Kyivan Spirituality

The question of spirituality is of immense interest for all human beings, but for those of us who are seeking salvation within the fold of the Holy Orthodox Church this question is of fundamental, profound importance. In fact it is a question of life and death, for it is our spiritual condition that dictates how we live our lives, how we see ourselves and treat those we come in contact with. It affects our worldview, our ideas, desires, moods, and even our understanding of ethical and environmental issues which in this day and age have become so important to so many. Finally and most importantly, it is our spiritual condition that enables us to unite ourselves to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to attain salvation in and through Him. In this paper I will attempt to discuss what Kyivan spirituality is and what it is not, and while complete understanding of this complex subject is both beyond my understanding and out of the scope of this paper, I will do my best to rely on the teachings of the Fathers of the Church and the Holy Scriptures to illustrate the themes which I feel are most important to us as Orthodox Christians serving our Lord in the UOC of USA in the twenty-first century.

Before we attempt to delve into “Kyivan Spirituality” we must come to a realization that there is really no such thing. While it is certain that by the grace of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit Kyivan Rus became fertile soil for Christian spirituality, it is also important to note that in truth Kyivan Spirituality is Orthodox Spirituality and thus it is really one and the same as Byzantine, Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian, Antiochian, Cappadocian or any other truly Orthodox spiritual school of thought. In other words, there is really only Orthodox and non-Orthodox Spirituality. Having said that we must also concur that there are in fact different expressions of Orthodox Spirituality based on the cultural, social and sometimes even political landscape of a given country, in this case Kyivan Rus. One has to only look at the Byazntine and Kyivan portrayals of the Christ in iconography to prove this point. In the Byzantine tradition, Christ is most often written as Pantocrator seated in a throne in a commanding and powerful posture, while in Kyivan iconography He is more often than not depicted as a “sacrificial Lamb who opened not his mouth before his shearer.” This is probably because of the tremendous influence of the first Kyivan saints Boris and Gleb. The brothers who became passion bearers for the sake of Christ left a lasting mark on Slavic Spirituality in general and Kyivan Spirituality in particular, and it is arguable that the cult of these saints helped shape the Ukrainian understanding of Christ and His sacrifice in a slightly different way than in Byzantine tradition. Further the “mother earth” and seasonal pagan practices of pre-Christian Kyivan Rus made the Ukrainians and the Russians especially ripe for Christian revelation as our people had no trouble at all understanding the role of the Theotokos and the renewal of the world and everything in it during Pascha. All this is certainly true, but one thing we must keep in mind is the fact that there is only one Truth, one way and one salvation. This one Truth is neither Ukrainian, nor Arabic, nor Serbian. In the light of this Truth there is neither Gentile nor Jew, neither Barbarian nor Scythian for “as many of us have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ”. The Truth is unchanging as it has always been, and it will always be until the world as we known it passes away. Thus it is our goal as Orthodox Christians to understand what it means to live in this One Truth which does not make national or ethnic distinctions but rather brings us and binds together as the One Body of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ united by his holy Blood into a new nation, a Heavenly Jerusalem which transcends any of the so called ism’s which divide us into groups. It is our goal than to learn how to live a spiritual life and having done that to apply what we have learned to our daily lives. For “the most subtle understanding of spiritual things” comes “from practice and experience.” (Philokalia, pg. 151 St. Simeon The New Theologian)

Having established that there is only Orthodox and non-Orthodox Spirituality we then need to answer a very important question and this question is, “Why?” Why should one strive to live a spiritual life? What is our ultimate goal? What are we as Orthodox Christians trying to accomplish? What is our final destination? To be able to answer the question of where we are going it is, at least in this case, imperative to understand where we came from, and for that we must go back to the account of creation found in Genesis.

