You’re hurting. Please don’t lose heart. This problem too will be resolved; it too will pass. You will get through the hardship and trial you’re facing. These are difficult days. You’re in great pain and struggling. And now you’ve turned on the radio to listen to Unseen Passages on Piraeus Church Radio, at 91.2 FM, the station that speaks to our souls. I too am trying to speak a little to your soul with these humble words of mine. But it’s hard, because I know there are moments when your pain is so great that your whole mood changes. You may have been happy for quite some time—days, perhaps months—and then an incident comes, a piece of news comes, or... a relationship falls apart, a relationship causes pain. There is suffering, an illness, a discovery, something you learn that makes you collapse. I understand that you’re not well. You say it yourself, and you feel it. So I come to you with what little strength I have, and I call upon the great power of God, His great love, His great grace, and His great promise: that He would be with us at every moment of our lives and help us when we ask Him. And now I ask Him, together with you and with so many listeners all over the world. We are all calling upon the Lord at this moment. Our program is meant to be like a prayer, and this is the prayer we offer: may He protect us, come to our aid, and give us back the joy we once had. Happiness is a great sign of freshness in your spiritual life, in your soul. When you’re happy, full of enthusiasm, inspiration, joy, well-being, and courage for life, you wake up and see beauty everywhere. It shows that you have a living connection with God, that you are close to Him, and that life flows within you. God is the source of life. When you draw close to Him, you receive that strength too. So when you find yourself happy and joyful, full of... life and eagerness, it means that at that moment you feel close to God. Joy is a sign of it. So is singing, or whistling. Sometimes, when you’re happy, you want to whistle, sing a tune, dance, or leap for joy. Something within you makes your heart tremble with happiness and flutter with excitement, abandon, ecstasy, and overflowing joy. It means God is within you. But right now you don’t feel that way, and you’ve tuned in hoping this might help a little. Don’t say, ‘It might help a little.’ Don’t say that. Those words can hold you back. You won’t find help if you remain in that ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe.’ No: God will surely help us. We need deep faith, firm assurance in our hearts, and great hope in the power of Christ. Do you believe? Christ kept asking this of the people who came to Him. They too were suffering: sick people, people troubled in soul, people tormented by demons, people in anguish, sinners, the poor, people who had done wrong, people burdened by so much bitterness and sorrow. They longed to be healed, to be freed from their tears, their sadness, their loneliness, their... despondency. And the Lord would ask them, ‘Do you believe?’ To believe means to open yourself and trust. In hope, I picture within myself the healing Christ is coming to give me. Even before Christ gives it, I hold it in my heart as though it were already here. I feel it and rejoice in it ahead of time, and this helps the miracle come about. But when you see your life only as misery, when you believe in failure instead of believing your problem can be resolved, when you give your heart more to the disaster you expect and the despair closing in on you, how can your life change? How can it change? The Lord’s words still hold true: ‘Let it be done according to your faith.’ What you believe in is what you draw toward yourself. Have faith in Christ, in His power and His love. You think so little of yourself. Don’t tell yourself you were born for ruin, that you were born to fail again and again, or that your life is meant for tears and despair. No, that is not what you were made for. You were made to rejoice, to enjoy life, and to overcome your troubles. Your trouble has clouded your mind. You’re going through an intense trial, and you see and feel everything through eyes blurred by tears and pain. That colors everything. Whatever anyone says to you now, it may not reach you. Someone could bring you a newborn baby. People see a baby in a maternity ward and feel hope: here is life, here is joy, here is freshness. But at this moment, none of it touches you. Yet not long ago, when you were doing well and your soul was joyful, that baby would have spoken to your heart. The sun brought you joy. Falling rain stirred your creativity. Everything did. Everything spoke to your soul. Everything was like a step that lifted you higher. But now, in this painful state, nothing seems to work. You feel stuck, and your soul is in distress. Don’t let this overwhelm you or break you. Believe in Christ. Help your soul wake up and come alive again. Help your soul. How? At first, what you can do is... Well... Listen to words that speak to your trouble, try to understand it, and help lift you out of it. It matters greatly that we can think about what is happening to us, come close to it, touch it, and peel it back like an onion, layer by layer, seeing what lies beneath each layer. You need to look a little at what is happening to you. What happened? Try to look at it reasonably, because your emotions have overwhelmed and clouded you so much right now. They have made you feel ill and have taken over inside you, leaving you shattered. Our feelings are a holy gift, but so is our reason. Use your reason too. Let’s look at things logically—at some things you can think through about your present problem, whatever is troubling you right now. However terrible you feel, I think you can still consider what I’m about to say. First, let me give the program’s phone number, since some people are listening on the road. We receive messages from people who are driving, traveling, cycling, or exercising. Pain often catches up with you wherever you are. The station’s number, then, is 4118602. Forty-one, eighteen, six, forty. The program’s email address is its title: atheata.perasmata@yahoo.gr. And when you call, don’t forget to say a prayer for Vasilis Hatzinikolaou, the musician for our program, who works on the sound and provides the musical accompaniment. In a moment I’ll tell you how to think clearly when emotion, in a moment of pain, threatens to overwhelm you. Thank you so much for that beautiful melody. It gave us a little rest and comfort. I say ‘a little,’ Vasilis, because however good you are, and however good your music—or any music in the world—may be, it is hard to get past a problem just by listening to music or advice. A comforting word is good. Suppose I’ve burned my hand on the stove and I’m alone. It helps to have you speak to me; that brings comfort. But however much you comfort me, the burn needs time to heal. There is no getting around that. My hand will need time to recover. Your kind word comforts me. Then the words will end, and I’ll still be looking at the burn. It may take a week or two to close up and settle down. In the same way, neither I nor anyone else can promise that you won’t have to grow through the pain you’re facing. Your soul is boiling. Yet through that painful process it will become gentler, softer, sweeter. You may not understand this now. But if you can, look ahead in your mind—a month, two months, a year from now. You are suffering today, but time will pass. People say time is a great healer, and it’s true. Remember the troubles you’ve been through before, and how much you cried... how much you hurt, how little you wanted to do anything. Perhaps you wanted to leave your job and say, ‘I quit. I never want to come back to work. I don’t want to speak to anyone, cook again, or do anything.’ And you truly felt that way. Yet after some months, little by little, you began to take up your life again. People who had always seen you crying and despondent saw you smile a little one afternoon when you visited. You heard a joke and laughed. A year later, you laughed wholeheartedly again. Right now, as you did then, you may say, ‘I’ll never laugh again. I’ll never feel joy again. I’m a wreck.’ But you aren’t a wreck. What is weighing on you makes you feel that way. You’re going through a terrible time, but that isn’t who you are. If you say, ‘I’m a wreck,’ it’s as though you’re saying your soul... is steeped in despair. Yet your soul is steeped in the hope of Christ. Your soul is steeped in the grace of the Holy Spirit. Your soul was immersed in the holy baptismal font, where you received the gifts and the grace of the Holy Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit, Scripture says, is love, joy, peace—joy. Joy is within you, deep in your soul. But a problem has suddenly appeared in your life and cast a shadow over that joy. Right now it has shaken you badly. Yet this problem lies on the surface: in your logismoi, those intrusive thoughts, in your thinking, and in the eyes it has clouded with pain and bitterness. Deep in your heart is the joy spoken of in the words, ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.’ All these fruits of the Holy Spirit are within you. Deep down, you are a happy person because you belong to God. The troubles we face—the troubles you face now, which hurt so much—also involve our logismoi, our intrusive thoughts: how we respond to events, how we filter them, how we let them touch us. That can crush us. And here our spiritual life comes into view: how deeply we live as people of God, and whether we remember something about what we are going through. I have not forgotten that you are hurting today. That is why I’m speaking to you, and why you’re listening. What you’re going through... let me ask you a simple question: does God know about it? Does God know what you’re going through right now? You may quickly say, ‘Yes, He knows. So what?’ I don’t mean that He knows it only in some distant, intellectual way—as though He had merely heard or seen it, while it lay outside His care and He had not permitted it to happen in our lives. When it happened, did God not say, ‘Let it happen’? Here I need to explain what the Saints call two kinds of God’s will. Sometimes God gladly wills something to happen. It accords with His blessedness, joy, and glory. He desires it and says, ‘Let it happen,’ as when... you build a loving family, have a smiling child, live a happy life, or think a beautiful thought. This is what we call God’s will according to His good pleasure: He looks upon what is happening with delight. And there is another kind, called God’s will by permission. God may permit, for example, a collision on the road, an accident in which someone is seriously injured or killed. Someone says, “That was God’s will.” Then someone else despairs and asks, “What kind of God wants us to die?” We do not mean that God wants this, drives events toward death, or rejoices in what happened. Here we are speaking of God’s will by permission. God permitted it to happen. Permitting it