Look Up!

   

    Do you look up to anyone? It seems who the world wants us to look up to holds no charm for the followers of Christ. Movie stars, athletes, rappers, and others are paraded non-stop through our media as if to say, "These are the people you ought to look up to. These are the people you ought to imitate and aspire to be like."

    And sadly, the world is filled with misguided imitators.

    I've had people that I've looked up to in my life. I've looked up to athletes who have achieved things I myself wanted to achieve. For example, learning about the training habits of the current world champion of women's bodybuilding has been very inspiring for me. I will never be a world champion, but I'm inspired by her to achieve as much of a 'likeness' of a champion as I can.

   So it is with the spiritual athletes I look up to. The Church has given us men and women who were so filled with the Spirit of God that grace flowed out of them for the benefit of us all. And in our closeness to them and through our imitation of them, our 'likeness' to these champions grows. 

   There is an interesting irony in honoring and imitating these saints. While we lift them up as worthy of imitation, they considered themselves lowly and humble sinners...y'know---like you and me!

   But these lowly and humble sinners were blessed by God with and cultivated gifts meant for our imitation. The saints teach us to empty ourselves of 'self' in order to be filled with Christ. Archimandrite Vasileios of Iveron writes that the saints teach us "through [their] conduct that ultimately, what is great, unapproachable and terrible in [them] is not the power, the inconceivable magnitude, but the ineffable love, the kindness of beauty and the condescension of humility that is manifest in the way [they] behave."*

  This 'visitation of grace' is meant to flow outward to all. Archimandrite Vasileios continues, "When you receive grace, when all that is within you says, "Glory to God," then you experience this joy and delight as a joy and delight radiated to all."* 

   One might say that just the desire to be like a Saint is a joy, but even more joyful is the path one travels following the footsteps of those so close to God. For a saint is a sinner whose only desire is to be more and more like the One who forgives sin.

    Such a saint is my friend, St. Pelagia. I took her name when I became Orthodox. Every day I spend with her I am inspired and aspire anew to imitate her. She is my goal. She is my friend. I thank God for her.

                           

   Pelagia lived as a wealthy woman of Antioch @ 400 AD. She acquired her wealth as an actress and prostitute. She was looked up to for her beauty and wealth. She was the envy of all. In fact, the people of Antioch called her, Pearl, as they admired her adornments and wealth. But Pelagia did not look up to herself. In fact, she looked upon herself as "a disciple of the devil". Everything that caused others to look up to her she found no value in. All her worldly wealth she gave away. She even gave away her identity as she disguised herself as a man. 

  So then, stripped bare, no longer rich, no longer an enviable woman, she stood before God--in a cave. The woman the world could no longer see, God revealed anew--in a cave.

  Pelagia was a child of God. Pelagia is a child of God. She disdained all that brought her to great heights in the world. And in letting them go, she ascended to better heights. She left all that the world treasures to acquire the treasures of heaven. 

  And now Pelagia offers herself to us. In her lowlines we look up to her. For when we look up to her, we see God. Look up!

*Vasileios, The Thunderbolt of Ever-Living Fire, Sebastion Press 2014