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https://www.honeyandhemlock.com/2025/07/tv-series-saint-paisios-from-farasa-to.html?m=1&fbclid=IwY2xjawT6RuZwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR4LHNyeIMqnhM2Kge7MEN33LGMa1Wu_GVmerasdR4HdUyY-K3qf_4i2Tte5HQ_aem_mXWcIQlgLQAexA4iN5uHiA

You may find it strange or somehow inappropriate that an Orthodox highly recommends the moving and cinematically satisfying 1984 Spanish biographical film series based on the life of St. Teresa of Ávila, but I do.

The Schism, after all, was simply a reality in Teresa’s day (although, as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of blessed memory and other scholars have made clear, it was a divide not fully realized everywhere). Those born on one side of it or the other had no say in the facts governing their history and ecclesiastical and geographical situations. I openly confess, St. Teresa remains permanently among my favorite Western saints — and for good reason. As I said of her in my Foreword to the recently republished edition of Walter Nigg’s Warriors of God (Angelico Press, 2024): “Was there ever a more winsome, humorous, or astute figure in monastic and religious history, or a more earthy and pragmatically minded mystic? One would be hard put to find one.” Certainly, she reflected the governing ideas of her own inescapable time and place, religious and otherwise, but no one can — or should — doubt her sanctity or her profound encounters with her Lord (whom she often referred to as “His Majesty”).

Writing for intelligent and not fearfully reactive Orthodox readers (and others), as I do, I have no qualms whatsoever recommending this sublime 8-part film series (or, for that matter, her writings; my suggested rule, as always, for those who have their wits about them, is “eat the fish and pick out the bones”). Besides, who could possibly dislike any saintly mystic who had the holy audacity to pray, “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us”? I know I couldn’t.

Here are all eight episodes:

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https://orthochristian.com/44489.html

https://orthochristian.com/65138.html

https://www.pravmir.com/article_1220.html

Also, before watching the new interview, this half-hour video biography provides English subtitles that one can easily turn on by clicking on the “cc” (closed caption) symbol. It gives helpful background to the interview that follows:

Here, then, is Father Emmanuel’s new interview with Father Gabriel, filmed in the latter’s Alpine hermitage:

Eight months ago, Father Emmanuel presented another interview, and it’s also time well spent:

Lastly, below is the listing at “Goodreads” of Father Gabriel’s books. They provide invaluable resources for understanding the patristic spiritual heritage and how to apply it to our lives. If I were to recommend two titles with which one might start, I would suggest Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition and Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius of Pontus. But one can begin with any one of his books and derive much benefit.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/101800.Gabriel_Bunge

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(Charles Corbet - c. 1910)

Fr. David McCready is a Western Rite Orthodox priest, now serving at St. Columba’s Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Colorado. My appreciation for the two lectures below is threefold: (1) he doesn’t cater to those who want flashy presentations, but to those who want erudition, substance, and an adult vocabulary (also true of Fr. Cassian Folsom further down the page); (2) he isn’t shy about offering a corrective to the deeply flawed (indeed, erroneous) notion that the Church was divided in its essential orthodoxy between East and West in the first millennium of her existence (and even, to a large extent, for some time thereafter); and (3) his grandly hirsute appearance. Both lectures contain portions that may surprise those who cling to certain faulty notions.

When I first saw the Patristix Channel, I was a little put off by the presentation style of these brothers. That opinion altered after I viewed two or three of what I now regard as a valuable (and, vitally, non-polemical) teaching source for Orthodox faith and practice — one I would certainly recommend to catechumens, for example. The description online is this:

A place to hear stories, truths and interesting things from the early centuries of the Christian faith. We'll talk about heroes and saints, the history of traditions and customs, and how to tie all of this in to our walk with God, our fellowship in the Church, and our ever increasing friendship with Jesus Christ.
This show is created by The Brothers Robinson, Eastern Orthodox Christians and filmmakers.

You can find the site here, and I believe it’s worth a look:

https://www.youtube.com/@Patristix

At the Adoremus website, Fr. Cassian Folsom’s biography reads as follows:

Father Cassian Folsom, O.S.B., is a scholar of sacred music and liturgy, a cancer survivor, and the founder and prior emeritus of the Monks of Norcia. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1955, Fr. Cassian studied music before joining the monastic community of Saint Meinrad in 1974. He founded his monastic community in Rome in 1998 and transferred it to Norcia in the year 2000. Over the last 15 years, the Monastery di San Benedetto has grown, attracting new vocations and pilgrims from around the world. He recently retired as prior but continues to serve the community and teach liturgy at the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm in Rome.

The three lectures below are well worth listening to, as they cover topics related to both previous and forthcoming posts on this page.

Finally, The Most Reluctant Convert can now be viewed on YouTube. Based mainly on Surprised By Joy, it tells the story, using his own words, of C. S. Lewis’s personal journey into Christian faith. This is the description on YouTube: “C.S. Lewis' journey from hard-boiled atheist to 'the most reluctant convert in all England'. Max McLean's performance brings Lewis' story of grief, loss and redemption to life on screen.” It’s a moving presentation, stylishly filmed and brilliantly acted.

[The White Knight] raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a deep ditch.

Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him. She was rather startled by the fall, as for some time he had kept on very well, and she was afraid that he really was hurt this time. However, though she could see nothing but the soles of his feet, she was much relieved to hear that he was talking on in his usual tone…

“How can you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?” Alice asked, as she dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.

The Knight looked surprised at the question. “What does it matter where my body happens to be?” he said. “My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the more head-downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things.”

(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter VIII)

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Prayer, both corporate and “private,” cannot be separated from priesthood. Let me explain.

Everything we do “in Christ” is priestly in nature; we could even say “liturgical.” This is as true when we pray alone as when we pray with others “at church.” Truth be told, if we are “in Christ,” we are never, in fact, alone. We are always praying in union with Christ, as fellow citizens with his “holy ones” (the “saints”) in his kingdom (see 1 John 1:3), and as members indissolubly joined together to make up his “Body.” You have, in fact, never really prayed “all by yourself.” Paradoxically, just as we are all inviolable solitaries in one sense (see the former post), in another sense we are always “surrounded by [a] great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). So, before more is said about how we individually protect the mind (the nous, the “spiritual intellect”) with the threefold “fence” described in the last post, we would do well to recall the sacred context within which all our activities, internal and external, are conducted.

