Books as Means to Humility, Not Pride

This section of The Evergetinos is among the most luminous and convicting in its entire corpus. It speaks with the voice of a Father who has entered deeply into the mind of Christ; where justice is transfigured by mercy, where the love of neighbor becomes inseparable from the love of God, and where even material loss becomes a gate to eternal life.

The Elder’s teaching exposes the great inversion of values that defines our time. In an age obsessed with self-preservation, power, and vengeance, the Christian is called not simply to resist these tendencies, but to live from an entirely different center. His measure of life is no longer self-interest or fear, but the eternal horizon of the Kingdom.

The Elder begins with a piercing truth: God’s commandments are light. It is only our attachment to self-will that makes them seem heavy. In modern terms, we could say that the weight we feel in forgiving enemies, in relinquishing possessions, or in enduring wrongs, comes not from the Gospel itself, but from our clinging to the illusion of control and possession. The commandment of Christ is light because it is love; and love is only heavy to one still bound by pride.

The parable of the gem-engraver is a mirror for us. The man, faced with imminent danger, discards all his treasure to preserve a fleeting life. We, knowing the eternal stakes, cannot part with even trifles to save our souls. The Elder’s irony cuts deeply: a worldly merchant becomes a philosopher in action, while we who claim the Kingdom behave as fools. Has the Christian fallen below the moral and spiritual clarity of the pagans who could endure insult or misfortune with composure? The Elder’s words imply as much, for true wisdom is to value what endures, and to let go of all that perishes.

We live amid a civilization that sanctifies vengeance, calls anger justice, and worships material gain. The Christian, if he is truly of Christ, stands as a contradiction to this world. His meekness will appear as weakness; his patience as passivity. Yet the Elder shows that it is precisely this self-emptying love that manifests divine power. To endure injury without resentment is to share in the Cross. To pray for the one who wrongs us is to participate in the compassion of the Crucified.

The image of the Body, so carefully developed by the Elder, destroys the illusion of separateness that fuels violence. To harm my brother is to wound Christ Himself; to harbor anger is to cut myself off from the Body’s life. The Christian is thus called to a supernatural realism: to perceive the unity of all in Christ and to respond to injury with the same tenderness one shows a diseased limb of one’s own body. One does not amputate a member in anger; one tends it with healing concern. So must we treat the sinner who has harmed us.

In the closing examples, the Elder incarnates this teaching. The monk who relinquishes his books rather than quarrel over them, the ascetic who frees the brigands who attacked him — these are not tales of naiveté but of divine wisdom. They show that peace of heart and fidelity to Christ outweigh any claim to justice or property. The true betrayal, as Abba Poimen tells the frightened hermit, is not the crime of the brigands but the monk’s own fear and loss of faith. The victory of Christ is not in punishing evil but in overcoming fear through love.

St. Ephraim’s brief counsel at the end grounds this lofty teaching in ordinary charity. Justice begins in the smallest acts; in returning what is borrowed, in honesty, in remembering that we “owe no man anything, but to love one another.” The ascetical heroism of forgiveness begins with these humble fidelities.

In an age of terror, noise, and material excess, the distinctive mark of the Christian is not moral superiority or rhetorical witness, but peace that disarms the world. The Evergetinos reminds us that the Gospel’s revolution lies in meekness; in the refusal to let hatred dictate our actions or possessions define our worth. If we have not yet attained even the calm of the pagan sage or the detachment of the shipwrecked merchant, then our first step is repentance: to rediscover the lightness of the commandments and to trust that the Cross, embraced without vengeance, is still the truest power in the world.

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Text of chat during the group:

00:02:23 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 291, G

00:08:34 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: www.philokaliaministries.blogspot.com

00:10:48 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 291 G 2

00:10:57 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: http://www.philokaliaministries.blogspot.com

00:19:21 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 292, # 2, 2nd paragraph

00:21:44 Rick Visser: We think we can have both, temporal and eternal.

00:24:02 Anthony: Prosperity gospel also came from sectarians reading the Hebrew Scriptures in a carnal manner.

00:27:45 Janine: Blessed are you poor

00:28:00 Adam Paige: Happy Are You Poor: the simple life and spiritual freedom (Thomas Dubay)

00:28:27 Rick Visser: All of us here in the class are in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the world.

00:36:26 Jessica McHale: I got rid of just about everything. I have two boxes, one clothes, one religious items. I have never felt free-er.

00:36:44 Rick Visser: Reacted to "I got rid of just ab..." with ❤️

00:37:56 Myles Davidson: Reacted to "I got rid of just ab..." with 👍

00:43:18 Anthony: Didn't God make beautiful raw materials partly so we can be co-creators?

00:49:51 Maureen Cunningham: Jesus had 12 your halfway there

00:53:22 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 294, first paragraph

00:53:27 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "P. 294, first paragr..." with 👍

01:01:39 Catherine Opie: 🤯 We are silly things for sure

01:06:34 Anthony: And I try to apply this reasoning to public policy .... And how I talk about policy. It's really difficult.

01:12:13 Catherine Opie: St Catherine of Siena even gave away the belongings of the other members of her family as well as her own, much to their annoyance.

01:12:37 Rick Visser: Even Socrates on his death bed asked if there was anything he owed anyone--yes there was: a rooster. So, he made sure it was taken care of before taking the hemlock.

01:13:01 Jessica McHale: Reacted to "St Catherine of Si..." with ❤️

01:13:05 Jessica McHale: Reacted to "Even Socrates on h..." with ❤️

01:15:03 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You Blessing

01:15:31 Jessica McHale: Thank YOU! Prayers for you all!

01:15:33 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you🙂

01:15:46 Bob Čihák, AZ: Bless you, Father.

01:15:46 Catherine Opie: 🙏🏻

01:15:49 Rick Visser: I pray for you.