When you have decided to do something and you say: “I’ll go now and do this”.

When you have decided to do something and you say: “I’ll go now and do this”.

How can you speak in this way?

Instead, the correct way to say this would be: “If it is the will of God, I’ll go and do it.”

In other words, when we rely on our abilities, we are excluding God from our lives.

Theoretically, we know that there is God. However, there’s no such thing as theoretical and intellectual union with God.

St. Gregory Palamas says that there are some Christians who know God intellectually and can speak about Him really wisely.

Indeed, we can obtain a great deal of correct information about God by studying, examining and analyzing His footprints. However, this is not the most important thing. 

The key is not in seeing and studying the trace of God, and then speaking about Him. 

Rather, what really matters is beyond all of this. What really matters is personally meeting God!

And these are two different things. 

If a person knows that there is God but doesn’t personally know Him, the soul of this man resembles the devil. 

The devil also knows that there is God, he knows everything about Him, but has no personal relationship with Him. In other words, he doesn’t know Him.

Therefore, our life in this world is a great responsibility. Everything  we do here, whether it be inside or outside of the church, everything that is our Christian way of life, including the way we pray, our relationship with people around us and our participation in the Holy Mysteries…. 

All of this must come to life within ourselves, so that it doesn’t just remain as an objective reality beyond us, which has no real connection to us.

Every single second of each day, our hearts must be engaged in the process of seeking God. 

No matter what we may be doing, our hearts must simultaneously be pursuing God. 

Let us learn to live this way - let our life be Christ. 

Archpriest Theodore Gignadze