Protopresbyter Dr Georgios Lekkas is a priest of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Belgium
We will be eternally with Christ if we acquire the ‘mind of Christ’ while we are still living in this life. Christ is all Love for His Father and sees in each person an image of Himself. He came into the World to win even the worst of men, so He is indifferent to none of us. He does not consider the colour of one’s skin, the language one speaks, one’s social background, one’s economic status, one’s beliefs, because in each of us He sees a small potential god-man.
The God-Man Jesus Christ came into the World so that every human being could be united with Him, for none of us are strangers to Him. His Love embraces everyone and seeks to win even those who crucified Him. He aches for each one and does not want to lose anyone, because in each one of us He sees a part of His own Body. He desires that His Body increase every day so that no one remains alone any longer and if He were not hindered by the fact that each of us is free, He would save us all at once.
No one can fall lower than the Lord because He, though sinless, has taken upon His shoulders the sins of all, without excluding anyone, down to the last individual who will be born in this world before His Second Coming. He made us as His ‘image’ in Paradise and redeemed our fall with His blood so that none would be lost. He sees His images in all of us, and it remains for us now to see His own image in everyone.
Whoever begins to see in others the image of Christ that He sees in them, has already begun to have the ‘mind of Christ’. No one is now a stranger to him. The ugly, the unwashed, the sick or the homeless are all now as much his own as himself, since on His Holy Cross the same God has embraced us all. None can now be seen as inferior to himself since the same Christ died for us all. Whoever begins to have the ‘mind of Christ’ sees each person as an integral part of his own self and wishes all to have what each one needs, so that, if possible, not a single one will be lost.
The Son of God came into the world as the God-Man so that He might share all that He has with every human being. What God gives does not cease but increases in all of us. It is only what we do not give that will end, but what we share is multiplied eternally. The miracle of the five loaves and two fish is not a particular case, but the normal state of matter when it is in the service of God’s Love for man.
Wherever there is the Love of God, there can be no envy, for whatever good is possessed by another person – who is as much ours as our own selves – is for us yet another opportunity to praise God. Every person can now be as much our own as the God-Man.