We received so many calls and messages during that program we did once, if you remember, about guilt and remorse in our lives.

People called us—people like you—who felt overwhelmed by guilt and remorse. They wanted to share their own experiences of growing up burdened with guilt, surrounded by people who gave them very strange ideas about God. So today, if you agree, I thought we could continue

together on Unseen Passages, the station that speaks to our souls and tries to free them from guilt and remorse, and from the image of such a cruel God. We want to awaken in ourselves a sense of the God of love, as He was revealed to us in Jesus Christ. He came near us, touched us, ate with us, looked into our eyes, looked past our sins, and reached the heart of our souls. There He saw something that was truly His own, and that is why He loved us. Our Christ knows why we make mistakes in life, why we sin. So He does not burden us with unhealthy remorse or guilt that crushes the soul. Instead, He gives us the strength to

rise above ourselves, overcome our weaknesses, look toward His kingdom, and change our lives. That is the message: change our lives instead of remaining trapped in guilt. As we said, guilt can be a starting point. Once we realize that something is wrong in our lives, it can move us to admit our mistake and go forward.

You can write a few lines to the program’s email address—otherwise you’ll feel guilty for writing too much! Please, I can’t keep up with reading it all. Is there anything else? I’ve told you before: you deserve more than having someone read one letter from you. You deserve someone who will care about you for all eternity. You deserve more than five or ten minutes of my time. You deserve all the time there is.

You deserve everything. God gives you these things, and so do the people close to you, the people you share your life with. Don’t expect programs to solve your problems. Programs offer a little encouragement and help you think. They give you a push, and then you have to get in there and struggle. It’s like watching a cooking show on television. You don’t eat anything; you’re still hungry. You have to go and cook. They tell you, ‘Do this,’ and you say, ‘What a wonderful recipe! Look how the slice holds together without crumbling. It comes out perfectly.’ Well, yes—but did talking about it fill you up? Did you eat? Life is lived right where you are. Look around you now: at your desk, at the people beside you, at your home, at your clutter. Put things in order. What sort of rooms and kitchens do some people keep?

And what about some people’s closets? Forgive me; I’m not saying this to make you feel guilt or remorse. Remember, I don’t want you weighed down by that. Still, my friends, how do some people manage to live in a house like that, with no housekeeping at all? No, I don’t mean you. You’ve straightened things out. I mean other people, all right? Yes. And don’t you feel guilty about how many courses you still haven’t passed at university, how far behind you are? You even tell your parents your studies are going well, though you owe several semesters’ worth of courses. Oh, the guilt! But you, madam, don’t you feel guilty for secretly going to the university to ask about your child, finding out about their personal affairs, and embarrassing them? That’s

how tangled our lives are, in the end. We make mistakes with one another. But I haven’t given you the email address, and now I feel guilty. It’s atheata.perasmata@yahoo.gr. Vasilis Chatzinikolaou, the only innocent person on this program, is with us again.

You watched the video. We’ll continue today, and I don’t know whether there will be another program after this or whether we’ll cover everything. That will depend on your participation too. If you didn’t hear the first program we did about being freed from all that remorse and guilt, you can find it online. Listen to that one as well. It may help you understand what we mean. Now, someone who always feels guilty, is constantly unhappy with himself, and cannot make peace with himself needs to say:

‘I love myself despite my mistakes. My mistakes are not who I am. The mistakes I make are not who I am. They are careless actions, wrong choices, sins—but I am not my sin. I am a human being, a creature of God, and I love myself because Christ tells us, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love your neighbor, He says, as you love yourself. So I love myself. Even when I feel guilty, I try to keep loving myself, just as I love someone who is ill and wounded. A child with a fever is more than that fever. My child has a fever, but my child is not the fever. My child is someone else entirely.’

