God is Love Revelation concerning God declares, “God is love,” “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” How difficult for us mortals to agree with this! Difficult, for both our own personal life and the life of the world around us would appear to testify to the contrary. Indeed, where is this light of the Father’s love if we all, approaching the end our our lives, in bitterness of heart can lament with Job, “My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart… If I wait, the grave is mine house… Where is now my hope?” And that which from my youth my heart has sought secretly but fervently - “Who shall see it?” (Job 17:11,13,15). Christ Himself attests that God is concerned for all creation, that He does not ignore a single small bird, that He clothes the grass of the field, and His concern for people is so incomparably great that “the very hairs of our head are all numbered.” But where is this Providence that is attentive to the last detail? We are all of us crushed by the spectacle of evil walking unrestrained up and down the world. Millions of lives that have often hardly begun - before they are even aware of living - are strangled with incredible ferocity. So why ever is this absurd life given to us? And lo, the soul longs to meet God and ask Him, “Why didst Thou give me life?… I am surfeited with suffering. Enveloped in darkness. Why dost Thou hide Thyself from me? I know that Thou art good but wherefore art Thou so indifferent to my pain?” “Why art Thou so… cruel and merciless toward me?” “I cannot fathom thee.” ---------------------------There lived a man in the world, a man of godly desires. His name was Simeon (the future St. Silouan). He prayed long and his tears were unrestrained; “Have mercy upon me.” But God did not hearken unto him. Many months went by in this prayer, until he strength was exhausted. He despaired, and cried out, “Thou are implacable!” And when at these words something foundered in his soul grown weak from despair, suddenly for an instant he beheld the living Christ. … there is no more difficult, more painful spiritual effort than the ascetic striving for love; no testimony more terrible than bearing witness to love; and no preaching more challenging than the preaching of love.… …Jesus Christ loved the world immeasurably, and it was given to St. Silouan effectively to experience this love. In response he conceived love for Christ, and over long years continued in extraordinary ascetic struggle to ensure that no one and nothing should deprived him of this gift, and at the end of his life to say, together with the great Apostle Paul, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?…” (Rom. 8:35+). If we pause and consider these words of St. Paul, we realize that he could speak thus only after having gone through all the trials mentioned… Dear Handmaid of God, parenting is suffering, it is the ascetic struggle we are called to, let it (even God Himself) teach you to gain love through the ascetic struggle. Only “after having gone through” the struggle can we gain love - and meet God.
