The Vision of Christ

Do you want to see the Lord Jesus Christ? "Come and see," says His Apostle.

The Lord Jesus Christ gave the promise to remain with His disciples until the end of time [91]. He is with them: in the Holy Gospel and the Sacraments of the Church [92]. It is not for those who do not believe in the gospel: they do not see it, being blinded by unbelief.

Do you want to hear Christ? "He speaks to you in the Gospel. Do not despise His saving voice: turn away from a sinful life and listen attentively to the teaching of Christ, which is eternal life.

Do you want Christ to appear to you? He teaches you how to get it. If you have My commandments and keep them, that is to say, you will love Me: and he who loves I will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and I will appear to him Myself [93].

You have been adopted by God through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, you have entered into the closest unity with God through the Sacrament of Holy Communion: support adoption, maintain unity. Restore the purity and renewal brought about by Holy Baptism through repentance, and nourish unity with God by living according to the Gospel and, if possible, by frequent communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Be ye in me, and I in you,[94] said the Lord. If you keep My commandments, abide in My love. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him [96].

Guard yourself from daydreaming, which may imagine to you that you see the Lord Jesus Christ, that you touch Him, that you embrace Him. This is an empty game of pompous, proud conceit! This is pernicious self-deception! [97] Fulfill the commandments of the Lord, and in a miraculous way you will see the Lord in yourself, in your attributes. Thus did the holy Apostle Paul see the Lord in himself: he demanded this vision from Christians; those who did not have it, he called those who had not attained the state due to Christians.

If you lead a sinful life, satisfy your passions, and at the same time think that you love the Lord Jesus Christ, then His everlasting disciple, who reclined on His shoulders during the Last Supper, convicts you of self-deception. He says: "Thou shalt speak, that thou knowest Him, and keepeth not His commandments, there is a lie, and in this thou hast the truth; and whoever keeps His word, truly in this the love of God is perfect[98].

If you fulfill your sinful will and thereby violate the Gospel commandments, then the Lord Jesus Christ ranks you among those who do not love Him. Thou shalt not love, says He, He does not keep My words [99].

Do not rush recklessly, without carefully examining your garments, in old, stinking rags, for marriage to the Son of God, for union with Him, although you are called to this marriage, to which every Christian is called. There are such servants of this Householder who will bind your hands and feet and cast you into utter darkness, alien to God [100].

Servants, to whose power the impudent seeker of love and other exalted spiritual states, not cleansed by repentance, pompous with conceit and arrogance, surrenders, demons, outcast angels. Utter darkness is the blindness of the human spirit, a passionate, carnal state. Sin and fallen spirits rule in a person in this state. He is deprived of moral freedom: his hands and feet are tied. The binding of hands and feet means the loss of the ability to live God-pleasing life and to achieve spiritual progress. All self-deceived people are in this state. Man emerges from this miserable state with the consciousness of his error, rejection of it, and entry into the salvific field of repentance.

It is difficult to get out of self-deception. There is a guard at the door; the doors are locked with heavy strong locks and bolts; the seal of the hellish abyss is attached to them. Locks and locks are the pride of the self-deceived, which is deeply hidden in the heart, their vanity, which is the initial cause of their activity, hypocrisy and deceit, with which pride and vanity are hidden, with which they clothe themselves in the guise of good intentions, humility, and holiness. The indestructible seal is the recognition of the actions of self-deception as acts of grace.

Can he who is in self-deception, in the realm of falsehood and deceit, be a fulfiller of Christ's commandments, which are truth from the Truth of Christ? Can he who sympathizes with falsehood, who delights in falsehood, who has assimilated falsehood to himself, who has united himself with falsehood in the spirit, sympathize with the truth? No! he will hate her, become her frenzied enemy and persecutor.

What will be your condition, unfortunate dreamers, who imagined that you spent your earthly life in the arms of God, when the saying of the Saviour strikes us: "Nicholas, I know you; depart from me, you workers of iniquity[101].