Passions 1

St. Seraphim’s Fellowship
P.O. Box 351656
Jacksonville, Fl. 32235-1656

~INTRODUCTION TO THE PASSIONS~

Part 1: “Some people really understand you”

Part 2: “How much do you really know about yourself?”


Dear Inmate:

I will begin by sending these teachings on the passions, there are ten lessons and a final test after which you will receive a certificate of completion. The purpose of these teachings on the passions is so that you will be able to identify patterns in your past life that are responsible for shaping your reality and bringing you where you are now. These teachings on the passions really come from the early Church where they had a highly developed psychology that ended up being the basis for the modern science of psychotherapy. The main difference of course, is that these teachings come from the wisdom of the early Church Fathers and were developed for the purpose of freeing a person’s soul from the bondage of sin, so that a real and true relationship with God and virtue is found. The Ancient Church has always seen herself as a kind of a hospital for the souls of men, filled with diagnosticians, x-ray technicians and surgeons. Her whole purpose and energies are highly focused to help bring health to the soul. The modern practice has been developed without the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of helping people to adjust to a sinful modern secular and pluralistic world and making them acceptable to it.

After this series is completed, I will then begin to go deeper with you concerning the Bible and the Church. Please feel free to write to me with any questions and I will respond. Much of what you will read in these teaching will be unfamiliar to you as you were raised in a predominately Protestant country. It is good to remember that Christianity is Eastern and much has been lost in the modern Western World.

~

The subject of repentance is a difficult and often misunderstood subject. Of course it involves being sorry for your sins and making things right, but it also has a lot to do with truly knowing yourself. Most of us think that no one really knows us. You know, the real us. Often people think that if people really knew us that they would hate us and never want to have a relationship with us. Many of us have expended much effort covering up the truly unpleasant things about ourselves so as to have “normal” relationships and feel the love from people that are important to us. This is not good. Imagine how tragic it would be for someone to live and die and never really know themselves in the way that God sees us. It may be a surprise for you to come to understand that some people really understand you.

In the immense treasure house of the early Christian Church are countless gems of holy wisdom which the world has not used for some time now. Among them is a whole system of Christian psychology, a way to get full knowledge of yourself from God. The art of acquiring self-knowledge from God was already highly developed within the first few centuries of Christianity. It is described in what are generally called “the patristic writings” –writings by very holy people in the early Church. Many of those holy teachers took part in the great ecumenical councils, which established the Creed, the worship services, the theology, and the canon law of the church. Many were courageous martyrs. Many were priests, and many were laymen. They are called “holy fathers” because they helped people to be born in God, brought people to life spiritually. These holy fathers (and anyone in the modern world who is like them) are the good Shepherd’s God promised he would send to guide and take care of us. God himself lives in the good shepherds and tells them what to do for us and what to teach us. We know from the Bible that;

“holy men speak as they are moved by the Holy Spirit.” (II Peter 1:21)Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth. 1 Cor 2:12-13

So holy people don’t just give you fancy theories, about God and men; they give you facts. The Apostles who told us about God in the Bible said;

“We speak to you about things which we have actually seen and heard”
(Acts 4:20).

The fathers in the early Church were like the apostles. They taught only what they really knew about God from personal experiences. “What we know,” said one of them named Hesychius, “we pass on by writings. And what we have seen on our journey, we testify to those who wish to accept our words.”
(Icon of Hesychius)

All of the fathers were like that. They lived in constant communion with God day in and day out, and then wrote letters and books to tell us what life with God is like. When anyone talks to you honestly, out of his own experience like that, it’s quite easy to believe him. As one of them, Saint Gregory of Sanai, said; “That man ministers the Gospels who, having participated in them himself, can also actively pass on to others the light of Christ. Like some divine planter, he sows the Word on the fields of his listener’s souls.”

