By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
Our meeting took place in a small street outside the precincts of the Sacred Monastery and, according to his custom – because he had to walk a bit, since he was eighty years old – he invited me to discuss while walking, so that we could become, as he usually said, “peripatetic philosophers.” He was a philosopher in the patristic sense of the term, since he had the real philosophy, which is empirical theology.
Starting the conversation, I told him that I felt that within my heart I saw the existence of various passions and I wanted to be freed from them in order to have real communion with God. He then told me: “The beginning of spiritual life is the sense of sinfulness. Man feels that he is worse than animals and unworthy of God’s love. This is a 'normal' state, and it is inspired by the Grace of God. It is the experience of hell that constitutes the negative vision of the uncreated Light. Through the Light of God, we see our state as though projected from the image of a transparency when light exists behind it. We should be concerned when we do not feel the passions that exist within us.”
Analyzing this statement, I want to emphasize that sin is a fall from the glory of God. The Apostle Paul writes: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). This means that Adam and Eve, before the fall, lived in Paradise in the illumination of the nous and shared in the glory of God. By transgressing God’s commandment, they lost this communion with God, that is, they lost participation in the glory of God and fell into profound darkness.
Source: From the book Ὁ ἅγιος Σωφρόνιος, ὁ ἁγιορείτης καί ἡσυχαστής. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
