Let a Righteous Man Reprove Me

It's been a while since I've posted. I've been thinking, not the whole time of course, some of it I was occupied with other things, some productive, some not, but still I was thinking. Some of my thinking involved what to write here next. I'm cautious about what I post here, perhaps not as much as I should be, but all in all I don't like to just blurt out what's on my mind or turning over in my heart. That is a sure path to disapation or as Shakespeare via Hamlet said, "the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. It is easy to talk all the action out of an idea. Much easier to discourse on holiness than to be holy, much easier to pontificate on theology than to be a true theologian, which as the Father's say is a man of unceasing prayer. And yet for all my precaution...perhap more accurately, for my delay, this sense of precation and the ethos that should be its foundation was recently brought home to me in most unexpected way.

I was rummaging around the Light & Life on-line catalog and came across an entry for a new book by the Coptic monk, Matthew the Poor. Like most book promotions it had a blub...a blurb that rivited my attention the way few things have recently. Let me share the relevent portion of it: "He spent whole nights in prayer, reciting one or two passages from these luminaries [Russian Fathers] and begging these saints to enlighten his understanding".

It was a slap in the face.

Suddenly I caught a glimpe of something I had heard about, read precautions and prescriptives about for a decade, but never really encountered in a way that broached my dull and slow to learn understanding...and I dare say I've yet to really learn the lesson since I'm talking about it before having really letting it sink in and change me.

What am I talking about? Simply this, When was the last time I spent nights in prayer begging to understand some portion of hard won holy wisdom from some Saint or Father. I flip my Bible open as cavilierly as I might a dictionary, how much less the works of Saints and holy ascetics. They are my spiritual pop corn, my spiritual candy aisle, my delightful little pastry cart of spiritual goodies. What a dolt I have been. Today the Ladder, tomorrow a Saint's life, this afternoon a trifle from the counsels of an aged Athonite monk and maybe in a couple of days I'll poke around in the Philokalia....find a nice inspirational passage to think about right before I flip on the news or check my e-mail.

Now I don't expect to go from where I am to where Matthew the Poor is just because my own self serving grazing has been revealed for what it is. That is not in my power. But God helping me I can do better. There is no way I can pick up any of my spiritual books now...let alone order new ones and not remember Matthew's example. What I can do is approch spiritual reading more purposfully, and more mindfully, remembering that what I hold in my hands by the grace of God was hard won, the fruit of a long and holy life spent in deep communion with God. How can I treat that lightly or even just "seriously". I must approach it revently and prayerfully. Maybe I'm not up to weeping all night in prayer to taste the grace that fills one page of some saint's writings. But I can still my heart and pray, asking for help and illumination, asking for humility, and instruction so that I don't just munch through it and think I've accomplished something. And what I learn from handling the writings of Saints and holy ascetics revently I can bring to the Scriptures, so that on every page with every verse that falls under my eyes I may kiss them not just with my lips but with my heart. And God willing I will not just to rush from chapter to chapter and book to book but to prayerfully ponder its passages with a heart humbled and searching before God.

O I'm so far from that...so far from even the making of a good beginning...but it can't be same again...never again because I know I there is an old man who lives in the desert in a land where he is persecuted for following Christ and he weeps and prays to understand a single passage from the Fathers, and I poor soul do not know yet how to weep at all.