My dear friends, thank you so much for being there on time again today, waiting for me. I was waiting for you too. And, with God's help, here we are together for this lovely meeting, both of us keeping our appointment. I want to share a few thoughts with you today, prompted by... Well, a friend of mine traveled from the provinces to Athens, and this is what happened to him: he mixed up his suitcase on the bus and took the wrong one. He took a migrant's suitcase. Both suitcases were black. “I took someone else's,” he told me. “I got home, opened it, and found different clothes and different things.” We called the bus company, went back, exchanged the suitcases, and each took his own. “Thankfully,” he said. Then he added, “The journey was much better the last time, because I came with hardly any luggage. I had only a small bag with me, a backpack. I could go wherever I wanted easily, without mix-ups like this. It really is nice to travel light. It saves you a lot of trouble.” That stayed with me, and I thought I would bring it into the things we talk about on this program. It really is good to travel through life with little baggage, without carrying so many useless things that burden you, tire you, make you anxious, wear you down, and weigh on you in the end. And I want to connect this with the opportunity the Church gives us at different times of the year, and every Wednesday and Friday. Whenever we want to prepare to receive Holy Communion, fasting is part of that preparation. There is Great Lent before Pascha, the Nativity Fast, the Dormition Fast in August, and the Apostles' Fast. Whenever a person wishes and is able to take part in these opportunities for fasting that the Church gives us, remember what my friend from the provinces said: “It is nice to travel light.” The less you have in your suitcase, the more freely you can move. And I think that when you carry less inside you as well, when you do not load your body with so much unnecessary, fatty, harmful food, it is easier to move. Physically, your shape changes, you gain weight, and you can feel unwell after eating too much. Spiritually, too, you lose... clarity of spirit. You lose clarity of thought and the freedom of movement your nous, your spiritual intellect, has when you need to make a decision. You cannot think clearly. You get bogged down, as though your thoughts have turned to mud. You grow drowsy and sluggish; you feel bloated and sleepy, with no energy to do anything. You lose the sense of well-being a fasting person has. Fasting is a great opportunity for spiritual growth, a way to discover just how strong you are. Fasting reveals your strength. It reveals your hidden gifts and the powers of your soul and body, which cannot show themselves when we keep feeding the body more and more and never let it show us what it can do with less fuel. The body can do a great deal with less. It has that capacity. This is a wonderful opportunity, and some people try it not only, I repeat, during the great fasting seasons, but on other days of the year as well, so that their nous may grow clear. You can feel it and say, “My thoughts have cleared.” It is one thing to go to bed with a heavy stomach, and quite another to turn your heart toward prayer and listen within yourself for the voice of God. You cannot hear it amid all that churning and boiling food that has overwhelmed you. You cannot hear that gentle voice of God, which comes to bodies trained in ascesis, in ascetic discipline, and to minds and a nous formed by self-control and fasting. As the saying goes, “A fat belly does not produce a subtle nous.” In other words, it is hard for your nous to become perceptive while your belly grows fat. The body cannot keep growing heavier while the soul grows finer. It is difficult. Body and soul are connected, after all. You will feel this in your own life. What happens in the soul is not separate from what happens in the body. So there is strength, clarity, and vitality. You have energy when you do not eat too much and when you fast. Mind you, I am talking about simple meals. I am not talking about starving yourself. Eat a little more simply, a little more plainly, without piling too much on your plate. I did not say you should never eat your fill. I did not say we should collapse from hunger, turn pale, become exhausted, or suffer severe physical symptoms. No. Eat a little less, just a little, so that you are somewhere between hunger and fullness. “I have eaten enough, though I could eat more. But I am fine as I am.” That is a good point of alertness and energy. Then it becomes easier to concentrate and direct your strength somewhere. You can say, “I can read now because I have eaten, but I have eaten only a little. I can read a book. I can think about something that concerns me. I have not eaten until I am stuffed, because then I only want to sleep. I cannot think. All the blood seems to go to my stomach, my brain feels starved of oxygen, and I cannot work through problems or deal with serious questions in my life.” It is a great thing to look at a piece of cheese in front of you and leave it untouched. You might say, “Here I am, and there is the cheese. What is the relationship between us? What does it give me? Pleasure, strength, joy, delight. But does the cheese itself give me these things, or does it bring out a joy that is already within me?” And that is exactly it: this joy is within me. The joy I feel when I eat something is not contained in the food. It is within me. The food gives my body, my soul, and my mood a lift, but the food itself is only the occasion. So during a fast, what do I say to myself? “Let me find another way to feel as I do when I eat a lot,” but without eating a lot... “Let me find a way to feel the joy I feel when I eat cheese, eggs, meat, fish, and the rest. How can I feel that joy without eating those foods? Let me find another source of joy.” That is what fasting does. It turns you toward the first source of the happiness, pleasure, and delight you find in food. It helps you see that the source is God, who has placed sweetness in food and awakens the sweetness already within you. If you go directly to God and find sweetness in Him, if you turn to the love of your brothers and sisters, if you make peace with someone close to you, and love, care for, and draw near to that person and connect with them, you can feel so satisfied, so full of sweetness, that you do not want to eat. You have already found what you were seeking from food. Remember, we do not eat only to stay alive. Often we eat to have a good time, to find pleasure and enjoyment. In fact, we are looking to food for something our soul needs. We seek a sense of well-being, calm, and peace. Someone says, for example, “I have a little wine and I relax.” And we can say, “How can I find other ways to relax without drinking or eating?” Through love. Sometimes you have had to go to the hospital for someone you love, and suddenly you find yourself running around for hours each day on their behalf. At that moment you give everything you have. You say, “I love this person very much. They mean so much to me.” I run to the pharmacy, speak to the doctors, go up and down the floors, find people, ask what is going to happen. And how do I feel? I am not hungry. Something within me gives me strength and keeps me going, because I have a purpose, a deeply important and sacred purpose: this person I love. Love can even cover over hunger. Love and devotion to a sacred purpose that gives life meaning can give me what I was seeking from food. That is why many young people, when they are doing something meaningful that fills their lives, can forget to eat. A student sits at the computer, and the hours go by. Perhaps they have found a game, a program, or something online connected with their studies. They become absorbed in learning and are so happy that they forget to come to the table. Someone calls, “Come and eat.” “In a minute. You start without me; I will be there.” The others finish. “Leave mine; I will eat it later.” Hours pass, and the student eats the meal cold, completely cold, and does not even feel like eating much. Something else has filled their life. So, you see, it is not really food you are looking for. What is missing is meaning in life: meaning with substance, meaning that reaches your soul, your heart, your feelings, and your understanding, and lets you see the beauty of life. Then food has its proper place as a support, and that saying begins to make sense: we eat to live; we do not live to eat. We eat to live, and we have other things to sustain us inwardly. So do not be surprised by people who turn to food. They are seeking love and security. They want something to wrap around themselves, something to cover them. What they really long for is a person's embrace, the embrace of God. When they cannot find that, a thick layer of fat from food wraps around them instead. Many doctors who work with nutrition say that people often eat for reasons other than hunger. They eat because of what is happening inside them. They want to feel affection, a kiss, a little joy on their lips and in their hearts, the warmth of an embrace. They look for it in food. Food enters the mouth and pleases the tongue, the palate, the lips, the whole mouth. It goes down the throat into the stomach and then becomes fat that covers the body. In the end, you cover yourself with something that harms your health. But if you had found love, warmth, meaning, comfort, tenderness, and kindness, eating a great deal would not matter so much to you. A little would be enough. A young woman once told me about breaking up with someone she