The Prologue (ii)
The hood (koukoullion) is a symbol of the grace of our Saviour [and] God: it shelters their mind (hegemonikon) and nurses their childlike [relationship] with Christ (1 Cor. 3, 1) in the face of those who are always attempting to beat and wound it (Prov. 7, 26). Anyone who bears this hood on his head is truly chanting [the inner meaning of the psalm], Unless the Lord builds the house and guards the city, in vain do the builder and watchman labor (Ps. 126:1). Words like these produce humility and uproot the primordial vice of pride that cast Lucifer the Day-Star down to the earth (Is. 14:12).
The life in Christ is a life in and by grace (Rom. 16, 4). The hood is a symbol of this grace and it is this grace which protects and nurtures a childlike relationship with Jesus Christ - faith. The faith connected to this grace is the faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior and God. It is not any faith - whether it professes to adhere to Jesus Christ or not - but precisely the faith which adheres to Him as Savior and God. The hood also covers the hegemonikon the ruling principle in man, this ruling principle functions according to nature when it is in a state of childlike humility to the Lord Jesus Christ - faith. This hood therefore is the symbolic counter of pride. The hood, though humble, is not to be underestimated for it is the symbol of the antidote for pride - and pride is the vice to which Lucifer succumbed and became satan!
The faith and therefore childlike relationship with Jesus Christ are given in the sacrament of Baptism (in fact Baptism is one of three creations Evagrius knows of according to his On the Faith) in which the baby or convert is Baptized under confession of the Nicene Creed. In this sacrament one comes to Christ as a child, and ought to be nurtured in a faith in Jesus Christ like that of a child. This does not exclude knowledge - far from it - but it merely places the emphasis on faith. The Christian is a Gnostic but not a gnostic (when the word is written with the upper case “G” I refer to the mature Christian, the lower case “g” refers to the heretical sects of the gnostics and Gnosticism).
The hood, as Fr. Gabriel Bunge notes, is borrowed from the dress of children. It is significant, he says, that Evagrius picks the hood as the first item of the monastic garb to comment on. For in the hegemonikon the virtue of humility is supposed to be established and if this is the case this is a major manifestation of that love which characterizes the Christian. This love will be the door for the person practicing it to gnosis - or knowledge of God. Pride blinds and gives false or pseudo - knowledge humility (and love) bring true knowledge. Heresy, in this sense, is manifest in a lack of love, pride, and false knowledge. Just like true practice (asceticism) is inseparable from true knowledge, so it is with false knowledge and false practice. In the spiritual life, practice and theory are inseparable - and this knife cuts both ways.
Dn. Gregory
Tags: Christianity, Orthodox Spirituality, Orthodoxy, Patristics, Religion
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
May 25, 2008 at 5:23 pm
[...] (prologue ii) A new post in my Praktikos Blog continuing the treatment of the monastic garb. The life in Christ is a life in [...]