I hope you’re well, my dear friend. That’s more or less how I always begin these broadcasts, but I don’t know how else to begin. I hope you are all well. Yes. Right now I’m coming to you through Piraiki Ekklisia on 91.2, on Unseen Passages, together with Vasilis Chatzinikolaou, who provides the music for our program. He helps us a great deal, comforts and supports me. He tells me his thoughts, his opinions, and I tell him mine, my own opinions. And I don’t know what kind of setting I’m entering right now. Are you well?

Are you troubled? What’s on your mind? That’s why I hope you’re well, and that life is going beautifully for you. Simply, I mean, because in the end, what’s beautiful is simple. You don’t have to do extraordinary things to say your life is beautiful. Simplicity has its own beauty. I hope, for example, that you have two or three good friends. Life is lovely when you can share it with two or three good friends. Perhaps that’s too many to ask for these days. Even one good friend is a wonderful thing. Do you have friends like that?

Do you have someone you can go to, tell them something, and know they’ll listen? Someone you can tell your troubles to? Perhaps something happens at work, and you think, ‘When I finish today, I’ll go home and call my friend. I’ll tell them what’s weighing on me, and I’ll hear a human voice.’

Someone I know understands me. It isn’t that they’ll solve my problem. Just having someone listen to you is a great thing. It’s a great blessing these days to have good friends who listen, receive another person’s pain, and act like breakwaters against our tension and panic. They say, ‘Come on, my friend, tell me everything. Make some coffee so we can have a cup—I know you drink coffee—and talk to me.’ ‘Oh, I don’t want to burden you with my problems.’ ‘But that’s what friends are for. Go on.’ And you say, ‘He goes to work, goes into the office, and talks to the manager about me behind my back.’ You keep talking, pouring out your hurt and bitterness, while your friend sits and listens. If you have a friend like that—

Of course, friendship isn’t just me burdening him. At some point he’ll bring me his burden too: his pain, his worries, his anxieties, and his joys. What matters is that someone understands you and, above all, that you feel loved. You can say something foolish, or he can see you in a moment of crisis, when you’re judging someone else, and he still puts up with you. Suppose you start speaking harshly about someone. Your friend hears you and knows you’re passing judgment. But he doesn’t jump up and say, ‘Shame on you! You’re judging someone. I’m leaving.’ Why? Because a good friend thinks, ‘My friend is going through a difficult moment. A troubled, intense part of his soul is coming out.’

Panic-stricken. People have passions too—both with epsilon-iota and with eta, as the Greek wordplay has it. That is, he is passionate right now, but he also has his passions. What does his friend do? He takes in that passion and makes room for it. It’s like Holy Confession. Sometimes you go to your spiritual father and tell him what’s going on. He knows that this person is jealous right now, that this person is judging someone, that this person is envious, that this woman is expressing hatred, that this woman has quite a passion. But he doesn’t suddenly put a label on you and say, ‘My child, I can see that you’re a bad person. Your egoism is showing now.’ What does he do? Because he loves you, he absorbs those tremors of the soul. He receives them all and covers them with love, waiting for all that turmoil in your soul to pass,

for things to settle little by little. Then he can say, ‘There now, you’ve calmed down. I know this isn’t all that you are. I’m your friend, and I know you aren’t a bad person. I heard you say some harsh things earlier: “I never want to see him again. If he speaks to me, I’ll shut the door in his face.”’ Your friend listens and says, ‘I know you aren’t really like that, but I welcome what you have to tell me. If you can’t tell me, whom will you tell? The walls? Will you sit there talking to yourself? You can tell God in prayer, of course, but you also need another human being like you, someone of flesh and blood beside you. You need to share your pain, even your passion, and say, “I’m angry right now. I don’t want anyone talking to me.”’ Having someone beside you at a moment like that is a great comfort in life.

Thank God for giving you someone who loves you at your best and at your worst, who knows what’s right about you and what’s crooked, and still says, ‘I love you. We’re friends, and we’ve been edified by so much in life. We’re more than our faults. I have faults too. Remember a month ago, when I was upset about my children’s grades and told you all about it? Now you’re telling me about your troubles at the office. Another day I’ll tell you about a car accident, and I may call the person who hit me a scoundrel.’ Someone might say, ‘Oh! He called him a scoundrel!’ Yes, he did, because he was angry. A friend knows how to see past the words and the harsh things we say. A friend understands what others cannot.

Others may label you: ‘He’s a bad person. I saw him lose his temper.’ A friend lets that judgment go, again and again, and says, ‘Let love lead us. Now let’s see what we can do.’

I hope you have that kind of sincere bond with a few good friends. You won’t regret it. Good friendships and good company are among the things we won’t regret in life. But remember to listen as well as speak. Listen to your friends too.

Don’t think only of yourself. Sometimes you spend time with people and tell them all about your troubles. Those poor people listen, and then you leave saying, ‘Well, goodbye! See you soon. Thanks so much for the talk.’ And the other person thinks, ‘But we didn’t really talk. You spoke the whole time, and I said nothing.’ Ask yourself sometimes: am I a good friend to others? Can someone trust me, speak to me, and count on me to give them time?

Can you set your own concerns aside for a little while, listen to someone else, and show understanding?

Put yourself in the other person’s place and ask, ‘Why might they have done that? How exactly did they feel?’ Try to enter into their experience, their heart, their thoughts. That’s good friendship. It’s such a relief in life, like having a safe harbor.

You can experience this with your wife or husband, and with friends outside the home too: friends you’ve had since childhood, relatives, neighbors, people at work, or others in your life. It’s wonderful to listen and speak, to offer advice when you should, and to be silent when you sense that your eyes alone will speak, while, of course, always praying inwardly.

We can say, ‘Lord, come among us now. Give us Your light and shine it on our relationship, so we can see what to say.’ In other words, bring Christ into it.

A young man had begun a relationship with a young woman, and they hoped to marry. One day she spoke to me. I asked, ‘Do you go for walks together? Do you talk and get to know each other?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but sometimes, just when I’m enjoying our walk, he says, “I have to leave early. I need to go home, read spiritual books, and say my prayers.”’

I told her, ‘Tell him that what you’re doing together at this stage of your lives is connected with prayer. You haven’t known each other for a hundred years. You’re only at the beginning. Your bond needs to deepen, and it will deepen through talking with each other. And I want you to understand that Christ is present in those conversations.’

The young man you’re getting to know goes home to read a spiritual book about Christ. And what does the book speak about? Humility, patient endurance, prayer, and love. Good. But aren’t you living those very things as you walk together? You’re putting what the books say into action. Your relationship is a book in itself. So I told her, ‘Next time he says he has to go home and read his books, tell him what I’ve told you. Tell him—’

‘From now on, I’ll be a book for you too. You’ll learn things through me.’ Books are needed when we have no living relationship with God and other people. When we do have those relationships, what place should books have? You read a cookbook to learn how to prepare a meal. But once you’re in the kitchen making it, the book isn’t the priority. Cooking is.

That’s even more true here. Relationships between people, the friendships that grow between them, help us resolve our problems and give us fresh insight into them. They speak to each person’s particular life in a much more personal way. Suppose I write a book. It will express my thoughts and my character. You can’t take it and apply it to your life exactly as it is, because your soul has its own starting points and needs. Your whole makeup, body and soul, is different from mine. You can’t do everything exactly as I would. That’s what a relationship can teach us. But I also told her that when they were together, they should call upon Christ in their hearts.

You have to speak about Him. When you go out for a drink or a meal, watch a film, or take a walk, call on Christ in your hearts and invite Him into it. Let even the drink you share be enjoyed in the light of Christ. Then you won’t feel that today’s outing took time away from your spiritual life. You’ll feel that it helped your spiritual life grow. Through that relationship, through conversation and patient endurance, you may say something silly and he’ll bear with you. He may say something foolish, and you’ll let it pass without embarrassing him. You’ll forgive him and come to understand him better. And you’ll come down to earth and say, ‘Ah, the person I’m getting to know and thinking of marrying is human, after all. He isn’t an angel. He says foolish things too.’ Yes, that’s a good thing. It takes time. The relationship needs time to grow deeper.