There is an often-quoted verse from the Old Testament, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26) As eye opening and fundamental as this verse is to our understanding of not only spirituality, but of all of salvation history and Christian revelation, the next verse is no less earth shattering. Incredibly, Genesis 1:27 says, “So God made man; in the image of God.” There is an obvious omission there. Adam receives the image of God, and because he receives the perfect image of our maker he is then able to attain his likeness. Thus the likeness of God was not given to Adam, but was rather attainable by him through the virtue of possession of the unblemished image of the Lord. Above all, man received free will. God does not force Adam to work towards this ultimate goal of attaining God’s likeness and thus becoming God-like, but rather Adam is free to choose whether to obey God or to break God’s divine law. Adam chooses whether to do good or evil. Finally Adam receives a divine commandment in the form of a fast. Adam is to temporarily abstain from eating the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fact that this is a temporary fast is very well illustrated by such Saints as St. Gregory the Theologian and our own St. Kiril of Turov, who wrote, “He (Adam) had entered the holy place before he was bidden.” (The Hagiography of Kievan Rus, pg. 63) This explanation really makes sense because, after all, we do not fast from things that are evil, but rather fast from things that are good. The Orthodox Church does not tell us that during the Great Lent we must abstain from murder, lying and stealing. We are to abstain from doing evil at all times, but rather we are asked to abstain from things which are otherwise good for us i.e. dairy, oil and meat. St. Ephraim the Syrian teaches that partaking of the fruits of the Tree in due time, after completing the divine fast, would in fact bring man in communion with God and give Adam the likeness of the maker. In other words, Adam can be seen as a Priest who was to bring a sacrificial offering and then partake of the Tree, or rather partake of the Lord Himself. Alas, due to Adam’s disobedience the fast is broken, the sacrificial offering is not brought, and instead of communion with God there is theft. Adam steals the gifts. He steals the fruits. He wants to become God without God. He wants to attain the likeness of God without communion with God. He wants to attain paradise without God in it; or rather he wants to be God himself. Already, even before God’s curse, Adam feels the sting of his actions. “The Lord God called Adam and said to him, ‘Adam where are you?’” Adam loses his connection to God. He loses communion with Him. He cannot hear God’s words in his heart any longer. In fact, he hides from God to cover his nakedness. It is truly ironic that the “wisdom” Adam receives from the Tree of Knowledge, makes him believe that he can hide from God under a bush. Ultimately, the image of God that Adam carries within himself becomes distorted. Men lose the ability to attain the likeness of God having lost the perfect image. Death, suffering, and disease enter the world, and all generations after Adam receive not the unblemished image of God, but rather the distorted image of Adam. “And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth.” (Genesis 5:3) In other words, the effects of the fall were devastating. A modern day Russian theologian, Professor A.I. Osipov compared Adam to a man who goes scuba diving, and having seen the beauty of the underwater worlds, decides to stay there and cuts his oxygen supply believing he can make it on his own. Although Adam did not ultimately suffer death, he became subject to negative mental, spiritual and physical changes. Through separation from God, man also became disjointed and separated. In fact, our heart, mind and body most often work against one another. While our heart is telling us to pray, our mind is telling us to watch television while our body is screaming for food and carnal pleasure.

Having spoken about the downfall of man, we must now turn to our salvation. Obviously Christians believe that our salvation is brought about by the incarnation, ministry, passion, resurrection and finally ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Having said that, I believe it is imperative that we understand as much as our limited minds allow, what Christ actually did for us in His ministry and most importantly on the Cross. After all, we cannot take up our own Cross and follow the Lord if we haven’t the slightest idea where it is that we are headed.

