'A School for the Lord's Service': St Benedict's Rule & Classical Education

This was an article I wrote for our school newsletter, Remarkable Providences. I have corrected a passage which got seriously distorted in the print edition thanks to my own hasty perusal of the proofs, and also added notes and links.

In his profound critique of modern ethics, After Virtue, University of Notre Dame philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously wrote, ‘We are waiting, not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict.’ [1] The reason for these words is that St Benedict, traditionally known as the ‘Father of Western monasticism’, was responsible for the formation of small communities committed to the cultivation and teaching of virtue even as the world around them lost all cohesion. They are communities to which we would do well to look for inspiration today.

Indeed, civilisation as a whole owes a very great debt to these monks. Benedictine monasticism, that is, monasteries which were organised and lived according to St Benedict’s Rule, were the ark in which all of the classical culture of the Latin world was preserved from the flood of barbarism and seedbed in which germinated much of the great monuments of mediæval culture. In the words of Dom Jean Leclercq, ‘education’ in the sense of instruction in grammar, of reading and writing, ‘is not separated from spiritual effort’ in the Benedictine vision. [2] The mediæval Western theologian par excellence, Thomas Aquinas, was raised and educated in St Benedict's own monastery of Monte Cassino, [3] and in his Divine Comedy, the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, Dante Alighieri, has an important exchange with St Benedict in the heavenly sphere of the contemplatives. [4] But to produce Aquinas and Dante, Latin-speaking Christendom had to begin from the ruins of Roman civilisation. John Henry Newman emphasises the gradual nature of the great Abbot’s achievement:

St Benedict found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it, not professing to do it by any set time, or by any rare specific, or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration rather than a visitation, correction or conversion. The new work which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and city. [5]

St Benedict’s Rule was a powerful agent in the civilisation of Europe, a project which, for the Rule’s author as well as its followers through the centuries, was explicitly educational. In his Prologue to the Rule, St Benedict quotes extensively from the Scriptures on the importance of holy living and concludes, ‘Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord's service [dominici schola servitii].’ [6] This reference to the monastery as a ‘school’ should not of course surprise us, however, since already in the opening words of the Rule, St Benedict has addressed his readers, ‘Listen, my son, to the lessons [praecepta] of the teacher [magistri].’ [7] Indeed, the Rule assumes throughout that the monks are discipuli, or ‘students’, and that the abbot is their magister, or ‘teacher’. In the words of the late Dom Adalbert de Vogüé, ‘the task of the monastic school is to educate us in the life of perfection according to the Gospel.’ [8]

But to this end, the monastic ‘school’ has need of a handbook, curriculum, and curriculum objectives, which are contained primarily in the Holy Scriptures, but also in the Rule itself and in the various writings of the Church Fathers which it recommends ‘for anyone hastening on to the perfection of the monastic life’. [9] In the Rule St Benedict lays out in painstaking detail how the ‘school’ is to be organised, even down to the exact daily schedule and arrangement of the services to be carried out and Psalms to be chanted in the church. The times for prayer, work, and individual study of Scripture, all summarised in the famous motto Ora et labora (‘Pray & work’), [9] are delineated. There are exact prescriptions of punishment for various offenses. The way in which meals are to be taken is described at length, with allowance for the different fasts of the Christian year.

This strict organisation of life as a ‘school for the Lord's service’ suggests obvious parallels to the efforts of those of us involved in classical Christian education today. In the opening lines of the Prologue, we find a beautiful distillation of what classical Christian education must assume at the outset. The late John Senior, one of the founders of the renowned [and sadly long defunct] Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, has taken each of the four imperative verbs of these opening sentences in the Latin text and shown clearly how relevant and challenging they are for both students and faculty.

The very first word, ausculta, means ‘listen’. Senior points out that this reminds us that education begins with quietly listening, for—

it is only to the just, gazing in rapt silence like a lover on his beloved at the art or thing, it is only to the patient, silent receptive listener, that the meaning of the poem, or the mystery of the number, star, chemical, plant—whatever subject the science sits at the feet of—is revealed... [10]

The next imperative is inclina—‘attend with' or ‘incline the ear of your heart’. Perhaps the most foreign concept to modern education, according to Senior:

This means students must love their teachers and teachers must be worthy of such love. Learning is a motion of the heart and not a mercenary contract in the ‘marketplace of ideas’ where the natural desires of youth to reach the stars are distracted from their aim by catalogues, orientation sessions and academic advising impelling them to marketable skills and government grants. [11]

The third imperative is excipe, that is, ‘accept’ or ‘welcome the admonition of a loving father freely’. In other words, the student must freely accept—

not just the precepts and the counsels but accept the correction and rebuke of the teacher who stands in loco parentis as the strong, gentle, pious father. Humility is a necessary condition of learning. The relationship of student to teacher is not one of equality, nor even of quantitative inequality as between those advanced and less advanced on the same plane; it is the relationship of disciple to master in which docility is an analogue of the love of man and God, from Whom all paternity in Heaven and on earth derives. [12]

Finally, the last of the four imperatives is efficaciter comple—‘faithfully put it into practice’. According to Senior, ‘The student must not only receive the knowledge, counsel and correction of the teacher, he must fulfill them . . .’ [13] To do this, the student must ultimately move beyond merely parroting or complying to truly understand what he is taught, ‘and by learning, become assimilated to the spiritual, intellectual and moral model of the teacher. . . . [Faculty and students] according to this rule should be better than the rest of the community, not only in intelligence but in manners, morals and taste as well.’ [14]

We at Providence Hall would do well to heed the teaching of St Benedict's Rule if we too wish to be ‘a school for the Lord's service’.

[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame, 1984), p. 263. I have written a post on MacIntyre's reference to St Benedict called ‘Waiting for St Benedict: MacIntyre, Monasticism, & the New Dark Ages’.

[2] Dom Jean Leclercq, OSB, The Love of Learning & the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, tr. Catharine Misrahi (NY: Fordham, 1961), p. 24.

[3] This was first called to my attention by James Taylor in Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1998), pp. 39-40: ‘It was, then, into a society, a culture, built on centuries of slow Benedictine influence so eloquently described by Newman [see above], that Aquinas was born in the thirteenth century. . . . Certainly to be considered is the fact that Thomas was placed with the Benedictines of Monte Cassino at an early age.’ But I later discovered that Taylor's teacher, John Senior, emphasises the point much more strongly: ‘St Benedict, Patron of Europe, founded Monte Cassino in 529. St Thomas as a little boy of five entered there to go to school around 1229—seven hundred years in the womb of Benedictine work and prayer and then you have St Thomas! The seedbed of theology is the Benedictine life, without which no one has the prerequisites’ (The Restoration of Christian Culture [Norfolk, VA: IHS, 2008], p. 87).

