The Heart Is But a Small Vessel
by St Macarius of Egypt
Feast of St Theodota the Martyr and Her Children
Anno Domini 2020, July 29
1. As many lights and burning lamps are lighted from fire, but the lamps and lights are lighted and shine from one nature, so also Christians are enkindled and shine from one nature, the divine fire, the Son of God, and they have their lamps burning in their hearts and they shine before Him while living on earth, just as He did. For it says, “Therefore your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness” (Ps. 45:7). For this reason he was called Christ in order that we also, being anointed with the same oil as He was anointed, may become Christs, so to say, of the same substance and one body. Again it says: “Both He that sanctifies and those that are sanctified are all of one” (Heb. 2:11).
2. Therefore, Christians from one aspect are similar to lamps with oil in them, that is, all the fruits of justification. But if the lamp be not enkindled from that of the Godhead within them, they are nothing. The Lord was “the burning lamp” (Jn. 5:35) by means of the Spirit of the Godhead which abided substantially in Him and set on fire His heart according to His humanity. Take the example of a dirty old pouch filled with pearls. So too Christians in the exterior man ought to be humble and of lowly esteem, while interiorly in the inner man they possess the “pearl of great price” (Mt. 13:46). Others are similar to “whited sepulchers,” outwardly painted and decorated, but “inwardly full of dead men’s bones” (Mt. 23:27), and of much foul smell and unclean spirits. They are dead to God and are clothed with every kind of shame and sordidness and the darkness of the adversary.
3. The Apostle says that “the child, as long as he is little, is under tutors and governors” (Gal. 3:2) of evil spirits that do not desire him to grow up, lest he should become a mature man and begin to look to the things pertaining to the household and assert some control. The Christian always should be mindful of God. For it is written: “Thou shalt love the Lord the God with thy whole heart” (Dt. 6:5). He should love the Lord, not only when he enters into the place of prayer, but in walking and talking and eating, may he remember God and love Him with affection. For it says: “Where your heart is, there also is your treasure” (Mt. 6:21; Lk 12:34). For to whatever thing one’s heart is tied and where his desire draws him, that is his God. If the heart always desires God, He is Lord of his heart. If man renounces himself and becomes possessionless, having no city, and he fasts, yet if he is still attached to the man he is or to worldly things or to a home or to parental affection, where his heart is attached, there his mind is held captive—that is his God. And he is found to have gone from the world through the large, front door, but he has reentered and thrown himself into the world through a little side door.
As sticks are thrown into the fire and are unable to resist the power of the fire, but are burned up at once, so too demons, seeking to wage war against a man who has received the Spirit, are burned up and consumed by the divine power of the fire, provided only that the person always clings to the Lord and has trust and hope in Him. And even if the demons are strong as mighty mountains, they are burned up by prayer, like wax by fire.
In the meantime, great is the soul’s struggle and war against them. There are rivers of dragons there and mouths of lions. There is fire which flames up in the soul. Just as the inveterate evil, inebriated with the spirit of error, is insatiable toward evil, either in murdering or committing adultery, so also Christians, having been baptized in the Holy Spirit, have no experience of evil. But those who possess grace and still are flirting with sin are under fear and journey through a fearful place.
4. Take the example of merchants. While on a voyage, even if they find a suitable wind and a calm sea, still as long as they have not reached the harbor, they always are in fear lest suddenly a contrary wind should blow and the sea would be stirred up by waves and the ship would be in danger. So too Christians, even if they possess within themselves a favorable wind of the Holy Spirit blowing, they still fear lest the wind of the opposing force should rise up and blow and stir up a storm and waves for their souls. Therefore, there is need of great diligence so that we may arrive at the harbor of rest, at the perfect world, at the eternal life and pleasure, at the city of the saints, at the heavenly Jerusalem, at “the Church of the firstborn” (Heb. 12:23). If a person does not pass through those degrees, he is under great fear, lest by chance at some time the evil power bring about some fall.
