Let all mortal flesh

This Lenten journey has been the most trying of my short two decades in Orthodoxy.

I confess to you all that I have been weak in my ascesis, not praying nearly as much as I would have liked, let alone not even beginning to pray as the Lord so calls.

In one week, both of my parents and my wife -- my helpmeet and heartmate -- were hospitalized, and I regret that all I could do was to pray wanly, not manly, and to simply flit between hospital rooms. I tried to read, but couldn't follow, Meyendorff (the poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus became most helpful, though).

They, all three, are better, though the treatment will be long for two.

The reality of spiritual poverty was thrust on me. The tumult of the world, the Babel-conversations of the national agora went on around me unreal, like radio telescope static from other worlds.

I learned a thing or two about such poverty: my will had become so little, and nearly ineffectual. A schizophrenic survivor of the first Gulf invasion inhabits the bauhaus disaster next door (i.e., section 8 apartments). His mind is broken and he wanders like the Philippian fortune-teller, enthralled to nightmarish visions of the abyss and the mordorian whispers emanating therefrom.

I could not bring peace to him, for I have not fasted nor prayed enough. I have not acquired the Holy Spirit enough, to bring salvation to this one, let alone thousands.

My email box during this gray period was filled everyday with distractions. And let me remind those who would throw bricks and Armageddon my lessons of weakness:

Our Lord gave up all His rights. It is not Christian to demand any right or privilege. The One Who stood before Pilate observed no freedom of speech, no right to bear arms, no justification for rage.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and let us look to the way of the Cross.

Let us keep hesychastic Silence, in holiness and repentance. Let all sides, right wing and left, wrong and bereft of wisdom, in the world squander their energies on lesser things.

We Orthodox, on the other hand, must journey to Golgotha. That is enough, if we are brave enough.

Politics, in Holy Week, is for those who do not want to face their own responsibility for the Crucifixion.

I am not energetic enough for other things. The way of Holy Week stretches before us. 

We are all, each one, guilty enough, for the Cross to be worth the trip.

Comments

[Carol Hewson]

Thank you, Father Tobias. Though always much more articulate, I believe your words reach the conscience of almost
reader. Every Lent I seem to have a week of dreadful spiritual warfare. You have a marvelous gift of Holy honesty. I've missed you lately. God bless you, your family and your flock. Now, we will become quiet and prepare.

[Fr. Gregory]

Yes, it is hard to focus, let alone pray well, in the midst of the tempest. God be with you during holy week and always. I hope we can get together sometime after Pascha.