Priest Visarion Alexa
Why am I Orthodox? The answer is in the today`s holy feast of the Lord`s Transfiguration:
`I wish to live what Jesus lived on Mount Tabor. I have no other scale or desire. Father Sophian showed me this Path and made me renounce at other demonic spiritual practices
He and the Light his face spread, his feeling, his entire being made me understand the meaning of this life.
Try to understand that the difference between other confessions/religions and Orthodoxy lies in this Feast.
The man wants to defeat evil, death, sickness. The man wants to connect his existence to something powerful, which doesn`t degrade itself, which doesn`t die, something which is over the death frontier and this very something is in fact God, the Eternal Being, Who is extremely discreet and loves us endlessly, Who brought us and the whole universe to life.
This Feast is the solution God proposes to the man who spat on His Love, because this is what Adam and Eve did, they spat on God`s Love. It is as if someone loves you sincerely, unconditionally and you disregards His Love and throw it away with a mere gesture.
This is what the first people did, this is what we do with God`s Love every day.
But He, the Endless Being showed us that we can still taste from Hapiness. God is Love and even more, He pours Himself over us as Light.
This Light is the promise God made to the man on Mount Tabor, where Jesus the Man unifies His Flesh and Soul with God.
He shares God`s Grace to such an extent that His Body, His clothes become bright, flooded by Light and the Light spread around is so powerfully shining that it completely stuns His disciples.
Peter is overwhelmed and he says only this: `It is good for us to be here`
When did you last have such a good state of mind, a disposition you wished it never had ended, a state of absolute joy ? Remember it.
Mount Tabor becomes the pillar of the Christian Orthodox World. Mount Tabor is the highest measure which the man can reach, is the man`s deification.
That is why I am Orthodox, because I believe the man can deify his person, I believe that the man and God can get so powerfully united that the man can borrow His features.
I became Orthodox because I wish God may lend me His Features : Love, Kindness, Non Judgment, Meekness. They are not mine, they don`t come to me naturally but by seeking Him, I wish to share what God is , so that through Him I may defeat all the weaknesses of this life: old age, sickness, death.
I wish to live what Jesus lived on Mount Tabor. I have no other scale or desire. Father Sophian showed me this path and made me renounce at other demonic spiritual practices.
He and the Light spread by his face, his feeling, his being made me understand the meaning of this life.
The condition of our encounter with the Absolute Being is only one :
`Blessed are the pure in the heart, for they will see God!` Purify your heart. Not the exterior heart, but the inner one.
You may be smiling and gentle on the surface but deep in your inner heart you are poisonous like a poisonous snake.
There is where God look, there will take place the encounter and until you don`t purify your heart of all the cunning thought and all wickedness, God won`t show up.
You may light up a lot of candles, you may pay for hundreds of prayers, you may go to all the monasteries, but if you don`t struggle with the wickedness from your heart, if you don`t purify it, everything is in vain.
How you can do this?
By remembering this sentence: I am the image of your Glory although I carry inside me the storms of my sins.`
I know that no matter how hurt I may be, no matter how hard it would be the fight inside me, I am Your Image.
This should be our concern every day and every moment, to purify our heart : Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me. Without cease! Only on the rock of this Name all the wickedness of our hearts may crush.
