Mother Siluana Vlad: On knowing ourselves and accepting others
God asks us first of all to become aware that He loves us, to feel His love. We can’t possibly respond to love until we feel God’s love.
Question:
How can I truly know myself, how can I uncover my passions?
Mother Siluana:
You need to look around you to see which people you like least of all, and why. “This man speaks too loudly and he is full of himself!” - that means one of my passions is being full of myself! “This woman is lazy!” - therefore, I am lazy. Write these down, and, looking at other people, start watching yourself. “I don’t want to go to school because I am tired…” - could it be that I am actually lazy? And this way, we uncover our passions.
We also need to get close to God. Getting close to God helps us see our passions, our pettiness - even St. Peter said “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8). But how can we get closer to God, since we usually just go around in circles? Pick up a blade of grass and say: “Lord, You love me, because this blade of grass is Your declaration of love to me!” And you will hear something, you will feel something.
Look at things you never really looked at before. Look at your fingers - what a miracle! If you only watch your fingers for a minute, it’s impossible that you won’t start crying in wonder. Look, what a miracle, that God made me and meant me to be this way before all ages. This body we have - let’s feel it, since it is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This is not a joke. What a miracle!
And you get close to God and you say: “Woe to me, O Lord, I made a sanctuary for idols out of Your temple!” And He will say: “It doesn’t matter, I love you! I love you and I will come to clean it!”
When you rest your head on a pillow, you rest on the love of the person who made that pillow. But we are not aware of this…we are looking for great miracles. What miracles? Look, my feet are hurting so I am sitting down in this chair, and I feel good. And I sit here with you, I look at you and you look at me. Isn’t this wonderful? But we don’t notice these things…
So this is how we become aware that God loves us. There are so many details we can notice, infinitely many…and then we discover that we are crass, we are wretched…
Let me tell you one more thing: God doesn’t even ask us to change that quickly. No…He asks us first of all to become aware that He loves us, to feel His love. We can’t possibly respond to love until we feel God’s love. We want to be like the young man in the Gospel (“Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” - Mark 10:17), we want to do something in order to get something. We need first of all to not do anything, we need to just give ourselves to Him, to give ourselves up into His hands, to show us to Him. And this nakedness of ours in front of Him will make us feel His presence and His love, and He will tell us what our infirmities and our sins are. This will sting afterward.
As long as I am anonymous, I can do anything. If you pass by a group of soldiers, they will shout obscenities at you. Go next to them, or follow them into their barracks and ask their commander: “Sir, I want to see those young men, they spoke so nicely to me, and I want to know them better!” And you’ll be amazed at how timid and nice those young men are! If you look them in the eye, they won’t be able to do anything bad.
If someone shouts some insult at you on the street, go to him, look him in the eye and say: “Could you please say it one more time, I didn’t quite get what you said.” And he will start hemming and hawing…Why? Because you paid attention to him, you noticed him, and so he became a person, a living human being. Whereas if you shout back at him “You animal!”, then he really becomes an animal, because he can’t wait to behave like an animal and abandon his responsibility of being human. As soon as we attach labels to people, they take the liberty to behave as such.
Question:
How can I accept others as they are?
Mother Siluana:
You need to ask God this question every moment. A man was asking God: “Lord, how can I love this woman?” - he had gotten married, and after the honeymoon, he found out that marriage wasn’t that easy, so he asked: “How can I love her?” And God answered: “The way I love her.” And so the question we need to ask is: “Lord, how do You love these people?”
Good people, I put God to the test! I said: “Lord, if You make me love this person or that person, then You truly are God!” And I am telling you, He truly is God! But you also have remedies. If someone hurts you, you have the prayer for the enemies - you put it in your pocket, you take it out and you read it. You don’t need to feel anything. Love is not a feeling. God doesn’t ask us to kiss our enemies or write them love notes. He asks us to pray for them, to refrain from our need to avenge ourselves, to do justice to ourselves, to show them what we can do…I have met women who were beaten by their husbands and who were happy that they at least insulted their husbands and so they felt “refreshed”. Let’s shun this “refreshing” from hell brought about by revenge, insults, bad words.
We need to ask God for strength so that we can accept our neighbor: “Lord, give me strength to bear the bad smell of this person.” I have told this story many times, so forgive me if I repeat myself - I was traveling somewhere by bus in Bucharest and a gypsy man started to stick his tongue out at me. I started saying the prayer: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us!” He kept doing it…You can imagine me, the “hesychast”, and him, the gypsy…what can you do, each with our own way. And all of a sudden he put his head in my lap! And, “hesychast” as I was, I looked at him and thought: “Lord, You love this man, do something with him!” All of a sudden the man gets up, makes the sign of the cross, and starts telling me about his problems with his wife, who, according to him, was a witch. After a while, he said: “I need to get off the bus here, but let me accompany you to your destination so I can protect you.” I said: “Don’t worry, God is protecting me”. He replied: “Yes, I noticed!”. I don’t know what he noticed, all I know is that I only said: “Lord, You love this man, do something with him!” - and He did!
And so, you can do the same - simply say: “Lord, I can do nothing!”, because He said: “You can do nothing without Me”.
“Lord, why did You give me these classmates that are so insufferable? Why did You give me this roommate - look how he acts...” And the Lord will say: “Why? To give you the chance to love with My grace and not based on your impulse.” And when people feel loved, they might surprise us with their reactions.
Text transcribed and translated from a conference available on YouTube entitled “The source of depression in the modern world”: