Recorded speech of Abbot, Archimandrite George of our Holy Monastery of Saint Gregory of the Holy Mountain at Stratoni of Halkidiki, on 14/27 January 1989, at the invitation of the Most Reverend Nicodemus, Metropolitan of Hierissou, of the Holy Mountain and Ardameri. Taken from the magazine "Saint Gregory" of the Holy Monastery of Saint Gregory, of the Holy Mountain.
The purpose of our life, as you know, is our union with God. As the Holy Bible says, man was created "in His image and likeness" of God, namely to unite with Him. The likeness of man with God, our holy Fathers call it "theosis". Can you see how great is the purpose of man's life? Not simply become better, more virtuous, more courteous by God, by grace. And what is the difference between Holy God and of the deified man? That our Maker and Creator is God in nature according to His nature, while we become gods by grace, for although by nature we remain men, with His grace we are deified.
When man unites with God by grace, he receives also the experience of God, feels God. For otherwise how could we unite with God without feeling His grace?
The first ones created in Paradise before they sinned, could converse with God, could feel the divine grace. God created man to be priest, prophet, king. Priest to accept His existence and the world as gifts of God, and to offer in return himself and the world to God eucharisticly and doxologically. Prophet to understand the mysteries of God. King to reign in the material creation and to himself. To use nature not as a tyrant but as a ruler. Not to abuse creation but to use thankfully. To day man does not use nature logically but acts self centredly and foolishly, with the result of destroying his natural surrounding and within it destroying himself.
If man had not sinned and replaced his love and obedience to God with his selfishness, he would not have separated from God, he would have been king, priest and prophet. However, Holy God who hurts for His creature, wishes to return man back to the state where he again can become true priest, prophet and king. To be able to again receive the experience of God and to unite with Him. For this, in the history of the Old Testament we see God preparing slowly the salvation of man with the coming of His Only Son. He thus gives graces like those that man had before his fall, like the grace of prophesy. In the Old Testament there were men, like prophet Elijah, prophet Essiah, prophet Moses, who received the prophetic grace and saw the glory of God. Except this grace was not generally given to all, nor was it for the full period of their lives but was partial grace that God gave them for a specific purpose and for defined occasions. Namely, whenever God wished these just men to declare the coming of Christ to the world or to declare His Will, they were given the capacity to receive some experiences and revelations.
However, prophet Joel prophesied that a time will come when God will give the grace of the Holy Spirit not only to select men and for a specific purpose, but to all the people. Here is what the prophesy of Joel says: "........I shall pour My Spirit upon all flesh", I shall give My Spirit to every person, "and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions" (Joel 2:28). Namely, my people will see spiritual visions, will see the mysteries of God. This pouring of the Holy Spirit happened during Pentecost. Then the grace of the Holy Spirit was given to the whole Church. This grace was not given during the period of the Old Testament because Christ was not yet incarnate. The communion of man with God had to first be restored, for God to give the grace of the Holy Spirit to all the people. This communion our Saviour Christ achieved through His incarnation.
The first union that God had with man in Paradise was not hypostatic and for this it failed. The second union is hypostatic namely personal. In the hypostatic face of Christ, human nature was united undisturbed, properly, indivisibly, inseparably, with the divine nature for ever. No matter how much men sin, it is no more possible for human nature to separate from God, because in Jesus Christ, the God-man, it is united for ever with the divine nature.
For man therefore to be able to receive the Holy Spirit, to become priest, king and prophet, to know the mysteries of God and to feel God, he must become member of the Body of Christ, of the Church. Jesus Christ is the only one, true and perfect priest, king and prophet. What Adam and Eve were created to do, failed due to sin and selfishness, was done by Christ. Now all of us united with Christ we can partake in the three offices of Christ, the royal, the prophetic and the priesthood. At this juncture we must clarify that with the holy baptism and Chrismation, the Christian receives the priesthood but not the special priesthood that is obtained through tonsuring and through which the liturgists of the Church receive the grace to perform in the Church and to shepherd the laity.
Laity again is not only the non-priestly but those who through holy baptism and Chrismation receive the right to be members of the people of God and the Body of Christ, to participate in the three offices of Christ. In fact the more healthy, conscious and active member of the people of God and of the Body of Christ is the Christian, that much more closely he participates in the hierarchal, prophetic and royal right of Christ, and that much greater experience and feeling of His grace he receives as we see in the lives of the Saints of our Faith.
