REFLECTIONS ON THE FEAST OF THE DORMITION
By Elder Thaddeus (+2003), from “Our Thoughts
Determine Our Lives, ”ppl63—170.
thank the Lord and the Most Holy ^Mother of God that
He has willed to embellish this feast day of the Dor- mition of the Most Holy
Theotokos through the angelic voices of the chil-dren who sang so beautifully.
This re-minds me of the days of my youth, before the war, when I was a monk in
the holy Patriarchate of Pech, the Serbian Zion as some call it. The choir from
Pech used to sing the responses at Holy Lit¬urgy every feast day at the
monastery. It was a mixed choir, very well organized, and the choir director
was a remarkable person.
I have heard many choirs from Belgrade and other
places, but that choir from Pech was quite extraordinary. Today, when I said,
Blessed is the Kingdom the children responded with Amen. This reminded me of
those days of my youth and it touched my heart.
When the chanting is as beautiful as this, we are
freed from all our cares and our interest for earthly things and we ascend into
eternity with the Lord, His angels, and the saints, where our true Fatherland
and our Kingdom is. If our Fatherland were of this world, then we would live
here in a state of wellbe¬ing, peace, and joy. However, this life for us
Christians is, so to say, an epi- timia. (“Epitimia” is to be understood as an
interdiction which, according to
Church canons, the priest as a spiritual physician may
apply in certain cases in order to treat the moral diseases of his spiritual
children. Similar to “penance,” albeit not quite the same. Ed.) In this life we
must prepare ourselves for life in the Heavenly Kingdom and we must attain
divine peace. No one can give us that peace; only God can give peace to created
beings and to us if we seek Him and long for Him with all our heart and if we
desire to become one with Him. He wants our souls to be united with Him, with His
divine will. He wants our entire being to become one with Him in order that we
may feel the joy of living. We, on the other hand, get very involved in this
material life and we have no time to think about our soul, about our inner
peace. We are always shattering our inner peace.
We have many examples by which we can learn. The Lord
gave us first of all the Most Holy Theotokos. It was His will that the Most
Holy Theotokos remain with the holy Apostles to comfort and encourage them
after His Resurrection and Ascension. One of the God-bearing Fathers, a native
of Athens, St. Dionysios the Areopagite, wished to see the Most Holy Mother of
God. When he arrived in Jerusalem, they took him to the home of St. John the
Theologian, where the Most Holy Theotokos lived. When he entered her chamber,
he was at once free of all cares and worries and was overcome with ineffable
joy and peace. This is how he describes his meeting with the Most Holy
Theotokos; “Had I not learned in my
youth about the True God, for me the Most Holy Theotokos would have been God.”
See what peace, stillness, and joy radiate from the
Most Holy Theotokos? God has allowed peace and joy to radiate from every soul
that is one with Him. Divine peace and joy emanate from such a person and we
feel good in his pres-ence. Do you see what the Kingdom of Heaven means? The
Kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Rom
14: 17).
The Most Holy Mother of God prays for us ceaselessly.
She is always visiting us. Whenever we turn to her in our heart, she is there.
After the Lord, she is the greatest protection for mankind. We have dedicated a
plethora of churches, throughout this world, to the Most Holy Mother of God.
How many healing springs where people are cured of their ailments have sprung
up in places where the Most Holy Theotokos appeared and blessed those springs
to heal both the sick and the healthy! She is constantly by our side, and all
too often we forget her.
You have seen that in this life anyone, even our
closest of kin, can abandon us. We all have our weaknesses and often hurt the
people closest to us. They can turn their backs on us because of our rudeness,
or they can forgive us but still be hurt. But the Lord and His Most Holy Mother
... oh, how many times have we insulted God and the Most Holy Theotokos, but
when we repent and turn to them in our hearts, they forgive us everything,
never remembering our sins and evil deeds!
You have already realized how unbelievably quickly
life goes by. One does not notice this as much in one’s youth, but when the
years bear down upon us, we see that a lot of time has passed and that very
little is left of this life.
Where do we go when the end of our life comes? We know where
we are going while we are still here, but what happens afterwards? Where are we
going? Have we prepared for the Heavenly Kingdom, for our true homeland? Only
the meek and those with pure hearts will enter it. Have we taken care to
cleanse our heart while in this life, the heart that gives us such a hard time
in this life? Have we said to ourselves, “Heart, you have caused me enough
pain; humble yourself and be a patient, long sufFering heart!”
