“God pursues us every day until he gets hold of those who are to be saved, as he did with Paul” (Cent. Char. III.2). This statement by the 7th c. monk, St. Maximos the Confessor, is a good place to begin as we enter into the Lenten season. I say this because it is important to keep before us the goal, namely that what our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, really wants for us is to be with him. Always. Every minute of every day. St. Paul understood this when he asked, in his letter to the Romans, “who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8:35) He answers his own question, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39)

Yet St. John Chrysostom, in his commentary on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, said there was one thing that can separate us from God: ourselves. According to St. John, it is we who separate ourselves from God and this usually is the result of sin.

So let’s begin by looking at how God pursues us. This will not take very long because it happens all the time, every day, right under our noses. The question is: do we see it?

Then, we will look at how we respond to the pursuit. This afternoon, I will present three examples from the Lenten Triodion (actually two examples, and a third from one of the feast days during this year’s Lenten period) of people who were pursued by God, and who responded positively.
So, how does God pursue us? Any ideas?

Basically, he pursues us in two ways:

1. By putting obstacles in front of us.
2. By removing obstacles from in front of us.

Does anyone have any examples of how God puts obstacles in front of us? We are confronted by an impossible task, and just when we don’t think we can do it, the way is found and the result we desire takes place. It is usually in these kinds of situations that we recognize that God has had some part in the process, regardless of whether we give full credit to God. The beauty in this method of God’s, is that if the task was easy, we would never, ever, give God credit. But when the task is extremely difficult, when it is clear the accomplishment of the task will take, literally, an act of God, we usually thank God.

What could this obstacle look like? This gets tricky. If I were to say the obstacle were some health problem and God puts the health problem in our way to do what? Heal us in the end? Maybe yes and maybe no. Teach us some lesson? There are too many problems if we were to examine the idea of God as the cause of sickness too carefully. We enter very grey territory, namely, trying to explain the actions of God. Going too far down that path can be dangerous. Not to mention futile. Only God can explain God’s actions.

And you can see how any scenario of trying to name the obstacles that God puts in front of us can easily be misconstrued.

Also, using the example of sickness, it would appear as if God is making a person ill, and this would be contrary to what we know about God, as the all-loving and all-merciful God he is. It would be contrary to what we know about God as the one who gives life, the one who abhors death. Death, suffering, and destruction are the work of Satan, not God. Yes, Jesus died, but only so we can live eternally.

So attempting to name the obstacles that God puts in our way, in the abstract or making a universal statement about obstacles from God, is difficult. But each person, that is, each person of prayer, knows how God acts in his or her life. What is wonderful about our relationship with God, is that as we grow spiritually we begin to see God’s hand in so many things throughout the day and we eventually learn why certain things happen. And if we are really fortunate, we can see the full picture, and understand that what we thought was an obstacle was either an attempt to get our attention, or an attempt to get us to act on something that we would have previously ignored. This afternoon we will meet someone before whom God places a very tangible obstacle. She literally is blocked from going where she wants to go by God.

What is perhaps more recognizable with regard to God’s actions is when he removes certain obstacles from our way. Any examples of how God removes the obstacles in our way?

Anything from the more serious task of taking away sickness to the less serious task, though very serious for someone stranded at an airport, providing a stand-by seat on an airplane. Extremely serious if the airport is O’Hare in Chicago.

OK, so God pursues us and makes his presence known every day. That is, if we can see it. Unfortunately, this talk is not about how to see God, though that would have made a good talk. In fact, everyone sees God in his or her own way, so the talk would have been short.

But we should probably ask how do we respond to this pursuit by God? This seems to me to be the more important question.

Well, we respond in two ways:

1. Putting obstacles between ourselves and God.
2. Removing the obstacles between ourselves and God.

How do we put obstacles between ourselves and God? This is easy. Perhaps the clearest obstacles that we put between ourselves and God are material possessions, or, put in another way, we prefer the things made by God to God himself. The language you will find in the writings of the Fathers of the Church states that this person rejoices in worldly things. My favorite church Father, St. Maximos the Confessor, explains it a little more clearly:

If all things have been made by God and for his sake, then God is better than what has been made. The one who forsakes the better and is engrossed in inferior things shows that he prefers the things made by God to God himself. (CC I.5)

But what if we do not even know we are putting obstacles between ourselves and God? Allow me to provide an example.

