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FOURTH
MEDITATION
He
that hateth Me, hateth My Father also. John 15:23
So, my dear friend, we have reached the halfway mark in our series:
we are halfway along the road on which we started together that first
Wednesday of Lenten Fast. On that occasion the call of Jesus resounded
for the first time in your ears, bent hungry for truth. You received it
and your soul, yearning for the absolute, followed it.
At that point I was alone, but I knew that my voice was not “one
crying in the wilderness,” for the words were those of Jesus. I knew
that the words with which I called you would penetrate your ears: “Prepare
ye the ways of the Lord; make straight His way into your hearts.”
And I was not mistaken. For look, how many we are today — a witness,
even if only within your hearts, to faith in Christ and to love for one
another.
Why have I been calling you, my friend, and why have I put my soul
into your hands, young person? Why have I believed in you to the point
of implicating you in my actions of faith, and even to the point of placing
my very life on the line for you?
Why? Because my spirit knew your soul even before you heard my
words or even before we set eyes on each other. I knew of your disquiet
and troubles, your unhappiness and suffering. I understood long ago that
your badness was but a shield against the world, and that your bravado
was but a defense for your wounds. For you are my friend. We are bound
together by a free friendship which no one and nothing can destroy. Our
freedom is guaranteed by Jesus Himself, and our love is founded upon the
Resurrected One Who said:
Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth
not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends, for all things
that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you (John 15:15).
Who has ever confessed such truths to you? You are surrounded on
all sides by an atmosphere of secrecy, as within a conspiracy devised
by “those above.” A selective system will prevent anything reaching
you other than that which subjugates you to a certain idea or imposed
concept. Where is your freedom to choose and where is your power of word?
Where is the exercise of that noble freedom given to you by God which
is the basis of your satisfaction in responding to history? Why then am
I amazed that you do not know that this freedom is, or how to use it?
Why should I be amazed that you know nothing of friendship or love, nor
to whom to give it nor how to preserve it?
Who has been your friend in this world, or who has given up their
soul for you? In every social group to which you belong, you are always
excluded by the fundamental arguments themselves which justify its existence
as a social phenomenon. Every exclusion based on these grounds puts you
in the position of a slave. It is a social and philosophical secret which
you are far from understanding. You are offered only the conclusion. Yet
if you are unfit to learn the road by which the conclusion came, how can
you be fit to know the conclusion itself? And if you are fit to know the
way, then why the mystery? Is someone afraid of your right to judge? or
of your freedom? or of your friendship? Could religion or faith be an
object of prohibition?
Slavery to ideas is as serious a form of slavery as any other.
Through His Church, Jesus offers you the deep mystery of His Divinity
and His friendship. You are no longer called a slave but a friend if you
discover the mystery of divine things.
You have avoided choosing Jesus as your friend for too long. Perhaps
you were afraid of the ocean of spiritual freedom into which you would
have to dive. But Jesus has chosen you to hear His voice. He did so a
long time ago: You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained
you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should
remain (John 15:16). The choice was made long ago, for Jesus
has always loved you, but now you have the choice to respond to His invitation.
In responding you are ordained to go and bear fruit that will remain.
To be a prophet of Christ in the world in which you live. To love
your neighbor as yourself and to make all men your friend. To proclaim
by every action this unique and limitless love which has raised man from
the level of a serf to that of a friend of God. To be the prophet of this
liberating love which delivers you from all constraint, returning to you
your integrity as you offer yourself to God.
The most humiliating bondage is that which forbids you any theological
flight, any attempt to transcend the immanent and its captivity. “You
are a slave of my will,” it seems to say to you, “and my will
forbids you to believe in anything other than what I direct you to believe.”
Why are you forbidden the right to leave the space in which you
are kept a prisoner of feelings and reason? Why is only that which belongs
to this dimension imposed upon you as reality and the rest dismissed and
decreed as fiction? And subsequently, why are you not directed to penetrate
this so-called fiction with your own knowledge and thus shatter it? Is
it that there lies somewhere the fear that this “fiction” is
more real than that which is imposed upon you as “reality?”
A philosophical or theological system, especially if it is a way
of life, cannot be destroyed from outside. From that point of view it
remains unassailable to its opponent. Phrases like “religion is the
opium of the people,” or “religion was created by the exploiting
classes,” cannot even raise a smile today. They are purely and simply
ignored.
Yet you, for you are young, are asked to take seriously the half-baked
arguments of the atheist bible (Hazlii) or the anti-catechism from Scinteia
Tineretulii* which hold fast only because of the prohibition preventing
you from responding to them. On the social level, freedom means the struggle
for ideas. But in Christ it means liberation from sin and death.
In our country atheism takes a forced course, becoming more and
more narrow. Its life springs from the authority of the state. Faith,
however, is on full wing, for it is a fact of life. Authoritarianism creates
bondage, life gives freedom.
