Concerning John the Baptist the Lord said: Elias is come already, and they knew him not. Why was this? Because they did not heed the paths of God and were not interested in them: they had a different mentality, different tastes, different views on things. Outside the range of Divine things, their shrewdness was in play, but within this range they did not understand anything due to their estrangement from it.

One’s inner mentality forms a feeling for things, which immediately notices and determines what is familiar to it, no matter how concealed it may be. An artist, scientist and economist look at one thing with equal attention, but each makes a judgment about it in his own way—one according to its beauty, the second according to causal relations, the third according to gains from it. So with the Jews: as was their disposition, so they judged about John, and then about the Saviour; but since they were disposed not according to God, they did not understand them, who carried out the work of God.

Similarly, now people have begun to not understand the Forerunner and the Lord—and do with them what they like. A hidden persecution of Christianity has arisen, which has begun to openly break through, like recently in Paris. What was done there on a small scale, is what we must expect with time in big proportions…

Save us, O Lord!

Thoughts for Each Day of the Year by St. Theophan the Recluse
Friday. 8th Week after Pentecost.