loved. “Afterward,” she said, “I went through so many chocolates.” The love she had known was sweet, and she had lost that sweetness. So what could she do when she wanted sweetness in her life again and could not find it? “I found a bag of chocolates,” she said. “I miss the sweetness I felt inside, so I will get it from these.” It is an illusion, a substitute, a deception, a lie that gives you pleasure for a moment. Soon you have eaten them, and then you say, “Why did I do that? Let us see what I weigh tomorrow.” You step on the scale. The number has not gone down, so you give the scale a kick as if it were to blame. It becomes a vicious circle. You feel disappointed and turn to food again. Many Christians struggle with things like this, whether you have noticed it or not. I read the emails I receive. So many come in every day, every month, all year long—countless emails, quite literally—and some are about this very thing. “Father, I’m terribly upset because I can’t control my hunger. I’m so disappointed in myself because I keep gaining weight. I’m very sad because I’ve put on fifteen kilos recently.” By “recently,” they mean over the last few months. It happens gradually. But once you start down that road... So the answer is not simply to stop eating or to give up pleasure. It is to find true pleasure. A person cannot live without something that fills the heart, brings joy, and offers comfort. That is what we mean by paraklesis, comfort for the soul: something within me that gives me the strength to endure life, a vision ahead of me, a reason to live that brings sweetness to my heart. Then I can say, “Keep going. This is what you’re living for. There is this, and there is that.” And it gives you strength. If you do not have that, you will look somewhere for comfort. That is why one person eats, another drinks, and another falls into harmful habits. They suffer, and it is hard for them to stop. Never simply tell someone, “Stop eating. Stop drinking.” Give them what will help them stop—above all, love. Saint Paisios of the Holy Mountain says something beautiful. He says that babies who did not nurse at their mother’s breast, and so did not take in her love along with her milk—the love in her eyes, her embrace, her lullaby, the scent of her body, her hands, her hair, and her touch—those children who were never filled will always be thirsty. And because they were not filled with their mother’s milk, they often go looking for bottles: bottles of alcohol, bottles containing other substances, anything they can take in through the mouth. They fall into harmful habits, drugs, and suffering. What they are really seeking is a mother’s tenderness, a caress, some comfort. Food truly does offer comfort, but it is not the comfort they are longing for. It gives a moment’s release, a brief feeling of excitement, but it does not reach deep into the soul. Food cannot fill your life with meaning; you can see that afterward it may even cause you trouble. Besides, so many illnesses today begin with what we eat. Remember the last time you went to the doctor? “What are your eating habits?” the doctor asked. You answered, and the doctor said, “You need to cut this out, and that as well.” Then you were given a list and left with five things you could eat. You thought, “What now? Am I going to fast all year?” Suddenly you find yourself fasting for medical reasons, rather than for the life of the Church. If you had learned to live a little more simply, as the Church invites you to do according to your strength, you would have been better prepared and healthier. You would not have reached that point. High cholesterol, high blood pressure... High uric acid, gout, pain in your lower back, extra weight that strains your spine. Then your bones ache. You cannot lift things or walk easily. One problem leads to another, and then come the pills. One pill conflicts with another, and you say, “I need to take this one, but I can’t because I’m already taking one for my heart.” Then the heart medication conflicts with the one for blood pressure. You struggle to find a balance, a difficult balance, because the balance you had at the beginning is gone. We made mistakes early on, and what are we paying for now? We end up suffering. They once did an experiment with animals in a zoo. They gave some of the animals a little less food—just a little less. They were fed slightly less than usual. As I said, slightly; I am not talking about going without food altogether. They observed that the animals eating a little less lived longer and had better health and energy. That is a good thing, shown in the experiment. Try it if you wish, if your health and your strength allow it. But believe me, sometimes you underestimate yourself and say, “I can’t do that,” when you are capable of a great deal. You really are. When I said, “If your strength allows it,” perhaps you thought, “Good, I’m glad he said that, because my strength really doesn’t allow it.” All right, perhaps it doesn’t. But are you quite sure? Or do you only think so? Could it be that you have come to believe you are weak? You have convinced yourself, “I can’t.” But what is it you cannot do? Do you know what you are doing? You are underestimating yourself. You are failing to see that you can hope for something, look forward to something, recognize your gifts, and find strength in yourself. Why can’t you do it? Even young children can. Why not you? If you truly cannot, then that settles it. Follow your doctor’s advice; your health comes first. There may be an ascetic in a monastery, burning with divine love, who says, “I do not care what the doctors say. Where God wills, the order of nature is overcome. I will keep my fast. Let the doctors say what they like. I will eat as the Church teaches, even if I die.” If you have such faith, then examine it within yourself through humility and prayer, in conversation with your spiritual father, and through honest self-knowledge, so you can understand what is true. Otherwise... You can keep some kind of fast. You can make an effort. You can do it; do not be afraid. You will be all right. There was once a man of seventy-five walking with his wife. They came to a garden and would have had to go all the way around to reach another place. He said, “Come on, let’s jump over this little wall and take a shortcut.” He went to jump over it, and he could have done it easily. He felt the desire and the strength. But his wife said, “What are you doing, dear?” “I’m going to jump over the wall.” “But you’re seventy-five!” “Oh yes,” he said, “you’re right. I’m seventy-five.” So he did not jump, because he started thinking about his age. His body was capable of it, but a thought stopped him in his tracks: “You can’t.” He listened to his wife, though in fact he could have done it. Sometimes we come to believe these things: “I’m too old now. I’m ill now. I can’t do that anymore.” We say it over and over, and we come to like believing it. It gives us an excuse. We take on the role of someone worn down, sick, frail, and suffering, and we do nothing. That is your choice, but then you move to the sidelines of life. You anchor yourself there and afterward feel sad, asking, “What am I doing with my life? I’m retired from it.” But you chose that place. Do you want to make an effort? Take one step. Try. Live simply, with love, humility, and forgiveness alongside your fasting. Fasting on its own does not help. After all, most religions, spiritual teachings, great teachers, and ancient philosophers have spoken about fasting. But I do not know whether they stressed what the Lord, our Christ, stressed: fast, yes, but also love; fast, but also forgive. Do it with joy, rather than as a chore or a torment. It is a gift you offer yourself. It is a way of respecting your body, of saying to it, “My dear body, you carry me everywhere, and I love you. Thank you. I will show my love by giving you what you need, without overburdening you, making you sick, or filling you with things that harm you.” Is that not a great gift to our bodies? When someone goes through, say, forty days of fasting, or eats on Wednesday and fasts on Friday, are they not caring for their body? Are they not caring for their body? A doctor, a highly respected dietitian, once told me that your body thanks you when you give it a rest, and offers you health in return, like an antidoron—a gift given back. The body settles down right away, he said. After a time of simple eating, fasting, self-control, and care with your food, you have blood tests and see the results return to healthy levels. Your body has answered you. What did it say? “Thank you.” And the thanks it gives you is health and a longer life. Let us not put everything on God and say, “We’ll live as long as God wants. Let’s eat whatever we please, and God will take care of it. We’ll live as long as He wants.” God enlightens doctors, and they tell us that what we are eating is harming us. What do you mean, “as long as God wants”? God has told you. Through your doctor, God has told you that you eat far too many things that harm you. You have overdone it. You cannot sleep on your stomach or turn onto your side; you cannot fit through the door, get into a car, or drive. Your belly cannot be pressed against the steering wheel when you have no room to move the seat farther back. At that point you cannot just say, “God will take care of it; whatever the good Lord wills.” The good Lord is telling you, “My child, do you want to climb mountains—the mountains of the Pindus range, and the mountains of love, life, virtue, and meaning? You will climb them when you carry less.” I liked something I read in the Evergetinos about ships in earlier times, when people lived more simply than we do today. In a great storm, when the ships were in danger of sinking, they threw overboard whatever was heavy and unnecessary. Sacks went into the sea so the ships could be lighter. But as we said, fasting must go together with love. To fast and love at the same time is a great thing. Fast and forgive, so that your prayer may be heard. Otherwise, it will not be heard. If you fast but are not reconciled with others, you will not see the spiritual fruit. You may enjoy better health, and that is another matter. But if you seek spiritual fruit with Christ’s help, you must also love. Let me give you an example while I am speaking to you. Right now, at this very moment, is something upsetting you? If you answer with complete honesty, I think that as you listen to me and we speak together, nothing is troubling you right now. But give yourself a minute to think about unpleasant things that happened at home, with relatives, or with people you cannot stand, and you will find plenty. Do you know where you will find them? By digging into the past. That is where you find hatred, malice, revenge, bitterness, pain, and a heart that refuses to forgive. You dig into the past and say to me, “Yes, I’m fine while I’m listening to you now, but do you know what happened last night? Do you know what happened a week ago with my neighbor? Or last year with my brother and my relatives?” Listen to what you are saying. It happened last year, yesterday, an hour ago, this morning—even if it happened quite recently. But at this moment, while we are speaking, it is not happening. So when you refuse to forgive or love, when you refuse to build bridges with others, you choose to stay among those past events. You live with memories and will not let them... fade and pass away. Instead, you bring them back like ghosts. We could make the sign of the Cross and say, “It’s over; it has passed,” but we keep talking about it. The more we talk about it, the more we keep it alive, instead of letting it go and allowing the light of Christ to come and wash it away. That is what happens when you hold unforgiveness in your soul. You could say, “Whatever you did to me, let it go. It has passed.” When you say, “It has passed,” it is as though you cut the thread tying you to the past. You say, “Those things are behind us. Let them go. Right now, you are doing nothing to me. Yesterday you insulted me, wronged me, and slandered me. At this moment you are not slandering me. It is in the past. I let it go, and I look ahead to Christ, to hope, and to love, which looks forward.” Imagine if Christ kept searching through our past, bringing old wrongs back to life. He would have condemned us all. Is that not what the Psalm says? “If You, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” Lord, if You kept account of our faults, who could bear it? Who could bear it? We could not endure that. Does the Lord keep bringing up the past and say, “My child, what was all that you did?” When the prodigal son returned, you saw that his father did not dig into the past, because it had passed. It was as though he said, “My child, I see something else before me now. I see a child who has repented.” The past was wiped away. There were your tears, your metanoia—your repentance—the love and the embrace that everyone shared. What happens from here on? If you want to live without poisoning yourself, remember that holding a grudge poisons you. You cannot get those people out of your head. You keep thinking of them with dislike and wishing them harm. The person hurt most is you: you become a spring of poison. You suffer, you torment yourself, and you keep the harm alive. That is why Christ says, before the fast... Forgive. Forgive others their sins, and God will forgive yours. Forgive them; that person is your brother. He was weak, and yes, he did wrong. I am not asking you to say he was right. He may have been very wrong indeed. You may be entirely in the right. None of it may be your fault. All right. That still does not mean you cannot forgive him. You can say within yourself, “I am right, but I forgive him.” Holding on to malice will not bring you justice. May we manage to let go of that hold the past has on us. Don’t live back there among old hurts. You become upset, sink into sadness, and weep. Someone says, “I haven’t spoken to a certain person for three years.” Three years! Has nothing changed in your heart all that time? Could you open it just a little? What good would it do to tell that person to fast? Above all, this is what he needs to work on. Fasting could even harm him if it makes him proud of himself. He says, “At least I fast.” What kind of fasting is that? Better to eat a steak on a fasting day and go say you’re sorry. But he says, “No, I can’t apologize. I’ll