Ceramic Workshop: Perfection in Simple Things
We offer you to have a look at our
photo-blog, which demonstrates the process of making the ceramics represented
in the catalog of St. Elisabeth Convent.
Ceramic Workshop: Perfection in Simple Things
Q&A with an Orthodox priest: About the Prayer
Meeting of Archpriest Andrew Lemeshonok with the House
of Love of Labour Staff
Q: Father, why is it so hard to pray
sometimes?
Father Andrew: The Holy Fathers used to say, “Prayer means shedding
one's blood.” When a person prays, he has to be focused on God. If his mind
wanders, if his heart leaps and jumps from feelings and emotions, if he is
inconsistent, you can imagine how hard it is for such a person to tune himself
in to God, can't you? All that noise and vanity, all those fears and problems
around... We have to get rid of that.
As
soon as the person enters a church, everything must be left outside because
that person comes to God, comes for confession, and there is no one else in the
world apart from his ill and helpless soul. You must have heard a hymn during
the Liturgy that says, “All earthly cares now let us lay aside.” That is, we
ought to lay aside everything and enter a different world. If we stay where we
are, of course, no miracle is going to happen (I mean, the miracle of the
transformation and sanctification of a human being). It will be impossible to
overcome the gravity of earth.
Q: How can we force our sinful hearts
into praying?
Father Andrew: There are a lot of methods to do so. Most importantly,
we should not be desperate, even if we do not feel like praying on a certain
day. Your desire to pray and your self-reproach is the beginning of prayer.
Your soul already suffers because of being so weak as not to be able to pray.
It begs for forgiveness, asks God for help, and goes to church again, where it
finally receives the gracious help from Christ.
Prayer
means shedding one's blood. When one prays, he struggles with the entire world.
We break up the bonds of this world through prayer and follow Christ, whereas
the world distracts, blinds, deafens us, makes everything possible to stop us.
See what is this struggle like? If we start to pray, we acquire so much! How
does our prayer act? According to the words of St Seraphim of Sarov, “Find
peace inside your heart and thousands will be saved around you.”
We
can talk and reprimand our relatives for years that they should not do this or
that, that it is bad. But they won't pay attention to us. However, as soon as
we start to have a genuine prayer life, this will be our victory: God will act
on our side, and our relatives will inevitably change. A monastic abandons the
world but his or her prayer protects all his relatives. Being a monastic does
not mean running away from one's problems but, on the contrary, getting to the
core of these problems, taking their burdens on one's shoulders.
Q: How can we learn to pray
attentively?
Father Andrew: He who is eager to learn will learn. No pain, no
gain. When prayer becomes really important for an individual, when he
sacrifices his time and strength to it so that it becomes the most vital part
of his life, then God may teach even a baby. We all are babies now; we all need
God's help, His blessing and might.
Freedom in Obedience
Fragment
of a meeting of the Sisterhood on July 14, 2013
Priest
Andrew Malakhovsky: I
would like to read aloud the questions for our today’s discussion. How can we
be free doing our obedience and at the same time avoid willfulness and pride?
How can we perceive freedom in such a way that we could submit ourselves to
being obedient both from the outside and deep inside our hearts?
Nun
Anastasia (Lashuk): I have
been thinking about obedience often lately. As you live, you come to the
conclusion that you are unable to listen to what other people tell you because
you see things in your own way, which is invisible yet powerful enough to
suppress everything they say. Right now, I would like to learn to listen
attentively and to do what I am told to do. For instance, sometimes I am told
that I have to travel somewhere but I think, “No, I can’t because I am too busy
right now. I will send someone else.” In fact, I have to get up and go where I
am told. In other words, when you make even the smallest effort to obey, you
start to feel free. Such experiments show that I have to work over it but this
is possible only with God’s help. Without God, I will follow my own opinion.
I also think that my own opinion is always making me
nervous. I would like to live with God and I struggle in order to regain the
peace of my soul. What do I want to achieve with this opinion? The only
possible outcome will be lack of inner peace both for me and my neighbour. The
most important thing of all is unity and love. If you humble yourself down, the
Lord will comfort you. It is through these small occasions that you see God´s
mercy and the freedom that lies in humility. However, this only happens when
the Lord allows this to happen and when you force yourself into being obedient.
