My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Ony True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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SIN (Αμαρτία)
We are created for God, and only in Him do we find the paramount bliss for which our heart is constantly yearning. Nothing other than God can make our souls happy! Give a man everything which he desires. He will enjoy it for a while, but afterward, he will become indifferent to it, because he feels that something else, much more elevated, is missing. Is it not in that way that the child, too, enjoys every new toy until it grows hungry? Then it abandons the toy and looks for food. A certain inextinguishable inner hunger for truth, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit (cf. Romans 14:17) torments our soul and does not give us peace, even among the best pleasures of life and among the most enviable achievements in the world.
The blessed hunger is a hunger for God. Blessed Augustine is right in his Confessions before God: "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in Thee."
The only guest who can make our soul happy is God. And if God is our paramount bliss, it is clear that that which obstructs the way to God must be the greatest of evil for us. Such an evil is sin (Αμαρτία).
It is in vain that some unenlightened people seek this greatest evil for man somewhere else, rather than in sin. Some consider disease to be the greatest evil, others--poverty, and other--death. But neither disease, nor poverty, nor death, nor any other earthly disaster can be such a great evil for us as sin is. These earthly misfortunes do not separate us from God if we are seeking Him sincerely, but, on the contrary, they bring us closer to Him...
"Disease is not the greatest evil for man, because the disease of the body endured with humility, faith, and patience can cure the soul sick with sin and bring it closer to God--the greatest good for man.
And death is not frightening for the believer, because through it, as through a door, one goes to the beloved and loving God Who hath prepared for them that love Him that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man (cf. I Corinthians 2:9).
But sin is the most wretched poverty of the heart--poverty blocking the treasure of grace. Sin is a deadly sickness of the soul, a sickness which deprives us both of the joys of earth and the joys of heaven. Sin is a terrible and most lamentable spiritual death which separates us eternally from the joy of the heavenly inhabitants in Paradise and buries us in the darkness of hell.
There is no greater evil for man than sin. It destroys both body and soul. It makes both this life and eternal life bitter. It causes discord in families, quarrels among neighbors and disagreements among relatives. It starts the fire of malice among people. It makes the soul proud and embittered. It poisons the heart with envy. It drives out holy feelings from the breast and invites the demons to settle there. It separates us from God. It extinguishes everything bright in our hearts. It teaches us to lie, to be gluttonous, and to be selfish and greedy. It makes us slander and judge our neighbors. It incites our hand to steal. It fills us with anger and rage. It whispers to us to seek revenge. It commits all outrage, debaucheries, and crimes. It causes all disease, suffering, injustice, violence, bloodshed, and war. It has filled the souls of all of us with an unbearable spiritual stench. It pours this stench into the relationships among us.
Have you asked yourself why is it so stifling in the world? Why is it hard to live? Why can we not put up with each other? The answer is: because sin has poisoned the atmosphere of life. We are all sick with sin. And if untreated body wounds emit an intolerable stench, how much more terrible is the stench of sin!
Just as the diseases of the body can be external (visible) and internal (hidden) so, the sins, as diseases of the soul, can be visible and invisible. We often comfort ourselves with the fact that we can hide the sinful wounds of our soul from the eyes of those around us. We pass for good and respectable people in their eyes. But we cannot hide anything from God. His eyes are brighter than the sun and penetrate everywhere. If we could take pictures of, or, with the help of some spiritual x-rays, see the hidden spiritual condition of each of us or of the whole of mankind as God sees it, we would be terrified!
Sin is an infinite evil because it is an insult to the infinite God.The Lord has commanded us not to sin. But we sin, and thus we insult the infinite greatness of the Creator. (Source: The Forgotten Medicine. The Mystery of Repentance by Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev)
(To be continued)
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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),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George