[4] Paradiso XXII. Dante’s choice of words in l. 98 to describe St Benedict rejoining the other contemplatives—Cosi mi disse, e indi si raccolse / al suo collegio, e ’l collegio si strinse (‘Thus he concluded and the voice was stilled. / Collegiate to collegium withdrew’)—seems to highlight in a fortuitous way the connection between St Benedict and education. The Italian I’ve taken from Dante, Paradise, tr. & ed. Anthony Esolen, illust. Gustave Dore (NY: Modern Library, 2007), p. 240; the translation is Dorothy L. Sayers & Barbara Reynolds, The Divine Comedy 3: Paradise (London: Penguin, 1962), p. 252.

[5] John Henry Newman, ‘The Mission of St Benedict’, {410}.

[6] Here I quote RB1980, but throughout the article I have in some cases given my own translation to emphasise the point I want to make, or I have offered alternatives from various translators. For the Latin text, I have used Abbot Justin McCann, OSB, tr. & ed., The Rule of Saint Benedict in English & Latin (Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, n.d.).

[7] My own translation.

[8] Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB, Reading St Benedict: Reflections on the Rule, tr. Colette Friedlander, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994), p. 34.

[9] I have written on this motto in the post, ‘Ora et Labora?’

[10] Senior, p. 93.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., p. 94.

[13] Ibid., p. 95.

[14] Ibid.

St Cyril, Leisure, & the Teaching Vocation

In thinking about what I can start posting here, I realised that one order of business might be to get a few more homilies up. I intend to try posting them in chronological order, in which case I shall begin with a little talk I gave on St Cyril the Apostle-to-the-Slavs at our faculty in-service training over the summer.

I'd like to talk today about our vocation as teachers, but focusing on an often neglected dimension of that vocation.

In the mid-9th c., a young man from Thessalonica named Constantine completed his university studies in the capitol of the East Roman (or Byzantine) Empire--Constantinople. He had been a student of the empire's best teachers, including St Photius the Great, who was directly responsible for the preservation of much of the ancient Greek literature now extant. [1] Constantine received a thorough classical education. Having mastered grammar:

He studied Homer and geometry with Leo [the Mathematician], and with Photius dialectic and all the branches of philosophy, and together with these rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, music; and all the other ancient Greek sciences. . . . Speed went hand in hand with diligence, for it is thus that knowledge and science are perfected. [2]

In a viva voce examination by Theoctistus, the imperial Logothete (i.e., 'Secretary of State'), Constantine was addressed:

'Philosopher, I should like to know what philosophy is.' To this, Constantine replied without hesitation: 'Knowledge of things human and divine, insofar as Man is able to approach God, for it teaches Man by his actions to become the image and likeness of his Creator.' [3]

Much could be said about this answer--in fact, there is a whole scholarly article about it that our future school librarian, Chris Rosser, was kind enough to obtain for me [4]--but here I shall make just a few comments (I've made others here).

First, Constantine's answer does not imply a so-called 'works-righteousness', since the 'actions' to which he refers consist first and foremost in turning to the Lord in repentance and calling on His grace. Second, the language of the response itself, is the epitome of the classical Christian tradition. Constantine is not making this up, but reciting something he has memorised. Third, the response shows the linking of knowledge and action, and, although the teacher is not mentioned, the connection of both with teaching and learning.

We shall come back to this last point later; for now, let's focus on Constantine himself. We know that the Logothete Theoctistus intended the young man for a brilliant political career--but this he flatly refused, insisting that he was interested in wisdom and knowledge alone. At this point, I should point out for all of you that Constantine went on to become famous for something very practical indeed: today he is known all over the world as St Cyril, the Apostle-to-the-Slavs. He produced the first translations of the Scriptures and Church services into the Slavonic language, bringing not only the Gospel to the Slavic peoples, Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians, etc.), but literacy itself by inventing the Glagolitic alphabet and the Old Church Slavonic literary language. For this, St Cyril has been called 'a linguistic genius' who ranks 'among the greatest philologists Europe has ever produced', [5] though his well-trained students eventually replaced the esoteric and hermetic characters of Glagolitic with an adaptation of the Greek alphabet named after their teacher.

But my point is this: St Cyril didn't set out from college to become a missionary and 'CHANGE THE WORLD!', as George Grant would say in one of his ACCS talks. Right out of college, the first thing St Cyril did was to go to a monastery for six months. He did briefly accept a position teaching philosophy, and served as a kind of missionary attaché to a diplomatic mission to the Arabs (whom he dazzled with his learning), but then he went to a second monastery where he and his brother, St Methodius, spent several years.

The real point of this talk about St Cyril is precisely these monastic interludes. Why did he do this? More importantly, what can we learn from him as educators?

In his magisterial study, The Christian Philosophy of S Thomas Aquinas, the great French historian of mediaeval philosophy, Étienne Gilson, writes:

Man can choose only between two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative. What confers special dignity on the functions of the Doctor [teacher] is that they imply both of these two kinds of life, properly subordinated the one to the other. The true function of the Doctor is to teach. Teaching (doctrina) consists in communicating to others a truth meditated beforehand. It demands of necessity both the reflection of the contemplative in order to discover the truth, and the activity of the professor in order to communicate his findings to others. But the most remarkable thing about this complex activity is that there is an exact correspondence between the higher and the lower, between contemplation and actions. . . .

In the first place, it is clear that the activity of the Doctor is not superimposed artificially upon his contemplative life. Rather, it finds its source in his contemplation and is, so to speak, its outward manifestation. [6]

I read these words while sitting on my front porch on a peaceful summer's day shortly after school ended (and before the real heat wave began!), and I've been thinking about them all summer. When Mr Carr asked me to speak at In-service on a topic of my choosing, I thought about these words, then I thought about St Cyril. St Cyril went to monasteries to engage in contemplation--which he drew upon in his active teaching among students in the capitol, among Arabs, Khazars, his close disciples and missionary companions, the Slavs, and others.

This distinction between 'action' and 'contemplation' goes back to ancient Greek philosophy. It was taken up by the Church Fathers, who saw it embodied in the story of Ss Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42. But the Fathers by and large seem to have used these words in a different sense to the Thomistic tradition as represented by Gilson. For the Fathers, and therefore for St Cyril who deeply imbibed them, 'action' is not merely the 'hustle and bustle' of life, but a struggle for virtue and purification from the passions. It is therefore a preparation for contemplation. According to Bl Theophylact of Ochrid, St Martha of Bethany represents 'active virtue', but so do Christ's feet at which St Mary sits, so by sitting St Mary has already attained active virtue. Furthermore, 'contemplation' is not merely 'thinking' (and I realise it is not merely this for Aquinas either), but praying and ultimately encountering God Himself, especially in 'vision'. In St Luke's Gospel, St Mary 'contemplates' Christ--she gazes at Him, listening to His words. [7]

In the Patristic sense, St Cyril is engaging in both action and contemplation at the monastery--and as Christian teachers, it is important for us as well to do both. We must struggle to acquire the virtues ourselves on the one hand, and we must pray and encounter God on the other, hoping eventually to see Him 'face to face'. Deep participation in the divine life is the goal we aim for as well as the font from which we draw in incarnating Christ in the lives of our students, in teaching the Bible, in leading prayer, in loving others, etc.

