JURIDICAL VENGEANCE OR CO-SUFFERING LOVE by Metropolitan Antony

We are,
for now, pointing out the fact and we will offer the explanation of it later;
but the fact — more
exactly the law — of
psychologic interaction [reciprocity] is present before us. Without a doubt,
the co‑suffering love of one who perceives the fallings of a neighbour with as
much grief as if he himself were the sinner becomes a powerful force of
regeneration. Sometimes it is expressed in admonitions, sometimes in tears or
fervent prayers, sometimes in supplications to the one who has fallen. In all
its forms, however, the effective cause is measured by the power of co‑suffering
love. This is always verified by experience. When, for example, you reprimand
an unruly young person, your pupil or child, he stands there with a blank look,
having only one thought: "I have to listen to this lecture!" You
threaten him, but either he does not take the threat seriously, or he becomes
angry. Realizing that reasonable arguments or threats are futile for moving his
will, you either become angry (in which case, your cause is lost) or you are
moved to compassion for the youth who is walking the path of corruption. You
imagine yourself to be in his place and you are horrified at the fate that
awaits him: expulsion from school, venereal disease, perhaps prison, social
contempt and even suicide. Your heart has become filled with compassion and
sorrow, and having fallen silent for a moment, you begin to speak in a
different tone. You tell him of your own personal wavering, of the heavy toll
of internal struggle you had to pay to correct your own errors, how embarrassed
you are at recalling the coarse words with which you insulted your parents in
your own youth. And then, the countenance of your listener changes. His
obduracy is shaken, he is moved to compunction and tears, and makes promises of
self‑correction in response to your benevolent words. If you will always
maintain the ability to treat the young person with such angerless,
compassionate love, putting away self‑love from your soul, then the Lord will
say to you, "You have gained your brother" (Mt. 18:15). He will
gradually be completely regenerated and his acquaint­ances will marvel, thinking
that he seems to be a completely different person from the one whom they knew
to be a disorderly, lazy, dishonest debaucher.

Some
reader will object, "Permit me to ask what this has to do with grace,
regeneration and redemption? You are telling us what takes place in secular
life." We reply that this phenomenon may occur even in the lives of
secular people, but in secular life, only the first glimmer of such a
manifestation of God’s regenerating grace is encountered. The more or less
lasting and profound effect of such grace is brought to pass only by those who
constantly pray to God and call on His all‑powerful grace in all their dealings
with their children, pupils or neighbours, banishing from their own hearts all
vanity and worldly objectives.

    It is
difficult to reconcile this with the usual conditions of life in this world.
That great Russian writer [Dostoevsky] who creates pictures of the spiritual
regeneration of sinners in all his works, introduces in his novels such loving
and compassionate people, not only from secular society (though some occupied
secular positions, such as Prince Myshkin and the father of The
Adolescent) but also he presented the schema‑monk elder and the self‑denying
novice in the fulness of the grace‑bearing nature. Dostoevsky went to lengths
to prepare his readers to turn away from their prejudices against monastics,
and in his earlier works, he focused attention not upon those who serve in the
mystery of regeneration, but upon those upon whom it was bestowed, usually under
the direct influence of Providence, that is, by means of disappointments,
suffering, illness, impending death, and the like.

On the
other hand, in his last novel [The Brothers Karamazov], he
portrayed the characters of two such examples of brotherly love — a youth and an old man in whom everyone who
drew near to them experienced if not a transformation in soul, then at least
deep moral stirring. And this was so for no other reason than that each one
felt that he was dear to Elder Zosima, that the elder was, so to speak,
entering into his soul and endeavouring to drive all evil out of it, and call
forth every good thing to life. Here is how this is expressed in the Prologue
for 29 May:

The elders
have said that every man must do for his neighbours whatever he can. He must,
as it were, put on his neighbour’s flesh and carry his entire weight; he must
suffer and rejoice and weep with him in every circumstance, or, in a word, he
must be with him as if he shared the same body and soul. If some affliction
befall his neighbour, he must grieve for him as for himself. For, it is
written, `We are one body in Christ,’ and again, `the heart and soul of the
multitude of those who believed was one.’

