The problem troubling you will be resolved only when it stops troubling you in a way that tears you apart.

At the start of this program, let me say this to you, my dear friend, and to all my dear friends across the world: the problem troubling you is not small, but it is not quite what you imagine, either. You are focusing on the wrong parts of it. You panic and lose your bearings, and then you cannot solve it. The lake of your soul is stirred up, so you cannot see clearly down to the bottom or tell what is happening there. You cannot discern the motives behind your actions and desires. You are confused. So you need to do what many ascetics do when something troubles them: put it aside until a little later.

As time passes, it brings solutions. As time passes, you begin to look at life more calmly. You mature, grow richer in spirit, gain wisdom, become sanctified, and make spiritual progress. You see things differently. When you have a problem, do not insist on solving it the very moment it appears. The solution will not find you then, because you are not making room for it. You are driven by your own reasoning, by panic, by haste, by the demand: I want to solve everything now. I want my work, my life, and my family settled now.

I want this anguish I am going through to pass right now. I want everything to be well in two days. But then comes the call to patient endurance, and the time that is needed, sometimes a great deal of time. Other blows may come in life as well. Time passes, and you see that the problem was resolved after five months. Five months. Is it not better that your actions were calmer, your choices sounder, your thoughts clearer, and your conduct more illumined? Let God enter your life.

I say this because I sometimes see how people approach a spiritual father, or the Church, or God, or read a book, and expect all their problems to be solved at once. Life asks patient endurance of you. You need to draw strength from God's power and His perfect wisdom. Do not judge Him when He permits sorrows to come into your life. Of course, what I am saying is hard to put into practice, because we usually do judge God. When a complaint rises in us, what is it but a judgment of God? We are saying, 'My God, You do not know what You are doing.' We even judge God over the weather.

Suppose it rains, and we say, 'Oh, what kind of weather is this again, my God?' Even if we do not say 'my God,' we complain about the weather. How much more readily, then, will I judge God over something that has happened in my life: an illness, losing a job, a failure, persecution, or slander?

Let me ask you something. You say you believe in God, do you not? Then where is your faith? What does it mean to believe in God? It means I trust Him. I believe He knows very well what He is doing. And if the One who knows what He is doing allows this to happen in your life, is He not wise? What makes you different? Will you not face problems like everyone else? Why do you feel especially aggrieved when it happens to you? Will you never be tested, never hurt, never cry? How will those qualities buried deep in your soul come out? You will have to suffer. 'But I am close to God,' someone says. 'Should I not have a happy life?' Happy...

...has to do with the meaning of life: having a sense of purpose, a quality to your life, and a way of understanding things that gives you comfort and rest. Yes, that is possible. But no one promised you an easy life. And God is not unjust. Are millions of people to suffer while you never do? Are you never to feel sorrow or face hardship? A shaking, an earthquake, will come into your life too, just as it has into other people's lives. Sometimes I see people who say they do not believe in God, yet they have come to terms with suffering and sorrow. You ask, 'How are you bearing it?' And they say, 'Well, we will see. I am like everyone else. God will provide.' 'What God? You said you do not believe!' 'Oh yes,' they say, 'I forgot.'

That person does believe. He simply does not call it God, yet he has received the patient endurance God gives. He says he does not believe, but in his life you can see humility emerging. He struggles, stands in line, waits at the hospital, has no connections and no one to pull strings for him. He is humbled, and afterward he is grateful for the smallest kindness. We Christians, by contrast, are often very spoiled. We want everything very quickly, and we make demands: 'I want my problems solved here and now.' You have not understood that through this problem God is sending you a message, teaching you a lesson. And if you do not learn it, another problem will come. For God is saying to you, 'Solving your problem is not the whole point.'

Perhaps here you need to learn humility, love, forgiveness, how to open your soul, how to give to those in need, and how to change your character. If you do not learn these things now, new hardships will come and teach you later. These are the strange ways of life.

