Adapted from a homily given on June 7, 2024.
As children of the West, we are in constant need of true Orthodox teachings on the love of God. We have been born into a culture in which God’s love is conditional: Only if you believe the right beliefs, only if you do the right and virtuous things, will you receive the love of God. If you don’t, then God’s love withdraws and you will be subject to His wrath.
We need the Orthodox teachings! Recently I read the transcript from a talk given by Fr. Rafail Noica, a Romanian ascetic and spiritual child of St. Sophrony of Essex. The excerpt was poignantly titled, “Will I go to Hell? God got Angry with Me.” Here is what Fr. Rafail said:
“Can you imagine an angry God? Oh, how many times I have experienced this and heard it from so many of you in letters and in conversations: ‘Maybe I have sinned and God got angry and doesn’t want to hear me anymore.’ That’s heresy! I started by saying that it is important to remember this: In difficult moments, keeping our mind in hell, … when I have a sense of guilt, when I start feeling my sin. There is no need to hide behind my imagination or in the bushes like Adam or something like that.”
Fr. Rafail is saying that it is our imagination that tells us God is angry with us. Just as Adam in the Garden thought he should hide from God in the bushes, because he thought God was angry, likewise we too try to hide from Him because we imagine His anger. Our guilt and shame—the result of our sin and our breaking away from God—make us believe that God’s disposition toward us has changed, that He is now angered at us.
In a word, we forget that it is our ever-loving and all-merciful God who in the first place revealed our sin to us! Our awareness of our sin—which brings about the shame and guilt—is a gift from God, His own revelation to us personally.
As Orthodox Christians, we must convert this shame and guilt into repentance—a movement toward God, rather than away (hiding in the bushes). Fr. Rafail continues:
“It’s about accepting who I am, no matter how ugly, now matter how bad I am. Because from what I am for real—that sinner—God takes me out of that sinfulness. And on the one hand He is all-powerful and can get me out of anywhere [no matter how much sin] there is no limit to God’s power. On the other hand, His love, in short, is invincible to any sinfulness. Paradoxically, the more sinful I am, the brighter the love of God’s omnipotence or the omnipotence of God’s love shows itself, because He takes me out of that, through the means that my sinfulness offers to God. If you look at the magnitude of God’s love, is it possible for man to perish?”
God is pursuing us! We are God’s target, His aim and goal. And He is unrelenting in His pursuit of us—each one of us individually. Because we are His creation, we are the object of His love.
Our salvation is not a divine courtroom drama. It is a divine courtship: The One Who loves pursuing His beloved. This is the language of the Church: Christ as bridegroom and the Church as His bride; the wedding feast; the bridal chamber. The hymn for female martyrs speaks in this same language:
“Your lamb cries out, ‘O Jesus, for You, my pure Bridegroom, I long; and seeking You I compete; and I am crucified and buried with You in Your baptism. I suffer for Your sake, that I may reign with You. I die for You that I may also live in You. Accept me as an unblemished sacrifice as I offer myself to You with love.’”
And just as this hymn expresses the martyr’s desire for Christ, so too is Christ’s desire for His beloved. We are being pursued by a God Who has divine eros for His creatures.
Our relationship with God is not juridical or legal, nor is it a human love that is fickle and turns to anger or disapproval. God’s all-powerful love overcomes all sin, no matter how grave. Fr. Rafail continues in his talk:
“Perdition is ‘impossible’ because God is all-powerful and His love is not overcome by anything, no matter what sin I may have committed. Then why do they talk about perdition? It is all about human freedom. … Freedom is perhaps the number one point of this ‘image and likeness of God.’ If God would save me by force, I would not be a god, because I was forced. It’s about my freedom, my being able to say no to God’s omnipotence and love and to perish. This same freedom can lead me to perdition and death. Of course this freedom is what God gave me so that I could be saved.”
You see, God does not want anyone in hell. He desires the salvation of all of His creatures. Yet because of freedom, we can choose hell and God will grant that to us. St. Paisios of Mt. Athos said: “I don’t want to go to hell for no other reason than not to grieve Christ, Who would see me in hell and grieve. Let us not do good expecting to receive wages like a hireling; let us do good out of love for Christ. Whatever we do, let us do it purely for the sake of Christ.”
Do we comprehend the magnitude of God’s love? Do we know the unyielding, unrelenting pursuit of our loving God for His beloved? This knowledge will put an end to the anxiety of the courtroom or the fear of angering God and eliciting His wrath. As children of the West, we must constantly reinforce the right Orthodox understanding of God in our minds and hearts, so that the temperamental Zeus-like false god of our imagining doesn’t take hold.
Fr. Symeon Kragiopoulos described the immensity of God’s personal love for each of us: “When God was creating you it was as if He hadn’t created anyone else before. And He loves you in whichever corner of the world you may be, no matter who you are. He wants to spend time specifically with you; He wants to find you and wants you to find Him back. He wants you to develop personal communion with him.”
And again, Fr. Symeon says, “Christ approaches all of us. He loves us so much and humbles himself so much, that he has no difficulty washing our feet. Man needs to be given over to the hands of God in such a way, so as to feel that God doesn’t simply serve him, but concerns Himself with him so much that He may even wash his feet. … Even if this example is all we get wind of and nothing more, it is enough to last us a lifetime Our soul will then be at peace.”
When we give ourselves over to our loving God—admitting to and accepting all of our sinfulness, our wounds, and our brokenness—as Fr. Rafail says, we meet “the omnipotence of God’s love,” which can overcome all of the darkness that is within us. We bring this darkness to light, and God will dwell in all of the crevices and dark corners of our soul, illumining us.
An example of such an illumined soul was the humble heart of Papa Dimitri Gagastathis, a simple village priest who became so sanctified through the trials of his life that he was walking with the saints, living in the grace of God. The holy Elder Aimilianos, who was part of the spiritual revival of Mt. Athos in the 20th Century, described Papa Dimitri in this way:
“He loved God in the fullest sense of his heart, with ‘burning of spirit’ and ‘clinging of soul.’ He lived for no other reason except for ‘the Lord to come and dwell in him.’ His life was truly an outpouring of Divine Grace. He was endowed with the gift of God’s love.
“When the Word finds a dwelling, when He finds a God- loving response to His knocking, when in His chase He captures the chased, He unites him with Himself. He transforms, purifies, and deifies him. He makes him a divine person—a god by Grace—filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.”
God is in chase and we are the chased. Let us no longer hide in the bushes of our own sinfulness, but stand bravely before him with all of our sin exposed. Then we will bathe in His mercy and love and receive His grace.
