We must have the same consciousness as Christ, who bears in Himself the whole world; this is what makes for the universality of the human person. The word of Christ does not stop; it is without limits.
If, as we confess in the Creed, Christ is very God, the Savior of the universe, the Creator of the world, ‘by whom all things were made’, how can we bring our understanding of Him down to a question of nationality, place, epoch…? I do not know a Greek Christ, a Russian Christ, an English Christ, an Arab Christ… Christ, for me, is everything, the supra-cosmic Being.
In the Scriptures, it is often said that Christ died for the whole world, for the sins of the whole world. When we limit the person of Christ, when we bring Him down to the level of nationalities, we immediately lose everything and fall into darkness. Then the way is open for hatred between nations, for hostility between social groups.
Read Saint Silouan. For him, everyone has his role in the world: one is king, another patriarch, teacher, or even laborer. It is of no importance. Whether someone be a king or a simple laborer, it made no difference to Father Silouan. Someone who loves Christ, who assimilates and bears within himself the ‘feelings that were in Jesus Christ’, lives the world as one Adam, prays for the whole Adam. That is what true Christianity is.
Christ is infinite God. He was crucified not only for believers, but for every being, from Adam until the last man to be born of woman. To follow Christ means to suffer so that all humanity be healed and saved. It cannot be otherwise. To love our neighbor as ourselves, to live according to the commandments of Christ, will lead us to the garden of Gethsemane, where Christ prayed for the whole world.
‘Love thy neighbor as thyself. It was given to me to understand this commandment in the form of a gigantic tree, of cosmic dimensions, whose root is Adam. Myself, I am only a little leaf on a branch of this tree. But this tree is not foreign to me; it is the basis of my being. I belong to it. To pray for the whole world is to pray for this tree in its totality, with its milliards of leaves.
To follow Christ means to open oneself to the same consciousness as Christ, who bears in Himself the whole of humanity, the totality of the tree, without excluding a single leaf. If we acquire this consciousness, we will pray for all as for ourselves.
If we become, like Christ, bearers of all humanity and of God, then our “I” will be the image of the Absolute, perhaps on a microscopic scale, but truly the image of the Absolute.
We repent personally, but our passions are also those which dominate the whole world. Thus, what we live is not separated from cosmic life. Little by little, quite naturally, we begin to live our state as a reflection of the state of all humanity. We begin to live our life as through God’s eyes, in a universal way. Through our repentance, we do not only live our own individual drama; we live in ourselves the tragedy of all humanity, the drama of its history since the beginning of time.
~Adapted from Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Words of Life, translated from the French by Sister Magdalen (Stavropegic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Essex)
