Introduction
For most of us, most of the time, our principal ascetic struggle is learning how to love the people around us. We may keep a prayer rule and follow the fasting calendar, but then someone interrupts us, disappoints us, or refuses to see something that seems obvious. Suddenly we discover how much work remains. The person in front of us has revealed an impatience that was already there.
Asceticism is spiritual training. Through God’s grace, we learn to govern our thoughts, appetites, and reactions so that we can serve Him more faithfully. God has given us real power to affect the world. As His image bearers, we are called to help straighten what has become crooked and cultivate what is already good. Our own crookedness complicates the work. Pride and resentment enter into our attempts to help, and we can end up adding to the very disorder we hoped to heal.
This is why relationships belong at the heart of our ascetic life. Every encounter gives us an opportunity to recognize our fallenness, repent, and become more available to grace. This includes the difficult conversation at home and the brief exchange with the person working the checkout. Our neighbor is a person to love, and in learning to love that person we discover where we need healing.
There is a parallel here with prayer. Keeping a prayer rule disciplines our attention, but the purpose of prayer is communion with God. Likewise, relationships train us in patience and self-control as we learn to live in communion with one another. Our Lord prays:
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
—John 17:21
That unity preserves the persons who share in it. We grow in our capacity to love one another without demanding that everyone become an extension of ourselves.
I sometimes remind my seminarians that all our theological learning must serve our love of God and neighbor. We can spend hours discussing difficult theological questions and still fail to attend to the person who needs us. Theology should help us worship God and serve His people. Otherwise, even a conversation full of Orthodox vocabulary can become a form of entertainment for the ego. The asceticism of relationships brings our learning into the ordinary circumstances where love is required.
Love that gives itself
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
—John 13:34
Our Lord’s self-offering is the measure of our love. He teaches us to surrender the insistence on having our own way. In a conversation, that may mean giving up the pleasure of making a clever point. It may mean staying present when we would rather leave, or accepting that our service will cost us time and comfort without earning recognition.
Such love requires discernment. The other person’s wishes do not automatically tell us what God wills. Parents, pastors, and people entrusted with responsibility sometimes need to be firm. We must ask what would actually serve this person in this moment.
Sometimes I need to say something difficult. Sometimes I, the knucklehead in the conversation, need to get out of the way and let the other person speak. Humility makes room for either possibility.
During our class discussion on this topic, one participant described learning to see himself as a participant in a situation instead of treating everything as something happening to him. That is a helpful shift. We can become so occupied with what we might lose, or how we are being regarded, that we lose sight of the person beside us. Asking what our part should be opens a little space for freedom. We can choose a response that serves the moment instead of defending our position automatically.
This is one of the sacrifices love asks of us: to relinquish the assumption that the encounter revolves around us. We are present with another person, before God, and we have an opportunity to serve.
Listening with humility
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
—James 1:19
Listening is a gift of attention. For the duration of the given conversation, we undertake a small fast from interrupting, rehearsing our answer, and deciding in advance what the other person really means. We attend to what is being said and leave room to discover what we have misunderstood.
Many of us are fixers. We hear the beginning of a problem and immediately recognize the solution. Or we remember something similar that happened to us and begin telling our own story. We may intend to build a bridge, but the effect can be to take the conversation away from the person who was speaking and cut them off from continuing with their thoughts. Even sound advice can arrive before we understand enough to know whether it is the advice that person needs.
Learning to listen involves practical skills. A brief retelling of what we think we have heard, or a short questions/rpompt, or the combination of the two, can invite someone to say more. But people can tell when they are being managed by a technique. Our questions should arise from a real desire to understand. We can ask, “I am so sorry. That must have been awful. What happened?” and then attentively give the person enough room to answer.
When someone is upset and is directing it towards us, we need not take that anger into ourselves. We can remain attentive without preparing for a fight. Their anger may be something we need to respond to, but it need not determine the spirit in which we respond. De-escalating things enough to allow a real conversation requires peace, not confrontation. We can be ready to step aside should things go sideways without getting angry ourselves.
Listening also reminds us how little we know about another person’s life. The only people whose lives seem uncomplicated or easy are the people we do not know very well. We see a reaction; we do not see every grief, disappointment, or fear behind it. We should make room for burdens we cannot see. Everyone is carrying and healing from something.