Forms of experience of the grace of God
What are the experiences of grace that a Christian can receive so that his faith and Christian life not be for him something mental and external, but true spiritual feeling of God, a communion with God, a habitation of God in which the complete man participates.
It is foremost an internal information that through faith in God he finds the true meaning of his life. He feels that his faith in Christ is a faith that comforts him internally, that gives meaning to his life, and guides him, that it is a strong light that illumines him. When he perceives the Christian faith within himself this way, he begins to live the grace of God. God is not something external to him.
Another experience of the grace of God man receives when he hears in his heart the invitation of God to repent for his dark and sinful deeds, to return to the Christian life, to confess, to enter on the road of God. This voice of God he hears inside him is an early experience of the grace of God. All those years he lived away from God he could not understand anything.
He starts to repent: he confesses to the Confessor for the first time in his life. After confession he feels a great peace and joy that he never felt before. And then he says: "I have been comforted". This comfort is the visit of the divine grace in a soul that has repented and God wishes to comfortl it.
The tears of a repenting Christian when he prays and asks to be forgiven by God or when he confesses are tears of repentance. Those tears are very comforting. They bring lots of peace to the soul of man. Then man feels that these are the gift and experience of divine grace.
The deeper man repents and comes to a greater love of God and prays with godly eros, that much those tears of repentance become tears of joy, tears of love and divine eros. Those tears that are higher than the tears of repentance, are also a higher visitation and experience of the grace of God.
We approach to commune the Body and Blood of Christ having repented, confessed, with fasting and spiritual preparation. After the Holy Communion what do we feel? Deep peace in our soul, spiritual joy. This too is a visitation of Divine grace and experience of God.
There are however other higher experiences of God. The higher experience of God is the vision of the uncreated Light. This Light the disciples of the Lord saw on the Mount of Transfiguration. They saw Christ shine like the sun with heavenly and divine light, which is not material, created light, like the sun and the other created lights. It was the uncreated Light, namely the Light of God, the Light of the Holy Trinity. Those who are completely cleansed from their passions and sin, and pray with true and clean prayer, they are found worthy of this great experience to see the Light of God in this life. This Light is what would be shining in the eternal life. Not only to see it from now but they are also seen from now in this Light. For this Light envelops the Saints. We do not see it but the clean of heart and saints see it. The bright crown that is painted around the faces of the Saints is the Light of the Holy Trinity that has illumined and sanctified them.
In the life of Great Basil we read that Great Basil when he was praying in his cell, they could see him shine wholly as well as his cell was illumined by the uncreated Light. We see the same in the lives of many saints.
So therefore for someone to be found worthy to see the uncreated Light is one of the highest experience of God, which is not given to every one but to very few, those who have progressed in spiritual life. According to Abba Isaac in every generation almost one man manages to see lucidly the uncreated Light. There are however even to day Christians who are worthy to have this unique experience of God.
Of course we should also say that everyone that sees the light does not mean that he sees the uncreated Light. The devil deceives and shows them other lights, demonic or psychological, to believe that it is the uncreated Light, when it is not. For this every Christian that hears something or has a certain experience, must not accept it as if from God, because he could be deceived by the devil. He must however confess it to his Confessor who will then tell him whether it is from God or if it is a deceit of demons. A lot of caution is needed in such cases.
Determination of a pure experience of the grace of God
Let us now look at the conditions which ensure whether different experiences we have are genuine and not false.
The first condition is that we should be men of repentance. If we do not repent of our sins and cleanse ourselves of our passions we cannot see God. As the Lord says in His beatitudes, "Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God". The more man cleanses himself from his passions, repents and returns to God, that much better he could feel and see God.
To attempt to receive experiences of God with artificial ways and methods as is done in the heresies of Hinduism, in Yoga, is false. Those experiences are not from God. Those are experiences that are derived from psychological ways.
The Holy Fathers tell us: "Give blood and receive spirit". In other words, if you do not give the blood of your heart with your repentance, prayer, fasting, asceticism, you cannot receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. True spiritual experiences are given to those who through humility do not ask for spiritual experiences but ask God for repentance and salvation. To those who are humble and say, "My God, I am not worthy to receive a visitation of your grace and divine and heavenly solace and spiritual pleasures". To those however who through pride ask God to give them experiences, He will not give them true and genuine experiences due to their pride. So therefore the second is humility.
