The Importance of Trainings — Changing Practical Life
The Importance of Spiritual Exercises[1]
Changing Practical Life
We constantly notice that many people hear, yet do not act according to what they hear. We also notice that there are persons who have fixed faults in their lives and recurring sins in every confession, which indicates that they have not changed and have not repented. So what is the reason for all this?
Perhaps the reason is that they have not transformed virtue from a theoretical conviction into a practical life. They have not trained themselves in virtue, nor in abandoning sin.
Therefore, the solution is to enter into practical training to acquire virtue or to abandon sin. And how is this done?
From time to time, a person needs to sit with himself and examine himself carefully, and not allow the world to swallow him up and make him forget how he should live.
You sit with yourself and ask: Where am I now, and on which path do I see myself walking? Am I in urgent need of changing my path?
In this private session, you must be honest with yourself.
Do not justify yourself, do not flatter yourself, and do not seek excuses for yourself.
Know what your sins are, what their causes are, and what the path to repentance is.
Also think about how to train yourself to live with God.
In truth, the matter of training is found in practical life in various aspects of life, not only in spiritual matters.
Examples
- A child from an early age is trained how to walk, how to speak, and how to eat.
A mother who always carries her child on her shoulder may be the cause of his developing soft bones. But when the year comes, she leaves him to crawl on the ground, to stand and fall, and to train himself how to raise his body and move his hands and feet. Every human being has undoubtedly gone through this training. - In the field of sports, we also see the importance of training.
Before every match and after every match, they review what happened, what the mistakes were, how they can be noticed, what opportunities were missed and how they were missed, and how this can be remedied in the future. They train on this. - The same applies to swimming, horseback riding, and all kinds of sports.
- Among the most famous who are concerned with training are those who practice yoga.
They train in spiritual matters and in self-control, and they also train in physical matters for bodily health. Among their most famous exercises is breathing training: how to purify the lungs completely by taking a long breath and exhaling, until all the stale air is expelled from the airways and replaced with pure air. - Among the important trainings in life are intelligence exercises.
In these, a person trains how to solve difficult and complex matters, including difficult problems in mathematics, solving puzzles, and crossword puzzles. Even children today are trained on computers in such matters, such as helping a trapped cat reach its goal amid many paths, some blocked and others open.
If your child comes to you asking for a solution to a problem he could not solve, do not think that love means guiding him directly, for then you would be cutting off his method of thinking. Rather, guide him on how to think, even by giving him only one step and leaving him to complete the rest. Otherwise, you accustom him to be a person who constantly depends on others.
The method of rote instruction is no longer suitable in upbringing or education. In many schools, institutes, and colleges, students enter into dialogue with professors through which they reach the desired result.
- Another example of training is what is given in preparing astronauts.
Do not think that astronauts who reached the moon or Mars, for example, are merely gifted people. Rather, they have in fact gone through very rigorous training. This includes accustoming them to remain in darkness for long periods to test their nerves, or training them to jump from high places, and so on. They are also trained technically to repair any malfunction in the spacecraft, and in certain medical matters to treat themselves if injured, as well as training in the use of oxygen and communication methods with the space center on Earth. The various trainings continue until they are qualified to carry out their difficult mission. - There are other trainings that some receive in physical therapy, in its various forms for different types of illnesses, as well as certain Swedish exercises to strengthen the muscles and many parts of the body, in order to reach comprehensive health.
Every organ of the body that does not train in movement and work is destined to weaken or become sluggish. Therefore, sports are beneficial, foremost among them swimming and walking, far from exhausting and strenuous exercises.
Spiritual Exercises
The Apostle Paul said: “I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need” (Phil 4:12). He also said: “Who by reason of use have their senses exercised” (Heb 5:14).
These senses are trained to discern between the voice of God and any other voice, as the Lord Christ said about the good shepherd: “The sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger… for they do not know the voice of strangers” (John 10:4–5). This is not like the child Samuel, who at the beginning of his life could not discern the voice of the Lord and thought that Eli the priest was the one who spoke to him (1 Sam 3:4–7).
These trained senses can discern sound teaching from strange teaching. Thus the Apostle John says: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
Many people have gone astray because they did not discern the voice of God.
One of them says, “The Spirit told me,” and we do not know which spirit told him.
Is it truly the Spirit of God? Or his personal conviction? Or what has been implanted in his subconscious mind from the teaching of others? Or a strange spirit that inspired him? Examples of this are those who believe in dreams—any dreams—without knowing their source, or those who believe what is said in horoscopes, and other various kinds of occult matters.
All these need to train themselves in discerning spirits.
Spiritual training is necessary, whether in thought or in action.
