Should “zealous” Christians fear hell?

By Archimandrite Lazar (Abashidze) (+2018)

Source: О тайных недугах души [On the Hidden Ailments of the Soul]

 

 

A Christian who has chosen an incorrect path of inner life, one founded not on true repentance but on a certain hidden pride and, together with it, on other passions, does not always notice this himself; even all the signs of this illness may be so deeply concealed that only an experienced spiritual father will be able to detect it. In such a case it must be noted that those around him always notice something unhealthy in the actions of the deluded person sooner than he himself does; therefore, when we are reproved, we must always reflect and many times apply, measure this reproof to ourselves—it is entirely possible that it is not accidental.

In the spiritual struggle, how often the enemy strives to deceive us! The Holy Fathers say that evil spirits also employ such a device: they take away the instruments with which they inflamed our passions and, as it were, withdraw from the person; thus all battles subside and the ailments of the soul are not noticed at all. But when he relaxes and considers himself safe, then the enemy thrusts his poisoned arrow into some most vulnerable part of the soul, kindles within it some most burning hidden passion that has gathered new strength and thirsts for satisfaction. And then the unfortunate man cannot withstand the sudden uprising within himself of such a dark power and easily falls. But the evil spirits know another cunning as well: they may withdraw for a long time, even leaving behind in a person, after their departure, what seem to be the most saving and grace-filled dispositions of the soul—something like zeal for good deeds, for holy labors, ardent fervor for prayer, for fasting, for vigil; even a trembling desire to perform works of mercy, to love all people, to help the poor and rescue the unfortunate; even the strength of patience to endure at times reproaches and slander, the desire to speak humbly of oneself and to undertake certain labors of repentance, and the like. All this not only operates in a person without opposition from the demons, but they themselves also imperceptibly inflame and encourage such movements and dispositions of the soul—yet at the same time the evil spirits subtly touch our vainglory and in the depth of the heart continue to offer their incense to the idol of our pride. The demons seem to have withdrawn, but they carefully watch that this little flame of pride in our soul does not go out. And so: a person lives outwardly in an excellent manner—zealous, modest, truthful, merciful, non-possessive, as though conscientious in everything; he even sometimes grieves over his sins, sometimes even painfully experiences some small offense of his own; he thirsts for purity and perfection; he endures insults, performs many and many things that appear entirely worthy of virtue; yet at the same time that incense to another god—to the idol of the “I”—does not cease to burn in the depths of the heart, becoming thicker with each ascetic labor, and with every “good” deed feeding our pride more and more.

How then can this evil be avoided? Under every unreasonable undertaking of ours, though outwardly good in appearance, the demon of pride tries to place his own censer; the inexperienced Christian does not always know how to examine well what he relies upon at the very beginning of his activity, from what source the roots of this tree of his ascetic striving draw their sap, who in reality encourages these labors of his and appropriates them to himself. The matter is that the true good in us must have its foundation only in the evangelical commandments, and must be carried out either from fear, or from obedience, or from love for God (according to the spiritual height of our life), but in no way for anything else: not for the sake of ascetic striving itself, or “spirituality,” or “goodness” separated from the Gospel, or “morality,” or “holiness,” or even “perfection,” and other lofty virtues understood in an abstract way. Rather, we must strive to perform our deeds in such a way as to fulfill the will of God, having a single aim—to please God. Whatever good a person may do, he cannot place hope in any of it; he must always say: “I am an unprofitable servant; I have done what I was obliged to do, and I have done it weakly and negligently” (Luke 17:10). The commandments of God are so infinitely deep that none of us can fully fulfill them; but the more someone strives to fulfill them, the more he will see his own weakness, his own imperfection, the sinful corruption and estrangement from God within himself. From this awareness there remains for him only to humble himself without end, to reproach himself, until he says, like the Apostle Paul: “of sinners I am first” (1 Tim. 1:15); there remains for him only to hope in the mercy of God, recognizing in himself no merits whatsoever.