Through the Genesis account of the fall and the writing of the fathers, it is clear that man was created for communion with God. He was called to achieve this union with the Maker through attaining His likeness. This is the foundation upon which Orthodox Spirituality is built. “God became man so that man can become God”. In other words, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ became man to “restore the fallen image to its former glory” giving us the opportunity to achieve His likeness. Having said that, there is one question that immediately comes to mind. If Christ did in fact restore the unblemished image of God, why is it that we are still subject to sin, disease and death? Why are we still subject to the wounds inflicted in the fall? In other words, we have to ask ourselves how we can take advantage of the sacrifice of Christ? How can we join ourselves to Him? How can we restore the “fallen image” in ourselves? How do we unite our disjointed members subjecting our heart, mind and body to the one living God? I believe that all of these fundamental questions are answered by Orthodox Spirituality, and I believe that these are the very questions that Orthodox Spirituality must answer. After all, we are Orthodox for one reason and one reason only. It is to attain salvation. Works on Orthodox Spirituality should not be used for intellectual summersaults or just for the sake of philosophizing. Rather Orthodox Spirituality should provide concrete answers on how to save us. We must take advantage of the fact that God became man by nature giving us the opportunity to become God through Grace. Before we attempt to discuss the way to deification, let us talk briefly about how Christ deified the very humanity that He took up.

“In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” (Hebrews 2:10) Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was perfect God and perfect man, yet we often forget that the humanity he took up was still a humanity that was suffering the wounds inflicted by the fall. Christ got hungry when he fasted, he got tired when he walked long distances, he cried when he found out about the death of his friend Lazarus and he was even tempted by the devil. In other words the Lord was truly man in every way. Through his Incarnation, passion and especially His Crucifixion, He healed the wounds inflicted by original sin. He deified the humanity that he took up “through suffering”. This should come as no surprise. The world was made by God. Everything in the world, every living and non-living thing, every natural and physical law was created by God. There is one law that often goes unnoticed because we are so used to seeing it throughout our whole life. Nothing that is damaged, wounded or broken can be fixed or healed without effort, tears, pain and suffering. One cannot even repair a malfunctioning computer without spending a considerable time working on it. One cannot even put a ripped book together without hard work. How much more is it true when it comes to our nature that was wounded in the fall? How much more is it true for the distorted image of God that we were suffering from before our Lord brought us salvation? How much more is this true when we are talking about defeating the devil, sin and death itself? It is clear than that the Son of God had to come, and He had to be crucified to return us to God through His own suffering and ultimately His death on the Cross. Truly death had to be conquered by death, and not just any death, but the death of the only begotten Son of God who having free will, chose to sacrifice Himself for the sake of the world. Through the suffering on the Cross, He deified the very humanity that he took up, granting us salvation. Through His glorious resurrection, through the ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit, we inherit the ability to be remade in the perfect image of Christ. We gain the ability to follow in His footsteps, take up our own Cross and follow Him. We inherit the small “mustered seed” sowed in our hearts and souls that enables us to attain theosis. We gain the ability to be deified both spiritually and physically. After all, there are countless accounts of God’s Holy Saints being physically changed, lifted up off of the ground during prayer, shining brighter than the sun itself and seeing the uncreated Light of Tabor while still in this world. Truly then we are called to be the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, the witnesses to Christ’s divinity while we are still living here, in this world.

The question one might ask next is the very question asked of the Apostle Peter as he stood and proclaimed the Son of God from the rooftop on the day of Pentecost. What must we do? Of course we can give the simple answer that we need to believe in the Son of God and be baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, however having done that we must not stop, but rather always progress up the ladder in bringing ourselves closer and closer to God.

