Love Could Very Well Say

From the Prologue for today, January 12:

HOMILY

About how man is most dear to God and God to man

“For I want not what is yours, but you” (I Corinthians 12:14).

With these words, which could have only been spoken by the fiery apostolic love toward one’s neighbor, is expressed the essence of the relationship of the Christian toward God and God toward the Christian. The love of God could very well say: “You, O Christian, fast for My sake; for My sake you distribute alms; for My sake you lift up heartfelt prayers; for My sake you build churches; for My sake you offer sacrifices and you perform many other good deeds. All of this is good, and all of this is pleasing to Me, but you are more precious to Me than all of this. In the end, I seek nothing of all of this rather, I seek you, only you.”

The love of a Christian could very well say:

“O Lord, You gave me health and that is good. You turn on the light; You permit the rain to fall; You refresh the air by Your thunder and that is good. You bestow wealth, wisdom, many years, offspring and many other good things which You bountifully place on the table of this life. All of this is good and overly-good. I receive all of this with gratitude. But, in the ultimate end, that is only the hem of Your garment. Ultimately, I do not seek anything of that but You, O Lord, You alone I seek.”

O my brethren, that is not God which is seen with the physical eyes, neither is that man which is seen with the physical eyes. That which is seen in the whole of nature is only something of God; and that which is seen in the physical garment is only something of man. Brethren, God is Love which heaven lowers to earth; Brethren, man is love which raises earth to heaven.

O Lord, Lover of mankind, Creator and Almighty, take up Your abode more and even more in us with Your Life-giving Spirit that we may live; that we may be alive in Your kingdom without death.

To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.

A Saint and a Man

About holiness

“But as the One who called you is holy, be you also holy in all your behavior” (1 Peter 1:15).

Brethren, holiness is a virtue which encompasses all other virtues. Hence brethren, a saint is a man adorned with all virtues. But if a man is prayerful and is not compassionate, he cannot be called holy. Or, if a man endures but without faith and hope he cannot be numbered among the saints. Or, if a man is very compassionate but without faith in God in truth, such a man cannot be numbered among the saints. A saint is a perfect man such as Adam was in Paradise; or even better, such as the New Adam was, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the Saint above the saints. This is the Sower of holiness on earth and the Nurturer of the saints in history. He called us to the dignity of the saints. He showed us the example of a true saint. He is the prototype of the saints as He is the arch-type of man. A true man, my brethren, does not mean anything else but a saint. A saint and a man, that is one and the same. He showed us what it means to be a man and what it means to be a saint. The Apostle Peter commands us: “Be you also holy in all your [living] behavior!” A saint is not a saint in one aspect of his life but rather in every aspect of his entire life. We must be holy in every work and aspect of our life in order to be numbered among the saints, i.e., among men according to the prototype of the saints and the arch-type of man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

O All-holy Lord, To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.

~ From the Prologue for today, June 28

Of Place

The all-wise St. John Chrysostom said: “A place will not save us if we do not carry out the will of God.” It is told of a monk who lived in a monastery where five brethren loved him and one brother offended him. Because of this one brother who offended him, he moved to another monastery. However, in this monastery eight of the brethren loved him and two of the brethren offended him. He then fled to a third monastery. But here, seven of the brethren loved him and five of the brethren offended him. He set out for a fourth monastery but along the way he thought: “How long will I flee from place to place? I will never find peace in the whole world. It would be better for me to become patient.” He pulled out a piece of paper and wrote in bold letters: “I will endure all for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” When he entered the fourth monastery here also some loved him and others offended him. But he patiently began to endure the offenses. As soon as someone offended him, he would take out that piece of paper and read: “I will endure all for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” So with patience he succeeded and all loved him and he remained in that monastery until his death.

From the Prologue

Clearing the Desktop / Thanksgiving

I have so many electronic sticky notes on my desktop. Clutter! I can’t bear to lose my inspirational quote collection, so up they go here, one by one.

The debt of thanksgiving to God, all the saints considered as their main debt. Without thanksgiving to God there can be no progress in the spiritual life. Thanksgiving to God, without ceasing, is the fruitful seed from which, if it is watered by the tears of continual repentance, a beautiful fruit blossoms - love toward God.

~ From the Prologue?

Prayer is Hard Work

Prayer is hard work, especially praying for others. There are so many to pray for! Half the time I can’t even remember them all, and a perfunctory, “Lord have mercy on (name)” seems, well, a little lame. It’s kind of like the old traditional night time prayers, “God bless (name), God bless (name), God bless (name).” I always think of Julie Andrews in Sound of Music. :-)

When I’m doing a lame job praying for others, I always ask “my” saints (my patron saint, St. Basil, and the Theotokos, and some other saints special to me) to pray “for” me. By this I mean two things, 1) that they will pray for ME; and 2) that they will pray FOR me, i.e. in my stead, for other people.

