October: Day 29: Teaching 3: Holy Martyr Anastasia the Roman

 

October: Day 29: Teaching 3:
Holy Martyr Anastasia the Roman
 
(How Can We Learn to Be Grateful to God?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. On the feast of Saint Anastasia of Rome, who, amid her torments, sang praises and offered thanksgiving to God in the words of the Psalms of the Prophet-King, it is fitting, brethren, to speak about how we too may learn to be grateful to God, we who, having received thousands of blessings from Him, have failed to value them and have not thanked Him for them.

II. Someone may ask me: Can one really learn to be grateful? Yes, brethren, one can. Everything can be learned in the school of the gospel. Put this to the test.

a) Have you ever tried to gather together, as though into a single bundle, all the mercies and blessings that have fallen to your lot?

Take a moment to reflect on your memories. Recall the first promptings of divine grace, the blessings of childhood, those pure and sweet memories that so many others like you do not possess! Remember the childhood prayers in your parental home, the pure joys, and the bright impulses toward goodness that are always so heartening. Then recall the disappointments, sorrows, and bitterness that showed you the true worth of the world. Remember the whole path appointed for you by Providence, the care and protection you received, and finally all the appeals, efforts, and abundant acts of mercy by which your heart was won over! Count all these things, and you will no longer be troubled; you will simply bow down before divine mercy.

b) Then, beloved brethren, add the blessings of the present to all the blessings of the past. Have we reflected on them? Ah, yes, very often! But we have counted only what we lacked. While clearly discerning what was missing, we remained blind to God’s blessings. And yet, why should we not count them? We urge you to do so, and dare to tell you in advance that you will be astonished when you discover the hidden blessings in your life, however empty and deprived it may appear outwardly.

How can we make you understand that what we say is true? Would it take another trial, one that might deprive you tomorrow of one of your faculties or abilities, one of your attachments, or one of those joys whose value you have never learned to appreciate? By losing these things, alas, you would understand their true worth, and your deprivation would reveal to you the riches you possessed.

Have we not learned this lesson many times, and painfully? When illness came, we learned the value of health. When one of our faculties failed, when our sight or hearing weakened, we understood what sorrow God had sent us. When emptiness settled over our home, we felt the worth of those relationships that we had so rarely sanctified with gratitude in the days when we could enjoy them! We came to understand how much strength and encouragement there could be in a sympathetic glance, in a handshake, and how much boundless joy a little child’s smile could bring us! What would you not give to have these things again? But no! It is already too late, and all your regrets will not bring them back.

What sorrow, what shame, to realize that these joys passed by unappreciated, that happiness was sought somewhere other than where God had appointed it to be found, and that the tenderest and most moving proofs of His love went unrecognized!

But are such trials necessary to teach us gratitude? Would happiness alone not be enough to move us to it? Brethren, sometimes it has been. We have probably all seen fortunate people who, through happiness, were moved and taught to be grateful. The lot God had prepared for them seemed so beautiful and, at the same time, so little deserved by them that they were overwhelmed by it, and goodness itself awakened in them the first stirrings of repentance and gratitude.

Oh, those among my brethren who are still young and whom God has spared until now, why are you not moved, stirred to repentance, and converted by these many proofs of divine love for you? Why preach only that dark and sorrowful idea that suffering alone can lead souls to God, and that hearts turn to Him only when they have been rejected by the light and find in His love their last refuge?

Show the world that youth, life, hope, and happiness can flourish in all their beauty beneath God’s mercy, and that joy, too, can enliven the heart and produce the fruits of self-denial, mercy, and self-sacrifice! Prove this to a world that needs to know it. And, remembering all the Lord’s blessings, do not imagine that these blessings will be taken away from you!

c) But to you, brethren, who groan beneath the burden of trial, dare we address the words of Holy Scripture and ask you to cry out with the Prophet: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” (Psalm 102:2)?

May God preserve us from speaking thoughtlessly about sorrow and thereby aggravating the suffering hearts of others under the pretext of comforting them! No, let us be just! There are days of great calamity for many people, days when grief and suffering cast them down into the dust, when blessing God seems impossible.

And yet, if God is “love,” and love is the essence of all His works, surely the preacher of the Gospel has something to say to them. Why should he not draw near to these crushed souls and tell them, in the name of the Gospel, how much that was beneficial for them was contained in this boundless sorrow?

If we did not dare to say this, we would, in effect, be believing that we are in the merciless hands of blind fate. But no! Fate has no place in the life of Christians.

We believe in God, who is continually at work both in our trials and in our blessings. We believe in His love even when He chastens us. Take care not to fail to recognize His visitation; take care not to pass blindly by these severe but real signs of His intervention.

We know what you wish to answer. You will say to me: “Where is God in my life? Where are His manifestations? Where is His love in the blows that strike me?”

But I answer you without hesitation: “Wait before you judge.”

Recall that Gospel scene in which the Apostles were sailing in the middle of the night and, thinking that a phantom was approaching them, cried out in terror. At that moment, from the very figure that had frightened them came a gentle, reassuring voice: “It is I; do not be afraid!” (John 6:20). It was their Teacher, the divine Teacher, Jesus Christ.

Ah, how often you too, like the Apostles, have been mistaken and, tossed about like them by the waves of the storm, have seen the phantom of fate rise before you in the night of trial—a terrifying apparition! Wait a little, and your eyes will be opened. From the depths of the darkness, you will hear the voice of the Savior saying to you, “Do not weep! It is I!”

Yes, it is He who appears to you in the mysterious trial; it is He who draws near, seeking you. It is He whom you must bless, humbling yourself because you have not recognized Him until now.

This is why we tell you, brethren: Take care not to fail to recognize God’s blessings in your trials!

When people find themselves in great calamities and do not feel His presence, only two choices remain to them: despair, or drunkenness and debauchery. Despair is the lot of the nobler souls, who may need only to come to know God in order to find refuge in Him. Drunkenness and debauchery, on the other hand, become the distractions of most weak souls.

In this way, they forget what God wished to teach them in the great hour of trial. When we reflect on this, our hearts tighten at the sight of all the suffering that passes in vain, bearing no fruit.

What! God has struck you, yet you have not recognized His hand, and He has appeared to you in vain? What! You, who have been marked by God with the mysterious seal of sorrow, erase this divine imprint and go so far as to begin once again to value the world that seemed no longer to exist for you? Do you not feel that the world itself is astonished by this and looks at you in bewilderment when you once again take part in the whirl of its amusements?

No! You were not created for such a purpose. Everything tells you this, and the hidden wound that opens anew at these words confirms it all the more strongly.

Brethren, while there is still time, seek the blessings hidden within your trials and accept the instruction that the Lord has concealed in them! (See the Discourses of Bersier.)

Would you like an example of how one can learn, in the very depths of sorrow, to bless God and diligently remember His benefits? We find this example in the holy Apostle Paul.

Do you know anyone who suffered more than the holy Apostle Paul, who over the course of thirty years endured in his own person so many torments of body, heart, and spirit? Whose life was more filled with struggle, betrayal, hatred, and the world’s contempt?

And have you noticed how Saint Paul begins his epistles? With an expression of thanksgiving. Read any one of them: there is not a single one in which you will not hear him blessing God from the very first lines.

Yet Saint Paul was certainly not one of those people who build castles in the air or see everything through a deceptive veil. He himself experienced want and disgrace, adversity and oppression. Even when he wrote to persecuted churches, even when he wrote from prison on the eve of his execution, he offered thanksgiving to God for everything. And why? Because, beyond all that caused sorrow, he saw the joys of Heaven; beyond transient things, he saw what was everlasting; and because, finally, in his eyes, present and temporary sufferings were redeemed by the victory of love.

Train yourselves, brethren, in the school of the holy Apostle Paul, and learn from him to see, beyond whatever grieves you, the divine love and goodness that surpass all things!

III. O power of divine goodness! If others do not acknowledge you, we, with the examples of Saint Anastasia the Martyr and countless other martyrs before us—those who glorified and thanked God amid the fiercest sufferings that the satanic malice of the enemies of the Lord’s Cross could devise—bow down before you. Overcome with shame at the sight of our own ingratitude, from this day forward we shall cry out with the Psalmist:

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits!” Amen.

(Compiled by Priest G. Dyachenko from the sources indicated.)

 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.