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Saint Sophrony of Essex speaks to us
(†11 July)
Again and again, I thank God, Who gives me the joy of meeting with you...
No matter how good the road may be, the driver must always adjust the car's course: to change speed, to slightly alter direction or to turn around. So it is with our life: although the path before us is marked out by the Fathers, by the Apostles and by Christ Himself, yet we are always compelled to keep our vehicle on that line which must be maintained to reach our ultimate goal.
And behold, brothers and sisters, today I want to tell you that the power of salvation lies not in the quantity of knowledge, but in the manner of living: the not gnostic, but ethical aspect of our life ‒ this is what saves us. It is that love which the Lord commanded us when, at the Mystical Supper, He said:„Love one another”(John 15:17). This does not mean that we are against any knowledge. On the contrary, God's commandment obliges us to seek and possess the fullness of knowledge ‒ that fullness which is the Lord Himself (cf. John 17:3). Nevertheless, even if we were to have absolute knowledge, salvation does not consist in it, but in the manner of living.
And behold, today I want to say that, although we divide labor into physical and intellectual, yet unity and salvation come only through love. And how bitter it is for me to observe that within us lives a terrible inclination towards domination and towards pre-eminence, towards seeing the other as beneath us ‒ and this is ruin for man. Often we encounter situations where people, outwardly, are full of information from all kinds of fields of knowledge, but inwardly they have not learned to love.
„To conquer the pride that prevents us from loving”
In my book about Elder Silouan, at the end of the description of his life I add his last word. I said to him:„I regret that I am always ill and do not have more time to devote to theology”.With his characteristic gentleness and calmness, he asked me:„And do you consider this to be something great?”.I behaved towards him knowing that he was the highest gift of God's benevolence towards me. And, naturally, I could not answer his question. After a moment of silence, he says to me:„There is only one great thing: to humble ourselves, to conquer the pride that prevents us from loving”.
I called this the last word, because the Lord also speaks about the same thing at the Mystical Supper. And the Apostle Paul also says the same:„And yet I will show you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a resounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing…”. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
And in the last word of Saint Silouan, in a formula as short as possible, is contained the same power of love which saves and which is the center of all life, even of Godhead Itself. With many other saints, whichever one we take, everything reduces to the same. Therefore, before all else, we must guard love and yearn for it.
If there were love, the entire Christian world would be one, after the image of the unity of the Holy Trinity. If the Christian world is broken into pieces, this is only because Christians do not keep the Lord's commandments. How many discussions, how many intellectual efforts on each side, to prove that they possess what is best, and nothing has led to any result in our age.
Therefore, it is not some function in earthly life that saves man, but only life according to God's commandments that saves man. If man keeps the commandments, and truly keeps them, with the feeling that the Lord spoke them as the ultimate revelation to men about how God Himself lives, our entire life will become different.
From 'Spiritual Discourses' (vol. I)
Reîntregirea Publishing House, 2004
Translation by Hieromonk Rafail Noica