The Emmaus disciples said to Jesus: “Lord, stay with us, the day is almost over.” The day of our life is almost over too, and only one thing is needed: that the Lord may open our eyes as He opened the eyes of the disciples of Emmaus, that we may see Him both in ourselves and in our brethren. If I then see my brother’s fault which repeats itself, I will not judge him in my thoughts but I will see Jesus whom he hurts and the fact that he hurt Jesus will remind me of how many times I had hurt my Lord. May at that moment – instead of me judging my brother – an angel wound my heart and fill it with compassion and love for Jesus whom everyone boycotts and scorns. May each of us realize: I have received more light from God than others and yet I hurt Jesus even more than they do – and realizing this, I will be with Jesus again, I will come down to the prison of my heart and offer Him my tears of sorrow to drink, and at the same time I will also see Jesus in my brother who was blinded by the old self at the moment.

We should see Christ in our neighbour. In the parable of the Last Judgment, Jesus says the same to those who will be saved and to those who will be condemned with only a slight difference: “…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine” or “whatever you did not do”. And then He says: “you did for Me” or “you did not do for Me”. Jesus is in my neighbour, especially in my brother – he is baptized, has received Christ, wants to follow Him with a sincere heart, and even wants to sacrifice his life for His sake, and yet there is a barrier – spiritual prison. My brother does not see Christ in himself and neither do I, and what is more, I do not see Christ in me either, so there is double blindness – the two of us do not see.

We strive to fight against sin and repent, so Christ abides in us through faith. But where and how does He abide in us? He is not on the throne of our heart to reign. There is our ego there. He is like a beggar somewhere in the corner and not only that. He is literally in prison. Our ego, our sin keeps Him in prison so that He cannot live in us. He is in prison and we have not come to Him. When did I realize at least once that Jesus is in me?

Question: What does my old self see? It does not see Christ in myself or in my neighbour or brother. It does not see and does not want to see my mistakes because the old self hates the truth and humiliation. Therefore it is necessary to practise humiliation and it need not even be artificial, I just need to stop and admit the truth. And it hurts. Besides, the old self refuses to admit that the gifts are from the Lord but adopts them as its own and seeks its own glory rather than the glory of God. So it is a theft. It is unwillingness to admit the reality, the truth.

What does the old self see in my neighbour? It sees someone else’s gifts from the perspective of envy, jealousy and a kind of competitiveness, and it does not even want to admit that my neighbour does have these gifts. It puts the speck in my brother’s eye under the microscope.

The first step in evangelization is to receive Jesus as one’s Saviour and Lord, to receive the Mother of God and the Holy Spirit, and to renounce heresies and the occult. But then there is the second stage. The second stage of mission, which is vital, is to build a true Church – the true Body of Christ – rather than a mere institution. The Church is the true Body of Christ, and the necessary condition is unity. The present-day Church, unfortunately, is like a rotten stinking corpse for the time being; it is not the light to the world but darkness. If we have sorrow and grief in our hearts over the Church, God will show us the key to the deepest mission.

Our mission is to seek Jesus together, to carry our own cross and, as the Apostle Paul says: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” If we bear one another’s burdens, people will feel divine love which is founded on a living faith, self-denial, carrying one’s cross and the following of Christ. We must allow Christ to reign in our life, that it may be true: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” We must let Him reign so that we ourselves may be saved and so that we can make every effort to save as many souls as possible for eternal life after the example of the saint apostles. We cannot do it by our might but Jesus wants to do it through every one of us – through you, through your brother, through brotherly love. The whole reform, in fact, consists not only in evangelization but also in the building of a living Church. And this should take a concrete form in building fellowship.

It is programmed in the nature of each of us that it is natural for us to do good things, but at the same time there is a kind of spiritual poison in our nature, a specific form of pride, blindness and negative manners which practically destroy that which is positive in us. And this is the same in all people, only the tint is slightly different in each. Behind certain natural gifts there is the poison of sin which we have inherited from Adam. It only takes different forms. It is the old self in disguise which has only one aim: It refuses to repent and to call the poison in us, that which is negative, by its proper name, and if anyone touches it, the fat is in the fire. The old self has a wonderful inbuilt defence mechanism.

It is said: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” And then Jesus says that if two agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them. This really is the key not only to building a living Church as the basic cell but also to true unity where Jesus is in the midst and where it is necessary for both of the believers to become powerless, i.e. to deny themselves and take up their cross, and then Jesus can show His power. If we do not obey the principle of self-denial and if we refuse to carry our cross, Jesus is paralyzed.

In the reflection on Jesus encountering the Emmaus disciples, we read: “Grant to me, O Lord, that I may see You both in me and my brother who is praying with me.” We see Christ neither in us nor in our brother. Jesus wants us to look with the eyes of faith.

