The Things We No Longer Need to Hold

The strange freedom that begins when we cease clinging even to what was once given by God

“He did not cling… but emptied himself.”

— Philippians 2:6–7

There are things we cling to because we love them.

There are other things we cling to because we are afraid of who we would be without them.

The distinction is not always apparent.

A vocation may be received from God. A work may be blessed by God. A place, a relationship, a responsibility, even a particular way of understanding ourselves may have been given to us through grace. For years these things can become the vessels through which we offer ourselves to God.

And yet the fact that something was once given does not necessarily mean that it must always be held.

This is one of the harder lessons of the spiritual life.

The fathers went into the desert not because creation was evil, nor because human relationships were worthless, nor because the life they left behind had necessarily been false. They went because they had heard another call, and they understood that there are moments when fidelity requires the opening of the hand.

Abba Arsenius had lived among emperors.

Then came the word:

Flee.

Later:

Be silent.

Later still:

Be still.

His life became a progressive relinquishment.

Not because what came before had been meaningless, but because God was leading him beyond the need to possess any particular form of himself.

This is kenosis.

We often imagine self-emptying as heroic sacrifice: something painful that we accomplish for God. But St. Paul reveals something subtler in Christ.

He did not cling.

Before the Cross, before the humiliation, before the tomb, there is this mysterious freedom of the Son.

He does not grasp.

He does not protect Himself.

He does not insist upon the preservation of His condition.

He receives everything from the Father, and therefore He has nothing to defend.

Perhaps much of our suffering comes not from what is being taken from us but from the effort to keep hold of what is already passing through our hands.

We want continuity.

We want explanation.

We want some recognizable thread connecting who we were with who we are becoming.

We want to know that what we have built will remain, that the names by which we have been known will continue to name us, that the structures which once held our lives will continue to hold them.

And sometimes God gives us none of this.

He simply opens the hand.

The modern elders understood that this stripping is not primarily about external renunciation. A man may abandon everything and remain fiercely attached to himself. Another may remain in an ordinary house, performing ordinary duties, caring for those entrusted to him, and be led into a poverty deeper than the desert.

For the real monastery is finally the place where the will is surrendered.

The real cell is the place from which we cannot escape ourselves.

And the real renunciation is not merely leaving things behind.

It is ceasing to demand that they remain ours.

This includes even holy things.

Perhaps especially holy things.

We can cling to our understanding of vocation.

We can cling to the work we believe God gave us.

We can cling to recognition, usefulness, belonging, reputation, spiritual identity, even to a particular image of faithfulness.

We can cling to the story we have told ourselves about what our life was supposed to become.

But Christ clung to nothing.

This does not mean indifference. It means love without possession.

And perhaps this is why Paul places the mystery of kenosis within an exhortation to love:

There must be no competition among you, no conceit… nobody thinks of his own interests first.

Only the unclenched heart can truly love.

As long as I must preserve myself, every relationship becomes subtly entangled with that preservation. I need others to confirm my place, recognize my sacrifice, understand my intentions, acknowledge my wounds, or assure me that the story I have lived was worthwhile.

But Christ descends beneath all of this.

He becomes small.

Hidden.

Misunderstood.

Powerless.

Obedient.

And finally silent.

There is something terrifying about such freedom.

Because eventually we discover that God may ask us to relinquish not only possessions but explanations.

To allow others to misunderstand.

To allow unfinished things to remain unfinished.

To allow questions to remain unanswered.

To allow institutions to continue without us.

To allow the future to take a shape we cannot foresee.

To allow our life to become smaller than we imagined it would be.

And not to cling.

The ego experiences this as death.

The heart, however, may slowly discover it as peace.

The desert fathers repeatedly fled from attempts to make them important. They hid from praise. They refused positions of honor. They guarded the obscurity in which the heart could stand naked before God.

They knew how easily even holiness becomes another garment the self puts on.

So they sought the place where there was nothing left to protect.

A cell.

A prayer rope.

A little work.

A brother to love.

Death remembered.

Christ awaited.

Perhaps the deepest renunciations come when we stop asking what will remain of us.

There is an immense relief hidden there.

I do not have to preserve every form my life has taken.

I do not have to carry every identity into the future.

I do not have to force what once bore fruit to continue bearing fruit in the same way.

I do not even have to understand what God is making of me now.

I need only remain before Him.

This is why the Name becomes increasingly precious when other things fall away.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Paul’s hymn descends through relinquishment until it reaches death itself—and then, suddenly, there is the Name.

The Name above every name.

Not our name.

Not our title.

Not our accomplishments.

Not the story others tell about us.

Not even the story we tell about ourselves.

Jesus.

Perhaps this is what remains when the hand has finally opened.

And perhaps this is why the Jesus Prayer becomes so powerful in seasons of stripping. Each repetition gently loosens another finger.

Lord Jesus Christ…

I do not need to cling to what I was.

Son of God…

I do not need to determine what I will become.

Have mercy on me…

I need only receive this moment from You.

The strange thing is that Paul does not end with emptiness.

Christ empties Himself, descends, becomes obedient unto death.

Therefore God raised Him high.

But Christ does not raise Himself.

That may be the most important thing.

The movement upward belongs entirely to the Father.

We descend.

God raises.

We relinquish.

God preserves what must be preserved.

We surrender the meaning of our lives.

God gathers their meaning into Himself.

This is why the Christian can afford not to cling.

Nothing offered to God disappears.

What must die will die.

What must remain will remain.

What must be transformed will be transformed.

Our task is not resurrection.

Our task is consent.

And perhaps, after years of trying to understand what faithfulness requires, the spiritual life eventually becomes very simple:

Do not grasp.

Do not defend.

Do not force.

Do not cling.

Become small enough to receive what this hour asks of you.

Love the person before you.

Say the prayer.

Keep your heart before God.

And when something is taken from your hands, resist the instinct immediately to close them again.

Leave them open.

Christ Himself has passed this way.

And the open hand that appears empty may, in the end, be the only hand capable of receiving everything.