Bit by bit, grace comes

 

The Lord has risen, my brethren, so that we may also rise. Presently, as long as we still find ourselves in this world, the soul which is deadened from sin is being resurrected, while after this life it is resurrected for eternal life.  Everyone, more or less, has some experience of the truth of this –that there exists another reality, that divine life exists, which is the real life that Christ gives. Christians, however, always feel as though that which they wanted to happen in their souls, that which they were expecting to happen during these Holy days, doesn’t happen exactly as they wanted it to.

The Lord did all of his work – became man, died and resurrected for us – and this is a reality. And we, according to the measure of our faith, are constantly deriving something from this truth according to the measure of our responsiveness, of our love towards Him, and to the measure of our toil and effort.

Over time, we will assimilate and become familiar with what the Lord did for us. On the one hand, we should be thankful that it is this way. For, if all good happened quickly for us, if we were suddenly given all good, could we withstand it? Would we absorb it correctly? Would our soul have time to be humbled and to endure that heavy weight of blessing or would it become proud and fall more and more and become lost?

Bit by bit, therefore, grace comes. Let us not be enticed by how much we desire something and what it is that we are expecting, but always to be ready to see that which the Lord gives us –even the little –since little was our faith.

And we ought to honor that little, to love, to embrace, to absorb, and to thank God for it, guarding it as “the apple of the eye”. We ought to be careful not to throw away even this ‘little’. And the Lord, as long as He sees that we are not greedy, but that this little –this tiny drop of grace that comes –that we honor, we appreciate, since we consider ourselves unworthy of it, the Lord will give us more and more.

 

Holy Hesychasterion “The Nativity of Theotokos” Publications.

Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos

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