An Ascetical Confession of the Incarnate Lord

 

Come and See: An Ascetical Confession of the Incarnate Lord

I confess You, Lord Jesus Christ, not as an idea grasped by the mind, but as the Word who became flesh and was seen. My faith begins with the Incarnation and stands or falls with it. You did not remain invisible or inaccessible. You entered the limits of creation, took a true body from the Virgin, and lived among men. When Philip said to Nathanael, “Come and see,” he testified that You could be encountered in reality, not imagined or reasoned toward.

Because You became man, I submit my whole life to this truth. I do not seek You apart from the flesh You assumed, nor do I attempt to rise to You by intellect alone. I renounce spiritual fantasies and private visions, for You have already given Yourself openly in history. I guard my mind from abstractions that separate spirit from body, because You united them in Yourself without confusion and without division.

I accept discipline of the body because You sanctified the body. I restrain my senses not because matter is evil, but because it is holy and must be treated with reverence. My eyes are trained to look rightly, not to wander. My ears are taught to listen to the Gospel and not to noise. My sense of smell is purified by incense, not indulgence. My mouth fasts and prays, and only then receives You in the Mysteries. In this way, my body learns obedience.

I venerate holy icons because You were truly seen. I do not imagine You according to my own thoughts, but receive the form handed down by the Church. I bow before the image not to worship wood and paint, but to confess that God took a face. I submit my imagination to the Incarnation, so that it may be healed and not deceive me.

I approach worship with fear and sobriety, not emotion or self-expression. I stand, bow, fast, and keep silence because You were obedient unto death. You taught me that salvation is not excitement but endurance, not self-display but self-emptying. I do not seek spiritual sweetness; I seek faithfulness.

I receive Your Body and Blood with trembling, knowing that You remain fully human and fully divine. I do not reduce the Mysteries to symbols, nor do I approach them casually. You give Yourself as true food and drink, and I prepare through repentance, restraint, and prayer, lest I receive judgment instead of life.

I confess that You ascended with the body You received and now sit at the right hand of the Father as the God-Man. Because of this, I endure the labor of ascetic life with hope. My struggle is not against the body but for its transfiguration. I do not escape the world; I learn obedience within it.

This is my prayer and my rule: to live according to the truth of the Incarnation; to submit mind, body, and senses to Christ; and to remain within the discipline of the Church, where You are seen, heard, touched, and received unto salvation.