The Lord has said that we save our souls by patient
long- suffering. We know that many misfortunes and sorrows come upon both the
pious and the impious, both the righteous and the sinful. We all receive our
share of misfortunes—this is a means of learning to accept everything in peace.
On our own we have no strength, but God has strength. It is to Him that we must
turn, deep down in our heart, and He will give us the strength to overcome all
difficulties, for it is very important to rise above all those little things
that take away our inner peace. We rarely pay any attention to this but allow
the injustice that we come across everywhere in our lives to shatter our inner
peace. Often we are the ones who do injustice to others. It may seem to us at
the time that we are doing the right thing, but later it turns out that we were
very wrong. We must learn to overcome all these little things with peace,
united with the Lord, so that disquiet will not enter us from the outside, and
so that we will always have our inner peace.
God is at the center of every person’s life. He is in
our heart whether we accept Him or not. He never separates Himself from us
because He is the Giver of life Who gives life to every created being. We have
buried Him with our worries and worldly cares, which destroy the peace within
us,
and that is why we have no peace or rest. No one on
earth can give us unshakable inner peace. Money cannot give us peace, neither
can fame, honor, a high-ranking position, nor even our closest friends and
family. The only Giver of peace and life is the Lord. He gives peace,
stillness, and joy to the angels and the saints, to us and to every created
thing. Therefore we must repent and turn to the Lord.
What is repentance? Repentance is a change of one’s
way of life; it is discarding the old man and all of his evil habits and
turning toward God, toward the Truth. Repentance means becoming quiet,
peaceful, humble, and meek. Everyone knows that it is very pleasing to be in
the company of a person who is meek, peaceful, and kind. A person who has no
peace generates restlessness and radiates it all around, so that in the company
of such a person we feel unsettled, and we too become restless. This is because
we have not united with the Lord through unceasing prayer. We have peace when
we are with the Lord and His Most Holy Mother; she is always here to help
whenever we call upon her. In her we have unshakable support, which remains the
same for all ages and which will not change. We cannot find this support anywhere
else on earth, not even among our family members, let alone in things like
riches, earthly power, and honor. We can be left without all these things, but
the Lord and His Most Holy Mother will never leave us.
And so, my children, as we celebrate the great feast
day of the Most Holy Theotokos, let us prepare ourselves for the Heavenly life,
let us teach our hearts to always long for God as the angels do, and for the
Most Holy Theotokos, for she is our Intercessor and prays unceasingly for us
weak ones before the throne of her Son. Whenever we turn to her in our hearts,
she is always there to help. Countless are those on this earth whom she has
comforted, and countless are the souls she has led from the depths of Hades to
the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us, therefore, learn to become accustomed to the
Heavenly Kingdom while we are still in this life. The Heavenly Kingdom is peace
and joy in the Holy Spirit.
We need to humble our hearts, which take insults so
deeply, and also our socalled dignity, for we cannot enter the Kingdom of
Heaven in pride, as when we take to heart each slander our neighbor casts. We
must accept our lessons from everyday life, for each day brings us cares,
worries, and insults. We must learn not to take insults to heart, for who knows
what awaits us during the course of our earthly
lives? God is merciful to us and has concealed our
future from us. Otherwise, not one among us would be able to go on, knowing
what the future holds for him. We must live through many misfortunes and
sorrows in order that we learn how to rise above all these problems that
disturb our inner peace. We must learn to acquire the divine peace and joy of
the angels and saints; the Kingdom of Heaven is acquired while we are still in
this life.
In this life we are in Heaven one moment and in Hades
the next. You can see this for yourself and learn from it. When our thoughts
are quiet and kind, when we forgive every slander and insult, we have divine
peace, joy, and stillness! But when we become angry because of someone’s unkind
words, we are at once in Hades! Everything collapses, and we lose all the joy
of living that we had before. Can you see how terrible living in Hades is? Here,
in this life, we are given the chance to taste both the Heavenly life and the
life of Hades. We should choose that which gives us peace,
the Heavenly Kingdom. We all desire this, without any
exceptions, whether our lives are good or bad. All people long for peace and
goodness, for ineffable love that never changes, and only God is this kind of
love. He alone is unchangeable. He is always J the same, and He is the basis of
all things—preeminently of mankind. He is ever waiting for us to return to His
J embrace, but all we do is shy 3 away from Him. He wants to give us peace and
to comfort us so that we may experience the joy of living, but all we ever see
are the cares and worries of this world.
