The Word That Makes Possible What It Commands

The Fathers on the undivided heart, the hidden power of baptism, and the grace already given

“The Word of God… obliges those who hear it to fulfill it, but it also introduces into the heart of the hearer the ability to fulfill it.”

— Abba Mark

Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Evergetinos Volume Three Hypothesis XI C4-D5

There are passages in the Fathers that can frighten us if we read them too quickly.

They speak of perfection.

Of keeping the commandments.

Of allowing no passion to remain unchallenged.

Of giving everything away.

Of taking up the cross.

Of refusing to divide our lives between God and something else.

And almost immediately we begin calculating our inadequacy.

Who can live this way?

Who possesses every virtue?

Who has cleansed himself from every passion?

Who can say that there is no breach left in the wall of his heart?

The Evergetinos does not soften the question.

The Fathers are far less interested than we are in making Christianity appear manageable.

A ship missing what it needs for the voyage cannot safely cross the sea. A soldier without his armor is exposed before the enemy. A city may have strong gates and vigilant guards, but if there is a breach somewhere in the wall, the enemy does not need to attack the gate.

He enters through the place left open.

So too the heart.

We may pray much and still protect one resentment.

We may fast and remain vain.

We may give generously while secretly feeding our need to be praised.

We may speak beautifully about God while refusing to forgive one person.

We may have surrendered almost everything and still whisper over one small corner of the heart:

This is mine.

The Fathers will not allow us the consolation of “almost.”

Not because God is a tyrant demanding flawless religious performance, but because love desires the whole person.

God does not want most of us.

He wants us.

And strangely, this severity becomes beautiful once we understand what the Fathers mean.

The problem is not that God is keeping an account and waiting for us to miss one item on an enormous list of obligations.

The problem is division.

“No man can serve two masters.”

The heart cannot become whole while deliberately maintaining two allegiances.

We know this from experience.

One cherished passion can gradually organize an entire life around itself. One resentment rehearsed long enough begins interpreting every encounter. One attachment we refuse to surrender begins dictating our choices. One secret vanity can enter even our prayer and turn the search for God into another search for ourselves.

“A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”

We usually hear this negatively.

But then Abba Mark takes precisely that image and turns it toward grace.

This is where the beauty of these passages opens before us.

For there is another leaven.

The Word of God.

The Fathers do not simply tell us what Christianity demands.

They tell us what Christianity makes possible.

Abba Mark says something astonishing: the Word of God possesses the same power as the authority by which it is spoken. It commands us, yes—but in the command itself it communicates the power by which the command may be fulfilled.

God does not stand at a distance saying:

Become holy.

He speaks holiness into us.

Christ does not merely say:

Follow Me.

His word creates within the willing heart the capacity to rise and follow.

He does not merely say:

Forgive.

Grace begins loosening the clenched fist of the heart.

He does not merely say:

Take up your cross.

He enters the suffering with us and makes what would otherwise crush us into the very place where communion with Him becomes possible.

This changes everything.

The Christian life is not principally the heroic attempt of fallen human beings to satisfy the demands of an impossibly holy God.

It is the life of God entering the human person.

“The word of God is living and active.”

Living.

Not information.

Not merely instruction.

Not religious advice.

Living.

The word received in faith enters the heart like leaven hidden in flour. Quietly, invisibly, patiently, it begins working through the whole person—body, soul, and spirit—until what has been received begins transforming the one who received it.

This is why hearing the Word is never trivial.

We may think nothing has happened.

We hear the Gospel proclaimed.

We read a saying of the Fathers.

A verse follows us through the day.

A command of Christ wounds us because we know that we are not living it.

And perhaps we think we have merely acquired another obligation.

But something has been placed within us.

A seed.

A fire.

Leaven.

Grace.

The Word carries within itself the possibility of the life it announces.

And baptism deepens the mystery still further.

Abba Mark insists that those who have been baptized have received the power to fulfill the commandments.

That statement should stop us.

Baptism, then, is not merely something that happened to us.

It is something that has been placed within us.

We have been joined to Christ.

His death has been planted within us.

His Resurrection has been planted within us.

The possibility of a new manner of existence has been given.

This does not mean that struggle disappears. The Fathers knew the violence of the passions better than we do. They knew temptation, weariness, distraction, despondency, lust, anger, vainglory, fear, and the terrible instability of the human heart.

But they also knew something we easily forget:

Grace has already arrived.

We are not standing outside the Kingdom trying to break into it by moral effort.

The Kingdom has been planted within us.

The tragedy of sin, therefore, is not simply that we have violated a rule.

It is that we have lived beneath what has been given to us.

We have forgotten who we became in the waters.

This is why repentance is so central.

Repentance is not groveling before an offended deity.

It is returning to reality.

It is repairing the breach.

It is discovering where we have divided the heart and opening that place again to God.

And this explains the uncompromising language of the Fathers concerning even the “small” passions.

They are not teaching scrupulosity.

They are teaching freedom.

Anything that masters us is too large.

Anything we cannot surrender has already revealed its power over us.

Anything we must hide from God has become a small altar erected beside His altar.

“For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”

The question, then, is not:

How many sins am I permitted while remaining a good Christian?

That question belongs to the mentality of a contract.

The Fathers ask something far more searching:

What still possesses the heart that belongs to Christ?

And yet even here we must be careful.

The answer is not anxiety.

It is not obsessive self-examination.

It is not the endless measurement of our spiritual condition.

It is surrender.

“Take up thy cross, and follow Me.”

There is a wonderful simplicity in this.

The commandments ultimately gather themselves into a single movement of the person toward God.

Give yourself.

Do not hold back.

Receive what comes.

Endure what cannot be changed.

Refuse the thoughts that separate you from Christ.

Repent when you fall.

Begin again.

Follow Him.

The Fathers knew that we could spend a lifetime trying to manage individual sins while never surrendering the self from which those sins arise.

So they lead us deeper.

Not merely:

Do not do this.

But:

Give yourself to God.

Not merely:

Control this passion.

But:

Let Christ possess the heart from which the passion draws its strength.

Not merely:

Fulfill your religious obligations.

But:

Become what you received.

Perhaps this is one of the great recoveries needed in our spiritual lives.

We have heard Christianity described so often in terms of demands, obligations, duties, prohibitions, and requirements that we can unconsciously imagine ourselves standing before God with an impossible list in our hands.

The Fathers see something far more beautiful.

They see a man standing in the waters of baptism.

They see the Word entering the ear and descending into the heart.

They see leaven hidden in the dough.

They see grace already working.

They see Christ within the human person making possible what fallen nature could never accomplish by itself.

Yes, the demand is total.

Because the gift is total.

God asks for the whole human being because He has given Himself wholly to the human being.

And perhaps this is why the Fathers can be simultaneously so severe and so full of hope.

They expect everything from us because they expect everything from grace.

There can be no protected corner.

No carefully preserved passion.

No portion of the day deliberately surrendered to another master.

But neither is there any corner of the human person into which Christ cannot enter.

That is the promise hidden inside the demand.

The Word that says,

Follow Me,

also gives feet to the lame.

The Word that says,

Rise,

raises the dead.

The Word that says,

Be clean,

cleanses the leper.

And the Word that calls us to become holy does not leave us standing alone before holiness.

He enters us.

He remains in us.

He works secretly like leaven.

Until, through repentance, patience, suffering, obedience, failure, beginning again, and grace upon grace, the life that once seemed impossible slowly becomes our own.

Not because we finally became strong enough.

But because the Word was living.

And we allowed Him to remain.