Becoming Alive

“I’ll just end with a story about Saint Pachomius, who is considered to be the founder of the first Christian monastic community. One day a man came to the cenobium and said, ‘I’d like to join the community.’ When Pachomius asked him why, the fellow said, ‘I’d like to see God.’

‘You’re coming here because you want to see God?’

‘Yes. What do I have to do? How many prostrations, how many Psalms, how many prayers, how much fasting ... ?’

Pachomius answered, ‘Listen, if you want to see God, you don’t have to pray and fast. You don’t even have to join the community. Just come along with me, and I will show you God.’ Pachomius took him inside and, indicating the meanest, lowliest, dirtiest, most demented of the brethren, said to him, ‘Look. There is God.’

The visitor said indignantly, ‘You mean to tell me that’s God?’

Pachomius answered, ‘If you don’t come to see God in him, you will see God nowhere.’

God is formless, imageless, and the only vision of God we have is the one made in his icon and according to his likeness, by grace. That refers to each one of us. God’s eternal icon has come in human form as Jesus Christ, the one through whom God is now definitively and fully revealed. No man has seen God, but the only begotten son who dwells in the loins of the Father has come and made him known (John 1:18). Christ is identified with everyone, and therefore, when I encounter anyone I must let that person slay the ego in me. And that is what I meant when I said ‘if I meet Christ, may the Christ slay me,’ because that is the only way of becoming alive.”

~Thomas Hopko