A sense of ease, instead of someone saying, “What time is it? It’s half past nine. I have to go and read my spiritual books.” Do you see what I mean now? There was a man at a monastery where the fathers had a lot of work to do. He told his spiritual father, “Father, I have no time for much prayer, or reading, or spiritual growth.” His spiritual father said, “You want to cultivate yourself? Then go dig in that field for a while. We have work to do there tomorrow.” “But Father,” he said, “I meant spiritual cultivation and books.” “Just dig the field, and you’ll see.” And in that trusting obedience—I see it as a matter of trust, a matter of love—

It is a matter of saying, “I place myself in your hands and let you shape me.” I do this out of love, with my own free will, trusting you. And from that trust comes deep understanding.

For love is a source of understanding; love brings understanding. All this began with what I was saying about friendship: it is a beautiful thing in life, and I hope you have it—good friends. Life flows more beautifully that way. You grow richer within, you mature, you become a more beautiful person, and you find peace. Then that inner turmoil begins to fade.

You see someone and, I don't know, somehow sense that something is troubling them, though you don't know what it is. You think, “Something is wrong; something is missing.” There is unrest in them, an uneasiness, a nervousness in the way they act. These are people who have never had anyone to lean on. We need someone to lean on, a place where the soul can rest, where we can feel the warmth of a heartfelt embrace—someone who welcomes and accepts us as we are.

Then you keep looking for reassurance. You want others to tell you, “Yes, yes, we love you. Yes, yes, you matter.” It is exhausting to have to beg for that and chase after it all the time. Good friendships give us that reassurance. They help us feel, “I am loved too. I have a place where I can go at any time, and no one will say, ‘What are you doing here?’ or ‘Why are you like that?’” That is why children often leave home and prefer being with their friends: their friends accept them. It means so much to be accepted without being judged. However you want to dress, whether you have washed or not, your friends accept you as you are.

At home, a child hears their mother say, “Have you brushed your teeth? Have you washed your feet? Where have you left your things? Your books are scattered everywhere. Why is your bag there? And do something about your hair too, my child. How many days has it been since you... Go and get a haircut.” That sort of thing does not create a friendly relationship at home, because it is constant criticism, control, and pressure. You keep intruding into the other person’s life, always getting underfoot. The kind of friendship I’m describing is freer, more relaxed; you can breathe more easily, and it feels better.

That won’t happen again. That kind of atmosphere does not build friendship. I’ve jumped from one thing to another, but you see what friendship means and how it helps a person find peace. It brings an inner calm and a sense of safety: there are people who love me without judging me. This is what Christ does when he says, “I judge no one.” I did not come here to judge you. I came to love you. I did not come to comment on your hair, your life, your clothes, or your house. I love you. If Christ entered a messy house, he would not say, “My child, what a mess!” You would feel how deeply Christ loves you and that he asks for nothing but you yourself. That is the beauty of it.

In a relationship of true love and friendship, you come to understand that the other person wants nothing around you; they want you. And when you realize that someone is looking only at your heart and loves it deeply, you want to change your surroundings too. You say, “Here you are, loving me and coming close to me, even entering this messy place. Let me put it in order so I can welcome you somewhere clean.” And the other person says, “But I never asked you to.” “That’s exactly why I’m doing it—because you didn’t ask.”

The most beautiful changes are the ones nobody asks for, yet they happen. That is the kind of change Christ—our Lord Jesus—is seeking to bring about in your life. After all these years, you may have noticed that He does not pressure you. I’m not talking about what the Gospel says—His commandments, teachings, counsel, and parables. Even these are offered very gently and discreetly. But leave the Gospel aside. I’m talking about your personal life: has Christ done anything there? You see, He does not bother you or impose anything on you. Christ Himself treats you as a friend, with great respect, and gives you freedom. He leaves you be and bears with you. “Come on, I’ll wait here until you wake up.” Yet He truly loves you. That way of treating people is beautiful in a friendship. If we have that spirit, then...

