It is very difficult to express what is meant by ‘Take up thy cross and follow me’. When we choose Christ, we must bear in mind that it means choosing the love of the Father, the love of Christ, the love of the Holy Spirit in this suffering world.
It is because ‘God is love’ that one becomes a Christian, and not because it facilitates an earthly career. In Christian life we are only happy because of Christ, because of our awareness that He is the truth, and not for any other reason.
One day, a man who was visiting Mount Athos asked several wise elders the following question: ‘What is the most important thing in your life?’ Each time he was answered like this: ‘It is divine love; to love God and to love one’s neighbor’. He said: ‘I don’t have love, either for prayer, or for God, or for other people. What must I do?’ And then he decided by himself: I will act as if I had this love’. Thirty years later, the Holy Spirit gave him the grace of love.
When we are going in spirit towards the absolute Being, the way appears infinitely long to us. God is like a polar star. How can we reach this luminary, which seems light years away? And suddenly, we discover that this very long way can be shortened, that the Lord can be present very close to us and say: ‘O foolish hearts, and slow to understand and believe!’
One cannot live as a Christian without inspiration. If an artist, a true one, lives day and night with the images of his art, then we Christians should be still more attentive. We must go further than artists in our efforts to live according to the spirit of the Gospel.
The most important thing now is that God inspire your struggle for salvation. When inspiration is given, all of life is filled with light and joy. One’s attention is no longer absorbed by details. We cannot deify ourselves by our own ascetic effort. Deification is brought about by God’s dwelling in us, and not by our own capacities.
The highest goal of man – to become bearer of the divine life which is without beginning and without end – presupposes a total freedom. Yet daily life shows us that, from lack of knowledge and understanding, the world lives out an endless tragedy. People who are ignorant of God are in authority, and they act with power; millions of humans are suffering because of their absurd and inescapable situation. Wise use of the divine gift of freedom is indeed inseparable from the knowledge of the Eternal; yet we are in the darkness of ignorance. Nonetheless, the Church continues to preach the necessity of this complete freedom. For if we are predetermined in one way or another, we do not really exist; we will not be able to say, like Christ, ‘I am.’
How to find a way out of the problems of daily living? How must we build our salvation? Without the divine gift of freedom we do not exist, and yet this freedom is beyond us. It is necessary, but we can neither understand it nor bear it. How to live, then?
In order not to lose the blessing that God has given you, struggle to assimilate every inspiring thought and to reject every thought which brings you death.
~Adapted from Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Words of Life, translated from the French by Sister Magdalen (Stavropegic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Essex)
