VIDEO: Podcast: The experiential knowledge of God (Met. Athanasios)

Source [Greek]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MrOgaefpMo

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Full transcript: https://otelders.org/podcasts/podcast-the-experiential-knowledge-of-god-met-athanasios/

Metropolitan Athanasios:

We read, listen about God, accept him orthodoxically and we have no doubt in our mind that He, God is indeed the true God which we are taught. But this knowledge is clearly intellectual knowledge, comes from the brain. And, of course, it influences on our mental world when faith is powerful and we practice the works of God. But the true knowledge, the “second faith of theory”, containing the word “theory”—derived from the ancient Greek verb “theoro/θεωρώ” which means “to see”—is this kind of knowledge, this faith which is born not merely out of intellectual knowledge but from the experience of God.

[…]

Because if the person is satisfied and if he or she feels “I am fine, I have no need any more, I feel nothing, I seek nothing” or “there is nothing that incites me to seek for something else”, this person has become satisfied and this satisfaction wears us out like the static water which gives birth to many microbes and bacteria and goes off. In the same manner a man that has stagnant waters and is satisfied. And God, the Good, our Father, the good medic, when we he sees his children to be satisfied/content, but our heart asks for God, he gives us the possibility of sorrows and temptations that come to us and shake us, to use them in order to wake up and understand that it is not the present things, you cannot be satisfied in present things, present things are relative, everything is relative. Only God is an absolute size, is an absolute existence in which a man is satisfied and he can say “I am content in God’s embrace”. Everything else, unfortunately, is relative…

We see a lot of times people who feel their lives collapse and they become a wreck and lose any meaning or purpose. For example, because they had a difficulty in their marriage and the wronged-person says “since my spouse betrayed me, for me there is no purpose or meaning in my life”. The purpose of your life, of your existence—which expresses all your being—was built upon a man, however good and necessary he/she might be”, if you built your everything on that man, well don’t you know that he/she is a man, he/she is a “limited size”, one time he/she will leave , will sleep, will not bear, sometime he/she might betray you, he/she will not be able to live up to your expectation. In that case, our life will come to have no purpose anymore? We understand that we built and support our existence on things that are not absolute, they are limited, and, when the time comes, when that big earthquake occurs, we break down and together we collapse and lose our entire life. However, it is a necessity to go through these earthquakes and reconsider our edifice and the basis on which we stand and to realize that present things are not permanent neither are we, neither can we imprison ourselves in temporary things.

The time must come to liberate ourselves and set them free in this spaciousness and safety of the existence of God. Yet, we make the mistake. You see, somebody loses his position, someone else his wealth, other his health, other his glory, whatever…we built on these things, we built on these things and the time of temptations come and we see ourselves to get scared, to frighten before the probability of the collapse of “my economy”, I might lose my money, my wealth, my family, my husband, I might lose the simplest thing, which, however, is still so important to us. We must learn not to idolize, not to turn into idols, things of the present, but to know that the absolute size that satisfies man is God and everything else is relative, it is temporary. They are events of the present life. Beautiful, necessary, consoling, good, they consol and give strength but unfortunately—these and with them us—we are only passing through this world. (Hebrews 13:14) “For here have we no lasting city, but we seek one to come” as Apostle Paul says. In the heart of saints, this feeling was born in the absolute. We do not have in this world a lasting city. Not only, we will leave and we know it, but we seek the one to come. We search for her, we expect her, we desire her. Why? Because we experienced the event of the relativity on the one hand and the absolute secureness and certainty of the Kingdom of God on the other.