That’s good, because sometimes we put too much pressure on others and become a nuisance. I say this because you’ve written to me several times about friendships where you feel pressured to do things you don’t want to do, to take a stand on issues that don’t reflect your views. You feel under pressure.

That cannot be friendship, when someone pressures you. And you ask me, “What should I do?” Do what you need to do. What is that? Don’t let anyone stifle your freedom, grip you by the throat until you can’t breathe. Say, “No, I won’t let you do that to me. Please. I’ll do it when I can, when I want to, when I feel love for it and it comes from within me. But if you force me to do it now, when it doesn’t come naturally to me, I won’t.” That’s the kind of pressure we’re talking about.

To the other person.

That’s how they go through life. That’s what he means when he says, “How are you? Are you well?” That’s how the program began: “Are you well? Do you have a few friends? Are you enjoying life?” I wish that for you too: that you’re doing well. Someone once told me, “I don’t do very much. I just live my life with my family and my children.” Yet I could see how much that person was growing spiritually, sometimes without even realizing it.

How often do you change without even realizing it, through things that at first don’t seem spiritual? You see someone wearing a cassock—a priest, a nun, or a monk—and think, “That person is making spiritual progress.”

It is his monastic habit that inspires you. But think of a mother changing her baby and waking every night for an hour or two to feed the child and settle it back to sleep. She cannot sleep because of the crying. Or think of someone with a dog that barks in the neighborhood. The owner cannot rest, the neighbors cannot rest, and he wakes up and bears it with patient endurance. In the morning he feeds his dog and loves it, though sometimes he feels like giving it a kick and sending it out of the yard. These things do not look spiritual.

What have I been talking about? Dogs, barking, babies, diapers, crying, chores. And yet these things, too, help you grow spiritually as you go through life. Life is beautiful even with all these tiny things. God gathers them up, and in the end He shows you a bouquet. You say to Him, “Lord, I have nothing.” And He says, “But I have seen beautiful things you have accomplished in your life.” “What have I accomplished?” Those little things—those tiny flowers.

“I gathered them,” God says, “and from all those tiny flowers I made a large, beautiful bouquet.” That is how life is: small successes, small acts of patient endurance, small acts of love, small acts of forgiveness. This is how our lives change. The years go by, and we may have no label to show that we have lived through great spiritual things.

And these things, too, are part of the spiritual life. Suppose your husband comes home and, as usual, shouts, gets angry, and swears—day after day after day. Perhaps three times a year, on the great feasts, he is in a good mood. But you may come to see those other 360-odd days, with a little patient endurance each day, as a treasure. That treasure is in your soul. Your life is beautiful in that way—beautiful in the spiritual progress you are making.

Sorrow and the blows of life shape you. A piece of marble becomes a statue only after the sculptor has struck it again and again. It is painful, but then you see the result and say, “What a beautiful statue! Look how it shines.” Yes, but it was once a rough piece of rock. Little by little, the blows made it beautiful. And so you show patient endurance in life. Sometimes you can bear it, and sometimes you cannot. Sometimes you do what is good, and sometimes you do not. Sometimes you struggle, and sometimes you sin. Yes, you sin. You come to accept that and say, “I too am human. I sin, I ask God for forgiveness, I keep struggling and trying, and I admit that, in the end, sin is something that…”

It is hard for anyone to say, “I will never sin again.” I simply recognize it. I admit that I am human, come to terms with that, and humble myself. I do not seek out sin, but I no longer panic as I used to. I once imagined there were things I would be completely free of, and that I would become an angel on earth.

When you see that you got angry and lost your temper, you say, “I acted like a human being again. This is who I am, Lord.” You admit it, and you grow calm. Then you begin to realize that you are just one person on planet Earth. There are, what, six billion of us? I am one among those six billion. That means there are another five billion, uh...