If we have worked hard for something, must we always give credit to God, must we always acknowledge God? Can’t a person take a little pleasure or pride in something he or she has worked hard for?

Let’s explore this a little more carefully. We have worked hard for something and we are proud of it. The question becomes, who has enabled this to happen? More often than not, we give some credit to God, but if we are being honest, we usually will credit ourselves with our accomplishments or ability to obtain something we want.

But how did we even get to the point of praising ourselves? How did we accomplish this original achievement? We had some desire for that achievement, or possession. If we had not desired the possession, or the promotion at work, or whatever achievement, and it came our way without our knowing it, we probably would have seen it entirely as a gift from God. Or, the possession would not have been an obstacle between us and God, but a means to a greater appreciation of who God is and what God does in our lives.

But when we desire something and get it, the scenario changes. There is a connection between our desiring something and obtaining it that leads us to think we had a big part in it. And once this happens, God gets a little lost. God is removed from the picture. When we become enamored with the possession, or the achievement, we move on to become even more enamored with our ability to obtain or achieve that “thing”. This is called idolatry. Idolatry is when we worship/value/find extremely important something other than God. In this case, we begin to worship the things of this world, including our own abilities.

The “thing” /possession/achievement becomes our God, because we will sacrifice many things in order to get it. The other way of looking at this, is to say we become of the world.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John that we are to be in the world, but not of it. He says, “if you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore, the world hates you” (15:19). We, as Christians, are called to be in the world not of it. What is the difference?

Being in the world means engaging in the activities of the world by choice and necessity. There are some who chose not to be in the world, but there numbers are few. Most are not called to be hermits and to retreat from the world. Being a hermit is a special calling from God, and even though they spend the majority of their time alone, they occasionally gather together for eucharist.

But we are called to be in the world, and to be in community. St. Maximos agrees when he says, “you are to love everyone from your soul, but in God alone are you to place your hope and to serve him with your whole strength” (CC IV.95).

Then how is one to overcome the tendency to prefer the creation of God to God, the creator, himself? One answer is to transfer our desire from created things to God. And this happens by self-mastery over pleasure and attention to the divine things. But I am getting ahead of myself.

But what of this emotion of desire? The Church Fathers and the great ascetics of our church have written volumes about it. They all agree that everything is clouded by desire. One cannot see clearly with regard to any situation if the emotion of desire is playing some part in the situation. The church Fathers called desire a passion. And this passion of desire is very powerful.

While desire for God, obviously, would be a good thing, desire for the things created by God is not. What we see here is a disordering of the passion of desire; we are given the natural ability to desire “something” but the question is what is it that we desire? A disordering of the passion of desire leads one to desire material goods.
The passions are defined by the Fathers of the Church (St. Maximos) as a movement of the soul contrary to nature, either toward the irrational love or senseless hatred of something material (like food, or wealth), or an irrational love or senseless hatred which emerges on account of something material (II.16). The passions have been introduced on account of the fall of humanity from perfection, in the Garden of Eden, and they have been attached to the more irrational part of human nature. After all, it was the desire of Adam and Eve to know more, to take the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that got them in trouble.
The passions are called passions because usually they make us suffer. When our passions take over our lives, when we are being ruled by our passions, the results are disastrous. We are actually suffering, though we may not know it. We have given up control of our lives to our desire for material goods, success, or anything other than God.

And after becoming attached to those passions, when we try to move away from them and toward God, there will also be a suffering that takes place. Moving away from sin involves suffering; breaking that attachment to sin is painful because the more you sin the easier it gets. The more you possess material goods, the easier it is to possess more material goods. These desires may begin as just thoughts, but they will, eventually, turn into actions.

