The Metropolitan Anthony (Packanich) talks about victories on the spiritual front and about the prayer «Let God Arise».

Who is the real winner?

The Christian. Only a christian can achieve the main victory — the victory over his own fears and passions. There is no higher victory. All our actions, proceedings directly depend upon those spiritual winnings. The believer has absolutely all resources and weapons for this victory.

One of those effectual and strong weapons is the prayer for the True Cross «Let God Arise».

«Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered; and let those who hate Him flee from His face. As smoke vanishes, let them vanish; and as wax melts from the presence of fire, so let the demons perish from the presence of those who love God and who sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross…»

By saying these words we witness and express our belief that the sign of the cross — it’s the strongest weapon to fight with any evil. Neither evil spirit and demons, nor any imp can’t stand in the face of the sign of the cross. We acknowledge it. All evil goes to pieces, melts like wax, disappears like mirage in the way of the power of the Holy Cross.

It’s the truth. It’s the stark fact, powerful and well-tried remedy.

We bless God, we adore His strength and love and thank for defense and welfare. This eulogy is the highest among prayers (the lowest is request).

Unfortunately, we less glorify the One Who created everything, and we more ask Him for something. It’s necessary to forget about anything and everything during prayer, and concentrate only on Him and His love, but each of us due to our infirmities and unbelief asks God for welfare for himself and for his family, for closed ones. Won’t the One, who created us, definitely take care of our welfare?

«And say with gladness: Hail, most precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, for Thou drivest away the demons by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ Who was crucified on thee, went down to hell and trampled on the power of the devil, and gave us thee, His honorable Cross, for driving away all enemies. O most precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, help me with our holy Lady, the Virgin Theotokos, and with all the Saints throughout the ages. Amen.»

We refer the Cross as life-giving because our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross and was resurrected having released people from never-ending death in hell, and granted us the everlasting life in His Kingdom. Lord revived our life, filled it with eternal breathing and strength.

Lord made us winners.

However the meaning of victory consists of obligatory elements: the courage, the patience, the endurance, the hardiness. Who doesn’t cowardly scuttle from awareness, try to avoid it, but who tries courageously to overcome it, bravely penetrate trough it, is the winner.

The winner is always the owner of the true belief. And the strength of belief is only approved with a challenge of` risk.

«You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose that you had to hang by that rope over a precipice…» — writes Clive Staples Lewis. How to achieve a similar belief? It’s possible where is no doubt that God is always upstream of your face, if we believe that any word in the Holy Scripture is God’s word, when we acquit saying to us: «So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him» (Ps. 45:11).

The knowledge of God belongs to mortification of our passions and keeping the commandments.

God will definitely disembosom himself to us seeing our humbling: «Happy are the clean in heart: for they will see God» (Matthew 5:8).

The prayer «Let God Arise» is the key to the knowledge of God, and it has miraculous power which directly depends on the strength of our belief.

Recorded by Natalia Goroshkova