“Stability lies in continual thirst for God”
St. Silouan says: ‘Blessed is the soul that knows her Creator, and has grown to love Him, for she has found perfect rest in Him.’ If he experiences perfect repose, how can he speak of ‘unquenchable thirst for God’?
This is the antinomic life we see in the people of God: the more they know God, the more they thirst for His knowledge; there is no satiety. After the vision of the living Christ, this insatiable thirst was Saint Silouan’s refrain throughout his life:
The grace of God gives strength to love the Beloved; and the soul is drawn to pray unceasingly, and cannot even for a second forget the Lord. O Lord, Lover of mankind, how came it Thou didst not forget Thy sinful servant but didst look down in mercy upon me from Thy glory, and inscrutably reveal Thyself to me? Always I wounded and grieved Thee. Yet I had but to turn to Thee and Thou, O Lord, wouldst give me to know Thy great love and immeasurable goodness. Thy meek and gentle gaze captured my soul. With what shall I requite Thee, O Lord? What hymn of praise shall I sing unto Thee? Thou givest Thy grace that the soul may evermore burn with love, and day and night she knows no rest from love of God.
The stability of the saints lies in the continual increase of their thirst for God. Although the Christian feels fulfilled at every stage of his life when his heart is overwhelmed with the grace of God, he is never content because he remembers the greatest commandment of the Gospel: ‘When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.’ Even if we fulfil all the commandments - and we can never fulfil them to perfection - we must never lose the consciousness that we are unprofitable servants: to God is due all glory, and to us the shame for our spiritual poverty.
Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou
“Wavering in Quest of the Kingdom which cannot be moved”
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