Our hearts should have burned upon receiving God’s information – Metropolitan of Strumica, Nahum
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We live in a world of information, and we need to be very careful from whom, how and when, we receive the information. The information can bring us both life and death. When we accept God’s information with our heart and likewise, we have the intention and will to put it into practice, then we secretly receive God’s uncreated energy, God’s grace, life and strength. We say secretly, because grace is activated, becomes effective, when we show intent and determination in our heart, to attain it, and, when we begin to achieve the grace continuously, in practice.
There is a great danger for us as Christians, and that is when we only accept God’s information at the field of our mind (reason). If we accept God’s information that comes from the word of the spiritual father, from the Holy Scriptures, from the works of the Holy Fathers with only our reason, without a serious intention to put it into practice, then we gather only knowledge without grace, and thus we acquire a kind of immunity, a kind of resistance to God’s information, we remain barren and automatically enter into passive sociopathy; It doesn’t even occur to us why we are spiritually stagnant.
Thus, God’s information that is sent to us can also kill us spiritually if we ignore it. In addition, even in the Gospel is written that the one who knew, and did not fulfil, will be punished more than the one who did not know (see: Luke 12, 48).
This demonic type of resistance, insensitivity, towards the fulfilment of God’s work is one of the main characteristics of modern Christians! I will not give examples, because we will all find ourselves in those situations – some more, some less. Instead of our hearts being frozen, out of unbelief, they should have burned – when God’s information reached them, and spread the fire to all around them. “Did not our hearts burn within us while He spoke to us on the road.” (Luke 24, 32)
Metropolitan of Strumica, Nahum
Divine Liturgy in the Monastery of “St. George the Victorious and Venerable Anthony the Great” in Novo Selo.
07 / 05 / 2025
