Walking "The Inner Way"

Thoughts after reading Fr. Dr. Joseph Allen's work on Pastoral Counseling

By Bishop Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) 

         The process of eldership, of Christian Counseling, has been rooted in the tradition of the Church, and is a charismatic blessing as important as the Apostolic Succession (Fr. Dr. Joseph Allen, “Inner Way”, 2000, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, pg xi). It, however, flows directly from the Holy Spirit to those whom follow His calling. Unlike Apostolic Succession, which often becomes compromised through greed, clouded by state politics, or abused through a pharisaical knowledge of canon law, the gift of Pastoring/Eldership is confirmed by good works, healing and spiritual discernment. It is an extension of the Great Commission and is an evangelical endeavor, bringing the message of the Gospel into the hidden corners of the heart. It conforms to the basic human need to know and be known, but with the added purpose of living life towards Christ, by His example, words and actions, as handed to us by the Scriptures and expounded and interpreted in every generation by Christ. The paradigms for spiritual discipleship are found at the core of the human psyche, present in the filial relationships of mother and father with daughter and son. This relationships are central to who we are, how we think, and the process of acquiring language, thoughts, skills and survival in the world around us. It taps into the most basic attributes of our consciousness - to know and be known.

         Unfortunately, most of us do not grow up with saintly family, like the Cappadocian brothers, Sts Basil and Gregory, grew up with St. Macrina the Elder; and so godly habits are not instilled in us from childhood. Thus, spiritual hygiene and good “exercise” require a “coach” later in life to bring us up to par. We require continual adult training in our spiritual sensibilities in order to continue the path of spiritual disciplines that was snuffed out by wrong influence, worldly education and our own inability to resist temptation. As Christ discipled his Apostles, giving them assignments, rebuking, teaching and making them accountable to one another, so the Christian pastors of history have always realized that their special ministry, outside of the sacramental works of Baptism and the Eucharist, are intensely personal and counseling related, helping their followers to understand, internalize, practice and maintain the teachings of Christ. Some are “more called than others”, and this seems to be especially true for the ascetics, who, after years of struggling with the passions and truly coming to understand their own weakness, frailty and dependence upon God for life, were given a special ministry amongst the people as an “Abba”, a spiritual father and physician. It is not true, however, to assume that only ascetics can offer effective counseling, as recent years have confirmed over and over that it was probably the monks’ removal from the life of the village and the assurance of anonymity and integrity that brought the common people to the desserts, mountains and forests of the Staret’s Skete. Instead, we should remember that, Scripturally and historically, as James 5:14 says - “Let [the sick] call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord…” so that “Whatever sins you bind upon earth are bound in heaven, and whatever sins you loose on earth are loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 18:18) Regardless of its form, the goal has always been, as it was for St. Paul, exercise of spiritual gifts within the Church "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…” (Ephesians 4:13 KJV)

         Spiritual direction is dangerous and painful. It quickly “fragments” the directee’s identity and re-orients his relationships. It is, like fasting, a form of “voluntary death” and can never be coerced or even “expected”. It is the call to pick up one’s cross and follow Christ. It is akin to “composting”, through a process of stirring up that which is rotten and discarded, so that God can create the fertile soil of that which is new and usable. (Ibid, pg 61) The process of spiritual direction often creates the conditions for a “break-down”, a failure, a loss, and only in the continued application of good council and right practice can the individual become something better for God’s use through it. As this break-down occurs, the biggest challenge will be to keep an open heart and a resolute mind in the face of the suffering that such a situation causes. Here, Job is a perfect example, because he was willing to suffer, even as God was trying him and making him into a better vessel for his glory. (Ibid, pg 63) Here it is important to persevere and not to lose heart, because this death to self and disappointment is absolutely necessary for the transformation of new life only comes through embracing these difficulties. To be able to push through this barrier, there must be an understanding of what our covenant with God is all about.