But Gilson points the way to a more prosaic interpretation of these terms, as well as of St Cyril himself, and therefore of the teaching profession. It is not fortuitous that I did this reading and thinking during the summer. The summer is a time of 'leisure' for teachers, and leisure, even a little bit, is necessary for contemplation. Another Thomist philosopher, Josef Pieper, connects the two when he points out that the 'Christian concept of the "contemplative life" was built on the Aristotelian concept of leisure'. [8] The purpose of leisure, in fact, is contemplation: ultimately, 'gazing' at God, prayer and worship (doxology, celebration of feasts), but also the more prosaic 'thinking' on truth, study, etc. We often think that the purpose of leisure is to 'unwind', 'veg out', or 'relax' after work in order to be refreshed to go back. But Pieper argues that this idea is the product of the modern materialistic culture and our slavery to work:

Now leisure is not there for the sake of work, no matter how much new strength the one who resumes working may gain from it; leisure in our sense is not justified by providing bodily renewal or even mental refreshment to lend new vigor to further work--although it does indeed bring such things!

As contemplation, so leisure is of a higher rank than the vita activa. [9]

In other words, leisure and contemplation are goods per se, they are the highest activity of man. They are good for us as human beings, making us more fully human, and not beasts of burden. But of course, they are also good for our work, and especially for teaching. Indeed, leisure and contemplation--even in the less spiritual and more intellectual or philosophical sense of just reading and thinking--are crucial to our vocation as teachers. Reading, quiet time on porches, conversation with each other, and academic conferences (especially the CiRCE Institute conference, where there were no 'workshops' on bulletin boards, just steady reflection on the theme 'What is Man?'!) need no justification. They are not work, but we draw upon them in our work.

As an illustration, and apropos of my reference to the CiRCE conference, in a session on 'Mimetic Teaching and the Cultivation of Virtue' Andrew Kern described a Christian interpretation of 'mimetic teaching':

First: Truth is the aim.

Second: the soul must be like, i.e. be conformed to, compatible with, the Truth.

Third: to be perceived the Truth must be embodied.

Fourth: this embodiment is then imitated.

Fifth: in this way Truth is known per se (the embodiment becomes transparent). [10]

The teacher's knowledge of Truth must be gained through some kind of contemplation (requiring leisure). The teacher embodies the Truth, the student imitates, the student knows the Truth. It is a pattern that can be applied to all kinds of objects and methods of contemplation, from St Paul's 'Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ' (I Cor 11:1), to using Lucy Pevensie to illustrate childlike faith, to letting Kindergarteners do arithmetic with beans.

To return at last to St Cyril, the monastery in Asia Minor was the shady porch where he spent his summer reading deep, thought-provoking books; his Glagolitic alphabet and the translations of the Gospels and liturgy he produced were the lesson plans (or in-service talk notes) born out of that deep reflection; the barbarian lands of Eastern Europe were his classroom and the barbaric Slavs themselves his students (hard to see the analogy, I know!). And what students they turned out to be! While Christians in the West have by and large remained woefully ignorant of the 1200-year Christian Tradition among the Slavs, suffice to say it has produced countless giants of the life in Christ as well as of Christian culture, art, and literature. St Cyril and his brother, St Methodius, really did 'change the world', but not by setting out to do so. They spent less time 'strategising' and more time reflecting on what man is. Theirs was an activity born out of profound contemplation.

[1] L.D. Wilson & N.G. Reynolds, Scribes & Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek & Latin Literature, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), p. 57.

[2] Qtd. in Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Cyril & Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2001), p. 25.

[3] Tachiaos, p. 27.

[4] Ihor Ševčenko ‘The Definition of Philosophy in the Life of Saint Constantine [Cyril]’, For Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, 11 October, 1956, comp. Morris Halle, Horace G. Lunt, Hugh McLean, and Cornelis H. Van Schooneveld (The Hague, 1956), pp. 449-57.

[5] Sir Dimitri Obolensky, Byzantium & the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1994), p. 207.

[6] Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, tr. L.K. Shook, CSB (London: Victor Gollancz, 1957), pp. 3-4.

[7] Bl Theophylact of Ohrid, The Explanation by Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, Vol. III of Bl. Theophylact’s Explanation of the New Testament, tr. Fr Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), pp. 121-2.

[8] Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, tr. Gerald Malsbary (South Bend, IN: St Augustine's Press, 1998), p. 5.

[9] Pieper, p. 34.

[10] This is based on my notes from Kern's talk.

'a lost child travelling in the snow'

All the way back in 2009 I posted one of my favourite Christmas poems, Chesterton's 'Child of the Snows' (here). Well, last year I bought a copy of Michael Patrick Hearn's Annotated Christmas Carol, and as I was reading it with my students around Christmas time, I noticed the following passage in the description of the Cratchits' Christmas celebration:

All this time the chesnuts and the jug went round and round; and bye and bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim; who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed. [1]

For the first time, while reading this passage I thought of GKC's poem, and then I noticed Hearn's annotation:

Apparently Dickens had no specific carol in mind; no such song has been found in any old collection of Christmas carols. G.K. Chesterton realized this omission, and included in his Poems (1926) 'A Child of the Snows', which might stand for Tiny Tim's carol until another might be found. [2]

I chose the image above as a good, classic, Logismoic piece, but the image here is more of a real illustration of the poem.


[1] Charles Dickens, The Annotated Christmas Carol: A Christmas Carol in Prose, ed. Michael Patrick Hearn, illust. John Leech (NY: Norton, 2004), p. 108.

[2] Dickens, p. 108, n. 63.

Ad blogges!

A number of factors have combined recently to convince me that I should return to the practice of crafting the occasional post for this blog. Not the least of these was this stirring post at Reading the Maps, discovered via the very medium the author denigrates and in which so many of us guiltily indulge: Facebook. How can I continue to neglect Logismoi after reading the following?

Blogging may have been superseded by new and inferior innovations, but the medium need not die. Indeed, bloggers should treat the rise of alternative forms of online communication as a liberation, rather than a disaster. Freed from the curse of coolness, blogging can now develop as a literary and artistic genre, or set of genres. Blogging may have lost some of its old practitioners, but it should be able to attract writers, artists, and political thinkers dissatisfied with the short attention span of twitter and the ritualised onanism of facebook. Blogging may become an act of resistance against the dumbing down of culture and political discourse in the twenty-first century.

I am not so certain, however, that this first new post since last summer can aspire to the lofty heights called for here. Instead, I intend to ease back into the practice beginning with a simple and, for me at least, enjoyable genre: the newly acquired books overview. In my household, we exchanged gifts for the Nativity according to the Church's calendar four nights ago, and I had already previously come by a few other titles, either received as gifts or purchased with gift cards and/or money. Having forgotten the order in which I acquired them, I'll settle for the alphabetical order of the authors' last names.

1) Ibrahim S. Amin, The Monster Hunter's Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Saving Mankind from Vampires, Zombies, Hellhounds, & Other Mythical Beasts (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007). An unexpected gift from our good friend, Anne Risch, this one is a sheer delight. For a small taste, consider the author's response to the question, 'Why would anyone want to hunt monsters?'

