How to Pray With Tears,

Concluded

will punish her for the feast days of the Ba’als when she burned incense to them and decked herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers and forgot me, says the Lord."

Then the reform comes, but only when all these things of the flesh, which were given by God but misused, are taken away and the soul is taken out into the empty desert to be brought back to her senses and remember for Whom she was made. "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her…For I will remove the names of the Ba’als from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more… And I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.

Once purified, all things will be given to the soul again: "And there I will give her the vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

"And everyone who has left houses or

7 Hosea 2:16-20 8 Hosea 2:15

brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life. 9"

Until this larger context of the danger of the flesh, the gravity of sin, is understood, St. Basil’s language can be a little obscure, but if we allow the greater meaning to sink in, the real nature of the soul’s relationship with God, we come to see that he is talking about a royal road to nothing less than utter purification. This purgation is undertaken in preparation for what they still call in the Eastern Church, "divinisation," the entire remaking of ourselves into the New Man. We are purified by our willingness to leave behind the temptations of Egypt, of the flesh. The next step, once the soul has been emptied and cleaned, is receiving the new life:

"Only then after a man is purified from the shame whose stain he took through his wickedness, and has come back again to his natural beauty, and as it were cleaning the Royal Image and restoring its ancient form, only thus is it possible for him to draw near to the Paraclete. And He, like the sun, will by the aid of your purified eye

show you in Himself the image 9 Matt.19:29

of the invisible, and in the blessed spectacle of the image

you shall behold the unspeakable beauty of the archetype."

That is, the model of the new you, God Himself. This is no mere "covering" of our sins, leaving us in our condition of wretchedness and slavery and hopeless separation from God. This is something entirely, incomparably different.

Through His aid hearts are lifted up, the weak are held by the hand and they who are advancing are brought to perfection. Shining upon

those that are cleansed from every spot, He makes them spiritual by fellowship with Himself. Just as when a sunbeam falls on bright and transparent bodies,

they themselves become brilliant too, and shed for a fresh brightness from themselves, so souls wherein the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual, and send forth their grace to others.

It is from this process, the "Way of Perfection" that must, that can only begin with the purification of the Purgative Way, that sanctity comes. This is where we see the extraordinary graces of the saints. It answers the old question, "How could the martyrs have sung the praises of God while they were being slaughtered?" How is such superhuman heroism possible? "With men this is impossible. But with God all things are possible."

Basil tells us plainly that this is the source of the extraordinary graces that fascinate us about the stories of the saints. He dares even to say, we are "made God."

"Hence comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in God, the being made like to God, and,

highest of all, the being made God."

This is the secret, the extraordinary goal, of the saints that makes our modernist aim, "living a good life" or "becoming a better person," some kind of mere naturalistic "self-improvement," look as silly and worthless as a child’s game. As useless as a gold coin in a vast desert. Those pursuing this Way of Perfection don’t want to "become their own best selves" – as the trendy neo-catholic gurus would have it. They aim at something higher than man could possibly achieve on his own: divinisation. ■