Opening the Doors of Our Hearts
When someone interrupts our routine, it seems a terrible intrusion, and we get very ruffled by it. Isn’t it odd? We desperately long for someone else to approach us, to speak to us, to love us, to fill our solitude, to unite with us, but as soon as someone does, we can’t wait to get rid of them. We reject them immediately, pass judgment on them, speak to them with anger and contempt, presume to tell them what to do, say “no” to them, and in general do whatever we can to let them know that their presence bothers us. And we find hundreds of ways of telling them: “Go away. Leave me alone. Don’t intrude on my solitude.”
And everything bothers you; everything annoys you. The way people look, the sound of their voice, the way they walk, or because they’re too short or too tall, or because their nose is like this or that, or because their eyebrows are too high or too low. Any little thing is enough to ruin your day, and, after all that, all you want to do is run away. And what is all this, if not hell for the damned?
And why have they gone to hell? Because they didn’t want paradise. Hell is exactly what they were looking for, and exactly what they found. But whenever we want, our heart can open and at once the great transformation will take place. And this is an opening to the spiritual fire, to the Holy Spirit, to Christ, to God. Do we want this? Will we unlock our heart? It all depends on whether we want to love God, or continue loving ourselves. And if we do decide to
stop living on our own, and throw open up the doors for the light to enter, then we’ll discover that, while we were looking for God, we also found our fellow man, for now we realize that there are people all around us.
Spiritual Lethargy
Another problem we have is that we tire easily. When it comes to worldly pursuits, our energy knows no bounds, but we grow weary very quickly when God is concerned. Those who chase after wealth or glory never tire of doing so. Others pursue sensual pleasures, tirelessly chasing after sin. But even the thought of running after God leaves us feeling fatigued. We get tired, and then we forget, and then we’re led astray by the world. But then something happens to make us think of God, and so we make promises and resolutions, but, after a little while, forget all about them, and so it goes round and round. But think about the material things you’re chasing after and accumulating in great piles: they’re all banal, fleeting, and utterly without meaning.
If you are able to see this, then sink the eyes of your soul deep into your heart—be it ever so twisted or perverted—and ask God to take over. Hovering over the chaos of your life, God will shine His light (cf. Gen. 1:3), and the abyss of hell that was in you will be transformed into heaven. God is humble, and will not shrink from entering into your sinful heart in order to rescue you from sin. That’s God! And only God can do this. No one and nothing else in this world can raise you from your state of death. There is no other cure for your wound, no other remedy for what ails you. In whatever you do, choose the path of humility, and God will glorify you.
Preparation for the Jesus Prayer
Now, if we wish to devote ourselves to the Jesus Prayer, we must also recognize that we have a problem. We are imprisoned within the confines of our worries and concerns. We are always in a hurry. We get tired. We become disillusioned. We live with stress, we are troubled by disturbing thoughts, by our passions, by inner storms. In order to sleep, we need to be on the point of exhaustion; and in order to be happy, we have to listen to music, or find some other amusement. This is no life at all! It tires us out, and doesn’t allow us to pray as much and in the way that we want.
This is why the Fathers assure us that the words of God “refresh and strengthen the soul, as wine strengthens the body.” Know that the word of God is to be found both in Scripture and in the Holy Fathers. We must diligently study both; and among the latter, the Ascetic Fathers particularly. We must likewise always be attentive to our work, not squandering our strength needlessly, but expending it responsibly on the duties which are before us. In this way our life will become a
daily spiritual exercise, and, coupled with spiritual study, will smooth the ground of the soul, rendering it capable of rising upward.
Love for God
The closer you are to God, the more you love Him. And our desire for God knows no satiety; it is something that can never be completed or exhausted. Love finds its perfection, not in this life, but in the next, and this means that perfect love should always be a perfect dissatisfaction.
“To love” means to find no final satisfaction in the things of the world, and thus it expresses both our movement toward, and the distance which still remains, between us and God. The extent of our love, then, can be measured by the duration of our weeping. It can be measured to the extent to which we’ve been reduced to nothing in the infinity of God, and by our attempts to make God our own and to comprehend Him. And this measure can be grasped, not by any intellectual calculation, but only through the experience of suffering and love.