But it is not so in the case when a person has as the measure of his deeds not the infinite, but the limited, the earthly; then he assigns a value to his deeds, measuring their weight and significance. Then there arises a morbid zeal, an inconsolable sorrow even over his small lapses—from fear of losing something of his wealth. With such reliance upon his own labors, a person becomes in his own eyes a rich man who diligently gathers and multiplies good; every one of his feats, even the smallest good action, he immediately weighs and places into his storehouse—and this instead of the poverty commanded to us (that we should regard ourselves as completely poor in spirit)!

Such self-satisfied labors, of course, do not have the depth required of deeds truly dedicated to God; they, like those planted in shallow soil, have no roots in the depth of true faith, but their roots spread along the surface and drink the impure juices of various passions. Therefore, in order to understand upon what such ascetic striving rests, one must look not at its external feats, but at the inner self-perception: does a person truly consider himself a sinner, weak, unworthy—not only in words, not even merely with the mind or on the surface of feeling, but in the depth of the heart? There, does he sigh over himself, does he condemn himself, or does the triumph of a victor rejoice there, the joyful acknowledgment of his own significance and God-pleasingness? This can be clearly seen from the following: whether such a person considers himself perishing, fully deserving of the torments of hell and being in real danger of being condemned to go into this eternal hell, so that only by the mercy of God can he be saved, and not by any of his own virtues; that he needs many prayers on his behalf, and that his own deeds and prayers are not sufficient for salvation. But if such a “zealous” Christian, while calling himself sinful, nevertheless is quite firmly convinced that it cannot possibly happen that he would end up in the prisons of hell, having so many good deeds, then such a disposition of heart is a misfortune! A completely different example is given to us by the holy fathers, who even on earth had already attained an angelic state, could perform wondrous miracles, possessed the gift of foresight, had visions and revelations from God; yet when they were dying, they wept inconsolably over themselves and sincerely considered themselves condemned to hell.

When the time of the repose of the holy Abba Agathon had come, the brethren, noticing fear in his face, said: “Father! Do you also fear?” He answered: “Although I have tried with all my strength to keep the commandments of God, yet I am a man—and I do not know whether my deeds are pleasing to God.” The brethren asked: “Are you not certain that your deeds are pleasing to God?” The elder said: “It is impossible for me to be assured of this until I stand before God, for the judgment of God is one thing and the judgment of man another.” [47]

When the time of the repose of Abba Arsenius came, the brethren who were with him saw that he was weeping. The brethren said to him: “Father! Do you also feel fear?” He answered: “I do feel fear. The fear which I experience at this hour has been with me from the time when I became a monk.” [48]

[St.] Poemen the Great used to say to his brethren: “Believe me: where Satan will be cast, there I also will be cast.” [49]

For many years the elder [St.] Silouan bore lofty ascetic labors and endured many painful struggles with demons. Thus, one night, during the elder’s prayer, the evil spirits strongly harassed him and did not allow him to pray with purity. In sorrow and with pain of heart he cried out to the Lord, asking Him to teach him how he should pray and what he should do so that the demons would not hinder him. And he heard an answer in his soul: “The proud always suffer thus from demons.” “Lord,” said the elder, “teach me what I must do so that my soul may become humble.” And again, in his heart came the answer from God: “Keep thy mind in hell and do not despair.” After this the elder Silouan understood that the whole ascetic struggle must be directed toward the acquisition of humility. From that day his “favorite song,” as he himself expressed it, became: “Soon I shall die, and my wretched soul will descend into the narrow black hell, and there alone I shall suffer in the dark flame and will weep for the Lord: ‘Where art Thou, Light of my soul? Why hast Thou forsaken me? I cannot live without Thee.’” [50]

[St.] John Climacus relates that one ascetic monk, from the thought of death, would often fall into ecstasy and, as though deprived of his senses or struck by an epileptic seizure, was carried away by the brethren who were with him, almost without breath. [51]

