(John. 1, 44-52)
Orthodoxy is: “Come and see”
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael asks. And Philip replies: “Come and see”. Though Nazareth is an unknown city, it has Christ. If someone sees his own “Nazareth” – meaning his true self and the chaos of sin he has inside him – he would be discouraged as never before: Can anything good come out of him? Clearly not. But when we feel our nothingness, Christ is born within us, in the same way that he sprung out of Nazereth.
Orthodoxy is Christ. Orthodoxy is also the fact that God became man, in order to make man God. This happens within the Church. How? “Come and see”. Come, you also, to the Church and live that which the saints live. Then you will understand what Orthodoxy truly is, and what an Orthodox life is: what Christ is, what he brought, what Christ gave. You will understand what all of those who believed in Christ lived, from the Apostles up until today.
The world is heading for destruction. But Christ became man and revealed himself – he reveals himself continually – to people through his Church, in order to save the world. With this reasoning, what humanity needs today is Orthodoxy.
An Orthodox Christian is someone who will innocently, humbly, and sincerely bow the knee before God within the Church. He will meet with Christ, and Christ will reveal himself to him, and will speak to his soul. He will feel this, and will spontaneously confess: “My Christ, you are my Lord and my God. You are everything. You are what I have been seeking for my whole life”.
Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos
Holy Hesychasterion “The Nativity of Theotokos” Publications.
