Our personal relationship with God is being able to see His face
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The main point of this Gospel reading is not the miracle that the Lord walked on the water, because nothing is impossible for the One who created everything from nothing, but, our personal relationship to Him (that is, being able to see the face of God.) Also, the freedom in the love, love in the freedom that God gives us.
Following the miracle of the multiplication of the five loaves and the two fish, the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostles on the boat ahead of him, and, He stayed with the people for a little longer. After they had gone some distance from the shore, He followed them whilst walking on the water. When He approached the boat in which the Apostles were, the Apostle Peter asked to come to Him, Jesus called him and he walked on the water whilst looking at the face of God. We should remember, as long as Peter looked at the face of God, he walked firmly on the water. At the first moment he doubted, at the first moment he responded to external temptations – the winds, he turned his gaze away from God; he began to sink and fall into the water (temptations). This means that, in all things in our life, we should do before the face of God and in everything we should be right before God and see Christ before us. And all things that hinder that path and everything that prevents us from seeing the face of God, we simply have to remove. These are those external things that come from the side. These are our thoughts, these are the temptations from the side, these are the challenges in life in which we have to look again and again to Christ first and then solve them all, through Him.
Unfortunately, we still sin by deed, with visible sins, this shows how far we are from God and from being able to see the face of God. We also make mistakes/sins with our words. We insult each other, we gossip, we judge, we talk nonsense, untruths and unnecessary things. But we should also pay attention to our thoughts, because every sinful thought is a sin, and again, turning our gaze away from the face of God. The wind in this gospel reading, represents, not only the external temptations, but also the thoughts, and all this prevents us from being able to see the face of God.
It all starts with the thought. When we pay attention to an external demonic thought, that thought has already entered us and taken up space within us. And furthermore, if we do not reject it, it takes up even more space and grows into feeling and energy and so on until it is manifest in reality by deed. The only way we can save ourselves is to ignore it and only look at the face of God, that is, to have constant, unceasing Jesus prayer and deeds according to God. In all earnest we should say the prayer at any time at every hour, and remember God, that is to say, to look at the face of God. In that way, we should cast aside all thoughts. Especially those thoughts that come to us as temptations, as well as those that come to us as “good” suggestions that later turn out to be bad. Also, they are attempts of the evil one to tear us away from seeing the face of God, that is, from God.
Seeing the face of God, in this “iconic” age, is seeing the face of the spiritual Father. In him we get to know God and that is why we confess and consult him about our every thought and everything that happens to us in our spiritual life. That is why we should listen to him in everything. To do otherwise is to walk on the choppy sea of temptation which ends in our sinking (downfall). We do not want to confess, because we do not want to listen to him. And we do not want to listen to him because we want to fulfil our own will (our passions), we love ourselves more than anything and we put ourselves at the centre, instead of God. And all this prevents us from seeing the face of God, and turning aside, and it is our own destruction.
Also, through the face of the other we see the face of God. God identifies himself with each person and through each person we can see the face of God. Our relationship to our neighbour is essentially our relationship to Christ, whoever our neighbour may be. Be it our friend, be it an enemy, be it a relative or a stranger, be it a respectable or disreputable person, be it a sinner or a righteous person, we should see the face of God in everyone.
And you see from this event in the Gospel, only after Peter turned to God again, looked at His face, did God immediately send him help. He reached out His hand to save him. No matter how much Peter might have shouted at this or that person, complained about this or that situation, made excuses or something else, nothing would have helped him and he would have failed more and more. But he did the right thing, repented and looked to God again.
At this moment, our second thought, which we emphasized at the beginning, is shown: love in freedom and freedom in love. First Peter looked at the face of God and then God gives His hand. God does nothing against our freedom and against our will. He asks for cooperation with us, if we want. At the same moment when we seek God – God is with us. At that moment when we are not searching for Him, God is not with us and that is the love of God and the freedom He gives us. Through our freedom, God shows us His love, because there is no love if someone curtails our freedom. The terrible thing for us is when we are not with God and when God is not with us, than we know who he is and we know who we are with, and, he has no tolerance in him. The demon usurps our freedom because there is not one iota of love in him.
And that is why we should strive to be with God in our life. Let us compare our life and correct our life according to God’s life. Our will, according to God’s will. Our thoughts, according to His thoughts. Our words, according to His words and our deeds, according to His. Thus to control our life whether it is right or wrong. May we not compare ourselves with someone else, and most of the time we have tendencies to compare ourselves with bad examples and we want to justify our bad deeds with that. We are not interested in whether this man did this or she did not, but simply how Christ did it. How Christ responded in a given situation, to a given temptation, so we should act at that given moment or point in time.
In summary, let me reiterate, everything that separates us from being able to see the face of God and stands as an obstacle between us and God so we cannot see God, is all a temptation and it is all from the demon, it is all to our detriment and we need to remove it.
May the Lord Jesus Christ help us in this, may He give His pious hand to us who are of little faith and we may enter with Him into the boat here on earth, which is the Church and the kingdom of heaven which is eternity, which will follow and be grant it to us.
Fr. Gavril Galev
Abbot of the monastery “St. Clement of Ohrid”,
Kinglake, Melbourne, Australia
06 / 08 / 2023