...A hunter kills to test himself against what nature has to offer, to see if his humble human mind and body can overcome the power, quickness, and savage cunning of the beasts. Thus a true hunter will wish to pit himself against the most challenging prey--creatures that will push him to the limit. Any fool with a gun can shoot a deer, but only the greatest of sportsmen will be able to overcome a Hydra.

However, even among the most dedicated sportsmen in the field there is also a second, and perhaps far more noble concern--no less lofty a goal than the protection and preservation of the human race.

The entry on each creature even includes a citation of early, often classical, sources. My only complaint is that, despite the appropriately arcane, antique-looking cover design, the illustrations are brightly coloured, modern-looking things. They just don't do justice to the subject matter.

2) G.K. Chesterton, Collected Works, Vol. 1: Heretics, Orthodoxy, The Blatchford Controversies, ed. David Dooley (SF: Ignatius, 1986). I was excited finally to come across an inexpensive used copy of a volume of GKC's Collected Works, a set of handsomely designed, but rather pricey volumes from Ignatius Press. I hope to see more some day.

3) Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol: The Original 1843 Manuscript (Delray Beach, FL: Levenger, 2011). A gift from my always thoughtful mother-in-law, this is the first-ever full-cover facsimile of Dickens's original manuscript of A Christmas Carol. It features a facing-page transcription, a beautiful red cloth Smythe-sewn binding gold-stamped with a design from the 1st edition, a silk ribbon marker, and, it seems, 'Archival paper selected to match the color of Dickens’s manuscript paper'. It also has an introduction by the curator of Literary & Historical Manuscripts at the Dickens MS owner: The Morgan Library & Museum. See the photo above. Now I can, just barely, read my favourite lines in Dickens's own handwriting:

'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive Ocean of my business!' (p. 14)

4) David L. Edwards, OBE, Poets & God: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, WOrdsworth, Coleridge, Blake (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005). I was off to Half Price Books to kill some time, hoping to find a copy of Gerald Basil Edwards's Book of Ebenezer Le Page. But while I saw no sign of the latter, I did discover this book by another Edwards, apparently a former Dean of King's College, Cambridge. The blurb on the back says this:

These great English poets are at the centre of a cultural heritage which goes along with the world-wide appeal of the English language, yet they have often become the object of study rather than of pleasure.

Scholarly, entertaining and often provocative, David Edwards's new book reveals their relevance to the current quest for an authentic spirituality in a mostly church-less society. Poets & God will excite the reader to rediscover and enjoy their work.

5) Thomas C. Oden, Early Libyan Christianity: Uncovering a North African Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2011). Although Tom Oden's niece, Amy Oden, was my Church history professor in college, and I myself briefly met the old fellow at a lecture about the Green Collection of Biblical artifacts here in OKC a few months ago, I've managed never to read any of his work. My father gave me this one with the explanation that he never knows what I have, and it was new enough that he could be pretty certain I didn't have it. I fully intend to read it through. I already glanced at the conclusion and found it profoundly moving. Oden is explaining how and why he is passionate about the subject, and apologising in advance for the tentative nature of his conclusions:

Why, then, have I continued to pursue this difficult task to the very end, when I had other urgent projects sitting on the shelf awaiting my attention at a late date in my life? Because so few know about this obscure area; because its role in early Christianity was so significant; because it has been so neglected as a subject of historical inquiry by Western academic colleages. These motives have been the engines of desire.

Now that I am at last ready to offer its results for scholarly and public examination, I am all the more aware that many of its conclusions may seem at first hard to defend and easy targets for academics who are working out of very different premises about reliable knowledge. I hope that someday someone will do more justice to this subject than I. But my time to do anything in this world is limited and growing more so. Hence I offer it for the reader's consideration, hoping for clemency.

6) Rob Pope, How to Study Chaucer, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2001). I do of course enjoy reading Chaucer, but my primary motive in buying this one was that I am going to be teaching Chaucer to my 8th-grade students this Spring. As I do not know him nearly as well as most of the other books we have been reading, I need all the help I can get.

7) David Simay, Swordfishtrombones: 33 1/3 (NY: Continuum, 2008). Some of you may recall that I posted briefly about Tom Waits a few years ago (here), but if you're not aware, I am an enormous fan. My sister gave me this little book (apparently the 33 1/3 series of books about albums is all the same size), a 'study' of sorts of Waits's groundbreaking album, 1983's Swordfishtrombones. Again, the back blurb says it best:

At the end of the seventies, Tom Waits felt trapped in a stalled career: his musical persona an artistic straightjacket. At a dark, desperate time in his life he got the phone call that offered a way out and met the woman who would change his life. What followed was Swordfishtrombones, one of the most daring transformations in pop music history.

Tom Waits is an elusive subject, sly and evasive. Through extensive research and a close, playful reading of his work, David Smay unwraps the vinegar pleasures of Swordfishtrombones and creates a freewheeling portrait of an American genius. This is the album where Tom Waits beats the blues with a hammer, drags his piano into the rain and burrows deep underground. This is the story of a man who reinvented himself and changed the musical landscape forever, a love story built on exotic percussion and phantom landscapes. This is a story about crows and mules.

8) J.R.R. Tolkien, Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham (NY: Del Rey, 1986). I bought this with a HP Books gift card after I had the disconcerting realisation that I didn't own a single copy of 'Smith of Wootton Major' (I had 'Farmer Giles' in the Tolkien Reader). It's such a beautiful story, and the descriptions of Smith's journeys oddly reminded me a little bit of Lovecraft's dream stories (another Tolkien/Lovecraft connection).

9) Leo Tolstoy, The Bear Hunt & Other Stories (NY: Little Leather Library Co., n.d.). I received this curious little volume only just tonight from an old family friend. I'd never seen or heard anything of this series, but according to this description the 'Little Leather Libary' books were a series of small classics bound in what was once brownish green imitation leather (mine is decidedly brown) in the early 1920's, apparently inspired by the Arts & Crafts-related Roycroft Press. The Tolstoy volume (Box 2 Volume 91 of the series) contains the stories 'The Bear Hunt', 'What Men Live By', and 'A Fairy Tale'.

Romans 12:1-3 & Paideia

This is a text I have written up based on the notes for a speech I gave at the graduation of my 6th-grade students, who are moving on from the Grammar stage of the classical trivium to the Dialectic stage (in fact, I am moving up to 8th grade next year, and so will be making the same transition myself as a teacher!). The Biblical passage with which it begins was read by one of the students just prior to my taking the podium. I dedicate this post to Kaye Wilson, who was quite vocal and insistent that I produce a written copy of the speech for her to peruse at leisure.

Romans 12:1-3: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.’

When I was probably twelve or thirteen years old, my dad wrote the first part of verse 2 of this passage from Romans on a hand-written note to me: just ‘And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.’ Now, although I don’t recall him ever explaining it, I think I know why he did this. When I was that age, I was a bit of a rebel, a nonconformist—and I think dad thought that Romans 12:2a could show me how a rebellious spirit could be ‘baptised’ and made subject to Christ.

