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| Saint Sophrony the Athonite. |
What,
then, is the nature of this suffering? Not an easy question to answer.
Once
having cognized God, having experienced life in the light radiating from the
Divine Countenance, the soul no longer finds peace or satisfaction in any
reality of this world, while at the same time she is surrounded by everything
except God. Everything she recognizes as evil, as darkness, as demonic action,
tosses her about. Sometimes the torture inflicted by the passions is so intense
that it seems as if God had abandoned man and now paid no heed to his appeals.
Like the most helpless creature he hangs suspended over the frightful abyss,
and cries to God for help but all his cries remain unheeded. God seems indifferent
to all his sufferings. The soul is aware that she had turned away from God's
love, and her iniquity and betrayal torture her. Nevertheless, she implores Him
to have pity on her. But in vain. God merely indicts the soul and she is weary
of such accusations. She recognises the justice of the divine judgment but that
by no means lessens her sufferings. It is not her imagination - she really is
plunged into the shadow of death, and not finding by her side the God Whom she
invokes day and night she suffers intolerably.
One
asks oneself - where is the sense in all this?
During
the times of trial the soul cannot accept it as a sign of Divine mercy or of God's confidence in her, as
His desire to associate man with holiness and fulness of being in Himself. The
soul knows only one thing - that God has abandoned her after having manifest
His Light, thereby vastly magnifying her misery. And when, at the end of her,
strength, she does not behold God leaning mercifully towards her, such thoughts
and sentiments assault her concerning which it is better to remain silent. The
soul descends into hell but not like those who do not know the Divine Spirit,
who do not possess the light of true knowledge of God and so are blind. No -
she descends into hell capable of discerning the nature of the darkness she
beholds.
This
only happens to those who, having known Divine grace, have then lost it. The
seed of Divine love which the soul bears in her depths then engenders
repentance so powerful, so total, as to surpass the measure of ordinary
religious consciousness. Shedding abundant tears, man turns, to God with his
whole being, with his whole strength, and so learns true prayer, which detaches
him from this world, introducing him into another world where he hears words,
which no human language can express - ineffable words, since once translated
into current concepts he who hears' them can only see and hear what he knows
from his own experience. When the soul has gone through this whole gamut of
harsh testing she perceives clearly in herself that there is no place in the
world, no tribulation, no joy, no force, no creature that could separate her
from the love of God. The shades of night can no longer swallow up the light of
this life.
Reference:
Saint
Silouan the Athonite. Archimandrite Sophrony(Sakharov). 1991.