I do wonder, if the saints are still human, how they have time for it all… The Mother of God, in particular. How can she find the time to hear and answer all our requests? Probably a stupid question. :o)

Here’s the Prologue for today:

And yet behold how heaven calls one (the Prophet Jeremiah), whom the earth called false, a traitor and a transgressor! “Lover of the brethren” this is how heaven called him. “Lover of the brethren” who prays much for the people. Finally, see how the saints in heaven pray to God for us! Not sleeping, they are praying for us while we are asleep; not eating, they are praying for us while we are eating and have over-eaten; not sinning, they are praying for us while we are sinning. O brethren, let us be ashamed before so many of our sincere friends. Let us be ashamed, let us be ashamed of so many prayers for us by the saints and let us join with their prayers. O Lord All-wonderful, forgive us our sinful slothfulness and dullness.

What does it mean to have experience of God?

From the Prologue for today:

About the personal experience of all the apostles

“What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands—-We proclaim now to you” (1 St. John 1:1).

Behold, such is the apostolic preaching! The apostles do not speak as worldly sages, nor like philosophers and even less as theoreticians who make suppositions about something in order to discover something. The apostles speak about things which they have not sought but which unexpectedly surrounded them; about the fact which they did not discover but, so to speak, unexpectedly found them and seized them. They did not occupy themselves with spiritual researches nor have they studied psychology, neither did they, much less, occupy themselves with spiritism. Their occupation was fishing - one totally experiential physical occupation. While they were fishing, the God-Man [Jesus] appeared to them and cautiously and slowly introduced them to a new vocation in the service of Himself. At first, they did not believe Him but they, still more cautiously and slowly with fear and hesitation and much wavering, came toward Him and recognized Him. Until the apostles saw Him many times with their own eyes and until they discussed Him many times among themselves and, until they felt Him with their own hands, their experienced fact is supernatural but their method of recognizing this fact is thoroughly sensory and positively learned. Not even one contemporary scholar would be able to use a more positive method to know Christ. The apostles saw not only one miracle but numerous miracles. They heard not only one lesson but many lessons which could not be contained in numerous books. They saw the resurrected Lord for forty days; they walked with Him, they conversed with Him, they ate with Him, and they touched Him. In a word: they personally and first handedly had thousands of wondrous facts by which they learned and confirmed one great fact, i.e., that Christ is the God-Man, the Son of the Living God, the Man-loving Savior of mankind and the All-Powerful Judge of the living and the dead.

Descriptions of the human “experience” of God are usually spiritualized, are they not? Experiential knowledge of God is spiritual, not physical. And de-intellectualized (St. Nikolai does a little of this at the beginning above), because what is intellectual is abstract, and what is abstract is not particular, is not sensed, whether with inner or outer senses, our physical eyes or the spiritual eyes of our soul. Here we see what it’s like to have full knowledge of Christ, God-Man, both divine and human, human in both body and soul. Only the Apostles knew Him this way, in His full being. Blessed are we who are not able to know Him like this and yet believe. Thank God for what comes down to us from the Apostles. Thank God for them proclaiming to us what they heard, what they saw with their own eyes, what they looked upon and touched with their own hands. Their accounts of their unique experience have been handed down to us as irreplaceable Scripture. When someone speaks of “apostolic succession”, what can he be talking about? Successors, however venerable their spiritual knowledge, can have no more than a part of the full Apostolic experience of Christ.

Love Grown Cold

Love for whomever or for whatever, even love for oneself can, in time, grow cold in man, can be lost altogether and can even be twisted into hatred. But the love of man for God, once gained and established, is more difficult to cool off, except if one loses his mind. In the first instance man diminishes or erases his love either out of change in himself or because of a change in the objects of his love. In the second instance man can diminish his love toward God only because of a change in him(self) and never because of a change in God. All of this is neatly and clearly explained by St. Isaac the Syrian saying, “There is a kind of love that is similar to a brook following a rainfall which quickly ceases after the rain stops. But there is a love similar to a spring which erupts through the earth, which never ceases. The first love is human love, and the second love is Divine Love.” St. Simeon the New Theologian, speaks about Divine Love, “O Holy Love! You are the end of the Law. You overcome me; You warm me; You inflame my heart to immeasurable love for God and my brothers. Out of love, God became man. Out of love, He endured all His life-giving suffering in order to deliver man from the throes of Hades and bring him to heaven. Out of love, the apostles completed their difficult course. Out of love, the martyrs shed their blood in order not to lose Christ.”

~ St. Nikolai Velimirovic, from the Prologue

Here is the explanation of the evil of heresy. Heresy, in depicting God falsely to man, causes a “change” in God, and thereby chances a cooling of our love for Him. Heresy is like craziness, losing our mind.

The greatness of the greatest commandment: to love God (Mark 12:30) is also explained, for we can fail to love others due either to a change in ourselves or a change in the object of our love. We have no “excuse” whatsoever for not loving God. We will do anything not to lose Him, once our love is gained and established. “Out of love, the martyrs shed their blood in order not to lose Christ.”