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I’m going to begin with an
experience. Experience is going to be actually my whole theme. I believe it’s
an experience that my tradition can offer to everyone no matter who you are, no
matter what church you go to, or no matter where you are at in life. Like many
people there was a time in my life when I thought I was doing everything right
in the world and at the time I thought that there was no more I could do. I was
a good person, a believer in the teachings of Christ, and I was waiting, like
most people, to get out of here. I was waiting for heaven. The Church for the
most part was just my pit stop on the road to the heavenly destination, where I
was waiting it out to one day meet God in the afterlife. This is how things were
until: I met God here!
There was this place I
accidentally wandered into. It was during my honeymoon many years ago. It was
the shrine of St. Photius in St. Augustine Florida. You can find it on the main
strip where all the tourists are doing their shopping. I was curious to see
this Orthodox shrine. I had never seen one before. I wandered in just expecting
to see some church art. I had heard of how beautiful Eastern churches were with
their iconography. That is not what happened. Instead of art I saw God. I saw
God in the beauty. It was unexpected. It was like I accidentally went through a
door that I was not supped to go through. I was immediately overcome with
emotion and in that experience, there was a message from God. There was no
voice, I could feel the words, as if they were imprinted on my soul. The
message was: “There is so much more of God to be found in this life”.
You would think that this
message would be obvious. this message that there is so much more of God to be
found in this life. For me it was not, and I know this is the case for many
people because of how we have been trained to understand God. We have been
trained to perceive God from a distance. God is always above and beyond and
maybe one day we will see him, in the next life. We keep God far away because that’s the way it’s
always been. God is not here, God is in heaven. This understanding began to be
unraveled for me as I took the next step in wanting more of the Eastern church,
it led me to my church and to my first experience of the Divine Liturgy where I
began to see heaven on earth for the first time, to see that God was here.
There was another person
who had a similar observation. Some of you already know this story. There was this Grand Prince of the ancient
Rus named Valdimir. He had been a pagan his whole life and was unsatisfied with
the religion. He wanted a religion of substance for his people. As the story
goes, he sent emissaries to many of the great religions of the world and the
one that came back from Eastern churches, who experienced a Byzantine liturgy,
had told him that they did not know if they were in heaven or on earth during
their worship. His response was: “I want that religion for my people”. This is
a common experience for people who come to one of our churches. In that, I inquired
why this experience happens and I was told by the priest that Christ is fully
present in all our liturgies.
You would think that this
would be another obvious fact. Jesus even says in the scripture, “where 2 or 3
gather” I am there. Why was I not seeing the obvious. It was easy to believe that
God was in the priest or the preacher, or in the tabernacle but not right here.
In the case of the liturgy, it could not be denied. God was here. There was an
experience of the heavenly and it was an experience that I wanted more of and
all the time. As that original experience that I had revealed, if there was so
much more, that so much more can be something that I could have access to all of
the time and not just in this place, and for this reason I began a study
Byzantine Spirituality, specifically in the books known as the Philokalia,
which for us Byzantines is referred often as our 2nd bible, for it
is where we find the spiritual instruction of how we can live the mysteries that
we find in the bible. It is also the book that I will using for this discussion.
It took me many years to
understand the content of the Philokalia and the reason for this was that I was
approaching it with the wrong mindset. I still carried with me the mindset that
I had brought with me into the Eastern Church. This is a mindset that I believe
that many Christians have. We are trained to believe from the cultural experience
of our religion, not the authentic teaching, that God or heaven is something we
are to only experience later after we die. For example, we are taught that our behavior,
how we think, how we act, or how we live impacts only the future and not right
now. The problem with believing this way is that whatever spirituality that we
practice only bears fruit in the life to come and not right now.
The fathers in the
Philokalia were contradicting this kind of spirituality that I had. The
spirituality that leads us to find heaven in some other place. What they were
teaching was that God was not interested in waiting for you to die in order to
have heaven and see him. According to them, God is someone who can be seen now,
when learn to make our lives heaven. The
Spirituality that they were offering, which is the spirituality of the Eastern
church, is one where we learn to transform what we are so we can begin to
experience God right now, not tomorrow, not after we die, and not in some other
place.
Going back to my original
experience at the shrine. That experience was telling me that God can be found
here. When I came to my first divine liturgy that experience was telling me
that. What the Philokalia teaches is that this kind of experience of the liturgy
is something that to be had all of the time. In the words of one of the fathers in the
Philokalia, St. Symeon the New Theologian, we do not have to wait until the
second coming of Christ to see the Kingdom of God. We can see it right now when
we learn to experience the uncreated light of God in Creation. He goes on to
say that he who sees this light is living the Second Coming of Christ right now.