(Felix Vallotton (1865 - 1925), “Coup de vent, Honfleur,” 1917)

It really should be taught more frequently and clearly than it generally is, that all who are “in Christ” have the privilege of being “priests” (ἱερεῖς; hiereis), and bear on their shoulders the duty that comes with it: “Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth… loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, [and] priests to his God and Father…” (emphasis added; Revelation 1:5-6; see 1 Peter 2:9).

A priest, despite impressions we might have, is not someone intended to occupy a position of power; rather, his position is one of humble service. The “priests” under the Old Covenant, who provided the model for those under the New, assisted the “high priest.” It was the high priest upon whom power and authority were bestowed in his consecration, and he bore the greatest share of responsibility before God. Still, his high priestly office was mortal, typological, and temporary. Under the New Covenant, Christ was revealed to be the true high priest, because he is immortal and divine, the one that all the earthly high priests had foreshadowed: “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession… Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:14, 16; the first ten chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews deal in some detail with this topic). The dispensing of mercy and transforming grace is Christ the High Priest’s singular and sacred duty or “office” (the two words are synonyms; in Latin, officium), made available to us by his sacrifice and resurrection. All who are “in Christ,” and thus “priests,” share in that office.

As “priests,” both those ordained to preside at the altar (who present Christ to the people and the people to God) and those who share in the priestly “order” of the laity (i.e., the “people” who “assist”)^[1], we offer together “the sacrifice of praise” at the eucharistic “altar” (Heb. 13:10, 15). (The “sacrifice of praise” referred to here, by the way, has nothing to do with the “music ministry” of a local congregation or the “praise songs” sung or to the release of intense emotion; it signifies something precise, focused, and weighty: “the fruit of lips which proclaim allegiance to his name” – καρπὸν χειλέων ὁμολογούντων τῷ ὀνόματι αὐτοῦ). The earth is sanctified by this continual eucharistic offering and its “allegiance” to Jesus’ name; the prophecy of Malachi finds here its fulfilment: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name [incense — which was costly — was offered as a sacrifice, incidentally], and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts” (Mal. 1:11; emphasis added). Those familiar with, say, the traditional daily preparatory prayers of St. Ambrose of Milan for the celebration of the Eucharist will immediately recognize the terminology of “assisting” at the sacrifice of the Mass. What is emphasized in those prayers is this very idea that we have the “duty” – the extraordinary office – of “offering” to God on earth, as those who “assist” as priests, what Christ the High Priest offers eternally in heaven.

Before all else, it is worship (λατρεία; latreia) that constitutes the “duty” of the Christian; and worship is the core and aim of all prayer, even of what we misleadingly call “private” prayer. Likewise, worship involves sacrifice, which, it should be underscored, doesn’t mean “death” (though it may involve it); as we said above, it is an offering to God. “Therefore,” says Paul, “I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship [λογικὴν λατρείαν; logiken latreian]” (emphasis added; Romans 12:1).

If we have it firmly established in our minds that what we do in private is as important a priestly duty as our corporate worship, and in fact is not divorced or distinct from corporate worship, then we have a basic understanding of the dignity of Christian worship and prayer. We do not, for instance, pray – even meditatively or contemplatively – in order to “get a buzz” or achieve a mystical “high,” to “transform our consciousness” or reach a state of transcendental bliss or “emptiness.” We certainly aren’t on a quest for visions or “locutions,” we don’t seek to “see” nature spirits or converse with angels (or aliens), to glow in the dark, or to receive the stigmata. If anything unusual or “mystical” occurs, we should “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1) – and that means, after consulting a trusted older and wiser head, more often than not, rejecting them (as all the great ascetics and genuine mystics have warned us repeatedly to be prepared to do). Spiritual health comes only with an increasing ability to abide with Christ.

(Joseph Wright of Derby, 1734 - 1797)

For such tried-and-true inner stability, in which the image of Christ can ever take fuller form in us, we have the perennial, practical threefold “Rule” – for lack of a better word – that Father Martin Thornton illustrated with his image of a fence. As we saw last time, he presented it in these words:

The Rule… can be summarized as consisting of (1) the Office… (2) The Mass [or Divine Liturgy]… (3) Private prayer…

The conception of Rule as a threefold system, an interconnected framework, might be illustrated by the idea of a fence. We are constructing a fence – to keep the devil out of the garden of the soul… This carefully constructed fence of the spiritual life is built around a series of big strong posts, firmly embedded in the ground, and placed at regular intervals; these represent the Mass, which acts as the central support of all else. A more numerous series of smaller stakes, embedded in the ground and placed at more frequent intervals between the main posts are the Offices. Finally there are a number of horizontal, parallel cross-pieces which may vary in number, size, strength, or material, which link up the verticals and which are dependent upon them: this is private prayer.^[2]

What we need most for authentic prayer to be realized in us is what Abba Serenus told Germanus and Cassian in the seventh of The Conferences, which we cited in the last post. The mind – the nous – constitutes the spiritual “vitals” we must at all costs guard and keep healthy. For this, we have the “fence.” Regarding the mind or – as it’s often called – the “heart,” Serenus says: it must gain “experience and learn with what things to equip its memory, to what purpose it should direct its unceasing flights, and why it should acquire the power to remain fixed in one place.”^[3] In the eighth conference, Serenus reminds his visitors that they must constantly stand vigilant against the demons, who “strike” from without with “very bitter impulses of thoughts,” and seek to steal away the good with which they have “equipped our memory.” The demons, he repeats, “are utterly unable to get into a person’s mind or body and do not have the ability to force their way into someone’s soul unless they have first deprived it of every holy thought and holy contemplation and have left it empty and bare.”^[4] So, of course, our effort is to protect and compound in ourselves the riches we have gained in “holy thought and holy contemplation,” so that we don’t find our inner riches plundered.

Having briefly discussed the Eucharist above (the “big strong posts, firmly embedded in the ground, and placed at regular intervals”), in what follows I will turn my attention, much too briefly, to the other two aspects of our spiritual practice: the Office (the “more numerous series of smaller stakes, embedded in the ground and placed at more frequent intervals between the main posts”), and private prayer (the “horizontal, parallel cross-pieces which may vary in number, size, strength, or material, which link up the verticals and which are dependent upon them”). My intention is pragmatic. I will venture only a few specific suggestions. And while I insist that all three parts of the Rule should be considered fundamental to our practice, they should also sensibly be adapted to fit our personal circumstances realistically – neither too much nor too little. Again, they relate to the duty incumbent on us in our calling as “priests” of Christ’s kingdom, offering our whole selves as living sacrifices in reasonable (i.e., mentally equipped) worship.

