Hesychios the Priest on the Nous

So we can speak of the blindness and inability of the nous to see things clearly.  And when our nous is darkened, we do not have a pure and open passage to our neighbor.  Everything is defiled and darkened, with terrible and upsetting consequences for our life.  Just as clouds hide the sun, so evil thoughts bring shadows to the mind and ruin it.  Our nous is darkened and remains unproductive either when we speak words of worldly import or, entertaining such words in our mind, we associate with them, or when our body involves itself with the nous in sensory things. Then we immediately lose our fervor, compunction, intimacy with God and spiritual knowledge. Therefore “so long as we concentrate our attention on the nous, we are enlightened; but when we are not attentive to it we are in darkness” [Hesychios the Priest, The Philokalia, Vol. 1, p. 184].

Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos, Orthodox Psychotherapy, p. 135.

Make haste to help me

O Lord, rebuke me not in they wrath, nor chasten me in thy hot displeasure.

For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thine hand has cut me off.

There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger,

Neither is there any health in my bones because of my sin.

For mine iniquities have gone over my head as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.

My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness,

I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly, I go mourning all the day long

For my loins are filled with loathsome disease and there is no soundness in my flesh

I am feeble and sore-broken, i have roared by the reason of the disquietness of my heart

Lord all my desire is before thee, and my groaning is not hid from thee

My heart panteth, my strength faileth me, as for the light of mine eyes, it has also gone from me.

My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore and my kinsman stand afar off.

They also that seek after my life lay snares for me;

And they that seek my hurt speak mischievous things, And imagine deceits all the day long.

But I, was a deaf man, that hears not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth.

Yea, I am as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs.

For in thee, O LORD, do I hope: thou wilt answer, O Lord my God.

For I said, Lest they rejoice over me: when my foot slippeth, they magnify themselves against me.

For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me.

For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin.

But mine enemies are lively, and are they strong: and they that hate me wrongfully are multiplied.

They also that render evil for good are mine adversaries, because I follow the thing that good is.

Forsake me not, O Lord: O my God, be not far from me.

Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation.

This is so good, I have to post it.

When I go back to the question of what I want, I find that all answers fall short in some way unless the answer I give is “God.”  I want God. I don’t want to figure out His will, I don’t want to figure out eternity, I don’t want to add stuff to my life in order to deepen my relationship with God. No. I want God. That’s right, I said I don’t want to deepen my relationship with God. Pursuing a relationship with God and pursuing God Himself are often very different things. Of course, when we go to church in order to deepen on our relationship with God, we do in fact find it deeper for the effort. But the church is not God. We must go to the church, an external behavior, in order to help us draw near to God, an inner reality.

I must be careful in making this point. History has seen religious movements that take what I have just said to mean that the external realities of the Christian faith are discretionary. They might say, “We don’t need to go to church as long as we seek after God,” or, “We don’t need to be baptized as long as we’re born again in our hearts,” or, “Holy Communion is not important because I can commune with God in other ways.”  This is silly. It makes God – forgive me for saying – into nothing but a function of the mind. It’s like a friend who doesn’t call or write for years and then says, “Sorry I haven’t called or written, but I’ve thought about you often.” What can you say? Hearing those words does little to renew the relationship that was destroyed when you realized that your friend was ignoring your calls and letters, it does little to sooth the old pain of rejection. Thinking about God is useless as the sole pathway to knowing God. Many pathways, the church and the disciplines of the church, have been established and used by Christians for hundreds of years. Suddenly, the last two hundred years, we assume that we are good enough that we can skip over them and arrive at the same destination? We can’t.

Do you want God? Use the church to find Him. Don’t forget the church, the way, and don’t forget God, the destination.

-from Christianity and Pleasure by Fr. David R. Smith