So I love my child, and I want to help my child recover from the fever. I love myself; I love my soul. I do not love my sin. I feel guilt and remorse because I am a sinner, and I try to overcome that condition, but I still love myself. If I do not, if I spend my whole life living with guilt as though it were my companion, I will not understand other people well either. I will blame them. I will hate them as I hate myself. Everything about them will seem wrong, just as everything about myself seems wrong. You’ll notice this. I’m not telling you to judge others or be unkind. But you will see that someone who continually finds fault with everyone around him does not love himself either, and then makes others feel guilty too. Someone who is unhappy with what he is doing

does it under pressure. He feels stifled and forced, takes no joy in it himself, and then makes others feel guilty about the way they live. Here is an example. If I fast at home and do so gladly, I can still be happy whatever the person beside me does. I might eat lentils while the person next to me has an omelet, a fried egg. Of course I would wish that he too might fast and find joy in that struggle, in self-control, discipline, and obedience to God’s commandment—all the beautiful things the Gospel and Holy Scripture teach. But I would want him to do it freely, if he chooses, when he chooses, and in his own way. I will not stifle him or make him feel guilty so that he will do it.

Often you see your child eating something else and say, ‘What are you doing, my child? Fire will come down and burn us up on a Friday!’ And the child asks, ‘Why would fire come down and burn us?’ ‘What are you eating? A pork chop? I made lentils today.’ ‘Fine,’ the child says, ‘since you made lentils, you eat them and leave me alone.’ Then an argument starts, and it turns into a struggle for power: who will win? The child is a child, rebellious, a young person going through adolescence and pushing back. All right—but what about you? Many children ask a question like this. I don’t know how they think of it, but they sense something. One says, ‘Deep down, are you perhaps jealous of what I’m doing? Do you actually enjoy eating lentils, Mom?’ ‘Do I enjoy it? Well, what am I, a fool for eating lentils here?’ ‘Forgive me, but if you feel forced to do it, then don’t keep fasting. Either you fast

joyfully, with respect for others and acceptance of each person beside you, or you make life hard for them too by filling them with guilt.’ That kind of inward pressure does nothing to help your child love God.

After a talk like this somewhere in Greece, a mother told me, ‘I pressured my child. I pressured him again and again, as much as I could, while he was still under my care. Now he has grown up, and he came to me and said, “You took me to Church all my life because I had no choice. Now that I do have a choice, and I understand what you did to me, I’m leaving.”’ I told her, ‘What can I say? After the way you handled it, what can I say now?’ You see, you never helped your child discover its sweetness.

You never showed your child that life close to Christ is beautiful and worth living. Instead, you taught him that he would be punished if he did not live that way. ‘And you expected to pass your English exam last year, when you were eating ice cream and souvlaki every Wednesday and Friday and never fasting? Of course you didn’t pass. Did you expect to get into university when you showed such contempt for God?’ Where are we placing our trust? In fear, threats, terror, guilt. We make the child feel, ‘I’ve done something terribly wrong before God.’ And that terrible thing was eating ice cream and souvlaki instead of fasting, so God punished him for it. What does the child feel then? First, he feels repelled by God. He says, ‘I don’t want a God like that.’

Can someone explain to me why any of this has to happen? And second, you fill me with guilt: you tell me it is my fault, that I did something bad and am responsible for all of this. Do you see? My food, my disrespect, my contempt were punished, and now I feel guilty. So you too carry guilt within you, and you are not happy with the life you are living. That is why you become so strict with others, so harsh toward the person beside you. Whatever good thing you tell someone close to you—your wife, husband, friend, child, relative, whoever it may be—if you say it in an irritating, harsh, oppressive way, it means that something within you is unsettled about what you yourself are doing.

When someone is always upset by the way others live, it means there is something in his own life he cannot enjoy. Do you enjoy your life close to God? Let the other person live as he chooses. Respect him, and at least do as God does. Don’t do what God does not do. God is not punishing him, yet you come along and punish him. God is not hurling thunderbolts, yet you hurl them with your mouth, your shouting, your words, your threats. If God were to step in that way and stop us for a moment, I think He would silence many mouths and say, ‘Enough. Stop speaking for Me.’ He may say that to me as well. If He did, I would feel deeply ashamed and guilty, and I would be moved to repentance. I would say, ‘My God, forgive me,’ and I would stop. Many times I wonder: if God...

stepped in right now, would He tell me, ‘Keep saying what you’re saying; I agree with you’? Or would He say, ‘Close your mouth. What are you telling people? What are you doing to them? Why are you stifling them and putting them under pressure?’ That thought frightens me.