I read in Contemporanul (November 11, 1977) an article entitled
“With atheists on religion.” The article contained declarations
by young people in an interview carried out by the magazine reporter.
Every investigation into religion is for us a source of disquiet and fear
because, according to officialdom, to be a believer is tantamount to betrayal
of one’s country. Nevertheless, in this interview the young people,
who were all Party members, replied according to their beliefs, and their
faith made them free. I suggest that you all read this article in Contemporanul
— the official literary organ of the materialist ideology of
the Romanian Communist Party. You will read there that the young people
are free from the bondage of theory. That would have made them hide their
true faith and declare formal statements about atheism. They overcame
their instinct of self-preservation and affirmed publicly and courageously
their faith and the freedom to choose for faith. They chose openly the
Church and Christ. All were young people like you, my friend, as good
and generous as you, as brave as you. They were our friends. As a consequence
some of you wrote them precious words of encouragement, through which
you wanted to tell them that they were not alone, that the best believe
as they do, and wish to express themselves as freely as they have done.
Friend, this is the eternal love of Christ. Our faith in Him binds
us together as One Body. Our common friendship binds us together, for
we are all Christ’s friends. Do not be afraid to affirm that you
are His friend. Do not be afraid to reject an atheist ideology which has
no other aim than to kill your soul as a metaphysical entity, or even
to cripple it within you.
Do not be afraid to affirm that our people has been Orthodox Christian
since its inception. And that 20 or 30 years of enforced atheism and imposed
materialist propaganda cannot stop our people’s aspiration after
the absolute.
Believe and love. Faith will make your free; love will unite you.
You will be free in union with Jesus, and you will abide in His love.
See how high you have soared, my friend. You are now a friend of
Christ! For this I love you, young person; for this I believe in you.
FIFTH
MEDITATION
Thou
art a priest forever after the order of Melchisadec.
Hebrews
5:6
Perhaps you have been asking yourself, my young friend, why I have
even been addressing you, and by what authority? What right do I have
to give this message which is disturbing you and obliging you to face
up to disturbing questions? Why have I come to confirm you in your own
misunderstood terror and to open up to you certain perspectives which
are both new and unexpected? Why do I also break down your fragile balance
of defenses?
Probably by uncovering for you the purity and innocence which you
did not recognize, I have made you even more vulnerable in this wicked
world. I have made you more open to suffering, and it is natural that
you should ask what is the purpose of suffering. Is it a finality, a blind
happening, a fate traced by the stars, a blinding ocean in which you swim
without hope of reaching any shore?
I speak to you in the name and authority of Christ and His Church,
in the name of the priesthood to which Christ called me, because nothing
in this world is an interplay of unconscious, arbitrary happenings. All
things stem from a cause and hold fast towards an end which stands outside
this world. The cause is God, the end is God. He is the Beginning and
the End, the Alpha and Omega.
But what is this world? What certainty does it offer us, what happiness
awaits us at the unknown corners of life, like comfort in misfortune?
I will not begin with death, nor life, nor with the beginning nor the
end; but with the given: that which happens to us every day.
Have you asked yourself, young person, what is your purpose in
the world and whether everything is reduced simply to that? If we were
born to be slaves of matter —and this is only a philosophical proposition
— then the end of your life is slavery. If your freedom is reduced
to need and logic — which in the last analysis is the same thing
— then your freedom is slavery. If all our knowledge is reduced to
a sterile and never-realized understanding of the laws of matter, our
knowledge is slavery. If your love is reduced to the struggle for existence,
and our sacrifice is for the perpetuating of the species, then these things
too are but slavery. And finally, if all our convictions spring from an
imposed, official doctrine, then they too are slavery. And in all this
series, young friend, where is the place for your soul?
You sense that there exists, away from all the materialism with
which you have been intoxicated, and far from the atheism which has been
imposed upon you like a violent ideology, something vaster, more authentic
and yet closer to you personally than all that which suffocates you in
this materialist bath. Your spirit within you propels you towards that
“something”, as towards a world only envisioned and suspected.
This world, like the blue sky glistening in the sun, sees its own
image through the grid of prohibitions which this society raises up to
you.
Know, friend, that neither an atheist ideology, nor the materialist
order, no matter how authoritatively it might be imposed upon you, is
in any state to raise up an absolutely impregnable wall against you and
the spiritual world. The soul cannot be made prisoner. This is a law which
the materialists refuse to recognize at their own peril. On the spiritual
level there is no captivity without hope.
Your teachers speak to you
of atheism and secretly go to church. Behold a crack through which the
golden light of the spiritual dimension reaches you. Your ideological
leaders thunder and lighten against religion, uttering the most foul curses,
yet at the moment of disaster they make the sign of the cross, asking
for God’s help — as, for example, during the earthquake of March
4, 1977. Behold another crack through which the soul escapes the suffocating
locker with the official ideology builds up by and by. In atheist meetings
those obliged to speak condemn those who believe or who were caught in
the criminal act of going to church. Yet away from the lying words, far
from their false-toned platform proclamations, you discern their fear
of being discovered as also having a religious belief. The lie in which
they so lamentably swim breaks down once more the wall of your incarceration,
and you say as the sweet light breaks through: “Whence this unnatural
light? It is a light foreign to this world.”
