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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ON THE SOUL'S THIRST FOR GOD
"My soul is athirst for God, the strong, the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?" (Psalm 41:42)
As we continue our forty-day Lenten journey to the Holy Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we, as Orthodox Christians, prepare for this Theophany through spiritual ascesis i.e., prayer, fasting, repentance, and adhering to the Divine commandments of God.
Our Creator guides with a marvelous compassion those who give themselves over to His Holy Will and His care. He inspires those who believe in Him to be attentive to their souls and seek His grace to cleanse, heal, and save it.
When even a spark of love for God is lit in the heart of a person, let him not quench it but leave it to burn, and he will see a marvel. That spark will flare up into a torch of unseen fire, and the light and heat from it will be very great. In the light of his love for God, a person will feel himself/herself in this world at a thick darkness, and in the heat he will feel an unquenchable thirst-- the thirst for God, to be near Him and see Him. This thirst is likened by king and Prophet David, the lover of God, to the thirst of a hart (deer) for the watersprings: "My soul is a thirst for God, the strong, the Living God." Are we not surrounded by infirmity? Does not everything around us quickly change to corruption? We snatch at shadows, and embrace corpses. We pray today for tomorrow's filth with silver and gold, and sometimes with our honor and conscience and even with our lives. This is not love, but the foulness of vice. A great soul seeks an object worthy of love, an object not subject to the destruction, corruption and disintegration of the transitory body. Therefore King David, in his love for God, proclaims: "...the strong and Living God." Who is truly strong and living but God." God has endowed His Angels and Saints with strength and life, and it is all of Him and from Him. "When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?" Here is the irresistible yearning of True love (agape) for God. Let all those be ashamed who say that they believe in God and love God, while the very thought of death, of departing from this world, puts them in a frenzy.
O Lord Our God, Thou Holy, Strong, and Living God. Thou Fount of strength and of life--illumine us and inflame us with love for Thee. To thee be glory and praise forever. Amen. (Source: The Prologue from Ochrid)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" - Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
he sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George