Soul Sickness

If only you had heeded my commandments, then your peace would be like a river, and your righteousness as a wave of the sea. Isaiah 48.18

For our peace to be like a river, we need to get cleaned up and be healed. The commencement of these holy days is a sacred opportunity to find out from Christ what specific steps He wants each of us to take for the sicknesses of the soul that are destroying us from within, to be dealt with and healed. Christ is the Healer and He wants to heal us: He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53.5)

In order for Him to be able to heal these soul illnesses, however, there are certain conditions that need to be in place. There are certain things that we need to do. These are the conditions for healing that Christ gives to everyone who is serious about living a holy life and who is willing to do what it takes to become holy. Conditions that are unique to us, to our circumstances, to the shapes of our souls and to the divine callings to which we have been called.

Becoming holy is not easy. It involves sacrificing the things that are most precious to us (even things that are good, even things that are spiritual), and getting used to living in discomfort. Our souls seek comfort (at all costs), but the experience of the Cross is not one of comfort. It is, rather, one of pressure. The pressure of the Cross is not something that any of us can handle.

Christ, however, makes it possible. He stands with us in the pain that we experience as a result of making sacrifices for the sake of the holiness of which He has commanded us—Be holy, for I am holy (1 Peter 1.16)—and He transforms the pain, turning it into a potent energy that broadens the soul, changes the thinking and energizes the sleep-deprived life of sacrificial worship to which we have committed.

We all have something that is wrong with us. A spiritual illness that inhibits us from being able to move beyond our flesh so as to enter, instead, into the fullness of the calling for which God created us. A calling to work, not only for God, but with God, for the purposes of the extension of His holy Kingdom on Earth. A calling that will, if we manage to reach it, set us completely free.

To do this work, however, our vessels have to be straight. What Christ is asking us to do, therefore, is to come to Him, now, in reverent and openhearted humility, to hear from Him what exactly it is that is killing us spiritually, so as to place it upon His shoulders to be taken up and dealt with on the Cross. Christ wants to go deeper and deeper into our depths. Our role is to surrender to this process, open our hearts to His love, to repent and to, say, simply, yes.

Lord, You do not want anyone to miss the transformation that is available across these days. Holy Week has started. The heavens are open. As our tenderhearted Lord, You are making provision to catch us, at the last moment, so as to prevent us from passing through this Lent unchanged. Please give us the quietness of soul to catch the opportunity that You are opening for each of us, individually, across these days, so as to grab it and, with all our strength, hold on to it.

Amen +

Author of You Are Mine and Apocalypse, Sister Anastasia writes on the role of the ancient, ascetic Church in a rapidly changing, modern world.

Photo by Nathan Jennings on Unsplash