“How can we start?” Maria asked. “I mean, how can we practice temperance and self-control?”
Fr. Maximos ate a piece of stuffed tomato before replying. “The proper way is to start with simple things, like being critical of your thoughts and actions. Let us say that a thought tells you you should do a certain thing, say buy a new television set. Examine it. Ask yourself, ‘Do I really need it?’ If you think you do, fine. Go ahead and buy it. But ask that question first and explore what your real needs are.”
Fr. Maximos continued, as if thinking aloud, “People become fanatical about their political ideologies. They transform a transient thing into something absolute. For us only God is the Absolute.”
“Some people today blame religion for all the ills of the world, claiming that religion breeds fanaticism and intolerance,” I pointed out.
“A real Christian cannot be a political or religious fanatic,” Fr. Maximos added drily. “Not only must you accept people different from yourself but you also must love them unconditionally. Always question your judgment. Even Paul had to search for Peter in order to ask him whether his experience on the road to Damascus was real and not a hallucination. Authentic spiritual life unavoidably makes us humble, not fanatical.”
“You are teaching a very different Christianity, Fr. Maxime,” I said. “The fundamentalists would hit the roof with self-righteous indignation at what you profess.”
Fr. Maximos smiled and continued. “Let me repeat, the foundation of the spiritual life is self-control and temperance, just as St. Paul advocated. This implies an ability to restrain our desires. That’s where we must begin our spiritual struggle. We need practice. How can we become compassionate, charitable, and loving if we can sacrifice nothing of ourselves?”
“Is that why the first commandment of God to Adam and Eve was to avoid eating from the tree of knowledge?” Michael asked.
“That’s what the elders say. The commandments of God are the medicines that He offered us for our cure. Honoring the commandments liberates us from the slavery of our passions and unbridled desires. When God said, ‘Thou shall not eat from that tree,’ it was a commandment to exercise temperance. That is why before starting His ministry Christ fasted for forty days and forty nights. It was to show that the first step in the spiritual life is to take mastery over your desires.”
I [continued]. “The word temperance or self-control, Fr. Maxime, usually brings to mind restraint in sexual matters and alcohol. I believe the elders have a much wider notion in their minds when they mention that term.”
“We are asked to develop temperance over all our passions, bodily and psychic,” Fr. Maximos replied. “It is a psychic passion, for instance, to have an exaggerated view of yourself and to demand that your views and wishes must always prevail.”
“It is possible, therefore,” I said, “that one can have mastery over bodily passions but be completely dominated by psychic passions.”
“Definitely,” Fr. Maximos confirmed. “You can easily find people who are temperate, who have mastered their physical desires. They eat moderately or very little. They are modest in the way they dress and so on. It is much more difficult to find temperate people who have mastered their psychic passions. It is very difficult to find people who are not egocentric, cunning, proud, and vain, people who do not insist that their opinions and wishes always prevail over those of others. That is why physical exercises like fasting and prostrating in front of icons are beneficial for the spiritual life but are not ends in themselves and certainly not sufficient. Reverence, or the struggle against the more subtle passions, is much more important toward real liberation.”
~Adapted from Kyriacos C. Markides, Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality
