Sometimes when God is silent, He can speak even louder to us through His silence, — His Beatitude Sviatoslav
Perhaps each of us has sometimes felt the silence of God. We come with a request, with our prayer, with our need. And it seems to us that God does not answer. And then the Lord begins to fuel us with his presence. Because when we pray, we are in God’s presence. His Beatitude Sviatoslav emphasized this in his sermon on Sunday, October 9, in the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ.
“The presence of God by the power of the grace of the Holy Spirit is a necessary condition for the completeness, integrity of a human being, its health,” the Patriarch noted. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God”.
The Archbishop urged the faithful to listen to the cry of a Canaanite woman and, therefore, to the words of Jesus Christ about her. “When she calls out to Him, Christ is silent. We would be amazed by such behavior today. And then this woman addresses Him with words: ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Christ speaks to her about bread: ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’ An even more stinging phrase. More stinging than the silent woman herself. But what kind of children’s bread is He talking about?”
“Christ reveals himself as a new Moses who feeds his people in the desert, just as Moses once brought down manna from heaven for his people. But that bread is not something, but someone — He himself. He is the heavenly bread from heaven to feed his children. And that table, that meal, at which the children sit, is the Divine Liturgy, the banquet of Heavenly Kingdom. The mystery of the Eucharist, which we consume as children of God at the Divine Liturgy, has one unique feature. Christ is fully present both in a small crumb and a large particle. He comes to his children regardless of their origin to make them his own, feed them with himself, and give them life.”
And today, the Lord sets that woman’s faith as an example for all of us. “We cannot use God as a tool for the blind satisfaction of my whims. When we grow in faith and ask for His presence and mercy, when we approach the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist — only then does God begin to answer us.”
His Beatitude Sviatoslav emphasized that we need God’s presence so much in times of war. We need Holy Communion, the Blood, and the Body of our Saviour, who is ready to do miracles further on in this world but through us.
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