This does not require us to invent excuses for harmful behavior. It does require humility about our ability to read another person’s heart. We may know what someone said or did. We rarely know everything that brought them to that moment. And we are there to be part of their healing before we are there for judgment, which is best left to God.
Patience and forbearance
With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
—Ephesians 4:2
Forbearance is patience with connection. We remain with the person through ordinary weakness. We resist the demand that everyone grow at our pace or become easy to live with before we will love them.
Much of this work is wonderfully ordinary. After thirty-six years of marriage, my wife has had many opportunities to practice forbearance with a husband who forgets things. I generally try to clean up after making my coffee, but sometimes I am in a hurry and leave a mess. Every such lapse does not need to become a formal hearing. There is room for, “He must have been in a hurry,” and for quietly taking care of it.
The same charity should work in both directions. When my wife leaves something undone, I can assume that she had a reason and help. We do not need to turn every inconvenience into a discussion about the quality of our marriage.
If something becomes a persistent problem, we need to discuss it and change what we are doing. Forbearance gives a household room to breathe while people continue learning to live together. It allows us to distinguish an ordinary weakness from a pattern that needs attention.
This kind of patience grows as we remember that everyone is going through something. We need not know the details before choosing to be charitable. We can begin by allowing for what we do not know.
When irritation rises, a pause and the Jesus Prayer can help us recover our purpose. The person before us is someone we are called to love. We can address what needs addressing without allowing contempt to govern the encounter.
Bearing one another’s burdens
Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
—Galatians 6:2
We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
—Romans 15:1
Whatever strength we have received becomes something we can place at another person’s service. We might offer a meal, help with a practical task, or introduce someone to a person better equipped to help. Sometimes we can share a burden simply by being willing to remain present.
I think of being in a hospital room with a family preparing for the death of someone they love. There is little use in trying to impress anyone with theological knowledge. Gentle prayer and familiar words can give people something to hold on to. Most people are comforted with The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want (Psalm 22/23:1) and will recite or sing along to it. The same goes for the Our Father.
Much of the work of love and connection in grief is simply being there with them in their grief; the ministry of presence. We cannot remove the loss, but we can help them bear it. We can trust the Holy Spirit to work through an offering that feels inadequate to us.
Some burdens are harder to recognize. We readily understand why someone who is physically frail needs help. Spiritual weakness can be less appealing. It may appear as pride, self-righteousness, or a readiness to take offense. Are these special categories of weakness that exempt us from patience? They, too, call for love. We should resist the temptation to answer another person’s spiritual immaturity with a display of our own.
Bearing a burden also requires us to recognize our limits. We may lack the needed experience, or our history with someone may make every conversation fall into the same painful rut. Sometimes the most useful thing we can do is connect that person with someone else.
Love may also require clear boundaries. Understanding a person’s suffering does not oblige us to remain available for manipulation. Those responsible for a community must consider everyone entrusted to their care. Welcoming someone who struggles does not mean permitting that person to make the community unsafe for others.
We offer what we can, with discernment and prayer. The desire to be indispensable can get in the way of service just as surely as indifference can.
Offering the fruit of the Spirit
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
—Galatians 5:22–23
The fruit of the Spirit gives us a useful way to examine ourselves. As we grow in Christ, the people around us should receive the benefit of that growth. We should be becoming more patient, more faithful, and more capable of kindness when kindness costs us something.
If our religious learning mainly gives us new ways to be smug, impatient, or cruel, something has gone wrong. We may have acquired a vocabulary without allowing the truth expressed in that vocabulary to change us. We should ask whether life with us is becoming more peaceful.
A peaceful response can change what becomes possible in a conversation. We do not have to join every quarrel into which we are invited. A person accustomed to conflict may discover, through repeated encounters, that another way of relating is possible. We cannot guarantee that response, but we can be faithful in what we bring.
Peace must reach deeper than the volume of our voice. A softly spoken question can still be calculated to wound. We know how to provoke people while maintaining an appearance of innocence. “I am only asking a question” can conceal a very deliberate attempt to start a fight.
The ascetic work reaches into that intention, where we must give up the pleasure of pushing a button and watching what happens. We ask the Holy Spirit to heal the desire itself and help us offer something better.
