The Loss of the First Love
The Loss of the First Love
Many began their spiritual life with strong fervor and a deep connection with God, but with the passing of time they lost this fervor and this connection, and they began to long for a day from the days of the past and do not find it!! They long to return backward, to the sweet old days, and they are not able… What is the reason?
Why does it happen that some come to know God and meet Him, then lose Him along the way?! And the saying of Scripture applies to them: “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Rev 2:4).
The most serious thing said about these is: “For those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance” (Heb 6).
How amazing that people reach this high level, then fall and perish!! What is the reason? They are various reasons, among which we mention:
Loss of Contrition:
The person newly committed to repentance is a person broken in heart,
having the image of the tax collector who stood afar off, and did not dare to lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast asking for mercy…
But it may happen to such a person, after he fasts two days a week, and tithes all his possessions, and is no longer among the unjust, the extortioners, the adulterers… it may happen that his heart is lifted up and he loses his contrition.
And if he loses his contrition, he loses his spirituality and goes backward!
The one newly committed to repentance says to the Lord, “I am not worthy to be called Your son; make me like one of Your hired servants.” But it may happen to such a person, after he has served his father many years, that his heart changes, and he says to his father, “You never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends”…!
The heart has changed. It has lost its former contrition. It has lost the phrase “I am not worthy.” It has lost the reverence that made him stand afar off. And as he forgets his sins with the length of time, his heart is lifted up, so grace departs from him, and he falls again!
Nothing is harder than for a person to forget his sin, for his tears to dry up, for his humility to be lost, and for him to lose his lowliness; and as he remains for a period away from falling, he becomes righteous in his own eyes.
Few are those who said with David, “My sin is ever before me,” and the feeling of contrition accompanied them all the way.
The greatest thing that ruins a person and returns him to the errors of the past is the loss of contrition, the loss of the sense of unworthiness, the loss of tears, the loss of humility, and the loss of the sense of need for repentance.
Therefore the holy Church, which appreciates the value of contrition in the life of the believer, made us read every day the Gospel passage of the sinful woman who wetted the feet of Christ with her tears, in the second watch of the Midnight Prayer, and after it we say:
“Grant me, O Lord, many springs of tears, as You granted of old to the sinful woman, and make me worthy to wet Your feet which freed me from the path of error, and acquire for me a pure life through repentance.”
Some try to move quickly from the life of repentance to the life of joy and to the life of service. In this haste, his remorse and contrition are lost, and he becomes occupied with occupations that make him forget his sins.
Any sin that does not receive its due of repentance, remorse, bitterness, and contrition may return a person to his former fall.
Sometimes this matter is helped by the kindness of some fathers of confession who are lenient with sins, permitting Communion immediately after any sin, whatever its ugliness, without a deterring discipline that makes the sinner feel the gravity of his sin, its impurity, and its wound to the heart of God.
In the past, the Church was at the summit of holiness and depth of connection with God, when sinners stood in the choir of the weepers, and the choir of the kneelers, or stood at the door outside entreating those who entered to pray for them…
Ritualism in Worship:
Very often the fervor of worship turns into routine and formalities, and a person feels no connection with God in it.
The person becomes accustomed to all the requirements of worship and performs them without spirit. He prays, reads the Bible, attends meetings and Liturgies, and even confesses and partakes also, and all this without spirit.
He reads the Holy Bible, but not as he used to read before; the reading turns into knowledge and thought, or into preaching and teaching, and into study. The reading turns into mere knowledge!!
Then prayers turn into a duty and an obligation. Fasts and prostrations turn into a kind of spiritual competitions that feed vainglory. And you ask about spirituality in this worship and you do not find it…
Service turns into a kind of activity and movement, into mere work, or sometimes into a kind of administration or control. A person serves in the atmosphere of the Church and may become occupied with it away from his spirituality, or may lose his spirituality in it, and thus he loses the goal along the way.
Spiritual reading loses its spirit and turns into knowledge…
In the beginning of his repentance, this worshiper used to read one verse or a few verses that would open before him a deep field for meditation, and he would find before him a treasure of spiritual things… But now he reads whole chapters, yet without depth, without understanding, without spirit, and without inner interaction of the heart with the word of God.
Formerly, spiritual reading would lift its owner to divine and heavenly atmospheres, and he would find in every word depths and more depths, because of which he might kneel and pray and say: I thank You, O Lord, for this deep consolation.
The routine of spiritual life makes a person lose his fervor, his reverence, and his spirituality. All his spiritual works become mere practices without spirit and without God Himself. The person becomes a mere phantom walking in the Church, neither affected by it nor affecting it…
Amid this routine, he loses tears, loses contrition, loses repentance, and covers over every feeling of remorse. The life of the worshiper may turn into mere ritual idols without life, and he wonders where his spirit is, and where his feeling of God dwelling in him is.
Where is the God whom I used to hold in prayer, abide in Him and He in me, and say to Him, “I will not let You go unless You bless me”?!
Where is the God whom I used to speak to mouth to ear, and feel His presence, feel the warmth of meeting Him, and the sweetness of fellowship and relationship, and the sincerity of love between me and Him? Where is He?!
Now there is religious information, knowledge, service and worship, and routine, but there is no God in life nor in worship…
The believer tries to return to the beginning of the way and cannot… Where are his former tears? They have dried up… Where are his sins over which he used to weep and be broken because of them? He does not feel that he has sins; his religious practices, activity, and services cover over them! There is no apparent fall that affects him, nor a spiritual shaking that shakes him…
Sometimes the reason for a person’s loss and his spiritual lukewarmness is not the loss of contrition nor ritualism in worship, but rather preoccupation.
Preoccupation:
A person enters the Church, and they see in him intelligence or activity, so they entrust him with services, and he becomes occupied in service, preaching, preparation, visitation, social service, and individual sessions…
He searches for his life amid these preoccupations and does not find it.
Many have become a flame of activity but without warmth; a flame of production but without spirit. They have become persons moving everywhere, and their spirituality is lost…
Others have become occupied with home and children, social relationships, or with studies, degrees, and practical and material life, and they lost their spirituality.
Amid preoccupations, a person finds no opportunity to sit with himself, to examine what is in it of feelings and sensations, and what changes and deviations have come upon it.
And perhaps a person sits with himself and is lost by (justifications).
Justifications and Excuses:
This is the snare of the intelligent in spiritual loss, as their mind helps them create excuses and justify every behavior and action…
He can use verses of Scripture and sayings of the Fathers to cover his deeds, with a special interpretation and a special explanation. His sins may put on the garments of lambs and be called by other than their names: harshness he calls firmness, judgment he calls zeal… and so on.
Poor are these intelligent ones who use their intelligence to justify themselves; wise are the meek who accept rebuke in silence.
A person must care for himself and examine himself with justice and truth, and see in which ways he is walking. And he must place before him the saying of the Lord:
(For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?)
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Year Seven (Issue Forty-One) 7-10-1976.
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