If this is
so, a reader may ask, then where is man’s free will? Alas, it is present in all
its potency. To be precise, the inner stirring just aroused can only beckon the
soul toward a better life, giving it the hope of possible regeneration. The
acceptance or angry rejection of this call depends on an action of free will.
The inevitable and unavoidable influence of grace‑bearing co‑suffering love
lies only in its leading the soul out of a condition of moral indifference,
distraction and incomprehension toward a definite decision, to be with God or
against God. Thus the righteous Symeon foretold of the Redeemer on the fortieth
day of His earthly life: "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rise
of many in Israel…so that the mind of many hearts may be revealed"
(Lk.2:34‑35). Christ’s words to Nikodemos have this same sense: "This is
the judgment, that light is come into the world and men loved darkness rather
than light" (Jn.3:19). The words which follow are especially significant:
"If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but
now they have no cloak for their sin…now they have both seen and hated both
Me and My Father" (Jn. 15:22, 24).

Thus,
contact with regenerating grace does not destroy one’s freedom, but brings one
to a decisive self determination to follow the path of good or evil, one’s own
justification or condemnation (see 1Pt.2:7, 8 and 2 Cor.2:15). John the
Baptist, burning with zeal for the salvation of mankind, impelled many to a
sudden decision to change their lives, and they asked, "What may we do [to
be saved]?" (Lk.3:12). The same was true of Apostle Peter’s sermon on the
day of Pentecost (Acts 2:37). Others, on the contrary, who heard the desert
dweller preach, were filled with hatred toward him and roused up Herodias to
cause his execution, to which the Saviour Himself bore witness (Mt.17:12).

About
thirty years ago on Mt Athos, the great elder Jerome gathered about 2000 monks
in the previously desolate St Panteleimon Monastery. He was distinguished by
boundless meekness and compassion toward human weakness, yet all those who
sinned or were heading toward sin felt that the elder’s spirit was in some
manner blocking their path and, at the very thought of him, they were brought
to repentance and went to him for confession. But this was not always the case.
Once, the elder was peacefully sitting near the monastery gates when suddenly
an enraged monk ran up to him, seized his beard and began beating him.
"What is wrong with you?" the elder inquired peacefully. "You do
not let me live!" exclaimed the monk, who was wrestling with some secret
temptations. "But I do not even remember your face," the elder said.
The monk, however, was already at the blessed man’s feet, in tears of
repentance.

The great
Russian writer Dostoevsky masterfully portrays for us this action of co‑suffering
love which divides people into those being regenerated and those being
condemned. Unbelieving visitors of Elder Zosima were so moved by his meek
appearance and words that some of them were filled with repentance whereas
others were so filled with malice that for no evident reason they would violate
all rules of decorum.

One ought
not to be disturbed by the fact that, in explaining the sacred dogma, we make
use not only of Sacred Scripture but also of examples from secular literature,
the very mention of which creates an aversion in many spiritual readers. But
what else can one do when there are so many readers who, only under great
constraint, will read or listen to extracts from the sacred writings. Christ
the Saviour Himself explained His teaching with parables drawn from everyday
life and St Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote a whole book titled Spiritual
Treasure Gathered From the Secular World.

And so we
confirm the truth divinely revealed to us and confirmed by observation and the
experience of life, that the principle and strength of moral regeneration is
the power of co‑suffering love. To a certain degree, it is found even in the
nature of unregenerate persons, as in maternal love. But a deep and decisive
regeneration of a beloved one can be produced only by one who lives by Christ
and depends on His power to bring about this regeneration.

Such a
disposition of co‑suffering love is a grace-bearing fruit of a godly life and
of nature (the love of a Christian mother, for example). It is accessible to
lay people who live in God, but usually only in relationship to certain close
relatives, to a pious, trusted teacher or to comrades in activity or fate
(Nekrasov^[iii]
takes an example from life in penal servitude); but in relationship to all
people, the earnest of this gift is imparted in the mystery of ordination,
something which our scholastic theologians have overlooked. St John Chrysostom,
however, clearly expressed this in his precious words which completely
convinced me that my "innovations" which I introduced as a professor
of pastoral theology (1893‑1900) coincide with the teaching of the Church and
that I was not proceeding "as one beating the air" (1Cor.9:26). He
says:

Spiritual
love is not born of anything earthly; it comes from above, from Heaven, and is
imparted in the mystery of holy Orders; but the assimilation and retention of
the gift depends on the aspirations of the spirit of man.

