When God Is Not There E-Book

Nikolaos

• Herausgeber: MICHAEL THE CHONIATIS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

This book records simple events and conversations, all the while grappling with difficult questions. In all this, we see the human struggle to discover the person of God when that is veiled by the logic of this world, our limited understanding, and the arrogant pretensions of human littleness. The book engages intensely with complex and difficult issues, which understandably concern us all, but which leave us confused and at times scandalised. What it does not do is give any direct answers, or try to persuade the reader through logic or impressive arguments. Its aim is to convey the sense of the discreet yet persuasive presence of the true God precisely in situations where He is not visible: in pain, in disability, in the tragedies of life, in inexorable death, as this comes across in true events and is reflected in the lives of real people.

Leseprobe

When God Is Not There

Nikolaos Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki

Copyright © 2017 Holy Metropolis of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki

All rights reserved.

Originally published in Greek as

Ἐκεῖ ποὺ δὲν φαίνεται ὁ Θεὸς

Εκδοση Ιεράς ΜητροπόλεωςΜεσογαίαςκαι Λαυρεωτικής

First edition, Athens 2010

By Nikolaos. Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki

Edited by Dimitri Chadjinikolaou

Graphic design and layout by Valia Kiritsi

Digital Creation-Design by

website: www.presence.gr

email: [email protected]

Physical book has been published by

ALEXANDER PRESS

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Montreal Quebec

H3R 2C7 Canada

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e-mail: [email protected]

You can buy the physical book from here:

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When God Is Not There

NIKOLAOS

Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia & Lavreotiki

Metropolitan Nikolaos (Chatzinikolaou) holds a B.S. in Physics from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He followed graduate studies in Astrophysics at Harvard University, in Mechanical Engineering at MIT and in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics (Harvard-MIT joint program). He worked as a researcher at various hospitals in the Boston area on the Hemodynamics of the heart and great vessels, and for three years as a consultant for renowned companies in Space Medical Technology.

He studied Theology at Holy Cross School of Theology, in Brookline, Mass, and received his Th.D. in Bioethics from the University of Thessaloniki, in Greece. In 2008, he was awarded the title of honorary doctor of Social Theology by the University of Athens.

He is the founder and director of the Hellenic Center for Biomedical Ethics in Athens and the chairman of the Bioethics Committee of the Church of Greece. In 2010, he founded the first Palliative Care Unit in Greece, under the name “GALILEE”.

He was tonsured a monk in Mount Athos and served as a hieromonk for 14 years at the Athonite dependency of Simonos Petra monastery in Athens. He was elected a bishop of Mesogaia & Lavreotiki in 2004.

CONTENTS

Introductory Note

Part I

When medical science is proved wrong

The small miracle we hope for, or, the great miracle we cannot bear

Is there such a thing as a life without value?

From undeserved suffering to salvation

Why me, my God?

The healing of the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda

Part II

At the side of the dying

Where do angels go?

At the boundary between life and death

The “Black Mountain” of Grammatiko

Departing within the spirit of the Cross and Resurrection

The falling asleep of an unknown saint

By way of epilogue

Introductory Note

The world we live in has been called a ‘vale of tears’, a ‘place of weeping’ – perhaps with good reason. Wherever you turn you see pain, sorrow, undeserved suffering, death, and sin. The ‘ruler of this world’ (Jn 12: 31), the ‘world ruler’ (Eph. 6:12) is the devil. He is constantly to be seen.

God, who is named ‘He who is’, meaning the One from whom everything comes into being, is nowhere to be seen. ‘No one has seen God at any time’ (John 1:18). That is why his very existence is a matter of dispute. He has, however, ‘revealed himself’ (John 21:1), and he promises to manifest himself to whomsoever keeps his commandments and loves him: ‘I will manifest myself to him’ (John 14:21).

This book records simple events and conversations, all the while grappling with difficult questions. In all this, we see the human struggle to discover the person of God when that is veiled by the logic of this world, our limited understanding, and the arrogant pretensions of human littleness. The book engages intensely with complex and difficult issues, which understandably concern us all, but which leave us confused and at times scandalised. What it does not do is give any direct answers, or try to persuade the reader through logic or impressive arguments. Its aim is to convey the sense of the discreet yet persuasive presence of the true God precisely in situations where He is not visible: in pain, in disability, in the tragedies of life, in inexorable death, as this comes across in true events and is reflected in the lives of real people.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I attempts to reveal the person of God through the challenge of pain and the threat of death. It presents a reality and logic very different from that of our daily life and rationalistic thinking. In the first two chapters we see him intervening at the last minute, just when all hope is fading. In the chapters that follow, God appears in unusual ways, reflected in the hidden world of people with mental disabilities and in the life and majesty of those with very extensive disabilities, who are mostly young. The final chapter of Part I traces the outline of the divine presence through the tragedy of a parent watching his or her child battling with cancer and coming face to face with the menace of death.