is one thing; causing it is another; pushing it in that direction is another. “Couldn’t He have prevented it?” someone asks. “Couldn’t He have done something? Couldn’t He?” But this is where we stop speaking and stop trying to explain. We truly do not know; we cannot understand how God thinks. We cannot fathom His mysteries. I do not understand this mystery. But I do know that He certainly knows. If you are in great pain right now, even that thought may not help you. But perhaps you can think about it, find comfort, and say, “God sees what I am going through. It is within His own... He is watching it. He is near me in this.” God gave His consent, as it were, before it happened. So it was no accident. Your life is not ruled by chance. Of course, today, when you are writhing in pain and crying until your eyes are red, you cannot see that. I understand; no one is scolding you. But when you look back on this day and these events in five months, a year, or perhaps five or ten years, you will see that, in the end, it was not for your harm, but that something good will come out of this pain. You may gain maturity, a gentler soul, a more tender heart, a humbler will, less arrogance and self-importance, perhaps less anger and fewer demands. Perhaps you will lose that stern, saintly air you once had when you could forgive no one and understand no one. Many good things can come of this. You cannot see them now. You might ask, “Then why tell me?” Because I am appealing to your reason, which you have set aside for the moment. You have let pain, despair, and hopelessness overwhelm you. Melancholy has taken hold, you have become psychologically ill, and you feel utterly worn down; you cannot... So I reach out a hand to you—or, rather, I point you to Christ’s hand. If you take mine, we may both sink. I can hold you close, but together we must take Christ’s hand and say, “Lord, pull us out.” We try to remember that the events of our lives are not hidden from Him. I think it brings your soul great relief to know that Christ knows what is happening. And since the almighty, all-good, all-wise, wondrous God knows, I can surrender and trust Him. Think of going to a doctor for a serious operation. You see the instruments, sharp tools that will cut into your body, and you know there will be pain. Your feelings cry out, “I can’t bear this!” But reason says, “He is a good doctor. He cares about me. He wants me to get well. I know him, and he has promised to help me.” So you listen to reason and place your trust in him. You let go. You entrust yourself to God. Nothing in your life happens by chance. The breakup, the person who left you—none of it happened by chance. Even if you were at fault, even if you bear much of the responsibility, this is not the moment to find someone to blame, pick a fight, or demand an explanation. I am simply saying that what happened was not a matter of chance. God saw it happen, and even if you made a mistake, you can still find your way into the light. But first you need to grow calm. Everything I am reminding you of today is meant to help you do that. Before you speak again or call the person you love, the child you argued with, the workplace that dismissed you, the relative who hurt you—before you do anything—do not act while your soul is boiling with resentment, bitterness, anger, hatred, or jealousy. In that state, you cannot make a sound decision. Take these things to heart. First, find peace. Let everything settle within you. When a disturbed lake grows still, you can see down to its depths; then you can act. As Father Paisios used to say, you do not go fishing when the sea is rough. You wait for the waves to subside. The same is true for you. Today I am reminding you of what you already know but have forgotten because sorrow has overwhelmed you. It leaves you unable to think, perhaps even unable to pray. I understand. A woman in great pain once told me, “As I am now, I cannot even pray.” But even in that anguish, you can let out a little cry, a quiet sigh, and remember this simple truth: God knows. Everything is in His hands. Nothing more can happen than God permits to happen in my life. And if He permits it, it will happen, whatever I do. So it is far better to entrust myself to His will than to struggle against what I cannot change. You cannot struggle against God or against events that have already come into your life. As you may have noticed, the happiest people are those who entrust themselves to God and let Him lead them. When they do need to resist something, they do so after finding peace within themselves. Then they can see clearly what steps to take, without acting in panic. We are so quick to act on impulse. In that moment, all you can think of is calling the other person and hurling insults. But that only gives them more grounds to hold against you. Impulsive action does us no good at times like these. We will say wrong and hurtful things and take steps that harm us. When people feel utterly wretched, they may think, “I want to die. I want to kill myself.” They imagine that death will solve the problem; anything that makes the problem disappear seems like deliverance. “If I die, I’ll finally have peace,” they say. But death will not bring that peace. So do nothing rash at that moment. Let your thoughts race back and forth, however painful that is, but do not act on them. Be still. You can sit quietly in a room at home and let this day pass. It is not a wasted day. A day when you are working through your pain and God is working toward