The Royal Road: Bearing Wrong, Refusing Retaliation, Loving Enemies

Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Evergetinos Hypothesis Section E paragraphs 1-9:

The Evergetinos sets the bar of freedom in a surprising place: anger without cause is not when we flare up over trifles, but whenever we react to any ill-treatment aimed at us. Abba Poimen sharpens the point: even if a brother were to gouge out an eye or cut off a hand, anger would still be without cause, unless he were separating us from God. In other words, the only justified “anger” is zeal for communion with God; all other indignation binds us to the injury and darkens the nous.

From this first edge, the text moves to the Christ-likeness of suffering injustice. One who willingly bears wrongs and forgives becomes “like Jesus”; one who neither wrongs nor suffers wrong is merely “like Adam”; one who wrongs is “like the Devil.” The goal is not moral equilibrium but kenosis: to descend into the humility of Christ who “was reviled and did not revile in return.”

The Evergetinos then baptizes our imagination with stories. Abba Gelasios’ costly book is stolen; he neither exposes the thief nor reclaims it, but quietly commends the buyer to purchase it. His silence pricks the thief’s conscience more effectively than accusation; repentance follows, and the thief remains to be formed by the elder’s life. Abba Evprepios helps thieves carry his goods; noticing a robber’s staff left behind, he runs after them to return it. Abba John the Persian offers to wash the feet of intruders; shame breaks their hardness more swiftly than punishment. Abba Makarios not only helps a thief load a camel with his own belongings; when the animal refuses to rise, he adds the missing tool and blesses the thief’s going, only then does the camel sit again, until everything is returned. These vignettes train the heart to a habitual non-resistance that is anything but passivity; it is a deliberate, creative meekness that seeks the other’s salvation.

Not all the stories end with goods restored. Sometimes the elder simply rejoices to have been counted worthy to lose. One monk prays to be given the chance to imitate such forbearance; when thieves finally come, he lights a lamp, shows them everything, even discloses the hidden coins. He does not wish them to bring anything back. Here dispossession becomes doxology. “We brought nothing into the world” and “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away” are not verses to be quoted at funerals only; they are the grammar of freedom in the face of loss.