When the Lord comes to a person, He
brings her His peace: Peace to
all! Peace to you! When
the Lord enters that person’s heart, he pacifies hit. The heart starts to be
thankful to God and inspired with the love that gives her the opportunity to
build the Kingdom of God around herself, to spread the peace of Christ around.
The peace of God is a reward given to us.
The sinful
world, no matter how tempting it might be, no matter how attractive it might be
for the natural man, is death. The world without God is a fruitless desert
where there can be only torment and suffering and by no means joy or the light
of love. The God’s world is the Kingdom, and this Kingdom is in our hearts when
God dwells in us, when we are looking for God’s truth and reject human justice.
It is through repentance, through renunciation of our egos, through humility
that we let God into our hearts. This is when we start to belong to Christ, and
this is when Christ begins to change our lives so that things we considered the
norm, things we got used to, are no longer acceptable. Thus an individual is
transformed. |
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The peace of
God allows one to see her life not as a meaningless and aimless chaos but as an
earthly path that leads into the Kingdom of Love. Peace is the gift that the
Lord brings to the earth. Once people hid from God in the paradise, they lost
peace. They started to look for joys and pleasures of their own; they began to
build their own world where there was no place for God. A poor cave was the only place left for the
Divine Child. All other places were occupied: hotels were packed and palaces
were shut for the Saviour. This is why the Lord knocks at the heart of every
person. He says, “I will give you My peace; I will give you My love.” However,
the person replies, “Give me health, give me success, give me wealth, give me
happiness on earth.” If the person does not receive these worldly pleasures,
she rejects God. She says, “God doesn’t help me. I came to God, I wanted Him to
give me joy but I have to suffer even more. I came to God because I wanted Him
to heal me from my illnesses but my illnesses are more severe than ever.” This
is why not every soul will dare ask God to enter her heart; not every soul will
remain in the church when trials begin.
How people
hurry to get holy water on Epiphany! How they hurry to have their Easter cakes
and foods consecrated!
On the other
hand, how hard it is for a person to repent, how hard it is for her to come and
humble down and leave behind her ego, her sins, and to leave behind that part
of her life that lacks God’s truth! Needless is to say that the peace of God is
the lot of courageous souls, it is for the souls that struggle with the sin
inside themselves. “I torment my tormentor!” Sin lives inside me. It will never
come to terms with God’s presence inside us. So we have to choose. Something’s
got to die. Either my ego, my self-love, my sin will die, or I will be left
without God forever. The peace of God is the Kingdom of Love where God invites
all of us to come. But how can a person who got accustomed to sinning reject
the sin and give all her life into God’s hands? Therefore, certainly, I would
like to say that the peace of God is a gift of God to the person who got lost,
who suffers, who is miserable and makes everyone around miserable, too. One
should accept this gift and not be doubtful or lose heart. We know that this
peace of God makes people not only happy while praying and relieved thanks to
God’s love but also leads them to the Golgotha and the Garden of Gethsemane,
where they will have to endure contempt, mockery, and resentment. Nevertheless,
the person will put up with it if she has experienced the joy of encounter with
God inside her heart, if she has really found God and His peace, because there
is nothing better or greater than that either in this life or in the age to
come.
Archpriest Andrew Lemeshonok
CONVERSATION