We experience a sense of ‘life incorruptible’ when we find ourselves close to the real holiness of the Church. Such moments do not last long, and when we experience them we can never be sure whether we ourselves are actually within this holiness. For a short and joyous instant we can feel that we stand at the blessed walls of the Church. Our existence within the Church is not our right, it is always a miracle of unexpected joy.
The Church is a mystery of overcoming lonely solitude. Overcoming solitude must be experienced realistically. Attending a church service, you come close to the wall of God's Church only when a ray of love slowly but inexorably melts the ice of your loneliness. Then you stop noticing that which seemed to build a barbed wire fence around you, the real or imaginary lack of faith of the priest, the viciousness of the old women on the watch for proper church behavior, the barbaric curiosity of two gaping youths who happened to drop in, the commercial arguments around the sale of candles. Then, through all of this you reach out to the blind soul of people, to the human being who in a minute may hear better and more clearly than you the voice of Jesus Christ, Man and God.
Two little boys enter a church; one is about six, the other, younger. The little one has probably never been inside a church before and the older one is guiding him around. They stop at the image of Christ crucified. ‘What's that?’ breathlessly asks the little one, his eyes wide open. The older answers confidently, ‘That's for truth!’
In the hymns to Saint Sergius of Radonezh we say that ‘he lived his bodily life spiritually, spent his days on earth as if it were heaven, communed with people as if they were angels, and his own world was otherworldly.’ Perhaps we do not want to live like this, but each one of us must try, within the measure of his strength, to live on earth in this heavenly way.
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