Marriage
When you see difficulties in your marriage, when you see that you’re making no progress in your spiritual life, don’t despair. But neither should you be content with whatever progress you may have already made. Lift up your heart to God. Imitate those who have given everything to God, and do what you can to be like them, even if all you can do is to desire in your heart to be like them. Leave the action to Christ. And when you advance in this way, you will truly sense what is the purpose of marriage. Otherwise, as a blind person wanders about, so too will you wander in life.…
It is an adulteration of marriage for us to think that it is a road to happiness, as if it were a denial of the Cross. The joy of marriage is for husband and wife to put their shoulders to the wheel and together go forward on the uphill road of life. “You haven’t suffered? Then you haven’t loved,” says a certain poet. Only those who suffer can really love. And that’s why sadness is a necessary feature of marriage. “Marriage,” in the words of an ancient philosopher, “is a world made beautiful by hope, and strengthened by misfortune.” Just as steel is fashioned in a furnace, just so is a person proved in marriage, in the fire of difficulties…Marriage, then, is a journey through sorrows and joys. When the sorrows seem overwhelming, then you should remember that God is with you. He will take up your cross. It was He who placed the crown of marriage on your head. But when we ask God about something, He doesn’t always supply the solution right away. He leads us forward very slowly. Sometimes He takes years. We have to experience pain, otherwise, life would have no meaning. But be of good cheer, for Christ is suffering with you, and the Holy Spirit, “through your groanings is pleading on your behalf” (cf. Rom. 8:26).…
Marriage is a road: it starts out from the earth and ends in heaven. It is a joining together, a bond with Christ, Who assures us that He will lead us to heaven, to be with Him always. Marriage is
a bridge leading us from earth to heaven. It is as if the sacrament is saying: Above and beyond love, above and beyond your husband, your wife, above the everyday events, remember that you are destined for heaven, that you have set out on a road which will take you there without fail. The bride and the bridegroom give their hands to one another, and the priest takes hold of them both, and leads them round the table dancing and singing. Marriage is a movement, a progression, a journey which will end in heaven, in eternity.
In marriage, it seems that two people come together. However, it’s not two but three. The man marries the woman, and the woman marries the man, but the two together also marry Christ. So three take part in the mystery, and three remain together in life.
In the dance around the table, the couple are led by the priest, who is a type of Christ. This means that Christ has seized us, rescued us, redeemed us, and made us His. And this is the “great mystery” of marriage (cf. Gal. 3:13)
Suffering
At the beginning, after the Fall, man himself sensed and realized that what had appeared as a curse—namely, God’s decision that he should live by the sweat of his brow, bear children with pain, and rediscover paradise through many tribulations (Acts 14:22)—hid what
was in fact God’s love, that it comprised a way and means for man’s second creation, for His renewal [of man] who had fallen away and was dying. On maturing, man recognized in his sufferings, in his labor and sweat, and even in his death, that his pain encompassed a means of
expression, a living possibility for his presenting and revealing himself to God, of confessing to Him his longing for the deification now lost.
This is to say that he, man, found no better way of expressing his yearning for deification than by suffering pain for the sake of God. Man, indeed, longs to become a god. But the one language capable of asking for his restoration to fellowship with God is the language of sacrifice, the fully vivid and living language of suffering for Christ, for the sake of God’s Kingdom. Suffering thus becomes a necessary element of the human soul, innate, instinctive in it, the very stuff out of
which we construct our relationship with God. It is out of sufferings, trials, and ordeals that the soul approaches God. It thus loves God the more, becomes more fully dependent on Him…. God does not heal the soul by any other method so much as by pain, by labor and travail, in order that He may give us life in exchange for our voluntary death.
Spiritual Study
Don’t try to find in Holy Scripture prescriptions and rules for your life. At the same time, rid yourself of the desire to insert your own thought into the text. You should be reading to learn what God says, and God will inspire you. And you should accept whatever God tells you. But perhaps now you’re thinking to yourself that all of this is a bit naïve; that such things don’t have a place in the modern world. What you say might be fine for people living in monasteries,
you’ll tell me, but we’ve got things to do, jobs to go to, problems to deal with. I see. So the Christian life is only for monks and nuns?...
The notion that it’s no longer possible to apply the truths of Christianity to our lives is like nitric acid. I’ve heard that if you throw a little of it onto a flower, it will shrivel up and die. That’s how such a notion affects our life. The Holy Scriptures are for us, the writings of the Fathers are for us, not simply for monks. They have their peace and quiet, they have their safe harbor, they have everything taken care of for them. We’re the ones in the middle of the fight, in the middle of the storm, we’re the ones pursued by the devil. And it is to us who Christ comes, in the midst of all our difficulties, to provide us with these spiritual weapons, which are called spiritual books.
Detachment
When some urgent business compels you to drive somewhere quickly, you don’t inspect the car to see if it’s new, or what sort of incidental feature it has, but what concerns you is getting to your
destination. So it is with the saints, who never deviate from their purpose.
They are attached to nothing in the world. They love nothing in the world. They await only Christ. And He purifies them: He purifies their heart. Then, as St. Symeon told us, he illumines their souls and grants them the vision of God. God appears before their very eyes.
