Lent time

       Today is the begining of the lent, an event which has great implications in the life of a Christian. Lent means  repent and suffer for our daily sins, which  separate us from Christ our Lord. Each sin or passion brakes our relationship with God,  makes our heart a desert where blows the wind of destruction and peril.  How does a soul keep in touch with God? Through prayer, confession of one’s sins and forgiveness gave by the priest, followed by repent and give up the sins. This lent consacrated to the Birth of Christ is usually full of expectations of joy, but every soul feels different the days which separate us from this celebrated moment. There are souls full of guilt and unable to escape  from their prison like mine.  I am totally enslaved by my inertia, my despair and sorrow. I am unable to feel any kind of relief or joy. I am surrounded by darkness and bad spirits. I am my worst enemy, for my will is entirely perverted, refusing to do the right thing. I know I must get up and do something, but I don’t want. It seems too hard and I wrongly prefer to do nothing. I admit I’ve reached the bottom.  Well, I am not so sure that  this is the lowest point of my fall. Who knows what else I might do to destroy my dreams and my soul? I persist in my staying in door all day long. I am unable to see anyone or talk to anyone. I think I am ashamed with myself.

        While writing these words I’m listening a  Kanon Paraklitikon to ease my pain and my disappointment with myself. I might as well consider myself a prisoner of my own self, a victim of my egocentric personality, always thinking, talking and doing everything for myself.  A monster within me devours me and I might be damned to die in sin. The only ease I feel is the sorrow. I think I feel like Zachaeus, on which Metropolitan Anthony  of Suroj said:

“Zachaeus had one thing to overcome in order to be able to meet Christ face to face: vanity, the fear of human judgement, the fear of ridicule. This man, well known in his city, accepted the humiliation of being laughed at, because he so earnestly wanted to see Christ. He was not a good man, but there was in him a depth that could not be satisfied with the life he led, there was in him a longing so strong, so powerful that he passed by human judgement in order to meet Christ face to face, and he met Him. Of all the crowd whom Christ saw with His eyes, He saw particularly that man, He called him down from the tree, and He went with him, bringing into his house all the fullness of the divine presence, and all the glory of salvation that had now come to him.”

Longing for God, but unable to reach Him.

I feel also as the prodigal son before he came back home.

 “Father, — he says, — let me enjoy now what I would and will enjoy when you are dead. It means, whether you live or whether you are dead matters nothing to me, our relationship can be broken at any moment; what matters is that I should enjoy the fruits of your labour and the freedom which your absence, your death will give me.’ This is the essential sin, this is the way in which we treat God, receiving from Him everything and dismissing Him until we have spent all His gifts and need more of His help. This is also the way in which we treat one another.”

Maybe I must meditate to his situation because I am also a son which I spent all the gifts, left all friends and relatives, refused to accept any judgement:

”We have in the prodigal son also a vision of what repentance is: how from hunger and loneliness and despair one can come back to one's senses, remember that we have a father, a brother, a friend, and go back to him, trusting that he has not changed, that he still is a father, still is our brother, still is our friend, ready to accept from him whatever judgement we deserved, but also ready, at any cost, to re-establish the relationship that was between us.”

           Before the Day of Judgement, my conscience judges me and finds me guilty: “We are to stand one day and be judged by our conscience and by our God. We will have to answer for all our life, all its emptiness, its trivialities, all that has not been done in our life perhaps more that what has been done, because God can forgive sin, He cannot create within our life what we have not cared to make of it.”

            My life is empty, it lacks a goal, some action and good deeds.