Hey, everybody! This is Steve, and lots of new viewers have been asking us to explain what exactly it means to "be the bee." To answer that, I need to suit up.

Bees are really amazing creatures. They live together in complex societies and play a very important role in nature, pollinating flowers, and making a lot of the food we eat possible. "Be the bee" is an awesome metaphor that goes back at least to St. Basil the Great, who used it to answer a difficult question people had. People wondered whether it was okay for Christians to read books by non-Christians. There was a theory that reading books by pagans, like Homer's Iliad or Plato's Republic, would compromise one's Christianity and lead one astray. That's where St. Basil jumped in with "be the bee."

In his Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature, St. Basil suggested that we approach non-Christian works like bees approach flowers. Just like bees only take the good nectar from flowers, we should only take the good from whatever situation in which we find ourselves, and leave the rest behind.

St. John Chrysostom took things a step further when he explained the reason that bees work so hard to collect the good nectar. "The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors but because she labors for others." Bees are part of a hive, a wider community, where they all work with and for each other. And it isn't just other bees that benefit; we also benefit from the labors of a hard-working bee.

So being the bee is about taking what's good out of every situation and sharing it with others. And it goes even deeper than that, right to the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, a 20th-century saint, pointed at this when he used the metaphor. Here's what he said about being the bee:

When a bee is found in a roomful of dirt and there is a small piece of sweet in a corner, it will ignore the dirt and will go to sit on top of the sweet. Now, if we ask the bee to show us where the garbage is, it will answer, "I don't know. I can only tell you where to find flowers, sweets, honey, and sugar." It only knows the good things in life and is ignorant of all evil. While a fly is drawn to disgusting things, to garbage and filth, a bee is drawn to what's sweet and beautiful, and won't even pay any attention to the dirt.

Orthodox theologians sometimes talk about apatheia, or passionlessness. You see, sin is something we suffer, something that takes away our freedom. We see this in extreme cases, where it seems like we can't help but fall into sin: I hear something, so I fall into anger; I taste something, so I fall into gluttony; I see something, so I fall into lust. We see this really well in the parable of the prodigal son, where the son's choice to sin ended up taking away his choices and led him to a terrible situation. But a bee isn't chained by sin, by the dirt and distractions that can take over our lives. A bee is so free it doesn't even notice the garbage; it goes straight to what's sweet.

And that's a really important part of our life in Christ, not simply to filter between what's good and bad, but to love Christ more and more so we don't worry about anything else, so we're too busy loving Christ to even notice the things that would otherwise make us angry or prideful or lustful. The garbage that distracts us and pulls us apart from each other and from God rather than bringing us together.

Of course, it's really hard to get to that point of passionlessness, but by God's grace it's something we can work on together every week. I know that making Be the Bee is a really important part of my spiritual life, and I hope that watching it is just as helpful for you.

And though it's an important part, we can't forget that it's a part of a larger whole. Praying and fasting and helping others aren't just things we should talk about on Be the Bee; they're things we should do in our lives as we try to "be the bee." We can't forget that our goal is Christ, to not just be with him but to be a part of him, a part of his body, which is the Church. No matter how much we pray or how much we fast or how good we are to others, it's incomplete without the Divine Liturgy; it's incomplete if we don't offer ourselves and the whole world up to God so that he can transform us and the whole world, and free us from sin and death, so he can offer us the sweetest thing of all: an eternity in his kingdom.

So let's be the bee and find God in every thing, every day. Be the bee and live Orthodoxy. Remember to like and subscribe. I'll see you all next week.