In a country that sadly has tens of thousands of Christian denominations preaching different gospels throughout our land, one of the questions that gets posed to me the most when I enter into conversations with others is: “Are you saved?”
Have you ever had that question posed to you, or ever had a conversation with someone where you were speaking about what “salvation” actually is? It’s hard to have these kinds of discussions with others, because it is like speaking two different languages! For many out there, Salvation is about being “saved” from hell fire and living in heaven. But Salvation for an Orthodox Christian means something completely different. Salvation is a journey towards Theosis….towards a Divine Union with God. Or perhaps my favorite description: Salvation is about becoming “Truly Human”
We are given a rather graphic depiction of this reality in the Gospel account of the Gerasene Demoniac. This story, which shows up in three of the synoptical Gospels (Mark, Luke, and Matthew), tells about a man who was greatly tormented by demons. His life was full of absolute chaos! He lived in the darkness of the tombs among the dead, and no one could tame him, not even with chains. The demoniac would go out at night, crying out and cutting himself with stones, in a life that more resembled a wild dog than a human being!
All of that changed when Christ came into the demoniac’s presence. The demons recognized Christ and begged Him “Not to send them into the abyss.”
There is a fantastic podcast on Ancient Faith Radio called “The Lord of Spirits” Podcast, which really sheds some amazing light on this text about “the Abyss”. In the Ancient near east, bodies of water often represented chaos, and underneath the waters was the area of the underworld where the demons existed called the Abyss. It was the worst place you could be in the underworld…deep beneath chaos…and the demons begged Christ not to send them there!
So instead, Jesus sends the demons into the herd of swine, who immediately become chaotic, run swiftly over the cliff into the water, and ironically ended up in “the Abyss” anyway! This is why in the baptismal service for the Orthodox Church, we say in the exorcism prayers that the demons have no power…not even to control swine!
This entire scene is a striking reminder of what happens when we allow ourselves to be overcome by passions and demonic thoughts leading to sin. It is a life of destruction and chaos. It turns us from becoming truly human beings to becoming “insane”, which is why in the prayer of St. Ephraim that we read during Great Lent, we ask God for “Chastity” (literally “for sanity”) by helping us turn away from any thought or passion that takes our focus off of Christ.
I was having dinner this past week with a parishioner who lived through some pretty chaotic times in Macedonia just after the war. She was sharing with us about how back then, even though there was a lot of chaos in the world, life was so much simpler back then.
I would venture to say that our lives have more chaos in them now than at any other point in our history. I’m not speaking about political or natural chaos like a pandemic, but rather internally. Even our thoughts, the millions of things that we have going on inside of our minds, are enough to drive us crazy! We have forgotten silence…that attribute that is so desperately needed if we are to allow Christ to come into our midst.
So often, we put so much emphasis on doing the external things that the Church calls us to do, that we neglect the place that needs the most attention: The inner workings of our souls. This is one of the reasons why Liturgy, coming to Church, and paying attention to what is being said is so important! We so often refer to the Liturgy as “entering into the Kingdom”, because we leave the world outside of the four walls of the Church, lay aside our earthly cares, and focus on God Who has come into our midst in that very moment. This is why we have things like icons, and incense, and hymnography! These things are meant to help us focus on what it is we are there for, and to keep the stray thoughts at bay!
Once we leave the four walls of the Church, when we are once again bombarded by the chaos of the world, we are given another powerful weapon that teaches us to control our interior thoughts. It is a beautiful prayer that we try so hard to practice and make a part of our life: The Jesus Prayer.
“O Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy upon me the sinner.”
That prayer is so VITAL for our salvation, brothers and sisters in Christ. St. Barsanuphius of Optina once said: “The acquisition of interior prayer is essential. Without it, one cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven…Let your first act, as soon as you wake up, be the sign of the Cross, and let your first words be the words of the Jesus Prayer.”
Practicing this prayer allows us to focus all of our interior thoughts on one thing: God Himself. It brings us from chaos to clarity…from insanity to sanity…from being a wild beast to a true Human Being, made in the image and likeness of our Creator.
How can we begin to think about Salvation, about what is to come after we pass on from this life, if we cannot manage to focus our interior thoughts on Christ for more than a few seconds? Once the chaos for the demoniac ended and the demons were once again cast into the abyss, what do we see? Everything changed for him! We see a man sitting in the presence of Christ, his life for the first time being put into order. May our Lord strengthen us with that same order, so that we can weed out the nonsense that the enemy tries to lay within us, and commend our thoughts and our whole being unto Christ our God!