About the illumination of Christ
"Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and
Christ will give you light" (Ephesians 5:14).
Saint Paul the apostle, similar to all the other apostles and Christian
saints, whatever he teaches to others, he teaches from his own personal
experience. For the Faith of Christ is an experience and proof and not a theory
of human sophistry. Even Paul lay as one spiritually dormant and, he was
spiritually dead while he opposed the Christian Faith. St. Paul was awakened,
arose, resurrected in the spirit and was illumined by Christ. He knows himself
from the time when he was spiritually dormant and from the time when he became
awakened, and when he arose, and when he was resurrected by the Spirit and when
he was illumined by Christ. That which he knows about himself as a Christian,
he commends to others. As an apostle, he sees himself in a great light and
believes that all other men, if they so desire, can be as bright as he is. The
light is not his, but Christ's light. His is only the love for that Light, Who
is Christ.
The illumination of Christ is necessary for man in the beginning as well as
in the end. For without Christ's illumination man is unable either to awaken,
or to arise, or to resurrect from the dead, as afterwards, he is unable to live
alone by himself in faith or to die in hope. Christ is needed in the beginning
as well as in the end. As to a drowning child the hand of the parent is needed
to retrieve him from the water and afterward to lead him on dry land, protecting
him and preventing him from drowning again; thus Christ is needed for those
drowning in the waters of sin. The apostle himself received the illumination of
Christ in the beginning on the road to Damascus and, again, he received it
later. The first illumination was his conversion to Christ and the second
illumination was the confirmation of himself in Christ. The first illumination
we all receive through baptism and later, through faith, and the fulfilling of
the commandments of the Lord. All of those who do not possess the illumination
of Christ, either they have had it and lost it, are dormant as though dead.
O gentle Lord, awaken us, uplift us, resurrect us, for we cannot do any of
these things without You.
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