The later
Church father St Symeon the New Theologian agrees with Chrysostom in
considering one worthy of priesthood:

 
BEARERS OF
CO-SUFFERING LOVE
MINISTERS OF
REDEMPTION

So far we
have spoken about the action of co‑suffering love, but now let us direct our
attention to its bearers: in what feeling, in what experience is it expressed?
It is evident that it is found in inner suffering for others, in co‑suffering.
And so we have come to the concept of redemptive co‑suffering. The door is now
open before us to a feasible understanding of the redemptive power of Christ’s
sufferings.

The Church
clearly teaches those who would partake of the Holy Mysteries that the grace of
regeneration is given from the co‑suffering love of Christ the Saviour. This is
expressed in the words of St Symeon the New Theologian, in the seventh prayer
before Communion:

Neither
the greatness of my offenses nor the multitude of my transgressions surpasses
the great longsuffering of my God and His exceeding love for man, but with the
oil of co-suffering [compassion] dost Thou purify and illumine those who
fervently repent, and Thou makest them to partake abundantly of the light and
to be communicants of Thy Divinity.

These are
precious words which explain the mystery of redemption and expand the
significance of Paul’s words: "For we do not have a high priest who is
unable to co‑suffer with our weaknesses" (Hb.4:15). The fourth antiphon of
Great Friday Matins clearly says that Christ’s sufferings were His co‑suffering
for mankind: "O Thou who dost suffer for and with mankind, glory be to
Thee."

Speaking
of himself as a servant of regeneration, Apostle Paul clearly expresses the
truth that co-suffering (compassion) which is filled with love and zeal for the
flock is a regenerating power, which gradually instills spiritual life into
those hearts where it had not previously existed, just as a child receives life
in the birth sufferings of the mother: "My children, of whom I travail in
birth again until Christ is formed in you" (Gal.4:19; Jn.16:21,22). In
another place, the apostle writes that the spiritual life of the flock
increases according to the measure that their teacher dies physically in his
pastoral suffering: "Thus death is actively at work in us, but life in
you" (2Cor.4:12; cp.1Cor.4:10‑16).

In the
prayer for accomplishing the mystery of the consecration of bishops, the
successors of the apostles, the regenerating power of their service is also
described as suffering (that is, co‑suffering with the sinful flock), in which
the hierarch represents, to the people, Christ the true Teacher and Redeemer:

As it is
not possible for the human nature to bear the Divine essence, by Thine ekonomy
Thou hast appointed teachers for us having a nature like our own, subject to
passions, who stand before Thy throne…make this appointed steward of the
episcopal grace an imitator of Thee, the true Shepherd, Who has laid down Thy
life for Thy flock….May he stand unashamed before Thy throne and receive the
great reward which Thou hast prepared for those who have suffered for the
preaching of the Gospel.

The co‑suffering
love of a mother, friend, a spiritual shepherd or an apostle is operative only
when it attracts Christ, the true Shepherd. If, however, it functions only in
the sphere of human relations, it can, it is true, evoke tender attitudes and
repentant sentiment, but not a radical regeneration. The latter is so difficult
for our corrupt nature that not in vain did Nikodemos, speaking with Christ,
liken this difficulty to an adult person entering again into his mother’s womb
and being born for a second time. The Lord replied that what is impossible in
the limits of human life is possible in the life of grace, in which the Holy
Spirit descends from heaven and operates. And to grant us this gift, Christ had
to be crucified and raised, as Moses raised the serpent in the wilderness, that
all who believe in Him should not perish, but have life eternal (see Jn.3:13‑15).

So that
which grace‑bearing people can do only in part and only for some people, our
Heavenly Redeemer can do, and does do, completely and for all. Filled with the
deepest compassion for sinful humanity during His earthly life, He often
exclaimed: "O faithless and perverted generation, how long shall I be with
you? How long shall I endure you?" (Mt.17:17). He was oppressed with the
greatest sorrow on the night when the greatest crime in human history occurred,
when God’s ministers —  with the
complicity of Christ’s own disciple, the former through envy, the latter
through greed —  decided
to put the Son of God to death.