Monk
Demetrios (Kozyrev): As far
as my understanding of freedom is concerned, I believe that if you entrust your
life to God, the Lord will act in you, and you will be able to find out what
freedom from sin means. Nevertheless, things often go in the opposite
direction: you prefer to trust yourself, to overestimate your own power, to
facilitate your past experience, and then you fall prey to your own “I”. On the
contrary, if you manage not to trust yourself and to put all your trust on God,
not to spare yourself and not to overestimate your own abilities, this may be
called true freedom.
Well, in fact, my personal perception of freedom is
sometimes distorted because I want to feel easy and comfortable, like a bird in
the sky, whereas true freedom is, perhaps, something different. Sometimes you
have to be patient and make effort in order to be free. There is nothing more
absurd than a pipe dream of freedom. There is, of course, a nifty expression,
“Love God and do whatever you want.” When you love God, this is real freedom.
But... do you really love God? If you look at yourself closely, you would doubt
it, so these words are inappropriate for you. On the other hand, the phrase
“All things are lawful for me, but all things do not edify” is a more sober
one. We should allow ourselves less.
Priest
Andrew Malakhovsky: We
should use our freedom in the right way.
Monk
Demetrios (Kozyrev): I
think that if you follow God, you will use the freedom that God gives in the
right way. Without God, you are sure to fall so you have got to be watchful.
Novice
Barbara (Vassilyeva): I
would like to add a couple of words about freedom and obedience to God. Freedom
is when you simply receive everything that God sends you. Real freedom is when
you are grateful to God no matter what.
I used to be ill and pity myself (before I came to the
Convent), and it was hard for me. I simply started saying “Thy will be done,”
and this prayer filled my soul with peace. I recall reading the Bible at that
time. The fact I liked most was that the people in the Bible did not have
strong emotional outbursts and cares. It seems to me that my Guardian Angel
showed me how a person could live with God and keep his heart free.
I remember the words I read… in James, if I remember
correctly. The words were: ponder upon God. It appeared to me that the people
who lived at those times and had a living memory of God were able to live
simple lives before Him, and their hearts were open towards Him, and even the
rhythm of their lives was different.
I would like to say that, maybe, we sometimes get lost
in our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and fears so much that we forget about God
and the fact that everything is guided by His Divine Providence.
Not long ago, I started to think that for some reason
it was hard for me to read akathists. For instance, when I read a canon or
penitential prayers with some petitions, it is easier because everything I ask
for is focused on myself. However, when I read an akathist, I have to forget
about myself and to praise the saint I am reading about. I have to be happy
that he is in heaven, that he is with God; I have to unite with him in the
spirit. You receive help when you try to forget about yourself during prayer.
You may spend an hour or two at the service and think
that you pray but in fact you simply speak vain words in your thoughts, and
this is far from a prayer. It turns out that I deceive myself because it is
very difficult to say a living word to the living God. So I try to give thanks
to the Lord, saying, “Thank you, Lord, for creating me and for all this world,
for everything.”
Even when I am unable to pray because I am tired, I
try to recall God’s love revealed to me in His Providence, and this really
helps me, not just during church services but in my everyday life…
How to Get Rid of Rancour?
Extracts from a meeting of Archpriest Andrew Lemeshonok with the monastic sisters
Q: How
can we overcome rancour?
It would be ideal if we all regarded ourselves to be
worse than everybody else. However, it is only thanks to God's grace that an
individual might be able to see things in such a way. In reality, we tend to
compare ourselves with others and to criticise other people. If we look around
all the time, we will not have the proper vision because we will notice the sin
in each person. It is much easier to notice sins of other people than to see
their strengths.
Q: There
are several reasons for anger: one is when you condemn someone, and the other
is when someone else humbles you down.
Father
Andrew: This happens because
that person treads upon your pride: you do not accept his or her words, you
feel hurt, your blood starts to boil from anger and you feel indignant, and the
sin starts to poison your soul. That person appears to be wrong, unjust, and
cruel. This opinion becomes stronger if you do not fight with it, if you
continue to trust yourself, to cherish your insult and your anger.
