Do not fabricate raptures for yourself,
do not excite your nerves, do not inflame yourself with a material fire,
with the fire of your blood. The sacrifice pleasing to God is humility
of heart, contrition of spirit. With wrath does God turn away from
sacrifices offered with self-confident presumption, with a proud opinion
of oneself, though the sacrifice be a whole burnt offering.
Pride excites the nerves, heats the
blood, arouses daydreaming, enlivens the life of the fall; humility
calms the nerves, subdues the motion of the blood, eliminates
daydreaming, mortifies falls, enlivens the life in Jesus Christ.
“Obedience” before the Lord “is greater
than good sacrifice, and submission than the fat of rams,” said the
Prophet to the Israelite king who had dared to offer to God a wrong
sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22). When you wish to offer to God the sacrifice
of love, do not offer it self-willfully, from a thoughtless impulse;
offer it with humility, in that time and that place which the Lord
commanded.
The spiritual place on which alone
spiritual sacrifices are commanded to be offered is humility. (Saying of
St. Pimen the Great from the ).
The Lord marked the one who loves and
the one who does not love by true and exact signs: “If a man love Me, he
will keep My word. He that loveth Me not keepeth not My sayings”(John
14:23,24).
Do you wish to learn the love of God?
Shun every deed, word, thought, and feeling forbidden by the Gospel. By
your enmity towards sin which is so hated by All-holy God, you will show
and prove your love for God. When due to weakness it happens that you
fall into transgressions, heal them at once by repentance. But it is
better to strive not to allow yourself even these transgressions, by
strict watchfulness over yourself.
Do you wish to learn the love of God?
Assiduously learn the commandments of the Lord in the Gospel, and strive
to fulfill them in very deed. Strive to turn the Gospel virtues into
habits, into your qualities. For a person who loves, it is natural to
fulfill the will of the beloved with exactness.
“I have loved Thy commandments more than
gold and topaz: therefore, I directed myself toward all Thy
commandments; every path of unrighteousness have I hated,” says the
Prophet (Ps. 118:127,128). Such conduct is indispensable for maintaining
fidelity to God. Fidelity is the unalterable condition of love. Without
this condition, love is dissolved.
By the constant shunning of evil and
fulfilling of the Gospel virtues—which comprises the whole Gospel moral
teaching—we attain the love of God. And by this same means do we abide
in the love of God: “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My
love,” said the Savior (John 15:10).
The perfection of love consists in union
with God; advancing in love is joined with inexpressible spiritual
consolation, delight, and enlightenment. But in the beginning of the
struggle, the disciple of love must undergo a violent warfare with
himself, with his own deeply damaged nature: evil, which through the
fall became innate to our nature, has become for it a law, warring and
revolting against the Law of God, against the law of holy love.
Love of God is founded on love of one’s
neighbor. When the remembrance of wrongs is obliterated in you: then you
are close to love. When your heart is overshadowed by holy, grace-given
peace towards all humanity: then you are at the very doors of love.
But these doors are opened by the Holy
Spirit alone. Love of God is a gift from God in a person who has
prepared himself to receive this gift by purity of heart, mind, and
body. The degree of the gift is according to the degree of preparation:
because God, even in His mercy, is just.
Love of God is entirely spiritual: “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).
“That which is born of the flesh is
flesh” (John 3:6): carnal love, as something born of flesh and blood,
has material, corrupt properties. It is inconstant, changeable: its fire
is completely dependent on matter.
Hearing from Scripture that our God is a
fire (Heb.12:29), that love is a fire, and feeling in yourself a fire
of natural love, do not think that this is one and the same fire. No!
These fires are at enmity with one another and are swallowed up by one
another (Ladder, steps 3 and 15). “Let us serve in a manner
well-pleasing to God, with reverence and fear; for our God is a
consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28,29).
Natural love, fallen love heats a
person’s blood, excites his nerves, arouses daydreaming; holy love cools
the blood, calms both soul and body, draws the inner man towards
prayerful silence, immerses him in rapture through humility and
spiritual delight.
Many ascetics, having taken natural love
for Divine love, excited their blood, and excited their daydreams also.
The condition of excitement passed very easily into a condition of
frenzy. Many took those who were in a state of excitement and frenzy for
persons filled with grace and holiness, while they were actually
unfortunate victims of self-delusion.
There were many such ascetics in the
Western Church from the time it fell into papism, in which Divine
properties are blasphemously ascribed to a man, and veneration which is
due and fitting to God alone is given to a man; many of these ascetics
wrote books from their excited condition in which frenzied self-delusion
seemed to them to be divine love, in which their disordered imagination
painted for them a multitude of visions which flattered their self-love
and pride.
Son of the Eastern Church! Shun the
reading of such books, avoid following the precepts of those who are
self-deluded. Guided by the Gospel and the holy Fathers of the true
Church, ascend with humility to the spiritual height of Divine love by
the means of fulfilling Christ’s commandments in deed.
Know firmly that love for God is the
highest gift of the Holy Spirit, and a person can only prepare himself,
through purity and humility, for the receiving of this great gift,
through which mind and heart and body are changed.
In vain is the labor, fruitless is it
and harmful, when we seek to discover in ourselves high spiritual gifts
prematurely: merciful God gives them in His own time, to the constant,
patient, humble fulfillers of the Gospel commandments. Amen.
Source-Pemptousia.com
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