First, then, the Office: This is, of course, the Latin or Western designation, although the term has been adopted in English-language Eastern Orthodox books.^[5]

At its most elementary, the Office involves the recitation or singing of Psalms and the reading of scripture. The very name “office,” as we have seen, means “duty.” It is a duty, in fact, that predates Christianity, inherited from the Church’s ancient Jewish heritage. The apostolic Church practiced it: “And day by day, [they were] attending the temple together” (Acts 2:46). This daily attendance at temple worship would have been practiced at the customary hours of prayer, and we see Peter and John doing precisely that in the next chapter, when they are met by a lame man whom they heal in Jesus’ name: “Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour” (i.e., 3 PM; Acts 3:1; emphasis added). It may very well be, too, what is meant to be inferred from the mention of “the prayers” in Acts 2:42 (note the definite article). The Church merely continued the practice, the “hours” of prayer in time becoming explicitly associated with Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice. The Psalms had been the “prayer book” of Jesus and were already being interpreted in a “spiritual sense” by the Jews. Christians prayed them “in the person of Christ,” seeing him in the texts (“Then [Jesus] said to [the gathered disciples], “These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled”; Luke 24:44; emphasis added).^[6] They were also understood to be ascetical texts, indeed able to banish and exorcize those unclean spirits and thoughts that constitute the relentless “enemies” cited throughout the Psalter. To steer his readers toward the spiritual, rather than the literal reading of the harshest Psalms, St. John Cassian gives this cautionary reminder in the seventh Conference:

[I]f we do not take [the imprecatory Psalms] as having been written against those evil spirits that lie in wait for us day and night we shall not only not derive from them any increase of gentleness and patience but we shall even conceive a kind of cruel feeling that is contrary to gospel perfection. For we shall not only be taught not to pray for our enemies and not to love them, but we shall even be incited to detest them with an implacable hatred, to curse them, and unceasingly to pour out prayer against them. To understand that holy men and friends of God would have uttered these things in such a spirit is exceedingly wicked and impious.^[7]

(Willem Bastiaan Tholen (1860 - 1931), Dawn, 1880s)

The Office was communal in nature: it was a synaxis or “gathering” of worshippers. Still, we see that praying the Office (the “synaxis”) “privately” was not unheard of; Cassian even refers in one instance to the individual “observance” of “singing the Psalms” as a “synaxis,” a “gathering”: “For when one of our brothers was traveling through this desert and the day was drawing to a close, he found a certain cave and made stop there, wishing to celebrate the evening synaxis in it [by himself].”^[8] I have little doubt that Cassian would have regarded this individual who dutifully prayed his Office as doing so spiritually in communion with the whole Body of Christ. The “communion of saints” isn’t simply a matter of physical proximity.

Whether said or sung along with other worshippers or in “private,” then, the Office unites us to all the saints who have prayed these same texts for millennia. We “equip our memory,” to use Cassian’s words, in so doing. Whether we pray through the Psalms weekly or monthly or even less, our continual recourse to them, to praying these same texts over and over again, stocks our minds with the whole vast tradition of prayer. To set the Psalter aside is, in a sense, to set aside one of the premier ways we have to imbue ourselves with the mind of Christ. There can be no substitute of equal value, and certainly none of greater.

Much more could be said about the Office, and I will be coming back to it in future posts, but I will make one last observation. There are countless “Office books” available, and finding the right one may require some effort, but I recommend finding one. For beginners, perhaps the first stop might be The Book of Common Prayer, which is — unsurprisingly — no longer just for Anglicans: there are, for example, an Orthodox version and a Roman Catholic version (see this post). An old man like me has enough time on his hands to pray the entire Benedictine Office each week (published in two volumes — Matins and the Diurnal — by an Orthodox press of the Western Rite), something I could not have done when I was raising a family and doing full-time ministry. In those days, though, I could manage the Prayer Book Matins and Vespers every day and did. But some form of the Office, whatever length is most appropriate for each person, should be adopted and adapted as our privilege and duty. Over time, if one sticks with it, it will cease to be onerous, if ever one felt it to be, and will become a cherished mainstay (to apply the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, written in reference to something else, “You will see for yourself that honey can be extracted from stones and oil from the hardest rocks”; Ep. 106).

Lastly, Private prayer: As with the Office, our private prayer should be done to “equip the memory.” Recalling St. John of Damascus’s words that prayer is the “uplifting of the mind to God,” we should seek to do precisely this intentionally and consciously. It is, we might say, an offering that we make each day. Although our private prayers will include intercession and petition to God, and – if we are Orthodox or Catholic – calling on saints and angels to pray with and for us, the most important thing is to raise the mind up to God and, for as long as we can do so, keep it there. (Again, I will say more about this in future posts.)

(Pavel Viktorovich Ryzhenko (1970-2014), “Sergius,” 2013)

As with the Office, private prayer will also include words and, indeed, repeated phrases. The mind should be “circumscribed” or “encircled” by the words of prayer. I do not mean a mantra, but actual, intentional prayers, every phrase of which means something. The Fathers of the Desert would often repeat “O God, make speed to save me; O Lord, make haste to help me” (Psalm 70:1; 69:1, LXX). The Jesus Prayer – “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” – is an expansion of the Kyrie eleison, and is central to Orthodox devotion (in fact, every Christian prayer is an expansion of the Kyrie eleison). In the Latin tradition, the most commonly repeated prayers are the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Apostles’ Creed, the Gloria, and the Salve Regina (all are said in the recitation of the rosary, for instance). The Orthodox use knotted ropes or strings of beads of various lengths to say the Jesus Prayer; in the West, the rosary has been used for centuries (I confess, I carry and use both; the rosary is used among Orthodox of the Western Rite, as well as by Catholics). What these frequently recited prayers — linked tactilely to knots and beads — are meant to do is sow and embed in our memories what is of utmost importance. While the words occupy one level of our mind, barring the gates against all outside intrusion, a higher level of our mind is simultaneously “uplifted” to God beyond words. (As an aside, I caution against using active imagination when praying the rosary; a mere remembrance of a “mystery” is sufficient at most.) This two-tiered mental practice in prayer will take time to learn, but once learned, it becomes an “abiding place” in which one can move into greater contemplation – though not, of course, without periods of distraction and occasional aridity.

