“There was a time when the heart of man was filled only with God – a mirror of the beauty of God, a harp for the praise of God.
There was a time when it was, in truth, in the hand of God, preserved from danger; but when man, in his madness, took things into his own hands, many wild beasts attacked the heart of man; and from there has, inwardly, come the bondage of the heart of man and, outwardly, that which is seen as the history of the world. Incapable of taking responsibility for his heart, man has looked for support to things – animate and inanimate – around him.
But whatever man has found to support his heart has fouled and wounded it. O wretched heart of man, seized on by many who have no right or power over you – as a pearl among swine! How hard you have become through your age- long slavery, and how darkened you are by the weight of darkness! God Himself has had to come down to free you from slavery, to save you from darkness, to heal you of your sinful leprosy and to take you once again into His own hand. The coming of God among men is the most gentle expression of His love for men, tidings of the greatest joy for the pure and the most devastating even for the impure of heart.
Like a flaming pillar in the deepest darkness, so is the coming of God among men. The news of this coming began with an angel and a maiden, with a conversation between heavenly and earthly purity. When an impure heart converses with an impure one, there is strife. Only when a pure heart converses with a pure one there is joy, peace and a great wonder. The Archangel Gabriel is the first messenger of the good news of man’s salvation, of this wondrous act of God’s – for the salvation of man could not come about without God’s wondrous action.
The most pure Virgin Mary was the first to hear this good news and, first among human beings, trembled with fear and joy. Heaven was mirrored in her pure heart like the sun in clear water. Beneath her heart, the Lord, the Creator of the new world and Renewer of the old, was to lay His head and clothe Himself in flesh.” (Nikolai Velimirovic, Homilies, p 2)
Fraternized 