> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://joshualore.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Alyosha's awakening - URL: https://joshualore.com/inthemiddleway/and-do-you-see-our-son-do-you-see-him-im/ - Published: 2016-01-18T22:29:01.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-03T04:51:21.000Z - Author: Joshua Lore - Tags: Uncategorized, #Migrated-1788408094757, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-09-03 00:01 > “And do you see our Son? Do you see him?” > > “I’m afraid… I don’t dare to look,” whispered Alyosha. > > “Do not be afraid of him. Awful is his greatness before us, terrible is his loftiness, yet he is boundlessly merciful, he became like us out of love, and he is rejoicing with us, transforming water into wine, that the joy of the guests may not end. That miracle, that lovely miracle! Not grief, but men’s joy Christ visited when he worked his first miracle, he helped men’s joy. He who loves men, loves their joy. He is waiting for new guests, he is ceaselessly calling new guests, now unto ages of ages. See, they are bringing the new wine, the vessels are being brought in!…” > > Something burned in Alyosha’s heart, something suddenly filled him almost painfully, tears of rapture nearly burst from his soul… He stretched out his hands, gave a short cry, and woke up… > > Again the coffin before him, the open window, and the quiet, solemn, distinct reading of the Gospel. But Alyosha no longer listened to what was being read. Strangely, he had fallen asleep on his knees, but now he was standing, and suddenly, as if torn from his place, with three firm, quick steps, he went up to the coffin. He even brushed Father Paissy with his shoulder without noticing it. The latter raised his eyes from the book for a moment, but looked away again at once, realizing that something strange was happening with the boy. For about half a minute Alyosha gazed at the coffin, at the covered up, motionless dead man stretched out with an icon on his chest and the cowl with an eight-pointed cross on his head. A moment ago he had heard his voice, and this voice was still sounding in his ears. He listened, waited to hear more… but suddenly turned abruptly and walked out of the cell. > > He did not stop at the porch, either, but went quickly down the steps. Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the flowerbeds near the house had fallen asleep until morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars… Alyosha stood gazing and suddenly, as if he had been cut down, threw himself to the earth. > > He did not know why he was embracing it, he did not try to understand why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss all of it, but he was kissing it, weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and he vowed ecstatically to love it, to love it unto ages of ages. “Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears…,” rang in his soul. What was he weeping for? Oh, in his rapture he wept even for the stars that shone on him from the abyss, and “he was not ashamed of this ecstasy.” It was as if threads from all those innumerable worlds of God all came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over, “touching other worlds.” He wanted to forgive everyone and for everything, and to ask forgiveness, oh, not for himself! but for all and for everything, “as others are asking for me,” rang again in his soul. But with each moment he felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as this heavenly vault descend into his soul. Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind – now for the whole of his life unto ages of ages. He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly, in that very moment of his ecstasy. Never, never in all his life would Alyosha forget that moment. “Someone visited my soul in that hour,” he would say afterwards, with firm belief in his words… The Brothers Karamazov