Reconnect

Previously on this blog I wrote:

God, it seems, is in the business of curing need. He would like to cure us of any disproportionate need for things that are Good, and of all our need for things that are Bad.

and

There is tremendous freedom in being able to let things go, even good things (like food in fasting). If I can consciously give it to God to determine how much of it I may have — to let Him give it back to me as He wills, then I know my freedom…. Giving up good things is to know that the goodness of created things has not somehow usurped the place of God. You can have them back again in freedom.

These seem to be good and necessary principles of “ascetical” life, but they aren’t enough for a Christian life as a whole. It’s not enough to “flee the world”, to become “free”, however necessary it is to do so. After fleeing one must go back. Reconnect. Monks flee into the desert, but how often they come back to open the door of their cell. Christ himself fled into the desert, and came back. Even the monastics who stay away are obliged to pray for the whole world, returning in thought to its travail. One wonders if we are not all kept in being by their holy prayers.

As glorious as Divine Liturgy is on Sundays, it does end. A Divine Liturgy may be ongoing in the eternity of heaven. It may be ongoing around the world in one place and another. But we who live in the world in one time and one place cannot be at the Liturgy all the time. We must go back out into the world. Reconnect.

The question is, What do we bring with us when we do so? To whom do we bring it? With what effect? How to reconnect as God would want??