God bless you, my dear friend, my dear friends. We are together again for Divine Passages on Piraeus Church Radio, at 91.2 FM, the station that speaks to our souls. I'm here again with you, alongside Vasilis Chatzinikolaou, our program's musician and sound engineer. Thank you so much, Vasilis, for being with us today. Many thanks to Phoebe, who answers your calls and takes down your messages. And above all, thank you for listening. I want you to know that I receive your letters, and the gifts so many of you send without my asking. Thank you very much. Books, poems, icons, all kinds of things. I hadn't intended to mention it, but I need to, so you know that what you sent has reached me. I can't name everyone who writes, and I don't have time to answer every letter. Sometimes I read them weeks later, when I manage to steal a little time. It isn't easy. But I want you to know that what you write enriches me deeply. It teaches me, moves me, helps me grow, and gives me much to think about. The subjects we discuss here come from you. They're yours! I read your words, take them into my thoughts and my heart, and answer you. How? Through this program. That's why you sometimes say the program answered a question of yours. Yes, because what I read came from you. Page after page of letters shows me pain and trials everywhere. I want you to know that you aren't the only one suffering. You wrote to me about your child, and about sorrowful stories from your family's past: how you began, how you grew up, what you endured, the blows you suffered, the pain you felt. Whatever I say, you may think I'm speaking about you, and I am. But many others like you have written about similar experiences. We're all here together, inhabitants of this same earth, all hurting, all in tears, all struggling. I pray that God will bless you and strengthen you, keep you in the light of His love, His wisdom, His truth, and His grace, and give you the courage to keep living. It isn't easy. Life is hard. Life holds pain and tragedy, but it is also a blessing and a joy. There are birds singing, waves breaking on the shore, and beautiful sunsets. There are also torrents, thunderbolts, hail, and pain. We will learn to live an ordinary life, as everyone on this earth does. We, too, will grow stronger and more mature. When one wave passes, we'll wait for a little calm, and then another wave will come. What we gain is experience, maturity, and wisdom. We'll know that the wave that just passed left something within us, an imprint. The wave that struck me left salt on my face, even in my eyes. It brought tears, but it also gave me the strength to look at life more calmly and say, ‘This is how things are,’ without being surprised or shocked or having a stroke the moment something happens. Now that I've mentioned a stroke, take care of your health. Illnesses are going around; there is... ...wear and tear, pain, and sickness, and they make us suffer. Take care of your health. These thoughts come to me one by one. Some people love God but neglect their health. I've told you personally: get checked by a doctor. Find out why you've lost your appetite, why you seem exhausted, why your body is always tired and weak. There may be spiritual reasons, but there may also be medical ones, and sometimes those are the main reason you feel this way. Your body may need nutrients, proper food, or vitamins. So go to the doctor. That is deeply connected to your spiritual life: caring for both soul and body. Our body is our house built of earth, a house of soil and clay. Yet we live in it. We are soul and body. Let's care for the body, help it, and follow the treatment the doctor recommends, so that you can live for many years instead of falling into the gloom of saying, ‘It's all over for me. I'm finished. I'm dying. I'm on my way out.’ But how old are you, to be on your way out? You can't be forty-five or fifty and talk as though you're ninety-eight or a hundred. You're not on your way out. You're tired, disappointed, a little downhearted and discouraged. That's why you don't want to see the doctor. But you will go and get well. I pray that you have good health and can see things with a clear mind. With a clear mind. Our life—perhaps you've noticed—the years pass, and our life passes with them. And what are we doing together now? Keeping each other company for a little while. We talk and enjoy one another's company; we meet through sound. Each of us pictures the other from what we hear. Through your voices, I try to understand you, and I hope you understand me. I picture you in my soul. What are you like, you who are listening to me now? Someone who met me once said, ‘Oh, so that's what you look like! I'd imagined you differently. I thought you had more white in your beard. I thought you were shorter, but you're taller. I thought you were more...’ We imagine people from what we hear. That's what we're doing now: keeping each other company and, through our imagination and the powers of our soul, trying to draw a little closer to the meaning of life, a little closer to God. Our life, our struggle, the effort we make—all of it is so poor, so small. Really, this program is no great thing, nor is this hour we spend together. If you turn off the radio and don't listen, you lose nothing. Life itself will teach you. Things will happen that strengthen you. Your child will come and tell you something, and what they say may teach you as much as a whole book. You grow through their words, their questions, their pain, their confusion. Little by little you gain composure, holiness, and wisdom, like some elderly spiritual fathers who have been through so much that they... ...face life far more calmly. They smile and go to visit a relative in the hospital with a calm heart. We younger people may be shaken when we visit someone there, because it's our first close encounter with pain and illness, with sorrow, intensive care units, wires, tubes, ventilators, and all those troubles. But after you have lived through all this and begun to understand it, the time finally comes to leave this life. Then you ask, ‘What happened in this world, after all? What did I learn in this life? What did I take from all its ups and downs? Was the way I lived worthwhile? Did any good come of it? Did I learn my lessons?’ I pray that you will learn yours, that I will learn mine, and that we will all learn ours. No one can help us by taking our struggle upon themselves. You will go through your trials, and I will go through mine. No one can solve your problem by taking it over for you. I can't eat for you, just as washing my own body doesn't wash yours. Each of us must attend to our own path. When you're hungry, you eat; I can't eat for you. In the same way, you will struggle, suffer blows, and find joy. Of course, you do this in fellowship with others, sharing love with them. But you cannot avoid your own lesson. It is personal. Several people may live in one house, yet each sees things in a different way. Suppose they hear that an uncle has separated from his wife. The whole family hears the same news. One person takes it hard; another stays calmer. A small child may hardly understand, because other things fill the child's mind. The man's mother may be devastated: ‘My son has separated from his wife.’ Life touches each person in a deeply personal way. You are alone in your struggle, and so am I. We are all alone in that sense, each of us striving. And that matters, because this is how a personal holiness grows, how God's own imprint is left on your soul. That is what makes each person sacred and precious. Each one is unique, shaped by God. Imagine God as a master woodcarver, taking each piece of wood, working on it, and giving each one its own... ...design, its own care, and its own pain. One thing wounded you; another wounded me. One person caused you pain; something else caught me off guard. That is why every person is sacred, and why we should be careful what we say about others. You don't know anyone else's life. You don't know what each person has endured. We start to accuse someone, then we get to know them a little and say, ‘He's a good person, and he's suffered so much.’ Christ's words are profound: ‘Judge not, that you be not judged.’ See how I've moved from one subject to another? Yet they all fit together, because life is a whole. Its parts are connected. The parts may seem unrelated, but they belong together. So Christ said, ‘Judge not, that you be not judged.’ Don't make comments about people or reach final conclusions about them. Don't speak out of hostility. Of course you can use your judgment. You might say, ‘If I see someone getting angry, I can tell that he's angry.’ Yes, you can see it, notice it, and talk about what happened. But when Christ says, ‘Judge not,’ He means: don't speak with hostility, don't talk as though you were God, and don't put a label on someone. You don't know their whole story. ‘That you be not judged.’ Who will judge you? Other people? The angels, the Saints, and God will judge us. People, sadly, will judge us too. People will judge even someone who does not judge others. People will judge even someone who never judges others. They can criticize him and talk about him. We cannot expect perfect treatment from other people. We have done the same to others, and others do it to us. People will misunderstand you and say all sorts of things about you. Let them. You, though, should not speak that way. Look within yourself. Tend to your soul and the growth of your character. As for others, say only, “This is how it seems to me,” or “This is my opinion.” Nothing more. Do not speak with certainty, because you do not know. Someone gets a promotion, and we say, “Oh, he wanted it. He was proud, hungry for power and ambitious. He pushed for it and used his connections.” How do you know any of that? There is so much we do not know. How often does the full story come out later and show that we were badly mistaken, that we wronged someone by all the things we said? So do not take such a firm position about other people. We know nothing. We stand before an astonishing mystery: the mystery of life and of a universe about which we know so little. Even the world we see, we do not truly see. We cannot fully perceive what is right around us; so much escapes us. As we speak, there are sounds around you that you cannot hear. There are colors all around us that we cannot see, though a bee can see them. There are smells that animals can detect but we cannot. So there are things beyond our perception. The same is true of the inner life, of the hidden world of another person’s soul. Let us put our effort into living the spiritual life as Christians. Let us receive the growth, maturity, and holiness that Christ gives us. Let that move us; let us go deeper into it. Let us set our whole course and all our hopes on it. Let us grow spiritually and cultivate our inner life. That is a great thing: to see real change in the depths of your character. And I see that it is in the hour of temptation that we are tested. Of course, that is when we forget everything. The hour of temptation is the test. I may go to the radio station, make a program, and then sit quietly at home in an atmosphere of peace. Suddenly the phone rings, and I hear terrible news about someone I know, a relative or a friend. All at once, the spiritual maturity I thought I had collapses, and panic takes hold of me. That is where the question lies. Can I absorb what I have gained from books, reflection, and prayer so deeply that it enters every cell, runs through all my blood, and flows through every part of me, so that when temptation or trouble comes, I remember it all and see life with that hidden depth? Otherwise, it all remains theoretical, does it not? We become people who talk about holiness and about Christ in theory. We speak beautifully, but none of it becomes something we live. This troubles me sometimes. I see people of eighty or ninety whom I have known in the Church, in the different churches I visit, and I find myself asking, “My friend, how many years have you been in the Church? How long have you been striving to draw near to God?” And they say, “Since I was a child.” You were there at fifteen or twenty or thirty, and now you are eighty or ninety. Where are the fruits? Where are the fruits? At forty you say, “I am not doing well because I am still young.” At fifty you say, “I am not doing well because I am middle-aged.” But if the thread of your life is cut there, what will you have to show? How is your character changing? Do you understand these things, live them, and put them into action? Panic at twenty, and panic at ninety. Anxiety at thirty, and insecurity at seventy. We often say in the Church that the Church is a place of healing, a hospital where a person comes to get well. Suppose I have injured my leg. I go to an orthopedic doctor and spend one week in the hospital, then two, three, four, but I do not get better. Months pass, and still I do not get better. Someone who sees me will say, “Either you are not following the treatment your doctor prescribed, or something is wrong with this hospital. What is going on? You have been here four months, and you still cannot move your leg. Nothing has changed.” So when we call the Church a place of healing, a hospital, we expect something to happen there. We expect change and spiritual growth. Someone who sees you should be able to say, “This is the change wrought by the right hand of the Most High.” The hand of God has touched this person, changed him, transformed him, given him new life. He was one way and has become another. He was a wolf and is becoming a sheep; he was a hawk and is becoming a dove. He was irritable, nervous, demanding, difficult, and harsh; now he is becoming gentle, compassionate, kind, and calm. Where do we see that? This is the heart of Christian spiritual life, the heart of Christ’s message for our lives. I think we need to feel that God is our Father and to feel His love. Let that love move us and transform us, giving us the desire to change and to live all the other virtues the Lord calls us to, but not as rules for good behavior. Rather, He asks: do you feel that God is your Father? What will then come from within you? You will grow peaceful and still. You will forgive others, and you will forgive yourself, too, though you are always scolding yourself. You will come to love yourself as well. You will feel that “the earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness.” You live on God’s earth, so you are safe wherever you go. Whatever situation arises, God has sent it. Remember Christ’s words about trust: not even a little bird falls to the ground unless God allows it. So God allowed what happened in your home the other day. But Christ did not say this just so we could read it in books and repeat His words. What good is repeating them if they never leave the page and enter my life? That is the point. And that is what another person needs to see to understand what makes our Orthodox faith and our love different, and how they affect his life. There was an elderly man in Athens whom Saint Paisios of the Holy Mountain spoke about; his spoken comments were later put into books. This man lived in Patissia, a crowded part of Athens, among apartment buildings, traffic, and working people who labored hard. He used to say, “No one ever came here to ask me difficult spiritual questions. No one asked me to explain the decisions of an Ecumenical Council or deep, difficult theological ideas. They came for encouragement. They wanted to know how to bear life and its pain, how to look at things, how to wake up in the morning and say ‘Good morning’ and truly feel that the day was good. A day is a beautiful thing. Life is a beautiful thing. They wanted to go to work, reach the nearby train station, stamp their ticket, and feel glad: ‘I am stamping a ticket to enter life today. I am alive, and I am going to work with meaning and purpose.’ That,” he said, “is what people asked of me. I have been here thirty or forty years, and they have never asked me to explain deep, difficult theological matters, worthy of respect though those matters are.” I think what people ask of us today is the lived faith we lack, the love of Christ that we do not yet have. We have the truth, but we do not live it. We have the truth, but we present it in words and arguments. We debate and quarrel, while the other person asks me, “But do you love me?” Once I stopped in the street to speak with a Jehovah’s Witness. As our conversation went on, I felt I knew more than he did on some points and could defeat him in the argument. I will not hide it from you: I was a little pleased with myself. I thought, “Two or three more moves and it is checkmate. I have won.” But then I wondered what good that would do. So I said to him, “Do you really want to understand these things? Are you open to moving beyond where you are and seeing God’s truth with humility and love? Let us look past our argument and face the death that will come for both of us.” With a steady step. Christ’s teaching is not a matter of quarrels. It is not a matter of tension or bloodshed. It is a matter of love and truth, which will enter our flesh and blood and come forth as a spiritual fragrance. “You are the fragrance of Christ,” Scripture says. “You are a letter of Christ,” it says. Someone looks at you and reads Christ in you. They read His word. They read His character. His manner. His example. But not just on the lips. Words, words, words. Sermons, sermons, philosophy, teaching. This is what children say to their mothers. Your son has said it to you too, yet you do it again, and he says, “Please stop preaching at me. I cannot bear another sermon.” Christ did not preach in the way I preach. He Himself was God made visible in the flesh. Can you be that? Can you make God visible in the way you live? You might be peeling an orange, and someone asks, “What is happening here?” “What do you mean? I am peeling an orange.” “Yes, but there is such a fragrance.” “That is the orange.” “It is not the orange. It is you. There is a spirit about you, a holiness.” Someone said something like that about Saint Paisios of the Holy Mountain. He saw him peeling an orange and felt God’s grace wash over him, without a word being spoken. Imagine bringing that into your home. I am not speaking here about people whom God has called and gifted, and who have the responsibility to teach theology and the faith. They are right to do so, and they should. I am speaking to you at home, who want to help your child, your neighbor, your husband, or your wife come to feel these things. Let us move beyond theories and live our faith. You might say, “But is that not what you are doing now? Talking about theories?” Yes, I am doing the same thing. That is what I am doing now: giving teachings. And when people get to know the one who teaches, they see the falsehood, the performance, the hypocrisy. I’m speaking about myself. Quite a few people have told me, “You say such beautiful things on the radio, but when someone meets you, you have no time for me. You don’t pay attention to my problems or help me.” “You’re right,” I say. “You’re right.” That’s how it is. Of course, there is a small difference: at home, you live with four or five people, and you have another twenty or thirty relatives. But when someone speaks and a great many people listen to him, tell me, whom can he attend to first? You? Many others came before you. They are already waiting their turn, hoping he will spend a long time speaking with them. And there are people he has known for years; he cannot simply abandon them to speak with you, a newcomer and a stranger. Isn’t that so? The game—that is why I tell you—the game and the struggle are where you are. Right there. At home, with the people you have regular contact with in daily life, who see you as you see them. When the door and windows of the house are shut and we are alone, there is no performance or pretense there. That is where we are ourselves. Anger, well... Someone once told me about an elderly priest in a church who was speaking with a man and had become a little angry. A young person was sitting in a nearby stall, but the priest had not noticed him. When the priest saw him, he turned and said, “You’re here? I didn’t see you. I’m sorry. Forgive me.” You see, that priest was an ordinary human being too. He felt at ease with someone and spoke sharply. He got angry, regained his balance, made peace with the man, and apologized. That is life. Real life is behind the display window. It is where you sit down to eat together, leave the dishes out, and someone gets irritated and says, “The icons, my child—pick up your plate here. You’ve left crumbs. Wash the dishes properly, don’t step like that, and put your life in order.” That is the friction of daily life. That is where Christianity is present, or absent. Christ is such a great gift to us, such a blessing and such a cause for gratitude. He spoke to us so simply that even children understand. His love is clear in the way He entered our daily lives and our homes right beside the plates we ate from, at the tables where we drank, on the roads we walked, in the shops people visited, and on the shore where they gathered their fish. In the squares where people gathered to hear His teaching, God entered our lives in this simple, beautiful way, bringing us too into an everyday, lived experience of Him. This is a great source of rest, happiness, and balance. That is why I once said to a young man who asked me, “Isn’t it true? I got married, and somehow I feel I’m missing out on many things, while you who are dedicated to God, who have not married and are like the monks on the Holy Mountain and elsewhere—the nuns and monks—are better off.” I told him, “Can I tell you something? After quite a few years of limited experience, I think what matters most is where there is sincerity and truth.” “There you are with your little children, changing the babies’ diapers, shopping for them, going to the supermarket for baby food, waiting in line. You are about to lose your temper, but you show patient endurance. It’s two in the afternoon, and you still have to get to the school, sort out the car, get to the gas station, attend to your wife, and pay the bills you owe. If you do all this calmly, with effort and patient endurance, with honesty in the way you live, then you are in a much better position than I am if all I have is theory and words. Don’t envy me. Don’t stop at the outward appearance. Hold on to what you are doing; it is something very beautiful, though of course it tires you. I understand that life has worn you out and that you sometimes think others have it easier. But that is not always so. You, too, are doing well; you are in a very good place.” And of course the monk, the person dedicated to God, and the priest are doing well when they truly attend to the central points, the very heart of Christ’s teaching, to its truth, and do not waste their time and the strength of their souls on pointless matters, arguments, complaints, commotion, and turmoil of the soul, becoming troubled and troubling others. And that is very beautiful. That is why I think of a monk on the Holy Mountain who, when a conversation was about to turn in the guest room where visitors came... to gossip and idle curiosity, the sort of talk that mostly satisfies the intellect. He said, “Well, my friends, I have some work in the garden. I’m going there now. Stay or leave as you like, but I’m going out to the garden.” He preferred to handle mud, soil, roots, thorns, tomatoes, and whatever else they had planted, rather than sit through supposedly spiritual talk that merely fed curiosity, habit, and the wish to stand out and say something clever. Live your faith. Leave the talk and live. Stop speaking and start living. Do what you say you teach. When I was young, I stayed at a monastery where a visitor snored so loudly that it seemed the doors along the whole floor were rattling. They had given him a room to himself; perhaps the monk looking after him knew from earlier visits how loudly he snored. I was four rooms away and could still hear him. I went into the corridor to find the source, listening at one door after another until I reached his room. The sound was astonishingly loud. The next day, in the monastery guest room, after having some bread rings, coffee, and the other things they had served, that gentleman said to a monk, “Father, may I ask you something? Is the uncreated light... Bluish, yellowish, or white?” I looked at him and thought, “Ah, he’s the one who snored.” You might ask what his snoring has to do with anything, since he had a problem. Is snoring wrong? Of course not; I say this partly in jest. But discussing the uncreated light while sitting in a comfortable room, with your mouth full of bread rings and coffee and an easy life in general, is very different from someone struggling in a cave or in the arena of life. If he does not see the uncreated light, he sees the uncreated grace of Christ in his heart, giving him patient endurance, love, courage, and strength to get through life. I prefer the latter to the former, who comes to settle questions that have no bearing on our everyday lives. Yet our living faith, a faith we are meant to experience, sometimes becomes a subject for debate and quarrels. When Saint Spyridon had to show something, it was as though he said, “We will not leave this entirely to teaching,” valuable though teaching is, because it helps the human mind understand. “Now you will see it in action.” He took a brick and said, “Look. See.” This was a saint speaking from experience: fire rose from the brick, water fell from it, and earth remained in his hand. I tell you this because the saint did not stop at theory. He showed it in action. Can you show me what you say you believe? A child might say to his mother, “You care so much about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, yet you shout at everyone at home. You cannot speak kindly to any of us. Then you tell me, ‘Holy Trinity, Most Holy Trinity, O God, have mercy on us and save us.’ But how can you speak of the Holy Trinity when you do not accept what it means?” She says, “I’ll strike you! How dare you insult me? I hold the Holy Trinity above everything!” Yes, but the Holy Trinity is a doctrine, a teaching, a truth that begins with a reality. The reality came first, and the teaching followed. What does it mean? The three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—love one another beyond measure. They are one in essence, one in nature. Each is reflected in the others; each wills what the others will. They dwell in one another, while each remains distinct in perfect unity. The Father is distinct from the Son, and the Holy Spirit is distinct from both. They share the same nature, yet each has His own personal properties. Now let us take that theology and live it. In a Christian home that teaches what it believes, each person should feel deeply connected to the others, as in the Holy Trinity, yet also free and distinct. Each should give the others room to breathe and to be themselves. The Father does not make the Son into the Father. He receives Him as the Son, and likewise the Holy Spirit. But you press down on your child like a steamroller. You want to draw your child entirely into yourself, to swallow him up, to cling to him and drain him of everything he has, of all his strength. You do not let him go out into life, stand on his own feet, disagree with you, or show that he, too, has a personality. There is the person before you, yet you do not let him feel that he is a person who can say something without being crushed. So the great truths we believe—the doctrines, the teachings of the Ecumenical Councils, their definitions and decisions—should not be words that come easily from our mouths. They should emerge, through pain, blood, tears, and sweat, from our lives, our actions, our experience, and our everyday conduct. Thank you. Saint Sergius of Radonezh in Russia was once asked what he would call his monastery. He said, “I will name it for the Holy Trinity, so that the fathers here may be deeply united, yet each distinct, each different, each free, each a person in his own right.” The Holy Trinity has this unity and a love beyond the grasp of the human mind. We cannot truly comprehend what God is like or exactly what we mean when we speak of Him. We approach it only faintly—if we can even call it an approach. Whatever we grasp is very little. So he was saying, “The Holy Trinity lives in this way, and I want us to live this way too: together and distinct. Loving, but without crushing one another or making everyone the same. You will have your own personality, your gifts, your freedom, and the respect due to you. At the same time, when I hurt, you will hurt; when you hurt, I will hurt. You will understand what I love and want to love it too. You will step beyond yourself to understand my thoughts.” That is it. Does someone visiting your home see this in your life? Do they see this love that reaches beyond the self: this sharing, compassion, gentleness, and understanding? If they do—and I believe they see it in you— they are moved and filled with admiration. What you have draws them toward you. They say, “I like what comes from you. You do not push me away or prick me like a cactus when I touch you. I feel good in your company.” Our time is up. You can find two books as MP3 recordings to listen to in your car. One is called “Strengthen Your Soul,” and the other, “Love Forever.” If you’d like to write to me at the program’s email address, please keep it to five lines, so I can manage to read your message and everyone else’s. In that way, we can live out the love of the Holy Trinity. Our circle has many more than three persons, of course. Send your five lines to atheata.perasmata@yahoo.gr. Vasilis Hatzinikolaou will play our final piece of music, and I’ll say goodbye and leave you to think about what we’ve discussed. Forgive me for taking another hour of your life. Have you ever thought about how many hours we’ve spent together? You have. You wrote to me, deeply moved, and said, ‘Father, though you don’t know me, I want you to know how many nights you’ve kept me company.’ It is an honor. Thank you so much. I embrace you. If you are suffering, I embrace you twice as warmly. I pray that God will fill the vessel of your heart and soul with His inexhaustible grace, love, and patient endurance, and place His Resurrection in your heart, so that you can endure and come through life victorious. Everything will pass. Everything will pass, and all will be well. Vasilis, thank you very much, and thank you all. Until we meet again, I pray that we will be closer to God, closer to His truth, and closer to His love. Goodbye, my dear friends.