Saint John the Merciful and public exaction

There are moments when the Evergetinos confronts us with a vision so stark and so luminous that it seems almost uninhabitable. It is not a juridical vision of justice. It is not a measured discourse about the protection of innocents. It does not weigh competing moral claims or concerns about equity or rights. What it reveals is something else entirely. It opens before us the divine ethos, the mode of being that belongs to those who have been seized by God, transformed by grace, and re-shaped through hesychia into a likeness of Christ that defies all earthly logic. It is the unvarnished gospel in its rawest form.

When the philosophers insult the monk from the Libyan desert, and he rushes toward them with eagerness, offering his cheek to their hands, it is not a lesson in social ethics. It is not a prescription for how a parent is to protect a child or how a citizen must respond to injustice. It is a revelation of the interior world of a man who watches over his mind and hopes only in the grace of God. The philosophers fast. The philosophers keep vigil. They practice disciplines that appear nearly identical. What they cannot do—what they admit they cannot do—is guard the mind in purity and allow insults to pass through the heart without stirring anger. In this they recognize the divine in the monk. They bow to him because a man who can endure injustice without disturbance is living from a realm they cannot inhabit.

The Evergetinos offers no apologies for this. It does not soften its witness. When the elder watches his garden destroyed and asks only to keep a single root so he might cook for the one who has wrecked the rest, he is not giving us a moral theory. He is revealing what the human heart becomes when it rests in the Spirit. The elder who lights a lamp for thieves and joyfully hands them his last coins is not attempting to reform criminal behavior, nor is he calculating social consequences. His joy is not naivete. It is the fire of Christ’s own meekness living in him.

And yet we must be honest. These stories do not address the complexities of the world in which most people live. They do not speak directly to the father protecting his family, the mother guarding her children, the priest shepherding a wounded community, or the layperson navigating systems of injustice. The Evergetinos does not pause to balance competing goods. It does not acknowledge the dangers that arise when evil is left unchecked. It is not a handbook for civil society. It is something far more dangerous. It presents us with the highest vision of a human heart purified by grace, a life transfigured to such a degree that it can absorb wrongs as Christ absorbed them. The gospel is not diluted. In fact, it becomes unbearable in its purity.

The elder who prays for the grace to respond to thieves with joy receives exactly what he asks for. God answers him not with consolation but with thieves at his door. He lights a lamp, welcomes them, opens his coffers, and blesses them as they leave with everything he owns. He asks for nothing in return, not even their repentance. When asked whether they came back like the thieves in the story, he laughs and says he preferred that they did not. He was not following a legal principle. He was walking the path he had begged God to let him walk. The suffering he endured was not a loss. It was the fruit of a longing for likeness with Christ.

And then there are the stories of divine recompense, e.g., St. John the Merciful and the miraculous jars of honey that turn to gold, the injustices endured by monks which become occasions for God to act as avenger. These are not examples of magical thinking. They are testimonies that God sees everything, that the meek are not abandoned, that those who refuse to avenge themselves have placed their trust in the only One capable of true judgment. The elders are not naïve about injustice. They simply refuse to litigate their own wounds. They trust that God Himself will set things right in a manner beyond human calculation.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:01:57 Sam: Hi Fr Charbel. Greetings from Australia :-)

00:04:05 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Welcome Sam.  Good to have you here!

00:10:47 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 306 # 10

00:13:13 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/non-resistance-justice-and-the-peace-of-christ

00:20:08 Janine: Oh poor Bob…i will pray for you!

00:21:45 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/non-resistance-justice-and-the-peace-of-christ

00:21:59 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 306 # 10

00:25:46 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/non-resistance-justice-and-the-peace-of-christ

00:34:04 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 307 # 11

00:46:14 Joan Chakonas: these stories create mental standards and illustrate aspirational rewards for me, a grateful listener (with very little patience)- if I try to be better God will give me these rewards someday.  I live these stories

00:46:36 Joan Chakonas: Love these stories

00:57:13 Vanessa: My property was broken into twice the last 6 months. It made me paranoid and feeling unsafe for a long time. Checking and double-checking windows and doors. I totally get the coffee scenario!

00:57:59 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "My property was brok..." with 😮

00:58:37 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/non-resistance-justice-and-the-peace-of-christ

00:59:23 Forrest: Since the monks in these stories have vanquished the passion of anger and desire to resist, how do they not have any charitable desire (or even obligation) to attempt to converse with the thieves and start separating the robbers from the demons and passions which rule their lives?

00:59:28 Catherine: I guess that if we are so covetous of material things that we would attack someone else over possession of these we are no less covetous than the theif

01:02:24 Joan Chakonas: I figure God handles these thieves.

01:03:41 Forrest: Reacted to "I guess that if we a..." with 👍

01:04:39 Bob Čihák, AZ: Replying to "I figure God handles..."

Yes! In the next Hypothesis.

01:04:53 Vanessa: Reacted to "I figure God handles..." with 👍

01:05:35 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 309 section A

01:17:14 Maureen Cunningham: Maybe we do not see Him

01:23:00 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/non-resistance-justice-and-the-peace-of-christ

01:25:26 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You Father

01:25:59 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you🙂

01:26:08 Forrest: Thank you!!

01:26:20 Jessica McHale: Thank you! Prayers for you!!!

01:26:24 Andrew Adams: Thanks be to God! Thank you, Father!

01:26:29 Joan Chakonas: Thank you Father