As Christians, we must first and foremost realize that we are not well. We must realize that it is the goal of our Christian lives to discard “the old man with his works” and put “on the new, created in the image of God.” (Manjava Skete, pg. 79) We must understand that we are sick, full of passions both known and unknown to us. We must come to a realization that we are perishing before we can accept the hand that is extended by our Lord and that is waiting to save us from drowning as He saved the Apostle Peter when the disciple lost faith. This sounds simple enough, but it is easier said than done. The society we live in, the television shows we watch, the schools we are educated in program us to believe that we are just fine. We are taught from a very young age not only to believe that we are wonderful people, but to also feel pride in everything we do. Even our loved ones and relatives who have the best intentions tend to lead us into this dangerous deception. Why is it dangerous? Because our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ stated over and over again that He “did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Matt 9:30) He stated over and over again that He came to heal those who are in need of a physician, not to those who are healthy. If we do not believe that we are sick, if we do not believe that we are perishing, then we do not need a Savior. If we do not believe that we are fallen, we do not need a hand to pick us up. Ultimately, if we believe that we are okay, we do not need Christ. It is painfully obvious that when the Lord said that He did not come to those who were righteous He said it with a grain of sarcasm, because the very people who counted themselves among the most righteous, actually crucified the Son of God. Having established the fact that we need to realize that we are sick before we can ask Christ for help, we need to also understand that simply stating that we know we are sinners is not enough. There is only one real way to know how far you have fallen and it is through “forcing yourself to do all His commandments.” (Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky, pg. 50) Only then do we begin to see how far off the mark we are. After all, the Lord left us the commandments because he wanted us to keep them. It is not for nothing that he taught that the ones who love him will surely keep his commandments. “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." (John 14:15) It is imperative to realize that it is keeping the commandments that actually make us man as God intended us to be from our very creation. “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt 5:38) In the writings of Monks Callistus and Ignatius we read that “the principle and root of all activity natural to us is to live in accordance with the saving commandments.” (Philokalia, pg. 168) Further, it is by forcing ourselves to keep the commandments that we realize that we are in dire need of help because it is absolutely impossible for us to keep them on our own. This is best realized by someone who tries for just one day in his or her life to keep all of the commandments of Christ and to live every minute, every second of the day as Christ would have done. This kind of test truly reveals our shortcomings. St. Simeon the Theologian writes, “a strict observance of commandments teaches men a deep realization of their own weakness.” (Philokalia pg. 97) This is of great importance because we do not only learn how weak and sick we really are, but we begin to acquire true humility, one of the most basic virtues, on our way to salvation. St. Paisius Velichkovsky, for example, spent much time “understanding his sins and daily faults, and the death which will come unexpectedly.” (Blessed Paisisus Velichkovsky, pg. 52) Thus it is only by keeping the divine commandments that we begin to reach out to God and ask Him to forgive us, to change us, to help us with an open heart. This in fact teaches us to pray properly.

In his essay on keeping attention and prayer, St. Simeon the Theologian explains that in order to reach the heights of spirituality one must begin with basics. One should not begin by an attempt to imagine the Heavens and celestial powers. One should not also try to conquer lack of attention by force of his own will, rather one must “keep your conscience clear in three respects: in relation to God, in relation to your spiritual father and in relation to other men, as well as to things and objects of the world.” (Philokalia, pg. 156) In other words we must first love God and our brothers and sisters that are in fact the two most important commandments upon which “hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt 22:40) Thus keeping the commandments is the foundation of a successful prayer life. It is the beginning of our spiritual journey to Christ. It is keeping the commandments that changes us and molds us into real Disciples of Christ and brings us humility that will in turn set us on the road to theosis.

Keeping the commandments of the Lord makes us look within ourselves. It makes us continually examine our own heart. The commandments open our spiritual eyes to the needles of sin that wound our whole being without our knowledge. In a recent lecture, Father Anthony Perkins compared the condition of the unaware sinner to the condition of a man who has leprosy. The leper may not know that he is sick until it is too late because the nerve endings that send signals to the brain when he encounters pain are in fact dead. The sinner in the very same way continues to hurt himself without even knowing that he is mortally wounded. It is a truly horrible condition that can only be remedied by a close examination of one’s heart through strict observance of the divine commandments. This observance sets us against the world which continually tells us that our lack of success, our depression, our failure to have good relationships or even our failure as a nation are all results of harmful outside influence. We are led to believe that we are good, while the world around us is evil and we fail because our boss is evil, our wife does not respect us, the wrong party is in charge of the country and so on and so forth. Orthodox spirituality however teaches us to first and foremost examine ourselves and find out what is wrong within ourselves. More often than not it is we who need to change, it is we who are wounded rather than those around us. Orthodoxy leads us to look for “the treasure buried in the field of” our own “heart”. (Philokalia, Nicephorus the Solitary, pg. 22) “Try to enter your inner treasure-house and you will see the treasure-house of heaven.” (Philokalia, Nicephorus the Solitary, pg. 30)

