Forgiveness: Let Go

Can you spare 25 minutes to listen to a wise talk given by an Orthodox brother on this topic?  Fr. Deacon Stephen Muse speaks about “Forgiveness:  Let Go” on the Orthodox Christian Network.  Give a listen here: 

http://myocn.net/forgiveness-letting-go/

 

 

On our salvation

Geronda, some feel certain of their salvation and others have doubts.  What is the proper stance? 

The goal is for people to observe God’s commandments.  The spiritual person must attain such a spiritual condition that even if God does not grant him Paradise, he will not be disturbed.  We must realize well that today we are alive, tomorrow we may be gone, and we must be concerned about how to be near Christ.  Those who have by God’s grace realized the vanity of this life have actually received the greatest gift; it is not necessary to be able to foresee the future, for it is enough to have the foresight to prepare for the salvation of the soul, and to take the best possible spiritual measures to be saved.  You see, Christ did say, The value of one soul is greater than the world world, (cf. Matt 16:26).  The value of one soul is infinite!  That is why the salvation of one soul is an extremely important matter! 

Does this mean, Geronda, that one shouldn’t have the hope of salvation and the fear of damnation? 

If someone has the hope of salvation, he will not have the fear of damnation.  And for someone to have the hope of salvation, he will have to be somewhat sorted out.  The person who is struggling to the best of his abilities, who has no desire to live a disorderly life, but who in the course of the struggle for faith and life falls and rises again and again, God will never abandon.  And if he has the slightest will not to grieve God, he will go to Paradise with his shoes on.  The Benevolent God will surprisingly push him into Paradise.  God will ensure He takes him when he is at his best, in repentance.  He may have to struggle all his life, but God will not abandon him; He will take him at the best possible time. 

Comments by Elder Paisios from the book Spiritual Awakening, pp 120-21 (available from St. Herman Press http://www.sainthermanmonastery.com/):

Was Jesus Christ self-sufficient?

 

Of all the people who ever lived, Jesus of Nazareth had the most right to claim self-sufficiency.  He didn’t have to need anyone or anything.  The Son of Man, the very Word of God made flesh, had life within Himself.  The Apostle John declared, “In him was life,” (John 1:4). 

Yet we find Jesus saying and living out just the opposite of self-sufficiency.  He was unafraid to need.  He acknowledged without apology that He depended utterly on the Father for everything—from His actions to His very words.  The times He spent in private prayer with His Father were not dutiful but life-sustaining.  Surely He is appalled at our stubborn refusal to desperately need the Father.  Self-sufficiency is not merely an affront to God, but utter foolishness, the equivalent of deliberately choosing death over life. 

Jesus also put Himself in a place where, as a man, He needed others as well.  He needed His mother, Mary, to care for His physical needs as an infant and child.  He accepted the ministry (financial and physical) of the women who followed Him and His disciples.  He was unembarrassed to need the companionship of friends, particularly His disciples, creating opportunities to be with them and asking them to pray for Him, especially as He faced His greatest agony in Gethsemane.  He risked loving a man He knew would betray Him, and He refused to isolate Himself from even the most critical of His questioners.  Confident that His Father would never let Him down, Jesus gladly leaned His full weight on the Father’s sufficiency, not His own. 

Found in From Bondage to Bonding: Escaping Codependency / Embracing Biblical Love pp 59-60

The way of the Orthodox Church

The way of the Church is love; this differs from the manner of the legalists.  The Church sees everything with forbearance and seeks to help each person, no matter what he may have done, no matter how sinful he may be. 

Acquisition of spiritual health

Every day you should try to plant in your soul something spiritual, which will eject something worldly and sinful.  Gradually, the old self will be disclaimed, and you will be able to move freely in the spiritual realm.  Replace the sinful images in your mind with holy ones.  Replace songs with hymns, worldly magazines with spiritual books.  If you do not break away from all that is worldly and sinful, if you do not commune with Christ, with Panagia, with the Saints, with the Church Triumphant, and if you do not place yourself completely in the hands of God, you will not be able to acquire spiritual health. 

 

Geronda Paisios on peace organizations

Geronda, do the peace organizations established by various countries help in bringing peace to the world?

It depends.  There are some who begin with good intentions.  But when all sorts of unrelated people—sorcerers, fire-worshippers, cultic religious types of all persuasions—enter into the mix and attempt to work together, how can there be a common purpose or a common ground for peace?  God forgive me, but such things are the devil’s rags.  Can peace be achieved through sinful association?  How can there be peace, when people are not reconciled with God?  Only when man is reconciled with God can inward and outward peace come.  But for us to be reconciled with God, we must first attain awareness, we must repent, we must live in accordance with God’s commandments, and then the Grace and peace of God will enter into us, enabling us to also help create peace around us.

The same Holy Spirit at work

. . . For as of old on the fiftieth day after the Sacrifice of the Lamb, the Law was given on Mount Sinai to the Hebrew people, now delivered from the Egyptians, so, after the Passion of Christ, in which the True Lamb of God was slain, on the fiftieth day after His Resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and upon the people who believed (Acts 2:3); so that an earnest Christian might know beyond any uncertainty, that the sacred rites of the Old Testament had served as foundations for the Gospel, and that by this same Spirit was the Second Covenant laid down, by Whom the first had been established.