Archpriest Andrew Lemeshonok, the spiritual
father of St. Elisabeth Convent, answers various questions of the parishioners.
Have you ever met people whose repentance was
similar to the repentance of St Mary of Egypt?
The
repentance of St Mary of Egypt is an extraordinary example. Having worked in
the Church for a long time, I have seen people come in a miserable and poor
condition, and the Lord provided them with a chance to begin a new life. They
went through a complete transformation. Of course, they didn’t walk on water
and they didn’t live in deserts but it was evident that the Lord gave them
power to oppose sin, to get the better of their own self, and the outcomes were
visible.
When you
see the result, it makes your faith stronger. In any case, we need to witness
the acts of God with our own eyes. We need it badly, particularly when we are
in trouble.
Why are we more accustomed to the time of
repentance and fasting than to the season of Easter joy?
We all
are ill, both spiritually and physically. We are more likely to feel sorrow
than joy. It is much harder to be happy than to cry. Joy is beyond our
capabilities.
It is
with this long fast, self-denial, temperance, and restrictions of earthly joys
that the Church prepares us for celestial delight. We will embrace that delight
when we arrive at the Bright Resurrection of Christ. However, we have to work
hard to preserve that joy through the entire Bright Week, the entire Easter
season until the Ascension, and throughout the entire year in general.
Orthodoxy
does not necessitate one’s grim and stiff repentance, when one doesn’t care
about anyone else. Orthodoxy is primarily centred around the joy of the Risen
Christ, which ensues when an individual humbles down and feels that God loves
him and is always near.
When anything bad happens, it has become
common to hear, “Well, that’s the Great Lent for you…” Is Great Lent really
to blame for all our misfortunes?
We are
always looking for someone to blame for our own sins or the trials and sorrows
that we have to go through.
Whenever
someone tries to make any spiritual effort and to get closer to God, there are
more sorrows, that’s true. For every action, there is an equal and opposite
reaction. If you want to get a result, if you are not afraid of moving forward,
if you exert yourself and start working spiritually and fighting the sin, you
must be aware of the fact that the sin won’t give in so easily. It will fight
tooth and nail. You will observe within yourself the things you have never
thought existed. You may have had a peaceful life and thought that you were a
good person who loved God and your neighbour. Nevertheless, when you get more
involved in Christian living, when you start going to church and trying to lead
a spiritual life, everything goes awry. You are shocked to find out that you
are not actually a decent person: in fact, you are a disgraceful sinner. Your
mask goes off. It is baffling for a proud person to see his sins and his
nefariousness, so he becomes desperate and dreary. That’s the usual scenario.
What you
should do in this case is be patient. You talk the talk, you gotta walk the
walk. You decide to follow Christ to the end. You might choose a big and
unbearable prayer rule and appear to be holy in your own eyes but then you will
turn out to be incapable of anything… It is extremely embarrassing to humble
down in this case. It is hard to admit, “Yes, Lord, forgive me, I am but a
little child who has put on a grown man’s clothes.” You’ve got to know your
level. That is why it is greatly beneficial if you seek advice of more
experienced people and ask your spiritual father for his blessing of your
abstinence and prayer rule.
March 21, 2018
St.
Elisabeth Convent
CONVERSATION