Some peasants went to a teacher who had fear of God, thinking that, since he was a teacher, he would know how to speak them about God. That`s why they told him:
`Teacher, we want to tell us: what is God?`
`Come tomorrow and I shall tell you.`
When they came the next day he told them:
`Come tomorrow.`
They came the next day but nothing. This continued for many days.
`Teacher won`t you tell us anything in the end?`
`Even if you came here every day of the rest of your life to tell you what is God, I wouldn`t tell you, because God can`t be understood and He can`t be known: He is boundless for the mind, is above everything, above all the attributes which can be given by the cataphatic theology.
Our destination, my sons, is not to live here on this earth of exile but to delight ourselves with the good things which wait for us in heaven. Here is the stadium, the arena of battle and according to the way each one of us fights, he will be lead to what is above. Heaven is empty. It awaits to be filled with the children of God.
The angels are eager to see us in heaven to find their peace, because they are worried the demons might take us down and they would be deprived of us, their brothers. The angels have a lot of love for us. If a man of God during his prayer and communication with God is filled with love for Him and for any man, the angels are even more since they are without sin and they delight ceaselessly of God and they receive a huge amount of divine love – according to the human criteria of measure- and they love us who fight down here with the demons and with our passions. And they help us in our fight. God send them to help the people who try to win His kingdom.
For each baptized man there is a guardian angel but there are so many more other angels who help the souls to avoid sin. Great is the love of the angels for us. They wait for us in heaven. They glorify God without cease being moved by Him because He gives them the divine chants and He nourishes them with His bliss. And they contemplate amazed this endless light. Because of that huge light they don`t see anything else around them.
They live in this bliss and say: Why people, the creatures of God, for whom God descended on earth, incarnated Himself, crucified Himself and shed His blood, won`t come here too? Why to be doomed? The hell is terrible! They know it too because it is right the opposite of the bliss they feel.
All those who are high above, in heaven, be them angels, or men, know all our condition. They know our thoughts, they know everything about us and pray for us because they are in reality and they see now purely not like in a mirror as we people see partially everything has connection with God. They know well all things and that is why they have a great wish not to lose us.
And when we sin and deviate from the right path beside the fact that they pray for us, they feel a great pain for us. If we people suffer for each other and sadden when we see that one of our brothers doesn`t go right and pray for him, they pray even more for us since they know all the cunning of the demons and what means hell and how easily the people who struggle on earth fall in it.
God is our Father, a Father who has so much love we cannot imagine. Even if we gathered all the fathers of the earth we could not make any father be like the Heavenly One. And if a father with human flaws forgives so generously, God the Father can forgive far more generously. Not seventy times seven as the Lord said to saint Peter, the Apostle, but for some endless seventy times seven, meaning that He forgives us in any moment.
Since we have such a Father we must not be afraid, we must ask for His forgiveness and we will immediately feel His Love, only we should not offend it. As we do not wish to hurt someone who loves us and try not to sadden that person, we should not sadden God the Father Who loves us boundlessly. We should try to have this awareness of God`s presence and love as a permanent thought in our mind because it is in accordance with the truth and reality.
Time passes, runs away, leaves us and we approach the end. Let us put a good beginning and take heed at ourselves and open the eyes of our soul and see God. Let us feel that we live and we move and receive life in God`s presence and arms.
This is our Creator, our Father, the Holder of our Providence, He is the One Who loves us in a boundless way according to His nature. We are the creations of God. To be indeed His children we must walk on the path of His commands following the advice and obedience we inherited from our Holy Fathers. And for the prayers of our holy starets Joseph may us be all covered by the grace of God and have the spiritual contemplation of God and let us not sadden Him with our life. Amen.
Excerpt from the book The Art of Salvation, Evanghelismos Publishing.
