Anthony is amazed at the comparison and goes to Alexandria with the intention of seeing the man who is his equal in sanctity. I do not know what grand things he promises himself from that cobbler; but when he came to him, he found that he gained his livelihood by working with his hands and in this manner supported himself, his wife, and his children. So he said: “Please, my dear cobbler, I know that you worship God faithfully and serve Him truly. Tell me, therefore, what you do, what you eat, what you drink, how or when you pray. You do not spend entire nights without sleep when you devote yourself to prayer, do you?” “Not at all,” said the cobbler. “In the morning and in the evening I give thanks to God for His faithful protection and guidance. I ask for forgiveness of all my sins for Christ’s sake, and I humbly pray that He would guide me with His Spirit and not lead me into temptation. After this prayer I get busy with my leather and provide sustenance for myself and those who are mine. Besides this I do nothing except to beware lest anywhere I do something against my conscience.”
When Anthony hears this, he is amazed, and he realizes that self-chosen forms of worship are no worship and that therefore no trust at all should be put in them. This blessing not only happened to Anthony himself but is also a warning to all posterity—a warning by which God wanted to help His church, lest it indulge in self-chosen forms of worship, which always bring with them this pernicious pest of self-reliance, which must be crushed.
--Blessed Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 21
How should we go about explaining that our forms of worship aren't self-chosen?
ReplyDeleteIf our forms of worship aren't self-chosen, are they in fact not adiaphora at all? What does Luther mean by "forms of worship?"
Phil,
ReplyDeleteLuther's commenting on the words of our Lord (citing Isaiah) in Matthew 15: In vain do they worship, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men. To Luther "self-chosen forms of worship" means the worship that we design and offer to appease God and to cause Him to be gracious to us. The opposite is the divinely revealed form of worship where the Father imparts all His gifts freely through the Son and in the Spirit. It's the old M and W. Does worship begin with us to get stuff to rain down from heaven? Or does it begin with God giving to us for which we offer thanks and praise back to heaven? Luther's advocating for the second.
Do you know the original source from which Luther cites this story, and how accurately he recounts it? There are similar stories in the lives of the desert fathers, but they have a decidedly different twist than this one (compare, for example, the account from the desert fathers I cited recently on my blog). I wonder if there's some other account Luther was using.
ReplyDeleteBTW, thanks for the lovely photos of the wedding. What church were they taken at?
Fr. Gregory,
ReplyDeleteNot sure of the source; but it is also alluded to in Apology, I believe. Some common medieval collection of the desert fathers, no doubt.
Church for wedding was the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (ROCOR) in D.C.
Ah, the footnotes in AE offer the following:
ReplyDeleteThe source of this story is the Vitae patrum, Book III, ch. 130, Patrologia, Series Latina, LXXIII, 785.
I was just reading Luther's "Introduction to the Prophets" (1532) which follows the same line of thought:
ReplyDeleteHere you learn that it is not enough to say or think, “I am doing it to God’s glory; I have in mind the true God; I mean to be worshiping and serving the only God.” All idolaters say and intend the very same thing. The thinking and intending is not what counts, otherwise those who martyred the apostles and the Christians would also have been God’s servants. For they too thought that they were offering a service to God, as Christ says in John 16[:2]; and St. Paul in Romans 10[:2] bears witness to the Jews that they have a zeal for God, and adds in Acts 26[:7] that with their worship night and day they hope to attain to the promised salvation.
On the contrary let everyone see to it that he is certain his worship and service of God has been instituted by God’s Word, and not invented by his own pious notions or good intentions. Whoever engages in a form of worship to which God has not borne witness ought to know that he is serving not the true God but an idol that he has concocted for himself. That is to say, he is serving his own notions and false ideas, and thereby the devil himself; and the words of all the prophets are against him. For the God who would have us establish worship and service of Him according to our own choice and inclination—without His commission and Word—does not exist. There is only one God, He who through His Word has abundantly established and commissioned all the various stations of life and the forms of worship and service in which it is his will to be served. We should abide by this and not turn aside from it either to the right or to the left,doing neither more nor less, making it neither worse nor better. Otherwise there will be no end of idolatry, and it will be impossible to distinguish between true worship and idolatry, since all have the true God in mind, and all use His true Name.
AE 35, p. 272
Thanks, Pr. Weedon. The original text can be found at http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/02m/0500-0600,_Auctor_Incertus,_Verba_Seniorum,_MLT.pdf.
ReplyDeleteThe relevant portion is the 'cobbler's' words: "Nescio me aliquando aliquid boni perpetrasse; unde et ex cubili proprio mane consurgens, antequam in opere meo resideam, dico quod omnis haec civitas a minore usque ad majorem ingrediuntur regnum Dei propter justitias suas, ego autem solus propter peccata mea poenam ingrediar sempiternam."
Translated, that's: "I am not aware that I have done anything good. When I get up in the morning, before I sit down to work, I say that the whole of this city, small and great, will go into the Kingdom of God because of their good deeds, while I alone will go into eternal punishment because of my evil deeds."
No doubt Luther was working from memory here.
Interesting...
Oh, and what follows in the original has nothing to do with self-chosen forms of worship (implying monasticism, I think?). Otherwise, why would Anthony return to the desert?
ReplyDeleteIn any case, thanks for finding the source!