Good News – Metropolitan Nahum of Strumica
Posted By Macedon on April 7, 2025
Do you see how we are in need of “soft food” in that the Gospel extract which is read on the day of the Annunciation begins with Saint Elizabeth’s conception in old age and the rest which was to come (see Luke 1: 24–38).
What is solid food?
Solid food is, that the One Who is more honourable than the cherubim and immeasurably more glorious than the seraphim did not have need of an angel, even if that were the Archangel Gabriel, to learn the truth about the incarnation from the Holy Spirit of the Son of God in Her.
Do you remember what I have told you: at the second stage of spiritual development – enlightenment of the mind, we gain a certain freedom before God. Then, not only will our main plans often coincide with God’s plans, although not always at the time we expect, but now we receive the gift of God, ourselves, in our heart – in the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven, in order to prepare that which we desire for us.
I am talking to you about the graceful struggle (endeavour) of ascetic prayer of the mind in the heart.
How much more all of this is brought to bear on the unattainable hesychastic-prayer struggle that the Most-Holy Theotokos had in the Holy of Holies within the Temple of the Old Testament.