The Path of the Perfect

“I will carefully observe the path of the perfect—I will behave in my home with heartfelt integrity. I will not allow an immoral thought to attract my attention” (Psalm 101:2)

Here’s a quotation a mother might embroider and frame to present as a daughter’s wedding gift. Here is a text to ponder for us all. If only every Orthodox Christian home had this as an inspiration to live by, for parents to practice and to make as the standard for their children. To “carefully observe the path of the perfect” is to find role models worthy of imitating. A culture transfixed by sports and entertainment creates heroes out of athletes and performers, but the life styles of too many of them with an excess of money and a dearth of good sense, much less education, make them an embarrassment to believers and unworthy as examples to our children. Where do we find the perfect? The Church responds with the lives of the saints. One problem is that of distance in time. That was then and this is now, is a common retort. Where are today’s saints? The challenge is on us the clergy, parents and adults in general, to bring alive the presence of the saints of the past—in our own lives and witness. We need the help of one another if that is to happen.

Even if we cannot find much assistance in a culture of self-indulgence, comfort and luxury, finding little help from others, at least “I will behave in my home with heartfelt integrity.” When I hold pre-marital conferences with those who promise to live together forever and to raise their children in ways that bring honor to Christ, I ask them to communicate honestly with each other, and to know when to be silent if the partner is not ready for conversation. They should promise not to place their heads on their pillows if there is any matter left unresolved between them. “Heartfelt integrity” means one doesn’t play head games with those we claim to love. Integrity means honesty and more—a person whose whole self is filled with inner peace, openness and unity in mind, soul and body. He or she radiates sincerity without a trace of doubt or duplicity. To be sincere is to be entirely of one piece, from the Latin sin=without; ceros=wax. Holes in marble were filled with wax, but a perfect piece was without a flaw. This must be the condition of happy, genuine persons of God.

Parents who behave sincerely will raise their children to be honest. We know that children are born sincere and trusting. They will at first resist believing that a parent is a liar, but they also are baptized into Christ and bear within them the Holy Spirit. They cannot be fooled unless they choose to pretend to be deceived. When mother tells the caller, “He isn’t home” when Dad is in bed, or when a thirteen-year-old is told at a ticket box office to say she is only eleven, that destroys integrity. Solzhenitzyn, in musing over how the mighty nation of Russia caved in to the gangsters who dominated them for nearly a century, said they accepted lies in place of truth. The antidote: Do not lie. Do not accept the lie.

The third ingredient for perfection is even more difficult to achieve. “An immoral thought” is thrown in our faces with the television commercials. The movies we watch and the novels we read are replete with sexual innuendoes. Honestly I don’t know what to do about it. I wonder if even our monasteries are exempt from the crass immorality that permeates our civilization and pretends to be normal. Of course, “with God all things are possible,” and we believe the word of the Lord. However, we realize that we get little support from our school systems; therefore, we have the home and the church to foster and encourage our children to resist evil, flee from immorality before they are entranced and captured by it, to cherish integrity and to refuse to lie or to walk down the path of darkness, deception, hypocrisy and banality that has no light at the end.