“Find a way to save the world”.Saint Sophrony The Athonite.

         

Saint Sophrony with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Orthodox monastery of all Celtics Saints. England.

What I want to write of now happened over half a century ago. It was a period of strain. Much - practically everything - was a puzzle to me. And life is so short! And God so immeasurably great and far off! Who will show me the straight way to Him, prevent me from wasting time on alien paths? Of course I sought such a guide, or guides - preceptors who might help me. But the fact that I was caught up by a hitherto-unknown force in the form of prayer which stayed with me day and night naturally made prayer my constant prop. And there were times when prayer, so I believe, brought enlightenment from God.

Unable to glimpse the divine truth in the destinies of mankind, of people in general, and tormented by my own dark ignorance, I was like a small, utterly helpless child. Feeling that there was something that I had to understand, I writhed impatiently and looked to God for help. And the Lord took pity on my ignorance and was not angry at my temerity but like a mother had compassion on me and was quick to respond. And this not once but over and over again. In like manner He had handled Job who suffered so much and protested so stormily.

I remember one such happening, which occurred in France, in the early twenties - before my departure to Mt. Athos in 1925. I wept and prayed to God: “Find a way to save the world - to save all of us, we are all defiled and cruel.” I would pray with particular fervor for the “little ones”, the poor and oppressed. Towards morning, with my strength waning, my prayer would be disturbed by the thought that if I grieve for mankind with all my heart, how is it that God can look on indifferently at the pain and torment of millions of beings whom He Himself had created? Why does He allow the innumerable instances of brute force in the world? And I would turn to Him with the insane challenge, “Where art Thou?” And in my heart I heard: “Was it you who was crucified for them?”… The gentle words uttered by the Spirit shook me to the core - He Who was crucified had answered me as God.

A brief response, but the divine word introduces a new, especial sense of being into the soul. The heart experiences a surge of light-bearing life. The mind suddenly grasps hitherto concealed meanings. Contact with His creative energy recre­ates us. Cognition that comes in this fashion is not the same as philosophical intellection: together with perception of the realities of the spiritual plane man's whole being takes on another form of life - similar, perhaps, to the first-created. This existential knowledge of God dissolves into a current of prayerful love for Him.

God answered me in a few words but words which contain an inexpressibly profound and vast revelation. Let me try to find an analogy accessible to our rational formation. In our fallen state we are separated from God by a thin veil - invisible and at the same time impenetrable. And in an unforeseen way, at a sign from God, a tiny split appears in this veil. Putting an eye to the split, we see not only what we had prayed about but wide horizons in the same perspective.

If our eye be “single”, and we keep it fixed on the vision we have been given, it will behold and be conscious of the infinity of the luminous Kingdom. And then not just our enquiry but a whole range of other related questions will find the satisfactory response. In the Divine eternity all “parallels” are knotted together in a ball, as are all divergent rays.

My spirit, although I suffered, 

wondered in amazement before God.

Then I started to ponder - if God be such as the crucified Christ made clear, then it is we, and we only, who are guilty of all the evil throughout the history of mankind. God manifested Himself in our flesh. Humility is a natural attri­bute of His love. Divine humility, we may adumbrate as a readiness to accept all and every wound at the hands of creatures created by Him. And, of course, this humility is indescribable. But we did not just reject Him - we put Him to what was in our eyes a shameful death. And I saw in spirit that it was not absence of compassion on God's part that was the cause of human misery but, only and entirely, man's abuse of the gift of freedom – “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient”(1Co6: 12)- which even our fall did not deprive us of.

He was victorious in my dispute with him. At first I was all bitter shame for my mad pride - as though I were more compassionate than God! Shame led to abject self-condem­nation. Then joy took over - not only had the Lord not condemned me for my audacity but He had even poured rich blessing on my head. Later I came to understand that my very prayer had been God's action in me.

To continue, and describe the spiritual experience accorded to me is not a simple task. I lived on the borders of two worlds, torn between the visible and the invisible -between the world of the mind and the realm of heaven. In saying that I was set on the border between two worlds, I want to show that what happened to me transcended me: the initiative was not mine but that of the living God into Whose sacred hands I had fallen. My spirit, although I suffered, wondered in amazement before God.

Experience showed me how inert our nature is in sin. Even such outpourings to God as I have cited do not instantly restore our wayward nature. Under the constantly increasing pressure of the external events of our century, which looked more and more menacing, again and again I found myself in conflict with God. Now I realise that although superficially I was leading an apparently blameless life, in my depths - spiritually - I was, and am, darkness itself.

More than once my prayer - if such it could be called - was inadmissibly audacious. Seeing all over the world the nightmare of principalities and powers crushing the little man, though “all we are brethren”: I would protest bitterly: “If Thou didst create all things; if without Thee "was not any thing made that was made.?" then all these foul criminals who are prepared to shed the blood of millions for the perverted satisfaction of lording it for a few days over us poor wretches - it is not they who are indictable, they are not responsible.”

It was a time of sore trial. I was on the edge of despair, foul despair. I saw no way out. And again the Lord visited me, and my thoughts took another turning. 'The Father sent His Son to save the world; but even Him they slew. But He rose, the Conqueror of death, and as the King of all eternity will "minister judgment to the people in uprightness.”

So then where are we? The question of good and evil is not resolved on the earthly plane. Those who have gone like sheep to the slaughter, “resisting not evil”. will become like the Son of the Father and will rise again with Him in glory everlasting.  

Woe is me that for a second time I fought with God in the same perspective. But my whole life continued to be preoccupied with seeking a categorical solution to the ques­tion which was to become a cardinal one for: all Christianity - how react to the persecution perpetrated by the princes of this world? The Lord granted me the grace to muse after this fashion: St. Peter in the garden of Gethsemane reacted in a normal way. But Christ said to him, “Put up thy sword into the sheath: the ·cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink. it?”(Matt16: 22-23)

This was how through prayer I learned precepts directly from on High. This was how the meaning was revealed to me of the Epistle to the Ephesians, concerning the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the Divine purpose for us. Our earthly life is in effect no more than a brief moment given to us by the Good Father in order that we may “know the [kenotic] love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God.” Here we hang on our cross, be it still an invisible one; but only thus are the greatness of man and the searchless depths of Divine Being made manifest. There are no words to tell of the God­sent richness of the way of the cross.

 

 

 

Reference:

On Prayer. Archimandrite Sophrony Sacharove. 1996.