That is why I look to the Gospel, to the life of Christ, and to the lives of the saints. They were strict with themselves, but deeply compassionate and understanding toward the people beside them. They did not put people under pressure. What matters is doing something out of love and freedom: seeing its beauty, longing for it, imagining it, desiring it, and then doing it. ‘I want you to love Me,’ Christ says. He does not want you to act under compulsion because you feel guilt and remorse. You see, living under guilt keeps you from being happy and enjoying what you do, and it keeps others from doing so as well. I remember getting into a taxi once while I was on a Greek island. It was a very hot summer day.

The taxi driver beside me was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He looked perfectly comfortable in the blazing summer heat. What else was he supposed to wear? I got in wearing my cassock, with my neck covered and sleeves all the way down to my wrists. It was July, about forty degrees, and the poor man looked at me and said, “Goodness, Father, I feel sorry for you. Aren’t you roasting?” “I am,” I said. “It’s hot. It’ll pass. Perhaps you could open a window. And when I sweat, the air gets inside my loose cassock and cools me as it evaporates.” Then I said, “But look how comfortable you are! Good for you. I’m glad to see it.” And I really was glad. Why? Because I could calmly accept being so covered up

and look at the man beside me in his shorts and short sleeves with respect, acceptance, and joy. His comfort did not bother me, because I had chosen what I was wearing. It matters greatly that you choose what you do freely, without feeling forced. Otherwise, you begin to envy others.

You envy others and ask, “Why should they have fun when I don’t? Why should they be happy when I’m not? Why should they have children when I don’t?” It makes all the difference when you truly want the life you are living. When what you do comes from your heart, you find peace, and you do not burden others with guilt, whoever they may be. Even if they are sinners, it is not your job to go around making them feel guilty.

They will feel remorse on their own. They will think things over and feel what they need to feel. But remorse is not our goal or our calling. Our calling is to remind people of God. Remorse can leave you confused, unsettled, melancholy, and hurting, digging through the darkness of your soul. But we do not stay there. We are in this life as children of God to remind the world of Christ’s light, of the lost Paradise to which everyone is called, of God’s open arms waiting for all, and of Christ’s kiss offered to everyone. We are here to invite people into life and light, not into gloom, bitterness, and complaint. Those things grow out of guilt.

That is what I mean: when you live with guilt, you are confused within yourself and cannot get along with others. You become difficult to be around. You cannot feel at one with anyone, not even with yourself. Your whole being feels shattered into a thousand pieces. And because you feel so unclean, you cannot draw close to God either.

Let me say one more thing about remorse. I think it also keeps you from moving forward in life. It catches you again and again and holds you at something that happened in the past. So much time has gone by, yet you are still there, and nothing good or fruitful comes of it. You remain stuck in sorrow, misery, bitterness, and darkness.

It keeps you from living now and facing the future opening before you. Guilt and remorse leave you stuck. Something happened. When? A long time ago. So what now? Will we stay there? Guilt always concerns something that has already happened, whether an hour ago, a few days ago, or, for some people, decades ago. I remember an elderly man, well over eighty, who told me about various sins. He still remembered old things and suffered over them. Once he said, “I stole a little money. I took twenty drachmas.” Drachmas, mind you. So this was...

I thought he meant a few years before the euro came in. “When did this happen, Grandfather?” I asked. “When I was fifteen,” he said. “I was riding my bicycle and stopped in a square.” He was over eighty and still tormented by guilt over something he had done at fifteen. You may ask, “Shouldn’t he have told you?” Yes, he should. But once you have told it, you must let the past take its proper place in your life. It is over. Do not go on living there. Live in the present and look ahead, toward the coming sunrise, instead of continually digging up what happened. Some people even confess their sins and still go on living in despair over what they have already confessed.

Do you see what you are doing then? You are treating the Mystery as though it had no effect. It is as if you were saying, “Christ does not really forgive me. His love has no power in me. His Crucifixion accomplished nothing in this world. His blood cannot wash me clean.” At heart, that means you do not believe. Whatever you have done—and I am not saying it was something small—some things are serious enough to shake your whole being. They truly grieve you. But seven years have passed, or eight, or for some people fifteen. Must you still stay there, digging it all up again and again? It belongs to the past. It is over.

