“Our Instability without Grace”

“Our Instability without Grace”

We think that our lack of stability is a great calamity and at times we lose hope and our heart breaks into pieces. However, at this moment we must cry out from our heart and confess our poverty and desolation to God. Then the Lord will unfailingly extend His hand and lead us on the way. Then we will receive a new beginning, a new grace, and we will pray with new gratitude to our Redeemer.

Even great saints could not avoid instability. Saint Sophrony notes:

We are unstable in everything before the coming of grace. Consider Peter: he confessed the divinity of Christ in such an apparently decisive manner, in his

unshakeable certainty; he was found worthy of the vision of the Light of Tabor and heard the voice of the Father testifying to His beloved Son; with firm loyalty he vows fidelity to Christ even at the cost of dying. And yet very soon after this, during the night in Gethsemane, out of cowardice he is unfaithful. If it was so with Peter, the ‘rock', then I tremble. May the awareness of my incapacity not be taken from me, until I step over the last boundary, until I enter once and for all into the sphere of Light, having escaped the outer darkness.

Whilst we cannot avoid alternating between grace and Godforsakenness, we must try to make our downward stay as short as possible. We can repent quickly and use every means to attract the grace of God, so that we can be lifted up again. In whatever state we find ourselves, the one great privilege that remains constant is that the Lord is working on us. We are the clay in His hands, which He moulds into a perfect image of His goodness and glory. It does not matter whether we are hurled into the deep or raised to heavenly heights, but whether we live or die to be pleasing to the Lord.

Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou

“Wavering in Quest of the Kingdom Which Cannot Be Moved”