We must take up our daily cross. This cross is in the first place our own nature and character. If someone tells us his attitude towards us, it hurts us. The problem with many beginners is that although they have received Christ, their nature, the old self, is so strong that it cannot stand criticism and use it as an incentive for true repentance. They fail to use this inner pain to look at Christ scourged, crowned with thorns and crucified or to unite their pain to His pain. The old self, on the contrary, either turns this painful wound into hatred towards the brother – this works automatically without any effort – or indulges in self-pity, which also is a false path. We often not only nourish our wounded feelings for years, but we masterfully reopen or even deepen the wound. So we really have reason to know ourselves more and more deeply and motivation to fight against the spiritual poison in us.

On the one hand, there is a need for evangelization, but on the other hand, there is a need to pray to the Lord for evangelizations to be organized in a certain rhythm, because although they bring zeal and dedication, and one can say a spiritual harvest in their climax, they are just like the exodus from Egypt. Then follows the Red Sea and the desert, i.e. a series of trials, which are also symbolized by snakes that bit the Israelites when they grumbled, in which period God purified their hearts. And then the people of God came to the land of Canaan, but we see that they very quickly turned away to pagan practices again, as described in the Book of Judges, and actually in the entire history of Israel. The tendency to go back to the old way of life – paganism and the cult of the old self connected with it – continues. The climax comes with the coming of Christ, His death and glorious Resurrection and then the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In the Apostolic period, we see the zeal of an evangelist and missionary particularly in the life of St Paul. After that, all of the Apostles died martyrs and a period of a bloody persecution of Christians followed.

The Divine Saviour obtained heaven for us with His own Blood. He did not need to purchase heaven for Himself but He sacrificed His life and His Blood for our sake to open the path for us to eternal happiness in heaven. He left all His rights and claims to us, His least brethren. In view of the merits of Jesus Christ, His passion and death, I may say: Heaven belongs to me. St Bernard used this logic to silence the devil. When on his death-bed the saint was joyfully awaiting heaven, the evil spirit came to him and said: “How can you hope that God will receive you into heaven if you know how poor your works were?!” But the saint replied: “I knew long ago that I could not build on my poor deeds, but my Saviour obtained heaven for me through His sufferings and Blood, and He will impart His merits to me. I hope therefore that I will be allowed to enter heaven.” And the devil left ashamed.

The most important thing which makes heaven heaven is that we are in communion with God which will never end, or in other words, we participate in the life of God. Angels are close to God and live a perfect life. Unlike them, we share in the very life of God because Jesus became man. Becoming man, He grafted the divine life onto our nature. We who have received Christ have eternal life already on this earth. The essence of eternal life consists in receiving the divine nature, becoming joint heirs of the kingdom of God. We have been literally grafted onto Christ. We have the same Spirit as Christ.

Heaven surpasses all our imagination. Let us imagine supreme happiness, unspeakable beauty, and yet heaven is far more beautiful. The Scripture says about heaven that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him. What then this heaven must be like if it surpasses our imagination?!

Let us imagine the most beautiful things in the world – the most beautiful jewels, the most beautiful works of art or the most beautiful scenery – this all is nothing compared with the beauty of heaven.

Let us imagine the beauty of our earth, the beauty of God’s creation. Imagine you are in the Alps watching the sunrise or the sunset or the magnificent scenery in the land of glaciers.

The goal of our life is to be united to God and to live in this communion for all eternity. Eternal life begins already here on earth where God puts us to the test. The length of this test varies from life to life. We all live in different places and in different times, the number of every man’s days is determined and then our earthly pilgrimage will end. These few decades of life will pass very quickly; and, moreover, they are full of suffering, disappointment… Life on earth is but toil and trouble. God gives us His grace in this life, and if we cooperate with it – i.e. deny or humble ourselves a little, patiently bear our cross, physical or mental suffering – our heart is filled with joy which the Lord gives us. But we are always surrounded by evil, envy, various diseases, suffering or loss of our relatives and friends. This is to remind us that the earth is not our permanent place. Our home is in heaven.

In heaven we will have everything the human heart desires. Our heart desires honour, wealth and power. We will obtain this all in a proper manner in heaven. Honour, wealth and power. It is written in the First Book of Samuel: “The Lord declares: I promise that I will honour those who honour Me.” Can we imagine greater honour than to be honoured by God? And if God honours us, all the inhabitants of heaven will honour us too for remaining faithful to Christ and His truth and not being led astray by lies. All our efforts in our service to God will be revealed.

Do we desire wealth and power? In heaven we will be heirs of God. Just think how rich our Father is and what an inheritance awaits us!

Our Lord often teaches us not to cling to anything – a manner or idea, to be poor in spirit and to seek nothing else but Him alone. There must be nothing to replace Jesus in our life, no other source of pleasure but Him alone who loved us from eternity and humbled Himself to the point of death, even the death of the cross, for our sake.

We should always try to discern what the Lord wills. The process of a sincere seeking of the will of God in serious life decisions is painful but what we do according to the will of God remains forever! We need to carry His cross, to accept the cross of uncertainty, seeking and powerlessness. Such are the ways of God – it is dying in practice. But it is worth it! Life is too short and we can do nothing more than seek and do His holy will.

The Lord directs our paths, and we must often walk by faith which is both the light and darkness for us, like the pillar of fire and cloud which led the Israelites on their way through the desert. Though many things are obscure to us, God sees and understands everything.