Tenth Experience: Walk the Path of Sanctity in the Joy of the Resurrection

Pottery Jars at the Hermitage of Annaya-Lebanon. Image by  Naanouh Productions.

You are walking on the paths of your life carrying many loads, burdens and concerns, carrying some jars, that are needed, and others, that are useless.
 
You have distributed your treasures among your jars, mixing your treasures with your trifles until you no longer know which jar contains your treasure. Some jars fall and break, and treasures are lost, and you do not see or know because of the noise of your jars. Some waste their treasures on the paths of their lives and arrive burdened with pottery. Every jar you carry which does not contain your treasure will be filled with distraction and excess weight that will hinder your journey and tire you.
 
Lay down the jars of drudgery to which the world subjects you, even if you have carried them for a long way, exhausted yourself for them, suffered for them and have perhaps become accustomed to them. Know where your treasure is, and put your whole heart in it. Put your whole treasure in one jar and carry it well. Thus, you will safeguard your treasure and arrive full.
 
Carry one jar, the jar of Christ, and He will fill it with love and carry it with you. No matter how full it gets it will still hold more; and no matter how heavy it gets, it will remain light. All the remaining jars are mere clay, and even if they were empty, they are heavy and bend your back. Choose for yourself your ways in this world, do not let the paths of the world choose you, and do not carry the jars of this world, which burden you, distract you and tire you out.
 
The more you increase your jars, the more you distance yourself from your neighbor. Every jar requires space, and as the number of your jars increases, you start moving away from your brother to keep the jars from bumping against each other and breaking. The jars become more important than your brother. In order to safeguard your jars, you lose your brother and neighbor.
 
Know that your treasure is very precious, but you carry it in pottery. Every brother of yours has a very precious treasure, which he also carries in an earthenware jar. You make your jar with your hands and fold yourself inside it. You sit inside the jar and say the world is clay; whomever sits inside a jar will see the whole world as clay. Get out of your jar and see the world as it is and not as you have fashioned it inside your jar. Let everyone fill his jar from the treasure of Christ because He alone is the true treasure.
 
In order for you to understand your brother, do not go toward him with an intellectual system created by your mind. Go toward him with love from the Spirit of the Creator, which He has placed in your heart.
 
Be full grains of wheat on the threshing floor of the Lord. Therefore, when the winnower works on you and throws you up in the air in order to purify you, you will be heavy and will fall on the threshing floor to be gathered into the barns of life. Do not be light, empty grains like straw carried away by the wind, which will disperse them outside the threshing floor and scatter them. Rest assured that nothing will fill you up and give you weight except Christ.
 
Fill yourselves up with Christ and you will remain on the threshing floor and will be gathered up; and as long as you are on the threshing floor, the winnowing fork will keep winnowing you, and hay and chaff will fly away. On the threshing floor, every grain of wheat remains alone even if it was gathered, measured, and bagged with the other grains, its sisters.
 
The millstone, water, and fire turn the grains of wheat into one grind and one loaf. From the field to the loaf the journey is long: pray for the sickle that reaps you, for the thresher that threshes you, for the threshing floor that gathers you, for the winnowing fork that refines you, for the millstone that grinds you, for the water that kneads you, and for the fire that bakes you. The way of sanctity is from the field to the loaf, from the earth to the light, from the manger to the Cross and resurrection: walk it in the joy of the resurrection.

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