Zeal for Your House…

Zeal within religious communities we seem to have no lack of, whether non-Christian or Christian, whether Orthodox or non-Orthodox, but how often is this zeal just a form of self-love veneered with a thin layer of religious confession? How often is it a cover up for an agenda, a headhunter's mentality, or simply a perverse and sulky disposition to sabotage?

Jesus Christ rarely acted in such a way that could label Him a zealot, and nowhere in scripture is He described as such, except in His act of "cleansing the Temple" whereupon His action is explained as a fulfillment of the prophetic utterance in psalm 69, ο ζηλος του οικου σου καταφαγεται με, "zeal for Your house eats me up" (John 2:17). Strangely, in John's first letter, the same chapter and verse number seems to give a commentary on the application, for us, of true zeal, και ο κοσμος παραγεται και η επιθυμια, ο δε ποιων το θελημα του θεου μενει εις τον αιωνα, "The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever" (1 John 2:17).

The man who does the will of God...

Brother Pandeli has posted at his blog FOCUS a wonderful article in which he offers the following quote from our father among the saints, Nektarios of Aegina,

“The zealot according to knowledge, motivated by the love of God and his neighbor, does all things with charity and self-effacement; he does nothing that might bring sorrow to his neighbor; such a zealot is enlightened by knowledge and nothing prompts him to deviate from what is morally right” (see Self-Knowledge, pp. 135-136).

Nothing prompts him to deviate from what is morally right...

I have been privileged to know people like this, and have been blessed to call one of them my best friend. With a friend like that, it is easy to follow Jesus and to choose the right. Somehow we escape, as did Jesus, the accusation of being zealots. The world doesn't quite know what to call us, because as soon as it chooses a name for us or throws an accusation against us, our course of action seems to have changed again. That's because they cannot see, they do not know, the One we are following, and so our ways are an enigma to them, as are His. They simply cannot track us.

I invite you to read the rest of Pandeli's post, entitled Zeal and Love: St Nektarios. It is well worth reading.