5. A woman who has conceived carries her baby inside in darkness, so to say, and in a hidden place. But if then the child comes forth at the appointed time, it sees a new creation, which it never saw, of sky and earth and sun. And at once friends and relatives with cheerful faces take it into their arms. But if it should happen that there is a miscarriage in the womb, then it is necessary that surgeons, whose duty it is, must use the knife and the child is then found passing from death to death and from darkness to darkness. Apply this also to the spiritual life. As many as have received the seed of the Godhead have it in an invisible manner. Because of sin dwelling within also, they hide it in dark and fearsome places. Therefore, if they protect themselves and preserve the seed, these in due time are born again visibly. And then, at the dissolution of the body, the angles and all the choirs above with cheerful faces receive them. But if, after having received the weapons of Christ to wage war manfully, such a one grows slothful, he immediately is turned over to the enemies and at the dissolution of the body passes over from the darkness and to perdition.
6. Take the example of a garden having fruit-bearing trees and other sweet-scented plants, in which all is well cultivated and beautifully laid out. It also has a small wall before a ditch to protect it. Should it so happen that a fast-moving river passed that way, even though only a little of the water dashes against the wall, it tears away the foundation. It digs a course and gradually dissolves the foundation. It enters and tears away and uproots all the plants and destroys the entire cultivation and renders it fruitless. So it is also with man’s heart. It has the good thoughts, but the rivers of evil are always flowing near the heart, seeking to bring it down and draw it to its own side. If the mind should be turned ever so little toward frivolity and yield to unclean thoughts, look out—the spirits of error have roamed the pastureland and have entered and have overturned there the beautiful things. They have destroyed good thoughts and devastated the soul.
7. There is the example of the eye, little in comparison to all the members of the body and the pupil itself is small, yet it is a great vessel. For it sees in one flash the sky, stars, sun, moon, cities, and other creatures. Likewise, these things are seen in one flash, they are formed and imaged in the small pupil of the eye. So it is with the mind toward the heart. And the heart itself is but a small vessel, yet there also are dragons and there are lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. And there are rough and uneven roads; there are precipices. But there is also God, also the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the Apostles, the treasures of grace—there are all things. Just as a fog hangs over the whole earth, so that one does not see his fellow man, so is the darkness of this world covering all creation and humanity. Humans obscured by the darkness, are in the night and spend their life in fearful places. Like a thick smoke in a one-room house, so is sin with its filthy thoughts. It settles down and creeps over the thoughts of the heart along with an infinite number of demons.
8. As in the visible things around us, when a war is being prepared wise men and nobles to not enlist, but, fearing death, remain aloof, so that the raw recruits and beggars and simple folk are put forth. And if it happens that they carry off a victory against the enemies and chase them from their frontiers, they receive from the king part of the booty and crowns and they gain promotions and dignities. Those great ones are now found much behind them in preference of the king. So too on a spiritual plane. The simple ones begin to hear the Word, and they do the Word’s work with loving attitude, and they receive from God the grace of the Spirit. But the wise and those who seek superficially the Word, these flee from the war and they do not progress. They are found behind those who entered the war and won the victory.
9. Just as the winds, blowing powerfully, shake all creatures in the sky and produce a very loud sound, so the power of the enemy pummels and carries the thoughts for its own benefit. Like the tax collectors who sit along the narrow streets and snatch at the passers-by and extort from them, so also the demons watch carefully and grab hold of souls. And when they pass out of the body, if they are not completely purified, they are not permitted to go up into the mansions of Heaven there to meet their Master. For they are driven down by the demons of the air. But if, while they still live in the flesh, they shall, because of their hard toil and much struggle, obtain from the Lord on high grace, they, along with those who through virtuous living are at rest, shall go to the Lord, as He promised. “Where I am, there also my servant will be” (Jn. 12:26). And for endless ages they shall reign together with the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, now and always and for all eternity. Amen.
*Homily 43 in The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter
by Pseudo-Macarius, tr. George A. Maloney, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 219-222. Available for purchase from 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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