You can most easily recognize God’s holy shepherds by how much they agree with one another. This is because they don’t try to interpret God’s Word by themselves; instead, they listen to how the Holy Spirit interprets it. Then when they get the message straight, they explain it to other people. There are hundreds of holy fathers whose writings come down to us, and all their individual experiences led them to identical discoveries about what God is like and what human beings are like, because they let the Holy Spirit interpret everything for them. That shows that God is in them and in their thinking; because; “He is the God that makes men to be of one mind.” (Ps 68:6) Only God could give that many different people exactly the same answers to so many important questions in life.

Holy people experience this agreement with one another for the most amazing but truly simple reason. It’s because they become so purified of all of their sins and selfish urges that when they look out through themselves, they see the truth very clearly. Anything we look through, whether it’s a pair of glasses or a telescope or a microscope, has to be clean if we’re going to see something through it with perfect accuracy. If there are spots on a microscope lens, a scientist will get a distorted picture of whatever he’s trying to look at. The same thing is true of us when we try to see truth, because we have to look through the lens of our own senses and thinking processes. If we have blobs of sins and selfish concerns on our lens, we’re not going to get a really clear view of what truth is. It’s not possible to see the truth clearly when you are spiritually unclean and all stirred up with uncontrolled emotions, any more than it’s possible to see a fish perfectly through muddy water. The reason that people have often disagreed so violently about the Christian Faith is that they’ve tried to get answers without first becoming saints, and you can’t do that. You’ve got to be a saint and actually live with God in order to understand what life is all about. Otherwise, even with the best I.Q. on earth, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes. There were a few men in the early Church who were very bright thinkers but weren’t quite purified enough to see the truth as clearly as others did. So the fathers never refer to them (unless they have to correct some extremely serious error) and just quietly write in such a way as to counteract their mistakes without mentioning any names.

The reason that such great differences and mistakes have arisen among commentators is that most of them, paying no sort of attention towards purifying the mind, rush into the work of interpreting the Scriptures, and in proportion to the density of impurity of their hearts form opinions that are at variance with and contrary to each other’s and to the Faith, and so are unable to take in the light of truth.

(Icon of~John Cassian)

The most splendid witness of God’s shepherds is not their personal holiness, not their incredible spiritual power (for they preformed all sorts of miracles), nor even their glorious martyrdoms. It is their unity. Unity is the height of obedience to Christ, who said; “He that receives whomever I send, receives me; and he that receives me, receives him that sent me” (Jn. 13:20)

The holy fathers, from so many various lands and different centuries, all receive one another with love. They are guided by one another and frequently study and quote each other’s writings. They rejoice in their spiritual agreement and their unity in God. As one of them has said, “The words of the saints never disagree if they are carefully examined; all alike speak the truth, wisely changing their judgments on particular subjects when necessary.” This beautiful unity, which is the reward for perfectly loving God and loving one another, is an answer to Jesus’ own prayer; “that they all may be one; as thou, Father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (Jn. 17:20,21).

Have you ever thought how odd it is that we seek so much guidance in other things and so little in how to live our lives? When you are thinking of entering a profession, like music or medicine or law, it seems very important to choose the best teachers you can find, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t run on hunches, or on your own natural talent, or on advice from people who don’t know much about the subject you’re interested in. But no worldly profession even begins to compare in seriousness with the profession of living your life successfully. When we stop to think about it, we all know that no profession is much help to a person who messes up his personal life and can’t live happily with others. So can you see that no teachers will ever be as important to you as the ones you choose, either deliberately or accidentally, to guide you in living your life? What are most people doing today? They are letting themselves be guided through life by everything from infantile TV fantasies to confused friends. How can we be so choosy about all the other forms of education and training but never once think soberly about what kind of teachers we’re going to get our knowledge of life from? That question came up centuries ago, and here’s what couple of the holy fathers have to say about it; What then? If a man is unlikely to take an unexplored path without a true guide, if no man will undertake to learn a science or an art without an experienced teacher, who will dare to attempt a practical study of the art of arts and the science of sciences, to enter the mysterious path leading to God ~ that is, Life ~ and venture to sail the boundless mental sea without a guide, a navigator, without true and experienced teachers? Whoever such a man may be, he is deceiving himself indeed, and has gone astray even before starting. (Icon of ~ Callistus and Ignatius)

