Monk Moses the Athonite
Faith is not a certain indefinite abstract theory, a nice ideology and an advantageous religious concept. Orthodox faith means experience, ethos, way of life. Faith means that Christ’s life becomes my own life. I shall express my thoughts as a simple believer, as a humble monk and as a sincere man.
Our relationship with Christ guides us to all truth. The great God makes Himself small, loving and familiar so that He can enter our mind and heart. The man from a bloke becomes a loving person who loves unselfishly and in a self sacrificing way. Moral life consists in the observance of the evangelical commands, in good deeds and in the killing of our passions.
Any human being even if he got lost and enslaved, keeps his uniqueness and holiness `after face`. Any man by his conscience has the insufflations from God within himself and for this reason is worthy of honor, respect and consideration. He is worthy of our compassion. Honor and love should not belong only to the highly ranked people, to the rulers, commanders, to the youngsters, to the beautiful to the intelligent and moral people, but also to the mentally and physically disabled persons, to the old men, to the helpless, to the poor and the small ones as well.
Orthodox faith makes the man never despair. It rather leads him to dedication, good deeds, philanthropy, support and ease. The believer by seeing Christ in the person of the other one, becomes more lenient, more friendly, more benevolent, more forgiving and meek.
Orthodoxy doesn’t fight against science. But Orthodoxy wants to see the scientist is modest, humble, meek and full of kindness. Orthodoxy doesn’t want him be insolent, rebellious and despotic, devoid of godliness and denier of God. We should not look furtively at those who don’t believe. They might have a great pain, a resistance, something which doesn’t allow them express themselves from all their heart.
Pride should be unknown to the authentic Orthodox believer. Pride multiplied the psychical disorders, stress, sorrows, discouragements, suspicions, illusions, alienations and troubles. Thus the man being unsatisfied and unbalanced tortures himself and tortures the others as well.
The faithful Christian fully rejoices in humbleness and he is always content anywhere he would be.
Holy humbleness shall rebalance and raise up the fallen man.
Orthodox faith should it be changed and updated in order to satisfy the people of nowadays? We definitely think that it shouldn’t. If Christ came now in the world he would say the same things. The heart of man always seeks the truth. We are called to offer this truth with plenty of love. The reductions are of no avail here neither the unbearable burdens. We won’t increase the number of followers by patting them on the heads.
Our aim is not to create some admirers of ourselves to applaud and approve us, our aim is holiness. Holiness will save the world. Only the Orthodox Church continues to give birth to saints even nowadays.
My beloved, we are called to live and glorify God and inspire holiness. Acquiring holiness is not done with the purpose of increasing our stock, of expecting praises, but out of our great love for God and His glory, our of generosity and strife for a virtuous quiet and free life pleasing God.
Only with the grace of God we can reach holiness. Self deification acquired independently is unknown in the Orthodox spiritual life. As we said before the main reason of our existence is the encounter with God. Our journey towards holiness is not a merely particular matter, it exists in the Body of the Church and in the Orthodox tradition. Our movement influences those around us and we help the in a better way by our own example. Then we become more lenient, more understanding, more pleasant. The truth should always be confessed without fear but in the same time without shouts, reasonably and gently.
Orthodox faith leads us to the prayer for the others, to giving instead of taking, to the joy for the other one’s joy, to the grief for the other one’s grief, to thinking about our eternal designation, makes us endure, hope, refrain ourselves and rejoice in simplicity and temperance.
