The life of the Orthodox Christian has one goal: to know God. This knowledge, which is the very essence of eternal life (John 17:3), is not academic knowledge but the real knowledge of and about another person that can only be gained by the experience of a long-term relationship. To gain this knowledge and have this experience, we must align our spiritual mind, our “nous”, with the mind of God and purify our spiritual heart so that it is ready to receive the Spirit of God. The means by which we do this and thus establish, build, and nourish our relationship with God are what we refer to when we speak of Orthodox Spirituality.
As in any relationship, we establish our relationship with God by getting to know about Him from as many different sources and in as many different ways as we can. At the very least these include reading the Scriptures and praying. We must keep in mind here that we human beings bring a personal, selfish bias to everything we do, and as such we must remember that while spontaneous prayer and private meditation on Scripture can be profitable, we cannot rely exclusively on ourselves if we expect reading Scripture and praying to be effective. This is why we must attend Church services regularly, incorporate the standard prayers of the Church into our private prayer, and read the Scriptures in the light of the writings of the Church Fathers. It should go without saying that we must not simply go through the motions; rather, we must actively engage in these activities. We must pray humbly, not seeking what we believe to be best for our lives, but rather seeking discernment, hoping to align our will as closely as possible with the Will of God. We must read the Scriptures thoughtfully and with focus, not interpreting them with the aforementioned personal bias (unintentional as that may be), but rather understanding them with the mind of the Church and incorporating them into our lives with the advice of the Fathers. We must participate fully and attentively in the services and regularly partake of the Sacraments, not seeing them as the means by which we obtain eternal life, but rather as gifts through which God physically reveals Himself to us. All of these things lay the foundation of our relationship with God, a foundation to which we must turn often. However, they are only the beginning.
To enter into a deep, meaningful relationship with God requires a certain amount of preparation on our part, and while the activities mentioned above certainly establish the relationship in general, if left only at that level we will have nothing more than a passing friendship with God. We will know Who He is, we will know certain facts about Him, but we will not truly know Him. And while we may say or at least think that we want this deep, meaningful relationship, in attempting to establish it we would immediately have to admit that we are not really ready for it and we certainly are not worthy of it. This is where the more ascetical aspects of Orthodox spirituality are brought to bear. If we want to achieve our goal of eternal life we must turn our attention away from ourselves and toward the needs of others (Matthew 25:31-46); activities such as fasting, giving alms, and setting a daily prayer rule begin this process. Here, however, we must remember that it is a common practice among human beings to be lenient with ourselves, and that this tends to be all the more true of our ascetical practices. If left to our own devising, our fasting rule would conform closely to our current diet, our almsgiving would conform closely to our current lifestyle, and our prayer rule would conform closely to our current schedule. This is why it is important to have a spiritual advisor, someone who can look at our lives from the outside in, call us to task when we are being too soft on ourselves, and remind us of the mercy and forgiveness of God when we are being to hard on ourselves. The Orthodox standards of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer are lofty; taken as “rules” or “laws” they can be both spiritually and physically damaging. A spiritual advisor helps us use these practices as they are intended, not as punitive measures for our criminal acts, but as medicine for our spiritual illnesses, helping us become healthy enough for a real relationship with God.
Having prepared ourselves for and entered into this relationship, we must continue to nourish it, never allowing it to stagnate. We must remain vigilant, tending to it not only in the ways mentioned above but also in special ways such as visiting a monastery, attending a retreat, or reading spiritually enriching material. In visiting a monastery, we have the opportunity to leave the world if only for a few days and experience a life completely devoted to God, focusing on our relationship with Him to the exclusion of everything else in our lives. Of course we must not fool ourselves into thinking that we can bring the entirety of the monastic experience home with us. The rest of our world will be waiting for us when we get home. But focusing our efforts exclusively on our relationship with God, allowing the quietude and stillness to soak into us to the point that we long for it when we return to the world, can help us be more aware of Him in our daily lives, allowing our relationship with Him to be a more important force that underlies all of our thoughts, words, and deeds. Attending a retreat allows us to focus on a particular weakness in our relationship, healing a particular illness rather than working on our overall spiritual health as we would at a monastery. The same is true of reading spiritually beneficial books or articles devoted to healing a particular infirmity or to promoting a specific practice that will lead to better overall spiritual health.
In all of this however, we must keep in mind that ultimately in and of ourselves we can do nothing (John 15:5). It is by the grace of God that we have the ability and opportunity to have this relationship with Him. Our contribution is to take advantage of the opportunity and use the ability to remain as faithful as we can to Him. The lives of the saints and the Theotokos show us that such faithfulness is possible, so learning about them and following their example is another way we care for our spiritual well-being. By praying in the ways He has provided, understanding the Scripture the way He intended as revealed to us by the Church and the Fathers, fasting and giving alms in the ways He has prescribed, and regularly leaving the world to focus exclusively on Him, we can be transformed into a person that more closely resembles the person He intended us to be (Ephesians 2:8-10, Romans 12:2). This transformation will lead us to the purity of heart that will allow us to see God (Matthew 5:8) and to have eternal life.