I will conclude here, but not before returning to where we began. As good a simile as the fence is to describe the interrelationship of Eucharist, Office, and private prayer, there is a grander simile by far. Forgive me for mixing metaphors so shamelessly. St. Paul describes Christians in 1 Corinthians 3 and 6 as collectively and individually God’s temple. We are, as we said, likewise the priests of the temple, making sacrifice daily. What we offer is ourselves, and the core of ourselves is the mind, the nous. In prayer, we seek to offer an unblemished gift, and prayer requires of us time and effort. If we are going to be truly the light of the world, both communally and personally, we will guard that light against every force in the world that would try to blow it out. And for that, a sturdy fence is of great benefit.

^[1] Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London, 1945), makes a point of this. He also notes that while “Christian worship was intensely corporate… it was not ‘public.’” In other words, once outsiders and catechumens had been dismissed, the “priestly” action of the gathered baptized – the Eucharist – could be celebrated. (Shape, p. 16)

^[2] Martin Thornton, The Heart of the Parish: A Theology of the Remnant (Cowley republication, 1989), pages 205 – 206. Thornton presents a more basic version of this in his Christian Proficiency (first published 1959; Cowley reprint, 1988).

^[3] Conference 7, IV, 2

^[4] Conference 8, XIX, 1 – 2

^[5] For example, in The Anthologion published by Saint Ignatius Orthodox Press (Zeeland, MI, 2021 – 2024), translated by Archimandrite Ephrem Lash.

^[6] The best book on this subject, in my estimation, is Father Patrick Henry Reardon’s Christ in the Psalms (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2021).

^[7] Cassian, Conference 7, XXI, 7 – 8. C. S. Lewis gives a similar warning in his Reflections on the Psalms.

^[8] Conference 8, XVI, 1

(Samuel Bough (1822-1878), At Barncluith, Hamilton, 1854)

(La Gloria di S.Benedetto by Pietro Annigoni, 1979)

1. Our interior sanctuary

In a celebrated passage, Thomas Merton presented an idea similar to one I mentioned in my two previous posts concerning what exists at the core of every human soul (what I mean by “interior sanctuary” above). I must make the caveat that an orthodox reader should study Merton critically, and sometimes warily. Even in the instance that I cite with sympathy below, which made an impact on me in my twenties, I believe, nevertheless, that he misleads the reader when he should have been more precise in his choice of words. The difficulty is that he uses the ambiguous word “nothingness,” and one might perhaps see in that a suggestion of his growing romantic intellectual affair with Buddhism. I won’t say more about it here (one can see some of my views about Zen Buddhism in particular here and here), but the passage below will be familiar to a few of you, and as I say, there’s truth in it:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness [I think Merton might have argued that the word “nothingness” indicates that the reality at our personal “center” is not a “thing”] which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us…^[1]

Merton’s observation is sound when he notes that, within us, there abides an “untouched” and untouchable “point or spark which belongs entirely to God.” Christian anthropology, to put the matter as simply as possible, teaches that each human being is individually created in “God’s image.” That is the most distinctive feature, in fact, of what it means to be human. That “image” certainly can’t be described adequately as a “thing”; in that sense (only) it can be said to be “no-thing.” To advance another simile, it’s the created “imprint” within our spiritual intellects of God’s uncreated mind. It is, in essence, created to grow through grace (i.e., as a “gift”) into the spiritual freedom that God possesses by nature (thus, the need to be creatures conditioned by time: see my post on this subject here). Freed from death and sin by Christ in his Incarnation (in which God, who by nature is incorporeal, became materially corporeal), our humanity “in Christ” has within it the restored potential to grow into the likeness of its Maker in cooperation with the Spirit (“Breath”) of God.

(Everhardus Koster (Dutch, 1817-1892), Lost in thoughts)

This basic “untouchableness” at the core of our individual selves – our inner “sanctuaries” – means that we are all, at heart, “solitaries,” even in our most social contexts. At our most sober, we know this, perhaps a little wistfully, to be true. At its best, we find in it some respite from the hurly-burly of life; at its worst, we may experience it as alienation. As greatly as we might yearn for union with, say, another person or with some social entity or with “nature” itself (nature-mysticism exists for good reason), and even if we have had temporary experiences of such a blissful unitive state (perhaps with chemical help), that union doesn’t last. It doesn’t last because, put bluntly, it can’t: we’re not made for that. The only everlasting, absorbing, fully blissful union – the one for which each immortal soul is created – is the transformative union with God; and only in that union can be found a richer unity with all else besides. God intends to be “all in all” in us. It’s not simply a matter of his exercising on us his raw will or power, either. It’s because we have that seed of God’s “pure glory” planted in our very nature – the “image” of God – that only our willed union with God (the missing piece of the puzzle that we are, to mix our metaphors) can cause it to spring into (eternal) life.

It may seem strange, at first, that I bring all this up in order to discuss prayer and the maintenance of the internal and external stability that one needs for prayer. I hope to show that it isn’t. To do that, I will draw from the Seventh Conference of St. John Cassian. As I said in passing not too long ago, it could be convincingly argued that all robust ascetical and moral theology after Cassian, both East and West, constitutes a series of footnotes to his two major works, The Institutes and The Conferences. After citing Cassian, I will bring in an insight of Fr. Martin Thornton’s (see my post on Fr. Thornton here) and then, in the follow-up post, I’ll offer in summary a few pragmatic suggestions for personal practice.

In the seventh of Cassian’s Conferences, he and his fellow-traveler, Germanus, are instructed by a certain Abba Serenus. The latter’s name is, as Cassian remarks, noteworthy in itself: serenity is what he exhibits and offers the two visitors. Serenus’ wisdom merits two conferences in the book, this and the eighth, both dealing with the important topic of evil spirits (chapter 7) and principalities (chapter 8). There is no questioning the existence of such entities in these dialogues, since the experiences of the desert ascetics recurrently confirmed their reality (some of those experiences are passingly recounted in this very chapter, in fact, and anyone familiar with academically researched, documented, and verified paranormal cases – for example, as met with again and again in poltergeist cases – will recognize all the same patterns).

