Built Upon the Rock

The mercy of being prepared for temptation

“My son, come to the service of God. Stand fast in fear and in righteousness, and prepare your soul for temptation.”

— St. Augustine, On Pastors

There is a kindness that comforts us by telling us that the storm will pass.

There is another kindness that teaches us how to stand when it does not.

Saint Augustine speaks with the severity of one who knows the difference.

The negligent shepherd, he tells us, does not necessarily abandon the sheep. He may remain near them. He may speak gently to them. He may even encourage them. His failure is more subtle: he does not prepare them for reality.

He allows them to believe that fidelity to God will somehow arrange the circumstances of their lives into something comprehensible and bearable. That obedience will be rewarded with clarity. That prayer will bring resolution. That goodness will be recognized. That sacrifice will be understood. That those whom we love will remain with us. That the structures upon which we have depended will hold.

Augustine calls this building upon sand.

The desert knew otherwise.

The fathers did not go into the wilderness because they believed God would spare them suffering. They went there because they wanted everything removed that prevented them from discovering whether God alone was enough.

And everything was tested.

Their bodies were tested by hunger and sleeplessness. Their minds by thoughts. Their hearts by loneliness. Their faith by dryness. Their charity by difficult brothers. Their perseverance by years in which apparently nothing happened.

The desert did not ask them merely whether they believed in God.

It asked whether they would remain before Him when there was nothing else left to sustain belief.

That is a very different question.

We often imagine temptation primarily as an enticement toward obvious sin. But some of the deepest temptations arrive disguised as reasonable expectations.

Surely God will explain this.

Surely this suffering will soon end.

Surely fidelity will produce peace.

Surely those who have given themselves to God will be protected from certain losses.

Surely there must be some path by which everything can be reconciled.

And then there is not.

The rain comes.

The river rises.

The winds strike the house.

Augustine does not tell us that Christ will prevent this. He tells us to build where the storm cannot finally reach.

The rock is Christ.

This is why the teaching of the desert can initially seem merciless. The elders are constantly taking things away from us—not because they despise human consolation, but because they know how easily consolation becomes an idol.

Do not trust your thoughts.

Do not demand an explanation.

Do not judge another.

Do not imagine tomorrow.

Do not cling even to the image you have formed of yourself.

Remain in your cell.

Remember death.

Say the Prayer.

Begin again.

Beneath all these counsels lies one great movement of the heart:

Return to Christ.

Saint John Climacus understood that remembrance of death is not morbidity. It is freedom from illusion. Death strips away the imaginary permanence we give to circumstances, identities, possessions, relationships, successes, failures, praise, accusations, plans, and fears.

Everything passes.

Christ remains.

The modern elders speak with the same sobriety. They do not promise that prayer will remove the cross. They teach us to discover Christ within it. The human heart gradually learns that peace is not the successful arrangement of circumstances. Peace is communion.

This is why some trials cannot be solved.

They must be inhabited.

There are hours in a human life when every available path appears to contain loss. There may be no choice that preserves everything we love, no explanation that removes every contradiction, no decision that leaves the heart untouched.

At such moments we discover how deeply we have confused peace with resolution.

We say: When this is settled, I will have peace.

The Gospel says something far more frightening:

Christ is your peace now.

Not when the question has been answered.

Not when others understand.

Not when the future becomes visible.

Not when what has been lost is restored.

Now.

This is the rock Augustine wants beneath our feet.

And perhaps this is why God sometimes permits a stripping that seems almost unbearable. What appears at first to be the destruction of one’s life may become the destruction of illusion—the illusion that life can finally be secured by anything other than God.

The Fathers would not have us romanticize this. Loss hurts. Betrayal hurts. Uncertainty exhausts. The body grows tired. The heart grieves. People whom we love disappear from this world. Institutions disappoint us. Our own weakness humiliates us. Prayer itself may become little more than remaining before God without understanding.

Yet something can be born precisely there.

Simplicity.

The soul ceases negotiating with reality.

It stops saying to God, I will trust You if You show me where this is going.

Instead it begins to say:

You are here.

That is enough.

This is not resignation. It is something fiercer.

Hope.

Christian hope is not confidence that events will unfold according to our desires. It is the refusal to believe that anything can separate us from Christ.

Augustine therefore points us directly toward the Crucified One.

Look at Him.

He does not explain suffering from a distance.

He enters it.

He is misunderstood.

He is falsely accused.

He is abandoned.

He loses everything visible.

And when there is nothing left to surrender, He surrenders Himself.

This is the strange school into which the Christian has been admitted.

We spend much of our lives asking Christ to remove the cross.

Slowly, if grace is given, we begin asking Him not to let us leave Him upon it.

That change is immense.

For then the question is no longer:

How do I escape this?

Nor even:

How do I understand this?

The question becomes:

How do I remain with Christ here?

The Desert Fathers called this stability. The hesychast knows it as abiding. The Jesus Prayer teaches it wordlessly with every breath.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

Nothing is solved by those words.

And yet everything is placed where it belongs.

The past.

The future.

Those we love.

Those who have wounded us.

The things we regret.

The things we cannot repair.

Our unanswered questions.

Our mortality.

Our very selves.

All placed into the Name.

Perhaps this is what it means finally to “prepare your soul for temptation.”

Not to become invulnerable.

Not to cease grieving.

Not to foresee every storm.

But to know where to stand when it comes.

There will be rain.

There will be rivers.

There will be winds.

Some things we thought permanent will fall.

And sometimes God, in His severe mercy, will permit us to discover that we had unknowingly built parts of ourselves upon sand.

Let them fall.

Do not spend the remainder of your life trying to rebuild what God has permitted the storm to uncover.

Go deeper.

Beneath reputation.

Beneath certainty.

Beneath belonging.

Beneath usefulness.

Beneath the need to understand what your life has become.

There is Rock beneath all of it.

Christ.

And when at last the heart touches Him, perhaps there is very little left to say.

God is.

I am before Him.

He knows me.

That is enough.