The Lord attracts us with His sweetness.
This is the sweetness Apostle Paul writes about and we
say these words during the Liturgy - "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit..."
The grace - the divine energy is given to us by
Christ, because the Father loves us.
The love of God is given and taught to us by the
communion of the Holy Spirit.
Christ expressed God's infinite love for man by his
self-sacrifice, which is why the grace and energy are experienced with great
sweetness by the heart of a human being.
Therefore, in the prayers, we often encounter the
words – “sweet Jesus”.
However, this sweetness cannot be fully expressed by
the human language, even the holy Fathers couldn’t find a different word for
it.
The holy Fathers sometimes even replaced the word
“love” with “divine eros”.
Not only should we have love towards God, but we must
have the “divine eros”, which is the fiery love for God.
This happens not because we have the ability to love
or because we are selfless beings, but because, as Apostle John says, God loved
us first.
We must experience this love, but it will not be
possible unless we struggle to cleanse our hearts…
However, the origin and the beginning of it is still
from God. This is something we must never forget.
If we never forget this, if we just live as prudent
human beings,
if we don’t tolerate in ourselves the type of faith
that the Pharisees and Sadducees had, (which is so prevalent in each of us and
in our church in general)
If we somehow turn our backs on these kinds of
beliefs,
If the purpose of our lives becomes seeking God and
opening up our hearts to Him, then the Lord will enter into us as sweetness and
our hearts will flare up towards Him with divine eros.
`
This is Christianity and this is the happiness that a
believer has.
And then, as a result, the faith that has been given
to us and the joy that has accompanied the entering of the faith in the very
beginning, will become stronger and more intense.
And it will begin the endless growth here in this
world and continue in eternity.
Archpriest
Theodore Gignadze
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