Eden Will Not Be Found Here (Sorry).

I know, I'm bummed too.

Every day, as part of my prayer rule, I read exactly one page from St. Isaac the Syrian’s Ascetical Homilies (two or more would be too much for me to handle). Today he included an admonition of Saint Martinian. I don’t know if the wording is exact, but I found it deeply helpful. And bracing.

Saint Martinian the Ascetic

I’ll share his words with you in a moment, but for now, stay with me. Why did I say that what I read was helpful and bracing? Because I keep forgetting something basic: we are at war.

Do you know what I mean?

We keep slipping into the belief that, though we are currently mourning and weeping in this valley of tears, it need not be that way. That Eden, if we would only seek it earnestly enough, could be found. That Heaven can be had now. If only I could just get my health in order, right? Lose a few pounds. Have more sex. Have sex at all. Get married. Fix my marriage. Make enough money to finally get the kind of house I’ve always wanted in the kind of town I’ve always dreamt of. Become cultured and well-read. Admired. The sort of person people look up to for being sharp, kind, and composed.

We keep slipping into this false view of reality and then are completely scandalized and devastated when everything drops out of the bag and we’re just standing there like an idiot. wondering what happened. What hit us.

We’re like Odysseus tied to the mast, hearing the sirens and begging to be let loose, certain the song is leading us somewhere good. It feels like life. It feels like arrival. But it ends the same bloody way every bloody time.

If this doesn’t resonate with you, go read something else. If it does, then here is your daily reminder from Saint Martinian that we are at war, but that all is well.

My children, if you are truly strugglers, men who pay heed to virtue and care for your souls, and you earnestly desire your mind to be limpidly pure before Christ and to do that which is pleasing to Him, then it surely behooves you to accept for His sake every warfare kindled by our nature’s passions, the attractions of this world, the duration and persistence of the demons’ wickedness with which they are accustomed to confront you, and all their snares.

Do not grow faint-hearted because of the continuing and obdurate fierceness of the battle; do not become hesitant because of the long duration of your struggle; do not grow lax, neither be afraid of the hosts of your enemies; and if for a season you should perhaps stumble and sin, do not fall into the pit of despair.

But if something should befall you in this great war and you should even be wounded upon your face, let this in no wise hinder you from attaining your goal.

Rather, persevere in the pursuit that you have chosen, and you will achieve that thing most desirable and praiseworthy, to prove steadfast and unmoving in war, reddened by the blood of your wounds.

Never cease, therefore, from wrestling with your adversaries.

Saint Martinian, pray for us.