Rule

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish,
The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.

If you have just come to the monastery,
and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want,
take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart
and to understand them with your mind.

And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up;
hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.

Realize above all that you are in God’s presence,
and stand there with the attitude of one who stands
before the emperor.

Empty yourself completely and sit waiting,
content with the grace of God,
like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing
but what his mother brings him

purgation

Traditionally the first “step” of union with God is purgation. One of the definitions suggested by Google is “evacuation of the bowels brought about by taking laxatives.” For the follower of Jesus, it is simply being like Jesus who …

… ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος· καὶ σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος

… made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men

Philippians 2:7 (KJV)

Other English translations use “empty himself” for κενόω. Maybe philosophically it is a little like “nihilism” – to become nothing? For the follower of Jesus is a choice to be “nothing” so God can create.

aims?

What should also become clear in this study are the ways in which Kierkegaard confronts some of the key errors that arise in overly systematic and reductive accounts of Christian conversion:

  1. The inherent weakness of approaches that assume we can dichotomise, and then quantify, the respective contributions of divine and human agency;
  2. The inclination to objectify human beings in ways that neglect their subjective existence as living persons who require to be conceived diachronically – persons who are called to take up a life-long vocation of becoming Christian;
  3. The tendency to reduce God to an amorphous concept, postulate or figment of the human imagination, thereby neglecting God’s active involvement in the process of becoming a Christian;
  4. The attendant impulse to allow a body of Christian teaching or dogma to displace the actuality of God’s personal agency;
  5. The overemphasis on conversion as a solipsistic event of individual transformation rather than a process of becoming reconciled with God;
  6. The tendency to prioritise epistemology over ontology (that is, over our relationship with God) in discussions of what is involved in becoming a Christian – to focus on the question of ‘What I come to know as a Christian’ rather than ‘Who I come to be as a Christian’; and
  7. The propensity to lose sight of God’s loving purpose to draw all human beings into the one true form of existence for which they were created.
Torrance, Andrew B.. The Freedom to Become a Christian, pp. 2-3.