your salvation, gently shaping you through that pain, is no wasted day. Have patient endurance. Today you are learning patient endurance. Even in great pain, you are growing more mature and gaining wisdom. You are being made holy. That holiness of your soul matters greatly, and what you are going through can help you grow in it. Little by little, you will see that you made mistakes and the other person did too. Then remember what I said earlier. If you recognize your mistakes and fall into despair over them, that is another mistake. What did we say before? God knew that you would make mistakes in your life. So what should you do? Find peace. Have you seen your mistake? Find peace. Have you realized that you were to blame for everything? Find peace. You need not despair all over again now that you understand it. Say to yourself, “God permitted me to make a serious mistake in my life.” He permitted it. Perhaps I can learn a great deal even from this. For a start, I have learned what kind of person I am. It is a great wisdom, a great achievement in life, to see yourself as you really are. You have accomplished something valuable by recognizing your enormous mistake. “What have I accomplished?” you ask. “Are you telling me I’ve accomplished something by making such a terrible mistake?” Yes: you have accomplished something by becoming aware of it, understanding it, and accepting the truth of it. Humble yourself. Make peace with who you are. Admit what kind of character you have and what you carry in your soul. When you can look at yourself calmly and remember that God loves you despite this enormous mistake, your soul will soften and a gentle smile will come to your lips. You may say, “I am a terrible person.” Just as you are about to weep over that, God comes to you and says, “Yes, I knew you would make serious mistakes. I permitted you to reach the day when you could finally see them.” But wait—I can almost hear someone objecting: “I have realized that none of this was my fault. Other people caused my pain.” Yes, I know. I am speaking to you too, if you have realized that others bear much of the blame for what you are suffering. You, too, should not rush to act. Remember the same truth: God permitted it. “What did God permit? That they should come and treat me this way? Others are to blame for everything I am going through. They wronged me, insulted me, abandoned me, and caused me pain!” Yes, those others. But did these people enter your life by chance? Did God’s love not permit this? If God had wanted a different plan for you, would He not have prevented it? “Does that mean I must keep living with them, shoulder everything, let them make a fool of me and wrong me, and become the victim?” Well, if that is what you are saying, those are your words; I did not say that. I did say you should let go of that defiant attitude. If you realize that all these others have wronged you, that they are all to blame for how awful you feel, and that the responsibility is entirely theirs, the first thing to do is what we have said: the first word in every problem is “Calm down.” Find peace within yourself. Remember that what happened was not a matter of chance; God permitted it. Once you are calm, consider what to do next. Is God calling you to remain with these people so that you may become holy and learn to love them? Or do you need to leave and free yourself from their oppression? You can leave. You can set firm boundaries. You need not let others take advantage of you or treat you however they please. But do it without hatred, anger, malice, or bitterness. That is what I want you to understand today. The Annunciation and all the rest. Feel God’s providence, His wisdom and His presence in your life. Feel your connection with Him. You don’t have that connection now, because a person cannot be close to God and fail to see these things, while growing angry and hateful toward everyone. It is as though you are blind to reality, suffering from a terrible illness: ignorance of spiritual truth in our lives. What did the Lord say as they crucified Him? “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” They did not know what they were doing. The Lord understood, at that very moment, that the people around Him did not know what they were doing. That is why He felt no anger or hatred and showed no lack of compassion. He understood that the crowd before Him lived in profound ignorance. They did not know who stood before them. The people did not realize that He was Christ, and the Lord made allowance for His creatures. He had no need to grow angry with us to find peace, or to take revenge to feel satisfied. He found joy in understanding us. “My children, I understand you. I do not hold this against you. I love you, and I answer your hatred with love. I pray to God the Father to look upon you with compassion.” And He said, “Father, forgive them.” Now, in our pain, let us try to understand that other people, too, acted out of ignorance. God permitted these people to enter your life and hurt you: that harsh man, that difficult woman who betrayed you, embittered you, abandoned you and broke your heart; the person with whom you spent years, only to suffer so much. Or perhaps your pain is at work, at home or in the office. What kind of pain are you going through? Our troubles often come through illness or through our relationships: with coworkers, spouses, children, parents and relatives. When all this settles within you, you do not go looking for revenge. You do not make rash