Some elderly people live with memories like these: “Back then, with that piece of land and my children, I should never have...” They feel terribly guilty. But, my dear friend, it happened. Your life is nearing its end, and you are still thinking about a piece of land and something that happened in ’65, or ’25, or ’75? Those things are past. There is no point in staying there and losing the one moment that is yours: the present. These are tricks played by the logismoi, those intrusive thoughts that torment us. Our thoughts can drive us to distraction, pull us under, and rob us of peace. That is why Christ comes to us through metanoia, through repentance, confession, and Holy Communion, and says, “My child, enough. Those things are over. Look me in the eyes.”

Have you seen little children tear out a page when they make a mistake? They cannot bear to look at it; they want a fresh notebook. Some cannot even bear to see torn pages in the same notebook, so they get a new one, with clean pages before them. The past is past. You made a mistake. What will you do now—die over it? Will you correct one mistake by making another? Will you drive yourself mad? That would be another mistake. Take your own life? That would be the worst mistake of all. It happened, and it is over. God loves me, and I place my hope in His love and kindness. Now, suppose there were a pill you could take that made you forget everything. Would you still feel guilty? Tell me, would you feel guilty if you could remember nothing from the past? Guilt remains as long as you keep thinking about those old things, over and over.

I am not saying you should never remember them. I repeat: remember them, speak of them, but let that be the end of it. Give remorse an expiration date, like the date printed on a product. Let it end someday; do not carry it for life. When the Prophet David says, “I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me,” he does not mean that he spends his whole life crushed by guilt. He remembers how great a sin the Lord freed him from, and his attention rests on the kindness he received: “You shall sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be made clean; You shall wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” You will wash me, and I shall be cleaner and whiter than snow. That is where the emphasis lies. I say, “God has forgiven me so many sins. I thank Him.” That is what matters: I thank Him, and I have hope.

I struggle, I stand up, I keep going. That is where the emphasis lies, not on, “Oh, my sin, my sin! What have I done?” No. What you did is past. It was a moment, or a few hours or days of your life. It is not who you are. A day has twenty-four hours. You made mistakes that lasted a few minutes, a few moments; you said certain words. But those moments have passed, and they are wiped away by Christ’s sacrifice, by God’s love, by divine grace. We call it grace because it is a gift. Receive that gift. Learn to accept gifts. Do not hold yourself so tightly closed. Open your heart and say, “Thank You so much for this gift. Lord, I thank You. I receive it.” “I forgive you, My child.” Now believe it. “I believe it.” Good. If you believe it, stop bringing it up.

Do you feel it coming back? If you met Christ on the road, He would not remind you of your old sins. They have been wiped from His memory. But if you insist on remembering them, you can carry them to your grave, still dwelling at eighty-five on something your soul did when you were ten.

That is your choice. If you want to live that way, if you have grown used to dwelling on guilt, going round and round in it, living on it and even taking pleasure in it, that is...

pride. And it creates an atmosphere full of guilt. All the time. Yet Christ wants us to live in the joy of the freedom He gives us. Do you understand? That is how I see it. What you did no longer exists; it is over. Christ drew near to sinners, to people burdened by guilt, to people sunk in wrongdoing, sin, reckless living, and injustice. And He saw the good in them all. We speak of the good thief.

And of the sinful woman who loved so much, whose many sins were forgiven. Christ saw how thirsty her soul was. If we had seen Saint Photini, the Samaritan woman, we might have said, “Look at that immoral woman. She has had five relationships one after another.” But Christ saw a good woman whose soul was thirsty—thirsty for a relationship, for connection, love, care, joy, and tenderness. She could not find her way and was suffering.

He did not see her as a sinner to keep at a distance, someone to condemn and reject. He saw a woman who needed help and had a strong soul. Think of what she had endured: one painful relationship after another, meeting someone new, talking, arguing, making up, and then beginning again with someone else. Christ saw how deeply this woman thirsted for happiness. If I had been there, I might have thought, “How sinful, how immoral! Stay away from me. Please, do not touch me.” But Christ went to her and said, “Give Me a drink.” He was willing to drink water she gave Him. He had come to forgive her, and He asked her for a drink.

