With the Eyes of God

You may ask, what is going on here? This epigram is not from St. Matthew's Gospel. It is from yesterday's Gospel lesson. It is intensely personal. In fact, it contemplates the most intimate moment of our lives — when every notable act and thought and desire, including our every secret and shame, will be searched out by the One Who Alone knows us fully and completely. We said this morning, "All hearts are open to you, O Lord. From you no secrets are hid."

The corresponding passage depicted in St. Matthew's Gospel, by contrast, is a very public event. Everyone is there; no one is left out: the Son of God sits upon His throne of glory; all the angels stand beside Him; and all the nations are gathered before Him:

We might search the breadth and depth of the Scriptures, but we will not find such a plenary gathering exceeding this one. It is reminiscent of Isaiah 43, where God calls the entire human lifeworld to account.

But how will He perform this Herculean feat? Questioning the mechanics of how He does it is like asking how God can hear everyone's prayers. It is a devilish question. Even human technology can accommodate three million telephone conversations or 90,000 television channels on a fiber optic thread that could pass through the eye of a needle. But this falls as far short of God as a light bulb falls short of the starry sky. God is present everywhere. He hovered over the void and created the universe with His Eternal Logos endowing each created thing with Divine essence. At the Incarnation He entered our world as a human creature renewing each human atom to be destined for His marvelous Kingdom. He said, "I am with you until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20). And the royal example of that Emmanuel, of that Presence-with-us, is our conscience.

Our conscience is not counted among our human organs. It is not a region of the brain. It is not made of organic tissue. It is a spiritual organ set within us at conception. I think of it as an embassy, for an embassy is located within a sovereign nation, yet it is the native soil of the country who established it. In fact, we have established within us the native soil of the greatest among nations, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. And however much some might repudiate it, yet it is there, impassive in its glorious sovereignty and possessing an incommensurable dignity. In that sense, our conscience is the authentic Voice of God within us. When the "ambassador" speaks, God's will is heard.

We know empirically that our conscience is not us. We blithely choose for things not in accord with God's will. Yet we can feel its Presence; sometimes we feel it powerfully. Do we not suddenly lose peace of mind when we sin? I quoted Shakespeare this morning before the Liturgy. Illicit sex, Shakespeare wrote, is

Are we not physically ill at our most extreme ungodly actions — tormenting us for the rest of our lives, indeed, for rest of our eternal lives. (I mean the most heinous sins.) Jesus says, that when the rebellious are

This "worm" is the sum of our unreconciled shames, which gnaws at our spiritual vitals, which preys upon our minds. "The remembrance of them is grievous unto us, and the burden of them is intolerable," in the words of an Early English prayer. I say an intolerable burden .... forever.

Many try to "medicate" this worm with hard liquor or powerful drugs. Yet it cannot be killed but only grows stronger manifested in rage and destruction. Perhaps you have known someone who has tried to deal with this worm — drunken rages through the night .... night after night after night.

I spoke to such a tormented man, who had rejected God and rejected the priests sent to him. He had no inclination for godly counsel or the sacraments. He told me, "Soon it will be over. I will finally have quiet of mind at my death." I replied, "Your death will only begin the greater life. This world is but a shadow of the vivid reality ahead."

How did the war with our conscience begin, which has brought many to a ghastly end? It begins precisely the way it has ended: by steadfastly ignoring God.

Do you remember the first time you committed a serious sin? I do. I felt sick to my stomach. Just yesterday everything was alright .... and the day before that and the day before that ...., and now it will never be right again. My whole life felt poisoned because I had committed a grave sin. The alarms of conscience rang loudly .... but over time I learned to ignore them. My friends told me, "Oh, that's just 'guilt'" .... as if moral wrong were a matter of opinion. Later, other phrases came into fashion: "head trip," "mind games," and the most commonly used "hang-ups." We must get rid of our hang-ups. All in cause to defeating conscience. These were words from which a dangerous delusion was constructed, the delusion that there is no God and that this unquiet mind, this dis-ease within me, could be cured by a therapist.

Much later in life, in an entirely different context, a preeminent psychiatrist, the Director of Neuropsychiatry at Harvard Medical School, told me, "The problem with people like you [priests and ministers] is that you send these 'troubled minds' to me. But the real mental illnesses you try to cure yourselves with prayer. I can't cure depression whose root cause is immorality." Tragically, we live in an age which repudiates the category "immorality" and invents medical labels for every moral failing.

We ignore the alarms of conscience until we barely hear them. And then, no longer hearing them, we descend deeper and deeper into personal chaos. We live as if in a trance. You've seen people in pursuit of their sin: single-minded .... in a trance.

To be precise, by separating ourselves from God, we open ourselves to demons, who constantly vie to occupy us. Demons have no physical being of their own. Like viruses, they must take over a cell to have physical wherewithal. And when they invade, we are by that fact possessed. We think thoughts we don't want to think. They are constant. We do things we don't want to do. We say things we don't want to say. When we see people who habituate an unending stream of vile language, you can be sure the problem runs much deeper than recklessness or bad habits. Our lives are no longer our own. These behaviors are common enough: the man who can't stop drinking, the teenager who can't stop taking drugs, the woman addicted to sex and pornography. We tell ourselves these are medical issues, or, worse, that they are just part of normal life. And they fall like dominoes: decriminalizing pornography in the 1970s, decriminalizing drugs in our own era, .... sending the demons into a feeding frenzy, and consigning broken human lives to perdition.

How can we end this personal chaos? How can we break out of the trance? Psychiatrists say, we must "hit bottom." "No one emerges from addiction without first becoming filled with self-disgust." That is, we countenance ourselves as moral creatures.

The Holy Fathers and Orthodox saints of today exhort people to live in perpetual humility. This healthy understanding of our sinful nature guards against pridefulness and the rebellious life that proceeds from it.

But what are we to do when we are already in it? We must strike out boldly! Our hearts must break! We must see ourselves as we really are: a treacherous creature, a creature who betrays and cannot be trusted. That is, we must consult our conscience.

Our conscience is a Heavenly way of seeing, a Divine way of knowing (the root meaning of the word conscience): Jesus calls it "the lamp of the body" which illuminates everything inside us.

The Psalmist says that in order to scatter the darkness, to break through to God, the conscience must first break the heart:

During recent weeks we have witnessed these break-throughs: Zacchaeus, the Contrite Publican, the Prodigal Son. Still ahead, awaits St. Mary of Egypt.

God has set within us an escape route from pandemonium and darkness, and that is humility, contrition, and the broken heart.

Jesus reclined with others at the house of Simon the Leper. They were eating and drinking and taking their ease. We imagine that Simon has been miraculously healed by Jesus, for leprosy was an incurable disease of the first century. Much was taken for granted in this house in Bethany. Jesus observed,

We are put in mind of the ten healed lepers; only one returns to give Jesus thanks.

Suddenly, a woman burst through the door and "broke open" an alabaster vessel of costly spikenard. For she herself was broken open. She poured the ointment freely on Jesus' head. She knelt on the floor and washed His feet with her tears. She dried them with her hair. She humbled herself in every way.

We who are comfortable are in danger of falling into the "unknowing" of Simon the Leper. A holy teacher of Orthodoxy has recently said that when we are not mindful of God, distracting ourselves with other things, at that moment we are atheists. It is better that we should be mindful of our past "leprosies" (so to speak). Or perhaps we suffer from an organic, incurable disease as a consequence of our past sins. We must be mindful of God, of how we have been brought out of the trap and prison of our passions, and how we owe all to God.

What is the costly spikenard of our time? How might we wash the Lord's feet with our tears? How may we live into our humility? Inasmuch as we see the poor in their hopeless plight and look in their faces as lost friends. Did you know that the homeless, after a short time, have no name. One of the things you learn in homelessness ministry is that no one addresses these men and women by their name.

A young man who works at the Hermitage, a splendid young man, traveled to the Philippines for two weeks. And he told us upon returing that the main thing he saw, the unforgettable thing, and perhaps God's reason for his going, was that he saw hard poverty for the first time. He could not enjoy his meals. He could not take his ease. And I have no doubt that he will not forget the poor — people who are in need for food and drink and decent clothing .... and, most of all, consolation and compassion.

To Simon, Jesus said,

Who among us can say, we owe God nothing? He is the only good. He is the only sanity. He is the only safety, finally. In Him we "move and live and have our being." Let us give thanks to our God. Let us praise His Holy Name. And let us get on with life in our brokenness, mindful always of what we have been capable of .... both the good and the shameful. For we fall short of the Kingdom, and we rely each day upon His patience, His understanding, and His forgiveness.

Are we unreconciled to God? This must never be! What sins remain unconfessed, let us confess them, for the remembrance of unconfessed sins gnaws at our vitals .... and will for eternity. Throw down the alabaster jar, and let your tears flow. For being made clean and absolved from all your sins will release such a holy fragrance as will make the angels rejoice (Lu 15:10).

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.