The Encounter
If you haven’t had
an encounter with God, you might have wasted your day.
We’ve got to be looking for Him and
finding Him throughout the day in prayer, in our actions, and in
conversations with other people. It is that encounter that shapes the utmost
reality called life.
It is only our
encounter with God that reveals and unveils the profound meanings of
everything that we come in contact with. First of all, this encounters
opens the depth within our souls. It is God’s calling that our hearts respond
to. Our hearts are like oceans that hide unknown depths. Only if we dive deep
into our own souls, we can discover God.
“Find the door of
your own heart, and you shall see that it is the door that leads to the Kingdom
of Heaven” (Saint John Chrysostom).
The Lord descends to the bottom of our
souls, penetrates their darkest and deepest layers, and enlightens
them with the light of his eternal love — and darkness disappears.
You haven’t wasted
your day if you live and let other people live. If you acknowledge
the right of the Other to exist. If you
don’t distort the Other person’s words, if you don’t libel nor betray
the Other, if you aren’t jealous of them. If you are courageous
enough to shift the focus of the Universe from yourself to the Other.
You will have to
die, to deny yourself, to overgrow your selfishness if you want to achieve it.
This growth is painful but it’s the only way that you can give place to the
Other with all his or her demands and his or her world.
Only if we break
free from ourselves and our passions, will we be able to perceive the light
that radiates from other people and the presence of God in them.
We should learn to
hear the Other and to yield to his words, to accept the silence and the beauty
of his soul and see the whole world in that person. We’ve got to learn from
others, to appreciate and thank them, to enjoy mutual creative work and joint
efforts. We should allow the Other to be better than we are and not to
depreciate his efforts and actions.
Metropolitan
Anthony of Sourozh wrote the following: “Our every encounter with humans and
with God does not only call for special conditions. When we seek God, we have
to love humans; when we interact with humans, we have to love
God.”
Without daily
witness, our faith is futile.
God is Love, and His
sacrifice on the Cross is the triumph of love. Therefore, the power of His
Church and the sacrifice of her ministry also consists of love.
Nothing can explain
the martyrs’ attitude to their ordeals and the apostles’ attitude to their
lives, filled with dissemination of the faith in Christ, like genuine love.
What else, except
love, can explain the suffering that the apostles had to endure while preaching
the Gospel?
This is vividly
pointed out by Apostle Paul who writes to the Christians of Corinth,
“Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are
buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; and labour, working with our own
hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed,
we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of
all things unto this day.” (1 Cor. 4:11–13).
If the apostles
hadn’t known what they endured that suffering for, would’ve they put their
lives at stake?
The virtue of the
holy apostles lies not only in their preaching but first of all in their
witness.
One can transfer
another person’s idea only if he is inspired and captivated by the idea.
The apostles
renounced everything in the world for Jesus’s sake. He became the most valuable
and the inalienable treasure for them. He filled their whole lives with
Himself.
We must remember
that if we deny God, we will deny the eternal life, too. Our steadfast
adherence to the faith and the Church of Christ is the pledge of our salvation.
Salvation is possible only if we profess Christ and bear our witness.
Our witness
consists not only of mere words but of our actions, too.
Our witness occurs
on every day that God gives us.
Metropolitan
Anthony (Pakanic)
Translated
by The Catalog of Good Deeds
CONVERSATION