In my earlier article, I described humility as “our willingness to receive with thanksgiving those things (of whatever size) that come our way.” This describes humility as a virtue, but the article’s title described it as a “sacrament.” Oddly, I seemed not to have unpacked what that means. There are several ways to think about sacraments. There are those actions within the life of the Church with which we are most familiar: Eucharist, Baptism, Chrismation, Marriage, Unction, Ordination, Confession. In each of these we observe that God has taken up an ordinary action and made it a means of grace. The sacraments of the Church are each, in their own way, given to us as a means of communion with God. And then we are told, “The whole world is a sacrament.” This is to say that the whole world is a means of communion.
It is a curious thing when we consider the word, “grace.” In common speech, grace means to be given some “slack” or a “leeway” that is not deserved. In Western juridical notions of God, grace means that God is somehow giving us something we do not deserve (such as forgiveness or salvation). Orthodoxy has a very different understanding. Grace is nothing other than the Divine Energies, the very “life” of God. Grace is God Himself. We are “saved by grace” because salvation is nothing other than union with God. To live by grace is to live by the very life of God and communion with Him. Thus when Christ speaks of communion with Him He says, “Whosoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood, abides in me and I in them.” (Jn. 6:56) This is grace.
When we have a statement, such as that found in Proverbs and quoted by St. James (“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” 4:6), we should pay close attention and understand what is being revealed to us. Humility is filled with grace. Humility is the Cup by means of which we can receive the life of God: it is a sacrament of grace.
The whole world has been given to us for communion with God. It is a gift we often refuse in that we want the world to be something less. We prefer utility to the life of grace. We want to know, “What is it good for?” When we should ask, “What is God’s good gift?”
One of the more common ways that this is encountered in our faith is in the place held by tradition. The Orthodox are sometimes falsely accused of being merely conservative, valuing the past over the present (or future). It is indeed true that some choose Orthodoxy for such reasons. However, this is a false approach to tradition itself. The vast majority of our life is traditioned to us – it is handed down, intact. Our biology, our language, the planet itself and all that it contains (with its utterly unique position in the universe), are among the largely unchangeable aspects of our existence. Those things that are changeable easily become fetishes in which we imagine that something as unessential as a new wardrobe can make us a “new person.”
Tragically, our modern culture markets changeable products in a constant cascade of “newness” and “innovation” (literally, “making things new”), all in a massive pursuit of wealth (which is itself something that passes away – Matt. 6:19). Addicted to the promises of modernity we ignore the true substance of what has been given to us (“handed down”) while we chase an ever-disappearing wind. There is little virtue (or grace) in that manner of life. It is exhausting, riddled with anxiety, always measured by what we have (or wish we had), and never by what we are.
And so Isaiah says:
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? (55:2)
Tradition (especially in its largest sense) is its own justification. It is like the breath we breathe. It carries grace because it is the gift of God. Learning to live rightly in relationship to what has been handed down to us is a life-skill that is largely ignored. What has been given is easily taken for granted. It patiently waits and continues to give, regardless of our ongoing dismissal.
Sacraments, even as vehicles of grace, are not received passively. The prayers of preparation for communion, to use but a single example, serve to draw our hearts to what is being “traditioned” to us in the Cup. Vladimir Lossky defines faith as a “participatory adherence,” a phrase that carries a certain fullness. It presumes that we are extending ourselves towards what we are receiving. In simpler terms, such faith “works by love.”
To live rightly in the world-as-the-gift-of-God is to love the world as the gift of God. It is to extend ourselves towards each and everything (and everyone) around us. Love is the supreme instrument of participation – it is that which adheres. In a life so lived, every element of God’s creation becomes a Cup, a vessel of communion, by which we may drink of His grace. It makes of our lives a song. In the tradition, human beings are described as “rational animals,” the image of God who “speaks.” Supremely, we are the rational (logikos) voice of all creation whose sound rightly soars above the chorus of creation itself.
Glory to God!
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