Pearls from heaven, or spiritual revelations in our lives. Talk by Mother Domnika

Did you know that God throws us pearls from heaven every day? We just have to be careful to see them and catch them. What are these pearls? We could call them spiritual revelations. Of course, these are not revelations about the destinies of the world or some spiritual mysteries; such revelations are granted to a few people in special cases. But, to us, other kinds of revelations, which the Lord gives us all the time, are much more important.

Let me give you one example. You certainly remember that St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov), when he was the abbot of the Sergius hermitage in St. Petersburg, endured many sorrows. He describes these sorrows in such a way that it becomes really frightening: how could one endure it all? Here is what he writes: “Here envy and slander rose and hissed; here I was subjected to severe, prolonged, humiliating punishments, without trial, without the slightest examination, like a speechless animal; here I saw enemies breathing irreconcilable malice and thirsting for my destruction”.

But here is what is surprising: following these words, St. Ignatius writes immediately after a comma: “Here the merciful Lord deemed it meet for me to know the inexpressible by words joy and peace of soul; here He deemed it meet for me to taste spiritual love and sweetness at the time when I met my enemy, who was seeking after my head. The face of this enemy became in my eyes like the face of a bright angel.

Here is a true spiritual revelation! In the midst of sorrows and temptations, St. Ignatius suddenly discovered what love for enemies is, how sweet it is! And further he writes: “What bliss it is to be crucified near the Savior, as was once crucified a robber! What bliss it is to confess together with this robber, from the conviction of the soul: I receive according to my sins: remember me, O Lord, in Your kingdom”.

Here is another revelation. St. Ignatius learned that earthly sorrows can turn into bliss for a person, because they bring one closer to God. At the same time, it was revealed to him that humility and repentance are also bliss In the midst of sorrows he would inwardly say with all his soul: “I receive according to my deeds” and would feel bliss from this.

All these were truly pearls from heaven, gifts from the Lord. St. Ignatius would find them, of course, by no accident, but through many feats, inner struggle, and prayer. He himself does not tell about it. But from his memoirs we know that in moments of grief, he did not go to complaining to people about his enemies; did not try to take revenge, but he would go to his cell and there immersed himself in prayer. After a while he would come out of his cell with a radiant face. In this way, he would acquire those precious pearls, the pure, sublime thoughts and feelings of which we have just read. And he thanked the Lord from the bottom of his heart for this spiritual experience, which could not be compared to anything earthly.

These are the revelations I wanted to tell you about. These are the revelations of how sweet the Gospel commandments are - they alone contain all the joy, all the bliss of man!

The Lord is ready to give us these kinds of revelations all the time. He throws them to us from heaven like pearls. But we are able to catch them only when we look carefully into the sky and diligently reach out our hands for these pearls.

What is it to gaze intently into the sky? Of course, we do not mean the sky that is above our heads, but the spiritual sky. The ladder to this heaven, as St. Isaac the Syrian says, is in the heart of man. When a person utters a prayer from the bottom of his heart, it means that he diligently gazes into heaven. And what is the stretching out one's hands? Hands are a symbol of activity. Trying to fulfill the commandments of the Gospel in a practical way is like stretching out one's hands to God.

And the Lord always sees the eyes that are turned to Him and never leaves empty the hands that are stretched out to Him. We all know this from our own experience. Who among us had not experienced it in our lives: let's say someone upset us, and we felt resentment, unwillingness to communicate with this person. But we try to overcome ourselves, pray for that person, to ask for help from the saints and from the Mother of God. After all, we know how the Mother of God loves to reconcile people! We also prayed for ourselves, so that our heart would be cleansed from sinful thoughts. We tried not to show our disturbed state outwardly: we talked to this man peacefully and did him favors. And at some point the Lord opened our spiritual eyes, and we saw that this man is truly our neighbor, that is, close and dear to us, he is the image of Christ. And this revelation was for us a precious pearl, more precious than all the earthly riches. As one elder would say, “a pearl, no matter how small, is more precious than the biggest rock."

Or, for example, something like what happened to elder Silouan could happen to us. I want to remind you of one of his stories: “Once at Pascha, I was walking from vespers to my mill, and a worker was standing on the road. When I approached him, he asked me to give him an egg. I didn't have any, so I went back to the Monastery, took two eggs, and gave one of them to the laborer. He says, “There are two of us.” I gave the second one also, and as I went from him, I cried out of pity for the poor people, and I began to feel sorry for the whole universe and every creature. For this little thing I received great joy from God, and I loved every creature of God, and I could hear the Spirit of God in my soul.”

Imagine, for just one small motion of love, the Holy Spirit visited the soul of elder Silouan and gave him great joy and love for all God's creation!

The Holy Spirit also visits us in different circumstances and gives us His grace and comfort for our small deeds. Let us keep all this in our hearts, and try not to lose this precious spiritual experience.

We keep it with the help of diligent prayer, when we repeat: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." And it is not only the prayer that is important, but attention to our heart, our thoughts and feelings.

Then we can feel and keep the grace of God even in the midst of bustle and our everyday life. The most important thing is to be always looking not for something temporary, not for some external convenience, but, first of all, for virtue. Following virtue, comes grace and brings much more joy and peace to the soul. Imagine, for example, that elder Silouan would not spare an egg for that worker or would be too lazy to go to the monastery to bring him this egg. After all, he could well have answered him, “I have nothing,” and gone on his way. In this way, he would have preserved his outward peace, his precious time, and that would have been no particular sin. But then he would not have received the grace of the Holy Spirit which comforted him so greatly.

In fact, every day is full of such situations, when the Holy Spirit is eager to visit us. We only need to listen to our heart and our conscience. Conscience always tells us about a particular virtue we could practice in a given situation. But our egoism opposes us; it encourages us to be lazy, to run away from labor, and to perform our work not according to our conscience. But it is very important to listen to your conscience and to curb every selfish movement. Because when a person does not curb these inappropriate mental motions in all sorts of little things, he ends up slacking off - as if such disposition were something neutral, no sin at all - and then in the end he comes to great suffering. Little by little, he falls into a state of spiritual slackness, some kind of torpor. He feels that he is tormented by the passions of despondency, anger, sadness, but he can do nothing. He wants to pray, but he cannot do anything. He wants to show an act of love and kindness, but he cannot bring himself to do it.

In order not to fall into such a state, we need to take our lives seriously, to confront our old man with courage in every little thing, and to follow Christ. This must be done in small things, since every day consists mainly of small situations. And in these situations, we can give ourselves away fully, we can do everything according to our conscience. And then, in these smallest situations, the Lord will give us precious pearls of His grace.