...999 million, however many thousands, and so on and so forth, and then there is me at the end. I am just one person, very, very small. Once you understand that, you calm down. You say, “Come now, who am I, after all?” Some people also calm down as time passes. The years go by; the body’s strength, the hormones, the nerves, and the intensity all subside. You see someone become as gentle as a lamb and wonder how he grew so calm. Someone else says, “He did not grow calm; he grew old. He cannot do much now. What is he going to do—shout, break things, hit people?” Now he tends his beehives. He has a little barrel and makes his own wine from the vines in his village. People settle down, even if they were hot-tempered in their youth. And as the years of life go by...

...life is beautiful in this way, through these simple little things. Of course, you may do something great and demanding today. I do not know; you may do something very remarkable, very great. But as the years pass, I see that small pieces like these make up the mosaic of our lives and make it beautiful: these little things that seem so insignificant.

You fall many times in life, and you tear down some of the idols you have built within yourself. People who once filled you with enthusiasm later disappoint you. Jobs that took you on enthusiastically then insulted you and let you go when you weren't expecting it. Such things can be very unjust.

You become disappointed with ideas, ideologies, philosophies, groups, people, associations, organizations—individuals. We are human. And all this can be good. “But I was disappointed,” you say. And what of it? Can you not see something beautiful in that? Through disappointment, you become drawn to something more real. If what first captivated you has now disappointed you, it was never the absolute good. If what captivates you is the absolute good, which is God, or something in which the divine is deeply present, you will never be disappointed. If you were disappointed, then that thing was not worthy of captivating you so completely. What happened to you can be good: you have come closer to the truth. You have become a more truthful person. You have understood it. Well done. I am glad you have understood.

Once a woman said to me, “You have disappointed me completely.” I do not say this out of ego or pride, or to mock you, but perhaps it is good that I disappointed you. I am not glad that I did. I am sorry I did not behave properly, that I did not live up to your expectations or to the spiritual stature you thought I had. But is it not also good to expect less from a human being, and not to place me so high when I do not belong there? If you wish, you can still love me. You can take a great step and say, “You are not as I imagined you, but I love you.” Through the love you show, you will make far more spiritual progress than the person you imagine me to be. You can also reject me...

Slowly, of course, because this is not easy. You know the expression: you fall from the clouds. “I never expected him to treat me like that,” someone says. “I never expected him to speak that way.” Why would you not expect it? What are you, then? Someone who stands so firmly? Do you always stand so well yourself? Does Holy Scripture not say, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall”? Whoever thinks he stands firm and unshakable in his opinions, his conduct, and the state of his soul should not be so certain of himself. We are all capable of falling into anything, and any one of us can disappoint someone else. We are human, and recognizing that helps us. These disappointments we cause one another help us turn our hearts toward Christ...

...who never disappoints anyone. No one has ever truly said to the Lord Himself, “You have disappointed me.” That is impossible. If something about Christ disappoints you, it is the mistaken image you have of Him. That image can indeed disappoint you deeply. If you have fixed in your heart the idea that loving Christ means everything will go well for you, then that image of Christ will certainly disappoint you.

That imagined Christ disappoints. But the true image of the Lord is of the One who says, “I discipline those I love. When I love someone, I prune the branches growing from the tree of his soul. I tend him, shape him, and correct him. I dig, hoe, and water. There is pain, there is rain, and even hail and snow fall. I do all of this for the soul.”

We are not disappointed by the Lord, but we do become disappointed with Christ’s people—with me, with you.

That helps us grow in humility. It is no reason to lose our footing, panic, or feel that everything has been turned upside down. Your eyes are opened. You humble yourself, come back down to earth, gather yourself, and watch your own conduct too. Suppose I disappoint you, and in your pride you lose your way and say, “That is it. Everyone has disappointed me!” You may then become worse than I am and disappoint others yourself. You will be humbled in your own eyes, and God will say, “Now look at what happened to you. You spoke about everyone else as though you were better, and here you are, in the same sorry state.”

If we understand this, we grow very dear to one another and feel united. We see that there is only one Master and one Teacher for us all. “One is the Lord”; and He says, “Do not call any of yourselves teacher. I am your Teacher, I am your Lord, I am your leader, I am your God. You are brothers and sisters.” And brothers and sisters...