His point is that we don’t have to wait
to go to heaven, we can begin to live in heaven right now.
Obviously, many of you might
be wondering what is this light that he is talking about. In explaining this I’m
going to take you on a little theological journey that will give you a context
for what he says. This journey begins with how we understand God in our Eastern
theology. I will begin by sharing something very familiar to us in terms of
light, our sun. We know that it’s impossible for us to touch the sun but it’s
not impossible for us to experience the light of the sun. The light of the sun
is the basis for how we exist in this world, but we know if we were to go into
that sun we would be destroyed. Like the sun, there will always be something of
God that will be inaccessible to us and unknowable. We call this God’s essence. On the other hand,
there is something of God that we can experience, which we call God’s energies,
just like how the light of the sun contributes to our existence, these
energies, are the basis for all existence and our experience of God. St. Symeon calls this the uncreate light,
it is through this light that way can know and experience God right now.
Ok, this might seem like a
logical explanation about this light, so how can we see it or why can’t we see
it? In this I will be continuing your theological journey going all the way
back to the beginning. In the beginning God said, let there be light. This
first day as it is called in scripture is where God united himself to creation.
This day is the foundation for all things. It’s not a 24hr period, it’s the
foundation for all that exists past present and future. It’s a day that does not
cease. All the other days of creation proceed out of that day. Think of the
Gensis account as God building a house upon a foundation. God being the
foundation, the foundation is the first day, the uncreated light that sustains
all things.
One of the things that God
built upon this foundation was a garden, Eden. The garden was the filter by
which this light came into the world, to our ancestors. We know it was there
that they encountered God. They were able to see God through this garden
experience. There were able to see God naturally through creation and not only
see they were given the option to partake of God through creation. They were
given the option to have this light within them in a direct way which would
give them immortality. They were given the option to eat from a tree that could
give them eternal life.
Think about this for a
moment. The created world, the beauty of a garden, was the filter in how our
ancestors saw God and it was through a created thing in that garden, a tree in
which they would receive immortality. We are talking about a place on this
Earth. The creation was the natural way that our ancestors were to experience
what we call heaven. A place right here.
No other place. As we know God never destroyed Eden after our ancestors fell.
That place is still here. There is place
right now in which we can see God and receive immortality by eating from a tree.
Well now you might ask,
how do we get there? To get there we have to learn about the vocation that our
ancestors received from God. The scripture tells us that God told them to
subdue the earth. This often goes into many self-serving interpretations that make
the Earth something we use and abuse at our leisure. However, the spiritual
understanding is that our ancestors were given the task to complete and perfect
the Earth. In one way they were to
extend the boundaries of the Garden of Eden. They were to make the whole Earth
Eden, a place where God can be seen and they were to make every tree a tree of
life, a tree that gives them immortality.
Now my question for all of
you is: When did God change his mind about the Earth? When did the Earth become
a place that we escape from in order to go to a place that we call Heaven? It
seems obvious to me that the Earth is to become heaven and if it can become heaven,
it can become the place that we can encounter God. Now this is what St. Symeon was
trying to teach us in the Philokalia when he says that we don’t have to wait
until the end to experience God, we need to learn to experience God right now
in and through creation.
Again, some of you might
say, why can’t we? He makes it sound easy. This is where the understanding of
salvation comes in. Salvation as it is understood in the Philokalia is the process
of returning back to the experience of God in creation. Salvation is not
getting your ticket to go to another place. That’s how it’s often marketed to
us. The whole point of a resurrection from the dead, as we say in our creed, is
to come back here. To be able to experience God right here is why we are being
saved and that salvation begins right now for us, in this place.
Yes, I said in this place.
One of things that is often lost in how we understanding our salvation, which
is essential for learning how to experience God, is that God is also saving the
world. We have heard this before in the
scripture: “For God so loved the world”, “Preach to all Creation” or “The whole
creation groans for salvation”. We live in a fallen world. The world was
designed for us to experience God in and when our ancestors fell into sin, they
brough the world with them. The world cannot be what it was meant to be without
them. As a result, God’s plan for salvation does not just involve us but also
the world that we live in.
We cannot experience God
apart from the Earth. This is how we were created. As I mentioned, Eden was the
place where we see God and it’s from a tree that we are to receive immortality.
For this reason, salvation must begin
for us from the Earth, as God intended it to be. We are often never instructed
in this way. We think it’s just our belief in an idea and we call that idea
faith. However, if you are a Catholic salvation for you began from the Earth.
Before, I prove this I want to turn your attention to what happened to Jesus on
the Cross. On the cross Jesus was pierced and out from his side blood and water
flowed out. In every Divine Liturgy this event is repeated. Hot Water is poured
into the chalice before we receive communion. During communion we give you that
blood and water, which comes from the side of Christ.
The chalice we use, to
give you that blood and water mixture, is a reproduction of the greater
chalice, which legend calls the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail was the first
chalice according to legend to receive that blood and water that flowed from
our Lord’s side. Well, that first chalice is not a golden cup like the one we
might use in our Liturgy, it was the Earth. The Earth is the Holy Grail and all
that it is connected to. The World has become for us once again the place we
can see God and it has become the place where we can once again eat from the
tree of life because of the precious and life-giving blood of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ.
It’s not a coincidence
that all the feasts in the Eastern church are based on the agricultural cycle. It’s because the world is to be the natural
means by how we encounter God. Those cycles of the moon, celestial alignments, the
solstice, and equinox that we base our feats on determine how we can
participate in our salvation. They are the foundation for how we can enter into
the mystery. They are the parts of garden where we can see God. There is a reason why in the Eastern church
Ascension Thursday should never become Ascension Sunday. There is a reason why
we should not move a feast day for the convince of the working class. It’s
because we are being saved through the natural world.
If you are still not
convinced, ask yourself why the scripture says that baptism saves you. Some
Christians are convinced that it’s just a symbol. They believe it’s a symbol of
their faith in Jesus Christ. They believe it’s a symbol for being able to have
something later on, when they get to heaven and be with Jesus. In the Eastern
church the waters of baptism make us a new creation. Water gives us something
of God. This is why we call the baptized the newly illuminated servants. The
water gives the baptized the ability to see God once again. The right to
experience him. Our ancestors lost that vision when they fell. The world became
dark. It was no longer the place to see God. God restores our vision once again
by using the natural world, the world that He sanctified by the blood of Christ.
One of the things we
immediately do after someone is baptized is that we use oil to seal them in the
Holy Spirit. We call it chrizmation. In the Western churches it’s called
confirmation. Here again people are
often trained to believe that the oil is just a symbol of the Holy Spirit. God
did not make the world to be a symbol. As one of our Eastern Fathers said, St.
John of Damascus, “the whole earth is the living Icon of the face of God”. It’s
the place where we experience God. God uses oil, not our faith, not our belief
in a symbol, to give us the Holy spirit. The oil is the natural means for us to
experience God. Most people are baptized and chrizamted as infants, there is no
way for a baby to understand anything. This is sometimes a belief for the
reasons for God parents. It is not the responsibility of a God parent to help
you believe in anything, it’s their responsibility to show you by example how
you too can experience what you have been given.
The next step in the
baptism is receiving the Holy Eucharist. I’m sure you know where I am going
with this. In the Eucharist, the bread and the wine, become what bread and wine
are meant to be. A way to experience God. As I mentioned earlier, the vocation
of our ancestors was to make the world Eden and every tree a tree of life.
God’s original plan for eating was not just way for us to live another day. Eating
was a way for us to experience God and eating from the tree of life would have given
us the chance to live forever. This understanding about food as way to
experience God has been lost to us. We pray over our food, but we don’t know
why. We think it’s just a way of being nice to God. The act of Eating, not just
the prayer before it, needs to become a prayer. That’s how food should be eaten.
Food is a way for us to experience God. I guarantee if we practice and teach
others to eat like that, we would be much healthier people.
Going back to what I was
saying about the Eucharist and why we get it right after we are chrizmated. In
baptism we are illuminated with the ability to see God here, through
chrizamtion, we are empowered with the experience God through creation, and now
through the Eucharist we receive the right to Eat from the Tree of life. The
eucharist is the fruit of the tree of life. It why we are going to be resurrected
after we die, Its why we are going to live forever. The cross is the new tree of
life that God planted in the world and this understanding is the basis of what
you will find in every Divine Liturgy.
The Divine Liturgy has
been called many things. Heaven on Earth as the emissaries of St. Vladimir
proclaimed. How Christ is fully present as that priest told me. Sometimes it’s
called a sacred place. I’m sure you might have heard many things. A precise description is to understand the Divine
Liturgy as Eden. Eden is heaven on Earth, Eden is how God is fully present, and
Eden is a sacred place. During the worship the Church becomes Eden that place
where is God can be seen and experienced. The Church, as Eden, also becomes the place where we can eat
from the tree of life. The Eucharist is the fruit of the tree, the source of
our immortality. Its how God communicates to us everything that God is. The Eucharist
is the source of that uncreated light that I was speaking of and as we receive
it , our bodies become the source of the light.
This understanding is why
you will not find Eucharistic Adoration in the Eastern church. There is nothing
wrong with doing that. That’s a way that people express their love for Christ. It’s
how they adore him. I like to think of the idea of Eucharistic adoration in the
Eastern church as Christ adoring us. It’s
not his intention to make a home in the bread and wine. He wants to make a home
in us. The fruit of tree of life is meant for us to eat so we can have
everything of God, it is not meant to remain as fruit. We are the destination of
God’s affection. We are the ones being glorified. God does not want to remain
in the tabernacle. He wants us to be his tabernacle. This understanding is an
essential aspect of Eastern spirituality.
When we eat from the tree
of lie, when we receive the Eucharist, we have everything of God in us. The
goal is to learn to adore God within. We know how to adore what’s outside. I
have been to Eucharistic adoration in the Latin church, it’s not complicated to
do this. However, many of us have no idea how to adore what is within us. Going
back to the question how do we see the uncreated light saint Symeon makes it
sound easy. This is the purpose of the Philokalia.
As I mentioned earlier it’s our 2nd
bible. With it you will find a spirituality that is called Hesychasm. Hesychasm
means the pursuit of stillness. In this matter, it’s the stillness necessary
for us to adore and to experience what we have been given.
Hesychasm is the
foundational spirituality of the Byzantine rite. What’s unfortunate is that this
spirituality has been lost to modern Eastern parishioners. We know about things
that come from this spirituality. Like the prayer rope, the Philokalia, and the
Jesus Prayer. However, many are not aware that whole liturgy and how it was
developed was based on this spirituality. We get a glimpse of this in our Tone
8 resurrection troparion, where we sing “you accepted burial for 3 days to free
us from our passions”. Some Eastern churches did not think that this made any sense,
so they changed it. I’m sure they thought: What does Christ’s burial have to do
with freeing us from our passions? What are passions? This was language taken
right out of the Philokalia and because it did not make sense they changed the
word to sufferings.
To give you further
context for this spirituality that leads to the experience of God I want to
take you back to its origins. Hesychasm was a spiritual movement that began in
the monasteries of Mt. Athos. This movement wanted to reform the liturgy of the
Byzantine rite. This reformation took place around the 1300s. The ideal in this
liturgical reformation was that the liturgy must lead to Hesychia, which means stillness,
that meeting place between us and God. That stillness that is necessary for experiencing
God. As we are going to see there is a reason why going to some of our
liturgies is like going to a gym. This has to do with the spirituality of
Hesychasm as I will be discussing.
As I mentioned, going to
some of our liturgies is like going to a gym. This is based on the understanding that the
body prays. Not just the mind and because the body prays , it too needs to be
healed , it too needs to be transformed. For the fathers of our tradition, it
just as important that your body experiences Hesychia as your mind. We are not
used to thinking of our body in this way. The only other religion in the world that
teaches to pray with their body is Hinduism. That is what yoga is. A prayer
done with the body. As they teach in yoga the posture of the body is a way to
experience God. This is the logic behind why we stand, bow, or do our metonia.
This is why you feel like you have been to an aerobics class when you leave our
worship. These aerobics are the way we are healed, the healing necessary for
experiencing God.
The body prays. Going back
to what I was saying about experiencing
God in creation, the body is the natural instrument for encountering God here. These
eyes were designed to see God here. We have the same eyes that our ancestors
had. They saw God in the garden. That’s what our senses were made for:::they
were made to encounter God with. This is why are liturgies involve all your senses.
Seeing your body in this way sometimes makes people uncomfortable and if it
does for you consider what the apostle Paul said, he said your body is the
temple of the Holy Spirit. This was no metaphor.
Your body was made to encounter God with. That’s why temples are made, they are
places to experience God in.
