Where There Is No Way Out

The terrible freedom of remaining with Christ when nothing changes

“Keep thy mind in hell and despair not.”

— St. Silouan the Athonite

There are moments when the spiritual life ceases to offer consolation.

Not because God has withdrawn His mercy, but because He permits every lesser thing upon which we have secretly depended to be taken from our hands.

The Fathers knew this place.

It is the place where prayer does not change circumstances. Where obedience does not immediately bring clarity. Where patience does not produce resolution. Where sincerity is misunderstood. Where doors remain closed. Where those who might have helped do not help. Where explanations accomplish nothing. Where tomorrow offers no obvious escape from today.

And it is precisely here that the soul discovers what it actually believes.

We speak easily of surrender when somewhere within us we still imagine that surrender will be rewarded by a favorable outcome.

We abandon ourselves to Providence, secretly expecting Providence to explain itself.

We accept the Cross while keeping one eye upon the horizon for resurrection.

But there comes a more terrible hour.

Nothing changes.

The stone remains.

The prayer remains unanswered.

The contradiction remains unresolved.

The soul finds itself standing before a life it would never have chosen and cannot repair.

Then the word given to Silouan descends with all its terrible force:

Keep thy mind in hell and despair not.

Do not flee from what is true.

Do not manufacture consolation.

Do not call darkness light.

Do not pretend that suffering does not wound.

Do not construct an imaginary future merely because the present has become unbearable.

Do not preserve yourself through fantasies of vindication, recognition, restoration, or escape.

Descend.

Descend into the truth.

Perhaps there is no way out.

Perhaps what has been lost will not be restored.

Perhaps others will never understand.

Perhaps the identity by which one has known oneself for decades will disappear.

Perhaps the work will pass into other hands.

Perhaps one’s name will be forgotten.

Perhaps there will be no earthly resolution adequate to the suffering.

The Fathers would not rush to rescue us from these possibilities.

They would say:

Good. Now remain with Christ.

For despair does not begin when every earthly hope disappears.

Despair begins when we conclude that because every earthly hope has disappeared, God is no longer enough.

That is the abyss.

And there the battle becomes astonishingly simple.

God is.

Christ is risen.

His mercy endures forever.

Therefore I will not despair.

This is not optimism.

Optimism requires evidence.

Christian hope can live without it.

Hope is not the conviction that circumstances will improve. It is not confidence that justice will be done in this life. It is not the expectation that one’s vocation, reputation, community, health, relationships, or plans will eventually be restored.

Hope is Christ.

Nothing more.

And nothing less.

This is why the saints can sound almost merciless to modern ears. They refuse the consolations by which we avoid God.

We want to know what comes next.

They tell us to repent.

We want circumstances resolved.

They tell us to pray.

We want our innocence recognized.

They tell us to accuse ourselves.

We want a path.

They give us Christ.

And eventually the soul begins to understand the severity of their mercy.

For much of life we imagine that peace will come when contradiction disappears.

The saints discovered another peace entirely.

Peace comes when the demand that contradiction disappear has died.

Then something extraordinary happens.

The soul becomes free.

Not because the prison doors have opened, but because it no longer requires them to open in order to love God.

Not because its name has been cleared, but because it no longer needs a name.

Not because the future has become certain, but because the future belongs to Another.

Not because suffering has ceased, but because suffering has ceased to possess the final word.

This is the hidden meaning of despair not.

It is not an emotional achievement.

It may coexist with exhaustion.

It may coexist with grief.

It may coexist with tears, bewilderment, humiliation, loneliness, and the terrible sensation that one’s life has narrowed to almost nothing.

The soul may possess no felt hope whatsoever.

And still, somewhere beneath everything, it says:

I will not leave Christ.

That may be the purest act of faith a human being ever makes.

When there is nothing to gain.

When prayer seems to accomplish nothing.

When obedience offers no reward.

When fidelity preserves no identity.

When God Himself seems silent.

Still:

I will not leave Christ.

The world may call such a life wasted.

The ego certainly will.

It will whisper urgently that something must be done to preserve oneself—to establish a future, secure a place, recover an identity, make certain that one’s life still means something.

But perhaps the final asceticism is precisely here.

To allow even the need for one’s life to mean something to die.

To become poor enough that God alone can give meaning to existence.

The grain of wheat does not understand the harvest.

It falls into the earth.

It disappears.

And for a time there is only darkness.

No one looking at the soil would know that anything is happening.

This is the hiddenness the Fathers loved.

Not romantic solitude.

Not spiritual self-possession.

Burial.

The old man wants witnesses.

The new man needs only God.

And so one remains.

One does the small thing placed before one’s hands.

One keeps vigil.

One prays the Name.

One serves the person immediately before oneself.

One asks forgiveness.

One refuses hatred.

One relinquishes imaginary futures.

One stops demanding that Providence justify itself.

Day after day.

Hour after hour.

Sometimes minute after minute.

This is not passivity.

It may be among the fiercest forms of spiritual warfare.

For the demons can endure our projects more easily than our abandonment to God.

They can tolerate religious ambition.

They can even tolerate austerity.

What they cannot endure is a human being who has nothing left to protect.

Nothing to prove.

Nothing to become.

Nothing to demand from tomorrow.

A person who can stand in the ruins of every imagined future and whisper:

Christ is here.

Then hell itself loses its power.

Because hell can threaten only the person who believes there is something more precious than Christ that can still be taken away.

This is why the saying does not end:

Keep thy mind in hell.

It ends:

and despair not.

That final word changes everything.

It means descend as far as truth requires.

See your poverty.

See your helplessness.

See the fragility of everything human.

Let every illusion of control perish.

But never surrender the knowledge of God’s mercy.

There is a thread descending into the abyss that hell itself cannot sever.

Christ has already descended there.

And therefore the deepest place is no longer Godless.

Perhaps this is where a human life finally becomes prayer.

Not when everything has been resolved.

Not when the path becomes clear.

Not when one knows what one will become.

But when, stripped of all these things, the heart becomes very still and discovers that it can say without bargaining:

If nothing changes, Thou art God.

If nothing is restored, Thou art God.

If I disappear from the memory of men, Thou knowest me.

If there is no way forward that I can see, Thou art the Way.

If all that remains is to stand before Thee in silence until death, Thou art enough.

Then the soul has begun to understand the strange freedom of the saints.

Keep thy mind in hell.

Look directly at what is unbearable.

Do not lie.

Do not flee.

Do not demand escape.

And despair not.

For beneath everything that can be taken away,

Christ remains.

And the one who possesses Christ lacks nothing.