In the midst of the days which God allows me to live, countless times God shows His mercy and guidance each single moment. Sometimes, I even don't know how it works but I realize that it works inside out. And I am grateful to find this excellent quotations of Elder Porphyrios' sayings which I found from Father Deacon Charles' blogspot.The love of God transforms everything; it sanctifies, amends and changes the nature of everything.
When you find Christ, you are satisfied, you desire nothing else, you find peace. You become a different person. You live everywhere, wherever Christ is. You live in the stars, in infinity, in heaven with the angels, with the saints, on earth with people, with plants, with animals, with everyone and everything. when there is love for Christ, loneliness disappears. You are peaceable, joyous, full. Neither melancholy, nor illness, nor pressure, nor anxiety, nor depression nor hell.Source: Wounded By Love, pp 99 - 100
Your love, O Lord will I proclaim
and Your Faithfulness constantly I sing
Glory to You!
Thank you Yudhie. I needed this.
ReplyDeleteJust reading this fills me up... thank you. Have you read Wounded by Love? It's really wonderful. I think that you'd like it, Yudhie. It's a great opportunity to feel like you've actually spent some time with Elder Porphyrios -- like meeting him, and having a long and beautiful conversation. It's amazing.
ReplyDeleteI hope you are well!
God bless.
You're welcome, Pandeli! God bless you.
ReplyDeleteNo, I haven't Elissa but I do think so that it'd be great reading :).
Forgive me brother (as I repost my comments from FrDn's blog). Such texts concern me deeply.
ReplyDeleteThey imply that because I have not known such a thing then I have not yet known Christ. I am Orthodox, yet completely in want, without more than a momentary peace snatched from chaos. I am still very much bound to the earth alone.
I do not deny that these may be the eventual fruit of His love for me, but I know them not.
well-written comment, brother David. I admit that what you say is also true for me :)!
ReplyDeleteAnd Let me, brother to express what in my mind and heart, when I quoted and reflected again on this beautiful saying..
'We find Christ' means when Christ in His mercy dwells in us, offering His arms to embrace us and we surrender all to Him, welcoming His love into our heart. It is wonderful to say such great thing as we see in the work of Christ's love. It means when -by the power of His grace- we trust in Him, all external wearies and obstacles can not overcome this work of His Love in us (which so often works so silently inside).
Yes you said it very correctly, brother it is not about us but about Him whose faithfulness never fails. On this earth, [so am] I, easily be distracted and --my heart is so ugly that too many times it fails me, yet His love sustains us and He -Who is greater than this world and than death itself- has sown His ineffable Joy in the deepest part of our being as He is Our Only Joy and peace. So that it be: "When you find Christ, you are satisfied, you desire nothing else, you find peace". With that joy and peace, through the narrow and thorny ways -behind Him- we head to His Kingdom, embracing all ... Such beauty is the work of God's Love and grace...
:) God bless.
I certainly didn't mean to argue with you. I struggle to hope sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI understand :). Forgive me, brother...
ReplyDeleteJust having returned from my long journey, I just wanted to check in.
ReplyDeleteMy brothers David and Yudhie, you are my treasure and my joy, and the two of you are actually not only in agreement (which is only a human way of co-experiencing an idea) but of one, loving and suffering mind, the mind of Christ, which is a gift from the Most-High.
The words of elder Porphyrios can be a comfort to some, an inspiration to others, but also a kind of intellectual spoils or trophies to still others.
Knowing you, Yudhie my beloved friend, as I do, I think I understand completely how you are reading elder Porphyrios, as you and I are also of one mind and even our human natures, our hearts, are quite similar.
Knowing you, David my beloved friend, as I do, I also think I understand why you wrote as you did. The words quoted of elder Porphyrios are not actually for us. Were he alive in the body and sitting with us, his words to us would be quite different, and I also include Yudhie with you and me and the elder, as we sit together at the round table of the Spirit. His words to us are different. He might even say the same words, but to us they would mean something else, because we four friends would know each other's hearts.
That we three can stand in spite of our weaknesses, failures, persecutions and temptations, means that we have found Christ (though more accurately, He has found us), that He has counted us worthy to follow Him to the Cross, not as religious participants but as initiates in and hostages to His ravaged and rejected, but victorious, love.
Christ is so very near us now, brothers, so very near! I salute you as we together say Yes in the face of our own frailty to the paths that Jesus walks in us.
Christ, Christ, Christ, one for all, and all for one.