Finally our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Himself teaches us that the Kingdom of Heaven is found within our own hearts and it is exactly by using the Gospel as a living guide, by judging our own actions by the standards set by Christ, that we begin to clean the dirt of sin and passions away and begin to see the divine glow that we ourselves carry in our very hearts. The result of such self-examination is humility that teaches us to treat everything that happens to us with a firm understanding that God’s will governs all, and that all things happen because God allows them to happen and they are in fact for our own benefit. This is in fact a very strong theme found in Orthodox Spirituality in general and in Kyivan Spirituality in particular.

This kind of example of acceptance of God’s will is found in the very first Ukrainian Saints Boris and Gleb who refused to take up arms against their brother. In the Sophia Senyk Manjava Skete it says on pg. 144 that the road to the Kingdom of Heaven lies through sorrows. The elder Job sees even disease and sickness as gifts sent by God to guide us towards communion with Him. (Manjava Skete pg. 81) This kind of humble approach is found all throughout Orthodoxy. The Gospel teaches that we "Enter (the Kingdom of God) through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." Again, we must emphasize the fact that Christ “perfected” the humanity that He took up through suffering. When we are told that we are to take up our Cross and follow Christ we should not expect to have it easy. Perhaps we can better understand and accept this if we rethink one of the most profound verses and in my humble opinion one of the most important and greatest revelations of Christian scripture. This verse is found in 1 John 4:8 and it teaches us that “God is Love.” If we truly believe that, we will then be able to fully give our lives to God knowing that He would never do anything to harm us. We would face hardships with a firm faith, hope and love for God, and we would thank Him for sending the hardships for our spiritual benefit.

I believe St. Anthony the Great sums this up best in the Philokalia. “God is good, dispassionate and immutable. Now someone who thinks it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change, may well ask how, in that case, it is possible to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good and showing mercy to those who honor Him, while turning away from the wicked and being angry with sinners. To this it must be answered that God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right to imagine that God feels pleasure or displeasure in a human way. He is good, and He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. On the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him; but if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him. By living in holiness we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked we make Him our enemy. It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way, but it is that our sins prevent God from shining within us, and exposes us to the demos who punish us. If through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him change, but that through our actions and our turning to God we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.” (Philokalia Volume One, St Anthony the Great, pg. 352) Thus we see that God is love and only love. He loves the sinner as much as He loves the righteous man. If we receive hardships it is not because God is angry with us, but it is often because our own actions prompt a reaction and we need to be brought into communion with God. Truly if time travel was a possibility and a caveman would be brought into our time he would be amazed by what he would see in a hospital. A doctor prescribes very different remedies and medications to different patients. One man is advised to take a vacation, another is given antibiotics and the third is rushed to the surgery room. This does not mean that the doctor loves the first man and hates the last one, but rather that the patients have very different ailments. In the same fashion God who is love and only love employs different medications for different patients who come into His Holy hospital which is our Church. Finally if we realize this we will not only be able to better understand and accept God’s will, but we will also be able to truly love and help our brothers and sisters even if they do have shortcomings. After all a man suffering from liver cancer does not criticize his roommate who is afflicted by the cancer of the lungs. Rather one is understanding towards the other in every way trying to strengthen and help the unfortunate fellow sharing his room.

Thus as I understand it Orthodox Spirituality consists of following the commandments of Christ to be able to see our weaknesses and need for the Crucified and Risen Lord. Having done that, we ask our Lord to strengthen us. We pray for humility and acceptance so we begin to see all things in our lives as sent by Him for our benefit. Through suffering and often through being spirituality crucified in our own lives, we begin to be transformed and deified through the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of our works is learning how to truly love God and our brothers and sister in Christ. I would say that in the end we attain theosis through the acquisition of love, for God Himself is Love!