Met Anthony: Every day can be either a day of disgrace or a day of victory
Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanich), the UOC Chancellor, reflects on betrayal of God, on variability of human nature, on shameful cowardice and victory over yourself.
Who betrays God? Whoever outside of Christ, who does not distinguish their thoughts, words, actions, who does not have an insight into whether they relate to Christ or are alien to Him, betrays God.
How to understand what is alien to Christ?
What is said or accomplished under the influence of passion is alien to Christ. Impassion takes one closer to Christ, to Perfection. Impassion enables the soul to free itself from the dirty and muddy contents and be filled with the Living water of God's grace.
Every day changes the trajectory of our movement – either to Christ or from Him. Every day can be a day of betrayal and shame or a day of victory over your nature. Churchill’s famous expression can be rephrased: “If a person chooses shame between war and shame, he will end up having both war and shame.”
This means that if we move away from the struggle with ourselves, our nature, passions, choosing to ignore this reality, getting distracted by the external impulses, then the circumstances will turn out so that we will get a shame and a great spiritual discord but will still have to start this fight though with irreparable losses.
Life with Christ is a conscious rejection of evil, even from the admixture of the smallest evil. Accepting evil is a betrayal of God.
Human nature is changeable. It is invincible. But this variability must be used for improvement, continuous change for the better, growth in good, rather than for falling and serving evil. There is always room for improvement; therefore, this process is endless.
"True perfection consists in incessant advancing toward the better without limiting perfection to whatever measure" (St. Gregory of Nyssa).
