Metropolitan of Strumica, Nahum: The Cross of Christ is a Personal Relationship (Part 3)
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THE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD IS NOT A ONE-SIDED RELATIONSHIP
Accepting and being grateful to God for what happens to us, does not mean accepting some kind of “destiny”, we cannot say – that’s how it was prearranged, that’s how it is given to us by God and that we cannot change anything that happens to us.
Acceptance and gratitude to God for our suffering is not a passive, one-sided relationship, but the basic beginning of a new relationship with God, that in itself essentially changes things for the better – not only as a relation towards the things themselves but also in the real life.
It seems antinomic (as if the occurrences contradicting each other, but they are not), like everything else in the relationship with God and the life with (in) Him.
– At the same time we experience Cross and Resurrection, joy and sorrow, giving ourselves to God and receiving Him, God’s abandonment and extraordinary grace, etc.
Acceptance as a struggle (feat, endeavor) is most needed at the first stage of spiritual development – purification of the heart from the passions.
There is no acceptance if we do not put our minds in the process of healing through obedience to the spiritual father.
There is no acceptance also if we do not harmonize our way of life with the level of spiritual growth we are at, as well as with the position we have in the Church.
If there is no acceptance with gratitude, our relationship with God is erroneous and we do not have a constant life of joy. Worst of all, the misplaced relationship cannot develop in the right direction.
At the second stage of spiritual development – the enlightenment of the mind, we gain certain freedom before God. Then not only will our main plans often coincide with God’s plan, though not always at the time we expect (we have already talked about this), but now we already receive the gift of God, by ourselves, in our hearts – in the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven, in order to prepare what we want to happen to us.
I am talking here about the graceful struggle of the ascetic-hasyhastic prayer of the mind in the heart.
At the level of enlightenment, we are already seeing the fruits of a properly established relationship with God – Which we have correctly set while we were at the level of purification of the heart from the passions.
At the third stage of spiritual growth – deification, that is to become the likeness of God, children of God gain great personal freedom before God so that sometimes it happens, they change even God’s plans; as we have read in the hierographies of our Saints.
Our relationship with God is a living relationship, we accept some things with gratitude, we unequivocally agree with other things, we rebel with love against third things, and ask God to change them – it all depends on how well our relationship with Him is built; and vice versa.
There is no image of God and likeness of God in man,
nor there is a true freedom and love in the relationship between man and God,
nor there is a real relationship between man and God, if the man does not have the opportunity to change God’s will.
There is no man and there is no God – there is no God-Man.
That is all.
Metropolitan of Strumica, Nahum
(20.03.2015)
