A talk given by Archimandrite Elias Morcos in 1964. The Arabic
original, from Majallat al-Nour, the magazine of the Orthodox Youth Movement.
The
Revival as a Return to God
 |
| Archimandrite Elias Morcos. |
The
Church is the salt of the earth and completes the work of Christ in the world.
The Church works, she is present, for the sake of the salvation of the world.
We can say that she is the center of being, in her its destiny is achieved. The
world corrupts and ages, but the Church is continuously renewed for the sake of
the salvation of the world. But if the salt is corrupted, then how can it be
salty?
The Church is the group of those who believe in the Lord Jesus and who have united around him to live the life of the Gospel, the life of God. They have no concern except to follow the Lord’s teaching and to follow in his footsteps. The group is in the world and for the world, but at the same time it is not of the world. From the beginning, from the ascension of the Lord to heaven, it is oriented toward the age to come, awaiting the return of the heavenly bridegroom and hastening him on. From now on, it lives in the last days, in the fullness of time, “it uses this world as though it doesn’t use it, and buys as though it doesn’t own.”
However,
the coarseness and weakness of human nature weigh upon the Church, since she is
made up of humans. Sins and failings and imperfections remain, and doubles will
continue to remain as long as human beings are human. But the Lord has born all
things and taken them all upon himself, and as a result there is no barrier.
The
Lord Jesus has passed over our life and has cleansed us and taken us from
weakness to strength and from corruption to life. In order for the Church to
continue to be the Church, she must follow the Lord and cleave to a continuous
Pascha, surpassing the self and constantly passing from the weight of the world
and its many varied temptations to the victory of the Lord and the purity of
the divine life.
Everything
that exists is in a state of motion and progress. Vegetable, biological, and
social life, the sciences… everything grows and is perfected. And how much more
so the spiritual life. It is progress and growth, an infinite reaching toward
God’s life. For that reason it is said that, “one who looks back is not
suitable for the Kingdom of Heaven.”
The temptations of this world are many and varied. They take an evil appearance just as they take a good appearance. All of them are clear in their result, in that they are a stopping in the world, a stopping along the way, a stopping in the exodus, the passing over, Pascha. They are an obstruction to God’s eternal Pascha. The journey to God is a journey without end. Every stopping along it leads us to the corruption of the world.
We acquire upright faith. We build churches. We hold services and prayers. We celebrate the feasts. We have all the richness of Orthodoxy, its liturgical and spiritual and ascetic treasures… But naturally, if all this remains external it is not enough. There is no doubt that the journey towards God is at its base an inner striving of the heart, in God’s being a God to us, living, personal, inner. It is said, “If you want to kill God, then kill man’s inner life.”
 |
| Father Elias Morcos during the Holy Liturgy. |
No,
the Church is not in the externals, it is in the heart. As the Bible says, “One
who does not meditate in his heart has no knowledge and no understanding”
(Isaiah 44:19). We know this, but in our habitual action we very often forget
it. We know that the Church is not in the stone and not in the chants and not
in the institutions and what is visible, but all its beauty is from within. If
we are satisfied with the externals and we do not understand them and do not
enter into their deep, living meaning, then the externals become something dead
and superficial that comes between us and God rather than leading us to Him. It
turns into an absolute value or an obsession or a reason to be distracted from
God. Then we confuse the externals and the true, unseen glory, forgetting the words
of the Bible, “On that day the glory of Jacob will grow lean” (Isaiah 17:4).
But if
we transcend appearances and desire to live and inter into the essence, there
is a Gospel that we must follow. There are teachings and divine commandments
that we have abandoned for the sake of the commandments of men. Unfortunately,
not only have we abandoned them, but often we have mocked them and we have
mocked those who keep them. The logic of the world here is the logic of wealth
and lust and it glorifies a lifestyle that dominates our entire life. No, the
Church is not in hearing the Gospel but in applying it. If we do not maintain
our chastity, our poverty, our humility, our mercy, then where is the Church?
If we do not desire righteousness and purify our hearts and we do not do good
works, but rather tear each other apart, then where is the Church? It is
something difficult and ineffective? But have we tried? Have we experienced the
Lord’s commandments to the very end in order to taste their sweetness and
effectiveness? Or have we preferred the bitterness and emptiness of the
pleasures of the world to the very end? The Lord put a great deal of emphasis
on keeping his commandments and he strongly urged this in his final sermon
since he knew that “the prince of this world” will prevail over hearts. But if
we are of the Lord and not of the prince of this world, should our faith not
start from this? Does our Lord not deserve that we trust in his word and try to
act according to his commandments so that we will be blessed? “If one loves me,
he will keep my word. If you keep my commandments, then you shall be
established in my love.”
But
the Church herself is not commandments and ordinances so much as Love of the
Lord and striving for his face. For this reason we do not understand the
commandments if we see them as dry ideas, devoid of their marrow and their
taste. Virtue is not in actions but in the movement of the heart within the
actions. It is through actions oriented toward the Lord, cleaving to him and
longing for him. How can the Church be commandments when the Lord said through
the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah “Precept upon precept, precept upon precept.
Line upon line, line upon line. Here a little, there a little. For with
stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people, to whom He
said, ‘This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest,’ and, ‘This
is the refreshing’; yet they would not hear. But the word of the Lord was to
them, ‘Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon
line, here a little, there a little,’ that they might go and fall backward, and
be broken and snared and caught” (Isaiah 28:10-13). And to the youth who had
kept the commandments from his infancy, the Lord said, “You lack one thing.”
That one thing remaining is love: to long for the Lord in our heart and to
desire him alone.
Reference:
http://araborthodoxy.blogspot.com/2011/05/fr-elias-morcos-on-revival-in-antioch.html