Basically, the passions are extremes in emotions and irrational feelings. St. Maximos will remind us, “when these underlying passions of the soul are aroused, they blind the understanding and do not allow one’s understanding to look at the rays of truth or to discern better from worse.” (IV.92). So we are not able to make good decisions that would enable us to move closer to God. We get stuck.

But with the coming of Christ, we find that the passions can be put to good use. Holy love is the best use of the passions, and it binds one’s mind to spiritual realities. The passions can be transformed.

And this brings me to the last topic of this morning’s session: removing the obstacles between God and us. How is this done? Any ideas? I’ll give you a hint: Lent.
We are able to transfer our desire for created things to God by paying attention to divine things. By turning our attention to divine things, we remove the obstacles between God and us because these divine things are a reflection of God. And what better time to focus on divine things than during Lent.

What are the divine things? The most obvious would be attending church and during Lent, there is an increase in the number of services. We have compline on Mondays, Pre-Sanctified Liturgy on Wednesdays, and the Akathist Hymn services on Fridays. There were also the Saturday services for the dead, a few weeks ago. Services and sacraments, like confession. Bring yourself to a place where you can pray and be surrounded by other divine things, like icons and candles and people praying to God.

There are also the ascetical disciplines: prayer and fasting. By taking the time during Lent to read a spiritual book, you are feeding yourself prayerful material. Or even to just commit to reading one of the Gospels or a letter of St. Paul. Instead of listening to the radio in the morning, you may want to listen to some Byzantine chant (in English). Feeding yourself the divine things like spiritual books or spiritual music is a way of staying connected with the divine things.

And at the same time, according to our Orthodox tradition, we are called to empty ourselves of our regular practices. Emptying yourself of food by fasting, and also donating the extra money you are saving to others who don’t have enough food to eat is one way of fasting and almsgiving.

But another way of fasting that does not involve food is to fast from certain activities that don’t keep God in front of you. Avoiding movies that and activities that are violent or too sexual or that promote a lifestyle that really isn’t in keeping with the life Christ has in store for us is a way of fasting. Fasting of Quakers.

But we can also cleanse ourselves by taking part in the sacrament of confession. Allow yourself to let go of sins you have committed. Give yourself the gift of forgiving yourself for the things you’ve done but have been unable to face. Confession is a time to give up the old ways of feeling and thinking. Confession is not about remembering the past, but gaining the strength and patience to endure what will come in the future.

But all forms of fasting are a form of self-control, and that is what Lent is really about, regaining one’s self control. It is this self-control that will bring you back to yourself, who God created you to be. Lent is about slowing down your life and first seeing whether there are obstacles between you and God, and if there are, doing what you can to remove those obstacles.

This is important because self-control has rewards. According to St. Maximos the Confessor, The reward of self-control is detachment and that of faith is knowledge. And detachment gives rise to discernment while knowledge gives rise to love for God (II.25).

When one has discernment one is able to realize why a relationship with the creator is more important than a relationship with created things or material things. An intense relationship with material things is called an addiction.

We have a need for an intense relationship in our lives. I believe we are made that way. We are created as relational beings to be in relationship with God. When we forsake a relationship with our Creator, that need for a relationship does not go away. It simply gets transferred onto material things.
But perhaps the most important divine thing is humility. This is also the best way to overcome the passions and overthrow any desire for material things. Humility frees human beings from every sin, and cuts out the passions of the soul. (I.76).

And the last way I will suggest for obtaining the divine things and overcoming the passions is to engage in virtuous activity. When a person engages in virtuous activity, the passions are disconnected from the mind. When the passions are disconnected from the mind, the passions no longer affect one’s thoughts. If passionate thoughts are no longer in one’s head, they cannot be actualized and never become passionate deeds.

We have a merciful God who knows our weaknesses more than we do. Let us call upon him to help us remove the obstacles that keep us far from him. Lent is a time of change. May our Lord and Savior continue to help us change in ways that move us closer to him.

We might as well move closer to him. He won’t leave us alone and stop pursuing us until we do.

Questions for reflection:

1. Why do people put up obstacles between themselves and God?
2. What kind of obstacles do people put up between themselves and God?
3. What would happen if all the obstacles were removed?