“You matter to Me. You have worth in My eyes, even with your sins, because I see something genuine in your search.” We see only other people’s mistakes. We do not see why they make them. We do not see the innocence within a sinner, the goodness within an enemy, or the suffering of someone who has been through so much. That is the beauty of Christ and the greatness of His person. People love and worship Him. Their quarrel is not with Christ Himself; it is with me, and perhaps with you too. We claim to represent Christ and speak for Him, but often what comes out is our own problems, our own passions, our peculiarities, and sometimes our unhealthy ways of thinking. We even pass them on to our children. You need only look at how your family speaks to you about your faith. How many of them recognize Christ in the way you live? Very few—and that is not because they are all bad.

Your child may behave badly, but still sense that what you are showing them does not come from Christ. You may wear a label saying, “I am a Christian. I belong to the Church,” but the child says, “You do not convince me.” Christ had something about Him that convinced people. We do not convince them when we stand there with a whip in our hand. Remember the student I told you about in the last program? When he saw me at school, all he could think was, “Sin. God. Sin, sin.” He thought everything was a sin, and that whenever God spoke, He would say, “My child, you keep sinning. This is a sin.” Seeing me brought the word “sin” to his mind. Do you understand? That is what happens when someone is taught the faith...

That kind of upbringing wounds another person’s soul. It harms someone in Christ’s name. That is the tragedy. I remember a young man who had finished school. His physics teacher was also a priest, a wonderful person. Years later, the young man came to see me and said, “I still remember what our physics teacher told us. On our last day of school, just before the national exams, he sat on his desk and said, ‘Children, don’t assume that because you came to this school, and some of us here belong to the Church, we necessarily showed you what the true God is like. We did what we could. Don’t stop there. Keep searching. You may find the true God elsewhere. If the God we showed you left you with inner conflicts, confusion, resentment, guilt, rebellion, a sense of being stifled and oppressed…’”

“‘…then we made a mistake. But that is not who God is. The mistake was ours. Leave our mistakes behind,’ he told them, ‘and go on to find the true God.’” The young man brought me that memory from school. His physics teacher had said it to them. “Those words made a deep impression on me,” he said. He still remembers them.

We who speak for God often fail to help people draw near to Him. That strikes me. You may accuse me of being too lenient, of speaking as though everything is allowed. I understand if you feel that way, and I respect it. But let me tell you what a former Protestant once said to me. This program prompted him to ask to become Orthodox. He is one of several people who have done so, but he called me and told me the details. I said, “You know, my program is not aimed at arguing against other beliefs.” He replied, “No, it is because of this program that I want to become Orthodox. Can you tell me where to go, which church?” I asked, “Why? This program doesn’t discuss doctrines and…”

“I believe in God,” he said, “and the fact that you don’t insult me, scold me, or press me in a way that suffocates me appeals to me. I would like to find a God like that.” I feel I have to say this because someone may think that speaking this way gives people the green light to take their faith lightly. But that is not what happened. This man was Protestant and became Orthodox. And he is one of several. Of course, this is about how God touches people’s souls, not about me. God offers Himself in love and truth: truth that touches another person with tenderness and love, not truth delivered with a whip.

Could someone bear a sermon that spoke the truth but wielded it like a whip, tearing pieces from them and drawing blood? You may ask, “Doesn’t metanoia, repentance, make the heart bleed?” Yes. If the heart is wounded by the arrow of Christ’s love, that pain is worth bearing. But a heart wounded by Christ’s love is different from a person wounded by the clumsy lashes we inflict, filling people’s lives with guilt.

The answer to all this… Vasilis, do you think I’ll have time to say everything today? How could you know what I have in mind? I do know that you choose beautiful music. I listen to it and enjoy it. Thank you very much, Vasilis. And thank you, my dear friend in Corinth, for the lovely message you sent me. I forwarded it to Vasilis…

You also thanked him for his other CDs, including *The Blues of My Soul*, with blues in a plagal mode, hymns of Byzantine music, and hymns in English. Those of you living abroad, they are worth seeking out…

Thank you for your kind words about our books, *Love Forever* and *Strengthen Your Soul*. You remembered rightly: *Love Forever* includes a written version of a program that also speaks about oppression.