Without even knowing us individually, the holy fathers understand us far better than we can understand ourselves, because they have been so close to our Creator that they have learned from Him what we are really like. He has taught them marvelous details about human nature, what helps it and what harms it, what things are in its’ power and what things are not in its’ power, what experiences it needs to be happy and what experiences rob it of happiness, what thoughts reinforce it with sanity and what thoughts destroy it with insanity. Today their teaching can protect you from some pain, tomorrow lead you into a sudden joy, the next day throw open the door to a love so strong and beautiful you’ll hardly be able to believe it.

Only a very small part of what the fathers have to say about human nature have been put into these letters of mine to you. But it’s enough to help you discover quite a bit about what your real self is like. Many people who have come to understand these few simple truths say that it did that for them. They feel that they know themselves better, and have much more confidence in themselves and where their going, than they did before. I hope the same thing will happen to you, and that God will bless you through the pages of the letters I will be sending.

Part 2

“HOW MUCH DO YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT YOURSELF?”

If someone were to ask you, you could probably give a number of impressions about what you feel that you are like. Maybe you’d tell them that you are intelligent, good-looking, athletic, responsible, fairly popular, and pretty much all right. Possibly you’d say you think you lack initiative, are easily shoved around, often bored, afraid to let people know when something’s bothering you, afraid of disappointing your family. Or you might say you feel you are gifted in some ways but act selfish and immature in other ways, that you don’t like or need other people around you most of the time, that you have the ability to run fairly well on your own steam.

Where do your impressions about yourself come from? Primarily from your parents and from individuals who are in parental or authoritative positions. Foster parents, relatives, intimate family friends, teachers, coaches, employers, or any other persons who have been responsible for you during comparatively long periods in your life. The way they treat us when we are children makes us form strong opinions about what we are like and what we can expect from ourselves. These opinions are strongest in our subconscious mind, down inside where you can’t see them too clearly most of the time.

If our parents or other individuals in positions of authority treated us as though we were OK, then we believe we are OK. If we were treated as though we couldn’t have lived without them, then we became absolutely convinced of our inadequacies. If they treated us as though we didn’t need much control (or as if they couldn’t impose it on us), we take it for granted that we are uncontrollable, by anyone, even ourselves. The only people who go overboard with uncontrollable habits like alcoholism and most kinds of drug addiction are ones who subconsciously think they are uncontrollable and have to reinforce that idea, because whatever you think about yourself, whether it’s something good or something bad, you automatically do everything you can to prove it is so.

Those old authority figures in our lives may have treated us as if we were competent or incompetent to do things, as if we were remarkably bright or a little dense; as if we were pleasant and cooperative or stubborn and revolutionary; as if we were equal with others, or as if we were God’s special gift to society ; as if we needed God, or as if having them or other capable people around was enough. Some of the impressions you’ve gotten about yourself from the way those authority figures have treated you will ring true all of your life. To some extent, they have given you real knowledge about yourself, although there can be cases where this is hardly true. Other impressions, you will find, are dead wrong. They are not the real you at all. But mostly you will discover that, even with good authority figures who have given you all the self knowledge they possibly could have; it just isn’t enough to get through life with. Not half enough!

When Jesus was twelve years old, he knew it was time to emphasize other relationships besides those with his own earthly family. His parents had taken him to a big feast in Jerusalem. When it was over, they packed up and started home. They’d traveled a whole day before they realized that Jesus wasn’t with them. Desperately worried, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. It took them three more days to find him. He had gone off and left them for four days! But only to go to a very safe place, God’s Temple, and that’s where they finally found him.

