"To Become All Flame" Retreat - Reflection 3: The Furnace

“Give Blood and Receive the Spirit”

— The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

There is a moment in the spiritual life when desire ceases to feel consoling.

At first the awakening of desire can be beautiful.

Prayer deepens.

Silence becomes attractive.

The heart longs for God.

The desert seems spacious.

Freedom seems near.

But then something happens.

The fire begins to reveal what is actually within us.

Not only our longing.

Our resistance.

Not only our love.

Our fear.

Not only our generosity.

Our need to control.

Not only our desire for God.

Our desire to possess God on our own terms.

This is where the fire becomes a furnace.

†

The Fathers were under no illusion about the human heart.

They knew that desire can be mixed.

We may seek God and still seek ourselves.

We may desire silence and secretly want escape.

We may speak of freedom while protecting self-will.

We may speak of holiness while desiring admiration.

The desert exposes these mixtures.

And that exposure is grace.

The passions do not suddenly appear because we entered silence.

Silence removes the noise that concealed them.

The anger was already there.

The need for approval was already there.

The wound was already there.

The desire to be important was already there.

The desert does not create these things.

It makes them visible.

And what becomes visible can finally be healed.

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This is why the Fathers speak relentlessly about the thoughts.

A memory appears.

A resentment rises.

A fantasy begins.

A conversation from years ago returns and we rehearse it again.

We imagine ourselves vindicated.

We imagine ourselves admired.

And slowly we discover how much of our interior life is occupied by conversations that are not actually happening.

The Fathers call us back.

Return to the cell.

Return to prayer.

Return to reality.

Return to God.

This returning is one of the deepest forms of asceticism.

†

The desert does not ask us to become less human.

It asks us to become truthful.

This is repentance.

Not self-condemnation.

The willingness to stand before God without disguise.

This anger is mine.

This fear is mine.

This pride is mine.

This wound is mine.

This desire for control is mine.

And yet I am Yours.

Heal what I cannot heal.

Burn away what prevents love.

Repentance is not despair.

It is hope made honest.

†

And grace does not bypass our freedom.

We must consent to healing.

This is why asceticism matters.

Fasting.

Vigil.

Silence.

Watchfulness.

Prayer.

Obedience.

These are not punishments.

They reveal where the will remains enslaved.

A person may think himself patient until someone contradicts him.

Detached until something is taken away.

Humble until he is ignored.

Obedient until obedience conflicts with what he has already decided God wants.

This is why the furnace is necessary.

Without it we can remain spiritually articulate and interiorly unfree.

†

“Give blood and receive the Spirit.”

The words are severe.

But the spiritual life costs us something.

Not because God demands suffering for its own sake.

Because love costs the false self everything.

The self that must be admired.

The self that must be right.

The self that must be safe.

The self that must be understood.

The self that must control the future.

This self does not die easily.

And so the Fathers speak of blood.

Not necessarily literal blood.

The interior cost of surrender.

The pain of not defending ourselves.

The pain of forgiving.

The pain of waiting.

The pain of being misunderstood.

The pain of remaining hidden.

The pain of discovering that we are not who we imagined ourselves to be.

The pain of letting God be God.

†

This is where obedience becomes essential.

True obedience is not servility.

It is not the destruction of conscience.

It is the purification of self-will.

Self-will says:

I already know what must happen.

I already know where God is leading.

I already know what my life must become.

And then we ask God to bless what we have already decided.

Obedience creates room for another possibility.

Perhaps I do not know.

Perhaps I am mistaken.

Perhaps what feels like freedom is escape.

Perhaps what feels like delay is mercy.

Perhaps what feels like obstruction is purification.

Obedience does not kill desire.

It tests whether desire belongs to God.

†

This is why the elder matters.

The elder is someone who has learned to distinguish fire from smoke.

He has been burned himself.

He knows self-deception.

The disciple comes and says:

I want this.

I fear this.

I think God is asking this.

And the elder listens for the movement beneath the words.

Does this desire make you more loving?

More humble?

More truthful?

More capable of waiting?

More willing to be hidden?

More compassionate?

More willing to surrender the outcome?

The Fathers do not despise mixed desire.

They purify it.

The spark may be genuine even when there is smoke.

The work is not to extinguish the fire.

It is to let it burn cleanly.

†

And this brings us to freedom.

The world often defines freedom as the ability to do what one wants.

The desert understands freedom as the ability to desire what is good.

A person can possess enormous external freedom and remain enslaved.

To anger.

To approval.

To fear.

To resentment.

To his own opinion.

The Fathers seek another freedom.

The freedom to forgive.

The freedom not to retaliate.

The freedom not to be praised.

The freedom not to win.

The freedom to remain silent.

The freedom to be unknown.