This is why the ordinary practices matter: a kind word, quiet generosity, a gentle response when tension rises. Through such acts, we cooperate with the grace we have received and allow others to share its fruits.
Forgiveness and repentance
And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
—Ephesians 4:32
We will often discover that we have already responded badly. Then the work becomes repentance. We must be willing to examine our contribution to a conflict and ask forgiveness without building a defense into the apology.
“I should not have said that. I am sorry” gives the other person something very different from an explanation of why our behavior was understandable or somehow justifiable.
After an encounter goes sideways and I have time for reflection, I find it useful to do an after-action review. What happened? Where did I stop listening? What could I do better next time? The temptation is to replay the conversation until we come up with the line that would have won it. Repentance asks us to identify what we can change in ourselves so that love can manifest grace the next time.
We cannot control whether the other person does the same. That is the ideal, but it isn’t always available. We can take responsibility for our own conduct without accepting responsibility for someone else’s choices. Even when our contribution was the smaller one, it remains ours to address.
We also need the humility to recognize when a conversation should pause. “I should not have taken it there. Let us stop and come back to this later” can be an act of love. It takes practice to interrupt an old habit, especially when a sharp and sarcastic reply comes so easily. Repeatedly choosing to pause, apologize, and return more calmly helps form a different habit. This is part of what spiritual training looks like in daily life.
Forgiveness does not make everything that happened irrelevant. History can teach us what boundaries are needed. A grudge keeps an offense alive as something to rehearse and nourish; discernment remembers enough to respond wisely.
We can pray for someone and desire their repentance while recognizing that trust has not yet been restored. Reconciliation requires a response from both people, and sometimes the other person is unwilling or unable to offer it. Forgiveness can begin before reconciliation becomes possible. Forgiving someone and refusing to hold a grudge allows us to remain available for future opportunities for healing.
Our task is to stop feeding resentment, remain open to whatever healing God makes possible, and act faithfully within the circumstances we actually face. Sometimes that means renewing a conversation. Sometimes it means stepping back and continuing to pray.
Correcting privately and gently
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
—Matthew 18:15
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
—Galatians 6:1
Correction belongs within this same work of love. In the ordinary faults and conflicts of daily life, we should begin privately and gently. We have seen something that concerns us; we should first find out what happened. We can name the action, listen to the explanation, and ask what could be done differently next time.
The purpose is restoration. Our Lord describes the good outcome as having gained our brother. That should guide the manner of our correction. Public humiliation may satisfy our anger, but it makes everything we are actually called to do more difficult.
But correcting someone in private and thus gaining a friend is not enough. We have to guard our tongues. Even a private conversation can be undermined if we later gossip about it. By telling other people what someone is “really like,” we can make it harder for them to love that person and harder for that person to find a way back. We may congratulate ourselves for having addressed the problem while continuing to spread it.
Charity leaves room for repentance. We can speak truthfully about an action without claiming complete knowledge and being charitable about the motives behind it. Even where motives are mixed, we may be able to appeal to a person’s desire to do good. As a pastor, I often want to remind people of the person they want to become rather than shaming for the part of them that is working against that.
And when someone takes me aside to offer corrections, I need the same humility I ask of them. My first responsibility is to hear whatever is true in the correction, take ownership of it, and find a better way forward through genuine repentance. The fact that someone has misunderstood part of the situation does not relieve me of responsibility for the part they have understood correctly.
When both people are willing to do this, a difficult conversation can deepen a relationship. We discover that we can tell the truth, admit our failures, and remain committed to one another. That is a great gift, and it grows through practice. Every conversation is a test to see if a connection can grow into a real friendship or mutual sacrifice, accountability, and love.
Conclusion
The asceticism of relationships gives us work we can begin today. We can listen through the end of a sentence. We can bear an ordinary inconvenience without contempt. We can offer concrete help, apologize for a careless word, or refrain from repeating a story that would diminish someone in another person’s eyes. Each small act asks us to surrender some measure of self-will and entrust ourselves to God.
Bring one relationship to prayer: the person with whom patience fails, the person whose burdens we have overlooked, or the person from whom we need to ask forgiveness. Ask for the grace to see that person more clearly and to serve faithfully in the next encounter. Then practice. This is how the discipline of prayer and fasting enters the life we share with others, and how, through God’s grace, we learn to love.