The third condition to receive true spiritual experience is to be in the Church. Not outside the Church. For outside the Church the devil will deceive us. When a sheep becomes separated from the flock, it will be destroyed by the wolf. Within the flock there is security. The Christian inside the Church is secure. However, when he leaves the Church, he is exposed to his deceits, of other people and of demons. We have many examples of many people who did not obey the Church and in their Spiritual state they fell into deceits. And they believed that they see God or that they are visited by God when in reality the experiences they had were demonic and destructive to them. Also it helps greatly to have a pure and warm prayer. The truth is that at the time of prayer God gives most of the spiritual experiences to man, for this, those who pray with longing, zeal and patience, receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and feeling of the grace of God.
As you may know, there is a prayer we say at the Holy Mountain and which you may also be saying: "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me the sinner". This prayer which is characterized as noetic, heartfelt and unremitting when it is said with humility, with longing and persistence, brings in the heart of man the feeling of the grace of God.
False experiences of the grace of God.
People have false experiences of God when they believe that by themselves, with their own powers, in heresies, in groups, in religious gatherings, outside the Church, they can receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. They gather and some new "prophet" acts the leader and they believe they are receiving the grace of God.
It happened that I was present at a gathering of Pentecostals in the States in 1966 while I was there. Their "church" was a hall of a school. First someone started to play some music with soft and gentle sounds which as it went on it was becoming progressively more intensive, deafening and frantic so that it caused excitement. The music finished and the preacher started. He too started gently and as he continued he would scream louder. At the end he too created an excited atmosphere. And then when all the people suffered from auto suggestion and hysteria, they started to scream and move their hands and give out unintelligible shouts. I felt that the Spirit of God was not there, which is a Spirit of peace and not of disturbance and excitement. The Spirit of God does not come with artificial and psychological ways. Instead I felt sorry for the children that were there with their parents for they could suffer the consequences of this mass neurosis.
A young man who became a monk at the Holy Mountain and who first went through the Hindu yoga (you should know that there are approximately 500 Hindu heresies in Greece), described to me what experiences they try to have there. When they wished to see light they would rub their eyes so that they could see little stars. When they again wished to hear unusual sounds they performed some sort of pressuring of the ears so that they wouldcreate sounds.
Similar psychological experiences that are produced artificially, some heretics attribute them to the Holy Spirit.
Other experiences in heretic gatherings are not only psychological. They could be demonic. The devil manipulates the seeking of such experiences by some people and presents them different signs which are not of God but theirs, diabolical. They cannot understand that they are victims of the devil.
They believe these signs are heavenly and from the Holy Spirit. The devil also can give them some prophetic capability as he gives to the "mediums". The Lord has however fore-warned us, "There will rise false christs and false prophets and will give you great signs and wonders, insomuch that if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect (Matt 24:24), They won't simply do miracles and wonders, scary signs. Like the Antichrist when he will come he will not do bad things. He would do benefactions, healing of the sick and other impressive things to deceive the people, if possible even the elect, to believe him as saviour and follow him.
That is why we must be careful. Every one who can do signs and prophesies is not always from God. Again as the Lord says: "Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord have we not prophesied in Your name? And in Your name cast out devils? And in Your name done many wonderful works? And then will I say unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me you that work iniquity" (Matt 7:22-23).
I knew a young man who was led astray by occult and Pentecostal heresies who confessed that the different experiences they had when they were members of these heresies, were diabolical.
A previous Pentecostal man for example confessed that at the Pentecostal gatherings when some "prophetess" would prophesy he felt a demonic disturbance and that when he tried to say the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me the sinner", the speaking in tongues would start and drown him, impeding him from saying the prayer.
Because the devil transforms to an angel of light, we must be careful with experiences. The Apostle John advises us "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God (1 John 4:1). Not all the spirits are from God. Those who have the Apostle's Paul gift of discernment of spirits (1 Cor. 12:10) can discern the spirits if they are from God or if from the devil. The Confessors of the Church have this gift. That is why when we have such problems we must seek our Confessor and he will determine the source of every experience.
