Orthodox Parables and Stories: Christ was looking for him!

I remember an event that happened in Cyprus. When I first came to Cyprus from Mount Athos, in the early years, a teacher of transcendental meditation came to me.

A yoga teacher who was initiated into all these satanic delusions and sophistry. He worked in England, traveled around, was a student of great gurus and various other delusional people of that time.

After a meeting with the elder Sophronius in Essex, his entire situation was disturbed. He was Cypriot. He came to Cyprus with his wife and they came and confessed and laid the foundations of a spiritual life. But he had many demonic actions.

Satan was fighting him fiercely. With many calculations and with a hardness of heart. Because meditation - or as the old man Paisios jokingly called it, diabolism - is based on human egoism, arrogance, vanity. So he cultivated vanity in himself for years.

He was a teacher, he had his own school with hundreds of students who taught them meditation, esoteric philosophy and more. So there was a battle inside his logic, inside his calculations and his heart could not be crushed to repent. He was coming to the monastery, confessing but struggling.

As I was taking confessions, I had next to me an image of the Bridegroom Christ, this image is the modern one that is the Bridegroom Christ with the red chlamys and the reed in his hand.

I found the icon in the monastery, I lit a candle in front of the icon and people confessed near it. He looked at it and wondered: "What does this picture mean?"

In the evening after the confession was over he went home and went to pray. In a state of dizziness, confussion etc., he fell asleep a little. He saw a vision, he himself could not understand, he saw Christ as the Bridegroom wearing that chlamys and searching with the reed in garbage and in grasses and in meadows and on cliffs.

He says: “But this is the Christ! What is Christ looking for? "

He took courage and went to Him and said to Him: "Lord, what are you looking for?"

And Christ says to him: "I am looking for some monsters like you."

And He urned and looked at him sternly. And then his heart breaks and for years he cried. Because he understood that Christ had been looking for him for so many years and he, with all these demonic things he had done, had made his heart a demonic monster.

But Christ was looking for him!

Elder Athanasiou, Metropolitan of Limassol