Give thanks to God, my dear friend, all my dear friends. Thank God that you are alive and well, and that you can hear me now. I do not mean just me: thank God that you can hear at all. Greetings, dear friends. We are together once again on Unseen Passages, with Vasilis Hatzinikolaou, who keeps us company with his beautiful music and handles the sound for the program. And with all of you, we form one great gathering across the whole world. Thank you so much for your messages. I do not read them out or mention them, because then I would constantly have to repeat all the kind things you say. Thank you very much. Pray that the things you say may be true, and that one day I might come close to them. I can see that you hold priests in high regard and imagine things about us that may not be true in reality. That is how you wish we were. I too wish I were as you imagine me. May we all become like that one day. Thank you so much for your love. As for what you write to me, I can say a prayer to God, and I hope He hears us. I hope God will, and I believe that when He sees your good intentions, He will hear you and resolve the problems you face. That does not mean you will have no new problems; others will come. We simply change problems: one is resolved, another appears. But in the meantime, you will have strength. You will have gained the wisdom of the saints. You will have learned to stay afloat through the waves and storms. In the end, you will learn that this is life. There is no life without waves, no sea that is always calm. No one passes through this world without hardships, trials, sorrows, heartaches, and unexpected problems. After all, are these not the things that bring us together? Is that not why you leave your work, hurry to call a friend or a neighbor, and tell them to listen to this program and others like it? You know we will say something drawn from your own life. What we speak about is yours; it comes from your own pain. If it speaks to you, it is because this wine comes from your own grapes, grapes that were pressed as you suffered and bled. Then I say a few words, and you wonder, ‘How does he know? How can he speak of these things?’ I know because you tell me and write to me. I talk with people, and I look a little into my own heart, which goes through much the same as yours. That is why our problems are so alike, and why we are so alike. I may not know you, but I believe that does not matter. Sometimes even someone who does not go to church, who does not have the close, conscious relationship with God through the Church that we try to have, can hear these words. When we speak of real questions of life, drawn from our homes, our work, our souls, and our hearts, your heart and mine beat with the same rhythm. When you sigh, I sigh too; we go through much the same troubles. That is why we understand one another. We have this mutual understanding and support, and we carry on with the struggle. But I began today’s program by telling you to glorify God because you can hear, because you are well, and because you have mental balance and health. It is no small thing to be mentally healthy: to be well, to understand what is happening, to be a normal person, calm, balanced, and at peace with yourself. Of course, we all have something. I do not think anyone is absolutely healthy mentally, absolutely. We all have something: fixations, fears, and quirks. Thank you. Um... We need awareness. We get stuck on things; we can be perfectionists. We all have something. But at least our overall mental state should allow us to live happily, harmoniously, and well with those around us. Glorify God. Someone once asked me, ‘Can you find anything good to thank God for?’ I said, ‘Let us thank God that we can understand one another and communicate, that our minds still work and have not failed us.’ That is no small thing. The balance is so delicate. Perhaps what I am saying today will not weigh heavily on you, because you do not realize what a great gift that balance is. When you are well, you do not know what it means to be unwell. Unless you have seen it, of course. Some of you have, and there are many people in the world who have seen it in dearly loved relatives and friends. They have seen a serious loss of mental balance, a severe mental health problem that appears suddenly. A person can no longer think clearly. Something happens to their mind; they seem confused, as though they cannot communicate. May God protect us all. I want to share a few thoughts about how He can help us preserve this great gift. I remember going to catechism classes as a child at a Christian center. An elderly man sat outside in the little waiting room. He looked after the place, unlocking and opening it, then closing it again. He kept looking up at an icon of Christ. One day after class I went out and asked him, ‘What do you do here while you sit?’ He said, ‘I sit and pray to God.’ ‘But you are old,’ I said. ‘So?’ he replied. ‘What temptations do you have? What do you ask God for, when you have no temptations?’ He said, ‘We do not pray only about temptations.’ I asked, ‘What do you ask Him for?’ He said, ‘I ask Him not to let me lose this,’ and he pointed to his head. ‘I beg Him not to let me lose it.’ ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What sort of prayer is that?’ ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘As the years go by, we do not know what will happen to our minds. So I beg Him.’ That made a deep impression on me. It was the first time I had heard someone pray for a clear mind and sound mental health: to stay alert, to understand what is happening, to remember and not forget, not to become confused or get stuck on some troubling idea that torments you. I was struck that this elderly man asked for such a thing in prayer and told me about it. I remembered it many years later. Over the years, I have known people in different places around the world whose minds were affected in this way. I am not speaking about any particular place or person now. There have been quite a few people, acquaintances and friends, and you can see that something has happened to their minds. I should say that some of these conditions can have a hereditary element. It is good to be aware of that, to think and talk about it, and to make careful, serious decisions before starting a family. If you know that you live with a serious inherited condition that your children might also inherit, you should take care. I remember a young woman some years ago in central Greece. She had met a man from Thessaloniki. She told me, ‘Father, it does not matter that he is going through this trial. I feel strong enough to share his pain and bear this trial with him.’ ‘I love him and I will marry him as he is. I understand it and I accept it.’ People who go through mental health difficulties want companionship too. Some people are able to take that on. But you have a duty to tell the other person. You must tell them, and if they cannot bear that burden, they should not go ahead. The start of a life together is a serious matter. These difficulties can affect your children. A parent may lash out at the children, the neighbors, or their husband or wife, even though those people have done nothing to cause it. There may be an underlying personal difficulty that needs treatment, medical care, support, conversation, or medication. If you do not say this or recognize it, you may start thinking the problem is your neighbor, your cousin, your brother, your wife or husband, or your children. Yet they are not the cause. Many children can see this in their parents, and they say so. Over the years, talking with people young and old, I have heard young people speak very honestly about it: ‘Something is wrong with my father. Is he thinking clearly? Does what he says make sense? It does not make sense to me.’ What can you say to that child? That the child is always at fault, that they have made another mistake? Of course, the way a child responds to a parent may also be wrong. You cannot insult your parents. But as an adult, you cannot lash out at your child when the real trouble lies elsewhere and you need help. You may need help from a specialist, and above all from Christ, who knows every illness of soul and body. But Christ Himself will send you to priests. Christ Himself will send you to doctors. He will say, ‘My child, when you have a headache, you go to the pharmacy. When your body is hungry, you go to the refrigerator. Now that you have a serious condition and need help, you should turn to someone qualified to help and support you.’ We need to take great care in choosing a partner or spouse, especially in this matter. The other person may lack all sorts of things: an impressive education, a lot of money, property, land, savings, cars, and so on. May they have all those things, but if they have mental balance, if they have a sound, steady soul, the ability to communicate, understanding, reason, and their wits about them—that matters. You might ask, ‘Are we all so irrational, then?’ But I’m not speaking only about you; I’m speaking about myself too. We all have something. As the saying goes, we have all taken a brick to the head. Every one of us has something. Some of us have more of these difficulties, some less. The question is whether we can manage them well enough for life to go on. And if we cannot, what then? Some people do not even ask for help. They lack the humility to turn to a specialist. I cannot... I mean, you come to me with health concerns, perhaps about pregnancy, or other concerns. Serious problems, say, with your stomach, your legs, your head, your ears, or your teeth, and you ask me to make the sign of the Cross over you or give you a blessing. Of course I will, and we pray. But that does not mean you should not also see a specialist, hear what they say, and receive treatment. That goes for bodily conditions and for what I am calling mental health conditions, including neurological ones. These people need help when you can see that prayer alone is not helping them, and neither is reading spiritual books and Holy Scripture alone. When you have high or low blood pressure, a thyroid problem, high cholesterol, or any of these illnesses, what do you do? Do you just come to have prayers read over you? You take your medicine. If you have diabetes, it is not enough for a priest to read prayers over you and for you to rely only on faith in God. Why do you go to the doctor for that? When your tooth hurts so badly you cannot sleep at night, why do you go to the dentist? You could pray. The same applies to some conditions of the human nervous system. I am not speaking about someone who lies or feels