Detach Yourself From What Holds You Back From Following God

Anthony, with skillful means, determined to demonstrate to the monk the problems inherent with his ascetic program. He told the monk to go to a nearby village, buy some meat, wear it as his clothing, and see what happens as he returned to his monastic home. As Anthony knew would happen, the monk found his body under attack by various animals seeing the meat, trying to get it for themselves. So, Anthony said, the monk’s attachment to the world indicated he was spiritual meat for demonic parasites, who would, in their assaults, use his earthly attachment as the foundation for spiritual his destruction. The monk, in trying to secure himself in the world, only left himself that much more insecure for his spiritual battle, and since he had come into the desert to be a monk, that battle would be the heart of his activity until he wrestled with God and attained victory against himself. That victory would be impossible so long as gives a part of himself over as food to those spiritual powers he wanted to fight, for they would be nourished even as he found himself spiritually malnourished and worn out.

While most of us are not called to the religious life, we can and should heed the spiritual medicine being prescribed here. We should never be double-minded in our walk with God. It is not easy, to be sure; we strive and find ourselves often overcome by grief and sorrow thanks to our human passions.  But yet, if we are not called to the spiritual battle as religious, we are called to be in the world, to live in it for the sake of God. To this properly, we must always hand ourselves over to God, to go to God with the right spirit, not being double-minded, but rather tender-hearted and loving, following the path of love which he established. This is how we will find ourselves capable of following God without it being done out of selfish pride, seeking personal gain at the expense of others. If we follow God only for what we think we can gain from him, for material and spiritual blessings to enjoy in our worldly life, we end up denying God as we put such goods head of him and so we find ourselves spiritually destroyed similar to the monk who was unwilling to cut himself from the world to be a monk. We turn to the luxuries we get from God and attach ourselves to them as good which we seek, and so we end up denying God as the highest good. We lose God by being double-minded, seeking him for an aim outside of himself, as we abuse his grace to lift ourselves up in pride.

We must, therefore, heed the warning of Hosea to the people of Israel. As they loved the luxury they established for themselves, they built altars to God, not out of love for God, but for love of themselves and what they thought they could get from God. Those altars were built for self-worship. Because they tried to claim such idolatry as acceptable by God, their faith was false, and so the altars and all they represented had to be dismantled and destroyed by the justice of God:

Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased the more altars he built; as his country improved he improved his pillars. Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The LORD will break down their altars, and destroy their pillars (Hos. 10: 1-2 RSV).

We, like the monk which Anthony talked to, are called to understand our relationship with God and to put him above all else. How we are to do this might be different than how a monk is expected to do this, because we are called to remain in society and help it as salt of the earth. But in wherever we find ourselves, we are called to submit ourselves to God first, following him and his commandments. We must not let any ideology override our faithful obedience and trust in God, an obedience which will make us live out the two-fold law of love over and above all other human concepts of justice and society. If we do so, we will see spiritual fruit emerge from our labor, for we will be resisting the devil, and offer him no room inside for which he can remain – as James said: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind” (James 4:7-8 RSV). But if we do not take this to heart, if we do not follow through and truly put our hope and trust in God first, if instead seek humanly invented ideologies as the foundation for our existence, we will be doubleminded, holding on to fallen humanity, and find ourselves thrown to and fro from the demonic powers which thrive in such double-minded activity. We will be eaten up  by the dark powers of the world just like the monk who wore meat was eaten up by the animals which sought after the meat he wore.

[1] The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 5.

[2] Evagrius, “To Eulogios” in Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus. trans. Robert E. Sinkewicz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 38.

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