Yes, the one who has been deemed worthy to see and contemplate Him has no other desire; nor can the one who has once been filled with the love of God have more love for anyone on earth.
Let us be eager, then, to find Christ and see Him as He is, in His beauty, His attractiveness.
Flee the world, flee the illusion of this life and its false happiness. Hasten to Christ, the one Savior of souls. Let us endeavor to discover the One who is present everywhere. When we have found Him, let us keep to Him, let us fall at His feet and embrace them in the fervor of our souls. Yes, I entreat you, let us endeavor to see Him, even in this life, and to contemplate Him. For if we are deemed worthy to see Him sensibly here below, we shall not die, and death shall have no dominion over us. No, let us not wait for tomorrow in order to see Him, but strive to contemplate Him now.
…let us walk undeviatingly and endeavor to reach the One who walks before us, Christ. Once we have taken hold of Him, let us fall before Him and weep because of His goodness. Let us beg Him with fervor that He may never leave us, absolutely never, and that we must not leave the path. He Himself is the path…for it was He who said, ‘I am the way, and the resurrection and the life.’
Imitate Christ our God. Suffer for your own salvation, even as He suffered for you.
How then, in what other way, will you be glorified with Him? If we are ashamed to bear the sufferings He bore for us and to suffer as He suffered, then it is quite clear that we shall not become partakers of His glory.
This is why I say - and will not cease repeating - that those who do not imitate the sufferings of Christ through repentance and obedience, and do not share in His death, will not share His Resurrection either. Nor will they receive the Holy Spirit….
Truly, what is important to me,or rather, exceeds all glory, is what makes me partake of Your ineffable glory, the sharing in Your suffering, the imitation of Your works. For Your humility secures divinity for all those who seek after it with great awareness.
Count me worthy to share Your pure sufferings, me the most humble and least of Your servants, so that…I may share your glory and the joy of Your blessings, O Word, even now, as an enigma, a foreshadowing, a mirror; and then later, may I know You as I have been known.
But the glory of Christ is the Cross, the sufferings He endured for us in order to exalt us. Yet some do not want to suffer what He suffered; they refuse to become participants in God’s glory by refusing to suffer as he suffered. Alas! They prefer the glory that comes from man and willingly choose to be separated from God.
But those, O my Christ, who trusted in You, free them from pride and unclean vanity. Make us participate in your sufferings and Your glory, and deign that nothing severs us from You.
Just as the darkness does not flee unless the light arrives, so is the sickness of our soul not removed if the One who takes away our weaknesses does not come to join Himself to us. When Christ arrives, He is called health, since He chases away all sickness, all infirmity from the soul and makes our soul well. The One Who is above all light is called light because He enlightens us. He is called life because He makes us live. He is called garment because He surrounds us entirely with His radiance, because He shrouds and makes us warm with the glory of His divinity. Thus we say that we put on Christ, the One who cannot be grasped and is absolutely impalpable. Because He is joined to our soul without becoming confused with it and changes the entire soul into light, He is said to dwell within us, to abide in us, without being circumscribed. What a miracle! This is how the One who is above all things becomes everything for us.
In order to know that those who love Christ and keep His commandments also see Him, listen to the Lord Himself who says, ‘he that has My commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves Me: and he that loves Me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and I will manifest myself to him.’
But if you have not been deemed worthy to have a glimpse of Christ, what business do you have to think that you are alive?
…”like a drop compared with the ocean, like the fringe of some garment with the fabric itself, like the claws of a lion with the lion. I found Him, the One whom I saw from afar, the One seen by Stephen when the heavens opened, and the sight of whom later blinded Paul, I saw Him completely, like a fire, truly, in the center of my heart.”
Allow me, O Christ, to kiss Your feet. Allow me to kiss Your hands - these hands that created me by Your word, the hands that fashioned everything without effort. Let me be filled with these (graces) without being stated. Grant me the sunlight of Your face, O Word, and the enjoyment of Your ineffable beauty. Let me contemplate and delight in Your vision- the vision unutterable, the vision invisible, the awesome vision.
[Pascha]... that day of joy, that day of gladness and happiness (at the view) of Christ’s Resurrection, which has arrived again in the circle of the year. More precisely, it occurs daily and eternally in those who understand its mystery; ineffable joy and happiness have filled our hearts.
Let us carefully examine the mystery of the Resurrection of Christ our God which takes place mystically in us at all times, if we desire it: how He is buried within us as in a tomb, he is joined to our souls and rises again, and He raises us up with Himself.
…and being assimilated to the Lord’s sufferings, we enter into the tomb of repentance and humility. He comes down from heaven and enters into our body as into a tomb. He joins himself to our souls, dead as they certainly were, and raises them up. He makes us who are risen with Christ, henceforth able to see the glory of His mystical resurrection.
The resurrection of the soul is the union with life. Just as the body is dead and cannot live or be called alive unless it receives the living soul and is joined to it, though not mingled with it, so the soul, alone and by itself, cannot live without being joined to God who is true eternal life, ineffable and without confusion.
The resurrection of Christ re-occurs in each of us, the faithful, and that not once but at every hour, when Christ the Master arises in us, resplendent and flashing with incorruption and divinity.
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