moves. You... well... How shall I put it? You gain another kind of wisdom in the way you act. You see things more wisely. Otherwise, it is almost as though you are quarreling with God Himself. When you turn against someone, God looks down and says, “My child, did you think I didn’t know when I sent that person into your life? Are you insulting Me too?” You say, “I’m not insulting You, my God.” “But you are, because I sent that person to you. I permitted this to happen in your life because I wanted you to learn something.” “What did You want me to learn, my God? This person betrayed me. Did You want me to learn what it is to be betrayed?” Yes. I wanted you to learn that even when someone betrays you, you still matter deeply to Me. I also wanted you to learn that even when someone betrays you, you can still stand on your own feet. Your worth does not depend on how others treat you. You thirst so deeply for others to keep telling you, “I’m on your side. I support you. I’m a true friend. I’ll never betray you.” You drew your strength to live from those words. They kept you standing. And Christ says, “Yes, they hurt you and embittered you. Does that mean you have no worth? That you cannot stand on your own feet? Have you lost your own personhood, your precious, immortal soul, fashioned by My hands, because others betrayed you?” So something good can come out of this pain. “I permitted it for a good purpose. Look for that good.” But to look for it, you must first grow calm again. Your feelings overwhelm you. You cry, you thrash about, anger seizes you. At times you clench your fists and want to tear a pillow apart or bang your head against the wall. Don’t do it. Someone did that, and I think his head took the blow rather than the wall. In his anger, he ended up with an enormous bump. Another person punched a door; another smashed the windows in his house. That is no solution. The way forward is to find something good in what has happened and to see that, although we call ourselves spiritual people, people of God, when troubles come we prove to be very poor students. We have... I am not saying this to drive us to despair, but to help us be more honest with ourselves and know ourselves better. This is how we are. Our souls take a very long time to recover. And the long time we need shows how far we are from God. Suppose someone hurts you and it takes you three weeks to recover. That shows that, for those three weeks, these truths and your connection with God were absent from your soul. You had lost sight of them. For three weeks, for example, the relationship that joined your soul to God and brought you His divine grace and His divine uncreated energies had been lost. You were like a plane that loses contact with the control tower and does not know where to land. You were lost up there, flying about with no idea where to go, where the airport was so you could land, or where the harbor was so you could drop anchor. This is what happens to our souls. And this is where we differ from the Saints. The Saints went through exactly what we go through, but they did not need so long to renew their connection with God. With us, the moment pain comes, everything changes. You might be perfectly happy now, but then your phone rings with strange news. Or someone you love sends you a message saying, “I want to break up,” for one reason or another. There you were, full of happiness, and one message, just a few words, can shatter you. “I want to break up.” Four words—no, three in Greek. Just three words can undo you when you thought you were sailing on a sea of happiness. And you say, “Why did God do this to me?” He permitted it to show you that your happiness cannot depend so completely on someone else. You need not fall apart when someone leaves you or feel that your soul cannot go on without that person. You have strength, whether that person stays or goes. There is happiness within your heart. Relationships, money, food, houses and shopping cannot give it to you. You must find it within yourself too. Such events help us see how tightly we have clung to things that wear out, disappear and pass away. Think of children building sandcastles on the beach. A child is delighted, but then a larger wave comes and knocks the castle down, and the child is upset. My child, it was a sandcastle. You put your trust in something you built from earth. Earth cannot hold you up through life. It is one thing to say, “We are happy together,” and quite another to say, “Without you, life has no meaning.” It is one thing to say, “I enjoy your love and your company. I like my work, my children and my car.” It is another to say, “I cannot live without these things. They are my happiness, everything in my life.” What do these blows teach us? That the things we loved and hoped for, the things we made absolute and clung to, were not everything after all. If they were, they would not disappear; they would still be standing. Yet they all fall like a sandcastle on the shore of life. So something good can come of this: you can understand how fleeting human things are. You can discover the beauty of your soul and the strength of your heart. Through your pain, God can help you grow, give you greater joy than you had before, and give you the sense to make better choices and take more careful steps, so that you are less often hurt in the same way. Your next attempt can be more thoughtful. That is why many people who have suffered greatly become more careful and more grounded. A young woman meets someone who betrays her, then