Not work makes the man superior to the animals, not his life in society, but his spiritual life. The man paints, sings, writes and especially prays.
No other creature on earth prays, it doesn`t seek, it doesn`t yearn after Something from its inside.
The man is the only creature who yearns after the Supreme Being found within himself. The Holy Scripture refers at the spiritual man, at the man who fishes in his depths, at the man who is not content with his borders, where the water is shallow and the fish scarce.
In the Gospel Simon says a hard word: `Master, I fished all night and didn`t catch anything.`
You see in vain the man tries to get rid of boredom, of his bad moods, of problems.
An hour of sleep, a movie, a ride to the seaside or in the mountains, in the forest, on vacations don`t solve his spiritual pain.
A man told me one day :
`Father, I am suffering a lot, I have problems, great worries and fears which burden me, it pains my soul. I think I`ll take the plane and leave for two weeks on vacation to forget about everything.
My dear, I am very sorry to tell you but your thoughts, pains and worries will follow you in the plane. Even more than this, you may find them already there when you arrive there…
You can`t run away of your thoughts and spiritual pains nowhere in the world.
You can`t drawn within you your thoughts, pains and fears no matter on how many vacations you would go, no matter how much you would drink or how many cigarettes you would smoke or even worse.
Until when? Until you wake up your spiritual self, the man who fishes in the depths.
All the Fathers of the Church say that when youp ray, when you focus on the man from your depths and begin to see the void from you, your sins, over you comes a wonderful state of repentance and endless humbleness and you only say as Simon said:
`Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.`
Do you know what`s the paradox? He doesn`t leave. He remains near the humble man, near the man who sees himself sinful. He has patience with the man and has an endless love for him.
Try to fish in the depths; try to find that state the Fathers of the Church defined it as being the search for the Truth. Not as a lecture, as an intellectual activity, but as a profound state of grace where the man and God meet.
The Saints who experienced this encounter say that once reaching this state didn`t need absolutely anything at all from what is in the world, because all their needs, all their emptiness was filled and fulfilled by God.
But how can we fish in the depth? What is the angle for this fishing?
There is a wonderful prayer, a kind of lying before God, who takes you to your depths with all your nets.
There is a prayer which allows your mind to go down in the depths you had never known you had, prayer which helps you see the darkness from your soul and which slowly will bring the Light in you:
`Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner!`