         The spiritual director is a “story mirror”, helping the story-teller, the directee, to contextualize and re-tell the story in a way that is spiritually beneficial. The goal of spiritual counsel is wholly and fully to be our best selves, to find our “τέλος”, to be complete, “full-furnished” and able to do the work of the ministry. The root of “Wholeness” and “Holiness” is the Greek word, “ὅλος”, which means unity, togetherness, communion. Spiritual “blocks” (Scripture calls them “stumbling blocks”, or canonically “impediments”) arise from within and without: the “Inner” due to inner error, negativity, anger and reaction, hidden sin, unrevealed thoughts; the “outer” due to abuse, broken relationships, lack of education, etc. To remove these blocks is to restore the original health, the natural knowledge of the conscience. (Ibid, pg 9)

         To enable communication and understand where the problems lie, one must be able to “appropriate”, to change to fit the situation, and understand where people are in their spiritual life. This is the incarnational principle. (Ibid, pg 11) There are three modes through which the ordained clergy minister reconciliation and growth to their people -

1. Liturgy - Acting “In Persona Christi” within the congregation, gives the pastor the social leadership and credibility necessary to initiate the painful work of counseling. By “re-presenting” Christ to the people, he can establish a relationship individually with those around him that reflect the same Presence of Christ.
2. Preaching - The application of God’s Word to our contemporary cultural context and our personal lives is absolutely necessary to convict of sin and initiate the work of repentance. In Scripture we see that the preaching of the “Law”, the revelation of God’s holiness and of His call to all men to repent and come to a knowledge of the Truth, was the prerogative of Prophets and Apostles, and is the preaching ministry that pastors are called to administer in the “Liturgy of the Word.”
3. Direction - A relationship in which the pastor witnesses God’s love and goodness, while the pastored confesses their struggles and sins, witnessing of their love for God and their desire to be healed. They both “confess” together, each baring witness to God’s grace in the other. This is called the “Prophetic Office” (Ibid, pg 13) and is a service, a diaconate, and requires that it be completely submitted to God’s will. “The universal must be made specific, This is a very hard task today, but most crucial to success…” (Ibid, pg 13) Because it is a form of voluntary slavery, the diaconate of confession within the Church is very taxing work, and is not to be taken up lightly.

         There is a “Non-Sacramental” work of repentance, which is being conscious of sin, feeling grief over sin and desiring a restored relationship with God… the turning to God in repentance. Turning from self to God, who has always been right there, waiting for me to turn back to Him. Then there is the “Sacramental Act of Absolution”: this is confessing, saying out, humbling oneself, putting oneself down and placing oneself low, so that he or she can receive the vocal blessing of their priest/bishop, of those who are called to help them as a agent of God’s grace and a representative of the whole Church. Absolution is a spoken confirmation of God’s promise of forgiveness and Christ’s gift of binding and loosing to the Apostles. The pastor who counsels through the repentance phase does not have to be the same as the pastor who hears the aural confession and who recites the formula of absolution - in fact, they have often been separated, especially when the ordained churchmen who ceremonially absolve sin are themselves compromised in sin and affairs of the world. It can be said that they do well apart, and their elision is not necessary. “Repentance binds the fruits” (Ibid, pg 19) of what happens on both sides of the process.

         Spiritual direction requires the disclosure of thoughts to the director, since he is trying to discern the operating structure of the directee’s psyche. The mental images, fantasies, nagging desires and flitting thoughts that the Father’s called “λογίσμοι”, spring up from the deep well of brokenness, the abyss of our consciousness, where both good and evil dwell, and where God is always present, apophatically as our Creator. “We fight this constant stream of passions and evil through disclosure.” The Elder’s Praxis, historically, was to work towards bringing light into the motivations and behaviors of his direct, thereby rendering them open to God’s grace. “A wound hidden will fester, but opened, cleaned, and salved will heal of the Body’s own created nature.”

         The whole process is present by Fr. Joseph in the quotation, “Thoughts - ‘Logismoi’ in the classic vocabulary - designated not merely the mental activities which we associate with the English word, but ‘images, sensible phantasms, which, when dwelt upon, make one draw toward the object existing outside the individual.’ These outside provocations were termed ‘probole’. The ‘work’ of repentance - best done in the context of spiritual direction - was literally to fight these multitudes and force them out of one’s life through disclosure. This was the way to gain one’s freedom from the terrible state of ‘pre-conditioning’ or ‘pre-possession’, which manifests itself in ‘prolypsis’ (force of habit), that residue of memory which can strike anyone to a certain degree. Such prolepses interfere with a person’s ability to interpret new phenomena in his or her life without reference to the past pattern - thus rendering him or her impulsively prejudiced Furthermore, they may also grow into continual phantasies and fixations of various sorts, and if so, they can become so pervasive that they begin to shape the person’s entire perception and behavior. One a person reaches this state, he or she can easily be led into ‘πλάνη’ (delusion or illusion). Only intensive and time-consuming work over and above the sacrament of confession/absolution could help those who have regressed this far. (Ibid, pgs 20-21)

         The difficulty occurs when the inner world of a directee is revealed, allowing for the process of fragmentation of the false identity of the directee, based as it was upon false projections of pride and self-justification. Once this fragmentation begins, it can feel as if “everything is falling apart”, stressing relationships, causing misunderstanding and creating a deep-seated fear of loss. Only by maintaining the direction and persevering through this death, allowing for a “stirring of the compost” can a new, fertile ground for God’s work be created.

