What has Ephraim to do with idols any more when it is
I who hear his prayer and care for him? I am like a cypress ever green; all
your fruitfulness comes from me.
Hosea
14
[Abba Apollo said] No one can endure the enemy’s
clever attacks, nor quench, nor control the leaping fire natural to the body,
unless God’s grace preserves us in our weakness. In all our prayers we should
as for his mercy to save us, so that he may turn aside this scourge that is
aimed even at you. For he makes a man to grieve, and then lifts him up to
salvation; he strikes, and his hand heals; he humbles and exalts; he gives
death and then life; he leads to hell and brings back from hell (1 Sam 2:6). So
Apollo prayed again, and the hermit was set free from his inner war. Apollo
urged him to ask God to give him a wise heart, in order to know how best to
speak.
* * *
It is somewhat troubling to think that God strikes,
humbles, gives death, and the like, even though Abba Apollo assures us that God
also gives life and heals, and exalts. It is
troubling, but less so when we are reminded that God was willing to undergo the
same cycles of humility and exaltation, death and life, and the journey to hell
and back again. There is nothing that we experience in the whole of our human
life that God’s Word did not take upon himself in his own humanity. Our
fruitfulness does indeed come from the one who has made the way for us from
death to life.
I am
reminded of Jesus’ words about the vine and the branches: we, the branches,
cannot bear any fruit without being connected to, and nourished by, the vine.
All the contrition and humility of Lent draws us closer to the vine. It is not
that we accomplish anything merely by our self-denial, byt that we attend more
closely to God, and simplify our lives to make that attention possible. What
fruit our practice brings comes not from us, but from God.
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