Next: Christian Liberty and Monastic Up: Monasticism Interiorized Previous: The Vow of Chastity Contents
“Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou worship.” The liturgical definition of man, the being of the Trisagion and the Sanctus, suppresses all passive states. True obedience to God implies the supreme freedom that is always creative. Christ shows this in his manner of accomplishing every law; he fulfills and raises the law to his own mysterious truth of being grace. Likewise the negative and restrictive form of the decalogue--“Thou shalt not”--is fulfilled in giving place to the beatitudes, to the positive and limitless creation of holiness.
Obedience in the Gospel is receptive of truth, and the latter sets one free. This is why God does not issue orders, but he utters appeals and invitations: “Listen, Israel.” “If anyone wills...” “If you wish to be perfect...” It is an invitation to find freedom again: “If anyone wishes to come to me and does not hate his...”--the possessive adjective here indicates a captive state, and “hate” means to free oneself from it in order to find the true unpossessive charity.
The teaching that comes from the school of “spiritual fathers” is enlightening. They warn of the great danger that one runs in seeking an aid. The greater the authority of a father, the greater should be his self-effacement. A disciple can indeed formulate the true and only aim of his request: “Father, tell me what the Holy Spirit suggests to you in order to heal my soul.”14.46 Abbot Poimen on his side specifies the art of a staretz: “Never command, but be for all an example, never a lawgiver.”14.47 A young man once went to an old ascetic to be instructed in the way of perfection, but the old man did not say a word. The other asked him the reason for his silence. “Am I then a superior to command you?” he answered. “I shall say nothing. Do, if you want, what you see me do.” From then on the young man imitated the old ascetic in everything and learned the meaning of silence and of free obedience.14.48
A spiritual father is never “a director of conscience”; he is before all else a charismatic. He does not engender his spiritual son, he engenders a son of God. Both, in common, place themselves in the school of truth. The disciple receives the gift of spiritual attention, the father receives that of being the organ of the Holy Spirit. St. Basil advises to find “a friend of God”, who gives the certitude that God speaks through him. “Call no one father” means that all fatherhood shares in the fatherhood of God, that all obedience is obedience to the Father's will in sharing in the acts of the obedient Christ.
John of Lycopolis counsels: “Judge your thoughts piously according to God; if you cannot, ask one who is capable of judging them.”14.49 The aim is to destroy the wall that desires have raised between the soul and God. To those who have practiced the art of humility, Theognostus says: “The one who has exercised submission and spiritual obedience and has made his body subject to his spirit, has no need of any submission to a man. He is subject to the Word of God and to his law, as a truly obedient man.”14.50 And again: “He who wishes to dwell in the desert ought not to need being instructed; he ought to be himself a teacher, otherwise he will suffer...”14.51 However, this is for the strong. The advice explains the essential--no obedience to human elements, no idolatry of a spiritual father, even if he is a saint. Every counsel of a staretz leads a man to a state of freedom before the face of God.
Obedience crucifies man's own will in order to arouse the final freedom--the spirit listening to the Holy Spirit.