The Meeting with the Lord¹
On the occasion of the Holy Forty Days, and the meeting of the Lord Christ with His disciples, I would like to speak to you about:
The Meeting with the Lord¹
Many think that they have met the Lord, while they have not met Him…
We mean by the meeting, the true meeting, in which a heart meets with a heart.
There are people who meet Christ in the body, while their hearts are far from Him. About these the Lord said reproaching them:
“This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.”
Perhaps a person stands a quarter of an hour or half an hour praying, without meeting the Lord. He merely repeats words, nothing more.
Prayer is a connection with God. Do you feel this connection in your prayer?
Do you feel during prayer that you are in the presence of God, and that you have seen Him, enjoyed Him, and spoken with Him? Therefore, those who live in the formality of prayer, and in mere ritual prayer without entering into its spirit—these have not met God.
To these the Lord said in the Book of Isaiah: “When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.”
I admire the expressions of the psalmist who tasted God and met Him, when he says: “Your face, Lord, I seek; Your face, O Lord, I will seek. Do not hide Your face from me.” “With my whole heart I have sought You.”
The virgin of the Song did not suffice with asking, but also went around the streets searching for Him, struggling for this meeting.
There is a person who prays and does not feel enjoyment, because he does not meet God in his prayer. The sign of enjoyment and meeting in prayer is that you do not wish to leave it. They could take your life from you more easily than separating you from the delight of speaking with God…!
There are people who meet with the phrases of prayer, with its meaning, with its rationality, but they do not meet with God. But those who have met Him, St. Isaac said about them:
“From the sweetness of the word in their mouths at the time of 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 beloved, 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 way does not feel himself: how much time has passed. And he does not know whether he is in the body or outside the body, he does not know…
And in order for you to meet the Lord, you must have a desire for the meeting.
But this is not a rule, for among the most wondrous examples is also the story of Saul of Tarsus, who was on his way to persecute the Lord and His children with all harshness and violence, carrying letters to drag men and women to prison… And on the road the Lord met him and drew him to Himself…
Speak to the Lord and say to Him: I want, O Lord, to meet You, to commune with You, and for my eyes to see You. I want, as You have entered my mind, that You also enter my heart.
I want to know You, to experience You, and to love You; and to cling to You. I want You to enter my heart, and I to enter Your heart. I want You to say to me: “Make haste and come down.” I will leave the sycamore tree, leave the crowd, and open my house to You, for You to dine with me and I with You.
If God possesses your affections, your meeting 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 for a moment, you will feel that you are sick with love…
If you have not loved God, then you have not yet met Him…
Zacchaeus the tax collector used to hear about the Lord by the hearing of the ear. So he desired to meet Him. He saw Him from afar, in the midst of the crowd. And the Lord kept approaching him until He called him by his name and entered his house, and salvation came to that house…
The heart is the only means by which one meets God.
Many worship God outside their souls and outside their hearts. And they pray and fast, yet do not meet God. They come out of all that 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 God is he 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 God here on earth, you will not meet Him there in heaven. Here is the taste of the kingdom…
Here begins the relationship with God, begins the companionship, the connection, the friendship… Here we take the pledge of the kingdom and its taste. Here you must enjoy the Kingdom of God within you, in order to enjoy His kingdom in heaven.
Thus, the Kingdom of God (“within you”) must precede the Kingdom of Heaven.
Meeting with God requires a person like the Forerunner (John the Baptist), to prepare for the Lord a people ready. This readiness for the meeting is what the Scripture called “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.
The Lord Christ does not seek merely a meeting, but more—abiding in Him: “Abide in Me, and I in you.” What is the meaning of this mutual abiding? It is an expression greater than our minds and greater than our hearts.
As the branches abide in the vine, as the body is joined to the head… Truly as the Scripture says: This mystery is great… It is not merely a meeting; it is dwelling, the dwelling of God in you. As He says: “You are the temples of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.” God looks at your heart and says: “Here is My rest forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it.”
Your heart is the place where Christ wants to rest His head.
For this you cry: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” Come, O Lord, and dwell. I will open all the doors for You. And the Lord answers: “Today I must stay at your house.”
Thus, meeting the Lord is an inner meeting and not an outer one. Many search for God here and there, while God is within them and they do not feel Him.
God is present everywhere, around you and within you, and you do not feel. When Augustine perceived this truth, he said: “You were with me, O Lord, but in my misery I was not with You.”
Thus, meeting God means feeling God in your life.
You are, O Lord, within me. You are with me. But I lack the sense and awareness. I lack the trained senses by which I see God. Therefore the Lord reproaches us saying: “You have eyes, but do not see.”
Many had the Lord with them and speaking to them, but they did not feel Him nor know Him.
The two disciples of Emmaus were met by the Lord and they did not recognize Him. And He spoke to Mary Magdalene and she thought He was the gardener. And He spoke to Samuel and he thought He was Eli the priest. Moses the prophet also did not perceive the Lord at the bush, so the Lord cried to him: “Take off your sandals… for the place where you stand is holy ground.”
God is present in your life and in the lives of people. But the problem is that the senses are not trained… You meet the Lord and do not know Him.
