Suppressed Desire

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"...[W]hat is it about man that is unbearable? I should say it is his suppressed desire to become god by grace."

"...[M]an's nature is such that he is unbearable. You cannot put up with him. He wants everything, but this is impossible and impracticable. Only He who created us, who knows us before we are born and after we are dead, is able to satisfy us, because everyone wants everything. Humanly speaking, however, this is impossible. Within the Church, all is possible. 'We hear things unheard of throughout the ages, and celebrate terrible wonders.'

In order to get rid of the trouble man causes, every system--or party, or ideology, or even, if you like, Christian ideology--truncates man by a procrustean method. This makes him something of a vegetable, and keeps him quiet...

[But] in the presence of the saint the systems which consume man are done away with...

...The saint...does not make our heads spin with theories. Our minds have become a seething mass of theories, anti-theories, and super-theories. But in the person of the saint we have before us a true human being, a clear image of God; and the important thing is not what he says but what he imparts by his presence."

The Saint: Archetype of Orthodoxy by Archimandrite Vasileios

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