November
18, 2001
"All
Holy Persons Confess Themselves
as Unclean and Sinners"
-- Abba Theonas
St. John Cassian's book, "The
Conferences," is well-known to readers of our weekly
newsletter. It, along with "The Institutes," is a classic to
which we will return from time to time as it is chock-full of
centuries-old monastic wisdom from the Egyptian Desert that is still
useful in today's modern world. In today's conference with Abba Theonas,
a man of whom we know virtually nothing beyond the text of his writings,
we will look at the issue of sinlessness.
THE THIRD CONFERENCE OF ABBA
THEONAS:
THAT ALL HOLY PERSONS HAVE TRUTHFULLY CONFESSED THEMSELVES UNCLEAN AND
SINNERS
-- Therefore all those who are holy are struck
with compunction because of the weakness of their constitution, and with
daily sighs they scrutinize their different thoughts and the hidden and
secret places of their conscience, humbly crying out: "Do not enter
into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no one living shall
be justified." And this: "Who will boast of having a chaste
heart? Or who will have confidence that he is pure of sin?" And
again: "There is no one who is righteous upon the earth, who does
what is good and does not sin." And also this: "Who
understands his sins?"
-- They consider the righteousness of human
beings so weak and imperfect and constantly in need of God's mercy that
one of them, whose iniquities and sins God cleansed with the fiery coal
of his word that was sent from his altar, said after having contemplated
God in wondrous fashion and after having seen the lofty seraphim and a
revelation of the heavenly mysteries: "Woe is me, for I am a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people with unclean
lips."
-- In my estimation he would perhaps not even
then have felt the uncleanness of his lips if he had not deserved to
know the true and integral purity of perfection, thanks to his having
contemplated God. Upon seeing him he immediately recognized an
uncleanness that had hitherto been unknown to him. For when he says:
"Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips," he shows by what
follows -- "and I dwell in the midst of a people with unclean
lips" -- that he was speaking of his own lips and not of the
people's uncleanness.
-- In vain, then, does your penetrating and
thorny objection -- when you said shortly before that if no one is
sinless then no one is holy, and that if no one is holy then no one will
be saved -- pose a problem for a most evident truth. For the difficulty
in this question can be resolved from the text of the prophet where he
says: "Behold, you are angry, and we have sinned." That is,
when you turned away from the pride and heedlessness of our hearts and
deprived us of your help, the abyss of our sins immediately engulfed us.
It was as if someone had said to the sun in all its splendor: Behold,
you have set, and at once thick darkness has covered us over.
-- And yet, although he says that the holy have
sinned, and not only that they have sinned but they have always remained
in their sins, he does not utterly despair of salvation, but he adds:
"We have always been in them, and we shall be saved."
-- I shall compare these words -- "Behold,
you are angry, and we have sinned" -- with those of the Apostle:
"Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this
death?" Again, what the prophet adds -- "We have always been
in them, and we shall be saved" -- corresponds to the words of the
Apostle that follows: "The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our
Lord."
-- Likewise, what the same prophet also says --
"Woe is me, for I am a man with unclean lips" -- also seems to
smack of the aforementioned words: "Wretched man that I am! Who
will free me from the body of this death?" Similarly, what follows
in the prophet -- "Behold, one of the seraphim flew to me, and in
his hand there was a coal (or a stone), which he had brought from the
altar with a tongs. And he touched my mouth and said: Behold, I have
touched your lips, and your iniquity shall be removed and your
sinfulness shall be cleansed" -- is like what seems to be uttered
by the mouth of Paul, when he says: "The grace of God, though Jesus
Christ our Lord."
-- You see, then, how all the holy truthfully
confess themselves sinners not in the person of the people but in their
own. Yet they are not at all hopeless about their salvation; rather,
thanks to the grace and mercy of the Lord, they presume upon the
complete justification that they despair of being able to attain due to
the condition of their human frailty." END
from St. John Cassian, "The
Conferences," (New York: Newman Press, 1997), pp. 808 - 810
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