The following is the story that Elder
Aimilianos told of his own mystical experience, but he told it in the third
person:
“Permit me to tell you [runs the
story] about a certain monk I once knew. Just as all of us have moments of
difficulty, he too was passing through a very critical period of his life. The
devil had cast fire into his brain, and wanted to strip him of his monastic
dignity, and make him a miserable seeker of alleged truth. His soul roared like
breaking waves, and he sought deliverance from his distress. From time to time,
he remembered the Prayer of the Heart, but it resounded only weakly within him,
because he had no faith in it. His immediate surroundings were of no help.
Everything was negative. His heart was about to break. How wretched man
becomes when he is beset by problems! And who among us has not known such
terrible days, such dark nights, and agonizing trials?
Our monk did not know what to do.
Walks did nothing for him. The night stifled him. And one night, gasping for
air, he threw open the window of his cell in order to take a deep breath. It
was dark – about three o’clock in the morning. In his great weariness, he was
about to close the window, hoping to get at least a few moments of rest. At
that very moment, however, it was as if everything around him – even the
darkness outside – had become light! He looked to see where such light might be
coming from, but it was coming from nowhere. The darkness, which has no
existence of its own, had become light, although his heart remained in the
dark. And when he turned around, he saw that his cell had also become light!He
examined the lamp to see if the light was coming from there, but that one,
small oil lamp could not become light itself, neither could it make all things
light.
Although his heart was not yet
illumined, he did have a certain hope. Overcome with surprise and moved by this
hope, but without being fully aware of what he was doing, he went out into the
black courtyard of the monastery, which had often seemed to him like hell. He
went out into the silence, into the night. Everything was clear as day. Nothing
was hidden in the darkness. Everything was in the light: the wooden beams and
the windows, the church, the ground he walked on, the sky, the spring of water
which flowed continuously, the crickets, the fireflies, the birds of the night
– everything was visible, everything! And the stars came down and the sky
lowered itself, and it seemed to him that everything – earth and sky had become
like heaven!And everything together was chanting the prayer [i.e. of the
heart], everything was saying the prayer.And his heart strangely opened and
began to dance; it began to beat and take part involuntarily in the same
prayer; his feet barely touched the ground. He did not know how he opened the
door and entered the church, or when he had vested; he did not know when the
other monks arrived, or when the Liturgy began. What exactly happened he did
not know. Gone was the ordinary connection of things, and he knew only that he
was standing before the altar, before the invisibly present God, celebrating
the Liturgy. And striking, as it were, the keys of both his heart and the
altar, his voice resounded above, to the altar beyond the heavens. The Liturgy continued.
The Gospel was read. The light was no longer all around him, but had built its
nest within his heart. The Liturgy ended, but the song that had begun in his
heart was endless. In his ecstasy, he saw that heaven and earth sing this
prayer without ceasing, and that the monk truly lives only when he is animated
by it. For this to happen, he needs only to cease living for himself.”
*
An Antidoro from Elder Aimilianos’
many teachings available in print due to the tireless efforts of the Ormylia
nuns for the last 23 years after Gerondas receded into silence. More would have
survived had not Elder Aimilianos set fire on his own manuscripts decades ago
in an act of self-effacing humility before the horrified eyes of his disciples
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