Imitating the Saints

THE SAINTS saw the true light. They gained spiritual health. They were freed from themselves. They enjoyed the freedom of the age to come. They are satiated with grace. They trust in God's love. They have seen what end everything is leading to. They have reached the point of saying consciously: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace (Lk. 2:29)” (p. 13). 

And God the Word goes outside Himself and comes to dwell in all through His intense longing, that all may become partakers of His grace and His divinity. He does not come to advertise the wealth of His divinity and reveal our worthlessness and poverty. Instead, He becomes poor, though He was rich, so that by His poverty we might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9). He becomes man and takes on everything that is ours, apart from sin, so as to give us everything that is His, apart from identity in essence. So that all may become sons of God [glorified creatures] by grace.

This self-emptying, as a work of unfathomable love, is a theophany—a revelation of the truth of God as a communion of persons who love each other.

This is the gospel of the new creation, the message of life which the Fathers [and Saints] proclaim by their existence. They show the way of existence. And they teach you how to live…

They allow everything to move freely. They wait for the other person to find his own rhythm, to find his path. They sacrifice their lives, in the likeness of the God-man, for the life of the other. They pour out grace. They hide their virtue out of modesty. They know that everything true is given from above. They have given to God what little they had. And they have received everything. They receive it constantly, they accept it without ceasing. And they cannot bear the abundance of life. They want to withdraw to the sidelines, to be quiet, to vanish, to calm down, not to be commented on. All they want is for others to live.

[. . .] The root of their being is watered by mystical streams [. . .] They contract—“He must increase, and I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30)—in order for divine love to circulate, to flow, to pour forth. For the earth to be watered. For the shadow to be illuminated. For the sorrow of the world to be comforted, to be turned to rejoicing.

They sought first the Kingdom of God, and everything else was given them as a free gift. They are not simply thinkers, orators, writers, poets. They are free people, true, real; they are united with God. They moved spontaneously. They expressed themselves honestly. They loved humility. They were filled with wisdom. They became golden-mouthed orators, theologians, poets, architects of the word. They developed hidden talents. Their being shone out of them. They did not learn things divine, they experienced them; they underwent them. These things changed them, deified them. They have become a revelation of God—in other words, a true revelation of man. They show what man is, and what he is able to become. [. . .] Each one, in his own personal way, reveals the same Truth… (pp. 8-9).

[…] there are no ancient or modern people. There are only true or false people.

A saint, a true person, is always living, regardless of whether he is ancient or contemporary, learned or illiterate. The power of the truth and the vitality of the Spirit does away with distances in time and differences in “education.” It passes right through the created and visible with uncreated grace, making even the clothing of a holy person’s words to shine like light (cf. Mt. 17:2). A simple elder from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, who wandered round the wilderness like a wild animal (Abba Bessarion, 12), has no less grace and daring in faith than someone like Maximus the Confessor. [Nor than] a humble believer today who really has the grace of Pentecost . . . and . . . manifests God’s love for mankind and his own pure heart with a comforting word or a smile (pp. 19-20).

*Excerpted from Archimandrite Vasileios, The Light of Christ Shines upon All through all the Saints, pp. 13, 18-20. Available for purchase at Eighth Day Books.