The true man
The true Christian is first a true man
He who decides to become a true Christian, to become a truly spiritual man, a true child of God, absolutely must consider that, first of all, he must become a true man. Being a true man is not different from being a Christian. Every man who is outside this true man is not a just and whole person. This is the first thing. The second is that he must consider that becoming a true Christian will not be accomplished by what man does with himself, but by what God does with him. One can be a civilized, educated man; he may be accustomed to good manners, to good behavior, to courtesy, which, in any case, civilization offers to people. He may have become familiar with, learned, and acquired many other things, but none of these things make him a true man; they do not make him a spiritual man, a true Christian, a true child of God.
If one does not understand this – one who wants to become a Christian, who wants to become a spiritual man – and has any hope, however slight, in his knowledge, his culture, in everything that he learns in contemporary society: he is not going to become a spiritual man, a true Christian, or even a true person. Of course, these things are all well and good; one cannot say they are bad. And anything good he gleans from all these things benefits both himself and others. But woe if one considers these things to be the spiritual life and thinks that they make him a spiritual man, a man of God! He will then always remain outside the reality of the spiritual life, the new life that God gives. And while all these are certainly good from one perspective, from another, one could say that they hinder God, they hinder man from becoming a spiritual man, a true man. They hinder him simply because he places his hope in them.
It will be difficult for them
to become Christians, real people, those who…
When one takes on the polish of a cultural life, the coating of a secular life – secular life in the good sense – he has great difficulty to then overcome its attributes and decide to become a spiritual person. As the Lord Himself said: “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” Not because money itself is something bad, but because he who has it trusts in it, surrenders to it, and moreover, his mental and spiritual conditions are defined by having it. All these things hinder him from becoming suitable for the kingdom of heaven, from taking that attitude which he has to take in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. And that is why the Lord says: “How hardly shall they that have riches enter the kingdom of God!” We can say the same thing here too: “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God, how hard it is to become men of God, true Christians, true men, spiritual people, for those who have all these things!” – such as a particular culture, a particular social coating and these sorts of things. Even education, if I may say so, is one such thing, as are all those other attributes that we consider good and that in themselves are not bad: they are fine. But when they are attached to a man, when he trusts in them and hopes in them and takes comfort in them, he cannot truly hope in the grace of God. He cannot truly wait for God’s intervention which will make him a new man, a true man, a spiritual man.
This is the reason, besides all the others, that he who wants to become a spiritual man must not only struggle to be humble, but also continuously humble and abase himself.
If only we could take a little bit
of the spirit, the thought,
the mindset of the ascetic!
I will tell you about an ascetic on Mount Athos, a monk who, as things show, really became a true man – a really enlightened and grace-filled man – without much knowledge or formal education. He is a foreigner, a Romanian. He is still alive. He is poor, and he goes from one monastery to another to ask for something on which to live. And when he goes to a monastery, he says: “I have come. If you cast me away, well,
I am a dog – it is good for me; you will do me good. If you give me that for which I ask, that is also good.” That is, he does not have difficulty at all considering himself such a thing: “Well, even if you cast me away as being a dog, I am a dog.” He has no difficulty taking this approach, having this attitude, considering himself this way – as we also find in the Neptic Fathers. Why? Because he knows well – maybe because he has not got all these good things to hinder him – he has learned perfectly well that man the way he is after the Fall is something worse than what he claims to be. He knows this perfectly well and does not have difficulty saying it; neither does he feel resentment if the others speak to him like this; neither is he surprised, nor does anything within him react and fight when he happens to hear something like this. He knows this truth perfectly well, he lives this truth, he lives this reality, and so he stops hoping for something of his own, whatever it is; he is no longer expecting something from himself. And this is how he presents himself before God. God no longer encounters any difficulty in this man and lavishly gives His grace. And this grace makes him a true man.
However, a man who lives in contemporary society where so much is said about civilization, about politeness, about so many other things – which as we said are good in themselves – this man has great difficulty seeing himself as this ascetic sees himself. He has great difficulty not being disturbed when others see him this way; actually, he should gladly and with a very good disposition accept being seen like this by others. However, he has great difficulty. So, the doors of his soul always remain closed, and God’s grace cannot pass through him, transform, and sanctify him.
One may therefore understand how much better all the moments of our lives would be – here in the world where we live and interact with one another, where one speaks to us one way, another behaves inappropriately toward us, where we encounter this and that – yes, how much better, how much easier, how much more spiritually we would live if we could take a little, just a little from this spirit, from this mentality, from
this thought of the ascetic about which I have spoken. That is, if we could accept a little – if not to the extent this ascetic lives this reality, at least to some degree – that we are something like this both before God and men, and before ourselves. And when we are told this in one way or another, or when it is proven by things that we are like this, may we rejoice in it and joyfully and gladly accept it. Then we will be freed from many offenses, suspicions, and ideas, and much anger and distress. All these things which are foreign to the true man – that is, all these things that torture contemporary man, the civilized man, the full-of-politeness modern man and make him unhappy as if he were in a living hell – all these things will be gone. All of this will depart as alien things when one thinks like this and takes this position. He will then be freed of them, and that which is inside him will be the grace of God, which will make him a true man, a spiritual man.
Experience will show us
that the true man does exist
However strange these things may seem, as difficult as they may be, since we eventually want to become men and women of God, whatever it will cost us, let’s decide to take this perspective, that of the ascetic above. And as you and I understand, as we are saying these things now, from this very moment on – not later, from this moment on – we will feel somehow differently among people. We will feel differently among our people, among strangers, and we will somehow bear the burden of life more easily, we who are not there in the desert of Mount Athos but are here, in the desert of the world. Somehow, we will feel at rest. And I believe that, little by little, our spiritual lives will begin to become fragrant; little by little, something new will be created inside us. And we will begin to understand little by little that all these things we listen to and say and read are true. From experience, we will be able to assure ourselves and others as well that, yes, the true man does exist, there is true life, there is the spiritual life which God gives when man takes the right attitude before Him.
This homily, belongs to a series of homilies that were delivered on Monday evenings at the church of Agios Athanasios,
Thessaloniki. The specific homilies were given in 1970-71, but the exact dates are not known.