Română
Fr. Rafail, disciple of Fr. Sophrony from Essex, talks about the gentleness of our God who does not stop us from doing what we want to do.
Subtitles: English, Romanian
Video: December 15, 2005, Alba Iulia, Romania.
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Fr. Rafail:
God, because He is almighty, manifests Himself in an unutterable gentleness. This gentleness, this quality of divine love, is the one which reveals God and the true divinity. It is not a power which interdicts this or that. And maybe that’s why God does not stop us [from doing what we want to do]. If He had forbidden the so-called “forbidden fruit”, then no one would have approached it. If God would stop us from sinning, then the world wouldn’t be as it is now. But the thought of God is not like the thought of man, He doesn’t think as we do. God’s thought is to transform us into real gods, and here, human freedom is of the greatest importance, above everything else. God wants to teach us how to use that freedom, a sword – let’s say, to kill enemies and not to kill ourselves. But in the end, those who belong to God are not swords nor tools of killing, except that now we have to fight with only one enemy, and that enemy is called “death”.
