Despair & Despondency: Imagine the Reward!
Letter 10 to St Olympia, from Cucusus after Seven Months in Exile
by St. John Chrysostom
Feast of St Olympia the Deaconess
Anno Domini 2020, July 25
Knowing this, my lady most beloved by God, take pains, and fight, and force yourself to cooperate with what I am saying—to repel, to chase away with the utmost ardor, the thoughts [logismous] troubling you, which are causing you such agitation, and such a storm. But, so that you might accomplish this, holding tightly to our exhortation, you must have no doubts.
And now it is necessary to prepare for you swords and lances, bows and arrows, and breastplates, shields, and leg-armor, in order for you to defend yourself, and to cast down and slaughter and leave for dead the troubling thoughts [logismous] that assail you. And where will we gather these weapons and projectiles for you, so that you might not only prevent your enemies from coming close, but that you might chase them very far away with much violence? From despondency itself, as we philosophize about it, making clear how heavy and oppressive a burden it is.
For despondency is for souls a grievous torture chamber, unspeakably painful, more fierce and bitter than every ferocity and torment. It imitates the poisonous worm that attacks not only the body but also the soul, and not only the bones but also the mind. It is a continual executioner that not only tears in pieces one’s torso but also mutilates the strength of one’s soul. It is a continuous night, darkness with no light, a tempest, a gale, an unseen fever burning more powerfully than any flame, a war having no relief, a disease which casts a shadow over nearly everything visible. For even the sun and the air seem to be oppressive to those who are suffering from these things, and midday seems to be as darkest night.
[…]
When did Job shine forth more brilliantly?—when he offered sacrifice for his children and gathered them together in harmony, or when, after they had been buried, their lives having been destroyed in the most bitter way, he bore what happened with great wisdom [philosophias]? How did he shine forth more greatly?—when he warmed the shoulders of those who were naked with the wool form his sheep; or when, hearing that fire had fallen from heaven and had devoured his flock along with the shepherds, he was not shaken, neither was he troubled, but he bore what happened meekly?
When was he greater?—when his bodily health enabled him to stand up against the unrighteous, breaking the molars of the unjust, seizing their prey from the midst of their teeth, and becoming a haven for the oppressed; or when he saw this same body, the armor of the oppressed, now devoured by worms, with himself sitting on a dunghill, and, taking a piece of earthenware, scraping himself with it? “For I am wasting away as I scrape off clods of earth from the eruption [from my sores],” he says (Job 7:5).
So, on one side were all his virtues, and on the other side all his sufferings. But these latter declared him to be more illustrious than those. For this was the most bitter part of the battle, requiring the greater courage, the more well-stretched soul, the more philosophic mind, and having greater love for God.
On account of this, the devil, the one causing these events, shamelessly and very much like a pirate, retorted, “Is it not in vain that Job worships God” (Job 1:9)? And when these things happened, Job departed, hiding himself, turning his back, without even providing a shadow of an insolent rebuttal. This is the summit of worthiness of a crown, this is the garland of virtue, this is the gleaming proof of courage, this is an effort of the highest degree of wisdom [philosophia].
This blessed Job, showing that the tyranny of despair is more grievous than death, called the latter a repose. “Death is a repost,” he says, “for man” (Job 3:23). And he asks him for a portion of grace in being delivered from the former, saying, “Would that God might grant that my prayer be answered, and that my hope be fulfilled. Would that he would make a beginning, and wound me, and draw me to my end. May the city be my grave, upon whose walls I have leapt” (Job 6:8-10). Thus despondency is more burdensome than everything else; and as it is more burdensome, its recompense will be greater.
In order that you may learn, from another angle, what the gain of sufferings is, even if one does not suffer for God—and no one would consider this to be an exaggeration—if one suffers and bears it nobly, and with meekness glorifies God for everything, he will be rewarded. Even Job did not know that he suffered those things for God—and indeed, this is why he was crowned, because he endured them nobly, not knowing the reason for his sufferings.
And Lazarus, encompassed with physical infirmity (and he also did not suffer for God), since he suffered very much, and persevered, and bore nobly the absence of anyone helping him, and the despondency caused by his wounds, by hunger, and by the contempt and cruelty of the rich man—you know how great the crowns are that he enjoyed. And yet we do not find any act of virtue attributed to him—not that he showed pity to the poor, or that he assisted the oppressed, or that he accomplished any similar good thing. We only hear of his sitting at the gate of the rich man, and of his infirmity, and of the tongues of the dogs, and of the contempt of the rich man towards him—that is, all the ways that he suffered so wretchedly. So even though he did not accomplish anything noble, and only because he bore his despondency nobly, he obtained the same end as the patriarch Abraham who did accomplish such acts of virtue.
