They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait

Short Reflection on the Conception of the Theotokos

Editor's Note: Today is the Conception of the Theotokos, and Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos (+ September 30, 2015) has a short but fantastic reflection on this feast. Fr. Symeon was a lecturer, preacher, and confessor in the Metropolis of Thessaloniki, Greece. His spiritual lectures often draw on his study of psychology. He founded one men's monastery, Monastery of the Holy Trinity, and one women's monastery, Monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos.

Father Symeon Kragiopoulos

9 DECEMBER

Conception by St. Anna of the Most Holy Theotokos; Anna the Prophetess

In our relationship with God, what is necessary is not so much to stay up late, to organize things or to make plans. Since God does everything, what is necessary is for you to be ready to listen. It may be the case that God leaves you waiting without speaking at all. God is not happy to see you being worn out by waiting, but it is as if He is saying: “Just wait, I am preparing everything for you.” And it is very wonderful. And you wait. And when hours, days, years go by and everything indicates that nothing will be done, a certain moment comes—after most of the time passes in inactivity—and God intervenes, as happened with St. Anna, who was barren. That is the way the appropriate time comes, which God will show, and what man must do is be ready to respond: to say “May it be blessed” and to surrender himself into the hands of God for Him to make use of. St. Anna was honored to bring into the world the Panagia!

Source:

Kragiopoulos, Father Symeon, Timeless Truths, Translated and edited by Theophilos Lasswell (Thessaloniki, Greece: Holy Women's Hesychasterion "The Nativity of the Theotokos," 2022), p. 388.