jealous and needs to talk, understand what is happening, gain self-knowledge, humble himself, and go to confession. Yes, spiritual guidance can help with that. But spiritual guidance alone cannot resolve every problem. A dentist may comfort you when tooth pain makes you panic, but being calm is not enough. You also need help, medicine, treatment, and the instruments the dentist uses to work on your teeth. That is how it is with all these things. Some people believe differently, and I respect that. They believe that divine grace, which heals what is weak and supplies what is lacking, does everything. Yes, but do you know where I do not see that happening? Among the very people who say it. I have met people who made sweeping claims: God is enough for everything, we need nothing else, God gives everything and does everything. As if I were telling people to go somewhere God is absent. I am not telling anyone to go away from God. Yet when the time came, those very people who insisted that nothing was needed but prayer, confession, Holy Communion, and so on—when their own relatives their parents, children, spouses, or other close family members became very seriously ill, they found they could not perform the miracle they had said would come so easily. Then they were the first to run to the doctors for help. That is a lesson in humility for us. We often speak about theology in very impressive terms. We say powerful and meaningful spiritual things. But the theology of the Fathers was joined to what they actually did. They lived what they taught. Take the Holy Unmercenaries: they were physicians, priests, spiritual people, Saints. They could perform miracles. They healed people and took no payment. “Unmercenary and wonderworking healers, visit us in our sickness; freely you received, freely give to us.” Those hymns were not written as mere figures of speech or symbols. They laid a hand on someone who was ill, and that person was healed. I admit I cannot do that. God has not given me that gift. If you have it, pray for all of us and heal those of us you can. So there are people like the Holy Unmercenaries, Saints and wonderworkers. Such people still exist today; there will be people who can heal. But how many are there? How many people live on this planet—six billion? Six billion people. What are all the others to do if they have no wonderworking healer of souls and bodies nearby, someone who can heal mental illness? I too read beautiful accounts in the Synaxarion of Saints who healed illnesses of mind and body. You might have depression, and through their prayer or touch it would be taken away. They might give you something of theirs that their hand had blessed, and you would recover. Yes, but that happened then. Now... What do we do? Is that help available to us? You call me to serve Holy Unction for you, and you have a serious mental or physical illness. Today I am focusing especially on mental well-being and how serious a matter it is. And you find that even after Holy Unction, whatever measure of faith you had, the problem persists: overwhelming panic, terrible insomnia, anxiety, nightmares, ringing in the ears, trembling, dizziness, unsteadiness. Mental and physical symptoms all mixed together. What shall we say? Shall we serve Holy Unction again, just to make sure? And again, and again? Why? Because we do not want to humble ourselves and admit that we need a doctor too? We need help from someone God has sent to us. Doctors have not been sent by some force opposed to God. God blesses doctors to heal us. Does He not guide their hands and their minds? I am not speaking about particular schools of medicine that reject God or seek to fight Christ. I believe that sound, established medicine and treatments that respect the person do not intrude on your spiritual life; they care for your health. I say this because we can become stubborn and fixated, saying, “I need nothing else. I know best. I will find the answer myself.” And in the end we receive no help. Nobody knows all the trouble I've seen. Lots of troubles floating around these days, seems like everybody's sick, sick, sick, and I'm right in there with them, yes, well there's one thing that's for sure, it ain't no use crying, just get in there and pitch, sometimes you need help, that's when you kinda look up, you know, that's uh... Me, oh yes, my love! We make grand statements. As I said at the beginning, our theological language at conferences and in talks is beautiful: God’s uncreated grace heals everything and raises fallen humanity back to its ancient, first-created beauty. And we become like the first Adam and the second Adam, who is Christ, and all that. But does this happen in practice? Everybody's always singin' the blues about his own troubles. The thing to do is to get with the big boss. That's right. Look up sometimes. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, and I ain't gonna bug nobody about it either. I know where I can get help when I need it. I think that too, every time, every time. Perhaps you should try! A young man told me about a woman he had met at a certain church. He went over and got to know her, but, he said, “There were so many difficulties. I could not communicate with her. Her thinking would get stuck, we could not understand each other, and her behavior was unsettled.” Does that not call for help and conversation? Of course, speak with your spiritual father and seek guidance from the Church. But when you see that this alone is not resolving the problem, you need further help. But so that we do not reach that point, those of us who have some measure of spiritual and mental balance can preserve it through gratitude to God. Let us be grateful to God and thank Him for what we have. When you give thanks, you draw more of God’s mercy and love, and He continues to give you His gifts. Thank God. Appreciate what you have, and be humble. Pride can creep in and leave a person confused in their thinking. All those who say strange things, reach the point of losing their minds, become confused, say irrational things, or behave irrationally lack humility. They do not simply accept life as God gives it. They insist on having things their own way. They interfere in other people’s lives. They do not recognize the worth of the person beside them and try to force that person to change. A mother’s child may want to become a mathematician, while she insists that the child become a lawyer. She argues, gets upset, and may even suffer a nervous breakdown through sheer insistence. You might think she meant well. Yes, but stubbornness like that conceals pride. You rarely see a humble, simple person, someone who does not think too highly of himself, lose his bearings in that way. Even if he recognizes that he has a gift, he tries at once to remember his connection with others. He may say, ‘I’m intelligent, but I did not become intelligent on my own. Other people have helped me. I belong somewhere. I did not spring up like a mushroom. I owe what I have to others too.’ So he sees his intelligence as part of a group, a circle of friends, a family, a community. That keeps his feet on the ground. He is intelligent and humble, intelligent and connected to others. Success does not go to his head. He does not run off on his own, imagining that he is terribly important, like an unruly horse. He knows he belongs with others and that he is the fruit of that whole community, of that whole family. Suppose you tell me, ‘Well done, Father. I like what you said.’ But it is not really mine. I bring myself back down to earth and say, ‘Look, you have read things. What have you said that is your own? Even what you are saying now came from people who talked with you and told you their troubles.’ I have read and studied. I have had teachers at university. And I do not make my own brain work. God gives me the light to think. A tiny injury to the brain, the slightest injury, could change everything. I could speak to you and you might not know who I am. You might tell me you see sounds and hear colors, and begin speaking irrationally. If you remember these things and look at your life with simplicity and humility, your thoughts settle down, you become calm, and then God’s grace truly gives you light. You go forward well. Take great care over this, and let us pray to God in this way. Sometimes God lets us pass through trials like these so that we may become humble, because growing more stubborn and proud only makes matters worse. Doctors say that a humble person who is willing to cooperate, as far as his condition allows, has a better chance of recovering quickly and seeing good results. Someone else goes on clinging to stubbornness and pride. Read a book, too, so that you can understand, gain some light, and find peace. See how the saints lived. Some of them needed doctors. They humbled themselves, went for examinations, undressed, and let the doctors examine them. They went through the same procedures as every other human being. Are the billions of other people who live this way somehow beneath us? Are we the only ones who are better? Unless, of course, you have immense faith. At a talk, a woman raised her hand and said, ‘I get through all my illnesses with prayer and the power of Christ. I call on Him, and everything is healed.’ One person has told me this: that prayer alone makes everything well. She meant serious illnesses, including cancer and other medically confirmed conditions that are not easily cured without medicine. She told me God heals them all through prayer. I do not know. I have not seen that among people generally. One person told me about it. I have not seen it happen myself. I heard her account, and I have no reason to disbelieve her or to doubt that Christ can do it. So I think it is a humble thing when Christ sends us to doctors. It is like the instruction in the Old Testament story of Naaman: ‘Go and wash in the Jordan.’ We need doctors, and above all we need humility. One of the greatest harms to our thinking is the pride that makes us believe we know everything, judge everyone, and even condemn those who seek help. I once heard someone criticize doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists, saying that none of them were needed. And I thought: as we say these things, people of faith are listening. I personally know friends, acquaintances, and families in Greece and abroad. I know many people who have difficulties like these and turn to others for help. How can we speak so offensively about them? How can we call them unbelievers or atheists, or say they do not value God’s grace and have abandoned the power of the Church? By what right, and with what authority, do we speak with such certainty? We could all be a little more humble. I say this about myself as well. Mental well-being is a very serious matter. As I said, it may not seem especially important to you because you have never been touched by it. May it never touch you. I pray that you will always have a sound mind, clear thinking, a strong memory, and emotional balance. May you never be tossed from optimism in the morning to depression in the afternoon and despair at night, caught in a terrible cycle and wondering what is happening to your life. Of course, these things are not all demonic either. We have another tendency: to assume that every illness we see is caused by demons or temptation. That is not so. I remember Father Paisios saying that he held a relic of Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian in his hand. When someone came to him, he wanted to discern whether the person had a psychological condition or a spiritual affliction calling for help from the Church. So he would approach the sick person with the relic of Saint Arsenios hidden in his hand. The person did not know he was holding it. Father Paisios would gently touch the person’s back. If the condition was psychological or neurological and called for medical treatment, the person would remain as he was, without any unusual reaction. There was no reaction. But if it was a spiritual affliction, Father Paisios would see the person grow agitated, shift in his seat, or move his body strangely. Then he understood that this person needed help from a priest and, above all, prayer. No one denies that. But we must not attribute everything to demons. That also insults the person before us, who bears the image of God and may simply be suffering from a biological or neurological condition. We say instead that the person has become a dwelling place for demons. That is no way to treat a human being or the soul before us. Of course, some saints do say that each passion has its own demon. They say that each of the passions has its own demon: if I become angry, there is the demon of anger; if I grow envious, the demon of envy; if I give in to gluttony, the demon of gluttony. But if we look at every movement in our lives as though a demon were hiding behind it, we will stop seeing Christ. We will see only dark spirits and powers. Christ did not come to direct our attention toward darkness. He came to turn us toward the light. Someone was sleepy and tired, and kept yawning. He told me, ‘It’s a temptation. It’s making me sleepy right now.’ I said, ‘But it’s late.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s a temptation.’ Certainly temptations can come when you sit down to pray at night. But sleepiness is not always a temptation. Someone else was hungry and said, ‘See? The demon of gluttony!’ I asked, ‘How long has it been since you ate?’ ‘Since the afternoon.’ ‘Well, five hours have passed. That is not the demon of gluttony.’ Hunger may lead to gluttony once you start eating, but hunger itself is not demonic. I do not think it is good to see everything in life as demonic or as a temptation. Learn to see Christ behind most things—perhaps even behind everything. Even when temptations come, the Lord permits them; nothing would happen without His permission. So everything is under His care and has a purpose. These experiences may help us and make us humble. Many people who thought very highly of themselves eventually had to turn to doctors. They humbled themselves and said, ‘Now I take my pills: one at noon, two in the morning, half a pill at night.’ That made them more willing to listen, more humane. Their haughty manner and their certainty about themselves fell away. They had been unable to humble themselves before the Church, priests, or spiritual fathers, but now they humble themselves before a doctor. That doctor may not even go to church, yet they ask, ‘Doctor, what did you say? Please write exactly how I should take this on the box. Please, doctor, do not abandon me.’ And you become humble. You say, ‘So this is life. Life has humbled me. God has humbled me through these circumstances.’ ‘My nervous system is worn down. My soul is tired. I lose my temper easily, get upset easily, and lose my inner balance. I need help.’ Give other people a chance to show you love. Feel your connection with them, and recognize that you too have needs. You are neither independent nor self-sufficient in this world. You may say, ‘I need no one. I am strong.’ Then you make an appointment and wait your turn. An ordinary person goes in ahead of you, while you, for all your education and intelligence, wait to see the doctor and receive treatment too. These experiences humble us. All of us are humbled by things like this. There is a great deal about these matters that I do not understand either. I certainly cannot explain them to you scientifically. But I have lived through some situations like this, and they make me think. So did a young woman who told me, “I do not care what degrees the man I marry has. I want him to be emotionally balanced. I want someone I can talk things through with, someone whose mind is sound.” She did not mean he had to solve equations or be astonishingly clever, the sort of person who could go on a game show and win hundreds of thousands. She meant that he should be well, that they could talk and understand