If one does not observe God's Providence in all
occasions of his life and does not accept it, he is certain to protest and feel
indignant. However, you cannot live with it because it ruins you from the
inside. An individual may carry on with his offence for years and to torture
himself voluntarily instead of struggling to get rid of this feeling by asking
God for help. If you do not humble yourself down, if you do not say that you
deserve it, you will always be angry at everyone and everything.
The problem is that if you do not struggle with anger
towards one person, you will inevitably feel it towards another person later.
The pattern of sin is the same but an individual, unfortunately, gets caught by
it over and over again; he spares himself instead of confronting the sin,
instead of not being self-indulgent, instead of being patient when it hurts,
when he sees that he is right and the other person is wrong. This is why one
has to work hard; but your own effort is not enough. If you work hard, you will
get God's help and God's grace...
Today I met some people who came to work at the
Convent. They were saying that they were honest and conscientious. However, it
is difficult for me to understand how a person can be honest and conscientious
without God's help. If God helps that person, He will grant him the ability to be
honest and good, but if God leaves that person, he will become dishonest and
bad. Of course, a dishonest person is also capable of becoming honest if God
touches his heart. This is why we should focus not on ourselves, not on
our “personal truths,” but on God. If God allows you to be insulted and
humiliated, He must have a reason for it. Due to the fact that it comes from
God and it serves the purpose of my salvation, I will tolerate it like a bitter
medicine, like a painful injection made by a doctor. A doctor treats a patient,
he wants to help him; however, he has to penetrate into the patient's body in
order to save him. He performs an operation in order to give that patient a
chance to survive.
The same happens in our spiritual lives: if things like these
happen, if you are rejected and feel useless for anyone, if the enemy attempts
to set you against your sisters at the convent and pushes you into a corner,
you have to oppose him and pray to God, “It happened according to Thy will, O
Lord, I deserve it, this is essential for my healing.” You should not accept it
passively. Nevertheless, if we are guided by our feelings and passions, this
does not resemble true monasticism in any way.
There is a stereotype that a monastic is a person with
half-closed eyes and a churchly voice who has settled everything down. There
might exist such an exemplary type of a monastic but there are also monastics
who live in accordance with their passions, their emotions and do not want to
get rid of them. It is frightening when people do not understand that they have
to make efforts to change their attitudes towards their neighbours and towards
processes that go in their souls. I mean the struggle against one's old man.
The old man must die. How will he die without pain, without protest? Therefore,
a person is tempted to give in and say, “This is beyond my strength, I can't
bear it anymore.” So there should be another person who can help. We do not,
however, trust our spiritual father and say, “He does not understand a thing!” Well,
perhaps, he does not; but maybe God will reveal something to him? He may not be
able to understand anything because he lacks spiritual and life experience but
if he is appointed to be your spiritual father, then God acts through him. The
Abbess does not understand anything, either, but the Lord is capable of
revealing something to you even through her. Sometimes people do not want to
accept that revelation from God, they are self-confident to the extent of
believing that they do not need anyone's assistance and that their knowledge is
sufficient for salvation.
Trying to justify himself, an individual begins to
watch for the sins, infirmities and shortcomings of other people. This becomes
an obstacle for him because he is inclined to say, “Who am I going to ask for
advice? There is nothing true and valid here.” For this reason, he will never
see divine presence because he turned his face from other humans.
The scheme is very simple: you simply trust yourself
and answer according to the human truth. But it will be sinful and untrue.
Truth is when a person does not want to accept it, when it is painful, but he
continues to fight and asks God to help him to humble himself down and do what
he is told to do. The Lord sees that the individual suffers and does not give
in, and grants him grace. It is then that the person discovers a new life. He
suddenly discovers that the other person whose sins he used to see is
beautiful. This is what Pascha is about. Your struggle against your self, your
struggle in order to acquire obedience and humility is Pascha. If an individual
spares himself and makes everything comply with his own will – can he
experience Pascha? His life becomes burdensome: my sinful self is never
satisfied.
Peace and Serenity of the Soul
Abba Paul the Barber and his brother Timothy lived in
Scetis. They
often used to argue. So Abba Paul said, “How long shall we go on like this?”