It is called “My God, You Are One Great Embrace.” It describes an experience we had at a school. What troubled the children most was this: people had taught them about God in such an oppressive way that they stifled them with guilt, instead of awakening in them an eager hope for Christ and a desire to love Him and draw near to Him.

The fears they stirred up drove us away from the Church. Then one child spoke up and said, “When you think about it, Christ isn’t to blame for any of this. He’s the best.” So thank you for your kind words. You can read about all this in more detail in the books. The program’s email address is atheata.perasmata@yahoo.gr. Vasilis, put on a beautiful piece of music so we can rest a little, free of guilt…

…and then continue with how to deal with this remorse and guilt that suffocate us.

My dear friend—beautiful, Vasilis, thank you very much. I want to tell you, dear friends, that you already know the answer. Were you expecting something new? It is what we have taught in the Church for twenty centuries. The question is how to live it well, so that we can enjoy God’s gift. It is metanoia, repentance; confession; and Holy Communion. This whole path has great power. It works. When someone follows it rightly, they are set free and see its fruits in their life.

The Mysteries, you understand? You come to understand, you go to the priest and confess. As Christ told us, what the Apostles and their successors forgive, He forgives too, and what they do not forgive, He does not forgive. Priests are always forgiving people. But then someone might ask: why do we see so many unhappy Christians, people who receive Holy Communion regularly yet remain miserable and burdened with sorrow? You look at someone like that and say, “Most Holy Theotokos, why is this poor person always so downcast?” You see him…

…and he has no joy. Yet he says Christ has forgiven him. Is that what a forgiven person looks like? Imagine going to a prison and telling someone, “You’re free. Your ten-year sentence has been reduced to one year, and now it’s time for you to leave.” Wouldn’t he come out jumping, dancing, singing, rejoicing, and embracing everyone? He would radiate happiness. We don’t radiate happiness. We give off something else, and I wonder why. Do you remember Abba Poemen, whom we spoke about on another program? He said that God does not…

…need a long time to change your life and receive you back. A man came to him and asked, “Father, I have committed a sin. If I struggle for three years, will God forgive me and receive me?” “Three years, my child?” “Well then, Father, three months?” “That long?” said Abba Poemen. “Then how long? Three weeks?” “Listen, my child. I believe that if you truly repent, understand what you have done, feel the weight of your mistake, and weep…”

“…God will receive you in three days. God loves you and takes you into His arms again. In three days your soul will begin to find peace. The first day you may be in pain. On the second day you may still be thinking about it, but by that evening you will begin to relax. On the third day you will say, ‘Three days have passed, and my soul is beginning to grow calm.’” Yet some Christians live with these memories for three decades, asking, “What did I do? How did I behave? What harm did I cause?” Well, if that is how you choose to live. So here are the steps. First, sit down and think about what has happened in your life. See where you bear responsibility. Recognize what you have done.

I have done terrible things. But there are also others who understand nothing at all…

…who feel nothing about what they have done. “I haven’t done anything, really,” they say. Yet they have hurt people, insulted them, looked down on them, slandered them, stolen, and treated them unjustly. They have done all sorts of things and feel nothing. Sit down and take an honest look: What have I done in my life? How have I behaved? What kind of person am I? What am I seeking? What do I want from this world? How do I treat others? A husband should ask, “How have I treated my wife? Have I respected her and taken her seriously? Do I know her and understand her? Do I love her and care about her, or do I hurt her?” A wife should ask herself the same things. Ah, the ladies weep when they hear this and say, “Tell them, Father, tell them!”

