St. Ignatius Brianchaninov - The Field, Emulating Our Lord Jesus Christ

 

 

Self-love and attachment to things fleeting and full of cares-these are the fruits of self-deception, blindness, spiritual death. Self-love is a twisted love for one's self. This love is insane and fallen. He who is full of self-love, passionate for fleeting pleasure, for sinful indulgence, is an enemy of himself. He is a self-murderer. Thinking to love himself and pamper himself, he ends up hating and destroying himself eternally. Let us look around, we who are entertained, clouded, fooled by the world. Let us awake, we who have been enchanted by the world, denied our true self-knowledge by the world! Let us learn from the experiences happening constantly around us. That which happens around us will inevitably happen to us as well. Did he who spent his entire life searching for honors take them with him into eternity? Did he not leave here on earth his bombastic titles, emblems of excellence, all the luxuries with which he surrounded himself? Did not this man go into eternity only bearing his deeds, his qualities developed during his earthly life?  
He who spent his life gathering riches, who saved a great deal of money, bought huge tracts of land to own, established various businese that brought in much profit, lived in chambers shining with gold and marble, rode around in magnificent carriages and horses - did he take all this with him into eternity? No! He left it all on earth, being content for the last need of the body with the smallest plot of land, in whích all dead men are equally content. He who spent his life in the pursuit of pleasures and enjoyments of the flesh, who spent time with friends playing games and other nonsense, who feasted at sumptuous banquets, is finally pushed away by necessity from his usual way of life. Soon comes old age, illness, and after them, the hour of the separation of the soul from the body. Then he will know, only too late, that serving one's passions and desires is nothing but self-deception that living for the pleasures of the body and sin is living without meaning. Striving for worldly success - how strange, how monstrous it is! This search is frenzied. Hardly has worldly success been found when it immediately loses its value, and the search is renewed with new vigor. It is never happy with the present; it lives only in the future, wanting only those things it does not yet have. The desired objects attract the seeker's heart with the dream and hope of fulfillment. When the seeker is constantly fooled he rushes after more objects for the duration of his life, until unexpected death steals him away. How can one explain this seeking, which treats everyone like a soulless traitor yet still rules over all, still attracts so many? Into our souls has been planted the striving for eternal bliss. But we fell, and our hearts, blinded by our fall, seek in time and on earth that which exists only in eternity and in heaven. The same fate that visited my fathers and brothers will visit me. They died, so will I. I will leave my cell; I will leave behind my books, my clothes, and my writing desk, where I spent many hours. I will leave everything that I needed or thought I needed during this earthly life. They will carry my body out of the cell where I live in anticipation of another life and country. They will carry out my body and give it up to the ground, which served as the beginning of man's body. The same fate will visit you, brothers, who read these words. You will die as well, leaving on earth all that is of the earth. Only with your souls will you enter eternity.  
 
The human soul gathers qualities that coincide with its activity. As a mirror shows the image of the objects placed in front of it, so the soul becomes stamped with the impressions of its deeds and activities, of its surroundings. But while a lifeless mirror loses the reflected images when the objects are removed, the reasoning soul keeps these impressions. They can be wiped elean or removed by others, but this requires work and time. Those impressions that are stamped onto the soul in the hour of its death remain part of the soul forever, and a guarantee of either eternal blessedness or eternal suffering. "You cannot serve God and mammon," said the Lord to fallen man, revealing before humanity that state into which he had been led by the fall. In a similar way, a doctor reveals to the patient his physical state, into which his disease has led him, and which the sick man himself cannot understand. As a result of our spiritual disease, we need timely selfrenunciation and rejection of the world for our salvation. "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other." Experience continually confirms the justice of that outlook on the moral sickness of mankind, which the all-holy physician expressed in the mentioned quote, spoken with decisive straightforwardness-indulging sinful and vain desires always leads to obsession with them, and after the obsession comes slavery, which is death to everything spiritual. Those who allowed themselves to follow their desires and carnal mind became obsessed with them, enslaved by them, forgot God and eternity, and wasted their earthly lives pointlessly, dying an eternal death. It is not possible to follow both your own will and God's will. From the actions of the former, the latter becomes tainted, useless. Thus, a sweetsmelling, precious myrrh loses its worth as it is mixed with even a small amount of foul-smelling liquid. Only then, God says through his prophet, "you shall eat the good of the land" when you willingly hear me. "But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken." It is impossible to know the reason of God if one remains carnally minded. The Apostle said, "For to be carnally minded is death. The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." What is the carnal mind? It is a way of thinking that has come about from the state into which people have been led by the fall, which directs them to act as if they were to live eternally on earth, raising up all that is temporaryand prone to entropy, demeaning God and everything that refers to pleasing God, and taking away salvation from peonte Let us renounce our own souls according to the commandment of the Saviour, in order to find our souls! Let us willingly reject the tainted state into which we have been led by our willing rejections of God, so that we may receive from God the holy state of a human nature renewed bu the incarnate God! Let us replace our will and the will of the demons (to which our will has subjected itself and with which our will has become aligned) with the will of God proclaimed to us in the Gospels. Let us replace our carnal mind-which we share with the fallen spirits - with the reason of God, shining out from the Gospels. Let us renounce our earthly riches so that we are able to follow our Lord Jesus Christ! Renouncing earthly riches becomes possible only with a correct understanding of them. The Gospel provides us with the correct interpretation of dealing with substantial property." When man accepts this correct interpretation, his reason inevitably realizes its truth. Earthly wealth does not belong to us, as those who have never thought about this erroneously believe. Otherwise, it always and forever would remain in our possession. But it changes hands constantly, thereby proving that it is given only for us to watch over temporarily. Wealth belongs to God; man is only the temporary caretaker. A faithful caretaker will follow exactiy the wishes of the one who has entrusted the wealth to him. And we, temporarily ruling over the wealth given to us, must rule over it according to the will of God. Let us not use it as a means of indulging our desires and passions, as a resource for eternal perdition. Let us use it for the good of mankind, which lives in need and suffering; let us use it as a means for our salvation. Those who desire Christian perfection give away their wealth outright." Those who wish to be saved must give alms according to their means, and must not indulge in excess. Let us renounce love of honors and the praise of men! Let us not run after ranks and titles, or use dishonest and demeaning methods to earn them, deriding the laws of God, the conscience, the good of our broth- ers. Such means are most often used for the attaining of earthly glory. He who is infected and enslaved by vainglory, the insatiable seeker after human praise, is unable to believe in Christ. "How can you believe," said Christ to His praise-loving contemporaries, "who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?"