Here is a story that preserves a "saying" Abba Mius once made:A soldier asked Abba Mius if God accepted repentance. After old Mius had taught the soldier many things, Mius said, "Tell me, my dear, if your cloak is torn, do you throw it away?" The soldier replied, "No, I mend it and use it again." Old Abba Mius said to him, "If you are so careful about your cloak, will not God be equally careful about his creature?" (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. Benedicta Ward. Kalamazooo, MI, 1984, 150; lightly edited)What a wonderful story that underscores the spiritual wisdom of a Desert Father. I espeically like the manner in which Abba Mius addresses the lieutenent colonel with "My dear." Even those in power deserve to be addressed courteously. And just in case you don't quite get the full import of the tale, Roberta Bondi in To Pray and Love: Conversations on Prayer with the Early Church provides this short commentary:
Sin does not destroy God's love and yearning for us. Sometimes it is said that the real wonder of our faith is that God loves us in spite of our unloveableness. Our monastic ancestors would find such a way of speaking quite alien. To God we are lovable and valuable, however damaged we may be. God's love is always there whether or not we can feel it, whether we seem good or bad to ourselves or to others, or whether or not we respond to God. It is a love that does not depend on our "being good."
A few days ago I mended with some glue an old sandal whose strap had broken loose. Now when I wear it out in the workshop, Abba Mius reminds me that as the repaired shoe is to me so I am to God: I am God's Andrew whom He made, "knit," and fashioned in my mother's womb, whom in Holy Baptism He claimed as his own, and whom He repairs and fixes me up when my life gets frayed, broken, and torn. God loves an old shoe like me. He glues me back together.
Image: St. Menas and Christ
2 comments:
Good thoughts, Andrew. I just have to wonder at Scripture, however, which does seem to want a response to grace- I mean that God wants a response from us. Not that grace isn't present when we don't respond. But there does seem a point in which we can sin against grace and despise God's love in the process, or something of the like.
Yes, Ted, often the thoughts of the Desert Elders are good, and, yes, Our Lord Jesus wants us to respond to His grace so that we don’t sin against God nor despise His love. On the one hand, sinning and despising is what not to do. On the other hand, living with the mind of Christ is what God wants us to do.
During last Sunday's Eucharist, in the Gospel proclamation (Matthew 22), we heard Jesus tells us the story about the man who showed up without his wedding garment at the marriage banquet. Somehow he managed to forget he was in the bridal party! He was acting as though all he needed to do was show up; he had left his “baptismal robe” at home, forgetting that he was baptized into the death and resurrection (new life) of Christ. The end of the story is tragic; the man is hustled outside the wedding banquet hall!
The Desert Elders knew this story, of course; as a consequence, they strove mightily always to wear their wedding garments. But at the end of the day, they also knew that they had managed, in one way or another, to soil and stain their baptismal robes. Realizing that they could live only, day by day, with the cleansing mercies of God, they tried hard to act like their Lorde, full of forgiveness—even as they prayed, “Forgive us our sins and we forgive those who sin against us.”
In my own family life, during Evening Prayer, after the lighting of the candles and quietly chanting Psalm 141 ("Let my prayer rise before you as incense"), my wife and I always pause for several minutes to examine before God what has happened in our lives during the day. That close inspection always reveals that I/we have somehow managed to sin (as we later say in Compline) "in thought, word, and deed by my fault, by my own fault, by my most grievous fault." After our mutual silent spiritual examination, together we offer this prayer: “Let the incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with the Church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you forever and ever.” Then we go on, singing the psalms, reading and discussing the lesson, making our intercessions and closing prayers. They it’s off to bed.
Or again: last Sunday morning June and I knelt at the beginning of the Liturgy for several minutes of quiet reflection and self-examination and then together with all our Christian brothers and sisters confessed our sins: “Holy and compassionate God, we have not loved you with our whole hearts; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have failed to worship you with our whole being and to share the feast of grace you give us. We have acted out of selfish ambition rather than the interests of others; we have nursed grudges rather than seeking reconciliation and peace. Forgive and renew in us the mind of Christ Jesus, that we may live according to your will.” So we are generally pretty much aware of ourselves as sinners before God; at the very same time we know God loves us; and at the very same time we want to grow in Christ. And always, at the very same time, God again and again speaks love, everlasting love, to us; and we rejoice in his mercies, asking him to help us live more fully in Christ, loving one another, providing for the poor, welcoming the stranger, forgiving sisters and brothers, proclaiming the Gospel, inviting all to the banquet.
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