Humility is Christ-like when there is no trace of self-interest but simply obedience to the divine will, which hallows the Name so the Kingdom comes. The Holy Spirit abides in the Son at the heart of the Church, humbly interceding in the Name, witness to God’s Kingdom in the hallowing. Sacred tradition has nothing to do with pious addictive habits or shallow religious conventions but with the Spirit’s transmission of the Name in Christ, handing the Name over from heart to heart, imparting the uncreated light of his glory. Humility is not something we do to improve ourselves but something God is doing when he unveils his Name, hallowing ‘I AM’ in the beauty of holiness. Obedience to the hallowing will of God cuts through all feigned humility and leaps over every self-interested attempt to be humbler than someone else, because glory is God’s and what falls short of God’s glory is vain, empty delusion. The one true spiritual tradition that renews the heart is the Spirit’s witness to the self-emptying mystery of ‘I AM,’ the witness of the Spirit to the truth of the Name, enjoining the desert’s ascetical practice of turning and seeing, which sustains the way of humble obedience.
Humility is straight, but flexibly wends where the Spirit wills, not where we want to things to go. The glory is ordinary, not special, once God is seer as well as seen. Each new day is the Eighth Day that rends the veil, transmitting the Gospel of resurrection, humbling allergic antipathy, healing addictive pathologies. Descending glory weds the Name as wisdom, Bride of the Lamb, embracing outer darkness as wondrous inner light. Strangers, welcomed home, rejoin pilgrims, resting from their travels, for wisdom cuts through separation and moves mountains of obstructive confusion. Solitaries are no longer outsiders excluded from communion but insiders at the heart of deifying union inspiring unspoken communion. The word monk, monachos, means someone who is alone with ‘I AM’ alone, the Name which transmits communion. The monk is alone as ‘I AM,’ the Name whose communion severs confusion and cures separation. The earliest traditions of Palestinian monasticism bear witness to the solitude of the monk, monachos, as ‘IHIDAYA,’ the unifying oneness of the hallowed Name of the Only Begotten, restoring all things to wholeness. The one tradition which recalls monasticism to ‘IHIDAYA’ is the tradition of living prophecy and prayer.
The one tradition of prophecy and prayer communicates the Logos of prophecy regarding the reparation and restoration of all. This Logos is assimilated in pure prayer as the recapitulation and reconciliation of all. Neither prophecy nor pure prayer are accessible outside wisdom’s witness to the glory of the coming Kingdom. They can be studied as a conditioned phenomenon in the University, but their transmission in the desert is unconditioned Spirit in action, not the product of conditioning conditions. The oneness of primordial IHIDAYA is not an extrinsic phenomenon that fades but is the intrinsic, integral activity of the Spirit which never fades. ‘I AM’ does not come and go but abides in the midst, encompassing all. ‘I AM’ is the only-begotten Son of the Father, unveiling God’s Name in the Holy Spirit. He is the oneness of wisdom and glory imparting deification, theosis, through turning, metanoia, and seeing, theoria.
The one tradition of Name-hallowing transmits right-glorification, Holy Orthodoxy, upstream from the addictive ethnic orthodoxies that are its compulsive parodies. It is the prophecy of prayer which the Spirit inspires in prophets and apostles, and which wisdom imparts through elders to the saints. It is the tradition of the unifying Name which mends our broken world. The Name’s cross of love restores the world by overcoming all that parodies or usurps God, overturning all that opposes or resists God. The solitary may feel alone, but in the Name is never actually alone, because ‘I AM’ is one in the saints, one in the angels, one in Christ, one in God the Holy Trinity. The solitary is not understood, but the Name inspires wisdom standing under all that there is. The solitary may doubt God, but ‘I AM’ is God whether in doubt or in faith. The solitary is often reduced to naught, but the nothing is God bearing God in the midst. The solitary can lose all sense of self, of God, of being right, but ‘I AM’ is ‘I AM,’ as the bush burns, and God is not consumed. God is humble and loves to share his humble Name, ‘I AM,’ with all, that all might be healed. Humble obedience to the will of God hallows the Name so that whatever happens, the Kingdom comes.