multitude of believers began to wax cold, and especially that multitude which had come to the faith of Christ from diverse foreign nations, from whom the Apostles out of consideration for the infancy of their faith and their ingrained heathen habits, required nothing more than that they should" abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood…"
…But those who still maintained the fervor of the apostles, mindful of that former perfection left their cities and intercourse with those who thought that carelessness and a laxer life was permissible to themselves and the Church of God, and began to live in rural and more sequestered spots, and there, in private and on their own account… And these, as by degrees time went on, were separated from the great mass of believers and because they abstained from marriage and cut themselves off from intercourse with their kinsmen and the life of this world, were termed monks or solitaries from the strictness of their lonely and solitary life. Whence it followed that from their common life they were called coenobites and their cells and lodgings coenobia.
That then alone was the earliest kind of monks, which is first not only in time but also in grace, and which continued unbroken for a very long period up to the time of Abbot Paul and Antony; and even to this day we see its traces remaining in strict coenobia.
We see from the instruction of Abba Piamun that monks were simply zealous Christians that intentionally withdrew themselves from the affairs of their local communities in order to fast and pray and pursue the spiritual life. This separateness for the sake of spiritual endeavor is the very essence of monasticism. The blessed monastic life rightly conducted is a life of “carefree self-care” (as Saint John Climacus put it) far from politics of any kind. Monastics that piously apply themselves can be role models for the rest of the Church, as St John Climacus himself declared,
Angels are a light for monks, and the monastic life is a light for all men. Therefore let monks strive to become a good example in everything, giving no occasion for stumbling in anything in all their works and words. For if the light becomes darkness, how much darker will be that darkness, that is, those living in the world (Step 26:31).
Many of the hierarchs and teachers of the Church lived as monks before serving the Church as bishops. Saint Basil, Saint Gregory and Saint John Chyrsosotom lived in asceticism before becoming bishops. Saint Ambrose of Milan, Saint Germanos of Auxerre, Saint Tarasus and Saint Nikiphorus all lived very fervent lives of prayer and fasting after becoming bishops.
Let us remember Saint John Climacus and all of the godly-wise monastic spiritual strugglers and be inspired to pray and fast for our own benefit.
There was a monastic custom, from the earliest times to pray quite often. The Prayers of the Hours were spread apart 1st Hour (6 a.m.), 3rd Hour (9 a.m.), 6th Hour (12 noon), 9th Hour (3 p.m.), Vespers, et cetera. These frequent fixed times for prayer helped the monk pray the Jesus Prayer unceasingly. It is impossible for a layman to imitate these services exactly, but there is a way to apply this practice in principle. Find a relatively short prayer that helps you find inner attention and print it out on a card and carry that card with you and/or leave a copy of it in your car. Every three hours or at some fixed times throughout the day, pull out that card and say the prayer with as much concentration as you can muster. This can greatly help you in your prayers and remembrance of God. I know of a certain man had a temptation to drift into inappropriate Internet sites and the practice of reading the Prayer of the Hours every time he opened up his Internet navigator greatly helped him.
Prayer is amazing, in that it is a spiritual weapon and at the same time a great source of consolation. Let us follow in the footsteps of the men and women of prayer, according to our strength, and may you all learn the fruits of prayer by experience. Amen.