Freedom is when you have nothing left to be taken away
Fear of persecutors is rooted in acquisitiveness. We ask St. Basil the Great why he was indifferent to the prefect's threats.
The choice between living by the commandments and living in peace confronts us every day. At night, tossing and turning without sleep or trembling with fear during shelling, we go over in our minds everything we may lose during war and persecution of the Church. The apartment into which we put all our savings. The job we spent six months looking for. Our health, which is already failing. The respect of people who are dear to us or on whom our careers depend. In the end, we have to make a compromise decision.
St. Basil the Great once found himself in a position far more dreadful than ours. Emperor Valens supported the Arians, who taught that the Son of God was created and not equal to the Father. Orthodox bishops were sent into exile one after another. The turn came to the Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. The prefect, the emperor's right hand, summoned him and demanded that he go over to the Arians.
St. Gregory the Theologian, Basil's friend, later recorded this historic conversation. Let us mentally travel to Caesarea and ask St. Basil himself about this story.
A cell with nothing to inventory
His Grace receives us in a small room. He wears a coarse hair shirt. On the shelf stand a few books, by the wall a bench, nothing more. A thin, emaciated man raises attentive eyes to us and gestures for us to sit.
St. Gregory wrote that Basil entered the interrogation "as one invited to a feast, not to a trial." The calm with which he greets us recalls this.
– Your Grace, they say the prefect threatened you with terrible things. What exactly?
– He listed everything that, in his opinion, ought to have frightened me, – the saint answers unhurriedly. – He would confiscate my property. Send me into exile. Torture me. Kill me. I told him: think up something else, if you can, because none of this moves me.
He sweeps his hand around his room.
– Look for yourself. To take property, there must be some to begin with. Unless he wished to take away this rag and a few books – in them lies all my wealth.
Exile from a foreign home
– But exile means losing your home, your flock, everything you have built here.
The saint does not answer at once. He looks out the small window, through which the city is visible.
– What exile is, I do not know. I am not attached to any place. Caesarea, where I now live, is not mine. And any place where I am sent will become mine. Or rather, every place belongs to God.
– And torture?
– What is there to torture? – His Grace spreads his thin hands. – There is almost no body left. It would suffice for the first and last blow, no more.
There is a joke in his words. But behind that joke stand years of severe asceticism.
– And you were not afraid of death either?
– Death for me is a benefaction. It will bring me sooner to God. For Him I live and labor, toward Him I have long been hastening.
An interlocutor who had never met a bishop
The prefect, according to St. Gregory's account, was struck by St. Basil's steadfastness. He confessed that "no one has ever spoken before me in such a way and with such freedom."
– What did you answer him, Your Grace?
The saint briefly closes his eyes, recalling with a smile:
– I said that, evidently, he had never yet had to speak with a bishop.
The reply sounds bold, and we ask cautiously:
– Is this not pride? Humility is commanded to a Christian, after all.
His Grace becomes serious and lays his palm on the table, as if drawing a line across it.
– In everything else we are modest and humbler than anyone. So the commandment bids. But when it concerns God and a voice is raised against Him, we forget everything and see before us only God.
Why could he not accept the teaching of the Arians? The saint explained this to the prefect in a single phrase:
– I myself am God's creation and am called to become a god. How then can I worship a creature?
The Arians considered the Son of God to be created, and for St. Basil to admit this would mean worshipping a creature instead of the Creator. Man, however, is called to deification – to union with God by grace. Such a substitution he cannot accept.
Firmness without stubbornness
For all his inflexibility, St. Basil was not a man who argued merely for the sake of arguing. St. Gregory tells how carefully his friend chose words in theological disputes. He understood that when piety has wavered, one can, by fighting for a single expression, "ruin everything through immoderation."
He could yield in a word. Yield in faith – never.
The historian Theodoret of Cyrrhus relates the same conversation in his own way. In his version the prefect first promises Basil the emperor's friendship, and the saint replies that he values it only together with piety, and without piety considers it perdition. When the prefect throws at him: "You are mad," His Grace responds: "I wish to always have such madness."
The prefect who admitted defeat
In the end the prefect released Basil, now without threats. Then he went to the emperor and reported: "We have been defeated, O emperor, by the head of this Church. He is a man who is above threats, firmer than arguments, stronger than persuasion." Valens forbade the use of force against the saint.
– And what happened next, Your Grace?
– Next came the feast of Theophany, – says the saint. – The emperor came to the church. The service was under way, the singing thundered, a sea of people stood. The emperor brought gifts which he had prepared with his own hands. But no one came out to receive them. He staggered, and one of the altar servers caught him by the arm so that he would not fall.
St. Gregory compares Valens after that day to iron that softens in fire but remains iron. The emperor stopped threatening and began to marvel, yet never entered into communion with Bishop Basil: he was ashamed to show his change.
The exile that never happened
– So they left you in peace?
– Not at once, – His Grace smiles again. – The decree of exile was prepared after all. At night a carriage was readied for me. Our enemies applauded, ours grew downcast.
– And what did you do that night?
– I told one of the escorts to take a notebook and follow me.
In a few hours he was to be carried off to an unknown place, yet he thinks of work and takes paper with him. That same night, as St. Gregory writes, the emperor's son fell gravely ill, and the matter of exile never came to pass.
We rise to take our leave. At last it has become clear that we fear losing what we clutch too tightly.
St. Basil had long ago placed into God's power his property, his place of residence, his body, and life itself. Therefore the prefect found nothing that he could take from him.
His Grace sees us to the door and says in parting:
– Every place belongs to God, and toward Him I have long been hastening. And for one who walks toward God, there is nothing to lose along the way.
