Christ is everything“IF God be for us, who can be against us?
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” [Rom.8: 31, 35, 38-39].
Christ is new life.
How can I say that? Christ is everything!
He is Joy, He is Life, He is Light, the True Light, which makes a man rejoice, gives him wings, makes him understand everything, understand everyone, He makes him feel pain for everyone, makes him want to have everyone together with Him, He makes him want everyone to be at Christ’s side.
When we find a treasure of any kind, we do not want to speak of it at all.
But the Christian, when he finds Christ, when he turns to Christ, when Christ has buried himself in his little soul and he [the Christian] feels it, he wants to shout out and tell it everywhere, he wants to talk about Christ, what Christ is.
You love Christ, and there is nothing you would rather have than His Love.
Christ is everything, He is the Source of Life, He is the summit of all that is desirable, He is everything. Everything that is beautiful is to be found in Christ.
And far off from Christ, tribulation, melancholy, anxiety, depression, persistent memories of the traumas of life, of the hours of pressure, struggle.
All those things of our life we live out there. And we go here and we go there, and nothing, and nowhere, brings rest to us.Where we find Christ, as if in a cave [i.e. like at the mountain of Transfiguration ], we sit down and we fear to leave, in case we lose Christ.
Read, and you’ll see. Ascetics, who came to know Christ, did not want to leave that cave, or to go out and do anything else: they wanted to be there, where they felt Christ together with them.Our prayer
Pray for the Church, for the world, for everyone.
The whole of Christendom is contained in prayer.
If we pray only for ourselves, that conceals self-interest.
But when you pray for the Church, you are also embraced within the Church.
In the Church is Christ, united with the Church and with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity and the Church are one.
Your desire must be for this: for the world to be sanctified and for everything to belong to Christ.
Then you enter into the Church and you live in the joy of Paradise.
You live with God, because the whole fullness of divinity dwells in the Church.
Pray for others more than for yourself. Say, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me“, and you will always have others in mind.
We are all children of the same Father; we are all one.
And so, when we pray for others, we say “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”, and not, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on them”.
In this way, we make them one with ourselves.
Let us love Christ.
Then the name of Christ will burst forth from within us with impellent desire, with fervor, with Divine eros.
We will shout His name secretly, without speaking words.
Let us stand before God in adoration, humbly, and in the footsteps of Christ,
- that Christ may free us from every trace of our fallen nature.
Let us ask for tears to be given to us before prayer.
But be careful! Do not let your right hand know what the left is doing [Matth.6: 3].
Pray with contrition: “Am I worthy for You to give such Grace, O Christ“?
And then these tears become tears of gratitude.
I am deeply moved; I have not done the will of God, but I ask for His mercy.
Pray to God with love and yearning, in tranquility,with meekness, gently and without forcing yourself.
And when you repeat the prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me“, [or the shortest way during your work; "Kyrië eleison",] say it slowly, humbly, gently and with Divine love.
Pronounce the name of Christ with sweetness.
Say the words one at a time: “Lord…Jesus…Christ…have mercy on me“, smoothly, tenderly, affectionately, silently, secretly mystically, but with exaltation, with longing, with passion, without tension, force or unbecoming emphasis, without compulsion and pressure.
In the way a mother speaks to the child she loves:
“my little boy…my darling girl…my little Johnny…my wee Mary”!
With longing. Yes, longing. That’s the whole secret.
Here the heart is speaking: “My little child, my joy“! “My Lord, my Jesus, my Jesus, my Jesus“!
“What you have in your heart and in your mind, that is what you express with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” [Luc.10: 27].
No need to add anything to this!
Elder Porphyrios, [Πορφύριος], On Prayer – ‘Wounded by Love’.
Blessed Elder Porphyrios [Bairaktaris] the Kapsokalyvite (1906-1991) was an Athonite hieromonk known for his gifts of spiritual discernment.
His father had been a cantor, who sang for Saint Nektarios of Aegina.Baptised Evangelos, he was later tonsured with his monastic name of Nikitas when in his mid teens.
He served in the skete of Kafsokalyvia, in the Cell of Saint George, until ill health forced him home.
He was unexpectedly elevated to the priesthood at the age of 21 by Porphyrios III, Archbishop of Mount Sinai and Raithu.
With the outbreak of World War II he became a hospital chaplain in Athens, in which post he continued for three decades [1940-1970].
His later years were devoted to the construction of the Holy Convent of the Transfiguration of the Saviour.
After 1984 he returned to Mount Athos, occupying the same cell which he had earlier in life been forced to abandon.
