And [next] We Wonder Why We Do Not Feel God’s Proximity, Why We Lose the Sense of His Living Presence

Temporal

 

Translation from Bulgarian
(scroll down for original)

269 

THE MAIN AND ULTIMATE GOAL
– AND THE CONTENT – OF
OUR TEMPORARY LIFE
ON EARTH

A sermon by Fr. Nicholas, Sofia, cath. Church “Assumption”, Sofia, Bulgaria

June 16, 2013 Sunday 7th after Pascha

On Sunday after the Ascension and before Pentecost, the Church has established for us to hear again God's [highest] Wisdom – of God the Word: why are we in the world; what is the point and the goal of man’s life. In his first-hierarch’s prayer the Saviour says: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” [John. 17:3]. This most important, quintessential issue of our existence – namely, on true life’s content, which is life in eternity and which starts from our temporary life on earth, is being, today, widely ignored or taken with surprising indifference and lack of interest by contemporary mankind. Another variant of rendering it essentially meaningless – these are the vague, groundless and frivolous human presumptions and speculations about immortality that are the fruit of imagination and fantasies of man’s mind – darkened by the isolation from God, as well as [fruit of] demonic suggestions. These fill up all the superstitions [vain beliefs, lit. in Bulgarian] and evil beliefs, as well as the deviations and distortions of the salvific God-revealing truth that is kept in fullness only within the Orthodox Church, the head of which is the God-man Jesus Christ.

Knowledge of the True God, which is life eternal – this is the main and ultimate goal and content of our temporary life on earth, which is a preparation for the transition into life eternal. God has ordained as a mandatory and indispensible prerequisite for obtaining the inexpressible bliss from the adoption by God and living together with our Creator in the immeasurable eternity, not only our desire for this but also labors and zeal to do away with sin. These are the efforts of the self-denial of our sinful nature, of the delights and comforts of the temporary life, of the fight with vanity and pride, through which we may come closer to Him and get to know Him, at that – in the not so long decades of our life here on the earth. Subservient to the way to life in eternity, to starting to live together with the Lord, should be all our earthly existence, but its essence represents the cleansing of the heart from passions and the enlightenment of the mind – its turning into a dwelling place of God’s truth, our starting to live with God in the heart. In the road of knowing God, through reviving the subtle heart flare, coming from the purification of the heart, one realizes how important is the growing into the habit and the in-building of a sustainable and unchangeable habit – to stray away and to isolate oneself from sin, to guard oneself against the penetration of temptations therein. From experience one is convinced that in addition to God’s comfort, only there, in the heart, one can most clearly hear and understand the voice of God which guides and strengthens one as to how to think and act, [which] gives him the necessary useful understanding of God’s ways. It is exactly that understandable and VISIBLE TO THE SOUL God’s presence, and in-dwelling in the heart that represent the beginning of the one new to it, of the real life, which goes on after the death of the body, in the blissful eternity. This is “filling up with all the fullness of God ... Christ’s dwelling in the hearts” [cf. Ephes. 3:19, 17] which Ap. Paul wrote of. One sees that even if they are not to the taste of one’s natural predispositions and desires, the listening in to and the living up to these suggestions, to the voice of the purified and enlightened conscience will always bring bright comfort from the true peace and rest for the soul. Only through one’s marriage to and growing together the heart’s taste into them one may come to know the truth and the pure joy that God grants to those who live with Him – by His commandments, of those who obey His will. In this exactly lies the fulfillment of the God-promised new covenant – with the new Israel, with the Christians, with the spoken by the prophet: “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people” [Heb. 8:10] 

St. Macarius the Great Homily II the sin that dwelleth in us – “Put off the old man”

T A L M A C H
so much and simple

HOMILY II

Concerning the kingdom of darkness, that is, of sin, and that God alone is able to take away sin from us, and to deliver us out of the bondage of the evil prince.

          1. THE kingdom of darkness, the evil prince, having taken men captive at the beginning, enveloped and clothed the soul in the power of darkness, as a man might clothe another. “And that they may make him king, and clothe him with royal garments, so that from head to foot he may wear royal apparel.”[1] In this manner the evil prince clothed the soul and all its substance with sin. He defiled it all, and brought it all into captivity to his kingdom, leaving not one member of it free from him – not the thoughts, not the understanding, not the body; he clothed it all with the purple of darkness. For as it is the body that suffers, not one part or member of it, but the whole is liable to suffer together, so the whole soul suffered the passions of un-happiness and sin. The evil one clothed the whole soul, which is the indispensable part or member of man, with his own unhappiness, which is sin, and thus the body became liable to suffering and decay.