It may be useful here to know an important matter, namely:
How did God train His saints until they reached what they became?
*Moses the prophet, at the beginning of his life, was violent, and in his zeal he killed a man. God took him to the wilderness and trained him for many years in shepherding sheep, until he learned meekness and calmness. He learned how to be compassionate toward his sheep even when they went astray, gently guiding them, because if he used violence with them they would die at his hands.
Thus, after mastering the training, it was later said of him: “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth” (Num 12:3).
It even reached the point that when God wanted to destroy the people after their worship of the golden calf, Moses stood to calm God’s anger and said to Him: “Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people” (Exod 32:12).
The same situation occurred with John the son of Zebedee and his brother James, whom the Lord named Boanerges, meaning “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17).
They were violent at the beginning of their lives. When one of the Samaritan villages refused to receive the Lord Christ, John and James said to Him: “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” But the Lord, who wanted to train them in meekness and love, rebuked them, saying: “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them” (Luke 9:51–56).
Thus we saw John the son of thunder transformed into John the Beloved, who wrote much about love and said: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16).
*The Lord Christ also trained His disciples in service, in training courses.
When He sent out the twelve disciples, He defined their work and instructed them what to do. When He sent the seventy, He also taught them principles of service. When they returned rejoicing and said to Him, “Even the demons are subject to us in Your name,” He corrected this feeling and said to them: “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:17, 20).
It was a period of training that the disciples lived under the guidance of the great Teacher, from which they benefited, and their feelings were corrected.
All the three years they lived with Christ were periods of training.
*Saint Moses the Black was very violent at the beginning of his life, even a murderer. When he came to the monastery, the monks feared him. But he submitted to long training under the hand of Saint Abba Isidore. He did not attain meekness at once. In the early days of his monastic life, some thieves attacked his cell, so he tied them with a rope and carried them to his teacher.
But with time and perseverance in training, Moses the murderer was transformed into Moses the meek and calm, who endured insults in humility, reproaching himself, as when he said after they expelled him: “They have done well to you, O black of color, gray of skin. Since you are not a human being, why do you stand among people?”
During his period of training, he subjected himself to teaching and subjected his nature to virtue, and thus he grew little by little.
*In reality, there are two types of people: one whom grace lifts up all at once, and another whom God leads through training step by step, until after long struggle they reach what He desires for them.
*God trained His children in many matters: He trained them in prayer, meekness, service, and all branches of virtue.
God trained David, for example, in prayer and endurance.
He trained him in prayer while he was shepherding sheep, singing on the flute, harp, and lyre, until he later sang to God and called people to do so, saying: “Sing to the Lord a new song” (Ps 96, 98).
He trained him in prayer through the trials he faced, and through them He also trained him in endurance.
He left him in the hand of a harsh king, Saul, who pursued him from wilderness to wilderness seeking to kill him. He also exposed him to opponents who troubled him, such as Joab the commander of his army, and to those who betrayed him, such as his son Absalom and his counselor Ahithophel, and others such as Shimei the son of Gera. How often David cried out, saying: “Lord, how they have increased who trouble me… Many are they who say of me, ‘There is no help for him in God’” (Ps 3:1–2).
Through endurance, God also trained him in faith in God’s work and in the response to prayer.
Thus he would also say: “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity; for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication; the Lord will receive my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled; let them turn back and be ashamed suddenly. Hallelujah” (Ps 6:8–10).
Exercises
*In the same way, you should look at trials as a field for spiritual training.
Through them, you lift your eyes upward and say with David: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills—From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps 121:1–2). You also train yourself to wait for the Lord and not despair because of the length of waiting, saying with the psalmist: “My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning” (Ps 130:6).
*Train yourself in the virtues you lack, ensuring that the training is within your capacity, and persist in it until it becomes established in your life.
*Here we ask: how did the Church train her children?
From the apostolic era, she trained them in the life of martyrdom—first by training them not to love the world or the things in the world, because the world is passing away and its lust (1 John 2:15–17). She also trained them to believe in the life to come, and that martyrdom is but a moment, after which they would be in Paradise with Christ.
Thus she trained them in the ascetic life, so that “those who use this world as not misusing it” (1 Cor 7:31).
The Church also trained her children in fasting and prayer.
She set fasts in which all the people fast, training them through fasting in self-control and in abstinence from material things.
She trained them in prayer by establishing the seven canonical prayers, so that no two or three hours would pass without prayer, and thus their minds would always be occupied with God.
Finally, I wish to speak to you about training in virtues.
Perseverance in virtues is far more important than merely acquiring them.
The virtue in which you do not remain steadfast for a long time is as though you have not yet attained it, because time is the practical test for knowing the depth of virtue within you.
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