And his mother said to him, Son, why have you treated us this way? Your father and I have been looking everywhere for you. And he said to them, why have you been looking for me? Didn’t you know that now I have to work with my Father? (Luke 2:48, 49)

Do you see what he really did? He said he couldn’t be with one father because he had to be with another one. He couldn’t be with Joseph (who was not his father by blood, but was in the position of being a father to him while he was a child), because he had to be with his heavenly Father. Do you see that Jesus was moving out of the activities in his earthly, childhood family into the action of his immense heavenly family? Even though he continued to live longer with his parents, his attention was on God’s whole family and not just on his mother and Joseph. Later on he plainly said that; “whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, and my mother” (Mark 3:35)

The kind of experience Jesus had comes to all of us after we are about 12 years old. We begin to feel that our own parents and our earthly families somehow aren’t enough. God puts this feeling into us to show us that it’s time to start relating more to our heavenly family. Earthly parents are sufficient for our childhood, but then God wants to fully adopt us, lead us into; “the spirit of adoption, whereby we shall call him Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15)

We can accept God’s adoption of us or reject it, just as a human body can accept or reject something transplanted into it from another person. If we accept, it means we start doing our part as full-fledged members of God’s family. And accepting God’s adoption of us means that. As we physically resemble members of our physical families, we shall now spiritually resemble God and all of the members of his spiritual family, his and ours. And as we sometimes inherit material items from our earthly families, we can now inherit spiritual riches and beautiful virtues and the same gift that Jesus inherited, resurrection from death. Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it is not clear in this life what we shall be someday, but we know that when God appears, we shall be like him. (Jn. 3:2)

The Spirit of God makes it obvious that we are his children, and we can see it ourselves. Being his children, we are his heirs, and we are joint heirs with Christ. (Rom. 8:16,17)

God lets our physical parents give birth to us and bring us into this world. Then he has holy people, like the apostles and other saints, give birth to us spiritually. We call our spiritual parents “father” because as St. Paul says, they have begotten us in Christ. That is, they don’t only teach us things about God; they also bring us into an entirely new state of being, into the whole family of God. They do this mainly, of course, by baptizing us and by showing us how to accept the adoption. So through them we are reborn; “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1:12,13)

Now I have to make one thing really plain. All of our knowledge of ourselves comes primarily from parents or parent figures, first from our physical ones and then from our spiritual ones. The world gives you a lot of other knowledge, but not self knowledge. Even if you include all of the accumulated knowledge from all of the psychiatrists in the world, unless they are members of God’s family and full of God’s wisdom about mankind, you will still learn nothing about the real you. So if you do not accept membership in God’s family and learn about yourself from God, you will never have much more self knowledge than you’ve got right now. You can learn to do very intelligent and wise-looking things, but you will not have become mature or wise. You can never be the real or mature man that God intended. Being physically mature is by no means the same as being mature. You become mature by getting to know yourself well, and they only way you can do that is by going to God. That’s why he said, in his wonderful thunderous voice.. Ask me of things concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands, ask me. I have made the earth, and created man upon it. I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways. (Is 45:11,13)

Another thing you need to realize is that, down in your subconscious mind, you now have some wrong convictions about yourself and what you are like. These subconscious convictions about yourself are extremely powerful, and they will force you to act on them whether you consciously want to or not. Most of them are much more powerful than your mind is, and you cannot think or reason your way out of them. Without help from God, we can’t even always determine exactly what they are. For instance, a person with a subconscious conviction that he is not lovable can spend years trying to cultivate friendships, get people to like him, and make even one person love him. But the subconscious conviction will win out, by forcing him to do more things to turn people off than his brain can think of doing to turn them on. And he will have no idea, consciously, why he can’t succeed in getting someone to love him, he couldn’t believe it because of his conviction that he is not lovable.

God’s Holy Spirit is the only thing there is that can barrel in and smash up the errors in your subconscious mind, and the confusion that comes from them. That’s partly what our rebirth into God’s family is all about. When we are reborn into God’s family, we are healed of sin. Now you may wonder what on earth sin could have to do with your wrong convictions about yourself. Well, do you know what the early Christians say that sin is? It’s anything unreasonable, anything irrational. That’s because everything unreasonable tends to destroy us, and self destruction is terrific sin.

