Hierarch’s Divine Liturgy in Veljusa ( 08.05.2005 )
Early this morning, in the chapel dedicated to the Holy Apostle Paul and to Venerable Gregory Palamas in the Veljusa monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos Eleusa, Metropolitan Nahum of Strumica celebrated Divine Liturgy.
“Though with our glance we cannot encompass the whole wide space of heaven and earth, we fail not to behold what we can. So, with modest words we shall fulfill now our duty towards godliness, yet leaving to the magnificence of nature victory over every word. Not even angelic tongues, whatever they are, nor the archangelic ones, be they united with the whole rational nature, can express at least the smallest part of God’s grandeour, while their comparison with that grandeour is out of question. And you, if you want to speak or listen to 
anything about God, renounce your body, deny your physical senses, depart from the earth, leave the sea, place the air below you, discard the seasons, time order and earth ornaments, lift yourself above the ether, pass by the stars, and their wonders, and beauty, the magnificence and benefit they bring to the universe, pass by their noble composition, light, location, movements, pass by their mutual relations and distances. When you have soared above all with your mind, ascend to the heavens, with your intellect behold the beauties there (…) (Col. 1:16; Eph. 1:2). 
When you have passed everything, rise with your thoughts beyond all creation, raise your mind beyond the limits of creation and imagine the permanent, immovable, unchangeable, dispassionate, simple, non-compound, indivisible Divine nature, unapproachable light (1Tim. 6:16), ineffable power, boundless grandeour, radiant light, desired goodness, unparalleled beauty, which mightily pierces the wounded soul, yet cannot be worthily expressed with words.
There are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the uncreated nature, the majestic dignity, goodness genuine. (Saint Basil the Great)
