“Give Your Blood and Receive the Spirit”

A prayerful meditation on surrender and the ache for freedom

Lord, You have led me into the silence,

into this narrow and blessed space where the only light

is the flicker of Your presence in my heart.

And yet even here, even now,

I feel the old gravity,

the self that will not die, the anxious clutching

at what is passing away.

You whisper hesychia, stillness,

and I tremble before what that really means.

To keep the body in the cell,

to hold the mind in the heart,

to be crucified to the world

and the world to me:

these are not gentle words.

They cut.

They demand blood.

I have given so little.

I still keep pieces of myself hidden away;

small comforts, imagined securities,

the fragile scaffolding of control

that I call prudence but You name fear.

Even as I pray, I clutch at the future

like a beggar hoarding crumbs,

as though You, the Giver of all,

might forget me.

But You call me to poverty;

not the poverty of lack,

but the poverty of heart that owns nothing,

not even its own peace.

You became poor, Lord of heaven,

that I might learn to empty myself

and find You dwelling in the emptiness.

Teach me this surrender that costs everything;

not the soft kind, the easy nod of consent,

but the raw obedience of blood and Spirit.

Tear from me the subtle idols:

the need to be certain,

the hunger to be seen,

the illusion of mastery over life and time.

Let my hesychia not be comfort,

but crucifixion;

the quiet dying where all thought ceases

and only Your Name breathes within.

Strip me until I stand naked in grace,

where the heart no longer bargains,

no longer remembers itself,

only beats with Your hidden life.

Grant me this freedom, O Lord,

to be nothing,

to possess nothing,

to love only You.

Then shall the silence become fire,

the stillness a torrent,

and the poverty of my soul

a boundless wealth in Your Presence.

May I give my blood,

and by Your mercy, receive the Spirit.

Amen.

Reflection based upon the writings of

Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou 

Perfect Surrendering to the Spirit of Salvation pp. 10-13