Orthodox Christian Spirituality – David Hampshire
17 September, 2014
Introduction
The first thing to say is that there are many ways of being a Christian and in this contribution I am going to limit myself to one perspective due to space and for the sake of clarity. I am going to approach spirituality from an Orthodox Christian perspective. Why? Because that is the one I know best and others need to speak for their own traditions.
There is only one Orthodox Christian spirituality
In his work Orthodoxy the theologian Paul Evdokimov states:
There is only one spirituality for all, without any distinction between bishops, monks and laymen, and the spirituality is monastic. (p287)
Evdokimov stresses here that there is no hierarchy when it comes to being spiritual. Bishops, priests and deacons are not closer to God because they serve in the sanctuary, in fact all of the early monks were lay people and most igoumen (leaders of monasteries) were not, and are not, ordained. So what characterises the monastic life for Orthodox Christians? To understand this we first have to understand something else: the purpose of life itself.
The meaning of the incarnation
St Athanasius states that in Jesus Christ God became human so that humans can become god. We cannot become God as ‘God is’ but we can participate in the life of God so that we ourselves take on the character of ‘god’. Orthodox Christians refer to this as ‘theosis’. As baptised and chrismated Christians we are drawn into the very life of God and that life is one of community and communion. By the grace of the Holy Spirit we are united with Christ and are brought to the Father in an act of Trinitarian love. In 1 John 4:7 – 8 we are told to love one another because love comes from God and that if we do not love we are not of God because God is love. It is into this life of love that we are drawn through the mysteries, especially the mystery of the Eucharist and communion.
The purpose of life is to be united with God for this we were created. It is obvious, though, that there are things that stand in our way. As St Paul says in his letter to the Philippians (2:12): ‘you must work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.’ Of course we cannot do that on our own and St Paul goes on to state (2:13): ‘for it is God who works in you….’
We are not alone
Metropolitan Kallistos of Diocletia reminds us of the early Church dictum: ‘one Christian, no Christian’. As Christians we belong to the Body and the Bride of Christ, the Church. We do that through the membership of our local church in communion with our bishop who is in communion with all other Orthodox bishops. When we go along to the local church we are reminded that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) when we look at the icons that adorn the walls, are on stands and on the iconostasis. Constantly we have the prayers of the Theotokos, the saints and the angelic host bringing us closer to Christ. In our homes we have an icon corner before which we say our morning and evening prayers. In the prayers, examples and writings of the saints we have guides on the way. There are others too, members of our community who encourage us through their example and prayers. Together we keep the fasts and celebrate the feasts of this people of God, bound together in the bond of life.
There are also those who are advanced on the spiritual path. Often these are monks and nuns who are perfecting the Christian life of prayer and service. It is common for an Orthodox Christian to have a spiritual father or mother. Rarely are these ordained ministers of the church, and there is an important distinction and link to be made between the institutional churches and the charismatic Church. It is through binding ourselves to a spiritual father or mother that we progress on our journey to unity with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, in whose name we were baptised.
Working out our salvation
There are three distinct activities that define Orthodox Christian spirituality and the first of these is encountering God in prayer. Prayer is the oxygen of the soul, without it the soul withers and dies. Prayer comes in many forms. There is the prayer of the Liturgy, the services in which we take part. There is the prayer of devotion, the prayer book we carry around and dip into during the day to set us on the right track. There is prayer of the heart, that constant prayer which enables us to stand before God in humility. None of this is possible without the Holy Spirit who prays within us calling out Abba/Father (Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6). Some Christians are so dedicated to this life of prayer that they retreat to the desert to perfect this life, such as St Anthony of Egypt, St John Climacus, St Gregory Palamas or Matthew the Poor.
The second activity is reading the Scriptures. In the Scriptures we hear the Word of God to His people over a period of thousands of years, and we are those people. Reading and meditating on Jesus in the Gospels is especially important for how can we become like Christ if we don’t know what Christ is like. This reading, though, is not simply done as an individual it is a reading of the Church and by the Church. Knowing the great commentaries is also important. Even those who disappeared into the desert remained a part of the Church and it was the people of God who allowed and encouraged them to follow the path of the spiritual athlete. Encountering the Triune God in Scripture is key to our own and our community’s spiritual development.
The third activity is asceticism. One thing that seems to separate Orthodox Christians from others is the amount of fasting we do. Asceticism, here normally fasting from food and drink – or certain types of food and drink – and other things that might be good and desirable, is not an end in itself. Rather it is a means to an end and that end is union with God in Christ. What we tend to forget is that we are not just spiritual beings like the angels we are also physical beings. In that God the Word took on ‘flesh’ in Jesus Christ ‘matter’ becomes united with God. Hence, our bodies are important. For the period of Great Lent leading up to Pascha (Easter), for forty days before Christmas, from the Monday after the first Sunday after Pentecost to 28th June and from the 1st to the 15th August we fast. We fast most Wednesdays and Fridays and from midnight before we receive communion. This is not because the body is bad but because it needs training, in this way it can move from being good to being glorious, transfigured.
This worldly spirituality
All of the above is likely to lead the reader to believe that Orthodox Christians are not of this world. In some ways this is true, in the Gospel of St John (18:36) Jesus tells us that His kingdom is not of this world, but the test of our spiritual life is the quality of our love for others. In St Matthew’s Gospel we are taught that when we respond to the needs of the marginalised we are encountering Christ (see: Matthew 25: 31 – 46). Genesis teaches us that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and therefore by meeting the needs of those that society has rejected we are restoring the image of God in the world and becoming like God in the process. Any person pertaining to be spiritual whist rejecting the needs of their fellow human beings is a liar or deluded. Even when St John Climacus wrote his classic work The Ladder of Divine Assent for monks seeking perfection he recognised that there is no spiritual life for the self-obsessed who ignore the needs of others.
Freedom without anarchy
The aim of the spiritual life is to be free. Free not to do what one wants but freedom to serve. This freedom is rooted in love, as the Blessed Augustine of Hippo states: ‘love and do what you will’. Of course if you do love you cannot will to do that which love would not do. Hence, the truly spiritual person embodies love, the love that is God. It is not a freedom from the body, as God the Word became Flesh, but freedom from that aspect of ‘flesh’ that leads us away from God and brings us into conflict with others – rooted in pride according to St John Climacus. This freedom allows for real variety, there is no single way of being an Orthodox Christian – as can be seen from the lives of St Simon Stylites, St Mary of Egypt, St David of Hermopolis, Fr Alexander Menn. Rather, in communion with each other we are called to follow Christ to see where that will take us, ultimately to be united with each other in the life of the Triune God.