From the beginning of our lives, we have all sinned
gravely. The Lord has warned us to be very careful lest we have a life of
hardship and sorrow, and endure much pain until we humble ourselves and realize
that we have sinned. For the Lord has said, Honor thy father and thy mother:
that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy Godgiveth thee.
(Exod 20:12). That is the law. The Lord showed us how to honor our parents by His
own example when, as His suffering on the Cross was nearing an end, He
entrusted His Most Holy Mother to His beloved disciple, John. He said to His
Mother, Woman, behold thy son. (Jn 19:26).
And to His disciple He said, Behold
thy mother.Qn 19:27).
(In the Aramaic tongue in which our Lord spoke, the
word “woman” implies greater honor than the word “mother.” Today it is
difficult for us to understand how the Lord could have addressed His mother as
“woman.” Likewise, when the Lord was in Cana of Galilee, the Most Holy
Theotokos turned to Him and said, They have no wine (Jn 2:3). And He said to
Her, Woman, what is that between Me and thee? Mine hour is not yet come (Jn
2:4). (In our language, when we say “woman” this has a somewhat disrespectful
meaning, but when we say “mother” it is much more intimate and affectionate.
But in the Aramaic tongue, the word “woman” is much more respectful.)
See how the Lord took care of His Mother in His last
hour upon the earth?
What do we do with our parents? God forbid that we should
continue to treat our parents the way we do. Even from our childhood we do not
honor our parents, but we want to live long and well. How can we live well if
we have disobeyed this God-given law from our childhood? The law of this world,
which is ever changing, punishes every violation against it. How then do we
expect not to be punished for disobeying the Heavenly Law—the Word of God,
which never changes, but stays the same for all ages, for it is Spirit and
Life?
We are the offspring of disobedient parents. When
disobedience entered our forebearers Adam and Eve, our nature suddenly changed.
It became corrupt, foul smelling, prone to decay, and mortal. Death entered us.
Before the Fall our forebearers were immortal. Only God, our Creator, can bring
us back to our original state, as He created us. It is for this reason that He
Who is love came down to earth and was born of the Virgin as a child. It is for
this reason that He lived for thirty three years among men. He wanted to teach
us the truth and to show us that He is love. We need to look to the Lord, His
Mother, the Apostles and the saints as examples and renew our life. We must
repent and leave behind our former way of life with all our bad habits, and we
must strive to learn obedience. If anyone has hurt us—our parents, our brother
or sister, a neighbor—then we must forgive them all from the heart, and when we
have done so, the Lord will know. Our forgiveness must not be confined to words
only. The Lord wants us to forgive from the heart. Our neighbor will then feel
our forgiveness and no words will be necessary. The person will know in his
heart that we have forgiven him.
How does a person know in his heart that he has been
forgiven? People have thoughts. We are like a fine thought apparatus. We are
connected to each other by our thoughts. When we think of a person, he
immediately receives our thoughts. But since we are distracted and our thoughts
are scattered, we cannot discern who it is that is sending us thoughts or the
kind of thoughts he is sending us. On the other hand, the person who has
peaceful thoughts, who is united with the Lord and whom the Lord has freed from
distractions, this person knows exactly which thoughts are his own, which ones
come from the enemy and which ones are from friends. Feelings and thoughts
coming from the minds of our fellow men reach us. This is why I say to you that
when we forgive from the heart, our neighbor can feel this and the burden that
has been oppressing his soul is no more.
This is the way to learn about the Heavenly life and
to acquire inner peace. Let us turn to the Most Holy Theotokos in our hearts
and ask her to intercede for us, that the Lord might give us strength and that
He might number us among His angels and saints who glorify God throughout all
eternity. Amen.
ORTHODOX HERITAGE VOL 13, ISSUE 07/08 2015
http://apantaortodoxias.blogspot.gr/2015/08/reflections-on-feast-of-dormition-by.html
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