Don't deny your doubts and your struggles. BE WHO-YOU-ARE before Christ, so He may save who-you-are.

Summary

In this heartfelt video, the speaker shares the beauty and peace of a sunset, reflecting on God's unwavering goodness. He recounts a profound conversation with a monastic brother about a letter from Saint Sophrony, discussing the coexistence of suffering and faith. The speaker emphasizes embracing life's spiritual tensions and struggles, rather than seeking easy escapes, as a path to true spiritual growth and salvation. Through personal anecdotes and spiritual insights, he encourages viewers to trust in God's unchanging love and to find peace in His silence. The video ends with a blessing and a hymn.

Takeaways

• 🌅 The speaker starts by sharing a peaceful sunset, emphasizing its beauty and tranquility.
• 🙏 The speaker was not planning to record but felt compelled to share the moment.
• 📜 The speaker reflects on a letter from Saint Sophrony from Essex, addressing why God allows pain and evil.
• 🕊️ Saint Sophrony expresses his lifelong struggle with temptations and suffering despite his devotion to God.
• 🤔 Saint Sophrony frequently asked God why such challenges exist but received no answer.
• 🌟 Saint Sophrony ultimately accepts God's silence, demonstrating deep faith and peace.
• 📖 The speaker discusses the importance of not escaping life's spiritual tensions but embracing them for growth.
• 🔥 Struggles and temptations are seen as opportunities for spiritual growth and purification.
• 💪 The speaker encourages facing doubts and discomforts honestly rather than denying them.
• ❤️ The overall message is to trust in God's love and continue striving for spiritual growth despite challenges.

Q & A

What inspired the speaker to record the video?

The speaker was inspired by a beautiful sunset that filled their heart with peace.

What does the speaker hope the sunset reminds the viewers of?

The speaker hopes the sunset reminds viewers of the beauty, peace, and goodness created by God.

Who did the speaker have a conversation with that day?

The speaker had a conversation with their monastic brother from Moldavia.

What significant letter is mentioned in the conversation with the monastic brother?

The letter mentioned is written by Saint Sophrony from Essex to a lady from Cyprus, addressing why God allows painful and evil events to happen.

What was Saint Sophrony's response to the question of why God allows suffering?

Saint Sophrony responded that despite his efforts to live a holy life, he experienced suffering and temptations daily. He concluded that if God remained silent on these matters, he would also keep silent.

What advice does Saint Sophrony give about dealing with spiritual tension?

Saint Sophrony advises identifying the source of spiritual tension and remaining in that place of tension, as it is where growth and salvation occur.

What two unshakable realities does the speaker mention in the video?

The speaker mentions the unshakable reality of God's existence and His love, and the unstable reality of human fallenness and struggles.

What are the risks of denying spiritual struggles according to the speaker?

The risks include missing the opportunity to become the saints we are meant to be, either by denying God's existence or by pretending to be something we are not.

What does the speaker encourage viewers to do in the face of suffering and unanswered questions?

The speaker encourages viewers to embrace their struggles and questions, keeping faith in God and continuing forward in virtue.

What is the speaker's final message to the viewers?

The speaker shares the gift of the sunset and the conversation with the monastic brother, blessing the viewers and reminding them of God's love and presence.

Outlines

00:00

🌅 Reflecting on Divine Creation and Suffering

The speaker begins by sharing a beautiful sunset, expressing a spontaneous desire to capture and share its serenity despite not initially planning to record. They reflect on the conversation with a monastic brother about a letter from Saint Sophrony, addressing the question of why God allows suffering and evil in the world. Saint Sophrony's honesty is highlighted, as he admits to a lifetime of striving for spiritual growth and closeness to God, yet enduring constant suffering and unanswered questions. The letter concludes with an acceptance of God's silence on these matters, suggesting a profound peace in the face of human struggle and divine mystery.

05:01

🙏 Embracing Spiritual Tension and Growth

In this paragraph, the speaker discusses the importance of identifying and confronting the sources of spiritual tension in life, as advised by Fr Sophrony. The advice is to remain in the midst of tension rather than fleeing, as this is where true growth and salvation are found. The speaker emphasizes the importance of acknowledging doubts, passions, and sins as real experiences that require honest confrontation and divine assistance for overcoming. The paragraph underscores the idea that pretending to be a saint before actually achieving sainthood can prevent true spiritual development and that one should not fake anything but allow God to work through the struggles of life.

10:06

✝️ The Path to Resurrection Through the Cross

The final paragraph focuses on the message that the path to spiritual resurrection lies through embracing the cross, or the source of tension and struggle in one's life. The speaker warns against seeking easy escapes from these challenges, as they are necessary for burning away the fallen aspects of oneself and revealing the true, eternal spirit. The paragraph concludes with an encouragement to struggle with life's uncomfortable realities and to allow God to work in one's life, even when faced with unanswered questions and God's silence. The speaker ends with a blessing and a hymn celebrating the grace that brings salvation to all mankind.

Keywords

💡Sunset

A sunset is the daily disappearance of the sun below the horizon. In the video, the sunset symbolizes peace and beauty, reminding the speaker of God's creation. It sets the tone for the contemplative and spiritual reflections that follow.

💡Monastic

Monastic refers to a monk or nun who lives under religious vows in a monastery. The speaker mentions having a conversation with a monastic brother, highlighting the deep, spiritual bond and the exchange of profound thoughts on faith and suffering.

💡Fr Sophrony

Fr Sophrony, or Saint Sophrony, was an Orthodox Christian monk known for his deep spiritual insights. The speaker discusses a letter written by Fr Sophrony, which addresses the question of why God allows suffering, demonstrating his honest and profound approach to faith.

💡Suffering

Suffering refers to the experience of pain, distress, or hardship. In the script, suffering is a central theme, with discussions on why God allows it and how it plays a role in spiritual growth and purification.

💡Faith

Faith is a strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion. The video emphasizes the importance of maintaining faith despite suffering and unanswered questions, portraying it as a source of strength and guidance.

💡Spiritual Tension

Spiritual tension refers to the inner conflict and struggles one faces in their spiritual journey. The speaker encourages embracing this tension, as it is essential for growth and finding salvation, rather than seeking an easy escape.

💡Silence of God

The silence of God refers to the experience of feeling that God is not responding to prayers or questions. Fr Sophrony's acceptance of God's silence is highlighted as a profound act of faith and submission to divine will.

💡Cross

The cross symbolizes suffering and sacrifice in Christian theology. The speaker advises staying 'on the cross,' enduring spiritual struggles, as this leads to growth and ultimate salvation, paralleling Christ's own suffering and resurrection.

💡Resurrection

Resurrection is the concept of rising from the dead, central to Christian belief in Jesus Christ's victory over death. The speaker connects the idea of enduring suffering (the cross) to achieving resurrection and eternal life.

💡Eternal Self

The eternal self refers to the immortal soul that is believed to live on after physical death. The video discusses the process of purifying the eternal self through spiritual struggles, aligning with God's will to become one's true self.

Highlights

Introduction of the speaker and their spontaneous decision to record the beautiful sunset.

Expression of gratitude and peace inspired by the sunset, linking it to the divine creation.

Mention of a conversation with a monastic brother about a letter by Saint Sophrony from Essex.

Saint Sophrony's honest response to why God allows pain and suffering in the world.

Saint Sophrony's lifelong struggle to live a good monastic life despite enduring many challenges and temptations.

Saint Sophrony's profound statement on God's silence regarding suffering: 'If God has kept His silence, then so shall I.'

Encouragement to embrace spiritual tension and struggle as a path to growth and salvation.

Advice to remain in places of spiritual tension instead of seeking easy escapes.

Explanation of the importance of acknowledging doubts and struggles in one's spiritual journey.

Warning against pretending to be saints without addressing real struggles and sins.

Comparison of two poles in life: the unshakeable reality of God's love and the unstable reality of human fallenness.

Encouragement to allow God to work through one's pain and suffering to reveal the true self.

Reminder of the ultimate goal: to become the saints God created us to be through perseverance in faith and love.

Final reflection on sharing beauty and spiritual insights with friends as an act of love.