just fast.” What is that? Christ fasted, and when He came down from the mountain, He showed love. He did not come with the force of authority or the power of the fist. He came with the power of love. Then He swept away the demons. He drove them all out, along with pain, sickness, despair, paralysis of soul and body, and blindness of soul and body. And it began with the Lord’s forty days of fasting. I’ve been to the Mount of Temptation. I don’t know whether you’ve visited that place near Jerusalem. It’s beautiful. You climb to the place where the Lord fasted. It is a desolate place, without human comfort. There, we are told, He prayed, rejoiced in communion with God, and prepared to go out into the world and begin His work of transforming people and telling us how much God loves us. He came in a lean body, shaped by a simple and ascetic life, and no one could fault Him for that. Later, of course, they accused Him of eating with tax collectors and sinners and visiting their homes. But the Lord did not go there for the food, and He certainly did not eat greedily. He shared a meal with them as a human being, and through it all He showed love. So I pray that each of us will make an effort. I pray that you will recognize the strength you have within you. Some spiritual fathers tell people who come to confession, “If you have a problem in your life, try fasting for three days. On the third day, when you wake up, ask God for help and pray. Then see which way your thoughts incline. Perhaps the course that comes through most clearly is God’s will for what you want to do.” To discern it, though, practice some self-restraint. This prepares you to receive the divine voice. You clear the ears and eyes of your soul, and then you see more clearly. You say, “Lord, I’m setting food aside. My attention isn’t on eating now; it’s on You.” Tell your soul and your body, “Come, let’s set food aside and listen to what God will tell us. Let’s eat less for three days. Lord, I will wait.” Some eat a little. Some eat nothing. Others can manage one day without food and eat more simply on the other two. Each person does what they can. And don’t concern yourself with whether I fast, whether someone else fasts, or how much. That is not your concern. “Who are you to judge another’s servant?” Who gave you that responsibility? If you were sitting here eating souvlaki on a fasting day, I would have no right to judge you. If I knew you, I might say, “My friend, perhaps don’t eat it so openly right now. Everyone can see you, it’s Holy Week, and it might trouble someone or give rise to a troubling thought.” But I would not judge your deeper motives. Fasting is a free choice. It is not something forced on you against your will, with someone saying, “You will fast, whether you like it or not.” I don’t think God wants that. Fast if you want to, as you are able. And if you eat, at least thank God. If it is a fasting season and you are eating meat because you cannot fast, thank Him. Say, “My Lord, I thank and glorify You. Others are fasting because they can, but I cannot, so I am eating meat, steak, and eggs. Thank You.” Gratitude to God for His gifts is itself a step forward. Thank God. The person who fasts must not condemn the person who does not, or become proud. Because... God will assess each person’s struggle and what each of us has done. We do not give ourselves the final judgment. I can say many things about myself, but God will tell me which of my actions were right. So I hope things go well for you. I pray that you overcome the temptations that come with food. You were right when you once told me, “It isn’t quite as you say. Church fasting sometimes makes you gain weight instead of losing it. I’ve been eating rusks, bread, pasta, tahini soup, and tahini pies.” “And potatoes. Those foods can make you gain weight, because you eat so much and can’t stop,” he told me. If you read a little about the science, you can see why he says that: the glucose and insulin rise caused by eating a lot of starch can leave us wanting more food afterward. It can be hard to restrain yourself, and that does not make you a bad person. Keep that in mind. You told me you had been reading the Paraklesis, the supplicatory canon, because you thought demons were making you so hungry. “I ate pasta,” you said, “then more and more, until I had emptied the pot. I thought demons were making me hungry.” That is not necessarily what is happening. I’ve read about this; these are not ideas I invented. A piece of chicken or fish with a little salad, for example, can keep you satisfied for hours. People call these foods slow burning. Bread, pasta, and sweets, on the other hand, can raise your blood glucose and insulin quickly, and then you may want to eat again soon. And you keep eating. A friend of mine who had gained eighteen kilos told