Reflecting on the lives of great ascetics, I am continually amazed by their unwavering resolve to embrace hardship, deliberately making their lives arduous and demanding. Modern society strives relentlessly for material comfort and excess, yet saints like Anthony and Macarius of Egypt pursued the opposite. They too labored intensely—not for wealth, but to live in poverty and embrace suffering.
To us, this seems incomprehensible. Our modern “Christianity” bears as much resemblance to the faith of Egypt’s desert dwellers as a pampered housecat does to a lion of the wilderness. Though of the same nature, their strength differs as vastly as a kitten’s purr differs from a lion’s roar. The root of this weakness, as Saint Seraphim of Sarov succinctly noted, is a lack of resolve.
A housecat may possess the latent heart of a predator, but it must first remember it is not merely a child’s plaything.
Asceticism is the salt that preserves our souls, rendering them fit for the Kingdom of God. It breathes life into prayer, awakens spiritual vigor, and purifies the heart of passions. To ascend to the heavenly realm, the soul must turn its gaze from the earthly. This requires solitude and the steadfast labor of a disciplined life.
Love for this world rests on three pillars: lust (pursuit of bodily and emotional pleasures), greed (distorted attachment to material gain), and vainglory (prideful craving for recognition). These passions chain humanity to the earth. No one can rise to heaven without uprooting these three idols. Herein lies the “resolve” Saint Seraphim accused us of lacking.
Μετάνοια (metanoia)—a transformation of the mind—demands a complete reordering of values and way of life. God calls us to ruthless resolve, even to the point of “hating” our former selves (Luke 14:26). Half-hearted asceticism or fleeting religious sentiment holds no meaning. Salvation is absolute: either we attain eternal life, or we do not. All else is trivial.
Two wings lift our earthbound souls heavenward: renunciation of the world and prayer of the heart.
Though we cannot retreat to the Egyptian desert, we may withdraw into the inner desert of our hearts, shielding ourselves from the world’s corruption. This requires cultivating an inner stillness diametrically opposed to the spirit of consumerism—a world manipulated by marketers, politicians, and other “shepherds” who view humanity as a numb, numbered biomass. Yet the lives of modern elders—Glinsk, Pochaev, Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, and others—reveal that even amidst apostasy, we may remain unscathed, gathering the same nectar of the Holy Spirit as the ancient desert fathers.
To “live like everyone else” is to befriend the world—and “friendship with the world is enmity against God” (James 4:4). Every compromise with the world is a sacrifice on Satan’s altar. The great ailment condemning modern Christians is worldliness—a tapestry woven of false motives, trends, success, wealth, and vanity.
Beauty, truth, and courage have lost their sacred meaning. Profanity is normalized; cunning and deceit are hailed as virtues. As Paul the Apostle declared, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ… I have discarded all things as rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).
Without establishing a spiritual hierarchy of values, salvation is impossible.
Otherwise, even our good deeds—building churches, giving alms, aiding the poor—become fragmented distractions, leaving us shipwrecked. The Christian’s singular aim is to “seek first the Kingdom of God” (Luke 12:31), which is “within you” (Luke 17:21). External acts alone are insufficient; inner labor is essential: taming thoughts, rejecting sinful impulses, and quieting passions. Only then can the heart attain the stillness necessary for pure prayer.
Asceticism—through fasting, silence, and detachment—is not a monastic privilege but the essence of salvation. As Elder Porphyrios the Kafsokalyvite taught, “If you wish to find God, first abandon your phone, internet, idle chatter, and vanity…” Grace flees at the slightest impurity—a word of judgment, a spark of anger, a lustful thought. Even minor inclinations toward evil sever our boldness before God.
“Live with utmost care,” urged Elder John (Krestiankin). This echoes the wisdom of the Desert Fathers, whose teachings begin with the Egyptian ascetics.
Salvation demands not merely external piety but a heart aflame—a resolve to transcend the world’s illusions and cling to the eternal.
Translated by The Catalogue of Good Deeds
Source: https://spzh.eu/ru/chelovek-i-cerkovy/84330-my-zabyli-vovse-chto-znachit-spasatsja
