The notes in this series are translated from the Telegram channel of Metropolitan Luke (Kovalenko) of Zaporozhye and Melitopol.
Christ is in our midst, my dear readers!
The Heavenly Queen hears us, loves us, and pities us
Today [September 18/October 1] the Church celebrates the memory of the “Healer” Icon of the Mother of God. We all seek help and protection in times of sorrows and hardships. In childhood, we sought it from our earthly mother, but as we get older, we resort to the intercession of our Heavenly Mother more and more. All people have their own physical infirmities. Everyone gets sick and suffers. Listen to what children and the elderly talk about with each other. The former talk about new toys and gadgets, and the latter about their infirmities. Such is the life path of every man: from a lively interest in the world with its various entertainments and temptations to the same kind of interest in the sicknesses of his dying body.
But what is this life given to us for? So we would move from interest in the world to interest in who has what disease? That’s not why God called us into this world, but so that we might gradually move from delight in the beauty of God’s world and its most-wise dispensation to gratitude to God and knowledge of His grace. It’s because of this incongruity between the dispensation of our spiritual heart and the heart of the Mother of God that it seems to us that the Theotokos doesn’t hear us and doesn’t respond to our pleas.
The Heavenly Queen hears us, loves us, and pities us. And she doesn’t just pity us, but weeps over us through her holy icons. She weeps because people have forgotten about God, about the meaning and purpose of our lives, about what her Son teaches us in the Gospel.
Mankind has become vain in its philosophizing; it has plunged into the seething, stinking spirit of the life of this world. If Christians spent as much time in front of their icons as they spend in front of television screens and computer monitors now, then perhaps the war would have already come to an end a long time ago. If they were interested in the spiritual life the way they were interested in political news, perhaps the long-awaited peace would have come to our land.
The Mother of God looks for purity of heart and prayer from us, and she receives our pleas to resolve this or that earthly problem. It’s not that Heaven above is silent, but that our hearts have become incapable of hearing and listening to it. We should ask the Mother of God for but one thing now—that she might cover us with her veil and lead us, the blind, infirm, and spiritually leprous, into the Kingdom of her Son and our God.
The radiance of eternal life on the face of another
The truth is apprehended through longsuffering.
We heard the words of the Apostle Paul today [September 19/October 2] about how he testified to Christ in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses (2 Cor. 6:4). There’s a lot of talk now about how we must also bear witness to Christ to the world. However, first of all we must save ourselves in God, and only then will our life become not just a testimony to Christ, but a reproof of the world for its sins. We can learn all the dogmatics, know the Fathers, read the Gospel in several languages, and speak very beautifully and reason intelligently, but remain godless at heart. Any teacher from the department of so-called “scientific atheism” can boast of the same academic achievements. People listen to us not with their tongues, but with their hearts. Vladyka Anthony of Sourozh once said that no one will come to God unless he sees the radiance of eternal life on the face of another. The truth doesn’t have to be proven—it’s enough to show it by example.
There’s a very important point here that we need to pay special attention to. An atheist can also do good works, help the poor, and live by the commandments, but he’ll never be able to pray. We are unable in and of ourselves to teach or tell the world anything about God that will benefit others. Only God can do this, in us and through us. It’s enough for us to provide Him a place for this. The cathedra from which God will address people is our heart. A faithful but illiterate person with a pure heart brings incomparably more benefit to the world than an educated theologian with a rotten soul.
Purity of heart is acquired, above all, through patience. And not just patience, but longsuffering, as the Word of God teaches us. I would like to wish all my readers that the sorrowful circumstances we live in today would purify your hearts; that malice, irritation, and condemnation might not increase in your souls, but rather thanksgiving to God for trusting us to live in this difficult time. The providence of God has weighed everything down to the smallest details. And if it pleased Him to lead us through the crucible of trials and tribulations, then it’s only to temper our faith and lead us into eternal life and grant us crowns of victory at the end of our earthly life.