me about it. “How did that happen, my friend? Why such a change?” I asked. He said, “During Great Lent I found a wonderful nut wholesaler. I bought bags like the ones they serve alongside whisky in bars. I’d sit with a bag in the afternoon, start eating, and have no idea why I couldn’t stop.” I told him, “I’ve had the same temptation, so I looked into it. Nuts contain a substance called tryptophan.” “What is that?” he asked. I said, “It’s in nuts, and once you start eating them, you find it hard to stop.” That, I thought, explained why you open a packet of cashews or peanuts intending to have just a few, then don’t know when to stop. You aren’t a bad person. Think of boiled eggs, for example. If someone said, “Eat as many boiled eggs as you can this afternoon,” you might manage one, two, three, or four, but then you would say, “I can’t eat any more. I’m full.” Protein helps you feel satisfied, while starchy foods may not satisfy you in the same way. You may feel full at first and then become hungry again. So this does not make you a bad person. That is how our bodies work. We need some understanding, a sense of measure, and a good mix of foods: starches, plant proteins, salads, fruit, and sweets in moderation. Then we can make the effort to fast, receive its fruits, and be benefited in the end. We don’t want someone to finish Great Lent and say, “Did you hear? I gained ten kilos this Lent, but I fasted!” All right, it is right to fast, to be healthy and balanced, to glorify God, and to grow in prayer, love, and generosity toward others. You told me that during fasting days you save what you would have spent on soft drinks. Someone else said, “I smoke fewer cigarettes, save the money I would have spent on packs, and give it to families in need in my parish, through a priest who distributes it. That way, I make a sacrifice too.” I said, “That’s good as well.” And what you told me about fasting from harsh words is good too. One man set himself the goal of not arguing with his wife throughout the fast. His wife set the same goal, but she could not keep it. After the first week she broke that fast. The husband managed to keep it. “I kept telling myself, ‘I won’t say anything that will start an argument. I’ll forgive her and act as though I didn’t hear,’” he said. “It was a real struggle. I would rather have been told to fast without oil. Sometimes my wife says things that make it very hard to hold back. I feel I have to answer because her words seem so unfair.” And he said, “I did a great deal of fasting this year.” The person who can bring it all together: fasting from certain foods, fasting from the passions, and restraint in every part of life. There is one thing we must never fast from. In love we should be rich and overflowing. Never fast from love. Always give love, and receive it from God and from people when they offer it. If they do not, that’s all right. You can still love. Don’t complain that others give you no love; fast from that complaint. No more complaining. Take responsibility for your life. No one is to blame for the way you are. Don’t keep saying, “I’m like this because they don’t love me, because they treated me unfairly.” If everyone always seems to wrong you and you are always complaining, fast from those complaints. Say, “I have no complaints.” My life. I am the one responsible, you will say. If I had found the source, which is God, and had learned to love, it would not trouble me whether others loved me or not. As it is, everything troubles me because I have not learned to love. Fasting is beautiful when we live it this way. The days pass well, and we rejoice in God’s presence. These are not wasted days, and what we are doing is not a deprivation. It is fullness, satisfaction, a wholehearted yes to life. It is something we enjoy, something that brings us joy. During that time I grow richer, not poorer. My life becomes more beautiful. I pray that you experience it this way. And to you, Vasilis Gatzinikolaou, thank you very much. Today, too, the musician and sound engineer for this program, composer, chanter, and all-around musician, Vasilis Gatzinikolaou, has given us his beautiful music. You can look for his CDs and find more information online. This program will also be available online in a few days; you will find where There is an email address, atheata.perasmata@yahoo.gr. We will speak again next time. I pray that you will be strong, enjoy your life, and give glory to God. May you wake up and say, “I know why I live. I know why I exist. I know who brought me into this world. I know that today, too, I live to love.” And I pray that fasting will lead you to love: that you will give things up so you can enjoy the love of God and of your brothers and sisters. May God give you strength. God be with us, and may the rest of our fast go well. Farewell.