Mother Maria Gysi on the Saints
Although written primarily for monastic communities, Mother Maria Gysi's book 'The Hidden Treasure' has some beautiful observations concerning the saints that can be an example and of benefit to non-monastics and married couples.
"When our Lord says that without Him we can do nothing, He means it quite literally: that without love, nothing is achieved sub specie aeternitatis. But He also means that the life of love is a mystery which we cannot search out. We can prepare for it by active obedience, but we cannot fetch it from Heaven. God gives it to us freely. He loves us first and makes His own to be reborn of the Spirit. This rebirth, however, is not at our command, for the Spirit blows where it wills. Once more we are put into our own small finite place. Our life can only be an answer to love. We cannot create Love. Love is infinitely bigger than we are. It has neither beginning nor end. All we can do is to open our hearts when it calls."
"...we need never compare our capacities with those of others. We all have received a share; how big or small it is, is the secret between God and ourselves and is, in any case, a secret of love. Since love can prove itself in this world only by overcoming evil, the love for God and the love for our fellow men are one in the same thing. Christ affirmed this in many ways and, in order that we should not be tempted to doubt, he explicitly told is that he himself would come to us in those who claim our love and compassion. He himself would receive what we give directly through them: 'I was in prison and ye visited me.'" [II, 2, 9]
"The early Church first discovered and experienced this mystery in her martyrs. The Church offered them in faith as a pure sacrifice to God. To know this gave the martyrs strength and endurance. They, of themselves, could not die ppurely, but the Church did it for them. Here we understand well the warning against seeking martyrdom in self-willed presumption. It is an unsafe thing to do, since it means to rely on one's own resources and suffer, as it were, outside the Communion if Saints.
This offering of each other is the mystery I'd love in the Church, her unceasing intercession. It is here that the Christians first discovered the unbroken union with the saints: the Church in heaven and on earth as one whole. That which the Church on earth has done for her martyrs, they in their turn now do in heaven a hundred-fold for those still on earth, to prepare them as a pure offering to God.
In the death of the martyrs, the mystery was revealed to the Church in the clearest light. But it is exactly the same under the conditions of ordinary life. This is the work of love which we are given to do, a work of joy indeed.
It is the mystery of the perfect sacrifice if Christ living in His Church, sovereign and ever creative, the flame He came to kindle, the cup which we also drink.
In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, all comes together into one; there it is revealed as essentially one:
This offering of each other is the mystery I'd love in the Church, her unceasing intercession. It is here that the Christians first discovered the unbroken union with the saints: the Church in heaven and on earth as one whole. That which the Church on earth has done for her martyrs, they in their turn now do in heaven a hundred-fold for those still on earth, to prepare them as a pure offering to God.
In the death of the martyrs, the mystery was revealed to the Church in the clearest light. But it is exactly the same under the conditions of ordinary life. This is the work of love which we are given to do, a work of joy indeed.
It is the mystery of the perfect sacrifice if Christ living in His Church, sovereign and ever creative, the flame He came to kindle, the cup which we also drink.
In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, all comes together into one; there it is revealed as essentially one:
'Bringing beforeOur own sacrifice and sacrifice if each other are revealed as one with His own, offered and accepted. For a moment the peace of the end comes into sight and, reborn to incorruptible joy, we drink of His cup." [II,3,2]
Thee Thine of Thine own
from all and for all.'
"We are not called to the great ultimate conquest of evil, but to small acts of love...In this work we are not alone. Our Lord and His saints are with us. They teach us how to welcome and carry evil and how to help build Jerusalem, the city if gladness. If we offer our life wholly, they take us straight into their ranks. Because they do not think of the pain, the saints are free to do full what we achieve only in part with sweatings and labour and at times, I believe, they smile at our untimely groanings. They set the standard; we are their fellow-combatants. They lead us on and we follow. They are our family, combatants. They lead us on and we follow. They are our family, our glory and our true home. We want to find them, to get to know them more and more. Love is the part if their life which did not perish in death, so we must seek them there where they lived love on earth. What each one finds in the course of his searching is the secret reward of each. Everyone has a special privilege, a name in heaven, a place which none other can have or even know. The whole of life changes its course when once we discover that place. There are no general rules, no highroads which lead straight to success. As the end is, so is the way: each one's own. And the only help we can give is to encourage each other to search: to dive headlong into the Bible and pray the saints to show us their face; to enter deep into the text, seize on every detail and make it a living scene in which we take part as their friends, their audience and as themselves all at once, so that we may learn from their lives how they lived loved and how they love still and so that we may also learn how much we are loved." [III, 1, 12]
"As for St John, so for him (St John): it meant much more that they had seen, heard and known their Lord in the flesh and they would do their utmost to help us who love him without seeing. When, keeping close to the two apostles, we approach the Gospel and ask them to tell is the story, I believe we can can then catch a glimpse of the work which the saints do for us. They let us look at our Lord as it were through their own eyes, they who see him now face to face. They show us the hidden things and how to listen to heaven. They teach us how to pay by simply taking us up into their own prayer and peace. But, above all, they make us feel how much we are loved and how much we are expected to live in return. Their love for their Lord and for us - so simple, so sure and so strong- is or shelter and home where we also may grow to the full stature of Christ, to a life which can bear burdens, the home where we can learn, step by step, joyfully to love, perseveringly, and with an unfaltering heart." [III, 3]
SOURCE: Mother Maria Gysi, The Hidden Treasure (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing Co, 1991), 36-37, 43-44, 57-58, 67. ISBN 0-920669-23-9
