Странник 332

Where are you coming from? Where is your usual village? Where have you been before? Why has it hitherto left me alone, orphaned, in poverty, in a terrible death? Having known You, I realized that without You this was my condition! It was so disastrous! I stood on the threshold of a dark hell, I was thrown into a deep, inexorable abyss. Don't leave me! I can't be without you! If you leave me, I’m again at the doors of hell, again in the abyss, again in an unbearable and inexpressible disaster. You're coming! I do not see the image of Your procession; I see Your coming, I see it not with carnal eyes, but with sensation. You give neither time nor a way to think - who are you? You suddenly appear in the soul, Invisible and Incomprehensible! You appear with indescribable quietness and subtlety, along with the power and strength of the Creator, because you change the whole person: you change, transform, recreate, renew the mind, heart, and body! You, the Strong One, enter the house, bind the strong, plunder the vessels of the house, plunder not for destruction but for salvation! Both the house and the vessels were Yours before, You arranged them, arranged them for Yourself, they themselves surrendered into the sad captivity of the predator. And until now they were - my mind, my soul, my body - under the power of a fierce ruler, they acted under his influence. You come: from now on they come at Your disposal, begin to act under Your holy, blessed influence. What shall I call you? How can I tell my brothers about You? How will I convey to them the name of the Wanderer, who has retreated under the roof of my soul, under a roof that has become dilapidated, has come to final destruction, open to gusty winds, to rain and snow - under a roof only fit for the camp of the dumb? What did you find in my heart, to which various sinful thoughts alternately came, entered it unhindered, found in it, like in a manger, like in a pig trough, the tasty food of various passionate feelings? It seems to me that I know the name of my Guest! But, looking at my uncleanness, I am afraid to say my name. One irreverent utterance of the great and all-holy name can lead to condemnation! How much more terrible is the very presence of the Named One! But You are present! Your immeasurable goodness led You to the vile sinner, so that the sinner, having come to know the dignity and purpose of man, having tasted through experience, seeing with the sensation “that the Lord is good” (Ps. 33:9), left the paths of iniquity, left for himself the beloved swamp (swamp - Ed.) of stinking passions, took care of acquiring purity through repentance, and became Your church and dwelling. How can I call the Wanderer who hovers around me, who hovers within me? What can I call the wonderful Guest who came to console me in my exile, to heal me from an incurable illness, to remove me from a dark abyss, to bring the green field to the Lord’s field, to guide me on the right and holy paths, who came to take away the impenetrable curtain that had hitherto spread before my eyes, hiding from me the majestic eternity and my God? What shall I call the Mentor who proclaims to me the teaching about God, the teaching new and at the same time ancient, the teaching Divine, and not human? Shall I call the Mentor light? I do not see the light, but it enlightens my mind and heart beyond any word, above any earthly teaching, without words, with unspeakable speed, with some strange - so I will express the inexpressible - touching the mind, or an action within the mind itself. Shall I call Him fire? But He does not burn; on the contrary, He waters pleasantly and cools. He is a kind of “subtle voice of coldness” (1 Kings 19:12); but every passion, every sinful thought flees from Him, like from fire. He does not utter any word, does not utter, and together he speaks, teaches, sings wonderfully, mysteriously, with indescribable quietness, subtlety, changing, renewing the mind and heart, listening to Him in silence, in the spiritual cage. He has no image, no form, there is nothing sensual about Him. It is completely insubstantial, invisible, extremely subtle: suddenly, unexpectedly, with indescribable quietness it appears in the mind, in the heart, gradually pours into the whole soul, into the whole body, takes possession of them, removes everything sinful from them, stops the action of flesh and blood, unites the dissected parts of a person into one, reveals our whole nature, which crumbled from a terrible fall, just as a meager vessel crumbles from a fall. Who, seeing re-creation, does not recognize the hand of the Creator, who alone has the power to create and recreate? Until now I have only spoken about action, without naming who is acting. It’s scary for me to name Him! Look at me, brothers! Look at what is happening in me! Will you tell me what is happening in me? Will you tell me who is the perpetrator? I feel, feel the presence of the Wanderer within me. Where He came from, how He appeared in me, I don’t know. Having appeared, He remains invisible, completely incomprehensible. But He is present because He acts in me, because He possesses me, without destroying my free will, drawing it into His will with the indescribable holiness of His will. With an invisible hand He took my mind, took my heart, took my soul, took my body. As soon as they felt this hand, they came to life! A new sensation, a new movement appeared in them - a spiritual sensation and movement! I did not know these sensations and movements before, I did not even know, I did not imagine their existence. They appeared, and from their appearances the sensations and movements of the flesh and soul were hidden or constrained; they appeared like life - and the previous state disappeared like death. From the touch of my hand on my entire being, my