(Philokalia Vol. III, G.E.H Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware)
When I look for an urgent answer or solution, my double “A” personality often kicks in. There have been times when, in my impatience for an immediate answer, I stayed up until dawn, doing Google research, drawing diagrams, or making lists. Even if I become exhausted and unproductive, I am sure that if I just persist a little more, I can get results within my timeline.
How much of our inner peace do we sacrifice, in our efforts to force our agenda and sense of timing on the universe?
St. Peter advises that we apply “conscious awareness of our own hearts” to discern God’s perspective and free ourselves from the frantic pressure to bring about the results we want, when we want them.
Harmonizing our will with God’s brings about patience and endurance. Patience and endurance are not simply two of many virtues. They are, instead, the preconditions for possessing our soul. If fact, St. Peter believes that “you come into yourself when you endure with patience.”
Without patient endurance, we live in turmoil, burdened by the idea that unless we force results, nothing worthwhile will happen in our lives. We are riddled with anxiety, uncertainty, and lack of clarity as our passions obscure the true nature of things.
How many tears would I like to shed whenever I gain even a partial glimpse of myself! If I do not sin, I become elated with pride; while if I sin and am able to realize it, in my dismay I lose heart and begin to despair. If I take refuge in hope, again I become arrogant. If I weep, it feeds my presumption; if I do not weep, the passions visit me again… In my ignorance all things seem contradictory, and I cannot reconcile them.
Patience is living in God’s infinite time. It is abandoning the futile struggle of forcing our temporal time frame on a God-created universe. It is acquiring humility to put aside our own assumptions; and discernment to understand the connecting links among things that appear contradictory.
Patient endurance is not a solitary virtue but the result of a transformative process that begins with faith and fear of God. As we no longer see ourselves as the center of the world, we experience awe, humility, clarity of vision, gratitude, and inner stillness.
For if such endurance is not born in the soul out of faith, the soul cannot possess any virtue at all.
The working assumptions for most of us are that we acquire and increase knowledge through our own efforts, feel justifiable pride in it, receive recognition for it and continue to ascend levels of accomplishment until we become “experts” or wise. It thus becomes easy to judge others, become anxious about winning arguments and impose our opinions which we “know” to be wiser than others.’
St. Peter, and other desert fathers, turn this value system on its head. Spiritual knowledge begins with acknowledgment of ignorance and the recognition of the need of God’s grace.
For this reason it is good to say ‘I do not know’, so that we neither disbelieve what is said by an angel nor place credence in what occurs through the deceitfulness of the enemy.
Giving up the pressure of forcing results and timelines, judging, impressing, and dominating others frees us from impatience. We now live in God’s time, realizing that experience and insight may take years, rather than hours or days, and that we cannot achieve anything on our own without God’s grace.
We may wait for many years until the answer is given us, unsolicited and unperceived, in the form of some concrete action- as someone has put it with reference to the contemplation of created beings. In this way we reach the haven of active spiritual knowledge. When we see this knowledge persisting in us over many years, then we will understand that truly we have been heard and have invisibly received the answer.
Readings in Philokalia 