         The spiritual experience that one has through this process of surrender, death and the “harrowing of hell”, through maintaining devotion, prayer, spiritual obedience, is the stuff from which the new identity, based on God’s love and the reality of His work, is formed. The important function of a spiritual director during this phase is to act as a “literary critic”, probing, asking and re-contextualizing the story as it unfolds, waiting for the “realization” of this new identity on the part of the directee. This phase cannot be rushed, taking place with complete freedom, without manipulation or compulsion. For some this process is longer and for others shorter, but once the process is finished by the Holy Spirit, a new life springs into being. Sometime, spiritual maturity is not reached at any point of this negative phase, and then it is up to the spiritual director to ask questions of faith, of salvation, or why the directee lacks the power of the Spirit and victory over sin.

         At this stage, it is important to remember “Human persons are grounded in Another who initiates personhood and who stays bound to persons in loyal ways for their well-being.” (Walter Brueggemann, “Covenanting as Human Vocation”, Ibid, pg 65) In laying aside the false self, a new identity begins to form, a “realization on who we are in Christ” begins to take hold. “If covenant index means that a person is grounded and finds his or her true identity in that ‘Other’, who is God, then the proper question of ‘identity’ for us to ask is not only ‘Who am I?’ but ‘To Whom do I belong?’ It is no easy task today for the spiritual director to transmit this truth to his direct; there is a temptation in modern society to follow the way, not of ‘God-groundedness’, but of ‘self-groundedness.’” (Ibid, pg 65) “Only be accepting the truth of covenant will we recognize that, because human life is grounded in a relationship with God, we are bound to take certain initiatives in life.” (Ibid, pg 66) “While Eastern Christian theology has traditionally labeled the human response-to-God as ‘synergy’, it could just as well be termed a covenantal relationship. The reality is the same.” (Ibid, pg 66) Realizing this covenant is the whole point of spiritual direction, working it out practically in the relationships, choices and work of the direct. Once someone realizes the nature and practical application of this “Synergy”, he is well on his way to spiritual health.

         Once a new birth is experienced, a resurrection for the ashes of fragmentation occurs, accompanied by a new identity that is not based on the insecurities, inherited problems, the reactions to the past or dreams of the future. This new identity lives in the present, in a relationship with the Presence of God, living in the power of the Spirit to act and move in this world, submitted to God’s will and plan in life.

         This process can cycle through, reaching a high state and then tumbling back due to sin or pride. For those who are morally successful at maintaining an outwardly spiritual life, the challenge becomes to act against the coldness, deadness and lack of humility that such maintenance creates. For these faithful disciples, God’s calling becomes deeper, more active, more pastoral - it becomes a call to heal the spiritual brokenness in others, taking on their burdens, their inner filth, and snatching souls out of the fire, even while despising the garments stained by sin (Jude 1:23). Several parts of the stages can occur at the same time, just as multiple wounds on a body heal at different rates, and some require more attention than others. The goal is spiritual health, to be able to clearly see the affairs of the soul and the response of the God-given conscience. The soul that is open, that does not hide, that receives the Light of the Holy Spirit, and that responds in repentance, sorrow over sins, seeking His Presence and joy at receiving God’s love and grace, is a soul that is growing into the likeness of Jesus Christ. This is the purpose of our lives, that for which we were created, and is the pathway to wholeness, community, and our union with God in eternity.

Bibliography:

• Metropolitan +Philip Saliba and Fr. Dr. Joseph Allen, “And He Leads Them: The Mind and Heart of Philip Saliba”, Conciliar Press, 2001
• Alexander Elchaninov, “The Diary of a Russian Priest”, 1967, SVS Press
• Metropolitan Hierotheos Nafpaktos, translated by Esther Williams, “Life After Death”, 1995, Birth of the Theotokos Monastery Press
• Metropolitan Hierotheos Nafpaktos, translated by Effie Mavromichali, “Illness and the Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition”, 1993, Birth of the Theotokos Monastery Press
• Metropolitan Hierotheos Nafpaktos, translated by Effie Mavromichali, “Orthodox Spirituality: A Brief Introduction”, 2008, Birth of the Theotokos Monastery Press
• Dr. Joseph Allen, “Inner Way”, 2000, Holy Cross Orthodox Press