Not wasting any time, I opened the conversation by reminding Fr. Maximos of our unfinished discussion about the nine fruits of the Spirit as listed by Apostle Paul, namely love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. “So far,” I said, “we have covered the last three: self-control, gentleness, and faithfulness. We were about to begin discussing the next two stages, goodness and kindness.”
Fr. Maximos nodded. “According to the Gospel, goodness is an attribute of God. Remember when someone teasingly addressed Jesus as Didaskale Agathe [Good Master] and Jesus replied,
‘Why do you call me Good?’ He went on to declare that only God is good. That means that the truly good person is someone who has no trace of evil in his heart. Let us say it is someone who in the depths of his being is totally purified and clean. When the Holy Spirit is fully activated within the person, there emerges an ultimate form of Catharsis.”
“So goodness restores a person to his primordial state as an icon of God,” someone pointed out.
“Correct. Every human being has Christ within his or her innermost being. Therefore, a person who is truly good is free from explosive emotions and psychological rough edges. The Christ within becomes manifest in his or her life.”
“Fr. Maxime,” I interjected, “wouldn’t you say that being good and free from violent emotions would depend to a great extent on the type of family you grew up in and your social background?”
“Of course it does. Favorable conditions can facilitate the activation of the energies of the Holy Spirit. But this is not an absolute rule.”
I had asked the question having in mind the tendency of religious people to overemphasize free will as a factor in shaping a person’s fate in contrast to the sociological way of thinking, which shows convincingly how social environment plays a central role in human development.
“There are cases, however, showing that the Holy Spirit works in very unexpected ways,” Fr. Maximos pointed out. “There are examples of criminals and robbers who became truly good persons in the way Jesus meant it, that is, icons of God. For example, Abba Moses the Ethiopian was an exemplary model of the good person. Yet in his earlier life he was really bad. That robber was transformed as a result of a simple episode in his life. He climbed over a wall to enter a women’s monastery with unholy intentions. Yet his heart was touched by the way the nuns treated him. That was the moment of Grace.”
“This is hard to imagine,” Eleni said, shaking her head. “How can you explain such a conversion, from a criminal to a saint?”
“Apparently there was a crack in his heart through which the Grace of God found a way to enter. He became a hermit and a totally transformed human being. He had redeemed himself and was completely freed from his past life. These are mysteries that we cannot explain with our reason. It is said that before his conversion he once got into such a rage that he slaughtered with his bare hands the entire flock of sheep of a poor shepherd. That is the kind of reputation he had. After what happened to him in that monastery, he underwent deep metanoia and ended up becoming one of the celebrated saints of the Church.”
“This is very difficult for people to understand or even accept,” Eleni said again. “It violates their sense of justice.”
“I appreciate that difficulty. But I have experienced such cases myself, time and again. I have witnessed how people can be drastically transformed as they undergo the pedagogy of the Ecclesia. It is truly an amazing miracle to see a person with so much accumulated evil in his heart being gradually transmuted from charcoal into gold. The Grace of the Holy Spirit penetrates such a person, extracts the stench from his heart, and cleanses him.”
Fr. Maximos went on to say that metanoia has a beginning but no end. It is a process of becoming good within God’s eternity and divine mercy. That is, metanoia is not a static state but a dynamic turning point on one’s eternal march toward union with God. There is no end point in our continuous learning and growth in love and wisdom.
Fr. Maximos then narrated a personal learning experience he had while serving as the protos (governor) of Mt. Athos in 1992. He was young at the time and zealous to be successful as governor. There was a difficult issue that he had to resolve. Somehow, he told us, he was a bit harsh on some people. “I felt I was right but I was somewhat austere. Then an elder approached me and said, ‘Father, please sweeten your words.’ This sentence stuck in my mind. It is something that they often say on Mt. Athos: ‘Sweeten your words a bit, Father.’ This incident had a lasting effect on the way I approach people. If you are to criticize somebody, don’t marinate your bitter words with vinegar, making them even more bitter. Plunge them instead into honey.”
“But who can ever do that?” Michael mused.
“Only the person who has cleansed his heart from egotism, the truly good person,” Fr. Maximos replied. “But in order to attain goodness, you must go through the furnace of genuine metanoia, which means that you must learn humility, self-mastery, and faith in God. Metanoia, you see, is a very painful process. But it is this pain that will separate the dirty part of yourself from the pure and clean ones. That’s when a person becomes truly charismatic in soul and body. His entire being becomes beautiful, irrespective of how he appears externally. He is at ease and comfortable with himself and brings comfort to others. He is good, just as God is good. The charisma of goodness emerges as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.”
~Adapted from Kyriacos C. Markides, Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality
