Episode Details

Lenten Retreat 2026 Fourth Reflection The Man Who Has Nothing Left But God

On the Life That Appears When the Self That Lived Has Died “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”

Galatians 2:20

There comes a moment that the man cannot perceive directly, because the one who would perceive it is no longer there.

He has passed through the loss of support. He has passed through the disappearance of certainty. He has passed through the collapse of identity. He has passed through the experience of abandonment in which he could no longer locate himself in relation to God or even in relation to himself.

He has stood where nothing remained to sustain the sense that he existed.

He did not cross this threshold through effort. He did not achieve it through discipline. He did not arrive there through understanding.

He arrived there because everything he used to sustain himself had been taken. And he did not die.
This is the first revelation.
He did not die.

The self he knew has disappeared. The structure that allowed him to experience continuity has dissolved. The identity he inhabited cannot be recovered.

And yet he remains.
But he does not remain as he was.

Before this, he experienced himself as existing from himself. Even in humility. Even in repentance. Even in dependence on God, he remained the one who depended. He remained the center from which his life was lived.

Now this center cannot be found.

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He cannot locate himself as the source of his own existence. He cannot experience himself as self originating.
He exists.
But not from himself.

The Psalmist speaks from within this mystery when he says, “My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.” Psalm 62:8

Before this, the man believed he clung to God. He believed his faith held him in relation to God. He believed his perseverance sustained his life.

Now he sees that even his clinging was sustained.

He sees that he has never lived by his own strength.

He sees that he has never possessed life in himself.

St. Symeon the New Theologian writes that when grace reveals itself fully, the soul sees that it has always existed by borrowed life.

Not poetic life.

Actual life.

The man now experiences himself as upheld.

Not helped.

Upheld.

This produces a peace that cannot be explained to the man who still lives from himself.

Because the man who lives from himself must constantly preserve himself. He must maintain continuity.
He must protect identity.

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He must secure stability.

He must ensure that he continues.

Fear is inseparable from this condition.

Fear of loss.

Fear of failure.

Fear of death.

Fear of disappearance.

But the man who no longer lives from himself cannot preserve himself.

Because he no longer possesses himself.

Christ says, “Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25

This finding is not recovery.

It is discovery.

The discovery that life was never his.

The discovery that existence belongs to God.

St. Isaac the Syrian writes that the man who has come to know his nothingness has come to know the truth of his existence.

Nothingness does not mean nonexistence.
It means the absence of autonomous existence.
The man exists entirely in God.
St. Paul says, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28 Before this, these words were believed.
Now they are known.

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