Fr. Rafail Noica: Each Crisis Takes us Further

I observed that not only are children born in pain, but that each pain is the birth of a child, and this child is you, who bears the pain, who passes through the crisis.

Shortly after returning to Orthodoxy, I felt a calling to monasticism, which was a response to the questions I had posed since childhood. Over time, I understood that death holds the meaning of life. I now see that our existence here, on earth, is nothing but the second stage of our passage from nonbeing to that which God calls us—God’s being—that is, eternity.

The first stage was our life in our mother’s womb. It was a “mechanical” gestation where this system, this body, fit for living in the earthly existence that God gives us, was formed. In this existence, a second gestation takes place: we died so that we could be born here, we died to our preceding life in our mother’s womb, and now begins our dialogue with God, from the time our personality is formed. From now on, God no longer does anything in our life except if we allow Him, if we say “Amen” to His word, if we trust Him. God calls us, gives us faith in Him, shows us what He can and wants to do with us through all the forms that He gave us in history, and through this dialogue between our soul and God, our Heavenly Father continues the creation of man, this time not without man’s will. He does not do anything without our will (this notion of man’s freedom is very important); God appeals to our freedom and teaches us in this life that it too is a “gestation” for the life to come, that is, eternal life. In our mother’s womb, He formed our bodily members, which we didn’t need there. What did hands and feet have to do there; what did we have to do with our nose, with our eyes and mouth? These, however, were meant for the life which was to be after that one [in the womb]. 

Many of our intellectuals deceive themselves and do not believe in prayer, or spirituality, and this seems normal; with the intellect that stays within the limits of this life, we cannot see a reason for spiritual things, because they are the members of the life to come. However, in contrast to the state before birth, God does not form these members for us except through our free will, and this free will is expressed through the faith which God encourages us to have and cultivates daily in us. I say that God cultivates it in us more than we cultivate it. Thus, responding to God with our free choice, we give Him the power to continue His creation in us; God teaches us in this life to begin cutting on our own the umbilical cord between ourselves and the womb of this life. And here begins, in the fallen state of man, the pain and tragedy of spiritual life, which must be seen from the perspective of eternal life. And just as the baby does not know anything in its mother’s womb, but lets nature do what it knows with it, so too we, in the womb of this life, must entrust ourselves completely to God. 

And we must actually collaborate, through prayer and participation in the Sacraments of the Church, which are the energies of the life to come. Beginning with Baptism, which Saint Paul says is already a death in Christ, we descend into death, in the baptismal waters, and we come out of it renewed in the new life, in Christ; through the ascetic efforts of our life, we learn, little by little, to distance ourselves, to detach ourselves, to the measure that we are able, from the elements of this life and to taste something of eternal life, that is, the third stage. In the end, we will die bodily, we will die irrevocably to this life, so that we can be born irrevocably in the life to come. 

Father Rafail, what was your most powerful crisis?  

I keep thinking, but I have not yet found a complete answer. What I want to tell you now is not a mathematical answer. Each crisis, when it comes, is the most powerful one. I remember Father Sophrony’s saying, who says that “the path to salvation is a climb up Golgotha.” And at each step, you encounter the same effort to climb higher, you encounter the same difficulty, to which is added, I would say exhaustion.  

Each crisis that comes upon a person is for the first time, and this question interests me because now I am beginning to realize that each crisis was, truly, a continuity of the path. It is a very important fact that there is no crisis that does not come without profit. And I thank whoever asked me this question, especially because it made me become aware of this profit. All that is painful in this life is nothing but a birth, beginning with the very first cure that man suffered after the Fall. God told Eve that she will give birth to children in pain. 

I observed—and now it is more and more clear—that not only are children born in pain, but that each pain is the birth of a child, and this child is you, who bears the pain, who passes through the crisis. A professor of theology in Paris explains the fact that the notion of “crisis” comes from the Greek word krisis which means judgment. In a crisis, God judges my life. Thus a crisis is a judgment which God manifests to me or to a nation (that professor spoke of the crises and perils which Israel in the Old Testament passed through, from slavery to other nations, etc.), through which God invites me to also judge my own life. 

Through a crisis, God’s thought is to see what is true and what is not true in my life. Thus, a crisis is a moment in which we too can judge ourselves, in which God’s judgment is manifested. I regret that in Romanian there is no word like “defy” or “challenge” in the English language; there is a term close to provocation, which is more pejorative than in Western languages; thus, it is at the same time a provocation and an invitation from God to go further. And, therefore, each crisis is a step further; each crisis, because you have not passed it, is the greatest. And in this sense, with trembling, you wait to see what other crises life brings you; and I would say that I too wait. But I wait with hope as well, with other gains, and I remain with the prayer: “Lord, as you know, have mercy on us all.”

Source: https://rafailnoica.wordpress.com/tag/ortodoxie/