Fragrance (novel) [19]
Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș
Fragrance
(novel)
*
I remember the years when I avoided entering demon-filled locations, locations that I felt from afar were bad for me. For I was trying to continually calm myself internally and keep the glory of God within me like a powerful torch. Later, from God’s enlightenment, I understood that I should not be afraid of places or people, who will always be different, because meeting them has a special role. Because each one has something important to tell me. And this important thing does not have to be understood immediately, it may be understood someday, who knows when, but that the meeting must take place. And, moreover, I understood that I must include everyone in my heart, because I must pray for everyone, and that noticing a virtue in one or an infirmity in another does not mean definitively fitting them into an image, but rather looking at them in scrolling. And, oh my God, how much peace and how much fulfillment in this embrace of all, in assuming Your world as my world! You know everyone before the world was. You know each of us individually, but you leave each of us to choose. Among all human dictatorships, the life with You is man’s only freedom, because to love You is to be truly free.
The petty dictator, the odious, the criminal, wants to be respected with the force. The horrible crimes of the world were born from the denial of the freedom of others. But to be free means to love the freedom of people. It means to love people even when they forget you and when they betray you and when they lie to your face shamelessly. To love means to truly understand man. To understand his motives, to understand his greatness, to understand his potencies. And face to face with the Saint of God you understand, as an understood, that he could have done everything that people usually do to get by and he didn’t do that! That everything was within his reach, that he could have taken our shortcuts, our well-trodden insensitivities, but he didn’t do that! And this overwhelms us: that he loved Him through all of his. He loved Him when he was happy and when he was sad and when he was alone and when he was sick and when no one believed in him. That his life is a earthshaking lesson of constancy, of ghostual continuity. And that, when we don’t like the endeavor, we don’t like the content of ascesis, but only the inconsistent praises in themselves.
I had forgotten the perfume from Varna and I carried its smooth scent through the 14 degrees of september. Plunging into the morning coolness was like jumping into a pool. Having the bag on my back, the coolness was attenuated. But it was a good shock, which I needed. Any way out of illness needs air, good food, serenity, friends. Whereas sleep, which tires your heart and puts you down, needs all-encompassing peace. And I’m not interested in the sweat and nor the writhings of sleep, I’m not interested in its duration, but in the readiness to work upon waking. Because it tells me that I’m good at writing, at praying, at serving. That I am on horses and that we must visit new territories of knowledge.
When Dumitru made Troița[1], he received advice from a Priest from another village. He would come to Church, sometimes with his wife, who was as upright as a man, but that Priest would put thoughts in his mind. He probably thought that the Priests in his village did not have this pastoral dexterity to plant thoughts. But when you are set on seeing outside, across many kilometers, a truth, you take it from there, even though you could have read it at home or listened to it at the sunday sermon. And the christian comes to Church not to hear! Most often he thinks he knows what the Priest will preach or that he knows more than he does. And when he learns new things from his Priest, he quickly minimizes them or forgets them, lest they take buds in him. Gossip with and about the Church is self-justification. We know what it thinks, what it does! The magnifying glass with which you are viewed is a magnifying glass with which they do not view themselves at all. Because the magnifying glass of attention would bring into you the great charisma of self-sight, of the sight that fills you with much living repentance. Why should I look at Ioana, who doesn’t know how to worship, but seems to be avoiding flies, instead of looking at my sins, at my soul, at its reality?! If my house is burning, why should I look at my neighbor first, when I am in great danger?!! Self-sight is the great awakening of the Church of God. If you see yourself as a sinner, then you have begun to need God. For the need for God is born only when you know that you are a sinner and that only He, only He can help you heal from your death.
[1] Wayside shrine.