Spiritual Watchfulness 2
Spiritual Watchfulness (1)
2- Emotion:
One of the reasons that make a person forget himself is that he is sometimes anesthetized by a certain emotion that occupies him, occupies his entire life, his time, and his feelings, so he is not free for God.
Like a child whom we want to keep away from us, so we give him a toy to distract him with… likewise the devil, if he sees that you have begun to walk in the spiritual path, presents you with a certain emotion to distract you with so that you do not devote yourself to spiritual work.
And God searches for you and does not find you. He calls you and you do not hear Him because you are busy or anesthetized by the emotion that has seeped into your heart, and like the moth that gnaws garments, or the weevil that eats grains… so this emotion has devoured what is inside you of the love of God.
There are many whom we love and are occupied with. As for God, we have placed Him last of all. While He is the One who says, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt 10:37).
If innocent loves should not occupy us away from the love of God, how much more other non-innocent loves: worldly, material, and bodily…?!
For this reason the holy monks cut themselves off even from innocent, holy loves lest they occupy them: the love of father and mother, brother and sister, relatives, friends, and acquaintances. And as the spiritual elder said, “The love of God has estranged me from people and human things.”
Each one of them withdrew himself from being occupied with the love of all, so that his heart might be free for God. And God becomes for him the all in all. And he says to the Lord, “You, O Lord, are for me the father and the mother, the brother and the sister, the friend and the beloved. I have none but You. You occupy my time, You occupy my life, You occupy my heart and my mind, You occupy my senses and my feelings. You are my preoccupation; I find no time to be occupied with anyone but You. You have filled my entire heart. My heart is full of You, rejoicing in You, needing no one other than You.”
Beware, my brother, lest you be in an emotional whirlpool. Perhaps an angel comes to you and asks you, “Who do you think dwells in your heart now?” And how will you answer? Will you perhaps say, “We have driven out the owner of the house and lodged strangers”!! What astonishment at this heart of yours: God is the One who owns it because He is your Creator, your Redeemer, and your Purchaser from death, and yet He finds no place for Himself in your heart. Imagine, the owner of a house cannot find in it even one room to dwell in!!
Where is the old love? Where is the time when God filled your entire heart and occupied all your love? When your heart was inflamed with this divine love, and in the flame of this spiritual heat every other love appeared trivial in your eyes? Where are those sweet days? Where are they?
But now, “I have this against you, that you have left your first love”…
Many times you do not sit with God. And if you do sit, it is not with the same love, nor with the same fervor, nor with the same burning desire… Another love has entered your heart, like a microbe that kills everything…
Perhaps there is another person who needs to awaken, not because of preoccupations or emotion, but because of the environment.
3- The Deviant Environment:
A person lives in a deviant environment. Whenever he awakens, it casts him into another negligence. And people reproach him: Why this extremism? Has madness afflicted your mind? Religion will lead you to insanity, and the psalms will bring you wars from demons… Leave all these matters and turn to your future.
And this environment may not always be a group of evil companions; it may sometimes be some family members, perhaps even the father and mother and relatives!! As the Lord said, “A man’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matt 10:36)…
If the son fasts, they threaten him with the loss of his health.
And if he walks in humility, they accuse him of weakness of personality…!!
And if the girl is modest, they accuse her of backwardness and threaten her with spinsterhood, and that she has become “a peasant,” not keeping up with the times!! And no one will marry her!
Thus a person behaves like the people of the world without his conscience reproaching him, forgetting the saying of Scripture: “Do not be conformed to this age” (Rom 12:2), that is, do not become its form and image…
We are not backward, but rather we accept from the age what suits our principles and ideals, and we leave what distances us from God. Civilization does not mean abandoning spiritual values, and holding fast to ideals is not a kind of backwardness. Rather, it is an inciting accusation, so that the weak may hear it and be shaken.
The strong person is not swept away by the environment, but resists it if it deviates, whereas the weak goes along with the atmosphere. A small fish can resist the current because it has life. While a huge tree trunk is swept away by the current despite its size, because it is not alive. So be alive, and resist the environment if it deviates. Do not surrender to everything new if it is against your principles and ideals.
