This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Path to Salvation: The Ardor of Zeal

I couldn't wait for the start of Great Lent (after Forgiveness Vespers on Sunday, 22 February) to begin reading St. Theophan the Recluse's The Path to Salvation. But I figured that a) spiritual reading is good almost any time and b) Lenten Triodion is as good as Great Lent itself.

I fear, however, that I've gone as far as I can go in the book.

The saint's introduction to his work notes that:

[I]n a Christian [growth] is a battle with oneself involving much labor, intense and sorrowful, and he must dispose his faculties for something for which they have no inclincation. Like a soldier, he must take every step of land, even his own, from his enemies by means of warfare, with the double-edged sword of forcing himself and opposing himself. Finally, after long labors and exertions, the Christian principles appear victorious, reigning without opposition; they penetrate the whole composition of human nature, dislodging from its demands and inclinations hostile to themselves, and place it in a state of passionlessness and purity, making it worhty of the blessedness of the pure in heart--to see God in themselves in sincerest communion with Him.

Such is the place in us of the Christian life. This life has three stages which may be called: 1) Turning to God; 2) Purification or self-amendment; 3) Sanctification. (The Path to Salvation, p. 23)

So far, so good. The faithful life is intense and serious work. I may not always give my faithful living the attention and effort the work of the Holy Trinity deserves (and I need to give), but I accept this truth about that nature of the work and think that I live it with some consistency.

Now on to chapter one.

Christian life is zeal and strength to remain in communion with God by means of an active fulfillment of His holy will, according to our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the help of the grace of God, to the glory of His most holy name.

The essence of Christian life consists in communion with God, in Christ Jesus our Lord . . . . The testimony of this life that is visible or can be felt within us is the ardor of the active zeal to please God alone in a Christian manner, with total self-sacrifice and hatred of everything which is opposed to this. And so, when this ardor of zeal begins, Christian life has its beginning. The person in whom this ardor is constantly active is one who is living in a Christian way. (The Path to Salvation, p. 27-28)

This is a strange saying. We here in the evangelical West think of the Christian life beginning with faith. Here the saint says it begins with zeal for holiness.

Of course, it's not that St. Theophan has no place for faith. Nor is he really saying that the Christian life can be had apart from faith. But in terms of the justification that is sanctification, zeal initiates the Christian life. And not just any zeal, but zeal that hates sin and death.

Just as salt, penetrating decomposing matter, preserves it from decomposition, so also the spirit of zeal, penetrating our whole being, banishes the sin which corrupts our nature both in soul and body; it banishes it even from the least of the places where it has settled in us, and thus it saves us from moral vice and corruption. (The Path to Salvation, p. 28)

Only true zeal both wishes to do good in all fulness and purity, and persecutes sin in its smallest forms. . . . [T]rue zeal to please God persecutes sin in its smallest reminders or marks, for it is zealous for perfect purity.(The Path to Salvation, p. 29)

This is the end of the first section of chapter one. And I now have enough to deal with through the rest of Lent. I'm afraid I can read no further.

Because, you see, I'm an ideas guy. Faith, for me, is first intellect, then action. Let's understand, say, the Incarnation (to the degree the human mind can). Let's trace out all the connections to other doctrines. Let's connect all those lines to the dailyness of one's life. Very INTJ, of course.

But zeal.

What was it that was said of our Lord? "Zeal for Thy house has consumed me." We're not talking about the excited, arm-pumping, Bible-waving emotion of the sweating televangelist. We're not even talking about the "afterglow" of a moving praise service or missionary presentation or godly sermon in which I make firm commitments to ammendment of life. This zeal is not reactionary. It is a motive force. It moves, in the power of the Spirit, regardless whether one's milieu is touchingly spiritual or hellishly secular.

And it is relentless. Utterly relentless. It hates sin and death. It hates them so much it will search into every nook and cranny of my guilt and shame, the dark hidden corners I don't even allow myself to acknowledge, let alone reveal to anyone else. And when it finds the least little taint of corruption, it will enlist the uncreated Trinitarian energies, the intercessions of the saints, the sacraments, and my own feeble and faltering will to eliminate it.

Dear God, I lack this zeal. Rather than hating sin, I allow it into my life. I keep it out of the main room--some of the time. But it has festooned the rest of my life, all the little closets under the stairs, the hidey-holes in the basement, the loose board in the attic, with its filth and stench. I have become accustomed to its presence, its darkness, and its stink. And so sin remains.

But it needs to be persecuted, cut, thrown out. According to the saint, only zeal can accomplish this. And only when zeal rises up within me will my Christian life begin. I've been playacting all this time. Hypocrites were, and are to this day, the professional actors of Greece. This is me. I'm a hypocrite. God forgive me. Brothers and sisters, forgive me.

Stung to the quick by this reading, I prayed a prayer I hardly understood, nor do I think I'm ready to have answered. "God, give me this zeal." Apart from it, growth in holiness seems a hopeless prospect. But the thought of its reality in my life frightens me to no end.

Posted by Clifton at February 5, 2004 05:45 AM | TrackBack