Interview conducted by Andrei Lucian Ionescu, PhD candidate
Father Abbot, in the Church, what seems almost impossible to many becomes possible: man’s drawing near to God and coming to know God. Indeed, Saint Paul the Apostle says that ‘the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned’ (1 Corinthians 2:14). How can the knowledge of God be attained?
We must know God, know the One who knows us, for Scripture says: ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you’ (Jeremiah 1:5). The purpose of our life on earth is to love God – and before we can love Him, we must know Him. The psalmist’s words tell us that God can be known through His works. Likewise, the full knowledge brought by Christ helps us to understand God perfectly. The Church teaches that this knowledge develops progressively, growing in tandem with grace and, of course, with human endeavour.
Moreover, I would say that God is known through His revelation or through the capacity for understanding within each of us, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Without help from on high, we can do nothing, nor do we understand why we are here and now on earth. To the extent that we perceive Him, to the extent that we feel Him, to the extent that we harmonise our steps with the Most High on life’s journey, and to the extent that we embrace His will through the teachings of the faith, to that extent do we live in God.
There can be no theology, therefore, apart from lived experience. To know God, you must draw near to Him, follow the path of union with God. Of course, one must start somewhere and, at the same time, how does one gain the certainty that one is on this path to perfection?
We begin to know God as soon as He has opened our eyes to understand His care for us, through His gifts.
We sense the beginning of union with God in the love with which, out of love for humanity, the Most High surrounds us. Heaven and earth, the Mother of God, the saints and the angels are God’s gifts, which draw us closer to Him. The Orthodox Faith, the Book of Books, the presence of the Holy Spirit in His creatures, and the Holy Mysteries are all gifts through which God seeks to sanctify our lives, so that we may become god-like through grace.
What, in return, does He ask or expect of us for this union? Peace, hope in God and good deeds: repentance, fasting and prayer. With these, we have the assurance that we are on the right path.
On this path of union with God, prayer is paramount, for man can do nothing without God’s grace…
The Lord is with us everywhere and every day. According to the teachings of our faith, we pray as children of the Father – there is, therefore, on the path to union with God, this opportunity to communicate through a living dialogue that brings comfort to our souls. Scripture urges us to pray for all people. Let us also pray for those who cause us trouble, or that we may be delivered from trouble and illness. But how? According to the word which says: ‘Pray without ceasing!’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). If we also fast, the Lord hears us. We pray to stir up God’s mercy. How do we believe that our prayer will be answered? The prayer of those who love God’s creation will be heard. For Scripture says: ‘Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love’ (1 John 4:8).
We are therefore urged to love: if we do not love, we do not know God, and we cannot enter into dialogue with Him. Prayer is an intimate relationship with God, which protects us from any envious thoughts in the course of our lives or from evil ways, and through which we express our love for the One who created us.
We are therefore urged to love: if we do not love, we do not know God, nor can we converse with Him.
Through prayer we are enlightened by God – for the Spirit is present, and it is in the Spirit that we converse with the Most High.
The Holy Sacraments play an important role in the economy of salvation. The secularised spirit of the contemporary world reduces them, in the view of many, merely to matters of tradition, perhaps to moral considerations, but not to the reality of life in the living and active Christ, present through His Holy Sacraments. How do we live out this sacramental experience of God’s presence within us?
To help those who, as a rule, overlook the importance of the Holy Mysteries, I, for my part, seek to make myself understood. We accept or receive all the Sacraments of the Church according to the strength of our faith, according to how familiar we have become with them, according to our desire for them, and according to how necessary we feel they are for our lives. In order that we may share in His holiness, God bestows upon us these Sacraments: Holy Baptism, Chrismation, the Divine Eucharist, Confession, Holy Orders, Matrimony and the Anointing of the Sick. There are many of us, however, who are unaware of their importance and do not understand them as such. This is the difficulty: how to convey to them the necessity of these sacraments.
For example, many do not realise that without the Sacrament of Marriage they cannot live together (being married only in a civil ceremony). Troubles befall them and their descendants because of this. People like this have no way of truly following the Christian life, nor of learning about the purpose of life or what God expects of us. The Confession of Sins is the Sacrament of the Church through which we are enlightened, and Holy Communion signifies ‘heavenly sustenance’, as the Holy Fathers say. Then, what does the Saviour say in the Gospel: ‘Whoever eats My Body and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him’ (John 6:56), or: ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life within you’ (John 6:53). Therefore, we have no excuse to claim that we did not know. According to the teaching of the faith, we must be convinced that without the working of grace we cannot speak of salvation.
The experience of God’s presence within us must continue even after receiving the Holy Mysteries. It naturally follows that we must align our deeds and thoughts with God’s will. Is this a curtailment or a loss of freedom?
It is true that, according to the teaching of the Church, through his freedom of choice, man has been offered the chance of deification, but he may choose not to obey God’s call or will. I would like to make myself clear. We are free to believe, but – outside of faith – our freedom is a turning away from God, a straying. Therefore, everything we think, say or do under the sun must be in accordance with the divine will, which we learn about from the Gospels and from the lives or writings of the saints, and as Father Dumitru Stăniloae also states: ‘true freedom is the freely accepted servitude to the good’1 However, we must bear in mind that we too must stand against our passions. Our nature was specifically fashioned to be in obedience to God. As long as we have strayed from God, we have only the freedom to direct our lives so that we may draw nearer to God, for it is God’s will that we should spend eternity with Him.
What does freedom in the Spirit mean?
It means that we should desire freedom in Christ Jesus. Freedom apart from Christ is the path to eternal misery. ‘Stand firm, therefore, in the freedom with which Christ has set us free, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5:1), says Saint Paul the Apostle.
So, let us live freely in Christ, for through Him we are delivered from the torments of life: sin, the devil, death – any other kind of freedom is bondage, which leads us to eternal torment. To be free is to be a servant of Christ – this is what we must strive for with our freedom.
To be free is to be a servant of Christ – this is what we must strive for with our freedom.
We have freedom, yet we also hold fast to the fear of God. How can freedom and the fear of God coexist in our hearts?
We are not free to believe or not to believe, but we have the freedom to draw near to God and, at the same time, to be of service to others through our life experience. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, as we have all heard. So, our whole desire is that we should fear God, for our life ‘beyond time’ can only be realised, to our benefit, in this way. As we walk this earth, let us take care to keep God in our hearts. What does the Word of Scripture say? ‘God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Timothy 2:4).
As we walk this earth, let us take care to keep God in our hearts.
Thus, our Lord Jesus Christ has set us free from the bondage of sin, the devil and death, and if we abide in Him, we are free from all that is evil under the sun. Consequently, there is no way we can choose anything else in life but freedom in Christ.
That which is accomplished in the spirit of freedom has eternal value. Yet freedom does not permit us to sever ourselves from others, for the Church is called ‘the communion of deification’. Then our freedom, our will, meets the freedom of the other, and together, in fact, we accept obedience to God alongside the reception of the grace that sanctifies our lives…
In my capacity as a spiritual father here at the monastery, I tell you honestly: I desire nothing from life to have or to be, but only to be of service to my neighbour. We who offer guidance, who are convinced that the Son of God became Man for the deification of humankind, wish to rejoice with all our hearts, each understanding, to a greater or lesser extent, what our purpose is in the world. ‘Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see God!’ (Hebrews 12:14), says Scripture. Friendship with the Spirit of all strengthens us in love and union with God and helps us to increase in good deeds; it clothes us in light. The experience of the ages, set out in detail in the Lives of the Saints, shows us that we can truly live in Christ, but how many of us are willing to disregard the temporary and fleeting things? How can one attain a life pleasing to God or a prayer as pure as the heavens? The teaching of the Church shows that nothing purifies our mind more, so that we may converse with God, than obedience to our spiritual father.
It is the fruit of a personal communion with sanctifying grace, and the cooperation between human will and God’s grace lies at the foundation of every stage of deification. How far can a person go on this spiritual ascent? Is there a limit that can be reached?
With regard to the spiritual ascent, if you wish, I shall speak of a limit. A disciple of Saint Seraphim of Sarov was gazing at the saint, and the saint asked him how he saw him. The disciple replied that he saw his face in the light. So, even in this life, God can reveal to us the radiance of a person who loves God.
Holiness is a sharing in the divine life. Can it be experienced during our earthly life?
It can be lived, but, you see, we do not wish to be crowned; we do not wish to show our love for God, even though it is for this very purpose that we were brought from non-existence into life. The most eloquent example of a holy life, for me at least, is Saint John Jacob of Hozeva.
Thus, the deification of the human being, which begins already in this life, becomes complete and irreversible in the age to come, and the faithful will rise in glory and attain knowledge and ‘face-to-face’ vision…
That is so! Purity of mind and sanctification are prerequisites for seeing God (Matthew 5:8), as Scripture says. Our entire life is at our disposal to gain another Life, imperishable and eternal. Therefore, friendship with the Spirit in this life—through receiving the Holy Mysteries and our continual striving in Christ Jesus—leads us to the most blessed fulfilment. God wishes us to be His friends for ever. And we shall undoubtedly become His family if we seek to live in Him, for Him, until the end of our days. Amen!
We have our whole life at our disposal to gain another Life, one that is imperishable and eternal. God wants us to be His friends for ever and ever.
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Fr Dumitru STĂNILOAE, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. II, p. 326.