How dangerous the environment is to the weak person! Whenever the love of God ignites within him, the environment returns to extinguish it. The bad example weakens him, and the ideas of people, their accusations, their mockery, and their false principles shake him… Thus he wears their personality, as the proverb says, “Be of their land as long as you are in their land, and of their house as long as you are in their house”!! This person does not awaken to himself unless another thought awakens him from outside this environment, a spiritual thought from grace, on the mouth of a spiritual person stronger than this environment.
Such a sleeper has no salvation except by changing this environment, by leaving bad company that corrupts good morals, and by training in a strong personality that resists the current.
Thus he comes out from the control of the environment that suffocates him… just as he comes out from the whirlpool of preoccupations and from the pressure of emotions that distance him from God, and from other obstacles, among which are:
4- The Mind Far from the Spirit:
Sometimes the mind becomes a cause of a person’s spiritual loss if it is misused.
Often the mind is an obedient servant to the desires of the soul. If the soul deviates, how easy it is to draw the mind to its side to justify its wrong behavior…
How easy it is for the mind to deviate, or to lose justice, and side with itself, sharpening all its energies to satisfy its desires, which may be wrong desires. Yet it tries to cite verses from Scripture and sayings of the holy Fathers, with wrong interpretations, to prove that it is right in its deviation… It can justify every path it takes, and tries to deceive others and deceive itself… Every way it walks, it can justify with proofs, evidences, excuses, and endless arguments: this sin was against my will, and this matter I cannot do, it is beyond my ability. This matter is justified by circumstances, that by good intention, and a third by the goal and purpose… etc.
At some times the mind of a person is not in the hand of the Holy Spirit. It may be in the grip of the world, or under the yoke of lust, or under the influence of environment, society, and traditions, and a person may act with the mind of others, to the harm of himself…
The mind may also harm a person because of the flightiness of its thoughts and their wandering, and it may wander into sins or trivialities. Perhaps this type of thinking stirs a person’s senses and feelings with stimulation that pulls him downward. And in the flightiness of his thinking he may not feel himself, as if his senses are drunk… until he finally awakens…
The mind may entice him by promising to fulfill his dreams and desires, doing so through daydreams, building for him palaces of imagination, and narrating stories characterized by richness that he cannot abandon because of their intense pleasure. It appears to a person as if his mind is the faithful, loyal friend who fulfills his wishes… And in all this, if someone wants to awaken him, he does not wish to awaken… Perhaps he continues to tickle these dreams for hours, days, or years, and may spend his entire life dreaming and thinking, rejoicing in this illusion…
How many are the gifts of the mind in composing, planning, and narrating stories and tales… and how often all these are used to the harm of itself… The problem of a person in all this is not that he cannot awaken, but that he does not want to… He is happy with his thoughts, and if the Spirit intervenes to convince him of his errors, he tries to respond with rational proofs… It is the problem of the rationalists… Among what misleads a person—besides the mind—is pleasure.
5- Pleasure:
There is nothing more difficult than pleasure, for it anesthetizes a person completely away from God. Every person has a certain pleasure that he follows, and he may not tire of anything else…
It takes over the entire heart, the entire sense, and the entire perception, and may take all the time as well if it intensifies. The whole person becomes under the leadership and direction of pleasure…
The spiritual person’s pleasure is in God. As for the sinner, his pleasure is in sin. You may try to awaken him from the negligence of pleasure and he refuses. He says to you, “I am pleased with my sleep, because the dreams of this sleep are sweeter than the reality of wakefulness…”
Those who do not want to awaken, whenever we press them they ask you for postponement. They say: There is no objection, but not now…
So how can the sleeping person awaken?
How did sinners awaken and turn into saints?
What are the internal and external means for a person’s awakening?
This is the subject of our contemplation next week, God willing.
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An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in Al-Keraza Magazine – Fifth Year – Issue Two – 12-10-1974.
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