Know thyself.

Allow me to get intimate and honest.

If I were to candidly sum things up concerning my inner life since entering the Church, I might be tempted to say some pretty horrible sounding things. I might be tempted to say, for instance, that I am worse now than I have ever been. Depression, anxiety, anger — my poor wife is having one hell of a time dealing with me at times, and I do not mean that in the vulgar sense. I find myself feeling as though I’m at wits’ end all too often these days.

However, despite my tendency to dwell only on that half of the story, that’s not all there is to it. With my time in the Church, things are getting clearer, far clearer than my eyes care to see. Bl. Fr. Seraphim Rose said that the Christian should expect nothing less than to be crucified, and God help me, it’s one of the most insightful things I’ve ever read about the Faith apart from Scripture. I look in the mirror, and I don’t like what I see. I’m not talking about sins here and there that I fall into anymore. I’m talking about the fundamentals of what have made me who I am, roots that only now are being exposed; and while the faithless man might despair to learn such things about himself, I am finally learning from them about how to fight this fight.

I’ve never understood until entering into the Church just how deeply sin — or, perhaps better put, death — is rooted in me. I can’t hide from it. There were months where I confessed the same exact sins to my spiritual father over and over again, and it was only when I grew so despairing and despondent that I began to give up on the Faith that the Lord again showed His face, which revealed in me darkness I have always hidden from. How often it is that we only notice God’s presence when we can no longer bear to notice anything else, and how humbling it is!

This is why theosis takes longer than our lifetimes. I am rapidly finding that theosis is more than just beating a few habitual sins and establishing a decent prayerlife — no, most of us are so tangled up in the passions that we can barely even move our eyes around to see how bad it is, and indeed, perhaps we can’t because without God’s grace, we can’t find it in ourselves to try. Thankfully, it is not solely up to us to escape, for Christ gave us Himself and His Church for the defeat of the passions and the healing of the soul.

Those who suffered and knew themselves to be “lowlives,” so to speak, were often the ones most receptive to Christ while He walked in the flesh on this earth. Why? I think they were the most self-aware. They couldn’t free themselves, but they recognized the Lord Who could. Those who rejected Him — Pharisees, temple authorities, and the like — could not recognize Him, because they did not even recognize themselves for what they were, sinners. A broken heart and a contrite spirit; these, O God, Thou wilt not despise.

I am often tempted to look at myself and say that since entering the Church, I’ve gotten worse. Perhaps by worldly standards, that’s so, but I’m not blind to myself anymore. The Church with Her grace has exposed corruption in me that I couldn’t see before, and though it hurts worse than anything I’ve experienced to date (remembering what Fr. Seraphim said about crucifixion), the Lord Almighty has the power to raise us from corruption.

This line, from one of the Paschal hymns, comes to mind: I desire My creation to shine with joy, and all sorrow will pass away.