“You should hear what my husband has done to me,” she says. Yes, dear, I’m coming to you now. Come, don’t cry just yet. Save your tears for your own mistakes. So what have you done? Nothing? Women often see themselves as the ones who have been wronged. You may well have been wronged, but you too have made mistakes in your life, as we all have. You gain nothing by always crying that you are the victim, that everyone has hurt you and ruined your life. Haven’t you made mistakes? Think about your own. Ask yourself: How have I treated my relatives, my coworkers, my husband at home? What have I given this man? Have I valued him, paid attention to him, shown him tenderness? Have I made him feel that I have something to offer him, that he means a great deal to me? How have you treated your children, your daughter? How have you treated that daughter of yours?

Have you said a kind word to her, encouraged her, comforted her? Let’s sit down and think. And you too, young person, think about your life: the time you waste, the endless idleness, your excesses, the money you throw away. Each of us has our own things to face, the things that mark our life. Do you see? This is how you begin to be honest.

Know who you really are. Don’t live with your head in the clouds, in a lie or a fantasy. We recognize these things, admit them, and say them first of all to ourselves. And we may weep, if tears come: tears of metanoia, of repentance, and of recognizing what we have done. Whether tears come or not, our soul senses that something is wrong. I am not as I should be. I have so much ego, so many difficult ways. I am ambitious, I think too highly of myself, I am terribly self-absorbed. I want people to praise me. I envy other people’s happiness, wish them harm, dislike them. I am greedy; I am gluttonous. Whatever you find rising to the surface in your own character, face it.

Once you recognize it, ask God’s forgiveness in prayer. Look to Christ and say, “I have sinned, Lord, I have sinned.” Then go to your spiritual father and tell him the story of your life. Speak openly: “This and this is happening. This is the kind of person I am.” Do it without placing the blame on others.

“I am responsible for these things, Father.”

If you don’t understand that, you will get nowhere. Yes, other people have made your life difficult, confused you, and caused you pain. But in everything you have gone through, have you played no part at all? Do you bear no personal responsibility? Say the others are ninety percent to blame. Will you never take responsibility for the remaining ten percent? Are you the victim of all humanity? What are you, the Lamb of God? Some people really do see themselves that way. A young woman says, “I couldn’t find a job, I couldn’t get married, my life went badly, I even became ill, and it is all my mother’s fault.” That cannot be true. Your mother may be at fault to some degree, but she is not responsible for all of it. Even if she made life difficult for you, I know another young woman whose mother was like yours, only harder to live with, and she refused to...

accept that situation. She stood up for herself, got on her own feet, and struggled on. She found work, married, and built a happy life. She also stopped blaming her mother. She said, “Blaming my mother gets me nowhere. Whatever she did, she thought she was doing what was best.” It was the worst thing, but her mother did not realize it. No one who does something wrong feels that what they are doing is wrong. Everyone thinks they are doing good. So even when parents make mistakes that affect your life, they felt they were doing the right thing. They did not set out to hurt you. While they were doing it, they did not understand that they were harming you, destroying you.

They felt it was the right response, and they acted accordingly. In any case, what they did is their responsibility. What about you? Can you keep passing the blame and responsibility to other people? Take responsibility for your life and say where you yourself have gone wrong. Then go to the priest, admit it, and confess it. Speak of others as people whose actions affected you and prompted your responses, without making your confession an account of their faults.

They played a part in your life, but you made your choices. Then put right what you can. If you say, “My fault is that I hurt people, cause them pain, treat them unjustly, give them no time to speak, and do not let them be free,” you cannot leave everything as it is and keep saying, “I have confessed; I have repented.” Metanoia, repentance, calls for change. Next time you go home and your husband speaks, sit and listen. Don’t interrupt him.

And you, listen while your wife shares her thoughts. Let her feel free to give her opinion. That is how you begin to correct what you have been doing. If you stole from someone, putting it right means returning what you stole. It is not enough to say, “Father, I committed this theft,” and leave it there. My child, make amends. “All right, Father, I’ll say a prayer.” No, take the money back and return it. That is one example: take the action needed to put things right. “Father, I do not love my sister-in-law, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, my niece, whoever it may be, and I do not speak to them.” My child, it is good that you have said so. Now make amends. What does that mean? Go home, and at the first opportunity make a call. Reach out, build a bridge, and try to mend what is broken. Where there was hatred, try to show love.