Closing blessings and prayers for the listeners, expressing unity and friendship.

Transcripts

Hello, my dear ones and may God bless you  wherever you are! I'll turn the camera  

in a second so we can see each other  but just have a look at this sunset.  

I really had no intention to record  tonight, I usually record in the morning  

but it is so beautiful and it fills my heart with  so much peace I want to share it with you and  

I hope it reminds you, the beauty of it, the peace  of it, I hope it reminds you as it is reminding me  

that God is the Creator of everything  that is good, everything that is peaceful,  

everything that is truly beautiful, and that the  Creator never changes and that His intention His  

plan for His creation does not change either. I'm  sorry now we are turning to something much less  

beautiful than the sunset. It's me, let me  get up my rock I don't quite know what to  

tell you because honestly I was not planning  to record anything tonight I just came out for  

a walk and I saw the sunset and  I wanted to share it with you.  

I had a beautiful and very  helpful to me conversation  

today with my monastic brother from Moldavia. We  spoke for I think well over one hour and he told  

me about this letter which he found written by Fr  Sophrony from Essex, Saint Sophrony from Essex now  

and it's written to a lady from Cyprus. Somewhere  in this letter Saint Sophrony answers a question  

which was put to him by this Cypriot lady about  the reasons why God allows anything painful,  

anything evil to unfold in the world, why do  all these horrible things happen in the world?  

And what struck my monastic brother and what he  wanted to talk to me about was Saint Sophrony's  

pure complete utter honesty in his response; he  writes that 'I've been a monastic for 50-60 years  

and in all my monastic life I've done my best to  lead a good monastic life, I've done my best to  

grow closer to God, to put an increasing distance  between myself and my sins, to help my brother  

and my sister; I have prayed for the world,  I've done in one word everything that I could,  

everything that was in my power to grow closer to  God and to bring the world closer to Him as well,  

and at the same time for every day of my life I've  suffered and I've gone through temptations and  

I've gone through pains of all sorts,' spiritual  battles with the evil ones, spiritual battles with  

his own fallenness, temptations from people around  him, temptations from his body, his failing body,  

he was suffering greatly and he was very ill in  the last decades, not years, decades of his life,  

'and I've always asked God  why things must be like this'.  

So he's done everything in his power to live  a life well pleasing to God while at the same  

time never stopping to ask God in prayer,  Why? Despite all his attempts to please God,  

all these temptations are still allowed to  unfold in his life and he ends this letter  

with a sentence which is amazing in its  simplicity and in the proof of the depth  

of the faith of this Saint: he says, 'In all these  50-60 years of struggles and inquiries in prayer,  

God has kept His silence, and if God has kept  His silence about these things, then so shall  

I.' Why there is something almost beyond human  in the peace with which he embraces this reality  

and at the same time there is something painfully  human in his constant never-ending attempts to  

understand and to ask for an answer, not because  he needs an answer personally necessarily but  

also because he's aware, as a spiritual father,  how helpful an answer, an understanding would be  

to all the people who ask for his advice in order  to deal with this question; and this conversation  

with my monastic brother reminded me why I love  Fr Sophrony so much, it reminded me why I've,  

I've just fallen in love utterly with him  from the first few lines I've read of his.  

He says somewhere else to always identify the  source of tension, the source of spiritual  

tension in your life, and once you identify  it, don't try to solve it, don't try to  

resolve it by running away, by exiting that  place of tension, by getting off that cross,  

instead do your best to keep yourself  on that cross, do your best to remain  

in that place of spiritual tension, because  that is where the treasure is, that is where  

and how you are going to grow and ultimately  find your salvation, by keeping yourself  

in the midst of that fire, by keeping yourself  on that cross, in that source of tension, if one  

has absolute faith in God, if faith in God  is a given, if the existence of God and  

