10.
Qualifications for Theosis
The Holy Fathers certainly say that within the Church we can attain Theosis.
But at the same time they say Theosis is a gift from God, it is not something
we can attain on our own. Of course, we must desire, struggle, and prepare
ourselves so that we are worthy, capable, and receptive enough to accept
and guard this great gift from God, since God does not wish to do anything
to us without our freedom, but at the same time, Theosis is a gift of
God, so therefore the holy Fathers say, on the one hand, that we undergo
Theosis, and on the other hand, that God acts in Theosis.
From this we discern certain qualifications that are necessary on the path
of man to Theosis. These are:
1. Humility
2. Asceticism
3. The spiritual practices of prayer and communion
1) Humility
According to the holy Fathers, the first necessary qualification is humility.
Without blessed humility, man cannot be put on the right course for Theosis,
cannot accept the divine Grace and so unite with God. Simply to acknowledge that
Theosis is the purpose of our life demands humility, because without humility,
how will you acknowledge that the purpose of your life is outside yourself; that
it is in God?
So long as man lives egocentrically, anthropocentrically, autonomously, he places
himself at the centre and purpose of his own life. He believes that he can be
perfected by his own efforts; defined by his own efforts; deified by his own
efforts. This is the spirit of contemporary civilisation, contemporary philosophy,
contemporary politics: to create an even better world, even more just, but to
do this autonomously, by oneself; to create a world which will have man at its
centre with no reference to God; with no acknowledgement that God is the source
of all good. This is the fault that Adam committed, believing that, with only
his own powers, he could become God, could complete himself. The fault of Adam
is one that all humanistic creeds make throughout all the ages. They do not consider
that communion with God is indispensable for the completion of man.
Everything Orthodox is theanthropically centred; its centre is the God-man Christ.
Everything that is not Orthodox has this common denominator: its centre is man,
whether it is Protestantism, Papism, Freemasonry, Millenarianism, atheism, or
whatever else is outside Orthodoxy. For us, the centre is the God-man Christ.
This means it is easy for someone to become a heretic, a Millenarianist, a Mason
or whatever else, but it is difficult to become an Orthodox Christian. To become
an Orthodox Christian, you must first accept that the centre of the world is
not yourself but Christ.
Thus, the beginning of the path towards Theosis is humility, i.e. that we acknowledge
that the purpose of our life is outside us; is with our Father, our Maker and
Creator.
Humility is needed to see that we are sick, that we are bigoted, that we are
full of weaknesses and passions.
Again, to persist on this path, someone who begins the path of Theosis must have
constant humility, for if he accepts the thought that he manages perfectly well
just by using his own powers, then pride enters him; he loses what he has gained
and must start again from the beginning; to become humble, to see his weakness,
his human sickness, and learn not to rely on himself. In order to find himself
continuously on the path of Theosis, he needs to depend on the Grace of God.
Therefore, in the lives of the saints, their great humility impresses us. While
they were near God, they shone within the light of God; they were miracle-workers;
they gave off myrrh; yet at the same time they believed about themselves that
they were very lowly, very far from God, that they were the worst of men. It
was this humility of theirs that made them gods by Grace.
2) Asceticism
The holy Fathers also tell us that Theosis has stages. It begins from the lowest
and progresses to the highest. Once we have humility, in order to become cleansed
from the passions we start our asceticism by applying the holy commandments of
Christ, beginning our daily struggle in Christ with repentance and much patience.
The holy Fathers say that within His commandments God himself lies hidden. When
a Christian observes them out of love and faith in Christ, then he unites with
Him.
According to the holy Fathers, this first stage of Theosis is also called ‘praxis’.
This is practical guidance given at the start of the path towards Theosis.
Naturally, this is not at all easy, because the struggle to uproot the passions
from within us is great. Much effort is required, so that gradually our inner
wasteland is cleansed from the thorns and stones of the passions so that it
can be cultivated spiritually, and so that the seed of God’s logos may fall
and bear fruit. Great and continuous effort towards ourselves is necessary for
all this. Therefore the Lord said that ‘the Kingdom of God suffers violence,
so the violent seize it’ (Matthew. 11:12). And again, the holy Fathers
teach us: ‘give blood and receive Spirit’, i.e. you cannot receive
the holy Spirit if you do not give the blood of your heart to the struggle
to cleanse yourself from the passions, in order to repent really and in depth,
and
in order to acquire the virtues.
All the virtues are aspects of the one great virtue, the virtue of love. When
a Christian acquires love, he has all the virtues. It is love that expels the
prime cause of all the evils and all the passions from the psyche of man. This
cause, according to the holy Fathers, is selfishness. All the evils within us
spring from selfishness, which is a diseased love for one's own self. This is
the reason why our Church has asceticism. Without asceticism, there is no spiritual
life, no struggle, and no progress. We obey, fast, keep vigil, labour with prostrations,
and stand upright, all so that we may be cleansed of our passions. If the Orthodox
Church ceases to be ascetical, it ceases to be Orthodox, because then it ceases
to help man rid himself of his passions in order to become gods by Grace.
The Church Fathers developed a great and profound anthropological teaching on
the psyche and the passions of man. According to them, in the psyche you can
distinguish intelligent and passable parts. The passible, again, comprises passionate
and desiring parts. The intelligent part contains the reasoning powers of the
psyche; the thoughts and cognitive powers. The passionate parts are the positive
and negative emotions; love and hate. The desiring part contains the good desires
of the virtues and the bad desires for pleasure; for enjoyment, avarice, gluttony,
the worship of the flesh and the carnal passions. Unless these three parts of
the psyche, the intelligent, the passionate, and the desiring, are cleansed,
man cannot receive the Grace of God within himself, and cannot be deified. The
intelligent part is cleansed by watchfulness, which is the continuous guarding
of the nous from thoughts, keeping the good thoughts and rejecting the bad. The
passionate part, again, is cleansed by love. Finally, the desiring part is cleansed
by self-control. All these parts are both cleansed and sanctified by prayer.
3) The Holy Mysteries and Prayer
Christ installs Himself in the heart of man through the Holy Mysteries: Holy
Baptism, Chrismation, Holy Confession and the Divine Eucharist. Those Orthodox
Christians who are in communion with Christ have God and His Grace within them,
in their hearts, because they have been baptised, chrismated, have confessed
and have received Holy Communion.
The passions cover Divine Grace as ashes bury a spark. Through asceticism and
prayer, the heart is cleansed of the passions, the spark of Divine Grace is rekindled,
and the faithful Christian feels Christ in his heart; the centre of his existence.
Every prayer of the Church helps to cleanse the heart, but the so-called prayer
of a single-phrase, also known as noetic prayer or prayer of the heart, is
particularly helpful: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner’.
This prayer, which has always been handed down on the Holy Mountain, has the
following advantage:
because it is only one sentence it helps us to concentrate our nous more easily.
Concentrating our nous, we immerse it in our heart, and then pay attention
to make sure it is not busy there with other things and ideas, good or bad;
that
it is busy only with God.
The practice in this prayer of the heart, which with God’s Grace may in
time become continuous, is a whole science, a holy art which the Saints of our
Faith describe in detail in their holy writings, and also in a large collection
of Patristic texts called the ‘Philokalia’.
This prayer helps and gladdens man, and when the Christian progresses in this
prayer and at the same time his life follows the holy commandments of Christ
and His Church, then he is worthy to receive the experience of Divine Grace.
He starts to taste the sweetness of communion with God, to know from experience ‘O
taste and see that the Lord is good’ (Psalm 34:8 ???). For us Orthodox,
God is not an idea, something that we think about, that we discuss or read
about, but a Person with Whom we come into living and personal communion, It
is something
we live, and somebody from Whom we receive experience.
Then we see what a great, unspeakable and inexpressible joy it is to have Christ
within us and to be Orthodox Christians.
Within their different concerns and every day occupations, it helps Christians
who are in the world so much to find at least a few minutes silence to exercise
themselves in this prayer.
Certainly, when fulfilled with humility and love, all labours and obligations
directed to God sanctify us, but prayer is also required.
In a quiet room (perhaps after some spiritual reading, or after lighting a
small oil lamp in front of the icons and burning incense), as far as possible
away
from noise and activity, and after other considerations and thoughts have fallen
quiet, they should sink their nous into the heart by saying the prayer: ‘Lord
Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner’. How much peace and strength
the psyches draw from the silence of God! How much this strengthens them during
the day so that they can keep themselves peaceful without nervous tension and
anxiety, but have all their forces united in harmony!
Some people in other places seek silence of the psyche by using artificial means
that are deluded and demonic, as in the so-called Oriental religions. They try
to find a certain silence by using external exercises, meditation etc., to achieve
a certain balance of psyche and body. The fault in all these is that properly
speaking, even when man tries to forget the various considerations of the material
world he does not have a dialogue with God, but only a monologue with himself,
so that once again he ends up in anthropocentrism, and in this way he fails.
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Source: Praxis
Research Institute
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