I must admit I still have a certain fondness for such a use of the verse, but having come to know me a little bit over the past year, you might well expect me to offer a more complicated exegesis. That’s just what I’m going to do. Like C.S. Lewis, but to a much lesser degree, I am a bit of a dinosaur. In talking about this passage, I will, of course, use some Greek and talk about the Church Fathers a whole lot. You have Mr Carr to blame for this speech taking such a turn. He suggested the idea of having a student read a bit of Scripture, and I immediately thought of this passage, and then this whole speech just kind of snowballed from there. The only comfort I have to offer is that this is the last time you’ll have to listen to me waxing on about Scripture in this way all summer.

So, to begin just taking the passage one thing at a time:

When St Paul calls our bodies ‘a living sacrifice’, among other things we might say that he is emphasising the importance of taming our unruly passions, a particular problem for youths.

The phrase ‘reasonable service’ in the King James is a perfectly passable rendering of something which is to me much more interesting in the Greek—logiken latreian—which we might also translate ‘rational or logical worship’. In other words, by disciplining our bodies, we our enabling our minds to participate in the glorification of God.

When St Paul speaks of not being conformed to ‘this world’, the word he uses is not the usual biblical word for ‘world’, kosmos, but aion (‘aeon’), which might also be translated ‘age’. Elsewhere, in Galatians 1:2, St Paul uses the same word when he speaks of ‘this present evil age’.

The ‘mind’ that is to be renewed is a word with a very interesting history: nous. In the Scriptural context, it can usually be pretty well translated as ‘mind’ in something like our modern sense, but in the Fathers the nous is much more. It is the ‘eye of the soul’, in other words the human faculty for perceiving God and ultimate truth.

When St Paul speaks of proving [dokimazein] ‘what is that…will of God’, the word he uses specifically means ‘to put to the test, examine, or prove by testing’. And when he exhorts us ‘not to think more highly, but soberly’, he is of course indicating the importance of exercising the mind in humility and temperance.

Now, I would like to suggest that Romans 12:1-3 be read tonight as an illuminating description of the effect of initiation into what we might call culture, or education, or that paideia which St Clement of Rome says ‘is in Christ’ (I Clement 21:8), calling it the ‘oracles of the paideia of God’ (I Clement 62:3).

By the taming of the passions, reason is incorporated into the glorifying of God (which as we have all heard many times is ‘man’s chief end’!).

Our aion (age) is completely opposed to this, ergo we turn away from ‘this present evil age’.

We are moulded by our mind being made new in a prosaic sense, but even more by the cleansing and renewal of our faculty for knowing God and Truth.

With such a mind, we examine and prove through testing what is the truth and how to act.

But even at the pinnacle of learning, we must preserve our humility (the sine qua non of learning) and the cardinal virtue of temperance or self-control.

Now, I hope you see the application of all of this to your Christian classical education.

In all three stages of the trivium, many ‘subjects’ are of course studied, but the first of these is Holy Scripture, which is why I maintained the practice in the 6th-grade class of daily reading directly from Scripture. So I will use this ‘subject’, the subject par excellence of Christian pedagogy, to illustrate what I’m talking about.

In his De doctrina Christiana 2.9.14, St Augustine beautifully describes the move from the Grammar to the Logic or Dialectic stage in the reading of Scripture: ‘The first rule in the laborious task [of studying Scripture] is…to know these books; not necessarily to understand them but to read them so as to commit them to memory or at least make them not totally unfamiliar.’ [1]

This is the Grammar stage—represented by the Veritas Press cards, worksheets, and tests, but most importantly, reading and memorising the text itself. St Athanasius the Great, under whose banner Joel sits now, says of the young St Anthony, ‘For he paid such close attention to what was read that nothing from Scripture did he fail to take in—rather he grasped everything, and in him the memory took the place of books.’ [2] So the recitations and memory work we do has clear patristic precedent.

Next, St Augustine says, ‘Then the matters which are clearly stated in them, whether ethical precepts or articles of belief, should be examined carefully and intelligently. The greater a person’s intellectual capacity, the more of these he finds.’ [3] Here we see the transition from Grammar to Dialectic—still familiarising, but also ‘examining’ (dokimasein) ‘intelligently’ (with reason—logiken latreian—and nous). I’ve tried to do this more and more over the last year: hence the sometimes mystifying essay questions I’ve given!

To complete the progression, St Augustine goes on to write:

Then, after gaining a familiarity with the language of the divine scriptures, one should proceed to explore and analyse the obscure passages, by taking examples from the more obvious parts to illuminate obscure expressions and by using the evidence of indisputable passages to remove the uncertain of ambiguous ones. [4]

Here we have much more pure Dialectic. I have tried to do this above all with our recent study of Revelation, where I was greatly assisted by the many notoriously obscure passages in that book! We did not of course entirely do away with the Grammar approach, but we had little choice but to begin moving into a more dialectical mode of reading.

But pay attention to the next line: ‘Here memory is extremely valuable; and it cannot be supplied by these instructions if it is lacking.’ [5] Did you see when we were reading Revelation how much easier it was to follow when you recalled the Old Testament references, the connections to other parts of the New Testament, or just earlier parts from Revelation itself? Grammar, which relies on memory, is the foundation, while Dialectic builds the structure of true knowledge on top of it.

Joel, you have a powerful imagination, when you’re not forgetting your work.

Ethan, you ask some penetrating questions, when you’re not distracted by Read.

Read, I thought for a long time about what I was going to say about you! You have a quick mind, which is a great help for picking up on exactly what you need to know and accessing it immediately, but this is only truly an asset when you’re not abusing it with corny jokes.

All of these things can serve well at the Dialectic stage, but for them to do so you must:

First, tame your passions.

Second, glorify God with your reason, not from emotion or habit only.

Third, resist the lures of ‘this present evil age’ (Gal 1:2), something we’ve learned a lot about in history, literature, and most recently, in Revelation.

Fourth, ask God’s grace to renew your mind and clease the ‘eye of your soul’ to perceive Truth.

Fifth, pose questions, think things through, and examine the facts before you to know what is true and how to act.

But above all, sixth, no matter how much you think you may know, no matter how keen your intellects become, acquire a spirit of humility and self-control.

St Gregory the Theologian, speaking at the funeral of his 'bff' (my apologies for the slang!), St Basil, said:

Who had such power in Rhetoric, which breathes with the might of fire . . . ? Who in Grammar, which perfects our tongues in Greek and compiles history, and presides over metres and legislates for poems? Who in Philosophy, that really lofty and high reaching science, whether practical and speculative, or in that part of it whose oppositions and struggles are concerned with logical demonstrations, which is called Dialectic . . . ? [6]

But he adds that his friend had become ‘excessively puffed up by his abilities’. [7] Interestingly, it took a woman—his sister, St Macrina—to cure St Basil of that, but cure him she did, so that he himself wrote: ‘I wept many tears over my miserable life, and I prayed that guidance might be vouchsafed me to the doctrines of true religion.’ [8]

I pray that the Lord grant all three of you such guidance as you embark on this new stage in your education.