"Whatever is done through error of reason is transgression,
and is rightly called sin". (Icon of Clement)

"We are virtuous or sinful according to whether we use things sensibly
or stupidly. Evil is an erroneous judgment about things accompanied
by their wrong use". (Icon of Maximus the Confessor)

Isn’t it irrational to think certain things about yourself that aren’t true? And isn’t it unreasonable to use yourself, as a result of these wrong convictions, in some way that doesn’t connect with what you really are? That’s sin. It’s what people do when they are separated from God. And that’s what the Bible is talking about when it says that in Baptism we die to sin, we die to everything unreasonable and start living a life that makes sense, the life in God, if we accept God’s adoption of us. That way we can die to our wrong convictions about ourselves, finally leaving the memory and confusion of them behind us. God rears us as his children when we accept his adoption, and the convictions he gives us about ourselves are all true and right.

You may be an adult in your life and earthly family, but you are a child in your heavenly family. With God you are a child. You can expect God to be quite indulgent with you, because you are a child of his. But you can’t expect the world or your family to indulge you as a child any longer. You are now just as responsible as your family for your welfare. People are doing things for you and you have to do things for them. Being incarcerated, you are responsible to the authorities so you should try to do whatever they ask of you. It is right to obey those who support you or have the rule over you. That’s just fair play. It is not to babies that God said, “Honor your father and your mother.” Babies wouldn’t know what He was talking about; it is addressed to adults who can read the message. When you are an adult, something adult is called for, namely, understanding of those who have authority over you, instead of expecting all the understanding to be on their side, as it was when you were a child. By the way, most earthly parents or authority figures won’t do much better than Jesus parents did. They worried about him, they questioned him when he left them and he went about his Father’s business. When you become preoccupied with yourself, with your surroundings, with the experiences you will certainly have to have in God’s family, some will misinterpret what is going on sometimes. They may think you are indifferent, or lazy, or moody, or selfish. You have to expect this. You also have to quit forming impressions about yourself from the way they treat you. If some people treat you now as if you were a child, it doesn’t mean you are one. All you have to do is just realize that, it’s not easy for them to see you differently now after having known you the way you were. Aim at the completely adult thing, give them all the help they request, and all the courtesy and consideration you can, but at the same time give plenty of attention to your growth in God.

"It is our duty to esteem holy teachers above our parents, because they are the means of our well being, but parents re only the means of our being". (Constitutions of the Holy Apostles)

In this business of starting to live in God’s family and getting a lot of self-knowledge from God, you should know that it doesn’t even slightly matter whether you have any faith to start with. Once there was a paralyzed man lying by a pool of water, you may have heard about it or read the account in the Bible. Jesus walked up to him and said, “Do you know who I am?” (He probably meant, do you know that I am the Christ and I can heal you?) The man said no, he had no idea who Jesus was. Did Jesus figure he had no faith, and just walk off? No! Not at all. He healed that poor invalid on the spot, and it wasn’t until later on that the man found he’d been healed by the Son of God. Why did Jesus not require faith of this man? As he did in the case of others, saying, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” "It was because the man did not yet clearly know who he was". (Icon of John Chrysostom)


But at least, when Jesus came up, the man didn’t drive him away. When Jesus asked him whether he wanted to be healed, he didn’t bitterly reply, “Quit putting me on, get lost.” He was open. That’s all anyone needs to be. So if you aren’t a pillar of faith, don’t worry about it. And don’t ever pretend to have any faith you really haven’t got. It just makes you feel sneaky and uncomfortable, and it doesn’t make any difference to God at all. The early saints, teachers of thousands of new Christians, often used to say, “In the nature of things, knowledge comes before faith” Isn’t that perfectly true? Don’t you have to get to know someone before you have faith in Him? How do you get to know someone? By hearing about him, by being with him, listening to him, talking with him. We get to know about various foods the same way, by tasting them. We have to try them out before we can see if they agree with us or not. That’s what Scripture invites us to do with God, it says, “Taste and see how gracious the Lord is!” No Faith required for that. As you receive and read the letters ahead, you can figure that’s what you are doing, tasting God’s Word.

In Christ’s Mercy,

Brother
Seraphim