14.
Consequences of Guidance That Does Not Lead to Theosis
Today, young people seek experiences. They are not content with
a materialistic life; nor with the rationalistic society that we
their elders hand down
to them. Our children, being icons of God, ‘called to be gods’,
seek something beyond the logical forms of the materialistic philosophy
and atheistic education we offer to them. They seek experiences of
true life. And, certainly, it is not sufficient for them to be told
about
God. They desire experience of Him, of His light, of His Grace. Many
of them search in vain, resorting to many cheap substitutes to find
something outside or beyond logic because they do not know that the
Church has
both the ability to comfort them and the experience they thirst for.
Others are led to Oriental mysticisms such as yoga; yet others to occultism
or gnosticism, and finally, unfortunately, even to outright satanism.
Even in morality they do not know any boundary, for morality, once severed
from its essence and deprived of its purpose, which is to unite them with
holy God, ends up by having absolutely no meaning.
Then tragic phenomena such as anarchy and terrorism become commonplace,
so that many young people give themselves to every type of extremism and
violence against their fellow men; deep down they wish to satisfy a dynamism
which they have within themselves. This deep yearning of theirs is not
fulfilled simply because they did not chance upon this guidance of Theosis.
The majority of young people, and not only the young, squander the precious
time of their lives, as well as the powers which God gave them for achievement
of the purpose of Theosis, in hunting for pleasure and carnal worship.
Unfortunately, it is often with the tolerance of the state that these
become their contemporary idols, their contemporary ‘gods’,
thus causing great corrosion to their bodies and psyches.
Living without any ideals whatsoever, others waste away in various purposeless,
vapid, and harmful occupations; some feel pleasure in driving cars at
excessive speeds on the roads – often with tragic results of injury and death – and
others, again, after many explorations, surrender unconditionally to
a demonic dependence on drugs, the new plague of our age.
Finally, enough people, after a relatively short life full of failure and
disappointment, consciously or unconsciously seek an end to the torment
of their vain quest, unfortunately resorting to the extreme form of desperation,
suicide.
Not all the young people who resort to these irrational and tragic things
are hooligans. They are young people, children of God, our children too,
who, disappointed by the materialistic, self-seeking society which we bequeath
to them, do not find that for which they were moulded; the true, the eternal.
We did not give it to them, and so they do not know it. They do not know
the great purpose of man's life, Theosis. Then, not finding peace in anything
else, they resort in desperation to the forms which we have mentioned.
Today, out of selfless love, many Shepherds of our holy Church; bishops,
priests, spiritual fathers, and lay brothers, devote themselves daily to
the guidance to our youth towards the aim of Theosis. We are grateful to
them for their sacrifice and offering: for this God-pleasing work of theirs,
with which, by the Grace of God, psyches for whom Christ died are saved
and sanctified.
Humbly, the Holy Mountain helps and assists in this great distress of the
Church. The Garden of our Panaghia, being a special place of sanctity and
silence dedicated to God, savours the blessing of Theosis, lives communion
with God, and has intense and vivid experience of His Grace and His Light,
so that many of our fellow men, the majority of them young, benefit from
and are strengthened and reborn in Christ by a pilgrimage to Mount Athos,
or by maintaining more specific connections with it. In this way, people
enjoy God in their life, and begin to understand what Orthodoxy is, what
Christian life is, what spiritual struggle is, and what joy and great meaning
these things give to their existence. This is to say, they taste something
of this great gift of God to man, Theosis.
Let all of us, Shepherds of the Church; theologians; catechists; not forget
about guidance for Theosis, by which the young people, but also all we
the humble, with the Grace of God and within our daily struggle, the struggle
of repentance and observance of His holy commandments, acquire the possibility
of enjoying this blessing of God, this union with Him, to enjoy it very
strongly in this life, but also to gain eternal happiness and blessedness.
Let us continually thank the holy Lord for the gift of Theosis, which is
a gift of His love. Let us reciprocate His love with our own love. The
Lord wants and desires us to be deified. After all, for this purpose He
became man and died upon the Cross so that He shines as the Sun amidst
suns, and God amidst gods.
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Source: Praxis
Research Institute
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