...quarrel and disappoint one another. That is life. Even this can do you good. “Imagine that,” someone says, “that incident brought me so sharply back down to earth.” Someone told me, “I never expected this from those people.” He described how he had worked with good people, and those good people had disappointed him. “So they are not good people after all,” he said. I told him, “They are. They are good people. But what does it mean to be a good person? Are you being good as you accuse them? Would I be good if I took your side against them and accused them too? You would like me to accuse them now, because it would suit you.”

The two of us could be friends and speak harshly together about those who disappointed you. But the truth is, we do the very things we see in others. We carry all of that within us, because we are all made of the same frail material. That is life. Then you feel your need for Christ and say, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. You, my Christ, have mercy on me. I do not know what to do. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Sometimes you put the emphasis on “have mercy”; sometimes on “me”; and sometimes on “Lord Jesus Christ.” The Lord is Jesus Christ. Not me, not you, not anyone else. This too is a gift of life...

...that your idols are brought down. Of course, this happens as the years pass, as your hair turns white and you see gray in your beard and hair. When we are young, we hope to find something absolute here on earth, and we ask this world for absolute things: absolute love, an absolute relationship, absolute perfection, complete consistency, honesty, and faithfulness. Yes, that is a longing for the absolute. But do not ask what is limited to give you the absolute; it simply cannot. Nor can the person beside you demand the absolute from you. One man said to his wife, “I hope you have not thought about another man. I hope you do not look at anyone else. I hope you have not...” She turned to him and said, “Have you asked yourself those same questions?” “That is different,” he said. “I am a man.” His wife replied, “I am utterly loyal and faithful to you. I love and respect you. But I do not understand why you are so strict with me...

...why I must always meet such an absolute standard. Can you meet a standard that high yourself? Are we not all human?” Our love in Christ, our sincere effort, and our humility draw God’s mercy toward us. As the years pass and you grow older, this is one of life’s gifts: you hear the news and the events of the day, and you look at all these things we have been discussing more calmly. So when someone goes to a grandmother or grandfather and tells them about something that has happened in their life...

...if that older person has matured through life—for age alone is not enough; a person must also have grown inwardly—they listen calmly. They have weathered many storms and may say, “My child, I understand. I went through something similar when I was young,” or, “Something like that happened to someone very close to me.” The maturity life brings enriches us.

Some grandparents in the old days spoke with such wisdom. Their words were simple, part of everyday conversation, but everything they said was like honey. Listening to them was like hearing sayings or proverbs worth writing down. Life had shaped them: hardship, poverty, mourning,emigration to foreign countries, change, constant work, children who died, fields to tend, expenses, wars. All these things brought people to maturity.

And as time passes, life is beautiful because it helps us form a more beautiful image of God within us. Our image of God changes. God Himself remains the same, but we...

As the years pass, we think about God differently. Our souls soften a little. We become more lenient. A young person may be rigid, abrupt, and strict with others, and may have equally rigid ideas about God. An older person often sees things differently. Usually, I say.

Remember what I’ve told you before about Saint Porphyrios the Kafsokalyvite? He said that at first he gave very strict penances, perhaps because he pictured God as a very stern judge. In time, people stopped coming to him for Confession. They would see him and avoid speaking to him. Then he understood that God is not like that, and his sense of God changed: in the words he spoke, in his heart, and in his mind.

Life brings these changes with time. I remember that when I was young, I would not budge on certain spiritual matters. I was adamant. Years later, after I had become a priest, a dear grandmother came to me one morning, trembling, and said:

“Father, I take pills for my blood pressure and other medicine for my health, so I have to drink a glass of milk every morning. Every day. Those are my doctor’s orders; these are urgent matters of life and health. Can I ever receive Holy Communion?” When I was young, I would have thought that impossible. How could you put anything in your mouth and then receive Holy Communion? And if you did, I would have wondered how we could appease God. You had done it, but what would you have to do now for Him to forgive you? After many years, though...

You hear that differently.

It is what Christ says about attending to the weightier matters of the law. You look at what carries greater weight: judgment, mercy, love, the other person’s heart, and the forgiveness in that heart. The passing years give you this, as maturity comes little by little. May God help us change and see Him differently, with love. Saint John the Theologian, when he was very old and had written his epistles, is said to have repeated just this: “My children, love one another,” and “God is love.” He kept saying, “Love one another. God is love.” As we draw closer to God and understand Him better, we focus on what matters most for winning a soul. We younger people...

We talk about God and... we want to stir up trouble in the world, and we quarrel over God. Imagine that! We speak about the One who is Love, and we start arguments because we are young. So, I knew a very holy older man on the Holy Mountain, and I used to say to him, “Father, next time I come, I’ll bring some young people for you to speak to about spiritual things, all right? Speak to them about God.”

“Bring them along,” he said, “and we’ll see.” I said, “Father, tell them some good things,” because he spoke so beautifully to adults about God. But when the young people came, he started talking to them about sports. Sports the whole time. I could not understand it. I tried to change the subject: “Father, here on the Holy Mountain, how many hours do you spend in prayer?” “My goodness, that move the player made in the match...” I would change the subject, and he would go right back to talking sports with them.

At the end, when we were alone, I said, “But Father, I asked you to speak to them about God.” “My dear child,” he said, “do you think God and everything about Him are just as you imagine? You don’t speak about God in the way you think you must.” I said, “Yes, but the young people...” “What happened to the young people?” he asked. Back in the room, they told me, “Bring us to see him again. That little elder is wonderful!” “What was so wonderful? He talked about sports the whole time!” “Yes, he talked about sports, but he had such a sense of humor. He made it interesting, and he didn’t say anything harsh to us.” What had that man achieved? He showed them God in another way. Even as I tell you this, I know that years ago I could not understand it. At the time, I thought it was a failure. I thought a conversation succeeded only if it led someone to pray, go to Confession, read spiritual books, make prostrations, use a prayer rope, and fast. Otherwise, what had it achieved? But perhaps God sometimes has another way.

What did God say to that man, that priest-monk on the Holy Mountain? “Father, give these young people room to breathe. They’ve come to the Holy Mountain, and wherever they look, they see God close by. They see churches, crosses, cassocks, and prayer ropes everywhere. You don’t need to preach here. Talk to them about sports; that’s fine. They’ll come to understand that God is present in everything.” He achieved something difficult that I had not achieved. He showed them that a person of God can talk about sports with humor, sensitivity, and intelligence, without vulgarity or fanaticism. God can run through the whole conversation even when you are not speaking about Him directly. That is a great achievement.

It is a beautiful thing. Once, while teaching, I was pleased with myself. I taught the children the next lesson without telling them that was what I was doing. I explained it through incidents, examples, and things from everyday life. When the class ended, I said, “Children, read the next lesson.” They said, “But you haven’t taught it to us.” “It’s exactly what we’ve been talking about all this time,” I said. “But those were things from our own everyday lives.” “Yes,” I said. “Didn’t you see? Do I have to talk about things far removed from your lives to tell you about God? This is God. Read the next lesson and you’ll understand.” The book simply puts these things more theoretically, in that stiff language you read as though you have to memorize it.

Suppose the book says, for instance, that God is His uncreated energies, and I tell a child, “God comes near me through His divine uncreated energy.” Fine, I’ve taught the lesson. But what has the child understood? “Uncreated energy.” Yet suppose you are sitting there studying and...

...worrying about your schoolwork and the national exams. Then, all at once, you feel something settle in your soul, a hope that God will help and things will turn out well. “Have you ever felt that?” I ask. “A comfort, a strength within you?” “Yes,” they say. “Do you know what that is?” I tell them. “It is God. God comes as hope and comfort.” I also gave them the term: His divine uncreated energy, His grace, His help, which is uncreated. I said that too. But I cannot simply say, “God comes near us through His divine uncreated energies,” and expect to touch someone’s heart. Why did the Lord say, “Look at the birds of the air”? Birds? You are the Son of God; speak to us about God! “That is how I will speak to you about God,” He says. “Look at the birds of the air, and through them you will understand God’s care, love, protection, and providence.”

