(Archpriest John Jouravsky)
1918
The mysteries of God are accessible only to those who have found sight by faith
you it is given the mystery of God's kingdom, but for those outside, everything is in parables (Mc.4, 11)
The gospel is a mystery within and the divine. This mystery is allowed in a sense living heart, which is nothing but the grace of faith, lived through experience. Whoever does not receive the grace of this experience does (and still the best case) the point where everything is in parables, the new stage of Christian morality, and even up to Gethsemane. Such an experience outside of the gospel is weak. Until the first test, they cry Hosanna, and when faith and worship outside begin to crumble, they shout: "He be crucified ! "At best, they fled into the night.
Only a reception inside the heart can irrevocably uncover mystery of the gospel. reception of truth se fait à la mesure de la vie , dit le grand maître du monachisme spirituel, Saint Isaac le Syrien. L’Évangile se révèle à la mesure de la purification, et le coeur se purifie dans l’exploit caché du repentir. C’est pourquoi la première parole du Seigneur au monde pécheur et infidèle fut : Repentez-vous et croyez en l’Évangile !
Le premier commandement du Nouveau Testament est donc celui du repentir. Sans lui, l’Évangile et la vie dans la grâce sont inconcevables. Par lui, l’âme acquiert la grâce de la foi. Le labeur de la purification ranime le sentiment intérieur par which the soul receives spiritual life and the Gospel.
Sin petrified heart, paralyzed, put to death the body feeling soft interior that welcomes the spiritual life of grace. When outdoor living in sin, the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven is not granted.
For those outside , Christianity is given in parables. Watching, they see not, by listening, they do not understand and do not include the heart (see Mt.13, Luc8 13 & 10). The mysteries do reveal that on the inside lane of the purified heart. And this inner path is that of repentance in grace. In this way, the whole inner life changes, physically and mentally.
The initial moment of repentance is born from above to a new life in grace, the life of repentance, where the heart is purified to accept the Gospel. The gospel is a new life of grace, a divine life, the life of God's miracles. The heart purified by repentance receives this new life and accept it as a miracle, and feel alive, he perceives tangible way, he welcomes it as firm assurance of things hoped (Hb.11, 1).
The revived heart breathes fresh air of the spiritual life, the spirit of repentance. But he who enjoys carnal desires within the gentle sensuality, thinking lead a Christian life and spiritual delusion. The Spirit of God does not remain in the way of seduction. This is not the way of the gospel because there is no cleansing of sin that kills. Only on the path of renunciation of carnal life on the road to repentance, and no other place, that the soul can acquire faith in the grace that will demonstrate a sense of the living heart.
Only the consciousness of a living faith can find life and spiritual existence. In a feat of repentance and faith known by experience, man strengthens its existence in the divine domain, and by the help of grace, receives the deification, communing with the participating light and plenty of Divinity. Everything is possible for him who believes. This divine life and hidden, spiritual, acquired in the secrecy of the indoor practice. Although few are those who find this practice, because few have tried to be attentive to their thoughts. These, by their renunciation belong to the group of Christians from inside , as says St. Macarius the Great. They are the living bearers of the living God, the holders of the faith alive, active and giver of life.
Eastern Monasticism is part of the Christian men who found the sight by faith. In it are preserved the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.
During history, the eastern monasticism came by his exploits on the spiritual path of faith in grace, he saw the Kingdom of Heaven, and has preached with love in his writings wise in God. Such a Christianity is still hiding.
By an effect of the inscrutable will of God, Eastern monasticism plays the role of Noah's Ark of the New Testament, which is kept active grace of perfection that sanctifies , according expression of St. Macarius the Great. This grace also sanctifies everyone outside. The Lord God keep thus actual contact with the outside world through monasticism.
In this arch, as in ancient Israel, has kept the mystery of the new covenant between God and man. Ancient Israel was kept in the ark a mystery: the promise of the coming of God Savior. Monasticism keeps him the same mystery, not as a promise, but as the fulfillment of this promise. This promise bears fruit in monasticism. God promised this , newly remains already in monasticism as the Savior of mankind. The mystery hidden in this century and this generation is revealed to the saints who live in monasticism. This mystery is the Christ in us, in the words of the Apostle (Col.1 0.26 to 27). Monasticism knows this from experience and the mystery hidden in the choir of his holy light.
The Christian world outside does not experience this mystery. It seems outwardly him devote great reverence, but inwardly it knows not. Christianity is for him a parable. Fully immersed in mind and the senses in the material and earthly things in vain and transitory, in the unenlightened pagan existence, the Christian world outside not accede to the mysteries of the Kingdom of God . By its internal tendency, it is for children of this world taking wife and husband (Luc20, 35), working for the extension of this century, his mortal existence and corruptible. He knows no other existence, eternal, immortal, angelic, nor the Resurrection, which already exists here on earth before the resurrection Generally, as says Saint Symeon the New Theologian. It is not worthy, for lack of effort to reach the last century, the resurrection of the dead where men will not take no women or women of husbands, but are like angels in heaven (Mt.22 , 20.34 to 36 & 30 & Luke Phil.3 0.8 to 11). Not working towards an adequate, he does not know the mysteries of existence and remains in a corruptible, mortal and carnal. Only those who are struggling and violence delight and penetrate the mysteries in the Kingdom. And this is what the Eastern monasticism.
