October: Day 21: Teaching 5: Venerable Hilarion the Great

October: Day 21: Teaching 5:
Venerable Hilarion the Great
 
(The Kingdom of Heaven is Achieved Through Great Efforts and Labors)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Saint Hilarion the Great, whose memory is celebrated today, was born in Palestine in 291. While studying in Alexandria, he learned the Christian faith and was baptized. Hearing about the famous ascetic Anthony the Great, he went to him and became his disciple. At that time, Saint Hilarion was 15 years old. With the blessing of Anthony, he returned to his homeland. Not finding his parents alive, he gave one part of his estate to his relatives, the other to the poor, and settled in the desert, near the Palestinian city of Maiuma. The Saint struggled much with impure thoughts that troubled his mind and inflamed his body; but he exhausted his body with strict fasting and labor and drove away thoughts with prayer and divine contemplation. He also suffered much from demons: more than once, while standing at prayer, he heard the weeping of children, the sobbing of women, the roar of lions and other wild animals, terrible noise and confusion, imagined by demons. But the holy hermit was not afraid, but prayed even more fervently. Once robbers attacked him, but he convinced them by the power of his words to leave vice and lead a good life. Soon the rumor about the ascetic spread throughout Palestine, and many began to come to him for healing of body and soul, and others wished to save their souls under his guidance. And many disciples gathered around Saint Hilarion, so that he became the same kind of teacher in Palestine as Anthony the Great was in Egypt. With his blessing, many monasteries were founded in Palestine, and he, going around the monasteries, established in them a strict ascetic way of life. Saint Hilarion lived in the desert for more than 60 years, enduring all kinds of hardships for the sake of attaining the kingdom of heaven. Towards the end of his life, Saint Hilarion wandered through monasteries in various places. Everywhere he appeared as a teacher of Christian wisdom and holiness, as a miracle worker and benefactor of all those who suffered. He died at the age of 80 on the island of Cyprus. He left his poor clothes and the Gospel, written in his own hand, as a keepsake for his beloved disciple. Later, his disciple Hesychios transferred his relics to Palestine, to the Maiuma Monastery, where Hesychios himself was later buried.

During his life and after his death, Saint Hilarion was glorified by God for many miracles.

II. The life of the Venerable Hilarion the Great teaches us to attain the kingdom of heaven by means of great efforts and labors. What was his life like? It was filled with great and countless feats of unceasing prayer, vigil, fasting, bodily labor, and it was just as cramped and narrow as the cramped underground cell in which he lived, and narrow were the paths in the holy caves where he labored. How did he make his way to the kingdom of heaven? With deep humility and self-abasement, with a living trust in the all-powerful goodness of God, and inspired by this feeling he did not waver, but courageously stood firm amidst all the temptations to which he was subjected by evil spirits and evil men; he accomplished this with constant and day by day increasing zeal and activity. "So run, that you may obtain" (1 Cor. 9:24).

a) "Run," says the apostle, "that you may obtain." This means that the kingdom of heaven is not given for free, without labor, without intense effort, without constant struggle; it is not given to those who live calmly and rest in carelessness, or who stand in one place without a care, even to those who walk, but slowly, but only to those who hasten, that is, run, pursue, labor, do not spare strength and exploits and use all efforts, constantly bearing in their hearts concern for their salvation.

"Run, that you may obtain." Why is this so? Because our nature, in its present state, is incapable of entering the kingdom of heaven in any other way. No vice, no sinful filth will enter it, according to the word of God, but our nature is deeply penetrated and infected with sin. Is it possible to cleanse it from all sinful habits and inclinations and completely divest ourselves of the old man without violence and labor, when the slightest wicked habits are overcome with difficulty and illness? On the other hand, in order to obtain the kingdom of heaven, it is necessary to acquire every truth and holiness, “besides which no one shall see the Lord,” according to the word of the apostle (Heb. 12:14). But our nature is again extremely weak and powerless for good, and it is impossible to accustom it to it and to clothe ourselves in a new man, created according to God in truth and holiness of truth, except with labor and intense effort. Besides this, we are still surrounded from the outside by countless obstacles on the path to the kingdom of heaven. The world blocks our path with its deceptions, temptations, opinions, persecutions; the devil strives to seduce us from it with his intrigues and designs - our flesh resists the spirit and draws man to the earth.

It is necessary to conquer all these enemies, and, so to speak, break through them, in order to reach the heavenly fatherland: for "only to him that overcomes will I grant to sit with Me on My throne," says the Lord Jesus Christ (Rev. 3:21). Is this possible without labor and effort? And that is why righteous Job called “man’s life on earth a war” (Job 7:1); the Lord Jesus Christ decisively teaches that "the narrow gate and the narrow way lead to eternal life,” although not many enter by them, while “the wide gate and the broad way lead to destruction” (Matt. 7:13, 14), although many go by them; that “the kingdom of heaven sufferes violence,” that is, it is taken by force, and only strenuous seekers capture it (Matt. 11:12).

b) These are the properties of the feat of those who, through intense labor, achieve the kingdom of God.

1) Firstly, we must constantly make the path to the kingdom of heaven with a feeling of deep humility or spiritual poverty. Such a disposition of spirit is necessarily required by the very essence of the matter. For how did man lose his original perfection in paradise? Through pride and the arrogant thought of being “like gods”. Consequently, this loss can be returned only by the opposite path – through humility. Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ pointed out the first source of blessedness precisely in spiritual poverty: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). “Nurture in yourself constantly the feeling that you are an ant and a worm,” says the Venerable Theognostos, “that you may become a God-created man... and the more you humble yourself, the more you will rise. If you, like the psalmist, consider yourself as nothing before God, then from small you become imperceptibly great, and at the time when you think that you have and mean nothing, you are enriched by both activity and knowledge worthy of praise about the Lord.”

2) But just as humility is necessary on the one hand in the exploits on the path to the kingdom of heaven, so on the other hand, courage of spirit is also necessary, which comes from unshakable hope and good-natured trust in God. “The Lord is my light and my Savior, whom shall I fear? Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though battle rise up against me, in Him will I trust” (Ps. 26:1, 3). “A Christian,” says Saint Makarios the Great, “must have hope and joy and trust in the future kingdom every day and say: 'If today I am not freed, tomorrow I will be freed.' And without this it is impossible to endure adversity, nor bear burdens and lead a sorrowful life; the hope and joy that is presented make a person work, endure adversity and hardship, and bear a sorrowful life."

c) Finally, the path to the kingdom of heaven must be made with constancy and gradually increasing activity.

For this it is absolutely necessary, firstly, to begin with nothing other than the small and gradually ascend to the great, and not vice versa. Why is this so? Because spiritual powers, like physical ones, do not grow suddenly, but little by little, and prematurely straining them beyond measure can weaken and exhaust them. On the other hand, neglected small things always lead to great falls. The desire to take on the great before the small is even called by the holy ascetics a suggestion of the devil. "The devils have a habit," says Saint Theodore of Edessa, "of turning us away from virtues that are easy and compatible with us, and of instilling in us a strong desire for virtues that are difficult and incompatible."

Secondly, having taken a step towards spiritual perfection, i.e. having begun either to destroy some bad inclination in oneself or to acquire the habit of some virtue, one should by no means retreat or even stop in one place for long. “The human soul,” teaches Saint Gregory the Great, “in this world is like a ship sailing against the current of the waves: it is impossible to stop in one place, and if it does not make an effort to stretch forward, it will be drawn into the depths.”

III. Through the prayers of Saint Hilarion, may God help us attain to the Kingdom of God, despite all obstacles. Amen.

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.