“Rejoice and be of good cheer” — trying…

It’s a sad state of affairs when I come to believe that “miserable failure” doesn’t even begin to describe my spiritual life.

What can I say? My passions rage more wildly than they ever did before my illumination — and I have failed to fight them off a number of times. I am horrified by the thoughts I have had. My tendency toward depression seems to be getting worse as time passes. I’ve been listening to some of my old Christian metal again, something of which I’m not sure my spiritual father approves. The only hope I can find for the world anymore is in the prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” What else is there? I don’t know. And that sounds like my old nihilistic tendencies coming back out of the woodwork again.

I have little consolation left, apart from the rare moments when I actually do feel any shred of love for Jesus. Apart from those times, my life consists of despondency, idleness, and yielding to the passions. Every time I think that I’ve grown tired of living in such bondage and want to return to Jesus, I find myself seemingly just moments later turning my back on Him again. Everything about it is abhorrent. To seriously meditate on the fact that Christ has watched me in my most wretched moments is enough to make me shudder — or at least it should be.

I’ve heard it said in a number of places that once one has lost everything, he is free to do anything. Another similar one is something to the effect of, one must hit bottom before one can know what it is to rise back up. Is that true? Maybe, and I hope so. It sure feels like I’ve hit bottom. I’m not sure that there is much of anything worse than falling into such despondency and fits of the passions so closely following one’s entrance into the Church. I know I said that I was going to have to suffer and fight, but this is ridiculous. St. Isaac the Syrian said that we ought not say that God is just, since He would have destroyed us all already if He were. When I consider my life, I realize how true that is.

I can say this much, though: I don’t feel sorry for myself. What cuts me is that I am really starting to understand how much my most personal and innermost sins affect everyone around me. I am closed-off. I am reserved to a fault. My presence is intimidating. I am distant. I seem always to be in a foul mood. I am negative. I am bitter. What disturbs me is that this is what others have either told me directly or very strongly implied in conversation — even one of my professors today told me that I intimidate her. Holy people are not intimidating in the way people say that I am. How am I of any help to the Kingdom when I am such a horrible example of an Orthodox Christian?

I just don’t know anymore. All the things that the world expects me to do seem utterly futile and useless, and it depresses me to no end. Add to that the ever-growing list of sins I have committed since my chrismation, and you have one miserable human being. My only explanation is that for all my head-smarts concerning the Orthodox faith, I’ve taken exactly none of it to heart for me to still be this way. Fr. Seraphim Rose always talked about “Orthodoxy of the heart” — that God would only grant me this!

This is a rant that I perhaps should not be making, but I’d be a liar to try to write anything inspiring. If I want inspiration, all I can do is look to the Psalter or the gospels, because it’s not in me anymore to find inspiration within myself. “Rejoice and be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world!”

O sweetest Jesus, teach me how to do that…