[1] St Augustine, On Christian Teaching, tr. R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford, 1999), p. 37.

[2] St Athanasius, The Life of Antony & the Letter to Marcellinus, tr. Robert C. Gregg (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1980), p. 32.

[3] St Augustine, p. 37.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Oration 43.23 (here).

[7] The Lives of the Three Great Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, & John Chrysostom, compiled & tr. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles, 1998), p. 8.

[8] Ibid., p. 9.

‘Even So Send I You’—A Homily for the 1st Sunday after Pascha

This was my last homily of the school year, preached on the Monday after the first Sunday after Pascha, using the BCP readings for that Sunday. Orthodox readers will note a larger number of quotations from non-Patristic sources, including Jim Elliot, Corrie ten Boom, and John Keble. I don’t apologise for this, since these are sources that I thought my audience might be able easily to relate to and which expressed ideas that I do not find at all opposed to the Patristic tradition. I do ask that sensitive readers please excuse my paraphrase of the first quote from St Isaac the Syrian. I was afraid a great deal of my audience might find it difficult to follow Dana Miller’s rendering of the passage, and so attempted to simplify without—I hope—distorting the meaning.

I John 5:4-12
St John 20:19-23

‘As My Father sent me, even so send I you.’

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Christ is risen!

When preaching on a text from Scripture, I’m nearly always tempted to explain the passage as whole—looking for a structure, drawing out a dense complex of ideas. But today I want to focus closely, and draw out my homily from one fairly simple idea.

In today’s Gospel, Christ shows His disciples the wounds in His hands and side—glorious scars of His suffering and death. It is then that He speaks the words I have quoted: ‘As My Father sent me, even so send I you.’ What I want to point out today is that these two things—the action and the words—are not unrelated.

Commenting on this passage, St Gregory the Great writes:

As the Son is loved by the Father and yet is sent forth to suffer, so also the disciples are loved by the Lord, Who nevertheless sends them into the world to suffer; that is, ‘I am loving you with the love with which the Father loved Me, Whom He sent into the world to undergo sufferings.’ [1]

Today’s message is that just as Christ was sent to suffer, so He sends His disciples to suffer too.

The showing of His wounds confirms the Resurrection, it builds that faith by which the world is overcome, according to the first verse of today’s Epistle reading. But this overcoming of world, though it is by faith, is nevertheless a struggle which requires suffering. In other words, God’s grace enables us to overcome world, but only through much suffering: physical, emotional, and spiritual. And what I am struck most by is the implication that this is the normal life for Christ’s disciples. Thus a line has long stuck with me from the journal of the famous Protestant missionary, Jim Elliot:

‘We are the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.’ And what are sheep doing going into a gate? What is their purpose inside those courts? To bleat melodies and enjoy the company of the flock? No. Those sheep were destined for the altar. [2]

In other words, they are destined to be slaughtered as a sacrifice.

Similarly, the great spiritual teacher of 20th-c. Serbia, Elder Thaddeus, says ‘there is no life other than that of serving others and patiently bearing sorrow and pain’. [3]

I’m afraid that more than at any other time or place, we Americans in the 21st c. fall into the trap of thinking that a life of ease and comfort, material prosperity and the respect of society, doing fun and pleasing ourselves, is somehow compatible with Christianity.

Make no mistake: Christian life is a cross!
Christian life is sacrifice!
Christian life is difficult!

St Paul writes, ‘That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto’ (I Thess. 3:3).

The great contemplative of the eastern desert, St Isaac of Nineveh, writes:

The person that wants to fulfill the Lord’s word is like someone prepared to be crucified who can think of nothing but dying, and no longer cares at all about the life of this present age. That’s what it means to ‘take up one’s cross and follow Him’ (Matt 16:24). The cross is a choice to be ready to suffer all the time. . . . Therefore by yourself prepare your soul to forget completely about this life. . . . When you struggle for Christ with this preparation, then everything that seems painful and bad will seem like no big deal at all. When your mind is prepared like this, it has no struggle or affliction when it faces death. If you don’t forget about life in this world because you want the blessed life to come, you’ll never be able to get through all the tribulations and pains that are gonna happen to you. [4]

The memory of the Church records that Christ’s words were certainly fulfilled by His immediate hearers—of the twelve Apostles, St Peter was crucified upside-down; St James, son of Zebedee, was beheaded; St John, son of Zebedee, died in exile; St Andrew was crucified on an x-shaped cross; St Philip was crucified; St Bartholomew was flayed (skinned) alive and beheaded; St Matthew was killed by an axe; St Thomas was killed by a spear; St James, son of Alphaeus, was crucified, stoned, and beaten to death by a club; St Jude was crucified; St Simon the Zealot was crucified; and St Matthias was stoned and beheaded.

Now, in context Christ’s words, ‘even so send I you’, obviously apply first of all to ‘clergy’. Our Lord is speaking to the Apostles—to whom He gives the power to ‘bind and loose’ (cf. St John 20:23). According to the English Puritan, Matthew Henry: this power ‘puts immense honour upon the ministry, and should put immense courage into ministers’. [5] Unfortunately, even the clergy often forget that it is their calling precisely to suffer.

But our Lord’s words also apply to all believers. All Christians are ‘sent out’ into the world. It is true that the laity don’t have the special task of ‘binding and loosing’—but we too can spread Christ’s forgiveness, if not sacramentally. The 6th-grade class just finished reading The Hiding Place, about a woman named Corrie Ten Boom who was imprisoned by the Nazis for helping Jews. After her release from the Ravensbruck prison camp, Corrie meets one of her former guards—who does not recognise her—when speaking at a German church. We read:

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. [6]

As I mentioned early on, by faith through grace we ‘overcome the world’. But what do we mean by ‘the world’? Is this the same as that world into which we’re sent?

In a homily on today’s Epistle delivered over 150 years ago, the great Anglican preacher, John Keble, said: ‘The world is the visible and outward course of things, amidst which we live and move. It is something different to each one of us but each one finds it the same in this respect, that by things in sight it tempts and draws him away from things out of sight.’ [7]

Thus the ‘world’ is not just outside, but, sadly, within us in the form of the passions which St Paul says ‘they that are Christ’s have crucified’ (Gal 5:24). Indeed, as St Isaac has famously written:

World is a collective noun which is applied to the so-called passions. . . . When we wish to give a collect name to the passions, we call them world. And when we wish to designate them specifically according to their names, we call them passions. . . . These are the passions: love of wealth; gathering objects of any kind; bodily pleasure . . . ; love of esteem, from which springs envy; the wielding of power; pride in the trappings of authority; stateliness and pomposity; human glory, which is the cause of resentment; fear for the body. [8]

All of this can be overcome by faith in Christ, through which His grace transforms us. The mediaeval English monk, the Venerable Bede, says that:

The commandments of God are not burdensome. If we keep them with true devotion, even though the world is difficult, we’ll pass by its temptations without being troubled, and we’ll even look forward to death, because it’s the gateway to the heavenly country. Of course we can’t achieve all this by our own efforts, so St John adds that our victory is a result of our faith, not our works. [9]

Finally, as Keble observes:

To overcome this world is really to turn away from the things which seem desirable in it and to give them up for the sake of better things out of sight, and when our faith has this effect on us—when it actually causes us to forego earthly things in order to secure the things eternal to please God and show duty to Jesus Christ—then it is a faith which overcomes the world. [10]

May we all learn to acquire and practice this kind of faith so that we can repeat in our own lives the great sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.


[1] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 1: The Holy Gospels, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 552, n. 365.

[2] Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life & Testament of Jim Elliot (NY: Harper, 1958), p. 89.

[3] Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life & Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, compiled by the St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, tr. Ana Smiljanic (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2009), p. 15.

[4] Paraphrased from Homily 37, in The Ascetical Homilies of St Isaac the Syrian, tr. Dana Miller (Boston: HTM, 1984), p. 168.

[5] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible: New One Volume Edition, ed. Leslie F. Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1966), p. 1628.

[6] Corrie ten Boom, with John & Elizabeth Sherrill, The Hiding Place (Washington Depot, CT: Chosen, 1971), p. 215.

[7] John Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, ed. Maria Poggi Johnson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), p. 127.

[8] Ascetical Homilies, pp. 14-5.

[9] Gerald Bray, ed., James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, Vol. XI in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2000), p. 222.

[10] Keble, p. 127.

'He That Is of God Heareth God's Words'--A Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent

I really didn’t mean to let two full months go by without posting a thing. To make up for it, here, much belatedly, is one of two homilies that I plan to post this week. This is my homily for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, preached, as usual, at chapel on the Monday morning following. I had received an indirect request through my principal to make it easier for the other teachers to take something away to discuss with their students—hence the repetitions of certain carefully enumerated points. The age and generally Protestant orientation of most of the audience accounts for the tone and some details of my retelling of the Life of St Mary of Egypt. I apologise that it is hardly a model of hagiographical narration.

Hebrews 9:11-15
St John 8:46-59

‘He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.’

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

In the second verse of today’s Gospel, these words that I have just quoted are spoken by Christ to the Jews. By ‘God’s words’, we can be sure that Our Lord means the Scriptures, of course, but the Scriptures are not only words already written but the words He is speaking at that moment.

From this ‘living Scripture’ we learn, first, that it is important that we ‘hear’ His words, not only read them silently. In the ancient world reading was always done out loud, and as often as we can we too must read the Scriptures aloud, listen to others read them, recite them, etc.

Second, we learn that merely hearing His words physically with our ears is not enough, since the Lord says to his physical audience ‘ye therefore hear them not’. It is also necessary to pay careful attention to what He says. Commenting on this text, the English Puritan, Matthew Henry, writes:

He that is of God . . . is willing and ready to hear His words, is sincerely desirous to know what the mind of God is, and cheerfully embraces whatever he knows to be so. He apprehends and discerns them, he so hears them as to perceive the voice of God in them, as they of the family know the master’s tread, and the master’s knock, as the sheep know the voice of their shepherd from that of a stranger.’

Third, and finally, we learn from these words of Christ that even paying attention is not enough—in v. 51, the Lord says that those who would never see death must ‘keep my saying’. In other words, truly hearing entails also doing.

In his commentary on this Gospel passage, St Gregory the Great emphasises all three of these points:

Let each one of you then consider within himself if this voice of God prevails in the ears of his heart. Then he will recognize whether he is now of God. There are some who do not choose to hear God’s commands even with their bodily ears. There are others who do this but do not embrace them with their heart’s desire. There are still others who receive God’s words readily, yes, and are touched, even to tears. But afterwards they go back to their sins again and therefore cannot be said to hear the word of God, because they neglect to practice it. [2]

Hearing the Word means listening, paying attention, but most importantly, doing the Word.

In the Anonymous Collection of Desert Fathers sayings, we read that:

A woman came to [St] Antony [the Great] and declared that she had endured great fasting and had learned the entire Bible by heart. [Amazing, huh?] She wanted to know from Antony what more she should do. Antony was less sanguine about her accomplishments than she was and put a series of questions to her. He asked her, ‘Is contempt the same as honor to you?’ She answered, ‘No.’ He then asked her, ‘Is loss gain, strangers as your parents, poverty as abundance?’ Again she answered ‘No.’ Antony said to her, ‘Thus you have neither fasted nor learned the Old and New Testament, but you have deceived yourself.’ [3]

By contrast, consider the story of the monk who—

came to St Basil [the Great] and said, ‘Speak a word, Father’; and Basil replied, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart’; and the monk went away at once. Twenty years later he came back, and said, ‘Father, I have struggled to keep your word; now speak another word to me’; and he said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’; and the monk returned in obedience to his cell to keep that also. [4]

Hearing God’s Word means listening, paying attention, but most importantly, doing God’s Word.

Indeed, I have already mentioned that in v. 51 Christ says, ‘If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.’ Does He mean we won’t die, but be taken to heaven like Enoch and Elijah? Clearly not. According to St Augustine: ‘It means nothing less than He saw another death from which He came to free us—the second death, eternal death, the death of hell, the death of the damned, which is shared with the devil and his angels! This is real death; the other kind of death is only a passage.’ [5] So Christ promises that if we keep His saying, we shall be delivered from this eternal death. But there is a more subtle, positive promise as well: If we hear (that is, do) the Word, its mysteries will be revealed to us.

Recall that the Jews respond to Christ’s promise: ‘Abraham is dead, and did he not keep God’s Word?’ What the Lord says in reply is rather strange. In v. 56, He tells them, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.’ Happily, the author of Hebrews, traditionally believed to be St Paul, helps us to understand this.

First, in a passage not found in today’s Epistle, but in chapter 11, v. 13, St Paul, having spoken of Abraham, writes: ‘These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them.’ In other words, yes, Abraham died the lesser death, and he died before Christ brought deliverence from eternal death, but he foresaw the deliverance, and he obtained this through faith—through hearing (that is, doing) the Word of God. St Irenaeus of Lyons says, ‘Righteously therefore, having left his earthly family, Abraham followed the Word of God walking as a pilgrim with the Word so that he might afterwards make his home with the Word.’ [6]

Now, the Fathers say many things about what Abraham saw—the mysteries revealed to him for his faith, like the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. But most Fathers specifically connect what Christ calls ‘my day’ with His crucifixion and death. St Irenaeus writes, ‘Abraham was a prophet and saw in the Spirit the day of the Lord’s coming and the dispensation of His suffering’; [7] St Chrysostom says Abraham ‘was gladdened at the cross’; [8] and St Gregory Palamas says the ‘mystery of the Cross was working in Abraham’. [9]

How was this so? The Fathers say it is especially true in the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac (found in Gen. 22:1-14). St Cyril says Abraham ‘saw the day of the Lord’s slaughter . . . when, as a type of Christ, he was enjoined to offer up for a sacrifice his only begotten and firstborn, Isaac . . . making clear the exact force of the Mystery in a type in what happened.’ [10] St Ephraim the Syrian writes, ‘“He saw and rejoiced,” for he recognized the redemption of all the nations through the symbol of the lamb. “He said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’” For He existed, but in hidden fashion, when Isaac was being redeemed and revealed His sign through a lamb.’ [11]

