St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite - Concerning the Mind

While the mind rules over the flesh in Man, it is also enslaved to the physical pleasures of Man. We know from St. Paul that in the realm of the flesh, we are enslaved to sin. The sinful passions begin to reign over us and we do the things that we do not desire but the things we do desire we cannot do. For the flesh has come into corruption from the sinful nature. But why, if the flesh is inherently good and the mind rules over it, does this occur? Why is the mind often found to be the slave to such earthly things? Is the premise that the flesh is inherently good wrong? Or perhaps the mind has allowed itself to be enslaved? Or is there another reason?

St. Nicodemos answers that "after the disobedience of Adam, his body received the whole of its existence from physical pleasure that is impassionate and irrational". From the moment of conception, man has become the recipient of physical pleasure. He is bound to physical pleasure until his spiritual senses are allowed to activate. This is called original sin. This is also why, until very recently, the Church has never held the position that an unbaptized infant could go to Heaven. The traditional teaching was that the unbaptized infant would be unconscious, at best, unable to fully experience the joy of the eternal beatific vision of God (Canon 120 of the Holy Council of Carthage, St. Gregory of Nyssa in Concerning Infants' Early Deaths implies this).

The mind is held captive by the physical nature from Adam's sin onward. It subjected to it by the sinfulness entering into the world. It has been held captive by the physical senses. It is the spiritual sense that must be awakened in man. If a man is blind, he is unaware of the gift of sight unless he previously had it. Man is born spiritually blind. What allows a man to see? It is the sacrament of baptism that awakens the senses of Man. But we first receive the physical senses and once a body has experienced the soft touch of clothing, the beauty of living bodies, the sounds of certain songs, the fragrances of myrrh and other aromatic smells, it is difficult to convince such person that what they have experienced is actually irrational and temporal.

The senses are liberated through a process. First, by reading and hearing the Sacred Scriptures and the Words of the Church Fathers. Second, by subduing the senses and by refusing to fuel their appetites. St. Nicodemos draws along the analogy of a king fighting off a severely fortified city by first cutting off the supply chain to the city depriving the city of food and military resources useful for battle. Thus, the mind subdues best the senses by cutting off that which fuels their physical pleasures. Attrition is the first war that the Church wages against the senses. The Church prescribes fasting periods as a primary means of subjecting the body's urge to eat and consume. This is not because food is evil but because the overeating of food distracts the mind from God and keeps him subjected to sinfulness.

"[T]he reason for the coming of the New Adam, Jesus Christ, can be said to be our liberation from seeking and loving only the visible things, and at the same time our exaltation to love and enjoy the spiritual realities, thus indicating our true transference to what indeed is better." Here, St. Nicodemos touches on something without actually explicitly stating it. The coming of Jesus was as a physical, fleshly, human. Jesus was fully Man. He was the incarnate Deity. His incarnation provides another means we escape bondage from the physical senses to the spiritual senses. The sacraments are the visible, physical, things that the Church has provided for us in order to elevate our physical nature to the divine, spiritual nature that God intends to elevate it to. Through baptism we are brought into union with God and become sons of God. Through chrismation we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Through the Eucharist we are fed by God with his own very flesh.

The mind wrestles with the physical senses but it can also be aided greatly by these same senses. When it is aided by these senses, the mind retains control of the body and is held in its proper state. When it allows itself to be controlled by these senses, the mind becomes subject to those same senses and it is brought down into destruction by these senses.