Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum: The Cross of Christ is a personal relationship – Part 1
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Man was created in the image of God, called to become the likeness of God – person. For this reason, he is endowed with perfect potential – his own and God’s. Man is rational, which means he has a mind and nous (intellect) in order to communicate with God and with people (and with the whole creation of God) as well as to organize his own life. He has the power to love and recognize love, and most importantly, has absolute freedom to decide how to use, or not to use his own entire potential. Personally, in this freedom, I mostly recognize the image of God in man, because love would not truly be love without freedom. God created man with these characteristics and only God can fulfil the man – nobody and nothing else.
Why do we say that the Cross of Christ is a personal relationship?
Each one of us carries his own cross (suffering), unique and personal, we also carry the cross of the congregation (universal, Church) – we should not forget this. However, it is very important how we carry our cross. Do we participate in the Cross of Christ through our Cross – in the Church, or perhaps some meaningless suffering happens that does not lead to the resurrection? If there is already a participation in the Cross of Christ, is it effective? In other words, have we harmonized our way of life with the level of spiritual development we are at, or are we improvising some kind of spiritual life? How do we recognize whether we improvise or not? If we carry our cross properly, then our eyes will open to see that the main focus of the suffering is not on our suffering itself, but the main focus is on our personal relationship with the God-Man Christ, a relationship that we build through suffering. If our attention (focus) is mainly on the suffering and we do not recognize God in it, it means that we are more self-centered (self-love) and our spiritual life is improvised. Both ways of behaving are easily recognizable.
So, remember that through every suffering primarily we recognize Christ, and we upgrade our personal relationship with Him. The suffering itself is very real, but it remains in the background because through acceptance and gratitude it becomes a source of joy from the newly established and upgraded relationship with our Lord. Any other suffering is meaningless.
Let us now consider a positive example from the Gospel and what has been said; (Matthew 15.22-27). We all remember the Canaanite woman and what she went through, pleading to the Lord for her daughter’s health. First, she accepted Christ’s conduct – an act of utter disregard of her, that is, she accepted His act (He did not reply, not even a word to her). Second, she accepted His word – extremely offensive to her (“It is not good to take the bread of the children and throw it to the dogs”). Third, she accepted His will and providence – she went through a process of utter humiliation (“Yes, Lord: yet the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters”). And because she accepted the act, the word, and the providence and Christ’s will, inevitably and immediately she received the grace of Christ, and thus (most important of all) she established a real and a new personal relationship with Him. Her plea (prayer) already had another quality and value before Christ: And at that moment her daughter was healed (see Matthew 15, 22-27). In this example, we see the suffering (humility), but above all, we see the struggle to achieve a personal relationship with God – persistent prayer struggle.
Is this all? No!
The Canaanite woman received what she was looking for. The children of God must also go through complete (total) abandonment by God, left to themselves, in order to discover their own son-ship. The God-Man Christ uttered these words on the Cross: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27, 46) He said those words only for us – to show us what we will go through and to give us the strength to go through that suffering of total God’s abandonment. Because that suffering will seem to us impossible to overcome: “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will “(Matthew 26, 39).
He who, in his struggle has not experienced the ultimate God’s abandonment (at least internally) with acceptance and gratitude, that person will never realise that Christ is literally everything to him. And he who, in his struggle has not lost everything (even external things) with acceptance and gratitude, will never recognise and experience the love of our Heavenly Father.
Only then occurs, the meeting of a person with the Person (God), when there is nothing for you in this world – neither visible, nor invisible, nor grace – nothing; we simply accept and thank Him for the suffering, and the personal relationship with God and with all the saints gets infinitely deeper. At the time of our death, only this remains with us – Our personal relationship with God, and nothing else.
Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum
15 / 03 / 2015
