Fr. Charalambos Libyos Papadopoulos
There is a beautiful story with a saint teaching to a simple monk the succinct prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” As the saint was leaving, he listened to the monk saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, do not have mercy on me.” He was wrong in the words of prayer. The saint was observing him, and he saw that the monk threw his cape on the river, and the cape as if it were a boat, transferred him to the opposite bank. Then, while admiring his sacred simplicity, the saint told him, “Go back and speak what you feel.”
This beautiful, cute, “mythical” story shows us a great spiritual truth. In the Christian way of life, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it That means that you have to be part of what you are doing and asking for. The relationship is always stronger than words. There are no sacred words, but sacred and pure hearts, unique persons with whom God establishes unique relationships. It does not matter what you know, but how you live your life and how much you love.
Many times knowledge through intellect is an obstacle to the encounter with Christ. That’s why, when we want to learn an instrument, the teacher asks us to forget that we already knew. The teacher urges us to empty our mind. The same situation occurs with the spiritual art. We must erase all these distorted information we have about God, and in fact become obstacles in our encounter with the living God.
God does not reside in words, but in our whole life. The ascetic does not know the proper words in order to pray, but it is of little important. One holds another kind of knowledge, based on love and not on reason and evidence. The language of faith does not always have vowels or consonants, but it is full of passion, hunger and thirst, love of the Absolute. Knowledge is not something you know, but something you feel and sense. Let us remember the saying from Gerontikon, “Do you have a heart? Then you can be saved.” That means you should have will and intent to meet the One who is beyond the alphabets of mortals.
*The article was originally published in Greek in ikivotos.gr
