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.
http://www.lucascleophas.nl/?p=3203
“Christ himself is joy. He is a joy that transforms you into a different person. It is a spiritual madness, but in Christ. This spiritual wine inebriates you like pure unadulterated wine. As David says, You have anointed my head with oil and your cup intoxicates me most mightily. Spiritual wine is unmixed, unadulterated, exceedingly strong, and when you drink it, it makes you drunk. This divine intoxication is a gift of God that is given to the pure in heart.
Fast as much as you can, make as many prostrations as you can, attend as many vigils as you like, but be joyful. Have Christ’s joy. It is the joy that lasts forever, that brings eternal happiness. It is the joy of our Lord that gives assured serenity, serene delight and full happiness. All-joyful joy that lasts forever, that surpasses every joy. Christ desires and delights in scattering joy, in enriching his faithful with joy. I pray that your joy may be full.
This is what our religion is. This is the direction we must take. Christ is Paradise, my children. What is Paradise? It is Christ. Paradise begins here and now. It is exactly the same: those who experience Christ here on earth, experience Paradise. That’s the way it is, just as I tell you. This is right, it’s true, believe me! Our task is to attempt to find a way to enter into the light of Christ. The point is not to observe all the outward forms. The essence of the matter is for us to be with Christ; for our soul to wake up and love Christ and become holy. To abandon herself to divine eros.” p. 96
Elder Porphyrios’s “Wounded by Love” is a gift, a hymn of one life’s insight into the life in Christ. The depth of the Elder’s love offers almost as much of value on first reading as on return visits for those whose spirit is oriented to his words. For he seems to capture the intangible either by his proximity to our time and lives, or by his character.
“The soul of the Christian needs to be refined and sensitive, to have sensibility and wings, to be constantly in flight and to live in dreams, to fly through infinity, among the stars, amidst the greatness of God, amid silence.
Whoever wants to become a Christian must first become a poet. That’s what it is! You must suffer. You must love and suffer – suffer for the one you love. Love makes effort for the loved one. She runs all through the night; she stays awake; she stains her feet with blood in order to meet her beloved. She makes sacrifices and disregards all impediments, threats and difficulties for the sake of the loved one. Love towards Christ is something even higher, infinitely higher.” p. 107
The Elder quotes both Matthew and Ignatius Brianchaninov’s “On the Prayer of Jesus” on what this suffering amounts to:
“Every physical and spiritual task which does not involve pain, toil and trouble never bears fruit for the person who engages in it, for the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by violence and the violent lay hold of it - ‘violence’ here meaning the laborious exercise of the body in everything.’ p 108
As he puts it, “When you love Christ, you exert yourself, but in blessed exertions. You suffer, but with joy.” No duress, no protest, no rebellion. “Exertion for Christ, true desire for Christ, is love, sacrifice and dissolution of self.”
The Elder’s thrust turns towards how this love might be expressed in prayer. I liked his admonitions on how to pray, summed up neatly in his chapter heading: “On Prayer: Pray to God with fervor and love in a calm state of mind, with meekness and gentleness, without forcing yourself.” And he renders the prayer of the priest recited secretly in the Divine Liturgy:
“Shine in our hearts, O loving master, the pure light of your divine knowledge and open the eyes of our mind to understand the proclamations of your Gospel. Instill within us fear of your blessed commandments, so that trampling down all fleshly desires we may lead a spiritual life, thinking and doing everything with a view to pleasing you. For you are the illumination of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and to you we ascribe glory, along with your Father who is without beginning and your all holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and forever and unto the ages of ages.”
As someone in the Western Rite, I’ve known this prayer mostly through the wonderful podcasts of Dr. Jeannie Constantinou whose “Search the Scriptures” on Ancient Faith Radio are as good as they are long. And I add it here not because it is “new” to anyone, but simply to not lose track of it. A great prayer for beginning!
And yet the Elder’s emphasis on “posture” expressed through the tone of the voice (soothing as to a little child), through the purity and selflessness of attitude, and avoiding delusion is something I could read over and over again. He repeats over and over: “Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” and places great emphasis on training the heart to turn to Christ. I think it is here that his monastic formation mixes most potently with his pastoral experience. And there seems to be much that may be gained by putting his words into action to rekindle the heart’s love for Christ. As he brings out the little episodes and responses where we can encounter Christ and turn to him in love over and over again. His whole manner seems to anticipate where our initial responses might take us, and so he offers instead “tools” to redirect our lives back toward the Kingdom at the outset. So though you may not find reading as joyful as St. Isaac, I wouldn’t wonder that his insight might lead you there all the same.
And though I’m not through with the Elder just yet and may post more later, I highly recommend his writing for study, reflection, and experience. It’s not easy to come by – I think it was a little on the pricey side, but it is beautifully written, wonderfully annotated with each scriptural quote italicized and referenced, and a great resource.
