Spiritual Growth and the Role of a Spiritual Father

It is good for us to know how to struggle properly in the spiritual life. Our spiritual struggle should be undertaken with knowledge and awareness. Spiritual growth and transformation should take place with knowledge. Repentance with knowledge, obedience with knowledge, prayer with knowledge, works with knowledge—en gnosei, as the Holy Fathers say.

We should always be aware of where we are.

We should know what we are striving toward and in which direction we are moving at every moment, always having Christ as our criterion.

Many times, in different contexts and from different perspectives on the process of spiritual maturation, we have emphasized that there are three stages in the spiritual development of a person. The living ascetic and hesychastic Tradition names them as follows:

1. Purification of the heart from the passions
2. Illumination of the mind
3. Deification of the human person

Why is it necessary to repeat things that have already been said and perhaps even understood?

Because we forget.

Ignorance comes before knowledge, and ignorance is the greatest sin, as the Holy Fathers say. But forgetfulness follows knowledge.

Knowledge in the Church is not merely an intellectual category. Knowledge is grace. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, given through the prayers of the spiritual father.

We acquire this knowledge—or rather, it is given to us—only through experience, through the grace-filled experience of the struggle of obedience. In this struggle, the energy of the mind is first purified. The mind is then illumined and, finally, deified even in its innermost essence.

Forgetfulness occurs when we fall again, when we turn away, when we lose grace and return to living and acting according to the passions of the old man.

Each of the three stages mentioned above corresponds to a particular process of purification, a particular form of prayer, and particular temptations.

Each of these stages may also correspond to a particular rank of priestly ministry, when canonical ordination is involved.

Each corresponds to a particular form of monastic life: the cenobitic monastery, the skete, and life in the desert.

At each of the three stages, there is also a specific spiritual relationship between the spiritual child and the spiritual father. This relationship differs at each level and depends upon the spiritual stage at which each of them stands.

The relationship is dynamic. It passes from one level to another. It is transformed.

The spiritual father and the spiritual child

The spiritual father gives birth to his spiritual child spiritually and by grace. He must then help the spiritual child grow, raise and educate him, and lead him toward freedom.

This growth is necessary, and it takes place within the sacred mystery of the personal relationship between them in the Church.

Such a relationship can be unique, deep, sincere, and filled with love.

When the spiritual child is at the first stage of spiritual growth, the quality of this relationship depends above all upon the openness, unconditional trust, and obedience of the spiritual child toward the spiritual father. At this stage, it does not depend as much upon the holiness of the spiritual guide.

The starting point of the relationship is the spiritual child's darkness of ignorance and captivity to the passions, especially to the principal passion of vainglory.

The spiritual child must reach the point at which the heart—the spiritual center of our being—is purified and opened, and noetic prayer of the heart begins to flow.

After this, the relationship most often develops into communion and a humble sharing of grace-filled experience: brother with brother, or brother with sister, in Christ.

Saint John the Baptist says concerning Christ:

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30, KJV)

The same principle applies to the spiritual relationship between the spiritual father and the spiritual child. The father's supervision and direction gradually decrease to the extent that Christ is revealed and grows within the heart of the spiritual child.

The purpose of guidance in the spiritual life, through the personal relationship between spiritual father and spiritual child, is therefore the creation of a new quality of relationship: growth in Christ according to the image and likeness of God—the Holy Trinity.

It is not a relationship of permanent idolatrous dependence, such as the relationship of guru and disciple sometimes found in Far Eastern philosophical and religious systems.

The starting point: diagnosing our illness

What is our starting position?

It is the diagnosis of our illness.

The three principal passions act within us with varying intensity, depending upon our circumstances and our degree of inner spiritual maturity:

• love of pleasure;
• love of money;
• love of glory, or vainglory.

The principal passion that closes the heart and seriously obstructs the process of purification and spiritual growth is vainglory—pride and vanity.

Is your heart closed? Examine yourself.

A closed heart is an imprisoned heart. It is imprisoned by the passions.

