By obedience, our spirit may stand pure before God.
`If someone loves his father or his mother or his sons more than he loves Me, he won`t be able to follow Me. ‘For the worldly people there is nothing more terrible than these words. However, we must be able to overcome what links us with the closest people. Otherwise we will never reach God`s universal and absolute love
Obedience is the complete renunciation at one`s own will. It is the way we have to follow to become free, to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in our heart. As long as any passion remains within us our life is tragic and without any escape. We can`t find peace unless we renounce at our own will. Only when we free ourselves of our own thoughts and ideas, of our own will, we will be able to live in complete purity, in the atmosphere of God.
To show obedience means to cut your own will. In the daily life it means to incline towards leaving one`s personal ideas in order to free oneself of the painful and miserable struggle we lead against passions. Once ended this struggle, we have reached the gates of eternity
Excerpt from From life and Spirit – Archimandrite Sophrony, Reîntregirea via http://doxologia.ro
