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.
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PURIFICATION OF THE HEART
By Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol, Cyprus
"Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Corinthians 7:1).
Then the Apostle Paul speaks about the sorrows that the Corinthians had to endure. This is very useful for us to hear today, because thereby we see that the first Christians also faced life's hardships, temptations, and sins, that their life was not angelic. However, it is important that they perceived them through a spiritual prism: through repentance, through the labor of self-correction.
In the previous chapter, the Apostle Paul says that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that God lives in man. As our body is such a sanctuary, we must take care not to pollute the temple of God, as, for example, we treat any church building: We consider it a sacred place, and we do not even think of committing any vile act there. It should be the same with our body, our soul, and our entire existence which is the temple of God. "For you are the temple of the living God" (1 Corinthians 6:16), says the holy Apostle. The Lord calls us to reject sin, evil, and every temptation, to truly become the people of God, so "The Lord Almighty would become our Father, and we His sons and daughters" (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:18).
Thus, the beginning of the seventh chapter says: "Having therefore these promises..." He Who promises is the Lord Himself. He promises that He will be our Father, and we His children when we renounce sin an everything that contaminates our existence. And if God promises something, He never lies. The Lord's promises are fulfilled; He is unlike us, who usually promise the moon and then cannot fulfill even half of it. Thus, the spiritual struggle we perform has the prospect of eternal life.
Receiving a promise from the Lord, we cannot always fully comprehend it. Usually we expect something from God that fits into the framework of our perception and understanding. However, everything that we receive from God is in reality much larger and broader that we can imagine. The promises of God work as a counterbalance. On one side of the scale: the weight of our spiritual labors, patience, expectation--everybody has something; and on the other side: the promises of God. The result is not just a balance, but the promises of God neutralize these hardships of our lives. The Lord is incomprehensible. It is impossible to truly understand and embrace anything that we receive from God. The Lord is rich. He is not like us, who have our own measures, our own limitations. God is generous in mercy; the love of God is boundless, and no single creature can fully contain it. A man who feels the love of God struggles to describe it, because it is indescribable.
The holy Apostles and the holy Fathers always tell us that if we endure a certain trial for the sake of the love of Christ, then we should understand that the reward of Christ will be much greater. We should strive to receive this reward from the Lord and have eternal communion with Him. Yes, perhaps it may look self-serving that we are thirsting for a reward, but we are weak people after all, and we simply need to see the prospect of our actions--such is our nature.
The prospect of eternal life is the promise given us by God. Therefore, when difficult times come in our lives, we need to remember the promises of God; we have to reflect upon our ascent to the Heavenly Kingdom, that our life does not end with the passing of these few years that we are allotted to live here on Earth, but our life will continue in the Eternal Kingdom. Thus, we will be able to overcome any difficulty we face, whether on a personal level, a social level, or a global level, as, for example, the danger from the encroachment of enemies on our security and peace of mind. Of course, we are people, and it is intrinsic within us to worry for our lives. But who can guarantee our safety? Who can tell us with certainty that we will not catch the coronavirus? Only God can give this world security.
When a person gives his life over to God and says, "God's will be done in all things," then he truly begins to feel peace of soul. This is what our ancestors said, and they were peaceful people. They always said: "The Lord's will be done," and believed what they said. At the same time, they were ready to endure whatever happened in their lives, having faith that the Lord sees our entire life. And even if death comes, that is, the worst thing that can happen to a person, then it is not so terrible, because Christ has overcome it.
We experience the victory of Christ over death every day in the Church. Death is destroyed through the death of Jesus Christ. And if we have hope in the Resurrected Lord, then we overcome death, corruption, fears, insecurity, etc. Christ promised to ever be with us. He asks but one thing of us--to cleanse ourselves from sin. How can we do this?
Our cleansing, of course, is accomplished through ascetic and spiritual struggles that we all must perform: the struggle of purification from the passions, the struggle of fasting, prayer, spiritual reading, confession, participating in the Church Mysteries (Sacraments), alms (charity), through any spiritual labor within the power of any individual person. By our fallen nature, we all have our own weaknesses, and we cannot overcome all of our sins. Our salvation does not consist in a sinless experience, but in repentance. We must learn to repent of our sins, to ask forgiveness from God, from people, from ourselves for all those sins and weaknesses we have. Thus, through repentance and prayer we receive the grace of God, and repentance becomes the cause of a man's salvation.
