Love makes you wiser. It does not neglect this or that cultural tool, for example, a deep knowledge of other religions in a pluralistic society. After all, it is a question of getting to know another person in his otherness, to understand and accept him along with his difference. The openness of hearts dictates the behavior or even the content of the dialogue. It is necessary to respect the originality of the messages. A witness does not have to engage in comparative theology, much less polemics. He is sensitive to spiritual beauty, even if it comes from non-Christians. He accepts it as a gift of the Spirit.

This sensitivity is possible only when a person is free from fear, from the complex of a representative of a minority, from the self-perception of a prisoner of a historical ghetto. Yes, in any human environment, where there is no suffocation of unfreedom, a Christian is called to creativity. And even when the witness is forced to remain silent, his face radiates joy and peace.

An open heart can be combined with a lack of education: a witness is taught only the Scriptures and the Liturgy, and he brings light. What is most important in a testimony is to identify with the poor. To be free from what you have; not to oppress anyone; to share with everyone even to the point of ruin; to look at others as the Lord looked — this is the best inner state for witnessing to the Gospel. The spirit of poverty, monastic asceticism, prayer and humility are Christian virtues to which, for example, Islam has always been sensitive.

In a hierarchical society, in developing countries, witness such as we have described is essentially the same as witness in a secularized world. Conservatism, religious formalism, and integrism reveal the same absence of a living God as a completely godless society.

Traditionalist society and secularized society may believe in different mythologies. But a group that claims to be guided by God is really based on the idolatrous notion of an avenging God who keeps man in a humiliated state or freezes him in the mentality of a clan—a clan led by God. A group may also, in striving for the technique it lacks, participate in the mythologization of technology and in scientism, which is somewhat more primitive than modern neopositivism.

The history of societies does not convey any message, and the religion of the media brings everywhere empty talk and just emptiness, and both belong to death. If you are also afraid of an environmental cataclysm, a nuclear catastrophe, see the collapse of empires or small countries that no one is interested in protecting, you can fall into a state of constant anxiety. Such a consciousness is ready to deify its own mind, believe in reincarnation, or begin to drown out the fear of death with drugs and sex. Of course, there is a lot to be developed: new apologetics, new prolegomena of faith associated with modern sciences. After the recognition of the "big bang" theory, it is no longer possible to drag a philosophy based on outdated knowledge. Undoubtedly, a new language needs to be developed; We need to restart the conversation about how to understand faith. It is also necessary to protect real culture with its treasury of feelings and reason; it is necessary to defend freedom or fight for it where it is lost, since freedom is the most favorable environment for the normal development of man and for the perception of faith based not on credulity, prejudice or fear of God.

A secularized society that does not call on God should not frighten us. From a certain point of view, it is healthier than the pagan world that worships false gods. "Let Christians, rejecting authority and violence, become poor and peaceful servants of the Crucified God, who affirms the freedom of the individual. Let them fight in peace on the side of those who seek the meaning of this world. Let them vouch for the faith of others. Let them also vouch for those who do not have faith, but create, even if very modestly, beauty and goodness" [3].

An extremely vivid example of such a saint as Seraphim of Sarov is extremely vivid. This man of God, who predicted the trials that would come to Russia, confronted the difficulties of his age, and they were perhaps not so different from those that confront us today. The solution he chose was not to engage in the worldly life of the world, in feverish activity for its salvation. He simply stepped on the royal path of complete self-surrender to the Lord, according to the words of the Scriptures: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden" (Matt. 11:28). In the simplicity of his heart, he went to Jesus. No other path has been paved for us, there is no salvation outside of Christ.

One of the temptations of the age in which we live is to say and think that salvation is in man and from man. Art, thought, politics present us with a whole series of surrogates for salvation. But even today our testimony, like the testimony of St. Seraphim, is to say and show in a transfigured life that salvation comes from God and goes to a person who humbly accepts it.

And we, who have become strong from this main conviction, can only betroth ourselves to Jesus Christ for the sake of the transfiguration of existence. It is precisely by marching in this way to the Kingdom of God that we will realize our witness in history by our words and deeds. We will also be able to transform some structures of society, which is also important. But this is what we must never forget: whoever is not nourished by the bread of life and drunk by the water of life only agitates the world, but cannot profoundly change it, for only the Spirit of God truly transforms the world.

The epistle given by St. Seraphim to a cloud of witnesses, among whom we are, is precisely to wage this mortal battle for holiness, to deeply believe in our only Saviour, Christ Jesus. It is that we need to be saved, which means to realize our insignificance and the transforming omnipotence of God. It is about feeling in our spiritual experience that everything is given to us. To the extent that we are aware of this gift of grace that transforms us, to the extent that this inner transformation has taken place, the world has changed.

God reveals Himself in the divine beauty of being, of all beings. Whoever the Lord transforms so much that his face becomes an icon of Christ, he is a faithful witness. Only the saints fulfill the unity of the Church, only they bear witness to the unity of God and the world. Man will never know the truth with his mind unless God purifies his heart. Whoever God clothes in the light is the bearer of the testimony, and he is also its content.

The Light of the World

A Romanian physicist recently argued that in the final stage of the universe's evolution, only light will exist, because protons—positively charged elementary particles—are the only things that will survive from matter.