Now that I have your
attention on your body being the place to experience God, we can look at the
question of why it’s difficult to worship. Why the posture. Why it feels like a
gym. Why is this so and how does it heal. To do that I want to look at a prayer of the
body that we are familiar with and have done without maybe ever seeing it as
body prayer. I am talking about Fasting. Sometimes we have fasted just because
our churches do it and not know why. Fasting in the spirituality of Hesychasm
is very specific, and it has to do with that mysterious word that we heard
earlier, the passions and in order to understand that word I will need to take
us back to the garden of Eden again.
In the garden our
ancestors before they sinned were in perfect harmony with that vision of God in
creation. Their minds were illuminated with that vision of God. When they lost
that vision their mind was broken. It was darkened. They were to find their satisfaction
in that vision alone and not being able to do it they tried to find
satisfaction in everything else. This is what we are dealing with right now.
Even though we have given back this access to this vision of God through the
holy mysteries God has given us the task of healing our own humanity. He did
the hard work but wants us to do the application. This as we are going to see
is what fasting is. It’s a form of healing and what we are being healed from is
what we call the passions and one of the greatest passions can be found in our
stomach.
Remember how I said that
eating should be a form of prayer. A way to connect to God. That was how eating
was before the fall. Now, for the most part our eating dominates how we live. All
our troubles began for us in how we ate. Our food now becomes our lord and we its slaves. Some days it’s all
we think about. Being hungry is not wrong. That is natural but letting our
desire food dominate our whole day and behavior is. How many of you have sat in church and could
not wait to get out to get to lunch. There is no need to pious about this. It’s
been every one of us. This is a passion for which Christ was buried for 3 days.
He wants to this power to die with him in that tomb, this is what fasting does,
and when it dies we can see God in us. As long as that power is there it
obstructs our vision of God. You can’t be committed to God and Burker king. He
wants to be the King.
Fasting has many uses but
its greatest in the Eastern church is to put our passions to rest so that we
can experience God in the body and for you people who have fasted for some
length of time you can testify that your experience of God was different when
you fasted. This is also the point of our feasts. The feast is enjoying now the
food you eat with God in celebration. Feasting is not a return to what fuels
our passion. If you fasted from chocolate for forty days just to gorge yourself
on Hershey bars you have missed the point. Food is not the bad guy, its how we
eat that is bad.
As some of you know
fasting is just as much work for body as it is for the mind. Our stomach says
eat and the mind says ok lets do it and it begins the journey to appease the stomach.
The reverse is just as true. We start thinking about our favorite food and
stomach says ok I will drive. There is a
harmony with our mind and body that goes along with our struggle against the
passions. This is where I’m going to diverge somewhat from focusing on
encountering God with the body and talk about the mind.
When I use that word,
mind, I am not talking about the ability to reason. I’m not talking about a
brain. The brain is part of the body. According to the fathers, the mind is the
eye of the soul. The mind is what drives
this body. The mind is what was darkened after our ancestors sinned. The mind
is what needs to purified in order to see God in creation. To behold God is the
natural state. If your mind is not pure
the body cannot experience God properly in the world.
According to the fathers
in the Philokalia the mind is malfunctioning. The energy that needs to focus on
God is scattered after other things. The example that I like to give in this
comes from my own experience. The Wi-Fi router in my home is often subject to a
dozen devices at once. I have 8 children so this has always been an issue. As
you might have guessed this causes problems for the device that you want to use
because it is not connecting properly. This is how it is with the mind. The
energy needed to experience God with the mind is scattered to other things,
which are also referred to as passions.
One of the greatest
passions of the mind, and this will surprise some of you, is daydreaming. We
are taught this is a good thing and healthy but for the fathers it is not. It’s
not healthy because it takes our mind to some other place rather towards God. To
demonstrate this truth, I will tell people to go sit down in silence to pray.
Try to remain in that moment with God. The first thing that will happen is that
you will become bored or unsatisfied. Your mind will then take you on a trip to
some other place. It can even be in a religious place. You might be sitting
down with Jesus and the apostles but the truth is you will not be sitting with
God. What you have done is created your own version of God with your day
dreaming, an idol, a God that wont make you bored. The true God you will leave behind
because you were not willing to face that suffering.
There is another way to
think of our daydreaming and how unhealthy it is for us. Think about what
happens when you are driving an automobile while doing it. I’m sure all of you
that drive can recall a time when you have driven a few miles down the road and
realize, “how do I get here”. You were daydreaming. Day dreaming is the number
one cause for auto accidents, and I know this because my wife works with auto
insurance. When we drive we need to
learn to practice not to day dream and to keep turning our mind back to the
road. This as we are going to see is the same principle for how we are taught to
pray in the Eastern Church, bringing our mind back to God in the silence, that
Hesychia, and Fathers call this practice Nepsis, or Watchfulness.
