Fr. Maximos served himself some hummus and continued. “Apostle Paul describes the fruits of the Spirit in the form of a scale, a hierarchy. He lists the highest and most exalted gift first and ends up with the most basic and foundational.”
“What does that mean?” said Emily, who has a reflexive aversion to the notion of hierarchy, which has traditionally denoted social divisions and inequalities.
“Think about it,” Fr. Maximos responded. “He lists love first, then joy, until, last on the list, self-control.”
“Do you think there is a deliberate logic in that sequence?” I asked. I’d assumed it was a manner of speaking, an aspect of Paul’s literary style that lacked intention or hidden agenda.
“If we examine this passage carefully, it appears to be intentional,” Fr. Maximos insisted. In an earlier conversation with me, he’d postulated that every passage in the New Testament should be seen not as accidental but as deliberately crafted to help people understand the nature of God and show what they need to do to unite with Him. Fr. Maximos repeated that there are no superfluous statements in the sayings of Jesus. Each sentence and parable is deliberate and expresses great spiritual truths and wisdom.
He paused for a few seconds as we all focused on our eating. The vegetarian dishes seemed never-ending.
“Can we go over that list, Father, and explain the meaning of each term so that we can see how they are connected?” Maria asked with some trepidation. Fr. Maximos looked around to see if there was interest in exploring the subject further. He didn’t have to ask. Everybody was eager.
“Okay. Let’s examine these gifts starting with the last one. You see,” Fr. Maximos said lightheartedly, “he, himself, was already at the top, at the stage of love, and could see from up there the lower steps that one must traverse to reach that highest of stages. So let us look at these gifts in reverse. We will start from the base, with self-control, and climb up the ladder all the way to love.”
“Are we to assume that Paul considers self-control and temperance as the foundation of all the other gifts?” Teresa asked.
“That’s right. You cannot get to the stage of real love directly. You must struggle at the lower stages first and climb until you reach love. Real love does not appear automatically. You must work for it, struggle for it until you get to know what it is all about.” So, self-control is a prerequisite to all the other steps?”
Fr. Maximos nodded. “That’s what we said. Temperate persons do not crave to taste everything, to use everything and everybody for their own pleasure and comfort. They exercise restraint in the face of temptations, be they food, sex, wealth, fame, power, or worldly pleasures of all sorts.”
“But how can one cultivate self-control? Modern social life is not helpful in this regard,” I pointed out. I had in mind the founders of sociology, who were concerned with the rise of what they considered unrestrained egoism and individualism that followed the breakdown of the old medieval, communal order. They feared that human beings left to themselves tend to generate desires that run out of control, rendering social life problematic if not impossible. Therefore, through “moral education,” human beings should be given clear guidelines and limits as antidotes to insatiable desires. It is an old concern, going all the way back to Confucius.
Fr. Maximos was not a sociologist. He saw the problem of moral guidelines not from the vantage point of maintaining a smoothly functioning society but from that of personal salvation. So the method he espoused for the cultivation of self control was not for sociological reasons but rather for spiritual and existential purposes.
“To develop the capacity for self-control and mastery,” he went on, “you must work on yourself. You start the spiritual life from the most elementary level, taking charge of external things.”
“You can’t start your university career before you complete elementary school,” Fr. Nikodemos interjected.
“Right. This is what often scandalizes young people who come to the Church for advice. They don’t like rules and regulations. They don’t like ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’ rules.
Fr. Maximos went on to explain that the commandments, which God gave to humanity through the great prophets and through Jesus, were not legalistic, moral principles. In order to understand what this implies, he said, we must always keep in mind the fact that we are created in the image of God and that our “natural state” is to be in constant contemplation of our Creator. It is, he said, the equivalent of a lover who is constantly thinking about and contemplating his or her beloved.
The Fall, he continued, disrupted that state of constant communion with God. Instead of remembering God, our attention shifted to the things of Creation, to objects. The sole purpose of spiritual struggle is to reestablish our connection with God and begin functioning again the way God made us “in the beginning.”
“Temperance and self-control, therefore,” Fr. Maximos went on, “is to help us in such a way as to liberate our hearts and minds from the objects of our enslavement so that we may return our gaze to God.”
~Adapted from Kyriacos C. Markides, Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality
