Friday, April 16, 2021

The Response of Saint Amphilochios Makris to a Request for Spiritual Advice from a Sixteen Year Old Girl


My child, the advice I give you will be a beacon throughout your life. These paternal words will guide you and bring you like a hurricane and auspicious wind near the eternal and happy port of your adoring love. Let your soul sail quietly on the calm waters so that it can reach its end. But to be able to reach this end of happiness, you need a lot of struggle and wrestling against the passions.
 
It is a struggle throughout this life of bitter exile, because in this life we are strangers and wandering sojourners, asking for refuge everywhere. We will find refuge and perfect rest only near our eternal homeland and there we will live in real security. There we will enjoy the unfading and all-white crown of our efforts.

There we will live in endless joy. There we will see our imaginary plans realized and our subtle noble desires will end in our lives. There we will enjoy the white manna that we crave so much. We will enjoy the fiery love, that so ignited and consumed our clay heart. There we will enjoy the loving Spouse of our soul which so longs to unite with Him to remain His forever.

My child, let your heart always be filled with heavenly love and let it be flooded only with high and Divine desires so that you always feel yourself enjoying the divine whispers that your adored Bridegroom will sweetly whisper to you. He rejoices to talk to you when you have His throne in your heart. You must keep your heart constantly like a holy and white tabernacle which always holding with fear you will move around and with you will move around an invisible force that will eliminate the fears and their terrible darkness that spring up around us.

I want your heart to constantly fly to worlds that are calm, clean and full of happiness. This happiness will be enlivened only by the crystalline and refreshing drops that the heavenly and blonde Visitor will be pleased to bestow and irrigate with His immaculate and bloody hands. Let your small and weak heart ascend and burn only for the great and infinite love that suffered so much and became our victim to make us His children. At the same time He made us His co-heirs so that we too can participate in His endless glory.

He became a living victim so that we too could become a victim of our fallen selves and start over again to whiten like white snow or like pure and burning gold. That is why we need great care, prayer, study, humility, obedience, to reach high to the endless infinity that will bring with it your glory.

My child, I want you to become a small and pure bride to enjoy your unique Bridegroom so that He may visit the small chamber of your heart to give richly His divine and endless gifts. Cleanse it constantly, if you will, so that you may have more visits and become one soul with this King whose Kingdom has no end.

Love Him to love you with the same love that He loved so many thousands of martyrs who shed their holy and innocent blood for the one who was previously suspended and humiliated and shed the last drop to teach us to have and cultivate holy humility.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.