Kings of Paradise

St. Panteleimon the Healer by Nicholas Roerich

“Anyone who loves God loves not only his fellow man, but the entire Creation as well: trees, grass, flowers. He loves everything with the same love.” — A monk of Mount Athos

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17

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I was on a hike the other day while listening to the audiobook of Looking East in Winter by Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. I must have zoned out at some point; my attention was called back when Williams described a certain sin as “disastrous and suicidal.” Strong words! I thought. Then it hit me: He must be talking about the climate. I turned the recording back thirty seconds.

Sure enough, Lord Williams writes: “And whether we are thinking of the needs and dignities of human persons who may not embody the rationality we casually treat as normal and normative, or of the disastrous and suicidal policies towards the environment we inhabit,” etc.

These days, it seems, Christian leaders—Archbishops of Canterbury, Popes of Rome, Patriarchs of Constantinople, and the like—use the strongest possible language when condemning crimes against the environment. And that’s a good thing! Since the Industrial Revolution (at the very least), mankind has failed in our God-given role as steward His creation.

These leaders are, perhaps, more reluctant to speak out about sins of the flesh. And yet, I wonder… We live in a hedonistic society, one that has made a virtue of self-indulgence. Is it possible that the two are related?

It occurs to me that the saints we identify as “ecological saints,” who lived in close harmony with the rest of Creation—were, to a man (or woman), great ascetics. Surely that’s no coincidence.

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St. Macarius of Egypt (d. 390) was a “grazer”: a hermit who lived in the wilderness, feeding only off of wild herbs and grasses. One day, a mother hyena brought her cub to Macarius. The cub had been born blind and would not survive on its own. Macarius healed the creature. Out of gratitude, the hyena pack refrained from preying on the local shepherds’ flocks.

St. Mary of Egypt (c. 420) forty years in the desert, fasting and praying, in hopes of atoning for seventeen years of wanton living. When she died, she was buried by her spiritual father, St. Zosimas, with the help of a lion.

St. Kieran of Ireland (c. 520), a disciple of St. Patrick, withdrew into the woods at the very heart of Ireland. According to the synaxarion, Kieran met a wild boar in the woods. The boar meant to gore Kieran, but he admonished it, saying, “Let us be friends, and use your tusks for better work.” The boar bowed submissively and used its tusks to tear down branches, which Kieran used to build his cell.

St. Kyriakos the Anchorite (d. 557) was also friends with a lion. It protected the hermit’s vegetable patch from goats and scared off marauders. Whenever Kyriakos’s visitors became nervous in its presence, however, the big cat would politely retire.

Every night, St. Cuthbert of Lindesfarne (d. 687) would wade out into the Irish Sea and pray waist-deep in the water. Every morning he would come back to shore, and a pair of otters would curl themselves around his legs to warm them up.

Of course, in the Western tradition, this “type” of saint is epitomized by Francis of Assisi (d. 1226). Everyone knows the legend of how Francis preached to the birds, or how he tamed the Wolf of Gubbio. Fewer, I think, have heard that Francis used a stone for a pillow and abstained from food and water for all forty days of Lent.

In the Orthodox tradition we have St. Seraphim of Sarov (d. 1883), who is sometimes seen as the Eastern “counterpart” to Francis. Seraphim who lived deep in the forests of Russia. For days on end, he knelt on a rock with hands upraised in prayer. He ate very little—mostly just bread—but what he had, he shared with the animals. He fed deer, rabbits, foxes, and squirrels right from his hand.

Seraphim developed a special friendship with a bear he named Mischa. In one story, a group of nuns was visiting Seraphim when Mischa suddenly lumbered out of the woods, walking on two legs. Seeing the nuns’ fear, Seraphim said: “Mischa, why are you scaring the orphans? You’d better go and get some sort of consolation, or I won’t have anything to treat them to.” Mischa returned shortly with a fresh honeycomb.

There’s also St. John of San Francisco (d. 1966) who once came across a wild dove with a broken wing. He splinted its wing and nursed it back to health. John named the bird Gulya. For the rest of its life, Gulya lived with John. Visitors would often find him talking with the bird. When John would bless the waters at Theophany, Gulya would swoop back and forth over the waters, as though he were the Holy Spirit.

There was no bed in St. John’s cell because he never laid down. He spent all night, every night, in front of his icon corner. It’s thought that he would sometimes doze while leaning on his stick, or while lying on the floor. He also never wore shoes. Once, as a young priest, the people complained to John’s bishop, who ordered him to wear shoes. Of course, he obeyed. But instead of putting them on his feet, he tied them to his belt and “wore” them that way.

St. Paisios of Mount Athos (d. 1994), like St. Seraphim, was a hermit who loved—and was loved by—wild animals. There are many incredible stories of this nature from his life but my favorite comes from a book called The Guru, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios. The author, Dionysios Farasiotis, was a spiritual son of Paisios. Farasiotis remembers the saint telling him:

“When I was in Stomio at the little monastery near Konitsa , there were two large bears who would come to the place where I would dispose of the garbage. The poor things were hungry, so I would go and give them some bread. The animals can recognize your disposition when you approach them, if you intend to kill them or if you approach them with genuine love.”

