“People Call Themselves Orthodox, but Do not See Their Close Ones’ Sufferings”
By Fr.
Andrew Lemeshonok
The Church is the union, the formation in this world,
which cannot be destroyed, which cannot be defeated by the gates of hell
because Christ loves us, and the Church itself is based on this God's love towards
people. Today and tomorrow – this love is always unrequited because we do not value
it, we just get used to it. This love never weakens, and where sin abounded,
grace abounded much more (Romans 5:20). The Lord does not say, “Do you deserve
My love or not?” Instead, He asks us, “Do you want My love?”
However, God does not impose His love on us. We live
by God’s grace, by the love that unites us all. There is so much sin in this
world, that it could divide us long ago. We see how some people give in to
their own human perception and then finally deviate and go astray. They think
that their truth is the most true, and that their opinion is the most right.
This is a mistake. When will a person see this mistake? Some people understand
this quite soon, while others can understand this only in the very end of their life.
It is so sad to hear about ruined lives… I confess
people for hours, and young people come to me and tell about how the devil destroys
their families and pits people against each other. He manages to do the most terrible thing – people become enemies because of inheritance or living area. This is so
scary! People sell each other and just go mad! We can see this happening all
the time.
When you hear about such things, your optimism and joy
get smaller and smaller. At the same time, we need to understand that this all is
temporal. We have to speak about the source of life, about the joy that exists,
that works in this world and defeats it. However, sometimes it can be just
impossible to see it with our human eyes. We need to have faith and trust to God to see
it. We need to reject ourselves, our opinion, and our vision of the situation.
It is good if a person humbles himself and tries to
hear. But many people do not. The most tragic thing is that sometimes people
even try to hide behind some pseudo-Orthodox ideas. Sometimes it all just comes to
the point of absurdity: people proclaim themselves “Orthodox” and ignore the
sufferings of their close ones! A person near you is suffering – "I have no time
for this! I have to solve universal issues!" It happens all the time around us.
Again, one can despair because of this, but we must not lose our
faith in God.
We must help each other, support each other, and bear
the burdens of each other in order not to fall, not to lose the connection with
God. Our common prayer and our meetings help us. Of course, sometimes our
prayers are full of joy, sometimes they can be sad, and sometimes they are just
sorrowful. But this is our life. We need to continue living, to live through certain
pages of our life, certain moments and periods. We need to draw conclusions
from what happens so that we do not make mistakes and trust to sin, which
sometimes can seem even more believable that what God says to us.
Our path is going on. We try to find something, to
discover something in our today’s life. The main thing is that God is near us.
Our life and the life of our closest people is at His hands, but not in the
hands of fate, luck or coincidence. Everything is under the Lord’s control.
May 21, 2018
St.
Elisabeth Convent
CONVERSATION