Gold-panning in the Church Fathers

Yes, I do actually read the fathers of the Church. Not always with pleasure, I admit: most of the time it is the same message put in different ways: the need for the purification of the heart and the constant struggle against a devil who wants to do everything possible to prevent you getting there. Most of it, I suspect, has survived because readable in a monastic refectory, which means slow and repetitive. Compared with later mystical theologies, especially Carmelite, there is no always much idea of forward progress, except when a small number so to speak pierce the clouds into ‘uncreated light’, nor is there much talk of the opening of the heart, the awakening of love and the deepening of compassion. Nor is there always much joy.

It’s a bit like panning for gold: there is an awful lot of mud, but just occasionally a nugget of gold. Like one I glimpsed last night in St Makarios of Egypt, in the (reworked) Philokalia version:

“Whenever those who possess in themselves the divine riches of the Spirit take part in spiritual discussions, they draw as it were on their inner treasure house and share their wealth with their hearers. Those, however, who do not have stored in the sanctuary of their heart the treasures from which springs forth the bounty of divine thoughts, mysteries and inspired words, but who cull what they say from the Scriptures, speak merely from the tip of the tongue, or if they have listened to spiritual men, they preen themselves with what others have said, putting it forward as though it were their own and claiming interest on someone else’s capital. Their listeners can enjoy what they say without great effort, but they themselves, when they have finished speaking, prove to be like paupers. For they have simply repeated what they have taken from others, without acquiring treasures of their own from which they could first derive pleasure themselves and which they could then communicate profitably to others. For this reason we must first ask God that these true riches may dwell within us, and then we can readily benefit others and speak to them of spiritual matters and divine mysteries.”  (Philokalia, vol. 3, pp 323-4).

How many times have I heard people spouting (or writing) borrowed riches, and how few times do they draw from ‘inner treasure houses’. If one lacks a treasure house, then at least one can acknowledge one’s poverty, which is probably a key step towards later riches.