Fr. Rafail Noica: Pedagogy or Punishment?
If you throw a handful of rocks in the air, they should all fall on your head, but from those rocks, God allows only how much is strictly necessary for you to understand something.
It is important, it is of utmost necessity that whatever a person does is totally free before God (I’m not talking about the state, laws, and our neighbor, and even other Christians because we are all Christians in becoming, and some are here and others there, and our judgments are always sinful, in any case, to the degree that we have judged–we must let Christ be the only judge. But even if they are good and well-intentioned they are still weak; we must put ourselves under the judgment of Christ and guide ourselves by that. And I would say one more thing: pay more attention, leaders, parents, priests, spiritual fathers, professors–well, professors are something else–those of us who are invested with guiding others in their becoming, that we do not become the conscience of those whom we educate, but that their conscience is Christ independent of me. It is difficult, sometimes I must impose myself, all those who are imperfect, beginning with the smallest among us, we must guide–in principle, because sometimes they are better than us–but we must have this in mind: the conscience of the person whom I want to guide must not be me, but God. This is essential. And then it is of utmost importance that a person must freely do what he does, to freely take steps on his journey to the Kingdom, because every step that is not done freely does not have eternal value–maybe it has disciplinary or moral value, things go as they should, like gears, but it is not salvific.
And thus God leads a person through pedagogy or punishment [pedeapsă in Romanian]. And punishment [pedeapsă] is not that God got angry and strikes us so that we no longer do something, but it is the result of my choice. Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov opened my eyes; he says somewhere–I do not know where. It is a book in Romanian, a small book. He explains–and now I am putting it in my own words–that if you throw a handful of rocks in the air, they should all fall on your head, but from those stones, God allows–I am speaking metaphorically–only how much is strictly necessary for you to understand something. And maybe one of those rocks should have killed you; it does not kill you, but it lets you taste the path that you chose so that you can understand it. It is not that God got angry–God is not wrathful. And when we say that God is slow to anger and quick to forgive, it is speaking in terms intelligible to us on every level. Yes, God is not wrathful. Yet God’s anger is toward all that is a lie, to all that is not true, and not toward sinners.
Thus, punishment is the result of what I do, from which God allows only the strict minimum that is necessary for me to wake up; if I do not wake up, to paraphrase Silouan, something worse may happen, a larger rock may fall on my head, and if not, then an even bigger one, etc., etc., and I may end up in a place from which I will not be able to return. Therefore, punishment is the result of our choices. God restricts how much falls on me to what is strictly necessary for my becoming, because it is important: either I have understood and through pedagogy, He can lead me, or I have not understood and through punishment He can lead me, but it is all God’s love, the gentle and good eye of God that follows me wherever I may be, and which leads me to salvation.
Thus, the word given to Saint Silouan applied to me is this: if we see ourselves as sinful, one: it is important that we see ourselves; this is the beginning of contemplation. That is, now I see my sin, Saint Sophrony said, and if we see the uncreated light later only then will we understand that this was the light that was illuminating, revealing the sin in which I was living, because what other light could show me my sin? Only divine grace. At that time I did not see light, now I do not see light, but seeing my sin, we can deduce that it is a light that is revelatory for me, and that light is the grace of God, it is the Holy Spirit Whom I do not feel as the Holy Spirit, God is still nonexistent for me, still incorrigible as Saint Silouan said, a stranger because I am estranged, but if we see this, one: let us be inspired because it is God present in that form of apparent absence, and two: let us hope in God’s mercy that He will give us an outcome, so to speak, to the degree of my current suffering at seeing my sin–I do all that I can, I confess, I first begin by praying, then confessing, then communing.
As for communion, many people believe that if I do the canon [penance] given to me by my spiritual father, if I confess and I don’t know what else, then this is what saves me, and now I can go commune and get a “candy” because I was a good child. No. “Take, eat, this is My Body which is broken for you for the remission of sins”--remission or forgiveness. “Drink of this all of you”–not those who have separated themselves from the true Church. In Catholicism they no longer commune, or they didn’t commune, except the priests communed with the Blood. “Drink of this all of you. This is my blood which is shed for you and for many”–Elder Sophrony said that the Fathers said that “many” means all: “My blood which is shed for all for the remission of sins.” Thus, the remission or forgiveness of sins is through the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ, not the effect of confession, a penance, or my ascetic striving, but my striving, confession, and penance–if it is given, because Elder Sophrony did not really give penances; I only received one once, and only later did I realize that this was a penance I had to fulfill; he told me I had to do certain things, but he did not give penances, and a penance should be a remedy for the wound suffered by the person who repents, a remedy that heals his wound. If we understand penance in a different way we are heretics, in our formation, because we are not heretics if we do not cling to the point of death to our heresy, then we are still Orthodox in becoming. But a penance and all that I say in confession is the expression of my choice before God; I call the sin that I did sin, and I try to do what I am told for the absolvement [ispășire] of this sin–ispășire which comes from the Slavonic spaseniye which means salvation–to be saved from this sin, from that wound, from that illness. And then God can grant the remission of sins which means the healing of the illness or wound with which I hurt myself.
I will take advantage of this moment to also say that there are two moments in our repentance: one moment, which I call vindication, and the other salvation. When I hear confessions–I once heard the confession of a Russian man. And I have never heard a confession as beautiful as that one. He was standing upright–and one more thing, we should learn from Russians: when they do a formal confession, the priest stands in front of the icon of Christ and to his right, the person who confesses also stands in front of the icon of Christ, both facing the icon. In the most formal way, standing, and he confesses to Christ, the priest being only a witness, as it is written in our prayer books–not facing the priest, on his knees while the priest stands and so on. These are denatured forms. So, the Russian man was standing and saying: “sinner, I did this and that. Sinner, I did this and that. Sinner, I thought of who knows what. Sinner…” All that he had to confess was preceded by the word “sinner”–he was reproaching himself. This is called vindication. And what is vindication? Elder Sophrony said, and now I will say it in my own words, God Who sees that I am sinful and that I sinned, if I say I am a sinner and have sinned, then I am in agreement with God. To this degree, I am similar to God. This is vindication. The step of salvation follows and that is communion with the Body and Blood. So, confession does not save me. Confession vindicates me, it justifies me before God. What is justification or vindication? It is that now I think like God. If I say, “no, I have not sinned. I am innocent,” God will say, not that He will say, but there is nothing to forgive the innocent person, and the innocent person cannot be forgiven. Before, I made a joke with the nun here, she said “forgive me, Father,” and I said “no, I don’t forgive you. This is not forgiven, it is encouraged.” It was something beautiful that she was doing, and out of humility she asked for forgiveness, being aware that anything we do can be a sin, and after I said if it is something to be forgiven, the Lord will forgive you.
What a beautiful encouragement! All to often I hear from people who are becoming Orthodox their concern for “the externals”, which is understandable since they are acquiring the Phronema. However, if this way of thinking is not guided or corrected it can lead to a purely external “faith”. Our God intimately desires to be with us. As someone once told me, our goal should be to “know God and be known by Him”.
Consequential “punishment” is what we bring upon ourselves through our actions (good or bad), but these are salvific opportunities if we allow God to work through these.
May God help us, save us, have mercy on us, and keep us by His grace+