mind, heart and body connected with each other, made up something whole, unified; then they are immersed in God, they remain there as long as they are held there by an invisible, incomprehensible, omnipotent hand. What feeling surrounds me there? My whole being is enveloped in deep, mysterious silence, beyond any thought, beyond any dreaming, beyond any spiritual movement produced by the blood; my whole being is sabbathed and acts together under the control of the Holy Spirit. This management is inexplicable in words. I remain as if intoxicated, I forget everything, I feed on unknown, incorruptible food, I am outside of everything sensory, in the region of the immaterial, in a region that is above not only matter, above every thought, every concept: I do not feel my body itself. My eyes look and do not look, see and do not see, my ears hear and do not hear; all my members are intoxicated - and I stagger on my feet, holding on to something with my hands so as not to fall, or I lie, cast down on a bed, as if in a painless illness and in relaxation resulting from an overabundance of strength. The “cup” of the Lord, the cup of the Spirit, intoxicates “powerfully” (Ps. 23:5). This is how I spend days, weeks!.. And the time is shortening!.. A wondrous silence, enveloping the mind, heart, soul of those who strive with all their strength towards God and are lost - so to speak - in an endless movement towards the infinite, this silence is at the same time a conversation, but - without words, without any variety, without thoughts, above thoughts. The wanderer who does all this has both a voice and an unusual word, speaking without words or sound and being heard mysteriously. I look in the Scriptures for words about such actions in order to get to know the wonderful Wanderer, and I involuntarily stop before the words of the Savior: “Where the Spirit wills, it breathes, and you hear its voice, but do not know where it comes from and where it goes, for every man is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). How to call the action itself? It reconciles, unites a person with himself, and then with God: it is impossible not to recognize in this action the breath of the gracious peace of God, “which surpasses all understanding, keeping the heart and mind in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7), given to those who come to a person, renewing a person by the Holy Spirit. Exactly! With this action, the mind and heart are made evangelical, made Christlike; a person sees the Gospel inscribed within himself, on the tablets of the soul, by the finger of the Spirit. The Divine Wanderer departs and hides as imperceptibly as he comes and appears imperceptibly. But He leaves in my entire being the stench of immortality, immaterial, just as He Himself is immaterial, a spiritual, life-giving stench, felt by a new sensation that He planted or resurrected in me. Enlivened, nourished by this fragrance, I write and speak the word of life to my brethren. When this fragrance is exhausted, when the stench of mortal passions is heard in my soul, then my word is without life, infected with stench and corruption!.. If anyone, hearing from the mouth of a sinner a great word about the actions of the Spirit, hesitates with unbelief, is confused by the thought, believing that the proclaimed action is the action of demonic delusion, let him reject the blasphemous thought. No no! This is not the action, these are not the properties of charm! Tell me, is it common for the devil, the enemy, the killer of men, to become their doctor? Is it characteristic of the devil to unite into one the parts and strengths of a person cut by sin, to bring them out of enslavement to sin into freedom, to bring them out of a state of opposition, internecine struggle, into a state of peace sacred to the Lord? Is it characteristic of the devil to extract God from the deep abyss of ignorance and deliver a living, experienced knowledge of God, no longer requiring any external evidence? Is it typical for the devil to preach and explain the Redeemer in detail, to preach and explain approaching the Redeemer through repentance? Is it characteristic of the devil to restore a fallen image in a person, to put in order a disordered likeness? Is it typical to taste spiritual poverty and at the same time resurrection, renewal, union with God? Is it characteristic of the devil to elevate to the heights of Theology at which a person is like nothing, without thought, without desire, completely immersed in wonderful silence? This silence is the drying up of all the forces of the human being, rushing towards God, and, so to speak, disappearing before the infinite greatness of God (Job 42:6). Delusion works differently, and God, the infinite Ruler of men, who was and now is their Creator, acts differently. Is not He who created and recreates the Creator? So, hear, beloved brother, hear how the action of delusion differs from the action of the Divine! When beauty approaches a person, whether with a thought or a dream, or a subtle opinion, or some phenomenon visible with sensual eyes, or a voice from heaven heard by sensual ears, it always approaches not as an unlimited ruler, but as a seductress, seeking consent in a person, and from his consent accepting power over him. Its action, whether it is inside or outside a person, is always an action from the outside; a person may reject it. Delight is always met initially by some doubt of the heart; those whom she decisively prevailed do not doubt about her. It never unites the charm of a person cut by sin, does not stop the flow of blood, does not instruct the ascetic to repentance, does not belittle him in front of himself, on the contrary, it arouses dreaminess in him, sets the blood in motion, brings him some kind of tasteless, poisonous pleasure, subtly flatters