Albemarle Tradewinds March 2016 Final Web

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY
THE FIRST L OVE REMEMBERED
I lately received a letter from a newly incarcerated Orthodox Christian man who, in writing of his
spiritual state, says “I don’t know whether these are the best or the worst days of my life.” These words
of a spiritually re-awakening man, bowed under tremendous noetic stress, open a vista onto a profound
mystery of the spiritual life.
Archimandrite Zacharias, in his extraordinary book, “Remember Thy First Love (Revelation 2: 4-5)”
speaks of this matter with the authority of inner experience and the authenticity of the ancient
tradition, passed through the ages from heart to heart, from elder to disciple. The Archimandrite is
himself a disciple of the Russian monk, Elder Sophrony of Mount Athos and Essex (1896-1993), who
was a disciple of Saint Silouan the Athonite(1866-1938).
All chapters copyright
© 2015
by author Nick Martone,
c/o
St. George’s Church
P.O. Box 38, Edenton,
NC.
In his first words of this powerful book the Archimandrite states, “Our entire struggle in this life is
aimed at discovering our ‘deep heart’ because this is the place where God manifests Himself.” And he
continues: “Indeed, true love proceeds from humility…As long as we are proud we will be separated
from our heart…and will end up as dry leaves blown about aimlessly by the wind.”
The first stage of the spiritual life, in the Elder’s teaching, is direct, unmerited experience of God:
“This direct, experiential knowledge of the true God is synonymous with the mystical theology of our
Church. It is mystical knowledge, not because it is somehow ‘mysterious,’ but because it is not external
to man: it is lived by the ‘inner man of the heart’ as a gift of the Holy Spirit.”
“The whole point of the first stage in the spiritual life is this: to implant in our being an indelible sense
of purpose; the unshakable knowledge that we have been created to dwell forever with the Lord.”
Yet at some point, this unmerited gift is withdrawn from the lover of God. As with the Prodigal,
because our nature is yet imperfect, because we are still gripped by proclivities that set our will into
opposition to God’s, we squander the unmerited gift, the Pearl of Great Price: “And not many days after
the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his
substance….And there arose a mighty famine in that country and he began to be in want.”
“A far country;” what does this mean? The Archimandrite says that, “this far country of famine is the
world we see around us, the world which has rejected God and his grace and whose inhabitants live
desolate….This famine of the heart is a terrible thing.”
And here begins the second stage of the spiritual life—the time of a man’s “coming to himself.” This is
the time of the purification of the inner man. It is the time of “charismatic despair,” of a frank meeting
with one’s utter spiritual poverty, and an entering into the suffering of Christ.
This suffering is, indeed, a grace given to us by God. For, as the Elder teaches, if we are to enter into the
life of Christ, the portal is His suffering. “Christ Himself was forsaken for our salvation, and we come
to know the length and depth of His way through our own experience of forsakenness. This is the very
essence of the second stage.”
Inquiries to:
St. George’s Orthodox Church,
Edenton, NC.
Telephone 482-2006
The Archimandrite writes of “the consolation of the Cross, of suffering love. To accept the narrow way
of affliction is something man can only do when the Holy One, Who is forever being crucified and
suffering in this world, touches his life….As small leaves on the great tree of humanity, our destiny is
inseparable from that of the whole world. So when man, having received grace, experiences the whole
weight of this tragic destiny, prayer for the whole world comes naturally, and he is led into the
universality of Christ, Who desires the salvation of all.”
8 Albemarle Tradewinds March 2016 albemarletradewinds.com