Temporal
Translation from Bulgarian
(scroll down for original)
(scroll down for original)
269
THE MAIN AND ULTIMATE GOAL
– AND THE CONTENT – OF
OUR TEMPORARY LIFE
ON EARTH
– 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]