Even the monastics can be deceived. We have cases at the Holy Mountain where monks were deceived by such experiences. For example, an angel appeared to a monk - while it was the devil- and told him "Come to the peak of Athos to show you great miracles". He guided him there and he almost fell over a cliff, had he not invoked the divine help. He made the mistake to believe the vision as if of God when he shouldn't have. The monastics know when they have a vision they must tell it to their Elder and he will tell them if it is from God or from the demons. Where there is pride therefore deceit is very possible.
About Pentecostals
The experiences of the Pentecostals are not from God. For this, not only they are not helped to come to Church but instead they are driven away from the Church. For only the devil is interested in driving people out of the Church.
Also their divisions in many heresies and groups is proof they do not comprise the true Church of God. Protestantism consists of thousands of heresies. One of the protestant heresies is Pentecostalism. Only in the USA there are over 39 different Pentecostals. Many of the Pentecostal heresies have no relationship between them. Here are some titles of some of the Pentecostal groups: "Congregation of the Church of God of the Mountain", "Integrated Congregation of the Church of God", "Theater Gar", "Sleepless Mission", "Church of Mother Horn", "Church of Mother Robertson", "Jesus and Sleepless Mission", "Remainder of the Church of God", "Fire born Church of God's sanctity of America", "Church of Mogara Cook", "National Spiritual Davidic Union Temple Church of God", "Church of the Square Bible".
If the Spirit of God existed in these groups, there would have been a union, there would have been one Church and not so many different and opposing groups.
Also, some of the demonstrations that take place at their gatherings, such as trembling, dropping to the ground as if dead, screaming unrecognizable sounds, are not from the peaceful Spirit of God. Similar phenomena we find in idolatric religions. There are also many similarities with the spiritualist phenomena.
They also cultivate a spirit of pride believing that the whole Church of two thousand years is deceived, while they discovered the truth in 1900. The first one who created the group of Pentecostals is an American. The first Pentecostal in Greece, Michael Gounas, preached, "After so many centuries in the land of Greece the outset of the visitation of God happened like the day of the Pentecost". According to him, the visit of Christ started in Greece by him like in the day of the Pentecost! All these years there was nothing. Do you see the satanic egoism and pride?
What happens now with the sought after gift by them of "speaking in tongues"? In truth, in the New Testament there is reference to "speaking in tongues". The holy Apostles on the day of the Pentecost spoke the tongues of the people who had come for pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to teach them the Good News. The gift of the speaking in tongues is a grace given by God to the Apostles for a specific purpose: To proselytize the non Christians to the Christian faith. The holy Apostles when speaking in tongues, did not speak meaningless sounds like demoniacs. They spoke tongues, not any tongues, but the tongues of those who were in Jerusalem and could not speak the Jewish language, so that they could hear of the greatness of God and believe. So the meaningless cries have no relation to the gift of "speaking in tongues" which the Pentecostals maintain.
The Orthodox Church is the place of the genuine experience of the Grace of God
The Church of Pentecost is our Orthodox Church. And why is she? Because she is the Church of the incarnation and humanism of Christ, of His crucifixional death, His Resurrection and of the Pentecost. When from the complete work of Christ we isolate only one part, we over emphasize it and falsely explain it, this becomes one sided and a heresy. Only the Church that accepts and lives the whole work of Christ including the Pentecost is the true Church of Pentecost. Can there be Resurrection without a Cross? Unless man crucifies himself with fasting, prayer, repentance, humility, asceticism, could he see God? The Cross precedes in the life of Christ and of the Christian and the Resurrection and Pentecost follows. While they want Resurrection and spiritual gifts, without crossing themselves through repentance, asceticism, fast and obedience to the Church. That is why they do not comprise the Church of the Pentecost.
At every Divine Liturgy of our Church we have Pentecost. How does the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ? Don't they become through the descent of the Holy Spirit? There is Pentecost! Every Holy Altar of the Orthodox Church is the attic of Pentecost. At every baptism we have Pentecost. With the grace of the Holy Spirit, man becomes a Christian and becomes one with the Body of Christ. Every tonsuring of a Deacon, priest and of course a hierarch is a new Pentecost. The Holy Spirit descends and makes a man an operative of God.
Every confession of a Christian is again Pentecost. The moment the Christian kneels to his Confessor and with humility tells him his sins with repentance and the Confessor reads him the blessing of forgiveness, he is forgiven by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
source: http://oodegr.com/english/empeiries/false_empeir1.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment