Our Christ has allowed us once again this year to celebrate the great and light-bearing day of His Resurrection: “Pascha, the Lord’s Pascha.”
Pascha is translated as “passing.” The human race received the grace and blessing from God to ascend from the earth to Heaven; to pass from transient death into eternal life.
Our Christ was infinitely merciful to us. He felt sorry for us and came down to our earth in order to raise us to Heaven.
Every year we celebrate Holy Pascha. Every year we all eagerly anticipate it, so we can once again feel the special joy and light of the Divine Resurrection within our souls; in order to taste a “small sample” of the endless jubilation of the eternal Pascha; to get a glimpse of the light that illumines the other world; to experience a tiny bit of the eternal blessedness that is felt in Heaven above by the souls who already have the privilege of being saved and who now celebrate the never-ending, eternal Pascha.
To truly feel Pascha and to actually see the light of the Divine Resurrection, we must purify our senses from every sinful feeling and desire: “Let us purify our senses and we shall behold Christ, radiant with the unapproachable light of the Resurrection, and we shall hear Him say, ‘Rejoice!’” says the hymnologist. If the heart has not been purified, if it has not been freed from appalling egotism and prideful dispositions, and if the humility of Christ has not become established within it, the light of the Resurrection cannot be seen by the soul’s eyes and cannot be sensed by the heart.
Our Christ showed us the path to purification: “Learn from Me, that I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Mt. 11:29). If we do not humble our mindset, if we do not bow our head, and if we do not wholeheartedly believe that we are a zero (that we are the worst human, the most sinful person, the one who will go to hell), we will never feel the special joy of the Holy Resurrection, and we will not be able to celebrate Christ’s Pascha mystically and secretly within our heart. “Every prideful person is unclean before the Lord” (Pr. 16:5); conversely, “He gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
God listens to the prayer of the humble man. Only through humility is the heart especially purified. The aim of every virtue, of every spiritual undertaking and struggle is to purify the heart. Humility, however, is the most effective purifying medication for the heart. Christ “lowered the heavens and came down” (Ps. 18:9). He descended, came down, humbled Himself, and drew near to us as a human being, even though He was a God-man: both God and man!
We people—and I first—do not bend our neck before the Lord. We do not humble our mindset because the element of pride still lives within us. We struggle to overcome this passionate condition; nevertheless, as soon as we think, “Now I feel humble,” a second later we are puffed up with pride again because we either experienced some grace while praying, or perhaps we did a good deed. The goad of pride and vainglory prods us, inflates us, and makes us feel as if we accomplished something.
A certain brother who was being assaulted by prideful thoughts went to seek advice from a renowned elder. “Geronda, I feel the spirit of pride intensifying within me. I believe that I struggle spiritually and I cannot defeat this thought. What must I do?” This brother was indeed a good monk.
The elder responded, “My child, did you create the heaven and the earth?” “No, father. God forbid!” “Well, He who created the heaven and the earth, He who created the spiritual world, the angels, and the Kingdom above, He who with His command brought the universe into existence out of nothing, said that He is humble and meek (cf. Mt. 11:29). Why are you prideful? You are clay, dirt, sinful, and full of passions. You have received innumerable blessings from God, and yet you imagine that you are something great? He bent down and washed His disciples’ feet. He endured ridicule, curses, and sarcasm from a great multitude of people. We see Him dying naked on the Cross out of love for us, even though He could have returned the universe to nothing with a single glance. He was so humble; He didn’t speak; He didn’t utter a word. And we human beings lift our head up and believe that we are something?”
The brother was tremendously edified when he heard all this wise advice and returned to his cell with a humble spirit. Man’s mind is polluted easily and is cleansed easily. The heart, on the other hand, is cleansed with difficulty and becomes polluted with difficulty. The heart is full of sinful roots. All the passions are rooted within the heart. This is why we all feel pain when God, Who desires man’s salvation and Who detests the death of his soul, attempts to uproot them, in order to deliver our heart from this passionate state and grant it freedom, so it can feel the joy of the Resurrection and see with its spiritual eyes the Divine Resurrectional Light.