This
oppressive grief possessed His most pure soul for a second time on the cross
when the cruel masses not only were not moved to pity by His terrible physical
sufferings (they could not even grasp His moral sufferings) but also
maliciously mocked the Sufferer. One must suppose that during that night in
Gethsemane, the thought and feeling of the God‑man embraced all of fallen
humanity — numbering many millions — and wept with loving grief over each one
individually, as only the all‑knowing divine heart could. Our redemption
consisted in this. This is why only God, the God‑man could be our Redeemer, and
not an angel or a man. It was not at all because a more valuable sacrifice was
necessary for the satisfaction of Divine wrath. Ever since this night in
Gethsemane and that day on Golgotha, every believer, even one who is just
beginning to believe, recognizes his inner bond with Christ and turns to Him in
prayer, as to an inexhaustible spring of moral regenerating strength. Few are
able to explain exactly why they so easily assimilated faith in the possibility
of receiving new moral energy and sanctification from turning to Christ, but no
believer doubts this, nor do even the heretics.

Having
suffered in His loving soul over our imperfection and our corrupt will, the
Lord poured into our nature a wellspring of new, vital strength, available to
everyone who has ever or will ever desire it, beginning with the wise thief.

One may
ask: "How does this happen? Upon what does the causal bond between
suffering and regeneration depend if the latter is not an external gift of God
as a reward for the merits of the One? How can one explain this transmission of
moral energy from a loving heart into the hearts of the beloved ones, from the
Sufferer to those for whom He had co‑suffered? You have presented to us factual
proof that it is thus; you have confirmed it with the words of the prayers of
the Church and the words of the holy fathers and the Bible. Finally you wish,
from this point of view, to explain the death agony of the Saviour, evidently
ascribing only a secondary significance to His physical sufferings, the
shedding of His blood and death. But we still desire to know what law of
existence causes this communion of the Redeemer with those being redeemed, and
the influence, which we ourselves have observed, of the co‑suffering will of
one man upon others. Is this merely a result of a conscious submission of the
will of a loved one to the will of the one who is loving, or is there something
taking place here that is deeper–something
objective, something that takes place in the very nature of our souls?"

"Of
course," we would reply to the latter. I have always been very
dissatisfied when a collocutor to whom I had explained redeeming grace,
responded from the point of view of scholastic theology, to this effect: you
are expounding the subjective, moral aspect of the dogma, but you do not touch
upon the objective, metaphysical (that is, the juridical) aspect.
"No," I would reply. "In the transmission of the compassionate,
loving energies of the Redeemer into the spiritual nature of a believing person
who calls upon His help, we find manifested a purely objective law of our
spiritual nature revealed in our dogmas, but which our dogmatic science has not
noticed."

Nevertheless,
before turning to the explanation of this law, one must first refute the
current opinion that Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane was inspired by fear of His
approaching sufferings and death. This would have been extremely unworthy of
the Lord, Whose servants both after this and even before (the Maccabees, for
instance) faced torments rejoicing and exulting amidst the tortures of their
bodies, longing to die for Christ as if it were the greatest blessing. The
Saviour knew very well that His Spirit would be separated from His body for
less than two full days; and for this reason alone, he would not have looked
upon bodily death as something terrible.^[iv]

We are
convinced that the heavy torments of the Saviour in Gethsemane came from a
contemplation of the sinful life and evil disposition of all human generations,
beginning with His enemies and betrayers,^[v]
and that the Lord’s words: "Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup
from Me," refer not to His impending crucifixion and death, but precisely
to this crushing state of profound grief for sinful humanity which He so dearly
loved.

Apostle
Paul confirms the correctness of our interpretation, when he expresses himself
relative to the Gethsemane prayer in connection with the morally regenerating
action of Christ upon people as their common High Priest:

Christ did
not glorify Himself to become a high priest; but He Who said unto Him, `Thou
art My Son…’ Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and
supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him
from death, and was heard because of His reverence.^[vi]

You see,
therefore, that the Lord did not pray for deliverance from crucifixion and
death, for then it would be impossible to say that He was heard, since He was
not delivered from crucifixion and death. He prayed for relief from His
overwhelming grief for sinful mankind. This grief was the "cup" that
He asked the Heavenly Father to remove from Him. "He prayed saying, `O My
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me’" (Mt.26:39; cp. Mk.14:37; Lk.22:42). From these words it is clear that
the Lord prayed, not concerning His impending sufferings, but about that which
He suffered "in this hour," the very hour in which He prayed.
How, then, was He heard?