Friday. [Gal. 4:8-21; Mark 6:45-53]

   Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid. Here is the pillar of our hope! Whatever misfortune or sorrow might there be, remember that the Lord is near, and be inspired through courageous patience. As at that time He suddenly appeared before the apostles who were in calamity on the sea, so will He show His help and intercession suddenly to you when you are in calamity. He is everywhere and is always ready with His protection. Stand only with Him or before Him in faith, prayer, hope, and devotion to His holy will. There will occur a union of the spirit with the Lord, and from this comes every good thing. However, this does not mean that there immediately will be dignity, and glory and honor, and other such things. The external things might remain as they are, but there will arise a courageous and good-humoured abiding in the order of events which it pleases the Lord to arrange for a person. And this is the main thing that everyone in calamity should seek—happiness on the inside, and not on the outside. Inner blessedness always exists among those who are in living union with the Lord.

Thursday. [Gal. 3:23-4:5; Mark 6:30-45]

   And people ran afoot thither out of all cities…and came together unto Him. This is to the Bethsaida desert, where the marvellous filling of five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fishes was performed. What drew the people to the Lord? Sympathy towards the Divine. The Divinity of the Lord, hidden under the cover of human nature, revealed itself in word, deed, gaze, and in all that was visible in the Lord. The manifestations of the Godhead awakened a feeling of the Godhead hidden in the heart, and through it drew people to the Lord. Nobody has power to hold back such a movement toward the Lord, not even the one who feels it, because it is deeper and stronger than all other movements. The same Divinity, manifested later by the Saviour, drew people of every tongue under the heavens to Him. It has been the same throughout the entire history of the Church, even to this day. A small trace of the Divine draws people to itself. What follows from this experience everywhere and at all times of our spirit’s aspiration for the Divine? What follows is that what is Divine, what is supernatural—is the Godhead, its source. This aspiration lies in the foundation of our spirit and constitutes its nature, as anyone can see from our intellectual, aesthetic and practical concerns. But in nature there cannot be lies and deception; consequently they do not exist in this aspiration for the Godhead. From this it follows that God and the Divine exist, and that the naturalists, in rejecting what is supernatural, are going against the nature of the human spirit.