I spoke to you about these things in my previous four sermons,
I will continue to speak further about them —for I am a priest of
Christ. God has discovered us through the sacramental love of His works,
and Jesus has commanded me to make it known to you so that you will not
say further: “I did not know it.”
I speak to you that you might know that you can fly, and that only
spiritual flight is truly exalted. The flight of materialism is flight
with broken wings. The Church of Christ has come out of the catacombs.
She shines blindingly on the soil of this country which is highly esteemed
in our hearts.
The Enea Church was destroyed — but who among us, Romanian
and Christian, can forget it? A beer hall, a symbol of a concept which
considers the Church a plague, will be put in its place. A beer hall —
so once more the people will be happy! Woe to the architect who builds
there, binding his name forever with the destruction of something that
was a demonstration of the Romanian genius of construction and faith.
Woe to the officials who believe that they can win glory and power by
destroying a church and building a beer hall. Woe to the concept that
considers an Agapia Inn more valuable than the Agapia Monastery. Woe to
those who consider that the Romanian Patriarchate is a piece of history
which can be placed in a museum, and who have not understood that it has
a real life which is always present. It is not a historical relic but
a living soul.
Woe to those who bow to force, allowing destruction which will
never be accepted by history.
I have said all these things to you because I am a priest. And
because we are priests and we listen to the command of God which says
that a burning light cannot be hid under a bushel but must shine before
all (Matt. 5:15). I have said these things, young friends, that
you might judge if it is right before God to listen to men rather than
God (Acts 4:19). For He Who gave Himself upon the Cross for the salvation
of the world, commanded us not to hide the divine truth. I have said all
these things to you that you might understand that through faith we shatter
walls and break down the bonds of prejudice and abuse, even if we shall
have tribulation in this world (John 16:33).
There is a continual battle between good and evil, between right
and wrong, between freedom and captivity of ideas, between purity and
corruption. All these battles take place on the one single field of combat
— the heart of man. I, the priest of Christ, address this heart;
for as Pascal has said: “The heart has its own way of thinking, which
reason ignores.”
What, then does the priesthood mean? It means to be an enduring
witness to human suffering and to take it upon your own shoulders. To
be the one who warms the leper at the breast and who gives to the miserable
life through the breath from his own mouth. To be a strong comfort to
every unfortunate one, even when you yourself are overwhelmed with weakness.
To be a ray of shining light to unhappy hearts when your own eyes long
ago ceased to see any light. To carry mountains of suffering on your shoulders,
while your own being screams out with the weight of its own suffering.
Your flesh rebels and says: “This is absurd, impossible. Where
is such a man, where is the priest you describe so that I may put my own
suffering upon him?” Yet nevertheless he exists! From time to time
there awakens within us the priest of Christ who, like the Good Samaritan,
will kneel down by the side of the man fallen among thieves and, putting
him upon his own donkey, will bring him to the Church of Jesus for healing.
From time to time the priest of Christ in us forgets ourselves and comforts
you, the man of suffering.
Who else could be moved by your suffering? Who else would bear
your burden, say words of comfort to you? From whom else would you hear
the words of Christ to you today: “Come to me, all who are burdened
and heavy ladened.”
I have seen you, my young friend, bullied by your elders, mocked
and insulted for the simple crime of being young. I spoke to you then
as one in weakness and pain, as a sensitive and defenseless being. Then
I saw you, to my horror and joy, bow and kiss my hand, humbling yourself
in your unexpected gesture which flowed from the depth of your wounds.
For you did not kiss my hand, but that of a priest of Christ who brought
you comfort.
Because you have overcome death, to which atheist doctrine had
condemned you, because you have been exalted above the ruins of fallen
materialism through your youth and faith, I speak to you the words which
Jesus spoke through the Apostle to the Gentiles. They sound absurd to
the prisoner of matter and materialism, to those who substitute beer halls
for churches and indecency for suffering. But to you they will resound
full of spiritual meaning and truth.
The preaching of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness;
but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer
of this world? (I Cor. 1:18-20).
Where are all these men, my friends? There are none of them left.
But you have remained here alive and whole in the Church of Christ, a
holy people, won by God, a foundation stone on which the Orthodox spirit
of the Romanian people is built. You are its single salvation and preservation
through this age.
Father
George is a prisoner for his Faith in Romania — see the December,
1982 issue of The Word, page 20.
From Word
Magazine
Publication of the Antiochian Orthodox
Christian Archdiocese of North America
May 1983
pp. 5-8
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