Along with the acceptance of literal demonic or intelligent evil forces, Cassian reflects the keen psychological insights of the Egyptian ascetics. This is not to suggest at all that the demonic is reducible to our own psychological impulses or thoughts. Evil spirits may respond to those things, but they come at us not from within us but from without — they are not psychological constructs. That distinction must remain crystal clear and fixed in our minds, and it should be seen as an implicit warning concerning what influences we allow to come in – especially those that enter through our senses (the result of not being on guard or “watchful” is gradually to become spiritually desensitized). We should, as we will see below, erect a sort of noetic barrier in our lives (we will call it a Rule), precisely to guard our hearts.

Through Abba Serenus, Cassian emphasizes that the nous – the mind – is “changeable and… manifoldly changeable.”^[2] This capacity for change – transformation – isn’t in itself a problem of the mind (2 Cor. 3:18!); indeed, its temporal nature is that it must develop and change, and its will must be energized by the Spirit to cooperate more and more freely. But unless the nous (the guiding principle, the “pilot,” so to speak) is properly directed and focused, the demonic can swing it, twist it, and push it towards a seemingly endless variety of false directions. Changeableness doesn’t mean that we should simply wander from one thing to another.

Because of its nature [Abba Serenus tells Germanus and Cassian], then, [the mind] can never stand idle but, unless it has some foresight into where it will move and what will preoccupy it, it will inevitably run about and fly everywhere due to its own changeableness until, having become accustomed by lengthy practice and constant habituation [“habituation,” it should be noted, means to “acquire certain habits”]… it gains experience and learns with what things to equip its memory, to what purpose it should direct its unceasing flights, and why it should acquire the power to remain fixed in one place. (Emphasis added.)^[3]

(Santiago Rusiñol (Spanish, 1861-1931), The Garden at Aranjuez, c. 1899)

I’ve put in italics above what deserves emphasis. We are told that we must have “foresight” regarding the direction into which our mind should move and what should preoccupy it. A more common term for this kind of “foresight” is “discernment,” and that has to be learned, with the help of reliable spiritual guidance. It’s not related to intellectual pursuit, the study of theological “systems,” the mastery of a “subject” or philosophical niceties, and so on, as valuable as such things may be, but only after they have lost all power to “puff up” a person (as St. Paul put it).

What we are stressing here is actualized in daily practice: “lengthy practice and constant habituation,” as Cassian says. Or, put differently, the weight here is placed on what we do and what habits we are forming in our hearts and behaviors that will, over time, become permanent. So it is that the “memory” must become equipped, “purpose” must be settled, and stability should be sought. We dealt with the subject of stability last time and said that, for many of us, it must be more a state of mind than actually to abide in a single locale. That said, so important is physical stability for the monk that Serenus even tells Germanus and Cassian at one point: “The elders are in the habit of telling [their hearers] of this powerful remedy: Stay in your cells, and eat and drink and sleep as much as you want, so long as you remain in them constantly.”^[4] The translator, Boniface Ramsey, cautions the reader, though, not to take this advice at face value: “This counsel,” he writes in a footnote, “is almost surely an exaggeration for the sake of emphasizing the importance of physical stability.” That noted, spiritual stability – which outer stillness and a place “set apart” for our prayer abets – is essential.

But here, rather crucially, I wish to highlight something that should – I hope – encourage us. It is Abba Serenus’ insistence to Germanus and Cassian that, as was noted above, the evil spirits do not have access to the deepest layer of our being. As I said, their attacks come from without. Our essential core, our heart in the spiritual sense, cannot be penetrated by any other entity than God. Even the “possessed,” for whom Serenus displays a remarkable compassion, even saying that they should receive Holy Communion, retain an inviolable core within themselves.^[5] (The Gadarene demoniac, for example, had an inviolable “self” that was salvageable by Christ, despite the Legion that had possessed him.)

The key distinction to be stressed – which may fly in the face of assumptions commonly held and disseminated – is that the demons, like us, are created beings, and therefore they have “bodies.” The “go-to” text here is 1 Corinthians 15, which notes both “different kinds” of bodies and – on the material level – “different kinds” of “flesh” (i.e., animal species). All creatures have bodies, and – this is of some importance – not all bodies are made of “flesh and blood.” Even the angels have angelic “bodies,” subtle and immaterial, and only perceptible to our fleshly sense organs as they wish or are directed. The demons, therefore, as bodily creatures, cannot fully and perfectly penetrate the essential nous. They can attack it, delude it, lead it astray, smother it, but – not being incorporeal themselves – they can only take up partial residence in a human being (they “are by no means to be considered incorporeal”^[6]); they can manage only to be partially united to a human “spirit”: “[I]t is completely impossible for them to enter into and be united with [the human spirit] in such a way that one can contain the other.”^[7]

Serenus continues:

Nor even if a spirit is mingled with this dense and solid matter (that is, with the flesh) which can very easily be done, is it therefore to be believed that it can be united to a soul, which is also a spirit, that it can make it the bearer of its own nature. This is possible to the Trinity alone, which so penetrates every intellectual nature that it is able not only to embrace and encompass it but even to flow into it and, being itself incorporeal, to be poured into a body.^[8] (Emphasis added.)

The demons can “read our minds,” not by penetrating them, but only by observing us (the ascetics from experience assumed that we are surveilled by unseen presences; again, serious paranormal researchers today would not find the notion implausible in the least): “No one doubts,” says Abba Serenus, “that unclean spirits can understand the characteristics of our thoughts, but they pick these up from external and perceptible indications – that is, either from our gestures or from our words, and from the desires to which they see us inclining… from movements and indications of the outer man.”^[9]

Thus, the need for “lengthy practice and constant habituation” in prayer, for “equipping the memory,” setting our purpose (or course), and practicing prayerful stability. How we practically establish and maintain stability in prayer is the subject of what follows.

(Simon Palmer (British, b.1956), "Sunday Lunchtime")

2. The fence we must construct

St. John of Damascus, in his monumental Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (it is, it seems, the first identifiably scholastic theological work^[10]), describes prayer as “an uprising of the mind to God or a petitioning of God for what is fitting.”^[11] That’s not an exhaustive definition, obviously, but the emphasis on the mind is noteworthy. At the center of prayer is the engagement of the nous.

