Metropolitan Nahum: On the Samaritan who was a leper
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The ten men, who were lepers, beseeched the Lord Jesus Christ and asked to be healed, and He says to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests” (Luke 17:14).
Christ first shows to everyone the way of humility and obedience.
The nine Jews departed to go and show themselves to the priests according to their traditional practice (scheme) of thought, religion, and of societal scheme – more out of habit – while the Samaritan departs because of a new relationship of personal trust and obedience to Christ.
The nine lepers follow a familiar and inherent pattern of thought, even though something new is happening to them – they are all cleansed of leprosy, that is; they receive the gift of cleansing (purification) of the energy of the mind, and yet, no one adapts to the new condition. And the goal that is missed is Christ Himself.
The Samaritan, on the other hand, who is not a slave to any scheme and is therefore open to the new, does not continue to follow the established scheme, but follows the new situation, that is, he returned and thanked Christ, which is the most normal thing to do.
Gratitude, after the purification of the energy of the mind, means using the light of the purified energy of the mind to perceive one’s own sins (not for condemnation of others). It means purifying the heart from the passions, activating the grace of Baptism and finding the place of the heart, uniting the energy of the mind with its essence in the heart, i.e. returning to Christ in our hearts and giving thanks to Him there (in our heart). It means, giving…
In the same sense, many Christians, at the outset of their spiritual life, with the help of the first grace, purify the energy of their mind, and yet, they fail to continue on the path of their spiritual development – both because of the indecisive battle with their passions, and due to their erroneous way of thinking of the religious-societal scheme which they adhere to and into which they are programmed, without being aware.
So, in addition to the personal sinful schemes which implants in us the model of life that this world imposes on us, there are also collective oblivious sinful schemes among Christians, which is to say, heresies, that must never be accepted.
The main collective, oblivious, sinful, scheme that is implanted in the hearts of believers is the scheme of identification with earthly forms of human organization – without the Church, specifically; renunciation of Christian identity and distressed identification with the state, nation and political platform, and their goals and interests, as well as putting the Church in the service of those goals and interests. That is why the SOC does not recognize the Macedonian Orthodox Church – OA.
This is that leprosy, i.e. inner impurity that needs to be cleansed from our spiritual heart as well as from the whole soul, without which there is no opening of the heart for the prayer of the mind in the heart, instead there is religious neurosis and religious sociopathy.
Most-Holy Theotokos, save us!
Metropolitan Nahum of Strumica
(20.12.2020 16:53)
http://www.mpc.org.mk/MPC/SE/vest.asp?id=7363
Photo by: Fr. Gavril Galev
