The Place Beneath All Answers

A Dialogue for the Feast of Saint Silouan the Athonite

“My soul yearns after the Lord, and I seek Him in tears.”

— Saint Silouan the Athonite

The disciple came to the elder before dawn.

He had not slept.

For many months he had prayed that God would make the path clear. Instead, one door after another had closed. Things that once seemed certain had become uncertain. Names by which he had known himself no longer seemed able to hold him. Even good desires had become painful because he could not bring them to completion.

He found the elder sitting quietly.

“Father,” he said, “I no longer know what God is doing.”

The elder looked at him.

“Why must you know?”

The disciple was silent.

After a while he said, “Because I am afraid of making a mistake.”

“You will make many.”

“I am afraid of losing what God has given me.”

“You will lose much.”

“I am afraid that everything may come to nothing.”

The elder smiled gently.

“Then perhaps you are finally near the place where prayer begins.”

The disciple did not understand.

“I have prayed for years.”

“Yes,” said the elder. “But much of our prayer is still an attempt to persuade God to preserve the world we understand.”

The words wounded him.

He looked toward the small window. The first light had not yet appeared.

“What am I supposed to do, then?”

“Remain.”

“Remain where?”

“Where God has placed you.”

“But nothing is resolved.”

“God is not waiting for your life to be resolved before He enters it.”

The disciple lowered his head.

There were people he loved whom he could not save. There were wounds he could not repair. There were decisions whose consequences he could not foresee. There were things being taken from him that he had once believed indispensable to the service of God.

He had secretly imagined that surrender would bring clarity.

Instead it had brought him here.

“What if I lose everything?”

The elder answered quietly:

“Then you will discover whether Christ is everything.”

The disciple began to weep.

For the first time he understood why the words frightened him.

He had wanted Christ above all things.

But perhaps he had not yet wanted Christ without all things.

The elder allowed him to weep.

After some time the disciple said, “Is this what you mean when you speak about descending into hell?”

“No.”

The elder’s voice became very gentle.

“Hell is not difficulty. Nor is it disappointment. We should not make poetry out of suffering.”

“Then what is the descent?”

“To stand before God without defending yourself.”

The disciple looked at him.

“Without defending your goodness. Without defending your choices. Without insisting upon your usefulness. Without presenting God with the evidence of everything you have sacrificed. Without demanding that He explain why the road has become dark.”

The elder paused.

“To go down is to relinquish every argument by which you have tried to prove that your life must take a certain form.”

“And despair not?”

“Ah.”

The elder’s face brightened.

“That is everything.”

Outside, somewhere beyond the walls, a bird began to sing.

“To despair is to believe that when you reach the bottom you will find only yourself. But the Christian descends and discovers Another.”

“Christ?”

“Christ.”

“Even there?”

“Especially there.”

The disciple sat very still.

Something within him had spent years climbing—toward holiness, toward understanding, toward some final coherence in which vocation, suffering, prayer, love, and obedience would all become intelligible.

Now the elder seemed to be telling him that the way was downward.

Not toward meaninglessness.

Toward Christ.

“But what becomes of my vocation?”

The elder looked puzzled.

“Which vocation?”

“My work. What I have been. What I may yet be.”

“That is not what I asked.”

The disciple waited.

The elder placed his hand upon his chest.

“Your vocation is here.”

He breathed the Name softly.

“Jesus Christ.”

Again:

“Jesus Christ.”

And once more:

“Jesus Christ.”

“The rest is clothing. Some garments God gives us for many years. Others He removes. Do not mistake the garment for the man.”

“But surely I must discern what comes next.”

“When next comes, yes.”

“And until then?”

“Love whoever is standing before you.”

The simplicity of the answer almost angered him.

“That cannot be enough.”

“Why?”

“There are larger questions.”

“For whom?”

“For my life.”

The elder laughed.

“You still think your life is the large thing.”

The disciple flushed.

The elder reached over and touched his hand.

“This is why we suffer so much. We stand before an immense God and remain fascinated by the dimensions of our own lives.”

They sat together in silence.

Eventually the elder spoke again.

“There is a greater question.”

“What is it?”

“Can your heart become wide enough to contain another person?”

The disciple thought of those who had hurt him.

Those who misunderstood him.

Those whose decisions had wounded him.

Those he wished would finally understand.

The elder seemed to know.

“Do not ask God first to vindicate you. Ask Him to enlarge you.”

The disciple closed his eyes.

“This is harder.”

“Yes.”

“Harder than fasting?”

“Yes.”

“Harder than solitude?”

“Much harder.”

“Why?”

“Because you can fast and remain full of yourself. You can live alone and carry the whole world into your cell. You can pray through the night and secretly ask God to confirm that you were right.”

The elder leaned toward him.

“But to love another person without requiring him to become different first—this begins to resemble Christ.”

Now dawn was appearing.

The disciple could see the elder’s face clearly.

He seemed very old and very young at once.

“Then purity of heart is not escape from the world?”

“No. It is the end of using the world to protect yourself from love.”

“And repentance?”

“The door.”

“To what?”

“To everyone.”

The disciple remembered Adam outside Paradise.

For the first time he understood why the saints could weep for people they had never met.

Perhaps repentance, when it became deep enough, broke through the little enclosure of the individual heart.

Perhaps beneath my sorrow there was simply sorrow.

Beneath my longing, longing.

Beneath my fall, Adam.

And beneath Adam—

Christ.

“Father,” he whispered, “I came because I wanted you to tell me what to do.”

“I have.”

“What?”

The elder stood.

The sun was beginning to rise.

“Go home.”

“And?”

“Do the small thing that love requires.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow has not been given to you.”

“And everything I cannot resolve?”

“Leave something for God to do.”

The disciple smiled through his tears.

At the doorway he turned.

“Father?”

“Yes?”

“I am still afraid.”

The elder nodded.

“Then be afraid before God.”

The disciple waited for something more.

Nothing came.

He stepped outside.

The world had not changed.

The questions remained.

Nothing had been resolved.

And yet the morning seemed strangely spacious.

For perhaps the first time, he did not experience uncertainty as an empty place that had to be filled.

It was simply a place in which Christ might come.

Behind him the elder had begun again to pray.

Very softly.

For Adam.

For the living.

For the dead.

For those who loved him.

For those who did not.

For the disciple disappearing down the path.

For the whole world.

And the disciple understood at last that the deepest descent was not into darkness.

It was into a heart from which no one had been excluded.

There Christ was waiting.