Watchfulness is kind of
like fasting for the mind. What you are doing is paying attention to what is going
on in it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good thought or a bad one. St. Evargious
the Solitary said that we need to make our intellects deaf and dumb during
prayer so that we can pray. This might sound strange. Many people are not
taught to pray this way. What he is talking about is drawing those energies of
the mind back to the source. As I was saying earlier, we have been given all of
God in the holy mysteries. Jesus is fully within us. There is no need to make
up ideas or images about him in order to reach him. We have him.
You will find when you begin
to do this there will be great difficulty. One of the tools used for this
difficulty is what is known as the Jesus Prayer. Many people know about this
prayer as just a prayer. For the spirituality of the Eastern church it’s more
like a surgical tool. It’s used as a counter or a replacement for the mind
wanting to focus on other things. The prayer is used to draw your mind back to
the source. This is why we do it with repetition and why we have what is called
a prayer rope. In saying the prayer, we make the mind, and the body focus on
what we have within us. In doing so we began to heal the mind and body.
Now I just mentioned that
the prayer uses mind and body. Circling back to the idea of bodily prayer there
is an understanding that the body and the mind must enter a state of Hesychia
together in order to experience God properly. This is obviously the purpose of the Jesus
prayer and prayer rope, and also the postures in the liturgy, but also extends
to the very act of breathing and other postures. Typically, people are taught
when they are praying the prayer to inhale “lord Jesus Christ son of god”
exhale have mercy on my a sinner” You will also find the in the Philokalia various
postures for prayer. The whole body is to participate because the whole body
was meant to experience God.
You will find that there
is a great deal of diversity on how this is carried out in the Eastern Church
but the principle is the same, which is to achieve Hesychia, to be healed. In
this regard, I have found St. Nikodemos as having the most effective teaching.
His method is not for everyone, especially if you have health issues. What he
said was to go find a quite place sit erect with head bowed and to inhale and
hold your breath in while saying the prayer(which is a few seconds), “lord Jesus
Christ son of God have mercy” and then to exhale. He said as you inhale say the
prayer with will all your mental might. He uses the example of someone drowning
in the ocean. Someone who is drowning and sees a boat far a way says “help”
with all their energy. He says to do this and don’t exhale until you know you’re
heard. Doing this for about 20min should jump start your mind to where it needs
to be. I have used this method of healing when my mind has been overwhelmed
with other things and it brought it right back to God.
What he said might seem extreme
and not for everyone. You will find a great deal of diversity of practices in
Hesychasm and with that I tell people that much of what you will find won’t be
for you. When approaching the spiritual texts like the Philokalia you have to
see them as medical journals. In a medical journal you might find various
doctors talking about the same sickness and how to heal it. Some of what those
doctors say might not work for you but others will. The idea is healing. In
this case healing the body and mind so that it can experience God in the world.
Healing is the propose behind all the spirituality of the
Eastern Church. We need to be healed in order to experience God. Our Father St.
John Chrysostom emphasized this when he told us that the Church is to be a
hospital. Hospitals heal people in the present. What a hospital does not do is
prepare people to die. That would be a hospice. That saint never made any
indication that the church was to be a place to prepare us for the next life. A
church needs to help us experience God right now. This is what the Eastern
Church does, this what her spirituality of Hesychasm accomplished for us.
God wants to be with us
right now. Not tomorrow and not in some other place. We might go to be with God
after we die but he doesn’t want to wait for the end for you to experience him.
This is why he sent Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus gives us the power to
experience God right now. This why the Christian religion is different from
every other. In just about every other religion God is met at the end of the
story. Jesus gives us the power to meet God right now. He restores to us access
to God through creation. He restores to us what is natural through the Church.
He gives us back the experience of God.
In closing I want to draw
us to the words of St. Theophane the Recluse that has been repeated amongst
many of the fathers. he said, “ Learn to make the very air you breath an
experience of God”. Some have considered this as metaphor, but the spiritualty
of the Eastern church makes this a very real statement. In the scripture there
are 2 instances of this. There is when God breathed in man the breath of life
and when Jesus breathed on the apostles and said receive the Spirit. We do this
also in baptism. If you were to go to one of our baptisms the priest breathes
on the person giving them the spirit. Breathing was the natural way to receive
the Spirit and through the spiritually of the Eastern church our every breath
can become for an experience of God.