Our prayer practice is always both corporate and individual. When we pray in church, our individual hearts are engaged; when we pray individually, we are still praying liturgically or in a priestly capacity (more about that assertion in the next post), as baptized members indissolubly joined to Christ and the whole communion of saints (the Church, in other words) in heaven and on earth. When we pray privately, God indwells our “inner sanctuary,” and, in Christ, the departed are our surrounding witnesses (see Hebrews 12:1), angels are present – and so also is the demonic. Christians have always believed that, as a rule, the “unseen realm” is merely outside the range of our material senses, though sometimes that veil may be withdrawn. They have always believed, too, because experience attests to it, that spiritual conflict is a reality.

Our prayer life can be – and probably should be – seen as a “Rule” or regula (it should, not to put too fine a point on it, be regular). We can see the outlines of the basic Christian Rule in the first church in Jerusalem: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread [i.e., Holy Communion] and the prayers [i.e., corporate prayer – what we might call the “office” or the “duty” of praying in common]” (Acts 2:42). Helpfully, Fr. Martin Thornton presented the perennial threefold Rule of the Church this way (and it applies equally well to the Orthodox Church as it did to his own Anglo-Catholic context in the 1950s):

The Rule… can be summarized as consisting of (1) the Office… (2) The Mass [or Divine Liturgy]… (3) Private prayer…

The conception of Rule as a threefold system, an interconnected framework, might be illustrated by the idea of a fence. We are constructing a fence – to keep the devil out of the garden of the soul… This carefully constructed fence of the spiritual life is built around a series of big strong posts, firmly embedded in the ground, and placed at regular intervals; these represent the Mass, which acts as the central support of all else. A more numerous series of smaller stakes, embedded in the ground and placed at more frequent intervals between the main posts are the Offices. Finally there are a number of horizontal, parallel cross-pieces which may vary in number, size, strength, or material, which link up the verticals and which are dependent upon them: this is private prayer.^[12]

This passage requires, it should go without saying, some necessary “unpacking,” and I will do that in the next post. I will also offer some practical, doable suggestions for actual “fence-construction.” In the meantime, I leave you here with both Cassian’s insights and Martin Thornton’s basic Rule for consideration.

^[1] Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York, 1968), p. 158.

^[2] In Boniface Ramsey’s complete translation (Newman Press, 1997), which is the version from which I will quote throughout, the Seventh Conference is found on pages 241-283.

^[3] IV, 2

^[4] XXIII, 3

^[5] About the possessed, Serenus says to Germanus and Cassian: “[W]e shall not only never despise them but we shall even pray ceaselessly for them as for our own members and suffer along with them from the depths of our being and with all our hearts… But we do not recall that Holy Communion was ever forbidden them. Rather, it was thought that, if possible, they should be given it every day… When it is received by a person it burns out as it were by a kind of fire the spirit that occupies his members and that is trying to hide in them, and it flees.” (XXXI, 1 – 2)

^[6] XIII, 1

^[7] X, 1

^[8] XIII, 1

^[9] XV, 1 – 2

^[10] We may not appreciate what Scholasticism became much later in the Latin West, but applying it to St. John of Damascus is neither incorrect nor a negative criticism.

^[11] Exposition, III, xxiv, 1

^[12] Martin Thornton, The Heart of the Parish: A Theology of the Remnant (Cowley republication, 1989), pages 205 – 206. Thornton presents a more basic version of this in his Christian Proficiency (first published 1959; Cowley reprint, 1988).

(Praying monk. 1864, by Jacob Maris)

In the meantime, having likened our individual solitariness to the monastic vocation, insisting that we are all “monks” in the deepest layer of our souls, and having said that what it is that professed monks and nuns do for us ideally is to show us “iconographically” what we all must discover to be true about our individual inner lives, regardless of who we are, where we live, or what we do, I thought it might be interesting to view (or at least, have access to) a few of the best “monastic documentaries” available online. Some of the recommendations I include below I’ve made before. I make no bones of the fact that I believe the monastic vocation is integral to full-orbed Christianity for the reasons I’ve indicated above. I don’t believe monasticism is the “highest” vocation or superior to family life or marriage (to think that, actually, is un-Orthodox, as well as unorthodox). But monks are “signs of contradiction” and — again — “icons” of an interior truth about our selves.

The gold standard of “monk movies” is, of course, Into Great Silence (Die große Stille), Philip Gröning’s magnificent 2005 award-winning film chronicalling the lives of the Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse. It isn’t available online in its totality (apart from this version on YouTube). Here is, however, a taste of what one will find in it:

The next video is also a stunning film. This is how I described it in an earlier post:

It is an award-winning 2022 Russian film about the Solovetsky Monastery, entitled The Holy Archipelago. The monastery was appropriated and converted into a gulag during the Soviet era, but today it thrives as a revitalized center of Orthodox faith. Stunningly beautiful, directed with artistic sensitivity and skill by Sergey Debizhev, the motion picture’s cinematography alone is worth savoring. The documentary also puts forth, along with a harrowing description of the years that Solovetsky (Solovki) housed political prisoners, a cultural commentary and a theological/philosophical perspective in contrast to that of the contemporary world (the description on the website below describes it this way: “The film explores the profound meanings of existence, faith, hope, and love. This is a large-scale story about the life of the Solovetsky monastery.”). Although there may be a version on YouTube in the U.S. where it can be viewed (there isn’t here in Norway), it can be found online here, with full English dubbing:

https://fawesome.tv/movies/10742601/the-holy-archipelago

Here is the trailer for the film that does appear on YouTube:

And here is a conversation with the director:

I won’t go into great detail about the next three films. They speak for themselves:

The introduction on YouTube to this beautiful film states: “The abbey of Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux is a Benedictine Abbey located at Le Barroux in Vaucluse (France). It was founded in 1978 by Dom Gerard Calvet. This documentary shows the transformation of different monks in their lives from being ordinary men to extraordinary men of faith who chose to live a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience.” Incidentally, the website for the Abbaye du Barroux can be found here, and it’s worth the visit: https://www.barroux.org/en/.

