The
main mission of the Church is to heal a person. In other words, when a
person becomes part of the Church is healed if he follows the
therapeutic regime which aims to assist him to return to the natural
state which God gave him when He had created him.
After the fall of our forefathers, our nature was
corrupted. When man severed his relationship with the Lord after
disobeying His command, all his mental and physical capacities were
immediately corrupted and perverted; his mind turned away from its
unbreakable communication with the Lord, which was his natural state,
towards the creation and matter, passions and sin. From that moment
sickness and perversion entered man’s nature.
This is the reality of the fall, the sin of the
forefathers, namely the hereditary sickness which passes on from one
generation to another because we are natural descendents of our
forefathers. Thus, each man has inherited this condition of spiritual
sickness; the perversion of his nature.
Jesus Christ is called the ‘New Adam’, because He enters history at a certain point in time and accomplishes a mission. Christ’s
mission was not so much to hand over the Gospel, namely His teachings,
neither to give us a book called ‘Gospel’, but to give us Himself. In
other words, just as we have inherited the sickness of our nature
through the first Adam, Jesus offers us Himself, so that through the
baptism we unite with Him, become one with Him, and then through the
Holy Eucharist we acquire the capacity to unite with Him organically and
ontologically (actually). This means that the actual unity with the
Body and Blood of Jesus flows into our being, into our soul and our
body. This is the reason why we become children of God and why the
Church exists. The Church would have no reason to exist if it did not
administer the holy mysteries, particularly the mystery of the Holy
Eucharist.
The Church is not an institution aiming to increase its
followers for various reasons. It is the place where man is healed
spiritually and is given the opportunity to unite with Jesus Christ.
However, man needs to follow a certain therapeutic treatment called
‘askesis’. It entails obeying all of the Lord’s commands handed over to
us by Jesus in the Gospel. Jesus’ commands are the medication which
treats our sickness. In fact, the Lord shouldn’t have given us any
commands since He had created us in His image; His commands are inherent
in our nature and our conscience reminds us about them. Nevertheless,
as the holy fathers say, the Lord did give us the appropriate medication
to cancel out wickedness.
A sick man goes to the doctor and receives a certain
treatment, not because the doctor impinges on his freedom or his
dignity, but because his advice if heeded, may cure him. If he doesn’t
follow the doctor’s instructions his illness will persist and may even
cause his death. In the same way the Lord’s commandments act as a
therapeutic treatment.
There are many commands and on the outset it seems
difficult for someone to remember and obey all of them. Nevertheless,
the most essential command is one and has to do with our entire being.
It is: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with your entire mind and with all your strength.’ And
it goes on ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. This part is the
result and the evidence of our genuine love towards the Lord. In other
words, it is not possible for someone who does not love God, to love
himself, his neighbor, nature or the rest of the creation. Therefore,
all the commandments have a common mission; they converge on the love
towards the Lord. This is the natural state of man; this is how the Lord
created him, namely, to move towards the Lord with a loving force. This
is easy to understand since as the Scriptures say ‘The Lord is love’.
But we must appreciate that we are not moving towards an idea, namely
‘love’, but towards a person.
The Church moves man towards a personal meeting with the
specific, personal God. In other words, the Church is the place which
develops man as a person and not as an individual (an ‘individual’ means
someone who is engrossed in his self). That is, it smashes his
individualism, develops him as a person and turns him into someone who
for the most part has a personal relationship with the Lord. This is
also the main difference between the Orthodox Church and eastern
religions which speak about a vague and faceless deity. This is the
reason why prayer differs from meditation. Prayer is a personal motion
towards a personal God; meditation is an impersonal motion from one man
to another through the invocation of a vague deity.
The personal motion towards the Lord presupposes that the
Lord also moves towards man. Since God is love, it follows that man, who
has been created in the image of God, is also love. This loving motion
enables man to come out of his self and offer himself to another person,
just as Jesus did when He ‘emptied Himself’.
When man empties himself he meets the Lord in a loving
union which is totally personal and totally fulfilling for man as a
whole. Man’s union with the Lord does not only take place on a mental,
philosophical, metaphysical or psychological level. It is a perfect
union at all levels. We ought to understand these things if we are to
appreciate our true mission in this world. Therefore, by understanding
the numerous commandments, we also understand why we ought to obey them.
In other words, the Church is not the sum of certain
commandments and laws but it is the place with a specific mission. The
Saints of our Church, all the children of the Church who are indeed
living children of God and of the Church, prove that what the Church
says and promises is true. These people have followed the treatment
offered by the Church and became the temple of the Holy Spirit and the
chosen vessel of the Lord. Namely the Holy Spirit is present inside
them. Indeed there are several such people who are experiencing the
presence of the Holy Spirit inside their souls. They know what ‘grace’
means.
When dealing with the reality of our worship, along with
all the preconditions and evidence presented by the lives of our saints,
we are faced with the entire range of the spiritual struggle. In other
words, we understand why all these things happen, why the commandments
are given, why askesis and the spiritual regime are necessary and what
happens with the presence of Jesus and with the existence of the Church.
Thus we understand what will happen to us. The only matter which still
needs to be resolved is how to practically begin the process of our
relationship with God, how to find Him and how to taste all the things
promised by the Church.
The Lord does not discriminate. He does not offer His mercy
to one but not to the other, neither does He give gifts to one but not
to the other. There are no ‘chosen ones’ for the Lord. The Lord gives to
each one the same grace and the same love. It is man who regulates his
relationship with the Lord. Man is free to love the Lord absolutely. One
may love Him a lot, another very little and yet some may hate Him.
Nevertheless, one has to be aware of his own intentions; he
ought to be able to say that he will remain steadfast in his faith even
though the Lord sometimes seems to leave him alone in his struggles. In
other words, one must never lose heart. He ought to recognize that this
mission is not up to him but it is a task accomplished by the Lord.
Jesus said to His disciples: ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you’
(John 15, 16). The disciples may have offered their good intention, but
unless the Lord was present with His grace to strengthen them, they
could not have accomplished a single thing.
Bearing in mind the Lord’s presence we ought to wage our
struggle with immense courage. One of the weapons the enemy uses is
trying to prevent us from dealing with our sins and passions with
courage and zeal.
The Lord offers us a medicine to help us with this process.
It is the medicine of repentance in the face of the Lord. This means
that one ought to repent not as someone who feels guilty, but as one who
is the son of the Lord. Neither any trespass nor the devil are able to
take away from us the privilege of being children of the Lord. Thus we
may stand before the Lord and say: ‘Indeed, I have sinned; I have been
misled. Nevertheless, I have not denied You and I am still seeking my
deliverance’.
People ought not to be miserable inside the Church, because
they have been called by the Lord to become gods through grace. This
means that a person who lives the life of the Church becomes lord and
not a miserable man. This is how the Lord makes him. The Saints, instead
of feeling depressed, placed great emphasis on repentance because it
made them feel children of the Lord. Repentance was like a life-giving
force which led them straight to the throne of their Father.
In the Church there is no place for disappointment neither
for backtracking, no matter what happens. Nevertheless, when someone
begins his spiritual life, the enemy may succeed in stealing his soul
and his heart, enslaving him into worldly matters and causing him to
drop his first love towards the Lord.
Therefore, let us not be enslaved by the affairs of this
world despite all our responsibilities and duties. Our heart must only
move towards the Lord.
The endExcerpts from a homily by the Metropolitan of Limassol, Athanasios, published in the ‘Paraklisi’ magazine, March 2012.
