When Nothing of Us Remains

Death, the Vanity of Great Works, and the One Thing That Endures

“For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

— 1 Corinthians 3:11

There is something almost merciless about death.

Not because death tells us that life has no meaning, but because it reveals how much of what we believed gave our life meaning cannot endure.

A person may labor for decades. He may build institutions, establish ministries, raise money, construct churches, write books, gather communities, educate generations, acquire titles and honors, and become known for the things he has accomplished. His name may be spoken with admiration. It may be carved into stone, placed upon buildings, printed in programs, preserved in institutional histories.

And then he dies.

For a little while there are tributes. Memories are shared. Gratitude is expressed. Photographs appear. People speak of what he accomplished.

Then the world moves on.

It always does.

Another generation comes that did not know him. Another benefactor gives more generously and a building receives another name. Institutions change direction. Communities forget the sacrifices by which they were established. Ministries disappear. Libraries are dispersed. Photographs are placed in boxes. Eventually even the name that once seemed inseparable from a place means very little to those who inhabit it.

Death makes this painfully clear.

And perhaps this is one of its greatest mercies.

For the Desert Fathers understood something that we continually resist: almost everything by which we establish ourselves in this world will be taken away.

They fled precisely from the world of reputation, accomplishment, influence, position and recognition—not because these things were necessarily evil, but because they knew how easily the ego fastens itself even to holy things.

One can build something for God and gradually begin building oneself through it.

One can serve the Church and slowly begin needing the Church to acknowledge that service.

One can teach about God while secretly hungering to be remembered as a teacher.

One can establish ministries in the name of Christ while quietly needing those ministries to testify that one’s life mattered.

One can even embrace asceticism, prayer, theology and spiritual fatherhood and construct from them an identity every bit as formidable as the identities one supposedly left behind.

The desert is ruthless about this.

Abba Moses did not go into the desert to become Abba Moses.

He went there to die.

The great elders became great precisely because greatness had ceased to interest them.

The Race We May Never Have Run

Saint Paul writes words that Christians understandably desire to make their own:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

But there is something in these words that should make us tremble.

It is possible to run very hard and still not run that race.

We may exhaust ourselves for religious things. We may sacrifice health, comfort, money, friendships and years of our lives. We may endure conflicts and humiliations because we believe something important must be preserved.

And perhaps it is important.

But activity for the Church is not necessarily faith.

Sacrifice is not necessarily self-emptying.

Perseverance is not necessarily fidelity.

Religious accomplishment is not necessarily holiness.

One may run an extraordinary race and discover at the end that it was largely a race toward oneself.

This is why the Fathers cared so little about what a monk accomplished and so much about what was happening within his heart.

What good is it to build a monastery if one has not become a dwelling place for God?

What good is it to defend orthodoxy if hatred has entered the heart?

What good is it to teach prayer if one no longer prays?

What good is it to gather disciples if one secretly needs disciples?

What good is it to establish institutions for Christ if one’s identity becomes inseparable from their survival?

The questions are severe because the Gospel is severe.

“Without Me you can do nothing.”

Nothing.

Not merely nothing secular.

Nothing.

We can accomplish astonishing things without Christ. Human talent, ambition, intelligence, charisma, money, discipline and determination can construct entire worlds.

But they cannot create the Kingdom.

The Terrible Possibility

There is a possibility that should sober every Christian who has spent his life doing things “for the Church.”

What if much of what we called service was self-preservation?

What if our need to accomplish something great concealed our fear of being nothing?

What if our desire to be remembered revealed that we had never learned the blessedness of being forgotten?

The modern elders speak with the same uncompromising clarity as the ancient Fathers. Saint Silouan points us toward the humility of Christ descending into the depths. Saint Sophrony continually returns us to the kenosis of the Lord—the movement downward rather than upward. Saint Porphyrios teaches us not to stare endlessly at darkness but to turn wholly toward Christ. And in Father Zacharias we repeatedly encounter the same mystery: the way of Christ is descent, self-emptying, the acceptance of becoming small so that the life of Another may become great within us.

This is almost incomprehensible to the modern religious imagination.

We measure attendance.

We count followers.

We publish statistics.

We celebrate expansion.

We announce initiatives.

We construct buildings.

We develop platforms.

We speak continually about impact.

And Christ speaks about a grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying.

The contrast should disturb us.