I didn’t wish to end this post without presenting something about a women’s monastery. I found this fine, short introduction to the life of the Sisters of Mary Morning Star gently captivating:

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There’s a Substack post making the rounds on the topic of “Orthodox burnout” (the last I looked, it had 582 “likes,” so it has obviously struck a chord). I applaud the author for his honesty. He’s a father, a husband, and works during the week, and so he is well within his rights to dig in his heels and not push his ascetical life beyond realistic limits. A sort of “muscular Orthodoxy” (for lack of a better designation) is fashionable, especially in the U.S., among young male converts. It’s often promoted by converted twenty-, thirty-, and (occasionally) forty-something Orthodox podcasters and influencers. (I tend not to use the term “Orthobro,” being little more now than indiscriminate billingsgate, indicative of an incapacity to distinguish between converts who really are noisy and problematic and those who are merely young, painfully sincere, zealous, but callow.) That burnout is frequently a consequence, after long effort, for those who have felt pressured into adopting a much too idealistic regime of prayer, fasting, reading, church activities, and the rest — whether actually pressured from without or feeling within a drive to keep up and the guilt feelings that attend the mounting protests of one’s body and mind — is scarcely surprising.

To all this, I have one word of advice. You have probably heard it before. It’s this: “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” It comes from the sensible ascetical theology of Abbot John Chapman (1865 - 1933), a sensible twentieth-century English representative of the sensible Benedictine tradition. Did I mention that he was sensible? Well, he was, and eminently so. And I don’t apologize for quoting a Roman Catholic writer in this instance. Even Orthodox of the “muscular” sort might benefit from becoming better acquainted with the reasonable balance found in the Benedictine tradition (and “this little rule… for beginners”). After all, St. Benedict was pre-schism, as much Orthodox as RC (there were Benedictines on Mount Athos as late as the 13th century), and Abbot Chapman’s wisdom is applicable on both sides of “the Bosphorus.”

“Pray as you can, not as you can’t” is sound ascetical advice; with it one can say “Fast as you can, not as you can’t,” “Give as you can, not as you can’t,” “Keep vigil as you can, not as you can’t,” and so on. It’s sound ascetical advice because reason and balance are congruent with discipline. A father, husband, and employee needs time to be a father, husband, and employee. He also needs to relax, to think, contemplate, exercise, do chores, maintain the car, and everything else that daily life entails (and, of course, this same sensible approach applies to women). It’s plain common sense. (Even in the monasteries under the Benedictine rule, the daily offices were kept to a comparatively moderate length because, quite sensibly, Benedict knew that monks and nuns had work to do.)

At any rate, that’s my word of advice to those complaining or worried about “burnout.” It’s okay to think through these things, adjust your time and strength as you must, and get it into your head that Christ has you well in hand, even when you’re dozing in a hammock.

A hunter in the desert saw Abba Anthony enjoying himself with the brethren and he was shocked. Wanting to show him that it was necessary sometimes to meet the needs of the brethren, the old man said to him, "Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it." So he did. The old man then said, "Shoot another," and he did so. Then the old man said, 'Shoot yet again," and the hunter replied "If I bend my bow so much I will break it." Then the old man said to him, "It is the same with the work of God. If we stretch the brethren beyond measure they will soon break. Sometimes it is necessary to come down to meet their needs." When he heard these words the hunter was pierced by compunction and, greatly edified by the old man, he went away. As for the brethren, they went home strengthened. (Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Sayings, Sayings of Abba Anthony, #13; translated by Benedicta Ward)

Speaking of St. Anthony the Great, I recently enjoyed watching this documentary, and you might too. It’s an engaging blend of artistic craftsmanship, historical investigation, and cinematic visuals. The overall question is: “What makes St. Anthony the Great ‘great’?” And the answer is both moving and spiritually satisfying. It is time well spent.

Finally, I wish to draw your attention to a soon-to-be-released book from Os Justi Press that you may wish to pre-order just as soon as you can do so. Scholar, composer, author, and publisher Dr. Peter Kwasniewski approached me with it some weeks ago to see if I would read and endorse it. And I’m appreciative that he brought me on board, because Timothy J. Kelly’s Wounded I Sing is truly a tremendous book, despite the modest size. I reproduce here, then, my full endorsement (which I suspect, given its length, will be shortened for the book’s cover):

I underline when I read. If I had previewed this superb book in hard copy, every page would, without a doubt, have been decorated with my underlining and marginal annotations (including the footnotes). This is a profoundly Catholic work, which I, as an Orthodox reader, can endorse as streaming from the common source of both our traditions. Its integration of sound biblical exegesis, patristic learning, mystical insights, citations from the best theological minds of the ages (from the Cistercian Fathers and St. Thomas to Paul Quay), and matters liturgical and sacramental reveals how internally consistent the Great Tradition is. Most importantly, it's about the divine eros and the union established eternally between our Incarnate Bridegroom and his people. This is, quite simply, a beautiful book, and Timothy J. Kelly is to be commended for giving us a text that illuminates Solomon's Song as few others in recent times have done. It deserves a place on the bookshelf next to Origen and St. Bernard.

I will be purchasing a hard copy for myself when it appears, and I plan to underline it throughout. I’ll undoubtedly purchase copies for friends, as well.

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With some extra demands on my time this week (all of them enjoyable and not burdensome), my forthcoming post in the present series about “demons and exorcism” is delayed for a few days. This video-laden post, though a sort of “filler,” should nonetheless prove worth your while.

The first of the videos is a half-hour-long look at St. Constantine’s Antiochian Orthodox Community in York, England, which has been given the golden opportunity of purchasing and restoring an ancient church building for its congregation. My parish here in Bergen, Norway, has recently done something similar and made a similar appeal as that below (and some of you have responded generously — for which we’re grateful), so I was gratified when one of the readers of my Substack, a member of St. Constantine’s, asked whether I would share the fine video they have produced. I was eager to do so. Please consider helping out the church, and definitely view the video. It’s beautifully produced and encouraging.

Here is the introduction they have put on YouTube:

The Orthodox Community of St Constantine the Great in York, under the omophorion of His Eminence Silouan (Oner), Metropolitan of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland, has grown steadily since its founding in 2004. In the city where St Constantine was crowned and St Wilfrid and St Paulinus once preached, we offer Orthodox worship in English, uniting converts and cradle Orthodox from many nations.

For now, we worship in a borrowed university chapel, and we are grateful for its hospitality. Yet we can only use it when it is available, and because we are merely guests, we have no space for catechesis, fellowship, or shared meals. We long for a permanent place of worship that we can call our own.

With the blessing of Metropolitan Silouan and our parish priest Fr Michael Alexander, we are raising £750,000 to buy and restore the disused ancient church of St Martin-cum-Gregory within the city walls of York. With its earliest parts dating from the days before the Great Schism, we are hoping to re-establish this church into an Orthodox temple dedicated to the worship of the Holy Trinity once again. Your gift will help root the Orthodox faith more deeply in English soil and give our growing community a true home for many generations to come.

Here, too, is the GoFundMe page where you can help out, if possible (and if you can’t assist materially, please consider keeping them in your prayers): https://www.gofundme.com/f/york-orthodox.

In the previous post, I cited C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, and having him in mind (I unapologetically think of him as a “pragmatic mystic,” someone who certainly demonstrated in his life both aspects of that label), I came across a three-part interview with the late Walter Hooper, Lewis’s friend and secretary, which I found delightful and fascinating. Hooper was a gentle, humorous, sharp, and good soul who did more to preserve Lewis’s work and legacy than any other. He took some flak for it (discussed a bit in one of the segments), but maintained his dignity and cheerfulness in the face of it all. Those of us who love and revere Lewis owe Hooper an immeasurable debt. (I will, by the way, face down anyone who tells me that Lewis was not one of the great theologians of our age, or who dismisses his thought as not sufficiently “sophisticated” philosophically, theologically, or otherwise. It’s usually academics who do the latter (envy being a lesser or greater fault, depending on the one doing the envying). Few things, however, of a pseudo-intellectual nature can cause me to evince contempt — which I acknowledge to be a sin — more easily than that. Help me not to sin and don’t do it here. Thank you.)

Here are the three parts of the interview, followed by the 1979 documentary featuring a much younger Walter Hooper (and Peter Ustinov performing the voice of Lewis), which I believe was the first ever of its kind.

Not too long ago, a French filmmaker captured a “typical” exorcism at the Russian monastery of Valaam in a documentary. The English subtitles on YouTube are a bit uneven. But, that caveat aside, beginning at the 46:12 time stamp, one can view the exorcism below. Whatever else might be said about the event recorded, the calmness of the monks carrying out the healing is notable. This is, I would say, the true Orthodox style, rooted in the ancient (not late medieval Latin) ascetical tradition — calm, collected, not showy, and with no info-gathering “dialogue” with devils:

I recently recommended C. S. Lewis’s classic, The Great Divorce, to a friend. No doubt, that’s why it’s fresh in my mind now. It’s my favorite of Lewis’s books. Indeed, when it comes to moral and ascetical Christian literature and the advice they give, and the conviction they instil in the earnest soul, I can think of no two writers — one ancient and one modern — whose practical insights can be bettered. One is St. John Cassian (his Conferences especially) and, as you might have guessed, Lewis is the second. Different they surely are, but I have found their wisdom complementary in my life, and have turned to both frequently for more decades than I care to enumerate.

In The Great Divorce, Lewis gives us a parable about damnation and salvation. It tells of a bus holiday to heaven for those dwelling in the “Grey City” of hell (a refrigerium, in other words). Those who choose to remain in heaven as an act of their own determination are allowed to do so. The majority of those whose dialogues with heavenly friends and angels are recounted decide to cling to their petty evils and remain in hell, preferring them to the supreme joy being offered (if you haven’t read the book, do; it can be read in one sitting, or one can listen to it here).

Near the conclusion of the book, Lewis illustrates for the reader the “relative size” of evil, the demonic, and “hell” as compared with Reality. By “reality,” he means the glorified and resurrected creation that shares ultimately in God “all in all.” Evil, as we have noted throughout the current “Demons and Exorcism” series, is defined as utter deficiency. It begins and ends in nothingness. It has no real or lasting existence; darkness has no chance of ever swallowing up the light. We must take evil seriously as long as we are in this life, while its gravitational pull on our wills towards nonexistence lasts. And, indeed, it is our wills that have been divinely positioned as the crux between the upward call and the downward drag.

I share, then, a short passage that illustrates the relative “size” of good and evil (including the devil and all his minions) strikingly. George MacDonald, the great 19th-century Scottish theologian and novelist, is Lewis’s mentor — his “Virgil/Beatrice/Bernard” — in the book, who acts as his guide in the dream. He shows Lewis a tiny crack in the ground, which is a doorway down to “hell” — the sort of fissure through which the minuscule bus of self-damned souls has emerged — itself less in size than an atom:

My Teacher gave a curious smile. “Look,” he said, and with the word he went down on his hands and knees. I did the same (how it hurt my knees!) and presently saw that he had plucked a blade of grass. Using its thin end as a pointer, he made me see, after I had looked very closely, a crack in the soil so small that I could not have identified it without this aid.

“I cannot be certain,” he said, “that this is the crack ye came up through. But through a crack no bigger than that ye certainly came.”

“But — but,” I gasped with a feeling of bewilderment not unlike terror. “I saw an infinite abyss. And cliffs towering up and up. And then this country on top of the cliffs.”

“Aye. But the voyage was not mere locomotion. That bus, and all you inside it, were increasing in size.”

“Do you mean then that Hell — all that infinite empty town — is down in some little crack like this?”

“Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World. Look at yon butterfly. If it swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste.”

“It seems big enough when you’re in it, Sir.”

“And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good. If all Hell’s miseries together entered the consciousness of yon wee yellow bird on the bough there, they would be swallowed up without trace, as if one drop of ink had been dropped into that Great Ocean to which your terrestrial Pacific itself is only a molecule.”

When we consider hell, then, or exorcism or the demonic, we must keep that “scale” in mind. There is never any call to extend the darkness or the “Grey City,” no need for us, or anyone (including “experts”), to know about the demonic except how — daily and practically — to cast it out of our thoughts and lives. That will be the subject of my forthcoming posts on “pragmatic exorcism.”

I will conclude here, though, by recommending the video from Fr. Emmanuel Lemelson posted below (happily, Fr. Lemelson is a reader of this Substack, as I am of his). It’s worth listening to what he says carefully. In it, he takes on, with restraint but due seriousness, what Fr. Chad Ripperger promotes in his (no doubt well-intentioned but deluded) demonological teaching. I heartily recommend both Fr. Lemelson’s YouTube channel (give it a “like” and subscribe) and his Substack page.