How can we know that the heart is most often closed because of a high opinion of ourselves rather than because of another passion? We recognize it by the nature of the attack.

The development of a sinful thought

The process by which a demonic thought appears and is accepted into the heart normally develops in several stages.

First, the thought is offered as a suggestion. The mind may then enter into conversation with it. This is usually followed by acceptance of the thought and its descent into the heart, from which a desire arises to fulfill it. Finally, the thought may be carried out in action, if the opportunity exists.

How are we tempted by the passion of pleasure? A pleasure-seeking thought attacks us. Depending upon the spiritual stage at which we stand, we may recognize the thought and refuse it. We may struggle against it and eventually reject it. Or we may accept it. Even after accepting it, we may still confess it before carrying it out in action.

Perhaps we are attacked by the passion of love of money. A thought attacks us, and we reject it. It attacks again, and we begin to converse with it. We still have sufficient time and opportunity either to overcome it or to confess it before committing the sin in action.

This is the usual development of a thought: from suggestion to acceptance and finally to action.

But what happens when self-love and pride are involved?

When someone steps upon our pride, vanity, or elevated opinion of ourselves—even for a single moment—we immediately experience spiritual darkness.

There is no gradual thought against which we might defend ourselves or with which we might agree, as in the previous examples. There is no ordinary attack and no ordinary defense.

This is because we are already imprisoned by pride.

The enemy of our salvation—the accuser and deceiver—does not need to conquer our heart from outside by suggesting thoughts. The passion is already ruling within us.

We must understand the difference.

When we are imprisoned by vainglory, it rules over us: over our hearts, thoughts, words, and reactions. We lose control over ourselves, over what is happening within our hearts, and over the way we react when our vanity is wounded.

The sinful feelings and thoughts caused by wounded pride freely occupy the heart because we are already captive. We are unable to examine and recognize them immediately.

Without restraint, our feelings become negative toward the person who has offended us, and we fall, with clear consequences for our spiritual life.

The thoughts that attack us in such temptations do not follow the usual path. They begin from already-conquered territory within the heart and attempt to lead us toward even greater evil.

The moment we are hurt, we condemn the other person. Our love toward that person grows cold. The thoughts then urge us to hate him. Once hatred is accepted, they suggest ways of harming him.

If we are spiritually careless and give our consent, the fall can become catastrophic from the perspective of the salvation of the soul.

This is how vainglory operates.

By contrast, when the demon attempts to activate the passions of pleasure or love of money, it normally must lead us through the process from suggestion to acceptance and finally to action.

The illness and its remedy

The diagnosis of the illness is pride.

Pride is the strongest, most invisible, and most subtle passion. It is the illness of the fallen mind.

A remedy exists. It is given to us when we truly desire to be healed.

Healing begins with the appearance of the spiritual father. By the free choice of our will, we place ourselves under his guidance with love and humility. We open the wounds of our soul so that they may be properly healed.

The characteristics of the fallen mind are:

• pride;
• distraction;
• darkness.

The characteristics of the mind renewed according to Christ are:

• humility;
• attentiveness and recollection in prayer;
• illumination.

The method of healing, therefore, is to place the fallen mind in obedience to the spiritual father.

In our fallen and darkened condition, we cannot properly distinguish what is truly good, what is beneficial to us, and what is spiritually harmful.

God arranges our salvation in ways that are often incomprehensible to us.

For those who sincerely desire salvation, He fulfills their desire. He moves and strengthens them, creates the necessary conditions, and establishes them in what is good.

Yet He does this without ever violating the freedom He has given them.

The first stage: purification of the heart

At the first stage of spiritual development—the stage of purification—we enter into obedience voluntarily and freely.

At this stage, through an effort of the will, we attempt to keep every desire, feeling, and thought at a distance until it has been examined with the spiritual father.

We then accept or reject it according to his counsel. We examine ourselves with his help.

This is how the process of healing begins.

The spiritual father is the one who undertakes the task of thinking and deciding for us, bearing the weight and responsibility of this task.

This is his voluntary and loving sacrifice, a risk he accepts for the sake of our salvation.

The spiritual child's obedience provides freedom from unnecessary care, which in turn is a necessary condition for prayerful stillness.

This process continues until the heart is opened.

At the first stage, the spiritual struggle therefore consists of the following:

• refusing to identify ourselves with our thoughts, desires, and feelings, and examining them with the spiritual father;
• making a proper confession in which we reveal the reactions of our own heart when we fall into temptation, rather than judging other people;
• undertaking bodily ascetic effort—restraint in food and bodily comfort, fasting, prostrations, regular attendance at divine services, and similar disciplines.

Through bodily discipline, we resist self-love and the habit of indulging our fallen nature. We establish the necessary framework, foundation, and atmosphere for mourning and repentance.

In this way, the gift of tears of repentance may be opened to us, leading us toward noetic prayer of the heart.

If we persevere in this struggle, even in small matters—for it is often in small matters that we fall and become darkened—we are gradually healed by the grace of the Holy Spirit given through obedience to the spiritual father.

We fall in small matters.

Even when the spiritual father is not illumined, he will not intentionally lead us into sin. He may, however, make a mistake when giving an ordinary, everyday instruction: “Go.” “Come.” “Do this.” “Do it in that way.” “This is permitted.” “This is not permitted.”

Our wisdom lies in obeying even when we do not agree with a particular instruction or when it does not appear logical to us.

For this reason, we say that at the first stage it is not decisive whether our spiritual guide is a saint or whether he has reached deification.

What is essential is that we oppose pride with humility and contrition within a real and personal relationship with the spiritual father.

This process of healing does not submit to the logic of this world.

It is participation and life in Christ. It is a living Tradition transmitted directly and personally from father to child.

There is no other way.

It is a process governed by the law of love—a love that at first is ascetic and beyond ordinary reasoning, and later becomes grace-filled.

Within this relationship, the spiritual father risks being wounded while, in a certain sense, “wounding” and healing his spiritual child by cutting away the passionate attachment of the mind.

In small matters, the spiritual father will often remain silent.

But when the spiritual child has identified himself with a desire, feeling, or thought that is destructive to his spiritual growth and salvation, the spiritual father must react in time and cut it off.

Because the spiritual child has identified himself with the passion, the correction may be experienced as a rejection of his person.

Being imprisoned by the thought, desire, or feeling, the spiritual child may reflexively return the correction with a lack of love.

The risk accepted by the spiritual father

What risk does the spiritual father accept?

First, he must continually receive blows and be wounded by his spiritual child—in thought, gesture, word, action, and within their human relationship.

It is natural that he will be wounded. To the degree that the spiritual child is captive to and identified with a passion, to that same degree he will respond to the spiritual father without love and will wound him.

Second, on the spiritual level, the demon simultaneously attacks the spiritual father because he is attempting to save another soul by freeing it from the nets of sin.

Third, the spiritual father absolves sins in the Holy Mystery of Confession.

When, out of love, he covers his spiritual child by reducing a canonical penance or releasing him from it altogether, he also accepts a great risk.

He assumes responsibility, and the weight of the demonic attack falls upon him in proportion to the sin from which the spiritual child has been released.

Fourth, when the spiritual father tonsures someone into the monastic schema or presents someone for ordination without proper canonical grounds, or when real obstacles exist, he again bears the full responsibility and risk while covering his spiritual child.

The father experiences a demonic attack corresponding to the deficiency or sin he has chosen to cover.

Mistakes are made.

A spiritual child may act thoughtlessly during temptation and abandon his spiritual parent.

But can a parent cease caring for a child even when the child completely abandons him?

Do not act while spiritually darkened

There is a spiritual law here that very few people understand.

When a person is in a condition of spiritual darkness, he should undertake nothing and should not act.

He needs a little patience. He must wait.

When the darkness passes and clarity returns, he may then make decisions.

Yet people most often make decisive and life-altering decisions precisely while they are in a passionate and darkened state.

They then fall, sealing off and disabling the process of healing and spiritual growth, either temporarily or permanently.

The necessity of a spiritual father at the first stage

At the first stage—the stage of purification—the spiritual child cannot know Christ except through the spiritual father.

The person may imagine intellectually that he possesses some knowledge, but this may be the delusion of self-opinion.

The mind is imprisoned by pride, vanity, and vainglory.

The heart is closed to noetic prayer of the heart.

The inner depths of the heart and the grace-filled cleansing in which the mind is transformed remain inaccessible. The mind therefore requires guidance and purification.

The first stage cannot be passed through without a spiritual father.

For this reason, those who are still at the stage of purification but say that they have a spiritual father living far away—on Mount Athos or in Jerusalem, for example—whom they rarely see, while living each day as they please and being directed by their own desires, feelings, and thoughts, cannot pass beyond the first stage of spiritual development.

They are mistaken. They remain in the same place.

Who is actually guiding them?

At the first stage, it is necessary to share daily life with the spiritual father—to eat bread together and to live in close contact.

He must observe you, cut off your self-will, and sometimes cause you pain.

You will react against him and wound him, and he will endure you.

You must humble yourself before him.

Without this, there is no healing, no spiritual life, and no growth.

There is no opening of the heart and no illumination.

The second stage: illumination of the mind

At the second stage—the stage of illumination, when the heart is opened and the mind prayerfully descends into it—it is important to have a spiritual father whose mind is illumined and who possesses the gift and experience of noetic prayer of the heart.

Such a father will know how to provide his spiritual child with the conditions necessary for prayerful stillness, unless the needs of the Church require something different.

Once the heart has been opened, this need becomes decisive.

What form does the relationship between spiritual father and spiritual child take at this stage?

When the spiritual father stands at the third stage—the stage of deification—he can guide the spiritual life of a child who stands at the second stage of illumination.

The spiritual child remains obliged to obey him. The vows still remain in force.

But when the spiritual father also stands at the second stage, their personal relationship is essentially a relationship between brothers in Christ.

They advise and watch over one another so that they do not leave room for the devil, because the perfection of deification has not yet been attained.

They may meet only occasionally and exchange their experiences.

At this point, a person may truthfully say that his senior spiritual father lives on Mount Athos, on Sinai, or in America, even though they meet only once a year and otherwise correspond occasionally or speak by telephone when counsel is needed.

The bishop and spiritual fatherhood

The bishop should be the spiritual father of his own diocese, not someone else.

When the bishop has many priests under his oversight, he may entrust spiritual guidance to one or more experienced fathers. Those fathers, however, should themselves confess to and remain accountable to the bishop.

Anything else is not in accordance with Orthodox Tradition.

False signs of spiritual authority

It is characteristic of those who consider themselves spiritual guides while still remaining at the first stage of spiritual development that they never speak about noetic prayer of the heart because they have no experience of it.

Yet they feel that they must speak about something.

Those with less education argue in a decisive and condemnatory manner about zealot controversies, the calendar, ecumenism, the last times, and the Apocalypse.

Those who are highly educated publish ethical and philosophical treatises clothed in theological language. These writings are burdened with incomprehensible words and complicated expressions that reach neither the minds nor the hearts of the people.

Yet they do not dare to speak about purely dogmatic subjects.

The beginning of true spiritual life

True spiritual life and spiritual struggle begin when the mind descends into the heart.

At that point, responsibility becomes much greater, and so does repentance.

Repentance then begins to take on the dimensions of Adam's mourning for the whole of humanity.

The person must persevere in the struggle to bring the mind into the heart and keep it there.

Then, as the Fathers say, the demon will raise temptations even from the ends of the earth in order to interrupt the ascetic and unceasing noetic prayer of the heart.

But because we are still fallen and exceedingly proud, we remain in the same place for years, buried in the early stages of the first degree of spiritual development and often even moving backward.

Through obedience and humility, however, we could pass quickly through the beginning, striving to fulfill the commandments and following the narrow path toward unceasing prayer.

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