Mankind works and works, labors and labors, strives and strives, seeks and seeks, demands and demands, rises and falls, loses and wins, sings and goes silent, gets sick and gets healed, boasts and takes pride, slips and staggers, and falls and rises. Sometimes he is tormented in the pit of misery; sometimes he takes pleasure in the palace of luxuries.

However, all of this troublesome pursuit and demanding attempt is nothing other than for mankind to fulfill the emptiness that is found within his soul; in other words, in his inner world. This emptiness however is not filled with the love of earthly mediums, but with the discovery of the true love of the Lord, and through the fulfillment of the obligations and requirements of this love.

It is because of this that the holy Saint Augustine says: “Our spirits are created to praise the Lord and to be pleased with him. Emptiness is found within every created man’s heart; and that man that is not prepared to be pleased with the Lord will not have this emptiness filled with anything else. And he will not find a pleasant and permanent taste with anything else.”

The great Barhebraeus adds and responds with the wisdom: “We should seize ourselves and bring us into ourselves that we may find the kingdom that is hidden within our heart so that we may see our God.”

Yusuf Beğtaş