"Offering Ourselves, We Enter Into His Joy" - a new book by Mother Siluana Vlad
"We cannot free ourselves from sin without abandoning it into the hands of Him Who wants to take it away from us." - M. Siluana
We are pleased to announce that a new book titled "Offering Ourselves, We Enter Into His Joy - Volume One" by Mother Siluana Vlad has just been published on Amazon as a Kindle e-book. You can purchase the book from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFYN8KRM
(Note: the money from the sale of the book goes toward the construction of the St. Silouan Monastery in Iasi, Romania)
Here is an excerpt from the book:
A word for the readers of this book - by Mother Siluana Vlad
Great is my helplessness, and much does it hamper me when I have to write a foreword to the books published under my name. I don’t ask why and don’t try to get away from this duty, but I only set my helplessness before God and before you so I can take courage.
You are holding in your hands a book I titled “Offering Ourselves, We Enter Into His Joy.” I chose this title to express as concisely as possible the work God does with us every time we open ourselves up and thus receive Him in all that we are. When we talk about ourselves, about our pain, our questions, our joy, we don’t use empty words, because that would be hiding in hypocrisy, but rather we offer ourselves and our lives, and at the same time, we seek a loving, attentive presence to receive us and show us a home for the soul. Such words are alive, even if they carry wounds or if they still wound us. And when such words are addressed to someone who believes in God and who gives witness to His loving work in the world, then these words become a meeting place with Him Who promised that “where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” This is why the messages gathered in these volumes are ways of entering into the Savior’s joy. He, the Word of God, incarnated for us and present in us and our lives, works in us and with us every time we express our lives in words and offer ourselves to Him, and He withdraws, patiently waiting, every time we use empty words.
And so, every time we consciously assume our internal experiences, and we offer them to the Lord to sift the tares and the chaff in the wind, we experience the death of the old man in us who has devised instruments for hiding and defending against our spiritual progress, and we experience a resurrection of the new man. The new man in us is not an ideal, it is not what we would like to be or what we imagine we will become at the Great Resurrection, but it is the old man clothed in Christ, assumed, loved, and freed from the captivity of sin and corruption. Our spiritual growth consists of this hidden work of consciously assuming the wholeness of our life so that we can offer it up to Christ our God, for healing, renewal, and sanctification. The Word of God became Man and took upon Himself all our human infirmities except sin so He can make us into gods by giving us His Life, and His Power. Yes, He didn’t take away sin from us by His Incarnation, and He also didn’t take away our freedom to sin, but He freed us from the captivity of sin by giving us His immeasurable loving forgiveness. This is why our main spiritual work is repentance, rejecting the pleasure of sin for the joy of God. We cannot free ourselves from sin without abandoning it into the hands of Him Who wants to take it away from us. We do this work as Christians through the Mystery of Confession and constant repentance expressed in a continuous renewal of the mind, a continuous abandonment of the mentality of this world which tells us that we need to be kind, good-looking, rich, honest, and happy without God, or with a god that serves these vain ideals. Repentance means first of all assuming God’s thoughts (“apart from Me you can do nothing”) and His works at every moment and in every gesture of our life.
The Holy Fathers tell us that God became man so that man can become a god. This becoming of man is done by God working with the “dust of the earth” that we are. It is not a new creation from nothing, but it is a becoming from all that we already are, from all that we have received from our ancestors, our parents, our times, from all that we have achieved or destroyed willingly or unwillingly, in knowledge or ignorance, in word, deed, or thought. The Savior teaches us that we enter into His joy if we are faithful over the few talents He gave us - be it one or five talents…And being faithful means working with these few things given to each of us, with all the riches of grace that the Lord gives us for free through His Church.
I dare to think that the pages you will read in this book will be an incentive for you to see and live your life in the light of this creed about man, about the purpose of our life in this world.
With gratitude and prayer,
Mother Siluana Vlad