You may say, 'I want you to deal with my problem. I want you to give me a solution.' But the person listening sees that the solution lies much deeper than what you are asking for. There are things in you that still need a great deal of work. The trouble shows itself in one place, but its source is somewhere else, and you are looking somewhere else again.

Be patient; do not make demands. God knows. Trust Him. He told us to look at the little birds He does not abandon and at the flowers He cares for. Think of God's providence and His wisdom. Is He not all-wise? Does He not know even the details? Does God not love? He loves you too. Your pain does not mean He does not love you. Think of the dentist who has helped you. Your mouth is healthy now, your teeth are fixed, and you are glad. Having healthy teeth matters. But what came before that relief? Tension, sweating in the dentist's chair, anxiety, fear, pain, an operation, instruments, drilling, root canals, extractions, whitening...

Fillings, pain, blood.

At one point the dentist says to me, 'Please spit. A little blood has collected. Go ahead, I will wait.' I spit, look, and see blood. When it is over, I say, 'Thank you so much. You helped me so much. You were very kind.' That is what we say to our dentists, is it not? Yet what did this kind person do? The dentist caused me pain, but knew what needed to be done.

Let us learn to trust God, while still telling Him the truth: 'My God, I am in pain. My God, sometimes I cannot bear it. This hurts so much.' Tell Him. I am not asking you to lie and say, 'How wonderful! Everything is fine! I am not hurting.' That is why I wonder when someone never cries in sorrow, or never cries at a funeral. Are you not human? You will cry, hurt, even scream. You can admit, 'What I am going through is painful, but it is doing me good. It is necessary for me. I need to go through it. I will make myself vulnerable, feel pain, open up, and speak of my wounds.' All of this is bound to leave some bitterness. But afterward, I will heal.

For behold, through the Cross, joy has come into all the world. Through the pain you endure, happiness will come too. You will face trials, and when the thing troubling you now—the thing you consider the most serious issue in your life—is settled, whether after five months, five years, or however long God wills for you, something new will come. Then there will be more to do. God says, 'That filling is finished. Now there is another place we need to put right. Will you let Me? Keep your mouth open. Do not protest or shout. Do not grab My hand while I am working and pull it away. Let Me work freely. Entrust yourself to Me.' That surrender, that trust, is what we lack. The Cross calls for trust.

The Cross asks something of you. When life hurts, you have to accept that you will become vulnerable. The time will come when things inside you are laid bare, just as the Lord was naked upon the Cross. He was naked, yet He did not fear it. For Christ, it was a nakedness like Adam's, the nakedness of innocence. He had nothing to fear and did not regard those before Him as enemies...

...or feel that He had to defend Himself, much less attack. He surrendered and let Himself be. Can you do that in your life? Entrust yourself to God, and open yourself to the people beside you, to your family. Let things work through between you so that something good can emerge. Trust life, and trust God at work within it to lead things toward good.

Christ was not ashamed to open Himself. He spread His arms and became an embrace. He rose from the earth onto the Cross, for the Cross stands above the ground, between earth and heaven. There you are, suspended, arms open, naked, exposed. You breathe a different air. You are vulnerable to anyone who sees you, anyone who might strike you, approach you, look at you, or scrutinize you. And you begin to understand: 'Now that I am crucified, now that I am in pain, I must get beyond worrying about what people think. I must stop asking what others say about me or how they see me, now that they can see my nakedness, my troubles, and my vulnerability. I must say: this is who I am.'

I must come closer to the truth, to who I truly am, and see myself as I really am. The pain you are going through, the cross you bear, can help you strip away what is false and see the truth of your inner life, whether there is goodness there and where it lies, perhaps deep within. You see your shame, your defensiveness, your inhibitions. How will you appear to others? What will they say about you? Is that not a cross? Is it not painful to speak to someone close to you about yourself, to tell the truth about who you are, and to become an open embrace? An embrace that is not afraid and does not look at the other person with suspicion. Christ became an embrace and said, 'Come...'

Come close to me. You may spit at me, but you may also embrace me as I am. You may pour out your bitterness and malice against me and thrust a spear at me, because I am defenseless, an easy target. But if you wish, we can become friends. You can embrace me, kiss me, and care for me as I am.

The point is that I want to be honest and take that step. I have to dare. This takes courage. It takes courage to speak to your spiritual father. It takes courage to speak to someone close to you: your family, your mother, your father, your wife or husband, your friend, your neighbor. It takes courage to open your arms and become an embrace yourself, as Christ did on the Cross.

In our relationships, crosses and pain keep arising, and we struggle to make ourselves vulnerable. It is hard to say, “I’m jealous of you,” or, “I want you, and I’m afraid of losing you.” It is hard to say, “I feel terribly lonely and inadequate.” You may find it hard to admit, “The truth is, I don’t love you very much, but I need you so much. I can’t live without you.” Or to say to your child, “The reason I don’t want you to study that subject isn’t that it doesn’t suit you. I don’t want to lose you. I’ve arranged a job for you here, and I want you close to me.” Instead, we tell lies. Yet real pain in a relationship can, in the end, bring forth a wonderful sweetness.

That is the true cross in our relationships with others, the one that can bring such sweetness in the end. The true cross means making yourself vulnerable. You may not always be pleasant, but you can always be truthful, with dignity and with respect for the other person: what they can bear, whether they can listen to you and accept what you say. At least make the attempt. Keep trying to be truthful. We are not truthful, and so our suffering bears no fruit. Listen, I know I’m speaking in my usual tangled way today, wandering from one thing to another. Everyone suffers. You will suffer one way or another. I cannot offer you a way never to suffer, because I have not found one myself.

What I can offer is a way Christ shows me. It is not my own. The Church shows it to me, as do the experience of the Saints and people who have learned how to face these things. You have often said it yourself: through pain, something deeply true, sweet, and beautiful can emerge. That is what I mean. Relationships bring pain, but you are ashamed. You are ashamed to open up. You dare not lay yourself bare and climb onto the cross. You think, “How can I spread my arms like that? What if someone throws a stone at me? I want to put my hands in front of my face, or I’ll be hurt.” And the answer comes: “No, leave your arms open, even if it means crying out.”

Say, “I’m afraid.” Admit that you are afraid. Say, “I’m ashamed.” Admit that you are ashamed. If you need to cry, cry. But then someone says, “Men don’t cry. Women shouldn’t cry either. You have to keep your composure, because if you cry, people will think you are weak. If you humble yourself, the other person will see someone they can take advantage of.” But isn’t that a lie? Isn’t it a lie to show one thing while feeling another? Christ was truthful on the Cross. And when you open up through your pain, when that pain allows what is hidden within you to blossom—your soul with all its suffering and longing—you will begin to speak the truth. Instead of saying, “Go away,” you will say, “I want you here, and I love you very much.” How often we say one thing when we mean another. You push your wife away, though deep down you love her dearly. What you really want to say is not “Go away,” but “I want to know whether you love me.”

“I’m testing how much you can bear. I want to test your love, so I tell you to go away and wait to see whether you’ll answer, ‘I’ll stay. Where would I go without you?’” Remember how Christ asked, “Do you also want to go away?” And when they answered, “Lord, where would we go? Who could be better than You? You have the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go?” I think the Lord felt great joy in the love of His disciples at that moment. He felt great joy after the Resurrection too, when He made as though He would go farther, and they said, “Stay. Don’t leave.” So say that you want me near you. Tell the truth. Express yourself. Open up. Be yourself. Isn’t it tragic that couples can be married for twenty, fifteen, or even forty years and still not know each other?

They have not opened up to each other. They have not embraced each other with their souls, only with their bodies. Open your soul so the other person can understand who you are, what you want, what you are seeking, and what is truly troubling you deep down.

The cross. A cross keeps arising in our relationships, and I do not know whether the Resurrection follows. Here the Resurrection does not come by itself. You must want it. You must bear the pain and go and tell the truth to yourself and to the person close to you. Say what you truly want them to hear. That is how I see it.

If you do that, I cannot promise everything will turn out perfectly. Thorns may appear. But it is good for the other person to know who is standing before them. If you find the courage to speak, they would have to be very hardhearted not to be moved and say, “You know, my brother, my sister, I am just like you.”

“I feel the same things inside. I hurt too. I am insecure. I am afraid. I get jealous. I tremble at the thought of death.” Then this shared experience brings us together. The truths we share bring us together, as do the thorns in our souls. We go to Christ, and He turns our thorns into roses and says, “Yes, this is it.”

“What I see before me is beautiful: sincerity. Truth.” It is impossible to be on the cross and pretend. When you climb onto the cross, you will cry out, weep, sweat, get dirty, and bleed. It is not a pleasant sight, but it is a true picture, an honest showing of your soul.

You will see that it is usually in great pain that a person becomes truthful. They cry out and say what they really mean, like little children when they play, get hurt, and cry. Then the truth comes out, and all pretense falls away. Earlier a child may have told me, “This upset me, and that upset me.” Later the child says, “Yes, but you love Kostas more than me. Yes, all those things bothered me, but you bought him something at the amusement park and didn’t buy me anything.” All that time, the child was talking about other things.

And behind those words, something else was hiding.

There was bitterness, a sense of having been treated unfairly, and jealousy. That is what the cross means in our relationships: a cross that brings forth resurrection, love, sweetness, and, in the end, beauty. That is the only difference, you know.

Being close to God does not mean you will be spared crosses or pain. Through pain, you come to see your true self. You notice your suffering and sorrow, and instead of saying over and over, “I’ve been fired, I’ve been fired, I’ve been fired. I have no money,” you look deeper. You say, “What troubles me now is not the dismissal itself, but this terrible insecurity inside me. It is not that I have no money, because right now I am not hungry. I am not hungry. My stomach—I am stuffed. Today I ate, I drank, I ate. My refrigerator is full. It is not that I have no money. I am afraid. I lack faith. I feel insecure and lonely. I do not feel that God loves me. I have not yet grasped God’s love for me.” So you see how the Cross, in itself—

—does not make you smile; by itself, it brings only pain. But if you begin to search within yourself, you mature and go deeper. You ask what is truly troubling you. What you named first is not the whole of it; something lies behind it, and something behind that. Then beauty begins to emerge, and you say, “Through this cross I have realized that I do not love God. I have realized that there is an ocean of God’s love for me, yet I have not tasted even one drop of it. That is why I feel so insecure. I have realized that what I lack is love, not money; a tender touch, not food. I lack other things, not the things I keep saying I lack.” And what helped me see all this was—

—the Cross God gave me. That is, if I choose to learn from it. If I do not, I shout, grow indignant, argue, and complain. The years pass, and I am not benefited. Sadly, you can see this in monasteries, parishes, Christian communities, homes, and families—in me and in you. Suffering while the years pass is not enough. Sometimes you see how people behave after years of ascesis, of ascetic discipline, and spiritual life, and you are astonished. You ask, “What has this person learned all these years? Has none of it benefited him? Did all those night vigils do nothing to make his soul a little more beautiful? What did he gain from them?”

In a particular case—mine, for example—the answer may be: nothing. Laboring, keeping vigils, fasting, being “crucified,” so to speak, through all these things does not mean that this cross will bear good fruit. The cross by itself, by itself, brings no benefit. You need to see it together with Christ, through His eyes. Let that wind of Christ blow over you on the cross. Draw near to Him where He too is on the Cross, and draw a breath from His breath, the breath of the Crucified One. Breathe with Him, so that you may come into rhythm with the beating of His heart, with His breath, His peace, His wisdom, and His holiness.

Then something good will come of it. Otherwise, it may turn out as a friend of mine once told me. He was a seventy-five-year-old monk and priest, and in a moment of disarming honesty—one that made me love him even more—he said, “Believe me, I am still just as I was when I entered the monastery: the same passions, the same mistakes, the same weaknesses, the same character.” He was not lying, and he was not merely speaking humbly. I believed him, because I had seen the difficulties that can arise in relationships. I deeply appreciated his honesty. He did not present a picture of holiness he did not possess, though he could have played the Saint. He could have pretended to be a Saint. Instead, he told me the truth.

It was not, of course, the whole truth, because this man has taken steps forward and made progress. Christ has changed and transformed him. But what he said revealed something, too. I told him, “Well, I looked at the icons there in the monastery, at the frescoes the fathers kiss when they come in. They kiss them once in the morning, once during Matins, then at the ‘Let Every Breath’ hymns. They kiss them before receiving Holy Communion, when they come in for Vespers, when they leave Vespers, and at Compline. That is seven or eight times a day. The icons have faded from all those kisses. Do you see? Look at the Lord’s feet, the hand of our Most Holy Theotokos, the saints: the colors are gone. So many kisses, so many times.”

“And what are you doing when you kiss them? You are embracing the saints. Has that embrace, that kiss, that grace done nothing in you? Has it not softened you, opened you up, eased your heart, made you more humble and more truthful?” Perhaps it has not. Perhaps it has not.

How do you approach a saint, the Most Holy Theotokos, and the Lord? When you go to kiss an icon with a feeling that, let’s say...

“I am fine. I am rich. I have everything I need in my soul. I kiss the icon with perfect dignity. I am a respectable man.” But how respectable are you if you approach it like that and fail to see what you are really like? And I say again: I am not asking you to believe lies about yourself. See the truth of what is happening within you. When I think of the Church’s word “self-reproach,” of calling yourself to account, I do not think it means telling yourself lies. If you believe you are good, you need not simply say, “No, I am bad.” Do not say anything false. Tell the truth. What do you feel? What do you think and desire? What do you imagine? What do you long for?

And when you admit these things, you become humble.

You become humble, and you do not lose your mind. Someone once sent me a long message full of thoughts and logismoi, intrusive thoughts. He was close to losing his mind and taking his own life. Why? Because those thoughts were dreadful, tragic, frightening, heavy, and ugly. My answer began very simply: “Haven’t you understood that you are an ordinary human being? Before you become a saint, you need to understand what it means to be human. And being human means carrying all sorts of things within you.” “But that is painful,” he said. Of course it is. It is a cross. That is why I call it the cross of knowing yourself, of seeing yourself as you are. He felt far more relieved when I told him that I often feel this way too. “You too?” “Yes, me too. And many others as well. Even saints—not just me, but holy people too.”

Great people speak about these things. They write about them in their books, discuss them, confess them, and admit them. “But surely,” he said, “no one can feel, think, or desire such things. Can a mother think something terrible about her child? Could she have an intrusive thought while looking at her baby—some wild thought of harming her child, or her husband, or killing a relative?” Yet such thoughts show us something about the human condition: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquities, and in sins my mother conceived me.” I carry such contradictions within me, such inner division and disorder. “But isn’t the Church about holiness?” Yes, and this is what holiness involves.

See your true condition, the corruption within you, and come to terms with yourself. Gather up all those sacks of dirt and disorder and bring them before Christ. Say to Him, “My Lord, this is what I am really like. This is who I am. Forgive me. Do You love me as I am?” “Yes.” Then why try to make yourself look better, to cover up and hide the truth of your soul? That is why you suffer. It could be so simple. Uncovering our true selves holds so much happiness in the end. The happiness is not in what comes out, but in daring to open up.

The man who wrote to me about all the disturbing things that came into his mind—I cannot tell you what they were. Anyone hearing them would be shocked. Some were things he thought, some came upon him, and some he desired. They are frightening. You might say, “What a thought! He thought that?” But he dared to say it. He came closer to the truth about himself, the real state of his soul, and he shared it. Now he can say, “There is someone I can face—my spiritual father, a friend, an acquaintance, a brother, a Christian I deeply respect—who knows things about me that others do not.” Then someone dies in a neighborhood, people are interviewed, and they all say, “But he was such a good man, so respectable. How could he have done that?”

Yes, he could have. And the person asking, “How could he?” is hiding the truth too. If he thinks about it honestly, he will find the same things in himself. I wrote to that man, “We are all in the same boat. We all have such thoughts. We are all alike.” Just think about what you say when you go to confession.

Think of your last confession, and you will see what you are like—unless, of course, you are a saint. I do not know: when you last confessed, did you have only holy things to say? Do you speak only of the uncreated light in confession? What was the uncreated light you saw last time like? No. I think it has been a while since you told anyone about seeing the uncreated light. Years have passed. You have not seen it, and neither have I. I say this because some people are startled when they hear such things. They give others a false impression and create a huge distance between themselves and them.

A young person hears you and thinks, “Everyone in there is perfect. Why should I go in? If I open my soul and tell them everything I feel, they will all leave. They are saints.” They are not saints. Christ Himself gave us other names: hypocrites, Pharisees, liars. Once, someone advised a person about another spiritual father: “Leave him. Do not go to him. He is not a good man.” I knew that spiritual father. I did not know what “not a good man” was supposed to mean. I knew nothing bad about him. He seemed a decent man to me, like other spiritual fathers, carrying on his struggle as they do. But I thought: the man who said, “Leave him; he is not a good man”...

...should tell us whom he considers a good one. What does “good” mean to him? Is he himself good? When you plant suspicion in someone else’s mind and say, “Leave. Do not go to him, or to her, or to that other person...” I am speaking generally now, taking this as an example. I am not focused on that particular case. Is that way of thinking truthful? And as I say this about the man who gave that advice, I too risk becoming a hypocrite. When I discussed it with an elder, do you know what he told me? “Father, we are all alike. If you now speak against the man who criticized someone else, you will make the same mistake. You will criticize him. One day you might do it yourself and say, ‘This person is right; that one is not.’” We keep sorting people into little boxes...

...boxes we put around one another in our relationships: this one is good, these are good people, those are bad, we are the most righteous, they are less so. Christ looks at us, waiting to see us join hands and become one. He asks us, “Have you forgotten the prayer I offered on the Mount of Olives, for all of you, good and bad alike?” Perhaps those called bad remember it more readily, because they will reach out their hands. They say, “We are sinners; we are unclean. Will you good people give us your hand? You who are pure and holy, reach out to us.” “Oh, no,” says someone else. “I cannot touch them.” You understand what I mean: I am speaking of drawing near to another person, of approaching them. And Christ prayed, “My heavenly Father, I ask You that they may all be one, loving one another, united as brothers and sisters.”

Keep your distance from the evil people do, but not from the people themselves. Christians live in the world while belonging to another world. That does not mean they refuse to draw near to others. It does not mean I can live in my apartment building thinking I am above everyone else, that they are all in the mud while I am something special. I may be deeper in the mud. A few days ago I heard a man shouting and swearing at his neighbor. He made a scene and showed what he was like; it was out in the open. I keep everything inside, carefully swept under the rug, so that nothing shows in my living room. It is like a children’s party: when you arrive, everything looks tidy because the mother has appeared.

Once the guests have gone, the mother lifts the rugs and finds chewing gum stuck there, cigarette butts, and other things tossed under the seats. She is horrified: “What went on in here?” This happens in every soul. What is going on inside us? It too is a cross to dare to look within and admit it to yourself.

A priest once told me how hard he tries to undo the image others have of him. “I try,” he said, “because you and I, and all priests, wear clothing with a great deal of meaning attached to it. It carries a tradition. People imagine that the whole tradition of the Church has been gathered up in us, that we embody it perfectly, that we are the best it has to offer. At least in my case, that is not true. I do not know about you.” I told him, “I think the same about myself. I do not embody that tradition perfectly, yet people approach me expecting something else. So I feel I have no right ever to speak sharply, get angry, or lose my temper in front of them. Of course I need to struggle against those things. But that struggle does not change the truth about where I am right now.”