Monasticism, by the feat of the will led by reason, outside waives and equipment to prepare his spiritual nature and reasonable in the resurrection in the Hereafter. Monasticism is therefore within this Christianity which covers sight by faith, and sees before him an open secret existence, divine hidden century and this generation.
Monasticism is also the bearer of faith alive in the living God. With this faith, he brings Christianity to the pagans. Christ's light still shines in monasticism and Christ in him effectively. Therefore simple souls and believers are attracted to pilgrimages to monasteries and monks are among the oldest of God's presence so vividly that their hearts can not be deceived. God is truth in monasticism and in the hearts of the holy monks.
This contact with the Christian monasticism illuminates the world outside and allows him to acquire a grace which sanctifies their active outdoor life and opens the door to the inner life and spiritual . Sanctifying grace of Christ is poured on the outside world only through monasticism. There has never been and there will never be another means of sanctification of the Church of Christ. Every Christian soul thirsty for renewal by the grace of its existence, does not receive and did receive that through monasticism. The holy monks are carrying this through force. The mystery of the Church of Christ is the grace of monasticism.
The mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven is given to the holy ascetics of Eastern monasticism, and with it the hidden and spiritual life that leads to sanctification.
The first of these ascetics bless the new mankind to perfection by his spiritual work the hidden mystery of the new life was the Blessed Virgin All-, the Mother of Him who was the prototype of this new humanity. The All-Holy Mother of God is the Heavenly Abbess of monastic land. She opened the door of the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, it opened the ascetic feat that allows the mysteries to delight. She was born into a new humanity, divine, heavenly, angelic, monastic, tending toward the next century, the new life and resurrection in incorruptibility.
The difference between Western monasticism and Eastern monasticism. In the eastern monasticism lies the mystery of the end.
Western monasticism was also rushed to the glory of the resurrection, but by another route, and external hardware. He had another experience, another evolution. He has experience of early Christianity, fields of Galilee and lilies in bloom (See Francis of Assisi and others). He walked carnally to follow Christ. Remember the dynamic momentum (and outside) of the crusaders in the fields of Galilee to liberate the Holy Land of enemies (external). Let us remember their fight against the Antichrist (outside). These are the basic lines of Western monasticism and its activity. They are essential for him to date.
In his spiritual growth, Western monasticism was arrested in the fervor of love, and the outside surface. It froze there in the youth and freshness of its youth forces.
He has not developed (and has not been) beyond youth. Western peoples, immature age, received Christianity at the fervor of love, outside. but all the glory of the king's daughter is within (Ps.44: 11). The inner glory was not received by the peoples of the West. That is why they are so long for this inner beauty and heavenly, and this was expressed in the languor of their Gothic churches.
The architectural art of the churches is not the result of chance, he betrays the mystery within the people who builds, the soul that conceives. The Gothic is the search for God in heaven is the languor of a soul stretched to the sky, crying and seeking the inner life. The Gothic is the hunger of the soul, these are the arms straight up that begged, looking up there that they can not find here on earth. Gothic reflect this essential feature of the religious experience of the West and its monasticism.
Quite different is the religious experience of Eastern Christianity and Eastern monasticism. He does not know the momentum towards the heavens. Ignore the Gothic churches. They stand firmly on the ground, for heaven and earth are not separated : there is no languor in the sky. The Oriental architecture fully expresses the inner experience of the Eastern Church and its monasticism. In the East, it has what we seek, in the West, seeks God in heaven in this momentum up. In the East, we reject this world and you stay in the celestial world; in the West, confirms this world and we look for the world to come. In the East, is the prayer of theophoric heart and quiet joy of acquisition, in the West, it is the exalted sentiments of the heart that rotate at the languor of a quest to tense up.
Eastern Monasticism is interior and contemplative. His age is that for centuries with white hair. It is the child of ancient peoples, the age of the contemplation of the end . Experience of Orthodox monasticism is the experience of the divine end, the experience of this corruptible existence of external sinful and deadly. At the end of this experiment is closely related the experience of majesty and light theophoric beginning of a life, the experience of God's appearance in the flesh, the experience of printing in the immortal man and the ineffable glory of God -Man, the face of Christ.
The final fate of Christian humanity, and thus the fate of the world, is inextricably linked to the fate of Eastern monasticism. The mystery of the end of the last time and is hidden in the Eastern monasticism in the Orthodox monasticism, and him alone. When this disappears monasticism, Christianity disappear, and with it the outside world.
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