To confirm the thought that we must always remain in repentance and contrition, the same father recounts the following frightening account: there lived in those regions a certain Stephen who, loving a desert and silent life, spent many years in monastic struggles and shone with various virtues, being especially adorned with fasting and tears. This father withdrew to the places of the hermits in order to undertake a harsher and stricter repentance, and there he lived for several years in an uninhabited desert. Before his death he returned to his cell. A day before his death he fell into ecstasy; with open eyes he looked now to the right and now to the left side of his bed, and as though being interrogated by someone, he said aloud before all who were present sometimes thus: “Yes, indeed, this is true; but I fasted for so many years for this.” At other times: “No, I did not do this; you are lying.” Then again he would say: “Yes, truly so, but I wept and served the brethren.” At times he objected: “No, you slander me.” To another charge he replied: “Yes, indeed so, and I do not know what to say to this; but God has mercy.” Truly it was a terrible and fearful spectacle, says St. John, this invisible and merciless interrogation; and what was most dreadful of all was that he was accused even of things that he had not done. Alas! the silent-dweller and hermit said of some of his sins: “I do not know what to say to this,” although he had spent about forty years in monastic life and had the gift of tears. Woe to me! Woe to me! Where then was the word of Ezekiel, to say to the interrogators: “In whatever I find you, in that I judge you, says God” (Ezek. 33:13, 16)? He could say nothing of the sort. And why? Glory to the One who alone knows. Some also said that in the desert he even fed a leopard from his own hands. During this interrogation his soul departed from the body; and it remained unknown what the decision and outcome of this judgment was and what sentence followed. [52]

The fathers also relate the following account: a certain clairvoyant elder came to a city when a monk highly esteemed by all was dying there. All the inhabitants of the city considered him a holy elder and greatly glorified him; they wept over his death, regarded it as a great loss for themselves, and many hoped through his prayers to be delivered from every temptation. The traveling clairvoyant monk was present at this event, and a terrible vision was revealed to him: he saw dreadful Ethiopians appear with tridents, and a voice was heard from on high: “Give him no rest, because he did not give Me rest for even one hour.” And so these Ethiopians, piercing the soul of the dying man with their tridents, drew it out and dragged it away. Peter of Damascus, a holy father of the eighth century, explains this case as follows: the cause of this was the monk’s exaltation of mind (pride), for if he had had other sins, he could not have concealed them from people, much less committed them every hour. But only pride can, through self-pleasing, conceal itself almost from everyone and even from the very person who possesses it, unless he is allowed to fall into temptations, by which the soul is exposed and comes to know its weakness and folly. Therefore the Holy Spirit did not find rest even for one hour in that wretched soul, because it always held this thought and rejoiced in it as in some good deed; because of this it became darkened like the demons. Not seeing himself as sinning, perhaps that man nourished within himself a single passion instead of others, and that one alone was sufficient for the demons, as being able to take the place of the other vices. [53]

There the holy Peter of Damascus also says: “No one will receive benefit from other virtues, even if he were to live in heaven, if he has pride, through which the devil, Adam, and many others greatly fell. Therefore no one should reject fear until he has reached the haven of perfect love and is outside the world and the body.” [54]

When Abba Macarius the Great came to the skete of Mount Nitria, a great multitude of brethren gathered to him. The elders asked him to speak a word of instruction to the brethren. He, weeping, said to them: “Brethren! Let your eyes shed tears before your departure to that place where our tears will burn our bodies.” All wept and, falling on their faces, said: “Father, pray for us.” [55]

“Now, during earthly life, often descend with your mind into hell, so that your soul and body may not descend there eternally,” taught St. Tikhon, Bishop of Zadonsk. [56]

Only this path—of self-condemnation, of distrust of oneself, of considering oneself the worst of sinners and worthy of every torment—the holy fathers recognized as saving and safe. Having chosen the correct path of spiritual life, it is in no way possible not to pass along the path of fear and trembling for one’s soul; all who were saved walked by it.

 

References

47. Bishop Ignatius Bryanchaninov. Otechnik. p. 61, no. 25.

48. Ibid., p. 53, no. 16.

49. Ibid., p. 329, no. 21.

50. Elder Silouan. ch. 2, pp. 20–22.

51. John Climacus. Step 6, 17.

52. John Climacus. Step 7, 50.

53. Works of Peter of Damascus, book 2, discourse 24, pp. 127–128.

54. Ibid., p. 117.

55. Bishop Ignatius Bryanchaninov. Otechnik. p. 310, no. 7.

56. Ibid., p. 364, no. 24.

 

Online: https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Lazar_Abashidze/o-tajnyh-nedugah-dushi/#0_7