Come like a thunderbolt
20 October 2022
I don’t want to live long, nor do I aspire to do so. I want to live with you. You’re living and inexhaustible abundance. Come and let your will be done in me. Come as you wish and whenever you judge is the right time. Come as a breath of wind, as a blessing, if you deem that best. Come as a thunderbolt of tribulation and devastate my being if you think that should be done. I know that in whatever manner you come, what will follow your visit, will be that profundity that I desire and am unable to express; and which I’m unable to find anywhere except in you. This is why I seek you and await you. I’m disappointed with myself. You alone remain. And I come to you, the physician, the illumination, the sanctification of souls and bodies. Infirm as I am, I come to you and relinquish to you all my life and my hope.
Archimandrite Vasileios Gontikakis, former Abbot of the Monastery of Iviron
