Category: Watchfulness


On Hope

Filed under: Grace, Patience, Prayer, Watchfulness
December 25, 2025

If it seems to us difficult, because the practice of virtue is hard, and still more because of the insidious counsel of the adversary, behold, He is pitiful and longsuffering, waiting for our conversion; and when we sin, He holds His hand, in expectation of our repentance; and when we fall, He is not ashamed to take us back, as the prophet says, Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return? Only let us be on the watch, making sure of a good intention, and let us be converted straight and fair, seeking help from Him, and He is ready to save us. He is looking for our will to turn to Him with a fervent impulse, to the best of our power, and for faith and zeal that springs from a good purpose; the whole success of the endeavour is His own work in us. Let us then endeavour, beloved, like children of God, putting away all preoccupation, and carelessness, and sloth, to be courageous and ready to follow after Him. Let us not put off from day to day, without observing how sin is injuring us. We do not know when we are to depart out of the flesh. The promises made to Christians are great and unspeakable, so great, that all the glory and beauty of sky and earth, and all the other adornment and variety, the wealth and comeliness and delight, of things visible, bear no proportion to the faith and wealth of a single soul.

~ St. Macarius the Egyptian, Fifty Spiritual Homilies, 5.17

I know it’s been a while, but I haven’t forgotten about this blog. I’ve just been busy promoting my new book, The Kingdom of God and the Common Good. Readers of this blog will be happy to know that, in a way, the whole book is about everyday asceticism, focused especially on questions of wealth, poverty, and society today.

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Rational Asceticism

Filed under: Discipline, Humility, Peace, Watchfulness
March 29, 2024

He [Christ] … taught us how one might acquire the ability to refrain from evil and be perfectly good. This takes place in four different ways: first, abandon and reject the things of the world; secondly, love God and put Him above the world; thirdly, love other people and put them above the world; and fourthly, forgo retaliation, cling to forgiveness, reward evil with good, and imitate God.

~ Theodore Abu Qurra, Theologus Autodidactus

I am working on writing my second book, this one on the topic of Orthodox Christian social thought and for Ancient Faith Publishing, and I decided that I should add a chapter on Middle Eastern Orthodox Christians after the Arab conquests of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.

Theodore Abu Qurra was a late-eight and early-ninth century Orthodox theologian and sometime bishop of Harran, near Edessa, and he is one of the first to write in Arabic (in addition to Greek and Syriac). Edessa was religiously pluralistic, and in the work quoted above, Theodore developed an intriguing thought experiment for trying to discern which religion is the truest.

The thought experiment goes like this: Imagine a man who lives on top of a mountain with his father, a king, whom he knows but has never seen. His father sends him to a village in his kingdom with a physician to care for him. Unfortunately, the son ignores the physician and falls ill. The physician notifies the king, and so the king writes his son a letter telling him what has caused his illness and how to get better, sending it with a messenger. Unfortunately, the king’s enemies hear of this. The king is too powerful for them to harm directly, but they devise a plan to send false messengers with counterfeit letters that will lead the son to poison himself and die. As it happens, all the messengers arrive at the same time, and the son does not know who to believe. How can he figure it out?

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Eulogy for Aric Emery

Filed under: Community, Watchfulness
August 12, 2023

(July 24, 1981 – July 23, 2023)

Today I gave this eulogy at the memorial service for my friend Aric, who died three weeks ago. Memento mori, meditation on death, is an ascetic discipline after all. Sometimes you choose it. Sometimes it chooses you. But it’s something we all need to do if we want to live our lives in the real world, where all is mortal, even our friends. Hopefully if anyone else finds themselves in that situation, this might help them grieve with the right perspective, too.

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The Joy of Thy Salvation

Filed under: Humility, Prayer, Watchfulness
March 30, 2022

Lesson after the Presanctified Liturgy

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church

Grand Rapids, Michigan

March 30, 2022

Introduction

A story from the desert Fathers provides a fitting image for our topic tonight:

The monks praised a brother to Abba Antony. But Antony went to him and tested whether he could endure abuse. And when he perceived that he could not bear it, he said: “You are like a house with a highly decorated facade, where burglars have stolen all the furniture out of the back door.”

In chapters 14 through 18 of Way of the Ascetics, Tito Colliander focuses on the topics of humility, watchfulness, resolution, and prayer. Without humility, we cannot be watchful. Without watchfulness or “vigilance,” we cannot be resolute. Without resolution—“the will to resist” temptation—we cannot truly pray. Then, no matter how holy we may seem to our brothers and sisters, their praise only amounts to window dressing, while inside the houses of our hearts, nothing of value remains. We have allowed burglars—our temptations—to steal away our virtue while we weren’t looking, too self-absorbed to notice.

Colliander connects these four elements in the second paragraph of chapter 14:

Humility is a prerequisite, for the proud man is once and for all shut out. Vigilance is necessary in order immediately to recognize the enemies and to keep the heart free from vice. The will to resist must be established at the very instant the enemy is recognized. But since without me ye can do nothing (John 15:5), prayer is the basis on which the whole battle depends.

My intention in this talk tonight is to augment Colliander’s discussion of these four elements by fleshing out some of the Fathers’ teachings that he sometimes leaves implicit in these chapters. With greater nuance, then, I hope we’ll be able to have a deeper discussion of these essential spiritual tools as they relate to our own lives.

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Mementos

Filed under: Watchfulness
September 19, 2018

I have known myself snatched away into true compunction of spirit by the death of a brother monk or of a dear friend or relative. Sometimes the memory of my own half-heartedness and carelessness has elevated my soul. No doubt there are countless occasions of this sort, which can rouse the mind, through God’s grace, from its drowsiness and half-heartedness.

~ “First Conference with Abba Isaac,” 26, from the Conferences of Cassian

Tomorrow, it will have been one year since my father died. There is nothing that can make the loss anything other than that—a loss. Death, I believe as a Christian, is unnatural. Part of us all knows deep down that this is not the way things ought to be, even if this is the way things always have been.

But the ascetic tradition of the Church, and the message of the Gospel of Christ’s resurrection, allow us to temper our grief with hope and channel it to virtuous ends. I have tried, when I can, to do that. Continue reading →

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Eulogy for My Father

Filed under: Watchfulness
September 26, 2017

One week ago, and somewhat suddenly, my father passed away. The burial was yesterday, at which I gave a eulogy. I write a lot about the value of memento mori, the remembrance of death, on this blog. It is the one certainty of our futures that we all will one day die. A life lived as if our road did not end there is therefore only fantasy. As a reminder to myself, and in the interest of encouraging a more sober outlook among others, the text of the eulogy follows below: Continue reading →

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Some Pauline Beatitudes

Filed under: Chastity, Watchfulness
September 24, 2016

And when Paul entered into the house of Onesiphorus, there was great joy, and bowing of knees and breaking of bread, and the word of God concerning abstinence (or continence) and the resurrection; for Paul said:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are they that keep the flesh chaste, for they shall become the temple of God.

Blessed are they that abstain (or the continent), for unto them shall God speak.

Blessed are they that have renounced this world, for they shall be well-pleasing unto God.

Blessed are they that possess their wives as though they had them not, for they shall inherit God.

Blessed are they that have the fear of God, for they shall become angels [messengers?] of God.

Blessed are they that tremble at the oracles of God, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are they that receive the wisdom of Jesus Christ, for they shall be called sons of the Most High.

Blessed are they that have kept their baptism pure, for they shall rest with the Father and with the Son.

Blessed are they that have compassed the understanding of Jesus Christ, for they shall be in light.

Blessed are they that for love of God have departed from the fashion of this world, for they shall judge angels, and shall be blessed at the right hand of the Father.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy and shall not see the bitter day of judgement.

Blessed are the bodies of the virgins, for they shall be well-pleasing unto God and shall not lose the reward of their continence (chastity), for the word of the Father shall be unto them a work of salvation in the day of his Son, and they shall have rest world without end.

~ Acts of Paul (and Thecla)

Today in the Orthodox Church we commemorate the holy virgin St. Thecla. The account of her meeting with St. Paul and how she miraculously escaped martyrdom several times comes right after these Pauline beatitudes in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, a product of the era of the Apostolic Fathers of Christian literature or just after (a late first- or second-century text).

While, of course, one may question the details of the story, there seems to be strong evidence that there was indeed a St. Thecla of Iconium, and St. Paul did in fact travel there and preach there. But I’m not so concerned about historical curiosities as I am about the text itself: Whatever else they may be, writings like this were meant to be didactic, and so we need not be historians to learn something valuable from the text. Continue reading →

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“Watch and Pray”

Filed under: Prayer, Watchfulness
April 5, 2015

Behold the Bridegroom cometh in the middle of the night, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching, but unworthy is he whom He shall find in slothfulness. Beware, therefore, O my soul, and be not overcome by sleep; lest thou be given over to death, and shut out from the kingdom. But return to soberness and cry aloud: Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou, O God; through the Theotokos, have mercy on us.

~ “Behold the Bridegroom Cometh,” Bridegroom Matins

Tonight we had our first Bridegroom Matins of Holy Week. One of at least two recurring hymns at these services, which we observe Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night, this hymn highlights the central importance of the discipline of watchfulness: “blessed is the servant whom [Christ] shall find watching.” Continue reading →

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Thy Will Be Done

Filed under: Patience, Peace, Prayer, Watchfulness
March 31, 2015

[Abba Isaac said:] “To pray, ‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’ is to pray that men may be like angels, that as angels fulfil God’s will in heaven, men may fulfil his will instead of their own, on earth. No one can say this sincerely except one who believes that every circumstance, favourable or unfavourable, is designed by God’s providence for his good, and that he thinks and cares more for the good of his people and their salvation than we do for ourselves. It may be understood thus: the will of God is the salvation of all men, according to that text of St Paul: ‘who willeth all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ [1 Timothy 2:4].”

~ Conferences of St. John Cassian, 9.20

The acceptance of all things as God’s will is one of the most common and most difficult teachings of the fathers. In particular, the part where Abba Isaac makes clear this includes “every circumstance, favourable or unfavourable,” is especially hard to swallow. What might we make of this? What good does it do? How does it affect our spiritual practice? Continue reading →

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Be the Bee!

Filed under: Grace, Patience, Peace, Watchfulness
November 8, 2014

[T]he monk who desires to gather spiritual honey, ought like a most careful bee, to suck out virtue from those who specially possess it, and should diligently store it up in the vessel of his own breast: nor should he investigate what any one is lacking in, but only regard and gather whatever virtue he has. For if we want to gain all virtues from some one person, we shall with great difficulty or perhaps never at all find suitable examples for us to imitate. For though we do not as yet see that even Christ is made “all things in all,” as the Apostle says; still in this way we can find Him bit by bit in all.

~ St. John Cassian, Institutes, 5.4

My wife Kelly sent me the following video. I’m sure I’m late in seeing it, but I figured it was worth sharing here anyway. Anyone who can make a video about apatheia that kids could actually get into is doing something right in my book. Kudos.

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