I will keep trying to become better. But there is a difference between trying to become a saint and constantly playing the saint. When I put on that appearance, others feel inadequate, weighed down, and pressured. They build a completely false picture in their minds, and even then they cannot make themselves accept it, because however hard you press yourself, something within you still wants otherwise.

I see it when someone receives Holy Communion and comes back a little later, and ten minutes later tells me again about his pain, his longing, and his sorrow. I remember a man who was deeply attached to a young woman. He loved her very much, but she did not want him; they had broken up. He told me, “I want to prepare to receive Holy Communion.” He received Holy Communion, and ten minutes later took the antidoron—the blessed bread distributed after Liturgy—and came to find me. “Father, what is going to happen with this woman?” I almost said, “My dear man, you have just received Holy Communion.” But then I thought, “Wait, wait. Calm down. At least he is speaking honestly.”

What I would really have been telling him was, “Now that you have received Holy Communion, act the part. Press a button and play the saint for a while. Do not tell me about these ordinary concerns, these human needs and feelings. At least pretend for me that you have received Holy Communion.” But he could not do that. This was the truth. He was saying, “I received Holy Communion, but I thought about her again, because I am still human and I have not reached that point.” You may ask, “Shouldn’t we move beyond our concerns and draw closer to God?” Yes, but that cannot happen through hypocrisy. That is what I have been trying to tell you. This is the cross I have spoken of today. It is a strange one, and I do not know quite how I came to speak about it this way, but I see it in myself: the struggle to be truthful in my spiritual efforts, in admitting what I am and seeing myself as I am.

Then share all this with your spiritual father, your brother, your family, your wife or husband, your children—as much as you can share, of course. There must be boundaries and respect for the other person. But it is a beautiful thing to know that the people before you are genuine. Otherwise, many problems arise, and priests, psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, hospitals, and institutions end up carrying them. Some people even end up in psychiatric hospitals, and I pray that none of us ever does. So that a person can instead go to a spiritual father and find rest for the soul, we need to be as honest as we can. There is an embrace waiting for us. And if you are afraid of one person, go to someone else you are not afraid of.

Open your soul. First, open it to yourself. Look within, and love your poor soul, so troubled, so wounded, so mistreated, so unwell. Mine is like that too. Oh, I’m embarrassed I just said that. I take it back. Vasilis, cut that out if you think you should. Vasilis, can you cut what we just said?

Hatzinikolaou is with us, and the music has played. Those words are staying in; they are beautiful. I have no regrets about the music Vasilis chose today. It was beautiful. Thank you again, Vasilis.

The numbers for the program are 4118602 and 4118640. You can also email me, but please write only ten lines. I cannot read the ten-page messages some people send. The address is atheata.perasmata@yahoo.gr. What can I do? I regret some of what I said today, but I have said it now. It was true, though. It was true.

Still, it was good. It was good that we said these things. It was good that today we spoke about unpleasant things and became a little more honest. We deserve no praise for that, and of course we do not boast about it. We simply say to Christ, ‘We want to be a little more honest before You and with one another.’ And You, Lord, who see the sorry state we reveal when we speak honestly, can set things right. All we can do is open our souls a little and let in a little more light, so that something sweet may come from this cross of human relationships, from the cross each of us carries within the soul. And that sweetness is the courage to speak, to share, to open up.

It is the love we come to experience with one another. And thank you for listening to me today without judging or rejecting me.

I do not reject you or condemn you either, because God neither condemns nor rejects any of us—not you, and not me. What a wonderful God we have. How good He is, and how full of love.

May you experience that love. May it live within you and grow, until you feel more and more deeply how very, very, very, very much God loves you. May God give you strength, and have a good week.