The Shepherd, June 2004
BLESSED IS THE MAN, 3
From early morning the eagle sits upon the peak of a high precipice, its eyes glinting, hungering to find some prey; then he swoops down from the blue sky, he skims spreading his broad wings to their greatest extent, he seeks out the catch. When he sees it, like an arrow, like lightning he swoops upon it; like a second arrow he soars up with it, he disappears. He feeds his eaglets, and again takes up his watch on his cliff or in the skies. Such too is the heart infected with the incurable malady of love for God’s commandments! And it is in that love, that there is blessedness. For in the commandments there is not only doing, in them there is hidden and through them there is made manifest a spiritual understanding: From Thy commandments have I gained understanding, says the Prophet (Ps.118:104). I have cried with my whole heart… (Ps. 118:145). The way of Thy commandments have I run, when Thou didst enlarge my heart (Ps. 118:32). And I meditated on Thy commandments which (Ps. 118:47). The law of Thy mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver (Ps. 118:72). Therefore have I loved Thy commandments more than gold and topaz (Ps. 118:127). In my heart have I hid Thy sayings that I might not sin against Thee (Ps. 118:11). I will rejoice in Thy sayings as one that findeth great spoil (Ps. 118:162). Guide me in the path of Thy commandments, for I have desired it (Ps. 118:35).
The sun rises and people hasten to their various occupations. Each has his aim and his purpose. What the soul is to the body, that its aim or purpose is to every human endeavour. One labours and concerns himself to gain a corruptible treasure; another to provide himself with a plethora of pleasures; yet another to obtain worldly and vain glories; and finally someone else says and thinks that his work will have some significance for the state or for the community. He who entrusts himself to the law of God in every endeavour has as his aim in every work to please God. The world is disclosed for him in the book of the commandments of the Lord. He reads through this book by his actions, his conduct, his life. His heart reads this book the more, the more it is enlightened by spiritual understanding, the more it is warmed in its progress in the ways of piety and virtue. It acquires fiery wings of faith, it begins to scorn all fear of the enemy, to be carried across every abyss, to hold fast to every good initiative. Blessed is such a heart! Such a heart is the man that is blessed.
Night approaches with its shadows, with its pale light, through which the nocturnal luminaries in the skies are made manifest; all over the earth people gather into their tents, into their refuges. In these shelters there is boredom, emptiness of soul; they attempt to muffle their suffering with mindless amusements; the emptiness, the moral corruption give way to noisy diversion, and the vessels of the temple of God, - that is the mind, the heart and the body, - are used by Baltasar (Belshazzar) for uses which are a violation (see Daniel 5:1-31). The slave of the earth, the slave to the temporal concerns of life, even when he eases off a little from the cares that consumed him through the course of the day, in the quiet of the night simply prepares himself for new concerns on the following day; and for him the day and the night, all his life, is a sacrifice to vanity and corruption.
The lowly votive-lamp glimmers before the holy icons, it sheds a soft light in the chamber of the righteous man. And there he is with his cares, with an unremitting, a consuming responsibility. He brings to his chamber the remembrance of the actions of his day; he compares them with those tables on which there is imprinted the revelation of God’s will for man, the Sacred Scriptures; the imperfections in his actions, in his thoughts, in the movements of his heart, he treats with repentance, he washes with tears; that he might renew and strengthen his endeavours he beseeches Heaven for renewed strength, a new illumination. The light of Grace, the supremely essential Power, descends from God unto the soul, which offers up its prayer with a painful awareness of human wretchedness, weakness and fallenness. Thus, day unto day poureth forth speech, and night unto night proclaimeth knowledge (Ps. 18:2). Thus life becomes a continuous progress, an uninterrupted acquisition - acquisition of things eternal. He who lives thus, such an one is the blessed man.
To be completed in our next issue…
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