God being a loving, good Being that has created  everything around us and us in order to save us,  

in order to unite us with Himself, if this  belief in this God is unshakable in you  

at least as much as it is possible for a mortal  human being to have anything unshakeable in us,  

once that is a given then you not only can ask God  all these difficult questions, but you should ask  

them for a very simple reason: they exist in  you. Anyway, it's not as if if you deny them,  

if you lie to yourself, if you pretend that  you don't have them they go away; the doubts  

that we have exist, they are real, they don't  just go away because we want them to go away,  

the pain that we feel, the passions that fight  us, the sins into which we fall, these are real  

experiences in our lives, they are not just  theatre, we don't pretend that they are there,  

and the risk is that unless we acknowledge  them and we are honest about them and we try to  

understand where they come from and we  ask for God's help to overcome them,  

if we pretend to be the Saints that we are not,  we are going to miss the opportunity to become  

the Saints that we could become, if we are going  to make ourselves into Saints of our own making,  

of our own creation before we actually reach that  state of being, we are going to miss becoming the  

Saints whom God created us to become anyway,  and who you would become, because God's will  

is unshakeable for us and for the world. When Fr  Sophrony says, 'All my life I've done the good  

or I've tried at least to do the good that was  up to me while at the same time not shying away  

from asking God difficult, uncomfortable  questions, trying to understand, difficult,  

uncomfortable realities about myself, about  the world, about my brothers and my sisters',  

when he says that, when he teaches us not to  run away from the places of tension in our lives  

but to learn from them and to grow from  them, he is basically telling us not to fake  

anything. We grow between these two poles  in our lives: on the one hand the given,  

the reality, the unshakable pole of God's  existence and God being love, Christ  

God is love, He has created the world out of love  in order to save the world through love so the  

world becomes one with Him Who is Love, this is  one pole, one unshakeable reality of our lives;  

the other one is painfully shakeable, painfully  unstable and it has to do with our fallen reality,  

our fallen humanity while still alive here in  this world. Do not seek to escape this tension  

because the only ways out are one, to deny God's  existence and in that case you would escape this  

tension by finding relief into nothingness, by  losing your eternal self, losing your salvation;  

and the other possible escape is to deny who  you are, to deny the reality of your being,  

the reality of your doubts, of your passion,  of your sin, of your struggle, and that is to  

fake everything and to become something that has  nothing to do with you, it is to build yourself,  

to build a Saint out of a fallen human being,  to build a Saint out of a sinner, to try to  

build something eternal, an eternal being out of  earth and soil which goes back into nothingness.  

Struggle, my brother, struggle, my sister, with  all the uncomfortable realities in your life. All  

the Saints of the Church are teaching us the same  thing: the way to the Resurrection is the Cross;  

the way to Life is to die to the world and  to ourselves here. Don't seek an easy escape  

from this cross, don't seek an easy escape from  this source of tension in your life, because this  

source of tension, this fire will burn everything  that is evil, everything that is fallen in you and  

will only allow the gold, the spiritual gold,  what is truly valuable, truly eternal in you  

to shine through, once this spiritual fire, these  flames of the Spirit have completely run through  

you and finished burning everything that is  fallen in you, then, and only then, the true you,  

the eternal you, the you whom God created  in His image to exist eternally with Him,  

then and only then that true you will shine  through. Don't build yourself into a Saint;  

Adam has tried it and we see where that ended.  Allow God the time and the space to work in  

your life, and if God allows pain and suffering,  if God does not answer to your questions: Why?  

Why, O Lord? Why? If God keeps his silence,  then we should learn to keep our silence as  

well and to keep on going forward in virtue of  our faith in Him and in the fact that He is Love  

and He will forever unshakeably,  unchangeably, if that is a word, be Love.

Oh, I don't know if this is going to  amount to anything, I don't know if  

this is going to benefit anyone, all I know  is that I saw something beautiful and like  

like a stupid child I wanted to pick it up and  show it to his friends, and you are our friends  

and this is, this is the  gift that God has given me,  

this beautiful sunset and this conversation with  my monastic brother, and they are all yours.  

Be blessed, my brother and my sister, be  blessed wherever you are. Amen, amen, amen. 

[singing] which doth abundantly pour forth the sweet wine of our salvation, 

truly making glad the souls and the bodies of all mankind. 

Wherefore as we call thee blest as the cause of our every good, 

we ever cry to thee like the Angel: Rejoice, O Full of Grace.