Perfectionism
"Be ye therefore perfect EVEN AS your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
This commandment of Christ has never been amended, repealed, or modified. It establishes the ethic for everyone. It is, as one can tell by the pronouns, addressed not to one person, but to many, that is, all.
It means that we DO have to try to attain perfection with hope of success. We MUST be Orthodox "perfectionists." Perfection is an ideal for the Orthodox, and not a pathology.
Faithful in the early Church, obedient to this commandment, were deeply troubled when it became necessary to answer the unheard-of question "What do we do when someone sins AFTER Baptism?" The result, finally, was the Mystery of Penance the audible expression of that sin itself to the Community and the audible request for forgiveness and the answering "I do forgive and absolve you" from each member of the community. That pious Tradition obtained right up to the time of Saint Constantine; however, in many places penance became more formulaic; nevertheless, the sinners, those with sins, had to recount them, say just what they were and how they had sinned, and "cures" or penances or remedies were devised involving the various terms of excommunication and of standing with the learners in the porch. This still allowed for the Church to be considered the place where one could strive to reach perfection at some point while one was a communicant in it. Those were the days (one can see the trace of them in the horologia which direct that the creed be intoned "in a low voice") when Holiness of the Church was typified in the absolute exclusion of the unbaptized, the learners, etc., from the Eucharist proper and for their not being permitted to learn the Creed, the Lord's prayer, and the real Meaning of Holy Baptism until they had been Baptized.
This all changed, and it was truly what we call, idiomatically, a "sea change," when Saint Constantine recognized Christianity and it became known that the only way to advancement was to join that Christian religion. Then there were two main defensive actions relative to perfection and holiness: the flight into the desert and monastic communities where the pursuit of perfection could be continued, unhindered by the tourists and all those who today are usually kept out of the monastery. Those who stayed, their Episcopate, that is, did their best to keep the essentials from the tourists, entrepreneurs, and yuppies of the day. This involved keeping not only the Creed which is chanted in the office private from chance eavesdroppers, but the "mystic" or "secret" or even subvocal intoning of certain prayers, but also the erection of the icon screens as rather complete barriers to protect the unbaptized and the unfaithful from being harmed by sight of the Eucharist itself, while insuring that the sight of anything of spiritual value, that is, the glimpse into Perfection afforded by the Icons would still witness even to the tourist The One Thing That is Needful.
Of course, such elaborate precautions were not unprecedented even before Constantine. The Gifts were kept covered even until they were brought to the Altar Table itself. They weren't even brought to the Altar until the Catechumens had been dismissed. Then, the curtain, which existed from long before any iconostasis and is found almost from the very beginning, was closed as still another cover over the gifts. It was only after a Third Alert "The Doors! The Doors" (In other words, "Make double sure the doors are closed!" that the curtain was withdrawn and the Creed chanted aloud! It's so pathetic when some use the cry "The Doors! The Doors! to do just the opposite of what the Tradition indicates: they OPEN the HOLY DOORS! Pathetic!
Yes, nowadays one will even hear those who have attended graduate schools of theology decrying "perfectionism" and "perfectionists." (I think they hide their scorn for perfection by calling it "maximalism.") They didn't get such ideas from the Scriptures, the Fathers, the Tradition, oral, written, monumental; no, they brought that idea from or rather bought that idea elsewhere, the world, in the sense of the fallen world.
When this sort of idea, the Christian ideal of perfection, is mentioned, it is often greeted with a veritable smokescreen of cries against "formalists," "obscurantists," etc., no word is too low to be barred from the war against perfectionism.
Unfortunately, Christ was totally dedicated, no? He expected perfection: That's why He became incarnate. He expected TOTAL stewardship. He didn't ask for any tithes or assessments or whatever, He expected that everything would be given away in order to follow Him. He expected that He would be WAY more important than family or "blood."
Sorry, that's the truth.
"I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou has not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none else. I FORM THE LIGHT AND CREATE DARKNESS: I MAKE PEACE, AND CREATE EVIL: I THE LORD DO ALL THESE THINGS." (Isaiah XLV, 5-7)