The years of our lives give us this way of reaching people. Do you remember how today’s program began? “I hope you’re well,” I said. “How is life going? How are you getting on?” As life goes by, we learn these things. At first we make mistakes, and plenty of them...

All women have made very serious mistakes with their husbands, for example. They try to teach them about God, though they themselves cannot bear any correction from their spiritual father, say, a stern correction. He is good only when he agrees with them. When he corrects them, they themselves will not accept it. Yet they keep giving their husbands blunt instructions: “It’s Wednesday today; we’re fasting. I didn’t make what you asked for because we’re fasting today. That’s final.” That is no way to reach someone. That is not the God...

...you are trying to show your husband. The image he gets is of someone threatening, someone who takes food from his mouth, makes his life difficult, and makes his wife tense and strange. The one thing that man will not feel from the image you give him is God’s gentleness.

We learn these things in life. Today I’ve spoken to you about friendship, the maturity life gives us, how we come down to earth and grow in humility, and how our image of God changes as the years pass. Life gives us all this. Think of today’s talk alongside that earlier one about the days of our lives passing. What do we do with them? How does my life go by? Like this: I sin, I repent, I struggle, I mature. Sometimes I may even grow without realizing it, because when I become aware of my progress, it ceases to be progress. Real growth is hidden; God knows it. I learn much from my mistakes, and the taste of God changes in my mouth, along with my sense of Him and the way I try to share Him with others.

I once went to give a talk at a school. Someone told me, “The people here aren’t really Church people...” I said, “That’s all right. What does ‘Church people’ even mean?” I said this to the parents themselves: “I was told that some of you may not go to Church. But whether you do or not, we all breathe the same air. We all have troubles; we will all be hurt and feel pain; we will all die. We all receive God’s love, even if we do not believe it comes from God. God loves us. We have things in common, don’t we? I haven’t come here to argue. I haven’t come to persuade you to become like me, to love God, or to go to Church. I’ve come to share a few thoughts. If any of them touch you, think about them. If you don’t like them, that’s all right. If you see things differently, tell me what you believe. Respect me, love me, forgive me.”

“Accept me as someone different, with different views.” Something good can come of all this, and you never know what God may be doing through it. God has His own way, and from what we can see, it is very different from the way we, who feel ourselves to be His children, do things. His way has another spirit, another approach, and in the end it succeeds wonderfully. We, sadly, make a mess of things. So, Lord, come into this mess of ours. And if I’ve made a mess of things today too, my dear friends, Vasilis—I don’t know whether I have—Vasilis is with us again, Vasilis Hatzinikolaou. Thank you so much for your company and your patient endurance. You bring order to this sea of sound.

And he puts everything in order, choosing lovely music—sometimes like waves, sometimes like rain, and sometimes like hail, as the occasion calls for. The program’s phone numbers are 41 18 602 and 41 18 640. You’re listening to Piraiki Ecclesia on 91.2, the station that speaks to our souls. The program’s email address is atheata.perasmata@yahoo.gr. The program is also broadcast online. In a few days there will be... You can search and find the appropriate place there. And I ask you, and above all I ask God, that Christ may come into this sea of words—and perhaps into the waves I’ve sometimes stirred up in your soul—bring some order to it, and help you sort out what I’ve said. If something troubled you, think it over.

Above all, take this to heart yourself. Don’t do what you’ve done before and say, “Come here, Mom, listen! He’s talking about you—you’ve been driving me crazy!” And don’t say that about anyone else, either. Let none of us point the finger at someone else. What I’m asking is hard, but keep it within you and let it blossom. If what we’ve said today takes root in you, blooms into a little flower, and gives off its fragrance, the other person will notice. But if you tell them, “Come and listen—he’s talking about you, so you can mend your ways,” nothing will change. People resist that. None of us wants someone to teach us like that. Have a good week, and may all go well. I pray that God speaks to your soul as the days and years go by, and that each time we meet through this program, you grow lovelier, more beautiful, and more gentle.

May the beauty and love of our Christ be reflected in your soul, your eyes, and your heart. May God give you strength. I’ll be waiting for you on the next program. Be there. We’ll talk again. Goodbye.