someone else who treats her badly. After that, she begins to take care. You may say, “Yes, but she might become discouraged.” This is where being Christians makes a difference. When others begin to lose heart, we begin to be drawn to God, to the beauty of our own souls and to the beauty of the strength God gives us within, to the radiance we feel within us, to Christ’s glory becoming our glory too. We gain experience, wisdom, good judgment, discernment and illumination—the very things we lack. Saint Paul the Simple came home and saw that his wife was betraying him with another man. He did not need years or even months to recover, as we might. We might be unable to forgive it, come to terms with it or bear it. We would feel so diminished, miserable, betrayed and broken. We might need years to find peace again, and bitter words would pour from our mouths. But Saint Paul the Simple, the disciple of Saint Anthony, saw what his wife was doing and said to her, “Oh, don’t let me disturb you. Carry on. Goodbye.” Then he left, saying, “I will give myself to God. I will find that first love.” Of course, I do not believe he felt no sorrow. But he did not have to collapse. His soul did not have to be shattered, and years did not have to pass before he could smile again. What I want to tell you today is that your feelings and your pain have clouded everything. They have tangled your thinking and your logismoi, those intrusive thoughts. Everything looks black to you, utterly hopeless. You have already been sad for many days; some of you have not smiled or felt joy for years. It should not be so. To go years without smiling is almost like saying, “It has been years since I felt close to God.” All the while you speak of going to Church on Sunday, read spiritual books and attend Church. But are you in touch with God? If you draw close to God, who fills us with joy, peace, happiness and a smile, you cannot remain like this. So let three years of unhappiness become two, and two become one. And if yours lasts one year, make it shorter still. If it takes you five days to recover, little by little let it take three. If a quarrel with someone close to you keeps you upset for five hours, let it gradually become two, until we make that great change, the change we see in the Saints. The Saints lived in constant communion with God, always standing before Him. They gazed upon Him, felt Him, breathed Him in, and did not need long to recover. If someone insulted them, the words passed through their thoughts and sank into hearts that were still full of happiness and joy. Almost at once, the hurt faded. Someone called them names, belittled them, insulted them or said nobody wanted them. The words stirred a couple of small ripples on the surface of their hearts; deep down, there was calm. That is the difference between us and the Saints. Let us shorten the time our unhappiness, sorrow and gloom last. Let it become much, much shorter. Do you understand? If you fail a test, be sad for a little while and then return to your studies. Cry a little, then go on living with joy. Let yourself be shaken a little, but do not let that little while become a long time. So let us earnestly ask God for this. It takes much prayer, great thirst and longing. We need to desire it and say, “My Lord, please help me hold on to You, think of You and feel You. Help Your blood and Your Spirit flow within me, and let Your thoughts flow through me continually, so that other thoughts and other logismoi, those intrusive thoughts, cannot take hold. Fill me with Your way of being. Keep me attuned to You always, so that nothing else can take over.” How could it? When I am speaking with Christ, looking to God, feeling His love, the honor He shows me and the worth and strength He gives me, how can it take hold? You may say something to me. Yes, I glance your way for a moment, then turn my eyes back to Christ. Whatever someone has said to you in your life, however deeply it hurt, you can look back to Christ. May that turn of the eyes, that turn of the soul, happen quickly. May we be alert and ready. These are beautiful things. I hope you will pray that I too may live them, because sadly, it takes me quite a while to recover when something upsets me. It takes me a long time to let go of my sorrows. Please do not think I said this today lightly. I have simply realized that it would help both you and me. I saw that you were troubled today, and I wanted to offer these humble words as a reason for us to pray more fervently to Christ and draw close to His strength, His love and His presence. Vasilis, thank you very much for keeping us company today. You too have helped us turn our souls toward Him a little sooner. May it not take us so long; may it happen during this very program. I hope we found a little comfort during this program, and that the sadness which might otherwise have stayed with you for a few more hours has lifted. Keep in mind that troubles may come again. When they do, remember what we have said, and the time you spend in sorrow will grow shorter. May your sorrow diminish and your joy in the presence of Christ increase. The station’s phone numbers are 41 18 602 and 41 18 640. The program’s email address is atheata.perazmata.gr. The program will be rebroadcast and will also be online in a few days; you can find it if you search for it. I pray that you will be blessed, and that we will speak again next time, when you will be wearing more of your festive best and your heart will shine with joy. May God give you strength.