him, inspires conceit, establishes an idol of “I” in the soul. Divine action is immaterial: not seen, not heard, not expected, unimaginable, inexplicable by any comparison borrowed from this century; comes, acts mysteriously. First, it shows a person his sin, grows his sin in a person’s eyes, constantly keeps terrible sin before his eyes, brings the soul into self-condemnation, reveals to it our fall, this terrible, dark, deep abyss of destruction into which our race fell through the sin of our forefather; then little by little he bestows intense attention and contrition of heart during prayer. Having prepared the vessel in this way, he suddenly, unexpectedly, insubstantially touches the dissected parts, and they are united together. How did you touch it? I can’t explain: I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything, but I see myself changed, I suddenly felt like this from the action of an autocratic. The Creator acted in the re-creation as He acted in the creation. Tell me: the body of Adam, molded from the earth, when it lay not yet animated by the soul before the Creator, could it have had a concept of life, a feeling of it? When suddenly revived by the soul, could you have thought before whether to accept the soul or reject it? Created Adam suddenly felt alive, thinking, desiring! Re-creation takes place with the same suddenness. The Creator was and is an unlimited Lord - he acts autocratically, supernaturally, above all thought, all comprehension, infinitely subtle, completely spiritual, immaterial. But you still hesitate! You look at me and, seeing such a sinner in front of you, you involuntarily ask: is it really possible that the Holy Spirit is working in this sinner, in whom the action of passions is so obvious and strong? Fair question! And it leaves me bewildered, horrified! I get carried away, I sin, I commit adultery with sin, I betray my God, I sell Him for the vile price of sin. And despite my constant betrayal, my treacherous, treacherous behavior, he remains unchanged. Gentle, He patiently awaits my repentance, and by all means attracts me to repentance and correction. Have you heard what the Son of God says in the Gospel? “They do not require,” He says, “a doctor’s health, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:12-13). This is what the Savior said and this is how he acted. He reclined with publicans, sinners, and introduced them, through conversion to faith and virtue, into spiritual kinship with Abraham and other righteous people. Are you surprised or amazed by the infinite goodness of the Son of God? Know that the All-Holy Spirit is just as good, just as thirsty for human salvation, just as meek, gentle, long-suffering, and much-merciful is the Spirit - one of the three equally honorable Persons of the All-Holy Trinity, constituting, unmerged and indivisible, a single Divine being, having a single nature. And sin attracts the Holy Spirit to a person! He is attracted by sin that is not carried out by committing it, but is visible in itself, recognized, mourned! The more a person looks into his sin, the more he goes into crying about himself, the more pleasant he is, the more accessible he is to the Holy Spirit, who, like a doctor, approaches only those who recognize themselves as sick, on the contrary, he turns away from those who “get rich” with their vain self-conceit (Luke 1:53). Look and peer into your sin! Don't take your eyes off him! Deny yourself, “do not have your life honest to yourself” (Acts 20:24). Give yourself over to the sight of your sin, to weeping over it! Then, in due time, you will see your reconstruction by the incomprehensible, much less inexplicable, action of the Holy Spirit. He will come to you when you do not expect Him - He will act in you when you recognize yourself as completely unworthy of Him! But if you harbor an expectation of grace, beware: you are in a dangerous position! Such an expectation indicates secret self-esteem, and honor indicates hidden conceit, in which there is pride. Pride conveniently follows, charm conveniently clings to it. Prelest is a deviation from the Truth and the Holy Spirit who promotes Truth, a deviation towards lies and rejected spirits who promote lies. Prelest already exists in conceit, exists in self-esteem, in the very expectation of grace. These are its original types, so the bud, color, embryo are the original types of a mature fruit. From false concepts come false sensations. Self-delusion is made up of false concepts and sensations. The seductive action of demons is added to the action of self-delusion. Demons take precedence and rule in the field of lies: those who arbitrarily submit to demons come under their violent influence. As darkened and seduced by a lie that he recognized as the truth, he is deprived of autocracy without noticing it. This state is a state of delight. We enter into it, we are cast into it for our pride and self-love. “He who loves his soul will destroy it; but he who hates his soul in this world will preserve it for eternity” (John 12:25). Amen. This article is borrowed from the experience of a monk who engaged in mental prayer and who came from it into that ecstasy that Saint Isaac the Syrian speaks of at the end of the 55th Word. Such rapture is the action of spiritual sensation, as the same Isaac the Syrian said in the 38th Word: “Spiritual intelligence is the sensation of the eternal belly, and the eternal belly is a Divine sensation, that is, given by the Holy Spirit.” The Monk Macarius the Great speaks about spiritual sensations in conversation 7; St. Simeon the New Theologian in Homily 1; Reverends Gregory of Sinaite and Nil of Sora call it a grace-filled prayer action. The name Wanderer, in the sense of the article, was used in the 4th conversation of St. Macarius the Great. You might be interested in: