Mother Siluana Vlad: On self-improvement
The important thing is to be with Christ! All we do for our self-improvement is useful if it is with the Lord. Self-esteem is gratitude for our gifts and recognizing these gifts.
Question
Self-improvement is very fashionable these days, and I admit that I also like certain ideas in that area. But you said before that we shouldn’t attribute any merits to ourselves for the good things we do. How can we love ourselves and our neighbors if we don’t work on our self-improvement? I don’t know how to reconcile self-esteem with not assuming any merits for ourselves.
Mother Siluana
If we transpose this language into a spiritual language, it is very simple. Let’s talk about self-esteem. What is it? It is true humility. When I am humble, I acknowledge that I have some merits, that I do some good things, but they are not due to me - I received them. I recognize that I can cultivate my talents. And if I cultivate my talents and I purify myself from passions, this is self-improvement. But the difference is that when I improve myself with my own energies and my own will, it will always be relative, and it will collapse when I least expect it. Or you go into the area marked “Improve yourselves!” in hell - because you don’t have Christ!
The important thing is to be with Christ! All we do for our self-improvement is useful if it is with the Lord. It will then be part of our daily program. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) And so self-improvement is very minor compared to what is prepared for us. All that matters is to know at all times that we have a personal relationship with God, that God is involved in our lives, and not to judge those who don’t do as we do.
And so self-esteem is gratitude for our gifts and recognizing these gifts. Yes, I have this talent. Yes, I have this gift. Lord, thank You for this gift, and don’t let me be lazy and not do my work. Thank You, Lord, for this. Or: I don’t have this gift that someone else has. Lord, give me this gift as well - but only if it is for my benefit! If not, let me rejoice that someone else has it! At least in our monastery, it is wonderful: each one of us has different gifts, and we are rich as a whole. The same thing happens in families: one person has a gift, and the other has a different gift.
Self-hate is a disease. It is not the hate that the Savior talks about - to hate our sins. Self-hate is a sin against the Holy Spirit because He gives you the strength to love, that is to say, to do things that unite you with Love, with God.
And so the main thing is not to go to extremes, and not to break our relationship with God. These things are expressed in a language that pertains to secular wisdom, and we find correspondences in our language which are not synonyms - they represent this miracle of the spiritual life which consists in receiving the uncreated into the created, in offering your gifts and your infirmities as a Prosphora into which the uncreated energy will come so that it transforms you.
If you make good Prosphora and you eat it, it doesn’t benefit you - you’re just eating good bread. But if you bring it to the Holy Altar and it gets transformed into the Body and Blood of our Savior, then that is different. Likewise, if you improve yourself, it doesn’t benefit you unless you become the Prosphora of the Holy Spirit, Who will make you holy. Slowly and gently!
From a Q&A session with ASCOR in Timisoara, Romania, in 2019. Original recording in Romanian: