The House Cannot Remain Empty

The terrible danger of a life put in order but not given wholly to God

“When he comes he finds it swept and put in order.”

There are words of Christ that console us because they reveal the tenderness of God. There are others that strip us bare.

This is one of them.

“He who is not with me is against me; he who does not gather with me scatters.”

There is no neutral ground.

We would like there to be.

We would like a small territory of the heart that belongs neither to God nor to the demons, but simply to ourselves. A quiet room where we may arrange things according to our preference. A portion of life that remains respectable, controlled, reasonable, and ours.

Christ tells us that such a place does not exist.

The heart gathers or it scatters.

It becomes the dwelling place of God or, however beautifully ordered, remains available to something else.

This is why the Fathers feared spiritual complacency more than we understand.

They knew that it is possible to stop committing certain sins without having begun to love God.

It is possible to become disciplined without becoming holy.

It is possible to become sober, respectable, restrained, even religious—and still remain empty.

The house can be swept.

The house can be put in order.

And the house can still belong to no one.

This is the terror hidden in the Gospel.

The unclean spirit returns and finds the house clean.

Christ does not say that it finds the man committing worse sins. He does not say that the doors have been deliberately opened to evil.

He says that the house is empty.

Nothing has taken possession of it.

The Desert Fathers understood this with extraordinary clarity. They did not flee into the desert merely because they wanted fewer temptations. The desert was not a program of moral improvement. They went there because they wanted God.

This distinction is everything.

If we understand asceticism merely as the removal of sin, eventually we will become exhausted or proud.

I no longer do this.

I have overcome that.

I have put my life in order.

I have become disciplined.

I have become religious.

And quietly the self takes possession of the very house from which the passions were supposedly expelled.

The Fathers therefore spoke relentlessly about watchfulness.

Not anxiety.

Not morbid introspection.

Watchfulness.

Guard the heart because something precious is happening there.

St. Macarius speaks of the heart as a small vessel, yet within it are depths beyond measure. There are beasts and serpents there, but there also is God, there are the angels, there is life and the Kingdom.

The battle is not principally over our behavior.

It is over the heart.

Who will dwell there?

That is the question.

The modern elders understood this as well. St. Porphyrios repeatedly warned against becoming preoccupied with darkness. Do not spend your life fighting darkness, he taught in substance. Open yourself to Christ. Turn toward the light. Love Him.

This is not softness.

It is warfare at its deepest level.

For a man can spend his entire life fighting his passions and secretly remain fascinated by them. He can measure them, analyze them, hate them, fear them, confess them endlessly—and still allow them to occupy the center of his attention.

Christ must become the center.

Not the struggle.

Not our progress.

Not even our holiness.

Christ.

This is why the Jesus Prayer is so simple and so terrible.

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

Again.

Again.

Again.

The Name enters the house.

We are not merely trying to drive something out.

We are asking Someone to enter.

This is also why the spiritual life cannot finally be reduced to self-improvement. Christianity is not the gradual construction of a more admirable human being. The Gospel does not exist to make the old man presentable.

The old man must die.

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

That is something altogether different from having a swept house.

And perhaps this explains why periods following repentance, conversion, retreat, confession, or profound spiritual consolation can sometimes be strangely dangerous.

Something has been cleared away.

We feel lighter.

There is peace.

The house is quiet.

And then we relax.

The Fathers would tell us: this is precisely when you must watch.

Not fearfully.

Faithfully.

The enemy is patient.

He does not always return with noise.

Sometimes he returns through distraction.

Sometimes through resentment.

Sometimes through curiosity.

Sometimes through endless activity.

Sometimes through the desire to be useful.

Sometimes through the need to be understood.

Sometimes through religious argument.

Sometimes through plans for what our life ought to become.

Sometimes through the quiet conviction that now, finally, we know ourselves.

Anything can become a door if it draws the heart away from the One Thing Necessary.

This is why the desert tradition can appear severe.

“Stay in your cell.”

“Guard your heart.”

“Remember death.”

“Keep your mind in hell and despair not.”

“Flee, be silent, pray without ceasing.”

These are not slogans of contempt for the world.

They are words spoken by men who discovered how easily the heart scatters.

We scatter ourselves among a thousand things and then wonder why we cannot pray.

We fill our minds with voices and wonder why God seems silent.

We concern ourselves with the sins of others and wonder why our own hearts have grown cold.

We speak endlessly about God and cease standing before Him.

We undertake good works and gradually forget the One for whom they were undertaken.

The scattering can even look holy.

That is what makes it dangerous.

“He who does not gather with me scatters.”

With Me.

Those two words judge everything.

Not: Are you accomplishing something?

Not: Are you admired?

Not: Are you correct?

Not: Are you useful?

Not even: Are you doing something religious?

Are you with Me?

The question becomes increasingly simple as one grows older in the spiritual life.

Where is Christ?

Where is my heart?

What have I allowed to occupy the house?

The elders repeatedly return us to this simplicity. St. Sophrony spoke of keeping the mind in God. St. Silouan teaches us to remain before Christ in humility. Elder Aimilianos describes the monastic life fundamentally as standing before God. The outward forms matter because they protect this inward reality.

But the reality is one thing:

God has come seeking the heart.

And therefore repentance cannot merely mean becoming empty of what is evil.

Repentance must become communion.

The anger must go—but Christ must enter.

The lust must go—but Christ must enter.

The resentment must go—but Christ must enter.

The fantasies must go—but Christ must enter.

The need to control our life must go—but Christ must enter.

Even our carefully constructed image of ourselves must eventually go.

Christ must enter.

Otherwise we may spend years decorating an empty house.

And there is something still more frightening.

The demon calls it “my house.”

“I will return to my house from which I came.”

My house.

The enemy still speaks as though he possesses what has been cleansed.

There is only one answer to that claim.

The house must belong to Another.

The Fathers therefore did not understand prayer as one activity among others. Prayer was possession in the deepest and holiest sense: the surrender of the heart to God.

The Name is placed there.

The Scriptures are placed there.

Compunction is placed there.

Silence is placed there.

Mercy is placed there.

The brother is received there.

Christ is welcomed there.

Until slowly the enemy returns and finds not an empty house but a Presence.

Someone is already there.

This is the hidden work of a lifetime.

Perhaps in the beginning we imagine that holiness means becoming someone.

Eventually we discover that it means making room for Someone.

Less of our noise.

Less of our explanations.

Less of our imagined futures.

Less fascination with ourselves.

More Christ.

Until prayer ceases to feel like something we do and becomes the quiet orientation of the whole person toward Him.

The desert sought this.

The elders sought this.

Every genuine asceticism serves this.

Not emptiness for its own sake.

Not silence for its own sake.

Not renunciation for its own sake.

Christ.

Otherwise the desert itself can become another empty house.

And so the Gospel leaves us with no comfortable middle ground.

We are gathering or scattering.

The house is becoming inhabited or remaining empty.

The heart is being given away or quietly reclaimed by the self.

There is no final technique for preventing this.

There is only watchfulness, repentance, humility, and the continual turning of the heart toward Christ.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until our last breath.

And perhaps at the end there will be very little left to say.

Only the Name.

Only mercy.

Only the desire that when the door of the heart is opened, it will not be found merely swept and orderly.

It will be found occupied.

Christ will be there.

And the house will finally know to whom it belongs.