Prayer, Love & Humility

Prayer

It is by the ascesis of faith that a man conquers egotism, steps beyond the bounds of self, and enters into a new, transcendent reality which also transcends subjectivity. In this new reality new laws rule; what is old has passed away and all is made new. Plunged into the unknown depths of this new reality, the ascetic of faith is led and guided by prayer; he feels, thinks, and lives by prayer.

Tracing this path of faith in the intellect of man, St. Isaac notes that the intellect is guarded and guided by prayer, every good thought being transformed by prayer into a pondering on God. But prayer is also a hard struggle, calling the whole person into action. Man crucifies himself in prayer, crucifying the passions and sinful thoughts that cling to his soul. Prayer is the slaying of the carnal thoughts of man’s fleshy life.

Patient perseverance in prayer is for man a very hard ascesis, that of the denial of self. This is fundamental to the work of salvation. Prayer is the fount of salvation, and it is by prayer that all the other virtues - and all good things - are acquired. This is why a man of prayer is assailed by monstrous temptations from which he is protected and saved only by prayer.

The surest guardian of the intellect is prayer. It drives away the clouds of the passions and illumines the intellect, bringing wisdom to the mind. Unceasing abiding in prayer is a true sign of perfection.

Spiritual prayer turns into ecstasy in which are revealed the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, and the intellect enters that sphere of holy unknowing that is greater than knowledge.

Begun thus by faith, the healing of the organs of understanding is continued by prayer. The bounds of human personality are pushed wider and wider, self-centeredness being progressively replaced by God-centeredness.

Love

Love is born of prayer, just as prayer is born of faith. The virtues are of one substance, and are thus born of one another. Love for God is a sign that the new reality into which a man is led by faith and prayer is far greater than that which has gone before. Love for God and man is the work of prayer and faith; a true love for man is in fact impossible without faith and prayer.

By faith man changes worlds: he moves from the limited world to the limitless, where he lives no longer by the laws of the senses but by the laws of prayer and love. St. Isaac lays great emphasis on the conviction he came to through his ascetic experience: that love for God comes through prayer. Love is the fruit of prayer. One can receive love from God through prayer and cannot in any way acquire it without the struggle of prayer. Since man comes to the knowledge of God through faith and prayer, it is strictly true that love is born of knowledge.

Through faith man renounces the law of egotism; he renounces his sinful soul. Though he loves his soul, he loathes the sin that is in it. By prayer, he strives to replace the law of egotism with the law of God, to replace passions with virtues, to replace human life with divine life and thereby heal the soul of its sin. This is why St. Isaac teaches that the love of God lies in self-denial of the soul.

Impurity and sickness of soul are unnatural accretions; they are no part of its created nature, for purity and health are the kingdom of the soul. A soul weakened by the passions is a ready ground for the cultivation of hatred, and love is only acquired through healing of the soul.

Love is of God, “for God is love” (1 John 4: 8). He who acquires love puts on with it God himself. God has no bounds, and love is therefore boundless and without limit, so that he who loves by and in God loves all things equally and without distinction. St. Isaac says of such a man that he has achieved perfection.

In the kingdom of love the antinomies of the mind disappear. The man who strives in love enjoys a foretaste of the harmony of Paradise in himself and in God’s world around him, for he has been delivered from the hell of self-centeredness and has entered into the paradise of divine values and perfections. When a man acquires perfectly the love of God, he acquires perfection.

Freeing himself from the passions, man disengages himself step by step from that self-absorption that characterises humanism. He leaves the sphere of death-dealing anthropocentrism and enters the sphere of the Holy Trinity. Here he receives into his soul the divine peace, wherein the oppositions and contradictions that arise from the categories of time and space lose their death-dealing power, and where he can clearly perceive his victory over sin and death.

Humility

Faith has its own thought-forms, having as it does its own way of life. A Christian not only lives by faith (2 Cor. 5: 7) but also thinks by faith. Faith presents a new way of thinking, through which is effected all the work of knowing in the believing man. This new way of thinking is humility.

Within the infinite reality of faith, the intellect abases itself before the ineffable mysteries of new life in the Holy Spirit. The pride of the intellect gives way to humility and modesty replaces presumption. The ascetic of faith protects all his thoughts through humility, and thereby also ensures for himself the knowledge of eternal truth.

Drawing its strength from prayer, humility goes on growing and growing without end. St. Isaac teaches that prayer and humility are always equally balanced, and that progress in prayer means progress also in humility, and vice versa. Humility is a power that collects the heart within itself and prevents its dissipating itself in proud thoughts and lustful desires. Humility is upheld and protected by the Holy Spirit, and not only draws man to God but also God to man.

Furthermore, humility was the cause of the Son of God taking flesh, that closest union of God with man: Humility made God a man on earth. Humility is the adornment of divinity, for the Word made flesh spoke with us through the human body with which he had clothed himself.

Humility is a mysterious, divine power which is given only to the saints, to those who are perfected in the virtues, and it is given by grace. It contains all things within itself. By the grace of the Holy Spirit the mysteries are revealed to the humble, and it is these humble ones who are thereby perfect in wisdom. The humble man is the fount of the mysteries of the new age.

Humility is temperance, and the two of them prepare in the soul a pledge for the Holy Trinity. Temperance derives from humility, and it is by humility that the intellect is healed and made whole. From humility flow a meekness and recollection that is the temperance of the senses. Humility adorns the soul with temperance.

When turned towards the world, a humble man reveals the whole of his personality through humility, imitating in this God incarnate. Just as the soul is unknown and invisible to bodily sight, so a humble man is unknown among men. He not only seeks to be unnoticed by men but to be as utterly recollected within himself as is possible, becoming as one who does not exist on earth, who has not yet come into being, and who is utterly unknown even to his own soul.

A humble man belittles himself before all men, but God therefore glorifies him, for where humility blossoms, there God’s glory sprouts abundantly, and the plant of the soul produces an imperishable flower.

SOURCE : Adapted from Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ - Father Justin Popovich