The encounter with God
In the temptation on the mountain we notice something strange, which is that the devil met with the Lord Christ. The Lord gave an opportunity—even to the devil—to meet Him!!
If the Lord had come only for the righteous, and if He had met only with the saints… sinners would have thought that they had no share in Him. But the Lord Christ, before beginning His ministry, gave the devil the opportunity to meet Him, and the devil—as usual—did not benefit from this opportunity, but added to his sins a new burden. Let us speak today about the encounter with God…
The encounter with God
They met the Lord and did not benefit…
The Lord, out of His love, meets everyone. He makes His sun rise on the righteous and the wicked, and sends rain upon the good and the evil.
The Lord met with Cain, the first murderer on earth, and Cain did not benefit from this encounter. And the Lord met with Adam and Eve after their fall and gave them an opportunity for confession and repentance, but they did not confess…
He visited the house of Simon the Pharisee. The Pharisees were known for pride and arrogance. Simon received Him into his house but did not receive Him into his heart. And during the visit he kept watching Him, looking for a mistake…
Christ met with Pilate, and with Herod, and with Annas and Caiaphas… He gave all of them the opportunity to see Him, but they did not benefit…
Pilate was moved and wanted to release Him, but cowardice overcame him. And Herod mocked Him, and the chief priests were blinded by envy, and this stood in the way of their benefit.
The rich young man met Christ and went away sorrowful—how strange…!
Many met Christ and did not benefit. There were obstacles within them or around them that prevented this benefit.
The one who meets the Lord and benefits is the prepared heart, the humble and loving heart that desires to profit…
What is the meaning of the encounter with the Lord…
Many think they met the Lord, while they did not meet Him…
We mean by encounter the true encounter, in which heart meets heart.
There are people who meet Christ in the flesh while their hearts are far from Him.
About these the Lord rebuked, saying:
“This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.”
A person may stand a quarter of an hour or half an hour praying without meeting the Lord.
He is merely repeating words.
Prayer is connection with God. Do you feel this connection in your prayer?
Do you feel during prayer that you are in the presence of God, that you have seen Him, enjoyed Him, and spoken with Him? Therefore, those who live in the formality of prayer or merely in its ritual without entering into its spirit—these have not met with God.
To these the Lord said in the Book of Isaiah: “When you spread out your hands, I hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.”
The heart is the only means by which one meets with God.
Many worship God outside their souls and outside their hearts. They pray and fast but do not meet with God. They come out of all this as they are, without change, without progress in the spirit, because they have not met the Lord whom they worship. God still seeks, “My son, give Me your heart”…
The one who meets with God is the one who enters into the heart of God, and God enters into his heart, and he becomes one with God in love and in will…
If you do not meet with God here on earth, you will not meet Him there in heaven. Here is the taste of the kingdom…
Here the relationship with God begins, the companionship, the connection, the friendship… Here we receive the pledge of the kingdom and its taste. Here you must enjoy the kingdom of God within you so that you may enjoy His kingdom in heaven.
Therefore, the kingdom of God “within you” must precede the kingdom of heaven. The encounter with God requires a person like the Baptist who prepares for the Lord a people made ready. This preparation for the encounter is what Scripture calls “the wedding garment.” You must wear it before entering the wedding to meet Christ.
The prepared heart is a heart that longs for God and for life with Him.
I say this to you now so that you may not think that the Great Fast is merely exchanging food with other food… The fasting period is an encounter with God, a period in which you say to God: I want to meet You; I want to hear from You the phrase, “Today I must stay at your house; let us sit at one table and drink from the fruit of this vine.”
A meeting of knowledge:
The encounter with God is an encounter of knowledge. And the knowledge of God is not easy.
The Apostle Paul says, “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” And in order to know Christ, “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish… for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ my Lord” (Philippians 3). “That I may know Him and be found in Him”…
And this knowledge is not merely intellectual. “By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3).
Those who knew God loved Him and left everything for His sake…
Augustine wandered for thirty years before he knew God. When he knew Him, he loved Him and found Him to be an indescribable beauty and an inexpressible joy. He tasted how good the Lord is, and said to Him in contrition, “Late have I loved You…”
“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” If you taste Him, you will feel the sweetness of life with Him and will say, “It is good, Lord, to be here”…
Mary, the sister of Martha, sat at the feet of Christ, contemplating Him to know Him. Those who truly knew the Lord ran after Him their whole way and did not want to know anything else besides Him… And you—do you think you know God merely because you repeat the phrase, “Truly we believe in one God, God the Father, the Pantocrator, Creator of heaven and earth…”?
No, intellectual knowledge alone is not enough. Even the demons know—“and tremble” (James 2). True knowledge is experiential knowledge, about which John the Beloved said, “What we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon, and our hands have handled.”
When Job met the Lord, he realized that all his previous knowledge was ignorance. He said, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know” (Job 42). And he said of the difference between the two knowledges:
“By the hearing of the ear I heard of You, but now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5).
So do you know God by the hearing of the ear, or have your eyes seen Him? Have they told you about God in sermons, and have you heard of Him in church, or have you experienced Him yourself, tasted Him, and met Him?
Have you known Him personally, or have you taken your knowledge of Him from others?
You meet with books, with buildings, with pictures, with sciences. All of them speak to you about the God whom you must meet. So have you met Him? Or do you say with the Shulamite virgin, “Why should I be as one who veils herself by the flocks of your companions?” (Song 1:7).
Run after God and say to Him, “Tell me where You feed, where You make Your flock rest at noon.” “Under Your shadow I desired to sit.”
A meeting of love:
If God possesses your emotions, your encounter with Him will be a meeting of love. You will say, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem… if you find my Beloved, tell Him that I am sick with love.” If you are far from God even for a moment, you will feel you are sick with love…
If you have not loved God, you have not yet met Him…
Zacchaeus the tax collector heard of the Lord with the hearing of the ear. He longed to meet Him. He saw Him from afar in the crowd. And the Lord kept drawing nearer until He called him by name and entered his house, and salvation came to that house…
Draw near to God a step and say to Him: I do not want my exercises during this fast to be memorizing chapters of Scripture, or increasing prostrations, or tightening bodily asceticism and fasting duration…
Rather, I want in this fast to meet You, to live with You, and that my eyes may see You. I want, as You entered my mind, that You also enter my heart.
I want to know You, to experience You, to love You, to cleave to You. I want You to enter my heart, and for me to enter Yours. I want You to say to me, “Make haste and come down.” Leave the sycamore tree, leave the crowd, and open your house for Me to dine with you, and you with Me.
Thus is the encounter with the Lord—an encounter of knowledge and love. And what else?
A meeting of delight:
There is a person who prays but does not feel delight, because he does not meet God in his prayer. The sign of delight and encounter in prayer is that you do not wish to leave it. To take your life from you is easier than to separate you from the delight of speaking with God…!
There are people who meet with the phrases of prayer, their meanings, and their logic, but they do not meet with God. As for those who met Him, St. Isaac said about them:
“From the sweetness of the word in their mouths during prayer, they do not wish to leave it to occupy themselves with another word.”
The name of God is beloved to these, as David the Prophet sang, “Your name is sweet, O Lord; it is my meditation all the day.” And as we say in the praise, “Your name is sweet and blessed in the mouths of Your saints.”
Whoever prays in this manner does not feel himself: how much time has passed upon him, nor does he know whether he is in the body or outside the body—he does not know…
Article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Keraza Magazine – Seventh Year (Issue Twelve), 19-3-1976
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