Between Part I and Part II there is a commentary on the apparent absence of God in one of His very miracles as described in the Gospel.

Part II attempts a dialogue of doubt and faith provoked by the challenge of death. Here death is not a fearsome possibility, but a given, something that happens. Doubts about God are expressed through honest questioning and rational argumentation, while the truth of His presence is shown through events that really happened. The first chapter describes the support given to people in their last moments as an act of loving communion, which, in turn, strengthens their faith in eternal life.

Death is not the end. It is a passage to the state of true life, ‘where there is neither pain, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting’. The accounts that follow in subsequent chapters lead gradually to a sense of the eternal resurrection, as this is expressed in the hearts of people who have lived through the tragedy of the death of their children, or as it is imprinted on the deepest being of those who have transformed the expectation of their own death into a state of ‘looking for’ the Kingdom of God.

All the incidents described are absolutely true. In most cases names, places or other details have been changed in order to avoid revealing the identity of the people concerned. In addition, I have consciously avoided any attempt to embellish the actual facts, so as not to impair the authenticity and truth of what is being described. Some accounts represent two incidents fused into one. My goal is not to record stories or events with precision, but to show as clearly as one can the truth of the human soul, and above all the great truth of the divine presence in the midst of everyday life, in the human world, and most especially ‘when God is not there’.

God is ‘other’ in His form, unusual, ‘a stranger’ in our encounters with Him, and ‘new’ when He appears to us. The purpose of this book is to bring about an ‘otherness’ in our way of thinking, a ‘newness of life’, ‘estrangement’ from the world, and so to lead us to the vision of greater things (John 1:51), and to faith in ‘the substance of things hoped for’ (Heb 11:1) and things not understood. Only in this way is it possible for the one who has been hurt by people and events, who mourns for his human nature and has been disappointed by his own logic, to see the light, to ‘stand firm in faith’ (1 Cor 16:13), to ‘be strong in the Lord’ (Eph 6:10), ‘rejoicing in his sufferings’ (Col 1:24) and receiving comfort from the Comforter the Spirit. ☩

Nikolaos

Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki

Part I

‘Through fire and water

...to a place of abundance’ (Ps 66:12)

When medical science is proved wrong

‘The grace of God blows where it wills’

Imagine a young couple, who are deeply devoted to the Church, and who have abandoned their life into God’s hands in innocence and simplicity of heart. And He blesses them with both hands. They come across Fr Porphyrios, that well-known and enlightened saint of our time, who embraces their life in its every detail. He is their shield against every danger, their protection against every threat. His prayer eases every difficulty in their lives. Peacefully, joyfully and free from care, the days go by. God grants them five lovely children, two girls and three boys. The eldest is Eva, a talented and wise creature with the good sense of an adult. She has exquisite features, yet premature maturity is engraved on her face. Sweet and gentle in manner, she is loved by everyone – a real angel. She exerts a magnetism but at the same time commands respect. She reaches the age of twelve. ‘All things work together for good for those who love God.’ That is what her parents think in their inmost hearts, and quite spontaneously they glorify Him. My God, what a blessing!

Suddenly, one day, as Eva is crossing the main road outside her father’s office without a care in the world, a car whose driver had lost control turns everything upside down in the family’s until then untroubled life; the child is sent to hospital, and from there to the world ‘where there is neither pain, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting’. Without anyone understanding how or why, in just a few moments Eva finds herself in God’s paradise, plunging her unsuspecting parents into a hell of suffering and painful shock. It is as if God had vanished from before their very eyes. When everything is going well, He is good; but when everything is turned upside down, inexorably and out of the blue, it is confirmation not that He is absent, but that He does not exist. Fr Porphyrios, with great compassion, shares their pain, but he gently insists on God’s immense love, and he expresses this with such kindness, faith, and love that it banishes any misgivings that his perception might be wrong.

Life now becomes unbearable. Instead of being inspired by an earthly angel, now all we can do is try to feel blindly for that angel with our wounded faith and our pain-filled prayer. Time goes by. The remaining children grow up, and through their progress and their gifts they fill their mother’s life with pained happiness, and their father’s with humbling acceptance of the will of God. Their support is their second daughter, Diana. Totally different from Eva: a tease, full of life, constantly rushing about, always smiling. She radiates nothing but joy, hope, and happiness, with the brightness of care-free innocence. Looking at her, you sense that she is the very image of those who ‘inherit the earth’, a reflection of the citizens of the Kingdom of God. You suppose that people like this have no connection with sin, sickness, or death. When you come into contact with them, you forget everything negative, all danger, everything dark. You become totally calm and still. Unless you are a mother who has suddenly lost her child; who has seen her ‘angel’ disappear from her sight and still cannot get her mind round it; who once believed in God in the wrong way and now must sincerely question her own faith. Then, even in the midst of your joy you may feel the ‘threat’ of the inexorable image of the Kingdom of God, the Byzan tine severity of the face of a God who does not smile in a worldly way, but firmly fixes His gaze on each person and the whole world.

One spring day, the whole family was at a small monas-tery up in Epirus, near the border with Albania. A friend of theirs was going to be tonsured a monk. He too was a somewhat playful type: a person who got on well with children, a simple, warm-hearted man. Despite the harsh image he presented as a monk, the abrupt change in his outward appearance, and the unconditional monastic vows he had sincerely made, his entire presence conveyed very much the picture of a happy but overgrown child. The children were enjoying his company. Diana was wildly excited. The whole atmosphere was one of great joy and certainly even greater grace. Everything was so wonderful, so imbued with God that nothing could mar this joy.

Four days after the tonsure, I was in Athens when I received a phone call from a mutual friend of ours, a dentist.

‘Be strong, Father,’ he said. ‘You won’t believe what you are about to hear.’

‘What is it? Tell me!’ I replied.

‘For a few days now Diana has had a pain in a back right molar. Something quite usual, and we said we’d have a look at it after they came back from Epirus. I took an x-ray, and I’m almost certain that she turns out to have an osteosarcoma in the lower jaw. I can’t believe it. I am doing all I can to disprove my initial diagnosis, but it keeps being confirmed.’

I knew what that meant: removal of the lower jaw, replacing it with a rib or some bone from the pelvis, aggressive treatments, a tragically depressing quality of life and less than ten per cent chance of surviving for five years. Better to die than to live like that!

Unable to come to terms with such a turn of events – the God I believed in did not allow such things – I hesitantly asked my friend the dentist, ‘Is it possible that you could have made some mistake? Should you perhaps repeat some of the tests? Is it possible for an ordinary toothache to result from an osteosarcoma?’

‘Unfortunately, osteosarcomas of the lower jaw are very clear and easy to diagnose but have a very poor prognosis,’ he replied. ‘I rang you in case you could help them to go to America immediately. There’s not a moment to lose.’

It had not been long ago that, while I was in America, I had encountered a similar situation with a Greek child and had helped the family when they needed an interpreter and with their consultations. Every time I had to meet the child – a fair-haired boy of seven – the dreadful sight made my heart bleed. Endless questions hammered away in my head, dozens of emotions pressed on my heart, and I felt dazed and pushed to the limits as never before in my life. That particular child did not make it in the end. He went through several tortured months of so-called life, the very sight of him a bleeding stab-wound for his hapless parents, and demonstrated that even the best medical science in the world was unable to help him.

Now the whole thing was to be played out once again. They would go to America with hopes, to the best hospital, with perhaps the most amazing doctors in the world, and they would come back to Greece with probabilities. They would leave with a child who was sick but looked normal, and return with something that did not bear looking at, something intolerable. And that would be the best case scenario...

The father, heroic man that he was, learnt the whole truth, and the mother, only part of the truth. They immediately went to Fr Porphyrios for his blessing. And he, a compassionate man, expressed intense anguish and worry. The only window that let in a little ray of hope as to his intuition was the fact that he advised them to go immediately. It seems that in his heart, along with the great anguish of love there was also some small spark of hope.

Within a week, the parents had left with their child for Ohio in America. What a terrible journey it was! Agony mixed with expectation, despair with hope. The fear that the most one could do would turn out to be quite useless was unbearable, causing pain more to the soul than to the body. The comfort they took with them was the prayer of Fr Porphyrios. And the faint suggestion that he had some hope...

