The Shepherd, July 2004
BLESSED IS THE MAN, 3
Do not look upon this cloud! Do not trust your own eyes deceiving you! Because for them, this empty dust, this insubstantial dust, seems to be a cloud. Close your eyes for a moment, and soar about this dust cloud, which is borne about by the powerful and multifarious streams of the winds, lest your sight be injured. After a minute, open your eyes, and behold - where is that vast cloud? You will search for traces of it, and there is no cloud; afterwards there is not even a trace of it, not even a sign that it had ever been.
With a menacing song, with menacing sounds David continues to speak of the menacing, fatal condemnation of the ungodly. For this reason shall the ungodly not stand up in judgment, nor sinners in the council of the righteous (Ps. 1:5). There will be no participation of the ungodly in the resurrection of the firstborn (see Rev. chapter 20), which Saint John describes in the Apocalypse, nor in that spiritual resurrection, which takes place during our earthly life, when the all-effecting Spirit touches the soul, nor when He renews it at the Second Coming. The soul will arise, it will live in life Divine! Its mind and heart will be enlightened, made communicant of spiritual understanding. Spiritual understanding is the perception of immortal life (Ven. Isaac the Syrian - homily 38), according to the definition of those who are Spirit-bearers. And this understanding itself is a sign of the resurrection. But, on the contrary, fleshly worldly wisdom is the invisible death of the soul (Rom. 8:6). Spiritual understanding is an activity of the Holy Spirit. It sees sin, it sees the passions in oneself and in others, it sees its soul and the souls of others, it sees the snares of the world-ruler. It ousts every thought which raises itself up against the mind of Christ. It cuts sin off from itself, in whatever form it might approach, because spiritual understanding is the kingdom, the light of the Holy Spirit within the mind and heart. The ungodly shall rise up in spiritual judgment. This judgment is the counsel of the righteous alone, their patrimony. It is inaccessible and incomprehensible to the ungodly and the sinners. It is Divine vision, and only the pure in heart see God (Matt. 5:8).
The way of the ungodly man is abhorrent to God, so alien and so abominable to Him that the Scriptures depict God as turning away from him, as not knowing him. On the contrary, the way of the righteous is so acceptable to God, that Scripture says of it: the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous (Ps. 1:6). And it is precisely He Alone that knows this way! O blessed way! Thou leadest to God! Thou art hidden within the limitless God! Thy beginning is God, and thine end is God! Thou art limitless like the limitless God.
The way of the ungodly has limits; it has pitiful limitations! It borders on a deep, dark precipice, the everlasting dwelling-place of everlasting death. And it ever shall perish - the way of the ungodly - in this same dread precipice, to which all who follow this way have been led aforetime and in which they too shall perish.
The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, and the way of the ungodly shall perish (Ps. 1:6). Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, who is not attracted by the ways of their thoughts, by their moral principles or their behaviour, but his will is rather in the law of the Lord.
So sings the heavenly, wondrous Minstrel, and to his holy inspired song the desert-dweller has lent his ear.
1847 A.D. Nicolo-Babaevsky Monastery
It was in the Nicolo-Babaevsky Monastery in the Kostroma Dioces that St Ignatius sent the last six years of his life.
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