Christ is of course the true Agnus Dei, the true Lamb of God—that is the Word of God that Abraham saw, and it is this ‘Word of God’ which we ‘hear’ in today’s Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15. In verses 13-14, St Paul writes:

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

This is the Mystery revealed to Abraham. Christ is the perfect sacrifice, who delivers us from death and frees us from the dead works of the Law—sacrificing animals, etc.—so we can follow ‘the Word of God’. To paraphrase St John Cassian (Conference 21.4.3), we no longer offer sacrifices of animals or mere ‘tithes of our possessions’, but ‘disdaining property, we offer ourselves and our own souls to God’. [12] We hear and do God’s Word by imitating Christ’s sacrifice. We participate in the Mystery of the Cross by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. For as we listen to today’s Gospel, we ourselves must be hearing the Word of God, and if we do this, we like Abraham will learn its Mystery. The Jews to whom Our Lord spoke heard but did not hear—we have the opportunity to hear what they did not.

In St John 8:58, Christ says: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.’ Commenting on this passage, St Gregory the Great writes:

Our Redeemer graciously turns their gaze away from His body and draws it to contemplation of His divinity. . . . ‘Before’ indicates past time, ‘I am’ present time. Because divinity does not have past and future time but always is, He did not say, ‘I was before Abraham’ but ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ And so it was said to Moses [at the burning bush], ‘I am who I am’, and ‘You will say to the children of Israel, “He who is has sent me to you”’ (Ex 3:14). [13]

In other words, Christ existed both before and after Abraham. It was Christ Who appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre, and the sign of the Precious Cross was stamped on his life. But this should not surprise us. As one modern theologian puts it:

Theologically speaking, creation and its history begins with the Passion of Christ [His suffering on the Cross] and from this ‘once for all’ work looks backwards and forwards to see everything in this light, making everything new. Christian cosmology, elaborated as it must be from the persective of the Cross, sees the Cross as impregnated in the very structure of creation: stat crux dum volvitur orbis—the Cross stands, while the earth revolves. The power of God revealed in and through the Cross brought creation into being and sustains it in existence. [14]

He then quotes St Isaac of Syria:

We do not speak of a power in the Cross that is any different from that through which the worlds came into being, [a power] which is eternal and without beginning and which guides creation all the time without any break, in a divine way and beyond the understanding of all, in accordance with the will of His divinity. [15]

If all this theology is a bit too much for you though, I’ll tell a little story that might make it easier.

Starting about 600 years ago, the Church that I belong to began a tradition of reading the Life of a Saint named St Mary of Egypt every year on the 5th Sunday of Lent. In the West, not many know about St Mary, so I’ll tell her story briefly.

The Life as we have it was written down in the 7th c. by St Sophronius of Jerusalem. It tells of a St Zosimas who lived in the Holy Land and was a good monk who ‘never ceased to study the Divine Scriptures. Whether resting, standing, working or eating food (if the scraps he nibbled could be called food), he incessantly and constantly had a single aim: always to sing of God, and to practice the teaching of the Divine Scriptures.’ According to the custom of his monastery, St Zosimas set off to the desert across the River Jordan to spend Lent alone with Christ (so, following the Word of God).

After 20 days, St Zosimas saw a human being whose body was ‘blackened, burnt by the heat of the sun’ [16]—an image of self-denial, of suffering, of the Mystery of the Cross—and discovers that it is a woman who already knows his name through Spirit. She is too humble to speak of herself, but St Zosimas begs her to tell him her story and finally cajoles her into it.

She says her name is ‘Mary’ and that she is from Alexandria, Egypt. Before she came to the desert, she was a very sinful woman—she liked to party, she wore lots of makeup and fancy clothes, and committed adultery many times. One day she went to Jerusalem and heard it was Feast of Precious Cross (at that time the Jerusalem Church still had all of the actual Cross that Christ was crucified on). Mary tried to go into the church with the crowd, but a mysterious force held her back. She realised that God was preventing her to enter because of her sins, and she promised to go to the desert and live in repentance. At that moment, she was able to enter the church and kiss Christ’s Precious Cross, upon which she immediately left and crossed the Jordan. At the time that she meets St Zosimas, St Mary believes that it has been 47 years since she left the Holy City to follow the Word of God.

When St Mary quotes Scripture to St Zosimas, he asks if she has read the Bible. Interestingly, she says: ‘I never learned from books. I have never even heard anyone who sang and read from them. But the word of God which is alive and active, by itself teaches a man knowledge.’ So Christ revealed to her His mysteries—she has heard His living voice, of which Scripture is only a record, and has been freed by grace to ‘serve the living God’. St Zosimas says, ‘Blessed is God Who has shown me how He rewards those who fear Him. Truly, O Lord, Thou dost not forsake those who seek Thee!’

The end of the story is that St Mary tells St Zosimas (who is a priest) to bring her Holy Communion. When he goes back to the Jordan he sees her on the other side, but she crosses by walking across the water to receive the Mysteries and says, ‘Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, O Lord, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.’ When St Zosimas goes back at her request after a year, St Mary has fallen asleep in the Lord.

Because St Mary has heard (and done) the Word of God, He has made known the Mystery of His Cross to her.

Because St Zosimas has heard (and done) the Word of God, He has made known mystery of St Mary’s cross to him.

Obviously, not all are called to live in the desert of the Holy Land, but as we get ready to celebrate His death and resurrection in a couple of weeks let’s try to remember that—

Whenever we are asked to do something we don’t like, we have an opportunity to share in Christ’s Cross just a little bit.

Whenever someone insults us or hurts us, and we are tempted to get angry and get back at them, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever we feel like fidgeting during Matins, or ignoring our teacher, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever we have to wait for something we want, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever our tie is too tight, the day is too hot, our chair is too hard, our class is too long, or the book we have to read is too boring, we share in Christ’s Cross.

If we do this, if we take advantage of these opportunities and even seek new ones, we will truly hear God’s Word.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.


[1] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible: New One Volume Edition, ed. Leslie F. Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1966), p. 1555.

[2] Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1-10, NT Vol. IVa of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), p. 309.

[3] Douglas Burton-Christ, The Word in the Desert: Scripture & the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (NY: Oxford, 1993), p. 161.

[4] Benedicta Ward, Foreword, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984), p. xxii.

[5] Elowsky, p. 313.

[6] Ibid., p. 316.

[7] Ibid., p. 316.

[8] Ibid., p. 316.

[9] St Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin with the Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009), p. 79.

[10] Elowsky, p. 316.

[11] Ibid., p. 317.

[12] St John Cassian, The Conferences, tr. Boniface Ramsey (NY: Newman, 1997), p. 721.

[13] Elowsky, p. 317.

[14] Fr John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2006), p. 90.

[15] Qtd. in ibid., p. 90.

[16] All quotations from the Life of St Mary of Egypt are taken from here.