💪 The Repentance of the Body 🕊️ The body repents with the repentance of the soul. The body becomes the mental vessel of the soul through prostration and standing in prayer, through abstinence from food, through solitude, through serving the brethren, and through the recitation of prayers. All these works transform the body into a spiritual vessel. When the mind turns to the body, the mind loses its ability to remain in communion; because the mind's turning to the body makes a person live by a sense of independence from God. However, if the mind turns to the body during prayer and the person offers his body as a sacrifice, he may feel independent from God, but he remains in communion from his side, i.e., because he remains alive in it. And if he leaves it due to the will turning to non-heavenly matters, he returns to communion with longing because of his love for the Lord. Let us transform our bodies into spiritual vessels so that they acquire a heavenly image that covers their earthly, dusty image, through prostration and abstinence from food; because successive prostrations with awareness and attentiveness strip the body of the image of its independence from the spirit and plant in the senses the unity of body and spirit. When we imagine our bodies as a tool or as something independent from us, we rush into sin; because the mind falls from communion with God into a deficient sensory knowledge far from the work of the Holy Spirit, who is the essence of our communion with God. #Repentance #BodyAndSoul #SpiritualVessel #Asceticism #Prayer #CommunionWithGod