All the Fathers speak of this. For a moment you are filled with joy, with love, with hope, with prayer, and you believe that you will never lose Christ again. But this state passes. Quickly. As it came. You start crying in the dark and no longer know in whom you believe.
These moments are somewhat like a piece of mercury that you want to hold in your palm but cannot, because it always slips away. You try hard, but it is so fine that it escapes through your fingers. You try to hold it, nevertheless, like a great treasure, you stand still, you are careful, you watch it, but you do something, somehow, a wrong move, a thought of nothing, and you have lost it. You find yourself again in darkness. But behold, after a while, God drops another, and you try to keep vigil, so as not to lose at least this one, but you lose it too immediately. You are foolish. But the Lord drops another. You lose this one too. He drops again. You lose again. He drops. You lose. And so on, you simpleton!
But do not despair! If you persevere in this work, in the helpless attempt to fulfill God's commandments, at some point something amazing will happen. Not because you hold the drop of grace better, or because you are more worthy – far from you, you nothing, this thought! – but the truth is that the all-merciful God sends you more and more often. And you let these slip too. And more, and more often, and more! Until one day, when the drops become a torrent, and there will no longer be a need to hold them in cupped hands so as not to waste them, because God already sends them like rain. They flow over you, you cannot hold them, but it no longer matters – it is Christ. Everywhere. Then Heaven unlocks and flows like a deluge, and then you no longer need the frightened attention and the painful burden of the struggle, for then that smooth flight begins, you begin to feel what impassibility is, the peace that is no longer taken from you, the walk through the Kingdom. Christ.
Even if we, woe to us, have not lived this second coming, we must have great hope, for we have read from saints close to us, from Geron Joseph, Saint Silouan, the great Sophrony, and others even closer, who walk among us even today, that, behold, this is the path to the purification of the heart. We have read this, that it is the second coming of grace, which from now on ceaselessly accompanies man. The saints lived these things. Let us look to them.
Mircea Stanciu
Excerpt from "The Journal of Healing," a book forthcoming from Bonifaciu Publishing House