“Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm 146: 3) To trust [another] makes him/[her] a steward and an advocator for you at God, since you admit yourself to be poor and you fear your incompetence to perceive God and to consider God as your only help. Thus, in your unity [with God] you aim at a duality, while it is not sufficient to overcome your seclusion. Duality implies the encounter of two faces, and whenever each of the two is frail, then, you would be casting yourself into two frailties.
You might be thinking that you would attain wholeness through another, however, for a reason of unfulfilled existence, he/[she] might be unable to bring you to the wholeness of your being. He/[she] might be merely supporting you, and whenever his/[her] consolidation is not great, then both of you would collapse. Two incomplete [beings] are unable to attain unity, while whenever you get united with God, realizing your being God’s beloved one, you become one in God. Through love, you do not add a thing on God; rather, you become perfected in God. You become perfected relatively before you perceive the Kingdom. However, this vision here precedes the perfect being when you will perceive God through death. Then, you would have accomplished your endeavor.
All perfection on earth is only [to be viewed as] endeavor until the Lord crowns you on the Last Day. Hence, we attain a complete vision neither before death nor after it, since it is not possible for you to attain perfection unless with the saints, whenever they meet their Lord on the Last Day. Salvation is for all together. Before that we are in endeavor.
You would be perfected through the weak ones, whenever you love them and you raise them up. The whole humanity is a marginalized group of people, who behold their glory only on the Last Day. You are within this group, whenever you join it through love. You are of that group and toward it in hope; I mean your hope toward God. Not a word in the Book promises you to be loved whenever you love. The Book has not maintained that your love would be responded by a reward. As response to love you might get a wrongful hatred, of which you are not the source. And if you were a great believer you would expect isolation, and it might save you, since you have a share in God’s love, who does not permit one do die from thirst or to get saddened for nothing. I have not said that your only calling is to depart from every face, since then [also] you would not find perfect consolation. It is right that you pursue to dwell in your belovedness, namely that you live with that love which you are given. However, it is not legitimate to be satisfied with this, since you might find yourself exiled to “the desert of love”, as François Mauriac says, i.e., you become subject to the decree of isolation that those, whose love you expect, have pronounced against you. It is your right to ask for attention, yet, I mean by this that people might consolidate into the love of God, and not to you. You become great whenever you endeavor for that pure divine unity, which gathers its eremites to their Lord.
Our sorrow is in that when we continue to be vulnerable in our human nature, since we have not reached at heaven. This, in itself, is a fair sorrow, since piety anticipates paradise here in divine love.
The problem is that we could not reach at the Kingdom here unless with the pure ones, and I mean those who love us in the Lord without any condition. The power of our endeavor is in the vision for which we aspire, and our path is the yearning till death. The pure ones are rare and I mean those who surround you with divine love, which does not depend on any condition in you, but it comes to you from free brotherly love, which is a reflection of divine love that is free by its nature.
It draws my attention that whenever Jesus has spoken about love in the Gospel He said that you give it, and He never promised you that you might be given it. He has experienced the human consolations which He has received from the group of people surrounding Him, especially from Peter, John and Jacob. However, He did not want us to rely on those consolations. All His teaching, from this [particular] perspective, is that you give without calculation, i.e., without expectation of a reward. You become [or you exist] through the love which you give hoping that it might be received, since you exist only if you give. And whenever you give, it does not [necessarily] mean that people have received it. This is why it has been said: “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” (Psalm 112: 9) Love does not require a condition in the Other. You give without calculation, namely you do not expect any exchange and you do not expect loyalty. Your heart gives whenever it is open to give, and there is no expression in the Book implying that your heart is open to take. They might commute the same feeling of you, and whenever they get disturbed from you, or despaired, or they turn away from you because of some brusqueness in their souls, you remain determined about giving, since through them you give your Lord and you wait today and afterward, and it is sufficient for you to accompany your Lord, since He alone is the bestowal.
I know what the response to this might be. It might be said that you are asking for a complete desert in our hearts. I do not ask for a complete desert. I have seen the desert actualized in the saints, who gave freely since they perceived the face of God on every face, and it was to this drawn face that they gave and they refused to look at the ugliness. They were accustomed that every human face is perfect in beauty, whenever you read on it the splendor of Christ.
Every human heart is exposed to become a den of snakes, as François Mauriac says. You do not love the snakes, rather the human heart which continues to be on the image of God, though it might contain snakes. Our teaching is that divine love does not depart the distorted image of God in every one of us, rather it embraces it. And if you adhere to the hope, namely the hope for God, God descends to the soul because God loves it, and not for its splendid beauties. We have to be trained concerning this challenging hope, that every soul, which would taste death, is beloved to God until God receives it.
You have to be educated that God loves every soul. And there is no doubt that God would refine it continuously, since God loves it always. You have to love every soul, even when it falls. And maybe you have to love it more whenever it is excessive in falling.
In life, whenever we were from the believers, probably our difficulty would be to perceive the fall continuously in us and in people. We would reach at extreme naivety whenever we conceive this existence as a paradise. The paradise is inhabited by the souls of those who arrived at the great endeavor [or struggle], that is the endeavor of the soul, and who had known that the soul is the dwelling place of God, regardless of the joys of this world.
Maybe the climax of the endeavor is to perceive yourself as nothing and to perceive others with you, whenever you have loved them, i.e., you perceive yourselves as the beloved ones of God. You do not need to rate the love of God for someone. What matters is that you believe in divine love, since we live by it. You are poor to divine love, whenever faced with it, since it is that which gives you existence and educates you according to its own essence.
But if you think that you have become something, you will lose everything. And if your faith, that grace gives you life and forgives your sins, falls then you become a nullity or almost a nullity. You do not need to understand how God uses you for God’s glory. You are given [grace] and God uses you for God’s glory as God wills. “The [true] religion with Allah is Islam [meaning submission].” [Surat Al-ʻImrān, 19] There is deep meaning in this saying. Come and swim in the sea of God and God will teach you everything and will use you for God’s glory in accordance to God’s will.
God perceives you in relation to God’s glory, while you do not know. The Savior has said to you and to your companions: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” [Matt.11: 28] Then, do not fear the burden that is thrown upon you. You might fall on the way as the one who carried His cross fell on His way to Golgotha. He must be supplying you with someone to help you on the road of suffering, since He wants you risen with Him on the Third Day.
Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi
Original Text: “الآخرون” –An Nahar- 13.04.2013