Everything happened incredibly quickly. The operation was set for three days after they arrived. Tests were repeated, the condition was confirmed, and the doctors called everything by its proper name. That is a legal require-ment there, as well as being part of the mentality.

The day of the operation arrived. It was 4:10 p.m. in Greece when my telephone rang. On the other end, I could hear the mother’s voice.

‘How are you, Father? I can’t bear it. They took my Diana into the operating theatre just now. They told me it would last about seven hours. I’m nearly going out of my mind. Yesterday they took me off and gave me a lesson in how to feed her. They gave me a little case of tools, because I’ll have to open and shut her mouth mechanically. They showed me another child who had been operated on last week so that I could sort of get used to it, and I nearly fainted. I can’t bear it, Father, I can’t bear it. Say a prayer. I’ve also rung Fr Porphyrios, but he didn’t answer. I hope he’s praying for us.’

I was speechless. What could I say? Of course, I must have said something, but what I don’t remember. Some of those embarrassing things one says, the sort of lifeless and commonplace words that fit quite properly one beside the other, but which taken together don’t give the slightest intimation of power and life.

I put the handset down. American time, in Ohio, about 8:15 in the morning. She had asked me to pray. What prayer should I say? Since I have no hope, since I don’t have faith, since Fr Porphyrios is praying. What am I to say to God? Doesn’t he know our need? Can’t he see our dreadful situation? Since his love has been unyielding until now, why should he now start doing what we ask? And how can I go begging for something, when I don’t have faith? I’m ashamed to

In the end, I did say a few words of prayer. I took up my prayer rope and asked God to have mercy on us all. That was probably easier, because I did not confuse myself with thoughts. But if I were God looking down on such a wretched and spiritually poor priest saying a prayer like that, I would pity both him and my Church for having such a feeble clergyman among its ranks.

The time passed without my noticing. At 5:20, the telephone rang again. Once more, it was the mother from America. ‘Father, they’re bringing her out of the operating theatre soon. In the end, it was nothing. She got off with just a tooth taken out. They told me it was a squamous cell granuloma, and that’s not so bad. What does that mean? Do you know? I don’t know. I believe they’re telling me the truth. If you can, try and talk to Fr Porphyrios, because we can’t get through to him. He’ll know.’

Outwardly I expressed my joy, but inwardly I remained thoroughly unconvinced, and I put the phone down. It was absolutely impossible, I thought to myself. There’s no way it can be true.

I rang my dentist friend from Greece straightaway and told him what had happened. We talked for a while, voicing our thoughts and suspicions, and we came to this conclusion: the diagnosis of osteosarcoma was so clear – indeed, it had been made both here and in America; and the difference between that and a squamous cell granuloma was so great and so obvious, that they had probably found that the disease was advanced and decided not to proceed with radical surgery. The psychological state of the traumatised mother was such that she could not bear the truth, so someone had told her that nice story so that she would not break down. Unfortunately, it seemed that things were much worse than we had thought!

We decided that my friend should telephone Fr Porphyrios, in case in the meantime he had been in touch with Diana’s father, who would have a more objective understanding of the situation.

The dentist called him.

Fr Porphyrios picked up the receiver and said, ‘ “We went through fire and water, and He has brought us to a place of abundance” (Ps. 66:12). In the end it was nothing serious. They took a tooth out, so she and we can all relax. Now the doxology begins. That’s all.’

‘What happened, Father? Has Diana’s father rung you?’

‘No, I haven’t spoken to anyone. I was praying, and right at that moment, when I picked up the telephone, my soul received consolation. Diana’s fine. If you talk to them, tell them not to hurry back; they should stay a week or so and see America.’

Instead of a tumour, they found a cyst. Instead of the entire lower jaw, they took out one single tooth. Instead of a taste of death, we all enjoyed the unique experience of a miracle. A miracle performed by God. But a miracle that He would not have performed, had it not been for Fr Porphyrios.

Diana got married as soon as she left school. Today she has a large number of children and is known for her open-heartedness. She is full of life and faith. Her life is a miracle. She has everything. The only thing she is lacking is – a tooth. But because it is a molar, it simply doesn’t show. If it did, it would make her more beautiful. It would reveal not what it is, but what it reflects. ‘The grace of God blows where it wills...’ (Jn. 3:8) ☩