After this, I would like to speak about something else that may seem paradoxical, but is true. If someone accomplishes a good thing, great and noble, but without having pain or danger or sufferings, his reward will not be very large. “For each one will receive his own reward according to his own toil” (1 Cor. 3:8)—not according to the greatness of the virtue, but according to the weight of the suffering (cf. 2 Cor. 4:17). For this reason, Paul, when he boasted, did not boast only of the noble acts of virtue that he had done, but also of the evils that he had suffered. For after saying, “For they are ministers of Christ—I speak as a madman—but I more so” (2 Cor. 11:23), in emphasizing his superiority by way of comparison, he did not say, “I preached the gospel to such and such people,” but rather, leaving aside his acts of virtue, he enumerated the evils that he had suffered, saying, “In toils more exceedingly abundant, in stripes beyond measure, in prisons more frequently, in danger of death often. Five times I received forty lashes save one from the Jews, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I spent in the deep, in journeys often, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from thieves, in dangers from countrymen, in dangers from the Gentiles, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the country, in dangers in the sea, in dangers from false brethren, in weariness and toils, in sleepless often, in hunger and thirst and nakedness; and without speaking of the rest, the cares that I have each day” (2 Cor. 11:23-28).
Do you see this series of sufferings, and the occasion for his boasting? Then he adds to these his works of virtue—but again, the sufferings have the greater importance, not the virtuous acts. For after saying, “the cares that I have each day,” referring to the continual persecutions, disturbances, and difficulties (for this is what he means by “the cares”), he added, “the care for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28). He did not say, “the correcting of,” but “the care for,” for this is more related to suffering than to virtue. And in what follows, likewise: “Who is weak,” he says, “and I am not weak?” He did not say, “I am correcting,” but “I am weak.” And again, “Who is scandalized and I am not inflamed” (2 Cor. 11:29)? He did not say, “I dissipated the scandal,” but, “I took part in the sadness.” Then, indicating that these things especially bring a reward, he added, “If it is necessary for me to boast, I will boast in my weakness” (2 Cor. 11:30). And he speaks next about his flight through the window in the wall, in a basket, for this was part of his suffering evils.
If, therefore, sufferings have great rewards, and despair is the most grievous and most painful of all sufferings, imagine what will be the recompense for it! I will not cease chanting this refrain to you, in order to fulfill now what I promised in the beginning: to draw out from despondency itself the considerations that will give birth to consolation from despondency in you.
*Excerpted from Letters to Saint Olympia, tr. David C. Ford (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2016), 99, 108-111. Available for purchase at Eighth Day Books.
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"What is it that has ordered the things of heaven and those of earth, the things which move through the air and those which move in the water; nay, rather the things which proceeded them: heaven and earth and the natures of fire and water? What is it that combined and arranged them...set them into motion and put them on their unceasing and unhindered course?..But who is the architect of these things? Or did not he who made them also bring them into being? We shall certainly not attribute such power to spontaneity." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3 This comes after St. John of Damascus sets out to delineate between the created and the uncreated, a fact which, while at the core of existence, seems for him to be, for this very reason, the simplest to believe. Everything but God is created and, thus, susceptible to change. This means people, but this also means demons, angels, the rest of the created order across the entire cosmos. Everything is vulnerable to unrest. Except for God. If you have ever tried to explain the Holy Trinity to a child for the first time, maybe you have felt as I have the weightier, inexpressible side of God's unchangeability: how do I possibly communicate this essential fact to the person in front of me? (This is usually when my faint stutter starts to pop up again.) I like that here, like St. Patrick reaching for a three-leaf clover, St. John brings us back to earth to better understand the cosmos. Fire and water are no less mysteries than heaven and earth. And yet here we are, cooking and washing, eating and drinking, filled and sustained on what we can neither fully explain nor claim to have created. Only God is unchanging. Vice versa, God is the only constant we need. Maybe the rest is better left unsaid. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
"Now, one who would speak or hear about God should know beyond any doubt that in what concerns theology and the Incarnation not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. That which can be known is one thing, whereas that which can be said is another, just as it is one thing to speak and another to know. Furthermore, many of those things about God which are not clearly perceived cannot be fittingly described, so that we are obliged to express in human terms things which transcend the human order. Thus, for example, in speaking about God we attribute to Him sleep, anger, indifference, hands and feet, and the like." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 2 When I was studying Fiction in graduate school, one of the first methods I learned to really situate the reader in the story you were about to tell them was disorientation; if you wanted to ground them in one story, first you had pull the rug out from under their feet. So it's fitting that in the beginning of St. John Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith, before rebuilding our foundation, he first puts us squarely in limbo, seesawing back and forth between certainty and uncertainty. To paraphrase, there is no doubt (certainty) that about God some things can be expressed...but not all things (uncertainty). Some things about God are truly knowable (certainty), but some are unknowable (uncertainty). Oh, and while we're speaking about God (certainty), let's admit there's a gap, too, between what we say and what we know (uncertainty). My favorite line in this spiraling excerpt, "...it is one thing to speak, and another to know," takes me back to the final lines in Wendell Berry's poem, "How to Be a Poet," which he wrote primarily as a reminder to himself: Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. Wherever your preferences fall on the cataphatic or apophatic spectrum of theology (whether you lean more toward what we can say about God or what we cannot), Berry's poem, I think, would nod along with St. John: before we say too much, let our words be preserved by the silence from which they came. I'm thinking of the silence, that filling, restorative quiet I feel when I step into a cathedral or in some of my favorite moments with my kids in the early hours. Even before praying, can we hear the One already praying in us? Let's start there. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
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