You do not make people; and God has thrown you into their hands and as such He does not save you from “beasts” which by nature are ravenous; and you are in a jungle though your desire is to live with lambs. Had the Lord wanted you to live in constant bliss, He would have customized a special society for you according to your wishes; but he did not do so; and sin seeped into the crevices of your brains and your mind and the folds of your heart. And things will remain like this since people do not repent and those who do are few and they get benefits from the sins they commit since so many of us are lovers of money, power and killing and they do not have the faith that God sends into the human soul. They do not believe, and this world is their only horizon; and judgment day imposes a high cost on them and much effort and confrontations with those in positions who themselves never tire of confronting.
And you cannot leave the world though you might desire to. And the people of the world want to control you. They get drunk with power and they make your life difficult and they try to win you to their delusion feeling at ease in that because virtue makes them “choke”; yet virtue does draw people to itself like sin does and if one is drawn to it (virtue) he will have much of it.
Delving in sin means delving in thick darkness from which you would not want to get out; and you might not think of getting out since that means that you have to live in the light so that your soul would not be a nest of snakes; and when the snakes bite you, you consider that your healing has to be miraculous.
And the world is under the Evil One since all what is in the world is “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the grandeur of life”. Those who delve into the world love its lusts and that has become their substance. They think their salvation is in finding pleasure in the world. They want to have new life; “what do I do to inherit eternal life?” they ask. You sometimes sense, in “big sinners “a longing for the new life that comes down from the Lord who is able to make every man new; as if no iniquity has nested in them. The human being cannot bring life out of himself. He is dead. He cannot enliven himself. Someone else has to give him life. Someone else has to raise him from the dead. And the greatest insinuation of the devil is to tell him: “Postpone that. Your life is in hating eternal life and in not longing for it. It costs you a great effort; and there is no pleasure in it like the pleasures you are swimming in.”
Rising from spiritual death to life is problematic after the dimming of God’s image in us. Who can do away with this darkness? That can happen when God comes to Man to destroy death. Christ has risen from the dead because He brought back His soul, that is His unending life, to His body that tasted death. That is a miracle. Man cannot live anew except through a miracle, and the miracle implies that which does not come from Man; but that which comes down on Man. And due to that, repentance is a rebirth. Man does not make repentance. It falls down on you as Grace. Man receives it and confesses that it is grace; if you think that you make it, you die in your pride.
The only thing in your capacity is to receive Grace. It is Grace that opens your heart so it can dwell in it. A new creation takes place in you. You become a new creation. That is what Paul said:”By grace you are saved”. You do nothing and are nothing in that and do not give life to yourself. The Holy Spirit alone is the giver of life.
If you fall in sin again, then you would ask yourself as to how you would be illumined again. Paul does not make it clear as to how to rise up again. He gets very disturbed due to that. He is very concerned that no means of salvation remains for us. The only thing he can do is to seek Grace, to call on the Holy Spirit to dwell anew in the human soul. We find an existential perplexity in Paul concerning the problem of rising after having fallen. He cannot understand how Man can have life outside Christ. How Christ remains dwelling in you through one Baptism. Where does Baptism go after one’s falling? How does one live again through the resurrection of the Savior? Do you have real existence if you do not abide in Christ? Those are questions one lives through with pain. If you obtain the miracle of Salvation, you do not have an explanation for that miracle. You only can receive and accept it.
In that we have a heritage from Pascal who said: “Kneel down and pray, whether you feel like it or not”. I have not found such talk in the ascetic tradition of the East, but that is very beneficial and reasonable pastorally. Ask him who has questions about the faith, or even the disbeliever, to accompany you to Church; he might hear a new voice or touch a grace that descends on him.
Some of those who disbelieve speak of a conversion that has happened to them but they did not turn to God. In fact it is God who turns towards you and He chooses the means that He sees fit. Train yourself to receive grace. Train yourself as much as you can but that does not mean that you can order God to pour His grace on you.
The Fathers said that you should understand the words of the prayers you pray. But that does not mean that you have to feel the words. But say the prayers; you might be “ordering” God to come to you. Cast yourself on Him. Throw yourself into His bosom. He would probably gather you to Himself and embrace you. He always feels that you are His son. The Lord always creates means for you to get closer to Him. And when He sees you from far and He knows that you are a prodigal, He would forget that, since He is certain that when you are in His embrace you will hear His heartbeat and understand that His heart beats for your sake. He longs for your heart to get back to Him.
He moves your heart in a miraculous way that He had not shown you before. He is always the one who performs wonders. We say God is “Wonderful in His Saints”. And I would say He is wonderful in His “sinners”. The sinners are His; and He “uttered” that when He accepted the sinners to nail His Christ to the Cross. And if they (the sinners) accept His blood as salvation for them, their adamancy (of sin) leaves them so that it will be replaced with His “adamancy”; that is His love.
Translated by Riad Moufarrij
Original Text: “عناد الله” – An Nahar – 01.12.2012
