St. Theophan the Recluse: Discord Regarding Pleasures

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Monday, July 15 (2), 2024
Rom. 9:18-33; Mt. 11:2-15                                       

The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by struggle, and strugglers take it by force” [Mt. 11:12].  The Kingdom is attained by struggle, by efforts, by labor, by hardship, ─ that is, only hard-working people who live an ascetic life can reach it.

Thus, on our way to the Kingdom, any kind of comfort ought to be excluded.  Pleasures of all sorts make the Kingdom more distant; yet we are concerned only with  pleasures, occasionally for the soul, much more often for the body: eating, drinking, having fun, living a good life, buying expensive things.

It is as if we have told the Kingdom of Heaven: “Please excuse me” [Lu 14:18], even though there is also a great feast there, a royal feast, unthinkable for us here on earth, ─ but not to our taste.  What is sweet there, for us is bitter; what is pleasant there, for us is disgusting, what is joy there, for us is a burden: total discord!  So the Kingdom of Heaven with the strugglers who take it moves ever farther and farther away from us.  And we don’t mind; in fact, we wouldn’t even mind getting rid of it altogether.   More and more often we hint that we don’t need the Heavenly Kingdom, ─ yet Satan for some reason still has not got the job done.

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