One Day within Your Courts

...is better than a thousand elsewhere.

This Psalm verse says all the hermit was trying to express in many paragraphs.

St. Silouan the Staretz had a vision of Jesus, once, yet he had not the knowledge or strength at the time to bear the vision. He had wondered why that vision did not endure as an irrevocable gift. Later he understood why he had lost grace, and at that point he received the "light of knowledge."

He understood the struggle of St. Seraphim of Sarov who (during a time of loss of grace and seeming abandonment by God) stood a thousand days and nights on bare stone in the wilderness, invoking God to be merciful to him, a sinner. Silouan also understood, now, what St. Pemn meant when he said, "Be sure, children, that where Satan is, there shall I be." He knew why St. Antony was sent to the cobbler for this lesson: "All will be saved, only I shall be lost."

And what St. Makarios of Egypt meant when he said: "Descend into thy heart and there do battle with Satan."

From the experience of his own life--and not astractly or theoretically--Silouan learned that "the field of man's spiritual battle with evil--cosmic evil--is his own heart. He saw in spirit that sin's deepest root is pride...."

From then on, Silouan concentrated his whole soul on acquiring the humility of Christ--which had been made known to him at the time of the first vision he had, but which he had lost. Siloaun also saw that "knowledge of the path to eternal, Divine life had always lain in the Church, and that by the action of the Holy Spirit this knowledge is handed down through the centuries, from generation to generation."

From that day, of comprehending these truths, Silouan adopted his "beloved song", as he called it: Soon I shall die, and my accursed soul will descend into the blackness of hell. I shall languish alone in the sombre flames, weeping for my Lord. "Where art Thou, Light of my soul? Why hast Thou forsaken me? I cannot live without Thee."

And why had he gone through all this process to begin with? Silouan had been told by an aged Staretz of another monastery, that Silouan's prayer was not pure. He had too many thoughts to which he clung, and rooted in this distraction, as always, is pride. This form of pride is so subtle, such a spiritual pride, that only humility can rout it from the soul.

This is why Jacob of Serug, in his homily on the Annunciation of Mary, wrote of her humility--and that it was due to her humility that God found her pure among women and chose her to be His mother.

The distractions of evil, of being in the houses of the wicked [thoughts, doings, words of the world], cause one to be scattered and to lose grace, to lose God. The soul is not looking at the Star but rather on the doings of earth. The hermit noticed this with the hate mail and false accusations: prayers were being offered for these souls, but how many other intentions had been neglected? And, the very thoughts of the difficulty with the neighbors disrupted any hope of humility, for self-protection in its own way is rooted in pride.

Where are the courts of the Lord? They are within the Sacred Heart! That is where the hermit, a genderless soul in nothingness, must nest if but for one day. Even being on the threshold--at the entrance of His Wound--than to be in the houses of the wicked!