Humility and Orthodox Christianity | Sister Anastasia

The following is from my conversation with Sister Anastasia. I begin by asking her about the relationship between the mind and the heart in Orthodox Christianity.

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Sister Anastasia: I think this hits on the absolute point for westerners, with our experience and maybe also the human condition as a whole. Particularly for us, it’s so hard to be intellectually innocent because of the way our psyches are cultivated in our culture and how we’re brought up to lead with the mind.

That was, for me, one of the hardest things in my time in the church and being in Christianity—this kind of “do not touch, do not look, don’t look down, don’t look side to side, don’t know the answer, be innocent, allow yourself to not know.” Especially in monasticism as well, with the humbling and the crucifixion of the mind, which is the main part of monasticism.

That kind of losing control and intellectual surrender is so difficult for us and is terrifying, because we’re conditioned from the beginning to prioritize and elevate our minds and control reality through our minds—even though we’re not actually doing so, though to a degree in some ways we do.

That aspect of Christianity makes people from the outside think Christianity is naive, stupid, and childish. Accepting the misjudgment and not correcting it—not saying, “let me bring you down a few pegs and use my intellect to throw you down through all the complexity and depth and intellectual profundity of Orthodoxy”—but instead allowing yourself to be trampled on is so hard. I just think that’s important because it’s something we’re all dealing with.

Herman: Yes. Well, it’s also something that greatly differentiates Orthodoxy from western Christianity—most expressions of it at least. There’s this tension in the West in particular, between the picture of Christianity you describe, which is Orthodox, and this other kind of triumphalistic cultural Christianity that wants to shove things down people’s throats and not respect their freedom, not allowing the Spirit of God to work on them slowly.

That’s a big temptation for people coming into Orthodoxy from Reformed backgrounds. They bring that baggage and approach to Christianity, which can be hard to shed.

So you discussed freedom and personal agency vis-à-vis your experience in coming into Christianity and in your life experience. Spiritually speaking, what have been some of the other most important lessons you’ve learned in your journey into Orthodoxy?

Sister Anastasia: The main thing, what it all comes down to, and where every argument finds its conclusion, is in the person of Christ—in him as a living being, a living spirit.

The most potent thing I received from my elder and my guides is that closeness with him, that he is alive, he is here with us, and he is active in this world. When that relationship and that sense are cultivated, a lot of temptations—the ones you spoke about and others—are uprooted.

When we are relating to him in that way, so many arguments, thought processes, and actions that are otherwise legitimate—lawful even—are brought to the question: “Is this actually the best thing I can do right now to be delightful to him and to reflect him, the Holy Spirit who is in front of me and showing me what it means to be divine, but also what it means to be human?”

I think God’s divine simplicity, and the simplicity he offers us to live in if we’re willing to accept it, is so healing—healing of the mind, healing of the drives that make our lives and relationships unnecessarily complicated.

If instead we seek his simplicity and rest in it, knowing that he will heal the rift, take care of the issue, be with me as I move from the most heightened environments to the smallest things in life—he is there with me. The lower I go, the more vibrant and potent his presence is, the closer he is to me.

But the life of the world today, spiritually, is toward empowerment, the rising up of oneself, worshipping oneself, elevating the self—an idolatry that blocks access to him because of pride. In my life, that pride stopped me from receiving his healing, because I was worshipping myself and considered myself divine. That was the message again and again—in spiritual contexts and secular ones. Not always framed as “divine,” but as “the center of your reality, do what you need for yourself.”

Sacrificing the self is the hardest thing to do. Yet through Christ being close, offering not just his love but his watchfulness as we suffer in self-sacrifice, showing, “I understand, I also did this, it hurts, it’s not easy, but if you do it you can receive the freedom I have—you can have what I have that you don’t: divine love, unconditional love.”

Those words were bandied about in my world, but it was only through humbling the self in practice—not just conceptually. We talk about humility in all traditions, but actually putting it into practice with real people, saying, “Okay, I’m wrong, you’re right. Your way of being is better than my way of being. Let’s do what you think is right, not what I think.”

It sounds simple, but living that daily completely changes your inner reality, your mind, your heart. That process of humbling, led by him through his own example, is what differentiates Christianity from everything else.