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| Saint Anthony the Great. |
God is no respecter of persons; and we hear now
the same Divine voice that St. Anthony the Great heard, and that the host of
great ascetics and saints following after him heard, and that future
generations of Christians coming after us will hear: "Behold,
I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I
will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcome will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame,
and am set down with my Father in his throne" (Rev. 3:20-21).
For our sake, our Lord Jesus Christ created
this visible world; for our sake He descended from Heaven, becoming a man like
unto us; He poured out His Divine blood for us in the terrible sufferings of
the Cross, to grant us such blessings of which we on Earth cannot even
conceive.
Therefore, perhaps, there is neither in Heaven
nor on Earth any greater sorrow than the sorrow of the awareness that
Christians neglect these ineffable gifts, whose inheritors they are called to
be.
Precisely this sorrow seized the heart of St.
Anthony, when once his disciples, seeing with what great zeal such a countless
multitude of monks labored in the desert, asked him, “Father! Will this zeal
and fervor for the virtues, to which we and this whole multitude of monks so
fervently apply ourselves, nearly without exception, continue for long?” Then
the saint, sighing and shedding copious tears, proclaimed to them the dread
prophecy of the state of Christianity in the last times, that the narrow and
tight path of virtues will be abandoned by many, from which many will follow
the impulses of their mind and body.
However, he added, against the background of
this universal apostasy, among
the Christians of those times, some will be far
better and more perfect than us, because more blessed is he who could have
sinned but did not, or done evil but did not, than he before whom there were
innumerable examples of asceticism by which he was as if involuntarily drawn to
the good.
These words of the God-pleaser are for us a
source of great consolation. It means that we, in our current situation,
although it sounds bold, can ascend to the same level of perfection as St.
Anthony the Great! That means, with our present visible impoverishment of the
gifts of the Spirit, we have the chance to prove to the Lord our love for Him,
and the Lord awaits this love from us.
There is an episode in the life of St. Seraphim of Sarov where
the Mother of God appeared to him and revealed that the martyr’s podvig(sufferings) is
possible now, only in another form. If the martyrs of old suffered manifestly,
then those of today suffer in secret from various heartfelt sorrows, and their
reward will be the same as that of the ancients.
Every time is given its own kind of suffering
by the providence of God. Knowing this, let us ever remember that our seemingly
small podvig (sufferings) for the sake of Christ, which we offer in our daily
lives, acquire in our present situation another value in the eyes of God than
in ancient times. In this lies God’s great mercy to us.
Let us remember the words of St. Anthony the
Great: “Let us believe in our Lord Jesus Christ with all our heart, and live
according to His commandments, and He will have mercy upon us in His Kingdom,
when we depart from this wandering designated for us in this world.”
Amen.
Reference:
God is no respecter of persons.A Homily for St. Anthony the Great.
http://orthochristian.com/110299.html