Temptations, hardships, and sorrows that rise against us (either from the devil, from others, or from the world we carry within us) are medicines. They are all sent and given by God’s providence to us, in order for us to regain the lost health of our soul. The health of the soul and heart consists of dispassion, holiness, and true well-being, which will extend into the next life as well. When can we realize that we have egotism? When one of our brothers makes a comment to us, or when the elder (our spiritual father and trainer who has been appointed by God to help us acquire dispassion through his instruction) reproaches us or points out one of our faults. If you feel bothered, upset, full of turmoil, dismay, distress, and anger internally, you can gauge the corresponding size, depth, width, and length of egotism that exists within you.
When someone is humble, he accepts advice, criticism, and insults. If a person does not have the strength to rejoice internally when he is fortunate enough to receive this medicine— rather, to diagnose the degree of his ego—he should at least struggle against the ill feelings.
During the glorious years when monasticism was at its acme, the fathers of the skete decided to test Abba Moses the Ethiopian, in order to ascertain the degree of humility, meekness, and dispassion he had attained. Abba Moses was a priest. One day, upon entering the altar in order to put on his vestments in preparation for the Divine Liturgy, the fathers said to him, “What are you doing in here, you dark skinned, black man? You are unworthy to set foot in here! Get out!” Abba Moses remained silent and left from the altar. A few days later, they tested him a second time. The first time he kept silent and strangled the internal unrest. During the second assault he not only felt free, but he also blamed himself saying, “Indeed! My body is dark. I have dark skin, and a dark soul. I am unworthy of being a priest. I am unworthy of entering the altar. The fathers are right.” The fathers were waiting for him a short distance up the road, and they asked him, “Abba, weren’t you upset when we spoke to you in that way?” “Yes, my fathers. The first time I felt quite disturbed, but I suppressed the distress and rebellion. The second time there was no upheaval. With God’s help, I felt peace, and I blamed myself. I realized that things are indeed exactly as you described.”
The fathers concluded that the first state is referred to as restraint while the second one is meekness. If we find ourselves in a situation similar to the above, and we witness a rebellion taking place within our soul and heart, we must understand that we have egotism. In which case, we must beseech God through prayer to grant us strength to confront and strangle the upheaval of pride, with Christ Himself as our model: “Learn from Me that I am meek and lowly in heart” (Mt. 11:29).
When we witness a prideful uprising, the forcefulness of the ego, and the constant barrage of illogical thoughts, we must implement self-reproach and begin to blame ourselves. “Why am I upset? Why do I have evil thoughts? What do my anger, rage, and other ill feelings reveal?” Egotism! “So you still dwell within me, you terrible beast? When will I slay you? When will I begin to struggle against you seriously? When will I take hold of the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, and the example of Christ, in order to slay this ferocious animal?” We will encounter this beast at the time of death. We will recognize it through our conscience as she criticizes us for not struggling adequately during the time we were given to war against it and kill it.
The horrible ego is the cause of all the evils in our life. If we thoroughly examine ourselves, we will discover that egotism is the driving force, the origin, and the heart of all our actions. Let us accuse ourselves, let us throw ourselves down low, and let us realize that we are nothing more than clay and dirt. The very people who are made of clay step on dirt and clay.
God has a Divine nature and He became so humble. We are humble by nature and yet we raise our head high and gloat: “There is no one else like me!” When we are not chosen to do something, this beast revolts, and a series of “Why? … Why me?” begins. This “me” must be strangled. Monasticism has a wealth of power available to strangle our pride, as long as we take hold of this power and use it to achieve the great eternal victory, with the help of our God.
The meek will see God in the other world. Every prideful person will be excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven. When Christ examines us, we will be asked if we felt and perceived egotism within us. Then, the next question will be if we struggled adequately, if we followed the directive and advice toward humility. When we experience internal upheaval, we do not make even the slightest effort to strangle the beast within us—even though we clearly see it. Oftentimes we turn a blind eye, we pretend not to notice, and we look the other way. This is egotism! Why don’t you struggle appropriately my child? Our life is not at our disposal. It can end at any moment. The fair of life where transactions are made to acquire the Kingdom of Heaven will come to an end. Then, once we close our eyes and die, we will realize how extensively egotism harmed us. However, we will not be able to come back to this life and make amends. We will ask to return; we will seek only one minute from the many years we lived, but this minute will not be given to us.
“Woe unto us,” if we are found in this predicament. We are unaware of, and our heart has not experienced, the reality of death. We have not felt what our soul will go through as it ascends to Heaven. We have never come up against the thoughts that will beset us as we face the aerial toll-houses. We have not been informed with God-sent feelings of the way our soul will feel when it is wholeheartedly convinced that it will no longer return back to life on the earth, when it begins to enter eternity, and when it perceives that this new life will never come to an end. It will then contemplate that in the event of failure it will live eternally in Hell with the demons, it will never see light again, and it will never come to know or behold God.
Subsequently, it will feel and be informed by the conscience that all his brothers are in Heaven celebrating the eternal Pascha, within the glory of God, dressed with the pure-white wedding garments, with which the Bridegroom has provided them. It will feel that his brothers’ souls are participating in the wedding festivities with the Bridegroom, that they are within the Heavenly bridal chamber, and that this gloriously radiant life will never end.
We have not experienced these things, these thoughts, these feelings, and, to some extent, we are spiritually blind. It is as if our heart is spiritually dead and anesthetized. There were moments when I experienced this during prayer. One night, I woke up in the middle of my sleep, at which time my mind was crystal clear and razor-sharp. When someone wakes up in the middle of sleep, he feels drowsy and disoriented. But this was not the case with me. My state of mind and heart were such that I truly felt that I had departed from this life and was entering eternity. The feeling of uncertainty was intense! “What will happen now? How will I face the Righteous Judge? What will I do in the event of failure and eternal damnation?” I truly believed I was departing. I was fully conscious of the Judge, of Hell, and of eternity. It was something that I cannot express with words. Later during the day I thought to myself, “So these are the things that will occur with my soul when I close my eyes? What must I do now? If I was overcome with such inexpressibly frightful feelings when I only tasted such a small sample of this reality and truth while I was still alive, what will happen when God actually commands my soul to part from my body?”
The eyes of our soul are closed shut, and we are oblivious to all these things. It is not that we don’t believe them. In theory we understand everything; however, our heart remains unmoved. Why is it indifferent? Because, if not totally, in part it has not been cleansed. Thus it remains insensitive. We have not forced ourselves to endure patiently the pain associated with the treatment of egotism. Our heart has not endured the pain associated with the removal of the egotistical roots. This is precisely why we subsist in this condition. At last, we must recognize our problem, we must acknowledge that egotism exists within us, and we must take a stance and put up a fight against it.
When others point out our mistakes and try to correct us, we should blame ourselves, accuse ourselves, scourge ourselves internally, strike our ego, take full responsibility, justify the person who corrected and cauterized us, and render thanks to God for attempting to cleanse us.
Struggling in this manner, with the grace of God, little by little we will be freed. Our heart will be liberated, the roots of passion will be uprooted, and we will eventually acquire spiritual health and consciously experience the things of the other world. Then we will see the light of the Divine Resurrection. “Having seen the Resurrection of Christ … .” We confess this repeatedly, but do we feel it and see it? No! I personally do not! When will we see it? When we attain purification. We must fight against egotism, this evil wickedness, armed with the Prayer of Jesus.
The words “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” should not stop day and night, if possible. When the soul is absent from the body, the body begins to reek, it becomes infested with maggots, it decays, and it becomes a source of disease. When prayer is absent from the soul, the soul suffers the same consequences. We should always be prepared to strike and slay this beast of egotism within us. We should pray ceaselessly. We should cense God’s temple, which is man’s body and soul, with the fragrance of prayer. “We should glorify our Holy God both with our body and with our soul” (cf. 1 Cor. 6:20). It takes effort! We who are responsible must take the lead and be the first to struggle. We must set a good example, and, in turn, they who follow must struggle, so that our entire brotherhood becomes worthy of celebrating the eternal and endless Pascha of salvation in the other world, in the eternal life, in the Jerusalem above, in the unapproachable light, in the infinite joy of God, where the angels encircle, praise, stand before, and offer doxologies and hymns to the Triune God endlessly and eternally. Amen.
Elder Ephraim of Arizona
“The Art of Salvation”
Homily 30