Held by the Right Hand

Discerning the Counsel of God When the Soul Wakes from a Dream

Epigraph

“Yet I was always in your presence;

you were holding me by my right hand.

You will guide me by your counsel,

and so you will lead me to glory.”

— Psalm 73 (Grail Translation)

The disciple returned after some days.

Not at the hour he usually came.

Earlier.

When the light was thin and the air still cool.

He stood again without speaking.

The elder did not look up.

After a long while the elder said,

St. Arsenius the Great

You have come carrying something heavier than before.

Disciple

Yes father.

Not heavier with despair.

But with a kind of sobriety.

As though something in me has woken from a dream and does not know where to stand.

St. Arsenius

Dreams do not leave bruises.

But waking does.

Tell me.

What has been taken from you.

Disciple

Certainty.

Or perhaps the illusion of it.

Words were spoken to me that were beautiful and demanding.

They promised life.

Yet after hearing them my heart did not grow firm.

It grew cautious.

Almost warned.

St. Arsenius

Then your heart was not rejecting life.

It was refusing haste.

Do you remember what the Psalm says.

When I was embittered

when I was cut to the quick

I was stupid and did not understand

no better than a beast before You.

Disciple

Yes father.

Those words have followed me all week.

St. Arsenius

They are not words of condemnation.

They are words of awakening.

The soul often confuses intensity with truth.

And authority with God.

But God does not press the heart like a weight.

He holds it by the right hand.

Disciple

That line pierced me.

Yet I was always in Your presence

You were holding me by my right hand.

Even when I was confused.

Even when I did not understand.

St. Arsenius

Especially then.

A man who is held does not need to throw himself forward.

Disciple

Father

there is a path placed before me that appears righteous.

It has the language of obedience.

Of sacrifice.

Of seriousness.

But when I imagine stepping onto it

my prayer grows narrow.

My breath shortens.

My heart grows watchful instead of free.

Is this cowardice.

St. Arsenius

No.

Cowardice flees suffering.

Discernment refuses violence.

God’s counsel does not bruise the conscience.

Even when it wounds the pride.

Disciple

Then why do I feel ashamed of hesitating.

St. Arsenius

Because you were trained to believe that speed is faithfulness.

But the Psalm says

You will guide me by Your counsel

and afterward receive me into glory.

Guidance is not seizure.

It is accompaniment.

Disciple

I fear deceiving myself.

That I am choosing the smaller life because I am tired.

St. Arsenius

Tiredness can be honest.

The danger is not choosing smallness.

The danger is choosing unreality.

Tell me

does the path you hesitate before require you to ignore the weight in your soul.

Disciple

Yes.

I would have to silence it.

Or spiritualize it away.

St. Arsenius

Then it is not yet your path.

God never asks the soul to mutilate its own perception.

He heals blindness.

He does not demand it.

Disciple

But others will say I am afraid.

Or resistant.

Or lacking trust.

St. Arsenius

They said the same of me when I left Rome.

Trust is not proven by agreeing.

It is proven by remaining truthful before God.

What else have I in heaven but You.

Apart from You I want nothing on earth.

If that line is true

then no role

no structure

no expectation

can compete with it.

Disciple

There are moments when I feel stripped of everything.

And strangely

those moments feel clean.

St. Arsenius

Because then the Psalm speaks plainly.

My body and my heart fail

but God is my possession forever.

This is not poetry.

It is diagnosis.

When God becomes possession

all other claims lose their power to command.

Disciple

So what should I do now father.

Remain.

Wait.

Withdraw.

St. Arsenius

Do not decide the whole road.

Decide the next step that preserves truth.

If your conscience asks for caution

honor it.

If silence is given

receive it.

If God has another path

He will not need to shout.

He will simply make the false ones lose their weight.

Disciple

I still feel weary.

St. Arsenius

Weariness that is honest is a teacher.

Weariness that is ignored becomes bitterness.

Stay where your prayer stays wide.

Where mercy remains soft.

Where God feels like possession rather than project.

Disciple

Pray for me father

that I may not mistake fear for discernment

or discernment for fear.

St. Arsenius

I will.

Remember this.

When God wakes the soul from a dream

He does not rush it back into noise.

He lets it stand

bare

held

until it learns that being guided is not the same as being driven.

The disciple bowed.

He did not feel finished.

But he felt held by the right hand.

And the elder returned to silence

trusting the counsel that leaves no mark on the skin

but reshapes the ground beneath the feet.