each other, and that he should have a steady character. These things matter in the spiritual life. And sometimes, because so many emails come in... I can see that sometimes we bring a troubled inner life with us into the Church. You hear me keep saying “sometimes,” because I do not want to make this an absolute claim. I am speaking about a few cases I know. I may be completely wrong, and I ask you to forgive me. Do not take everything I say as certain. But we bring our nature, our character, and our inheritance into the Church. If something in us is troubled and needs help, it may show itself in unhealthy ways there too. If you had joined a football team instead of your parish, perhaps you would have expressed the same trouble there. You might have latched onto something in that setting. Then you come into the Church and feel relieved: “I have escaped it here.” You may even feel you can hide it here, because... Within the Church, my psychological problem may not look like a psychological problem. It may look like a virtue, like zeal for God, even like holiness. The Church offers a great deal of room in which to hide things. That applies to me as I speak to you, too. Do you understand? I can say I am doing something for God, that it is spiritual, while hiding my own quirks and peculiarities behind it. I am speaking about myself. I may carry all sorts of unreasonable things inside me, yet you cannot see them behind the Church, behind my cassock, behind an outward appearance of reverence, modesty, and dignity. You think, “He is a priest in the Church. Surely what he says must make sense.” Yet what I say may make no sense at all. I too may need spiritual, psychological, and medical help. May God protect and keep us all, and heal us if anything is wrong. But is truth not what matters most? Is honesty not what we seek? You cannot look Christ in the eyes without being truthful. You cannot look Christ in the eyes and tell Him lies. I might lie to you. But when I face Christ, I must tell Him the whole truth: “Lord, I have my own troubled ways, and this is how I disguise them and hide them. Help me. Heal me.” Christ heals everything, as we have said, sometimes through the people of God. But I am not Christ, nor do I have the grace of the saints who worked such great miracles. That is why I tell many people to go to a doctor: perhaps a general physician, a neurologist, a psychiatrist, or a psychologist, depending on the situation and on how far I can help them. These matters are not simple. Those of you whose children study fields such as the human sciences will know that we cannot so easily simplify everything and call it all divine, demonic, a temptation, or holy. There is more to it than that. All these forms of help have their place, and they can help us draw closer to God and understand that every good gift and every perfect gift comes from Him. All that is good comes from God. Sound and truthful scientific knowledge that improves our lives also begins with God’s grace. Some people misuse that knowledge, misinterpret it, distort it, or put it to deceitful and self-serving ends. So, of course, when someone goes to a doctor or seeks help from anyone, that person should be trustworthy—someone whose help friends, relatives, or acquaintances have received, and through whose help they found their balance and returned to the reality of everyday life. That last point is very important: to live in the real world. Do not live in some other world. Know what is happening around you. Be a person of God, but keep your feet on the ground. Let your soul soar as high as it wishes toward heaven, while you still understand the here and now. Otherwise, your children may come and say, “My parents really are not thinking clearly. They do not know what they are saying.” “I went out for a walk yesterday, and they berated me all night, going on and on.” You may be a saint, or I may think you are a saint, but you still may not know how to communicate with your child. Might you need someone to explain a few things to you? To help you understand why you act this way, what is troubling you, and what you might find if you look within yourself? Of course, your spiritual father will help. But sometimes spiritual fathers cannot do everything. I have found that myself. People come to me for help, and I cannot help them. Someone asks, “Why are you treating me this way and sending me elsewhere?” I may send that person to another spiritual father, a specialist, or a doctor. I tell him, “If I pretend to give you the help you think you need, I would be failing to respect you.” Suppose you want to feel close to God, so you go to a doctor and say, “Doctor, I came to you to feel close to God.” Would he not say, “My child, you have come to the wrong person. I am a doctor. If you have a headache or something wrong with your arms or legs, I can treat you. If you want to feel close to God, go to a church, go to a priest, and pray. He can help you draw close to God.” That is where an honest doctor would send you. The honest thing for me, too, is to recognize that I cannot take responsibility for everyone and everything when I cannot give them the support they need. I could harm them. Questions of health, childbirth, having children, psychology, and mental illness—I cannot take all of these on and tell you what to do. That would be different if I were a saint. But when I see the mistakes I make, and perhaps others make too, I am humbled. I say, “Better leave it alone. Stop making pronouncements and offering words of wisdom.” There have been times when I have said, “Do this; do not worry,” and things did not turn out as I said. Father Porphyrios, for example, told a woman with cancer, in a case I know of, “Do not have surgery.” She said, “But the doctors told me to.” He said, “Do not have it.” “Nothing will happen to you. You will live.” She did not have the cancer operation. She lived for many more years and eventually died of old age, not cancer. But that is an enormous responsibility. I cannot simply read about Father Porphyrios telling that woman not to have surgery and then say the same to every woman who comes to me with a tumour: “Do not have surgery. I am telling you so.” Father Porphyrios, and anyone like him, is not someone whose life and words we can copy mechanically. First we would need to follow his holiness. Then the grace to heal might come into our souls, and only then, if God illumined us, could we speak as he did. Then we might place a hand on a sick person’s face and take away their sorrow. I read about a saint who had this gift: when you looked into his eyes, he took away your sorrow and gave you joy—not just for a moment, but for good. If you and I meet and talk, we may feel happier for a while. What matters is whether I can take away the condition that troubles you, perhaps something inherited, and truly free you from it. May I become able to do that one day, or may someone else. Until then, we will use the humble means available to us: my own prayer, the holy Mysteries, and God’s help, along with the support of specialists. Through them, too, I will see God’s hand at work. Someone had a serious operation with Father Porphyrios’s blessing. Father Porphyrios told him, “I could see God moving your surgeon’s hands. God guided the doctor to operate on you, give you your medicine, and treat you.” Let us ask God to preserve our mental balance. When we face a difficulty, let us seek help from someone with the right expertise, even when it costs us money, causes difficulty, or puts us under pressure. We cannot know everything. There are things we need to learn. Once, someone who badly needed help was seeing a psychologist and... Paying for those appointments, as he had to. I told him, “You need to go back to the specialist you were seeing.” He said, “But it is very expensive.” I replied, “First, I cannot give you the fifty minutes or the hour that person gave you to talk everything through. There are many others waiting outside. And second, the fact that you raise the cost suggests you came here looking for something easier, more convenient, cheaper, and less demanding. It does not work that way. I wish I had that specialist’s knowledge. Of course, I would not charge you. But sometimes caring for... Our mental health has to cost us something before we appreciate what a great gift it is. Those of us who enjoy a good measure of that health, who can find our balance and understand one another as we are doing now, should thank God deeply. We should love all those going through such trials; perhaps this is the cross they carry. I have heard that many great minds, people who gave much to the world, also went through breakdowns, crises, nervous turmoil, or confusion. God allowed them to experience this part of human suffering, so that afterward they could understand others and become more compassionate, humble, and kind. Vasilis, you too should glorify God for the illumined nous, the spiritual mind, and the musical heart He has given you. Your beautiful music keeps us company again today. If you disagree with what I have said, forgive me and carry on with your own approach. I have no objection. If the path you have chosen works and bears fruit, I have no reason to tell you to change it. If I have upset or confused you, forgive me. Forget what I said. Do what you believe draws you closer to God and helps you find balance, bringing order and steadiness to your inner life. Pray for us too—for me and for everyone who suffers, a little or a great deal, through trials of the mind and soul. May God help us grow in humility, live simply, and thank Him for what He has already given us. May we not think too highly of ourselves, but learn to bring our nous, our spiritual mind, along with our will and desires, into obedience. May we learn to work with others and trust them, ready to learn and humbly accept their help. And I hope God will lead us, even in this life, toward peace and balance... And toward eternal life. There we will all have a mind as simple and humble as a child’s, yet also full of wisdom, for our nous, our spiritual mind, will be able to behold God Himself and delight in Him. Until then, in this life, we will do what we can to preserve what we already have. Let us not lose that gift. Let us preserve it by glorifying God and continuing the beautiful struggle of the spiritual life, which leads us toward inner rest and happiness. May Christ bless you. May Christ bring peace to your nous, your spiritual mind, calm your thoughts, desires, and confusion, and give you His longed-for peace and love, and His everlasting joy. May God give you strength. Until we meet and speak again, farewell.