In the end, it is not a sinless life that saves us (none of us lives our entire life without mistakes or without sins). And we will make mistakes and commit sins, all because of our weakness. Engaging in the ascetic struggle of battling with sin, we will realize that we are not able to cope with everything. And it is precisely when we feel our weakness, our inability to cope with sin, that we need to sincerely repent. Repentance is a sign of humility. A humble person is ever repenting, but a proud person--never, because he has a very high idea of himself and does not feel the need to repent before God.
"...There are bodily sins, that is, those committed by the body, which we all know well and with which we fight. But the whole man is saved. For example, we say that we fast, that we abstain from food. Such a bodily fast undoubtedly has a beneficial effect on our soul as well, because man is the unity of soul and body. It is one thing to eat a light soup, and another to eat a shish kebab. There is a difference. In the same way, there is a difference between a man who fasts and a man who does not fast, between a man who is vigilant and prays and a man who sleeps ten hours. Every movement of the soul or body has an effect on the other--for example, remembrance of wrongs, or holding a grudge. It is a spiritual passion, but it also affects our body. Remembrance of wrongs is reflected on the whole body of a man, on his behavior, his appearance. But the appearance of a pure, virtuous person is completely different, his piety is imprinted on his face. Look at the Saints, how beautiful their faces are.
"...If you look at the face of Christians who are spiritually laboring, you will see some special internal peace in them. A proud, cunning, evil, money-loving man has a completely different look. Of course, we should not judge someone by his appearance, but quite often our face broadcasts the whole truth about us.
When man labors spiritually, his whole being is sanctified, both soul and body, because man is a psychosomatic (soul and body) unity. We cannot divide a person and say here is where his soul ends and his body begins. No, take bread for an example. To make bread, you have to mix water and flour and knead the dough. When we have baked the bread, we cannot distinguish the water and the flour anymore. It is already one whole. The same is true of the human body and soul. As long as a man is alive, he is an inseparable unity of soul and body; therefore death is the enemy of mankind, inasmuch as it destroys this unity. The body dies, and the soul departs for where souls live. But Christ will abolish death and man will rise again. Only the body will resurrect because the soul does not die. The body will become incorrupt, like the body of Christ after His Resurrection. Man will regain his psychosomatic unity.
Thus, the pollution of the soul and body is any sin committed by the body or soul. Therefore, let us labor with fear of God for the sanctification of our souls and bodies. Holiness is a spiritual ascetic struggle. Everything that a man thinks he is doing for God, he is actually doing for himself...We labor in order to be with Christ. We strive to purify ourselves in order to become the very place where the Lord can come and abide. We need only to perform all these spiritual and ascetic struggles with fear of God, in order to have inner purity.
What does "with fear of God" mean? We often say this in church, or we say it about someone, that this or that man has the fear of God. We have to understand that this fear of God has nothing in common with our psychological fear, when, for example, we fear dogs, cats, airplanes, the coronavirus. We do not fear like that. When our Church calls, "in the fear of God, with faith, and love draw near..." it does not mean that we should be immediately seized by fear, by worrying, and begin to quake with horror. Instead it means that we feel reverence, holy awe, that is, the feeling that God is Holy, that He is our Father, that He loves us, that He is the most sacred and precious thing in the world. And when a man feels awe, love, and reverence in his heart, all of this together is the fear of God.
The fear of God is essential to building our relationship with God. This is the most important work of our life. How should we build this relationship? Through keeping the Commandments of God, through repentance for our sins and contrition for what we have done, through daily spiritual and ascetic struggle, and through participating in the Holy Mysteries (Sacraments) of the Church, which are necessary elements of the life in Christ. Of course, all of this should happen with every person to the best of his/her ability. And so, thus laboring in the fear of God, we acquire Divine grace in our hearts." (Source: Orthodox Heritage)
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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 (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George