The freedom to lose everything except God.

Autonomy says:

No one will tell me what to do.

Spiritual freedom says:

Nothing will prevent me from belonging completely to God.

†

And sometimes the furnace is simply the life we have actually been given.

Illness.

Hiddenness.

Delay.

An unwanted responsibility.

Loneliness.

Misunderstanding.

An unanswered prayer.

We tell ourselves:

I could pray if I had more silence.

I could love if people were easier.

I could be peaceful if this problem were resolved.

I could discern if God made things clearer.

But the saints discover that the place of limitation itself can become the altar.

Not because suffering is good.

Because nothing need remain outside communion with Christ.

Everything can be brought into the fire.

†

Waiting is one of the great furnaces.

If a desire belongs merely to emotion, time often dissipates it.

If it belongs to ego, lack of recognition often embitters it.

But if it belongs to God, waiting can deepen it.

The desire becomes quieter.

Less dramatic.

Less defensive.

More peaceful.

Eventually it may no longer need to prove itself.

It simply remains:

I want God.

†

And the real test of all of this is love.

Not intensity.

Not extraordinary prayer.

Not great ascetic feats.

Humility.

Mercy.

Patience.

Non-judgment.

A gentle word.

The ability to bear another’s weakness.

Does the fire make the heart warmer toward others?

Or harder?

Does prayer make us more merciful?

Does solitude enlarge our compassion?

Does suffering make us gentler?

St. Isaac tells us that the heart transformed by God becomes merciful toward all creation.

This is what happens when the fire burns cleanly.

It does not produce harshness.

It produces tenderness.

The closer a person draws to God, the less capable he becomes of contempt.

The fire of God illuminates.

It does not scorch others.

†

Perhaps this is what “give blood” finally means.

Allow love to cost you something.

Give up the right to rehearse the injury.

Give up the fantasy of vindication.

Give up the need to be seen as spiritually exceptional.

Give up the demand that God’s path conform to the one you imagined.

Give up the insistence that suffering must first make sense.

Give up the right to possess even your own vocation.

Put everything into God’s hands.

Even the desire itself.

And say:

Lord, I desire You.

And even the form that my desire takes belongs to You.

If hiddenness is Your will, let me disappear.

If service is Your will, let me be poured out.

If I must wait, teach me to wait.

If I am mistaken, correct me.

If the desire is from You, purify it until nothing remains but love.

That is obedience.

Not passivity.

Offering.

†

The Cross stands at the center.

Christ is the truly free man.

And His freedom looks like self-gift.

“No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord.”

Freedom reaches its perfection not in self-assertion but in love.

He is free enough to love unto the end.

And so every authentic Christian freedom eventually becomes cruciform.

†

Here the furnace becomes luminous.

What feels at first like destruction is actually transfiguration.

The fire burns away what is false.

But preserves what is real.

God is not trying to destroy the person.

He is freeing the person from everything that prevents him from becoming himself.

The false identities.

The defensive habits.

The fears.

The need to prove.

The need to possess.

The need to control.

And beneath them something deeper remains.

A person capable of love.

A person created in the image of God.

A person called to communion.

This cannot be rushed.

Years of returning.

Years of beginning again.

The modern mind asks:

Why is this taking so long?

The desert asks:

Why are you in such a hurry?

Fruit ripens slowly.

The heart does too.

Repent.

Return.

Begin again.

†

Eventually something changes.

Not dramatically.

Almost imperceptibly.

A provocation no longer has the same power.

A need for approval loosens.

A resentment becomes harder to sustain.

We can be misunderstood without immediately defending ourselves.

We need fewer explanations from God.

The heart begins to rest.

This is the fruit of the furnace.

Not perfection.

Freedom.

The passions may still knock at the door.

But they are no longer masters of the house.

Now the saying begins to make sense:

“Give blood and receive the Spirit.”

We give what binds us.

God gives what frees us.

We give self-will.

He gives liberty.

We give resentment.

He gives mercy.

We give fear.

He gives trust.

We give illusion.

He gives truth.

We give our carefully protected life.

He gives us life itself.

†

The furnace is not a detour from desire.

It keeps desire from becoming fantasy.

It is not the enemy of freedom.

It is where freedom is born.

It is not God’s refusal of us.

It is His refusal to leave us divided.

The fire that first awakened longing now consumes what prevents longing from becoming love.

At first we said:

I want God.

Then:

I want God more than these other things.

Then:

I want God even if He gives me none of the things I imagined.

And finally, perhaps:

I want only what allows me to belong completely to Him.

The spark has become flame.

The flame has entered the furnace.

And now the heart is being prepared for the final mystery:

not merely to desire the fire,

not merely to endure the fire,

but to become what the fire has touched.

To become all flame.