The Judgment of Hiddenness

The Desert Fathers loved hiddenness because hiddenness reveals whom we actually desire.

Would I still do this if no one knew?

Would I still pray if no one thought me prayerful?

Would I still write if my name disappeared from the page?

Would I still serve if someone else received the gratitude?

Would I still build if another person’s name were eventually placed upon what I built?

Would I still love the Church if the Church never thanked me?

Would Christ be enough if everything by which I understood myself were taken away?

These questions penetrate far more deeply than questions about success or failure.

For the Christian vocation is ultimately not to accomplish something impressive for God.

It is to become His.

The Fathers understood that this transformation often occurs where nothing appears to be happening.

A monk sits in his cell.

An old woman whispers the Jesus Prayer.

Someone forgives an injury no one else knows was inflicted.

A caregiver washes the same dishes, changes the same sheets, answers the same questions, and offers the weariness silently to God.

A priest prays before an empty altar.

A suffering person refuses bitterness.

Someone wakes during the night and says only:

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

No plaques commemorate these things.

No institutions record them.

No biographies may ever mention them.

And yet perhaps these are among the greatest events occurring upon the earth.

Because eternity measures differently.

Wood, Hay, Straw

Saint Paul tells us that fire will test the quality of each person’s work.

Some things will remain.

Others will burn.

We should not presume that the largest things will survive.

Wood, hay and straw can be assembled into enormous structures.

Gold can fit in the palm of one’s hand.

A lifetime of visible accomplishment may contain very little that belongs to eternity, while a single hidden act of mercy may contain within it the Kingdom of God.

This is why death can be such a terrible revelation.

Everything falls from our hands.

The positions.

The ministries.

The buildings.

The books.

The friendships.

The conflicts.

The reputations.

The grievances.

The explanations we wanted to give.

The recognition we believed we deserved.

Even our own name.

And eventually the world that seemed so preoccupied with us becomes preoccupied with someone else.

There is something profoundly liberating about allowing ourselves to see this before we die.

Nothing Rooted in the Ego Endures

Nothing rooted in the ego can enter the Kingdom.

This does not mean that everything we have accomplished was false. Grace works through terribly mixed human beings. God brings forth fruit even through our vanity, weakness and confused motives.

But sooner or later the fire must come.

Everything must be purified.

The question is not simply whether our works survive.

The question is whether we have allowed God to make us capable of surviving their loss.

Can the ministry disappear and Christ remain?

Can the institution forget us and Christ remain?

Can our reputation collapse and Christ remain?

Can our strength disappear and Christ remain?

Can the future we imagined never arrive and Christ remain?

Can almost everything be taken from us and still we whisper:

Thou art enough.

Perhaps this is why the elders speak so insistently about remembrance of death.

It is not morbidity.

It is freedom.

To remember death is to stop negotiating with eternity as though our earthly importance could purchase something there.

It is to discover while there is still time that the only treasure worth possessing is the One whom death cannot take from us.

May Christ Remain

The tragedy of a life is not that a person’s name eventually disappears.

That will happen to nearly all of us.

The tragedy would be to spend our lives desperately preventing it.

The Christian does not finally pray:

May they remember me.

He prays:

May Christ remember me.

“Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.”

That is enough.

Perhaps more than enough.

For the thief had no ministry.

He founded nothing.

He wrote nothing.

He built nothing.

He left behind no school of spirituality, no disciples, no institution, no charitable foundation, no theological work.

His life’s accomplishments, insofar as we know them, were hardly worth remembering.

And yet in the final poverty, when nothing remained with which to construct an identity, he turned toward Christ.

And Christ said:

Today you will be with Me in Paradise.

There is the measure.

Not what remains of us here.

Not whether our names survive.

Not whether the things we built continue.

Not even whether later generations understand what we tried to do.

Only this:

Did we become Christ’s?

Did we learn to love?

Did we become merciful?

Did we descend into humility?

Did we allow the false self to die?

Did we keep the faith?

And when everything else was stripped away, did we discover that underneath all our works, all our identities, all our accomplishments and all our failures there remained one desire:

Jesus Christ.

The Fathers went into the desert to learn this before death forced them to learn it.

Perhaps that is why we still need the desert.

Not so that we might accomplish something great.

But so that, by grace, we might finally consent to become nothing—

and discover that when nothing of us remains,

Christ is still there.