My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.
A SONG OF REPENTANCE: THE GREAT CANON OF SAINT ANDREW OF CRETE (Part IV)
[SOURCE: The Monastery of Axion Estin]
Prior to hearing Prophet Nathan's message David's mind did not waver. As soon as he saw Bathsheba, he forgot God, seduced her. Then he started to worry how he could get away from the trouble that might arise when other learned what he had done. When his first efforts at a cover-up failed, he arranged for the woman's husband to be murdered. Safeguarding, his reputation filled his mind. For him to repent, something outside these thoughts had to burst in on his darkened mind because David's eyes could not be opened of themselves; God had to intervene. God, unlike David, wanted their close friendship to live again. The wellspring of repentance is God actively seeking out the sinner and helping them change their mind (metanoia), heart, and therefore their path.
God's messenger, the Prophet Nathan, was skilful in the way he approached David. He came to the king's court ostensibly to complain about the injustice some rich man had done to a poor neighbor. Prophet Nathan claimed this rich man had refused to kill any of his own flock to feed a suddenly arrived guest, and instead stole the lone ewe a poor neighbor owned and loved so much. A king in Israel is anointed to defend the poor against the rich. When he does so a king is doing what God named him to do. Prophet Nathan aroused this still uncorrupted side of David's mind; and so the king with indignation asks: "Who is that man?"
Prophet Nathan's abrupt reply: "You are the man", brings David back to himself; and he was able to speak to God again and say:
"Against Thee alone have I sinned; And I have done evil before Thee" (Psalm 50[51]: 4).
David now knows his heart has for a long time been turned away from God. He had settled into adultery and murder. This turn of mind makes him worthless; he is just one more man fleeing from God. That is why he can say, "Against Thee alone have I sinned".
Taking Bathsheba and killing her husband are indeed sins against them, but by cheating them David broke the Commandments of God and robed himself of his right to life. The parallelism between Prophet Nathan's words and David's deeds was so close that David's ears were immediately opened. He saw how he was misguided and so pleaded for mercy. This is the true meaning of repentance.
Before his sin David of course knew the Commandments, and was consequently, on one level, aware that adultery and murder were wrong. That knowledge, however, existed in a separate part of his mind than the operative part absorbed in Bathsheba's beauty. In this sense, Saint Andrew of Crete expects us to think of repentance as an awakening to the realization that we have turned from the path of life established by God because of our corrupt choices and actions.
Without concern for what God wants from us, our life is trivial and has no true goal. But our desire to please Him joins us to the immensity of God's activities and purposes for His creation. The first of these is His merciful and unexplainable decision to bring the cosmos and us, out of nothingness into existence.
Inseparable from this mysterious kindness, is His equally unfathomable desire to share His own Divine life with us, to communicate intimately with us. He had no intention of creating us and then forgetting us. His coming to talk with Adam in the coolness of the afternoon is as genuine a fact as his creating us. He wants to share his life with us and asks that we share freely ours with him. We know this marvel and feel guilty because we have not consistently tried to keep pace with Him in our daily life.
Saint Andrew of Crete knows that his life and all of humanity's life are encompassed in God's Divine plan. Astounding as it sounds, we are called to glory, to be with God. This fullness is already present among us; Christ by His death and Resurrection has outdone evil and death. It is a mistake to think of the world and not see the evidence of God's presence in it and therefore rejoice in it. The Kingdom of God is, as Christ's says, within us. It shines forth in the faith of millions living and dead (asleep in Christ) who display the Truth of what He says.
Saint Andrew of Crete writes his poem because this uniquely worthwhile link between us and the Loving God is dear to Him. We are to one degree or another separated from God when we fail to see God's gift of life to us. Stories in the Old and New Testament spur Saint Andrew on the ask pardon for the known and unknown moments in his life when he forgot to lovingly share his life with His Maker.
In this poem, written at a time close to the day he will face judgment, he is once more going over the record of things God has told us about Himself and what He wants from us. Saint Andrew now wants to hear any messages God has sent him and that selfishness may have driven him to ignore.
This is the purpose underlying the long reviews Saint Andrew makes of his life, in the Great Canon. He is begging God to show him sides of himself that make him unable to be a man whose whole heart and mind are fixed on loving God above all things, and to love and serve his neighbor as himself. The Great Canon is an effort to reach that purity of heart. It is a plea for full repentance.
We will not learn of Saint Andrew's past failings in any detail nor will we be privy to new discoveries he makes. He is talking to God who already knows what Saint Andrew has to say and is waiting to hear the admissions it will be good for His disciple to make.
If we want to understand the Great Canon we must remember the already mentioned fact that it is a conversation between lovers. Saint Andrew does not want to disappoint Christ. Every genuine lover thinks he or she is not worthy of being loved. Each of us almost surely has just reason to suspect his or her words and actions have not always been what they should have been. These memories, though heavy, will not erase the certitude that Christ unfailingly loves each of us and is calling us to repair our past by living with Him. Because of our failures, feelings of guilt haunt us. Because of our blindness in the past we have reason to fear other impairments may be darkening our sight. True lovers unrelentingly struggle for purification. Saint Andrew of Crete is asking Christ to make him now fit for their imminent meeting.
(To be continued)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George