Where I once sought revenge, I will show kindness, patient endurance, and compassion. Look also for the reason behind what you did, so that next time you do not do it again. It is not enough to say, “I committed this sin.” Find out why you did it, so that guilt does not keep choking you for no good reason. When you understand why you commit a particular sin, ask yourself: What was I really looking for at that moment?

Look and see...

You were not seeking that particular sin for its own sake. You were looking for something else. Take an example: a young woman quarrels with her husband. He gets up and leaves the house. She is overcome by sadness, emptiness, loneliness, and despair. She goes to the cupboard and eats all the chocolates, biscuits, sweets, anything sweet she can find. She empties the whole box of chocolates.

Then she feels guilty. “Oh no, what have I done? I fought with my husband, and now I have been greedy too. Look at the state I am in. I never change.” A few days later, when the same sadness returns, she reaches for all the chocolates again. Look into that overeating and that quarrel. What lies behind them? What are you looking for? Why are you eating now? You can eat; no one is stopping you. Open the fridge and eat every piece of cake in it. But before you eat that cake, and before any sin that seems as sweet as cake, ask why you are doing it. What are you seeking? One young woman who asked herself that said, “Deep down, I did not want food. I wanted some sweetness in my life. My husband and I had quarreled, and I was not finding that sweetness with him, so I looked for it somewhere I could taste it. I found it in sweets and emptied the box. It was not really a chocolate I wanted.”

“I wanted to satisfy my emotional hunger. I wanted to fill the loneliness in my heart, and this was how I tried to do it. I could not fill my soul with love, but at least I could fill my stomach with chocolates and cakes, and I enjoyed them.” Next time you reach for food, remember and say to yourself, “I am not going to eat because I am hungry for food. I am hungry for love, for sweetness and tenderness. Since I cannot have his kiss, I am going to eat by myself and enjoy it.” As you put it into words, you may find that the fierce urge to eat every chocolate begins to fade. You may still eat a few out of habit. But when you understand why you do what you do—and few people stop to ask—you can say, “What am I seeking? Am I trying to cover up my loneliness or insecurity? Am I trying to build a wall around myself?”

Perhaps you are seeking warmth, or the feeling that you matter. It matters greatly to find the reason behind each sin. Deep down, the longing at its heart is for something good. Remember that. No one, in the very depths of their being, sins simply for the sake of evil. Even the gravest sins can be, deep down, a search for something good.

When you sin, you are seeking something good, but you lose your way and make mistakes in trying to find it. Instead of going to her husband, embracing him, and saying, “It is you I want. I want us to talk, make peace, and bring some sweetness back into our lives,” this woman turns, after their quarrel, to something that harms her. It affects her health, her body, her weight, and how she feels. Then the whole thing becomes a vicious circle.

After all this, learn little by little to see things differently. Remember God’s truths: God loves me. Remember that; you forget it. God brought this husband or this wife into my life so that we could grow holy together, not tear each other apart. Learn from what has happened, and forgive yourself too. God has forgiven you through the priest. Now forgive yourself and say, “All right, I will learn from this. I will grow through my mistakes.” When someone hurts us, we sometimes say, “God permitted it so that something good might come of it.” In the same way, good can come even from your mistakes. Little by little, something sweet can emerge from the bitterness in your life, even from this guilt and these pangs of conscience.

Our souls take a beating, but we grow more mature and humble, more honest, more genuine, and wiser. We come to understand what it means to be human. A human being is someone who gets knocked about, who tries to take flight but finds it hard, and who looks to God for help. And now I am looking at the clock and saying, “Help! We have run out of time! Vasilis, why didn’t you call out to me?” I have kept you longer than I meant to. Forgive me. We will speak again another time.

Another time, we will talk about the guilt we feel when people close to us leave, when relatives fall ill and some die. We say, “I am to blame for his death. I am to blame for my relative’s death because I said something to him one day, and that must be why he died.” And there is emotional blackmail too: “My child, if you do not marry the woman I want you to marry, I will die.”

Next time, we’ll talk more about guilt and remorse, and the ways these can be used to make life harder, even though our lives can be beautiful. I pray that you find joy in your life, that God forgives you, and that you have strength for the rest of your journey. God be with us.