In order to meet the Lord also, you must meet with Him in purpose. And according to the proverb: “One of the conditions of companionship is agreement.”
If you want to see God, occupy yourself with Him, think of Him…
Let Him be your goal and preoccupation, and let all else be secondary things. There are those whom another love distances from the Lord…
Another desire, another lust. Their heart is attached to it, so they are preoccupied with it instead of with the Lord. Thus, whoever loves the Lord is preoccupied with Him. He sees Him in everything. If a blessing or help or deliverance comes, he says: This is from God. And if he hears a good word, he says: This is the voice of God. And if he sees a righteous person, he says: He is the image of God. God is always on his tongue and in his heart.
“Your name is beloved, O Lord; it is my meditation all the day.”
“Your name is sweet and blessed in the mouths of Your saints.”
The whole problem of meeting is related to love—love of God.
God finds those who preach about Him, and those who build houses for Him, and those who interpret His law. But the more important is: Where are those who love Him? And God says: “My son, give Me your heart.”
Do you want to meet God? You must love Him.
Do you think that meeting God is merely slogans we place and titles? No, it is love and emotion. And you cannot love God if there is another love preoccupying you. There are those who love people, and those who love titles, or money, or knowledge, or authority, or lusts. And in all of this the Lord says:
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me…”
And the Scripture says: “The love of the world is enmity with God. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
Therefore, the Lord rejoiced when Peter said: “We have left all and followed You.” So have you also left everything for the sake of God, and has God become your all in all?
Be occupied with God, love Him with all your heart, give Him your affection.
“God is love. He who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” In this way one can meet God…
It is not enough to read the Scripture, but you must love it…
“In the law of the Lord is your delight, and in His law you meditate day and night.” You say to the Lord: “I rejoiced at Your word as one who finds great treasure,” “In Your name I lift up my hands, and my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,” “I found Your words like honey and I ate them.”
In this way you meet God in His words, if you open your heart to them with love.
And as you love the word of God, you love His Church, you love His service, you love His kingdom, you love His heaven, you love His children.
Is your heart a dwelling place for God, or have you subleased it to others?!
God says to you: “My son, give Me your heart,” and you say to Him: “I have come, O Lord, too late! Others have preceded You and taken it. My heart has been taken by so-and-so, and by such-and-such. If my heart were empty, I would have given it to You, but I’m sorry, it is occupied.”
God works by His grace to empty your heart so it becomes His. And He meets you, and you meet Him. And this emptying comes by detachment…
You feel that everything is trivial beside God. So you detach from everything, and God becomes all in all. And in this way you meet Him without hindrance… And you cannot detach from the world and its matters unless this world loses its value in your eyes… I like in this the saying of the Apostle Paul: “I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ… and be found in Him.” “What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss, for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ.”
Abraham the father of the patriarchs left for the sake of the Lord his family, his clan, and his father’s house. And for His sake also he went to offer his only son as a burnt offering. As though he were saying to the Lord: “I, O Lord, have none but You, neither family nor clan nor son. You are everything to me, and no one else. Since I met You, I have known no one else but You…”
David in his love for God said what is harder than this: “I was as a beast before You; yet I am continually with You” (Ps. 73).
What matters is that I be with You, and I do not care about the state I am in. He who meets You cannot be far.
When God created man, He was, for man, all in all. Then other loves began to enter the heart of man, and from that time his meeting with the Lord diminished, and fear replaced love, and he began to flee from the face of God…
We need to re-evaluate matters, so that we feel that everything beside God is rubbish, so that nothing competes with Him in our heart…
And if we do not detach on our own, the grace of God works to detach us, until the heart becomes the Lord’s.
Among the examples of this is Job the righteous: the Lord stripped him of wealth, children, fame, dignity, friends, and even health… And in this detachment he met God, and his eyes saw Him…
And the meeting with God is what determines its time, place, and manner…
Who would have thought that the Magi, whose eyes were always fixed on the stars, would meet the Lord of all the stars in a manger of cattle! And it would be a meeting of faith.
Meeting with God is a meeting of knowledge. And the knowledge of God is not an easy or simple matter… 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 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). To know Him “and be found in Him”…
And this knowledge is not merely intellectual knowledge: “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 30 years until he knew God. And when he knew Him, he loved Him, and found Him an inexpressible beauty and an indescribable joy. He tasted how good the Lord is. And he said to Him in contrition: “I have loved You too late…”
“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” If you taste Him, you will feel the sweetness of life with Him, and say to Him: “It is good, O Lord, for us to be here…”
Mary the sister of Martha used to sit at the feet of Christ, contemplating Him to know Him.
Those who truly knew the Lord ran after Him all the way, and did not want to know anything else but Him… And you—do you think that 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. For the demons know—“believe and tremble” (James 2). But true knowledge is experiential knowledge, described by John the Beloved: “That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled.”
Job the righteous, when he met the Lord, realized that all his previous knowledge of God 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 regarding the difference between the two knowledges:
“I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, 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? Did they tell you about God in sermons, and did you hear about 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, and with buildings, and with pictures, and with sciences—all of which speak to you of the God whom you ought to meet. So have you met Him?
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An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, published in Watani Newspaper on 25-4-1993
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