At this point, the elder opened up his hand and called to a red robin that was resting in the branches of a tree, and the little bird came and happily perched on the elder’s finger.

“The animals enjoy being with man and look at him as their king. In Paradise, Adam called the animals one by one and gave them each a name according to its kind. Animals recognized man’s superiority and were happy in his presence. After the fall, however, this relationship was destroyed. Man looked at the beasts with the intention of killing them, and the animals became wild. Nevertheless, the wild animals are still more sincere than man is. If you approach them with love, they return to that pristine state.

“Man has ruined the animals. Even the dog that lives continually by man’s side has changed, acquiring a police mentality and distrustful character. I used to feed a little kitten around here that would come and rub itself up against my leg and purr. Although it was very tame, when one day, I tossed a piece of bread to it, the animal pulled back in fear. What had happened to it? Someone had thrown stones at it and ruined the animal’s attitude towards people. So you see, this evil state of affairs begins with man.”

Paisios spent five hours a day in liturgical prayer (the liturgy of the hours, etc.). That’s not counting his prayer rule, which included at least three hundred prostrations and 1,200 Jesus Prayers per day—though Paisios was known to repeat the Jesus Prayer constantly within his heart. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he didn’t eat at all; on every other day, he took only one small meal at 11 a.m.

So, why do ascetics tend to have a special rapport with animals? As St. Paisios explains, it all goes back to our father Adam.

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I’m going to quote a long passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. This passage is usually divided into two separate sections under two different subsections/glosses. When taken together, however, they offer a single vision of a renewed Creation:

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:16-23)

We know from Genesis that, when Adam fell, he brought down all of Creation with him. Here, St. Paul teaches us that Christ, the New Adam, came to reverse that process. “The revealing of the sons of God” refers to the process of our becoming “joint heirs with Christ.” It refers to our conversion, repentance, prayer, fasting, and, ultimately, our divinization.

Do you see what this means? Our fate—spiritual as well as physical—is tied up with that of all Creation. We fall and rise together. We are redeemed (or not) together. If we pursue ecological health while neglecting our spiritual and moral health, we undermine ourselves.

We refer to the saint as the “restored image of God. He (or she) has been “put back together” by Christ. He is what God meant him to be. And part of that role is to serve as the king of paradise, to use St. Paisios’s phrase. Elizabeth Theokritoff put it beautifully in her book Living in God’s Creation:

In the saints’ lives and stories of holy people, we find many themes that throw lights on humans’ proper place in creation. We see the extent of human authority over other creatures, and the way in which that authority relates to our creation in God. We find the idea that creation is there for the benefits of humans, but it is equally evident that the benefit works both. The saints use both humans skills and their powers of intercession for the benefit of all sorts of creatures. The extent to which all creatures on earth are interdependent is something we are only now discovering; yet a sense of this truth comes across, differently expressed, in the stories of saints, even from early times. We find that the transforming power of holiness extends not only to animate creatures, but to things and places too. Sometimes the transfigure world around the same is perceptible also to others, but we also see that the holy person perceives a transfigured world, a world directed toward God, where most of us would only see the utilitarian and the ordinary.

In other words, to live in harmony with nature, we must live in harmony with God—and vice versa.

The Christian must balance love for the things of this world with a true hope for the world to come. I think of a certain passage from the Life of Fr. Seraphim Rose:

In the morning, before Church services, Fr. Seraphim had a practice of circling the entire monastery grounds. As the golden glow of the morning light filtered through the broad canopy of leaves, Fr. Seraphim could be seen blessing and even kissing the trees.

“What’s this?” Fr. Herman [a fellow monk] asked him. “Kissing trees?”

Fr. Seraphim looked up, smiling radiantly, and continued walking.

Fr. Seraphim knew better than most people that this old earth, weighed down by the fallenness of man, had not long to live, that it would be “obliterated in the twinkling of an eye,” transfigured into a new earth. And yet, as Fr. Herman realized while he watched him make his rounds, Fr. Seraphim was already living as if in the future age.

For the pure of heart, Paradise is here. It is now. Through fasting and prayer, God gives us the grace to live in perfect harmony with all of Creation—and with our Creator.

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Last weekend, my wife and I watched a new-ish documentary called Sacred Alaska. It’s about the native Alaskan peoples and their incredible history with the Orthodox Church.

In it, Fr. Michael Oleska (of blessed memory) explains his theory as to why the Alaskans accepted Orthodoxy so readily:

Alaskan native people believe that all life is a mysterious and sacred reality, not just in humans but in animals. The animals are sensitive and, in many ways, wise. The hunter can never surprise the animal, or outsmart it, or overpower it. They only get the animals who allow themselves to be caught. The animals must sacrifice themselves to keep the otherwise pitiful and pathetic humans alive. This is the traditional belief that goes back thousands of years. And when the story of Christ was told to them, they accepted the sacrifice of Christ in the same way.

The order of creation is love. And, in this fallen world, the highest expression of love is self-sacrifice. To always be laying down our life—for our friends and family; for our neighbor and our enemy; for plants and animals; for Christ—is what it means to be a Christian.