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To strengthen this, Christ said: “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth” (John 17:19). What is this necessity for sanctification, except the desire for full likeness and unity between us and the Father? It is a continual ascent for us, because there is no stagnation in God and in His love, and this ascent cannot be achieved except through growth and in obedience, as the Son Himself, sent to us by the Father, showed us by His example:

“In the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him” (Hebrews 5:7-9).

Therefore, we see that obedience and attentiveness are the characteristics that can bring God’s love into our heart. Both prove our trust in God the Father, Who, being unseen, proposes a meeting also in the unseen plane. For what is attentiveness, except drilling through layer after layer of the visible in order to reach the unseen? “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Blessed and blessed seventy times seven, because they have received the word in their deep heart and there, hidden, in the innermost chamber, they have met the Father in prayer (cf. Matthew 6:4), and their joy is now full (cf. John 16:24).

For us, it is an urgent necessity to increase our attentiveness toward Christ – and we do not reduce this attentiveness only to His words, but also to His actions and, even more so, to what He showed is essential for Him (for example: John 4:34, 5:30, 6:38, 12:27, 18:37, etc.) –, lest we be scolded for our inattentiveness, as Philip was. When Christ tells Philip: “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” (John 14:9), He shows him that more attentiveness was asked of him, one capable of penetrating the barrier of visible things, an attentiveness that would have opened to way toward encountering God the Father. As much as God reveals Himself less, and as much as He is “farther” from us and from our gaze, the more necessary it is to increase our attentiveness in obedience. This can be achieved most easily through the obedience we show toward our spiritual father. Therefore, the Holy Apostle Paul, after revealing this path of obedience to the Philippians, (immediately) added this word: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). A son shows his true obedience when his father is not present. Because in a relationship, love is forged in secret: “My bone was not hidden from Thee, which Thou madest in secret, nor my substance in the lowest parts of the earth” (Psalm 138:15).

God is a God who hides Himself – Deus absconditus –, Who does not reveal His Mystery openly, in noisy or fearsome manifestations, but rather in secret, as we see in the case of the Prophet Elijah. He is nonetheless interested in phenomenology (meaning the way in which things are perceived from the outside), namely He is interested in the phenomenology of relationship, how we relate to Him: “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? … But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:13,15). This fact leads us to conclude that God asks us for this kind of attentiveness: living, trusting, and thus loving. This is what the Holy Apostle Peter refers to when he says: “Whom having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9).

(To be continued)

Protos. Hrisostom Ciuciu