Abba Timothy said to him. “I suggest you take my side of the argument and in my
turn I will take your side when you oppose me.” They spent the rest of their
days in this practice.
The
life of a man who found God is characterised by absence of anger, by meekness,
humility, constant vigilance of the soul and being watchful to keep sinful
movements of his soul at bay because they destroy the peaceful mood. A man sees
God's Providence in his life and does his best in order to cherish this peace
of Christ but as soon as he forgets God, he is in for struggle. It is
impossible to have victory over sin using only our own efforts. We need God's
help to do this.
If we
seek human justice, we are certain to justify ourselves, to decide that we were
offended and to pity ourselves in any conflict. When we hear an angry or
irritated word, we are unable to forgive and to humble ourselves down before
our neighbour.
We need
to remember God and His love in order to quench down the sinful movements in
our souls. Apostle Paul writes, “Bear ye one another's burdens” (cf.
Gal. 6:2). There is no other way to fulfil the law of Christ. The path of a
Christian is truly a narrow one, but it is this path that allows one's soul to
acquire inner peace and to abide in God's love.
The
Lord humbled himself unto death, even the death of the cross (Phil. 2:8).
The Lord defeated the sin, the evil of the entire world by His humility and
meekness. He teaches us to seek love instead of human righteousness. He is the
source of this love. “I am the Way... I am the beginning and the end of this
way.” (cf. John 14:6; Rev. 1:8). The Lord brought us His righteousness,
and it is according to this righteousness that we ought to concede, to humble
ourselves and never scandalize our neighbour. Even if we see that our brother
or sister does or says something wrong, we ought to correct it and help that
person to get rid of the lie and the sin. We can only do that if we have
compassion, if we do not reject that person and do not add our own sins to his.
God's
love has enlightened the whole universe. If we are patient enough to carry the
burdens of the people around us, if we are humble and forgiving, our world will
become brighter, our homes will become warmer because of God's love. How can we
help our neighbour if we do not understand or hear him? One cannot defeat the
sin with nice words and clever advice. One cannot teach another person to love
if his own heart is cold and empty. This is why we all need God's forgiveness,
God's blessing; this is why we all are enormously indebted to God for his love.
We receive it, we survive only thanks to it but we are so quick to forget it
and to lose it as we are looking for our unique place in this world.
The
Lord says, “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all,
and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35). And, “Judge not, that ye be not
judged.” (Matthew 7:1). The Lord leads us to Mount Golgotha. He stretches
His holy arms out to us from the Cross, and we see wounds from the nails on His
hands. The Blood of Christ that pours from these wounds washes away the sins of
the entire world. We
consider ourselves to be Orthodox Christians, we go to church but how often we
cannot humble ourselves down before a brother. How often we forget about God
who loves our offender as much as He loves us even though we humiliate, insult
and ignore him because of our own understanding of truth and justice.
The
world did not accept the love of Christ. Man crucified God but God who had come
to save man did not take revenge on him and did not renounce His love. He drank
the cup of suffering for the sake of our salvation. That is why we must
reconcile with all our offenders before we take communion in church; only after
reconciliation can we approach the Chalice of Life.
We follow Christ by subduing ourselves, by surmounting our personal view of the truth and justice, by learning the commandments of Christ, which are based not on human laws but on the all-forgiving and ever-winning love.
May God
help us to follow the example of these holy elders who found such a simple
answer to the problems in their monastic life! They decided to ignore angry
words, to be patient with their brother, and thus remained peaceful and helped
their neighbour.
Peace
in our homes with the people around us will be easily restored and maintained
if we eliminate excess words, bad looks or thoughts.
From the life of the Convent: Pilgrimage of the sisters of St.Elisabeth Convent to venerate the relics of St.Silouan the Athontie
On August 22, 2016 the monastic sisterhood of St.Elisabeth Convent set out to the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Minsk to venerate the relics of Saint Silouan the Athonite. Read more here about the venerable head of Saint Silouan the Athonite brought to Minsk here.
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| Leaving the convent |
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| Learn more about St.Elisabeth Convent |
On the Way to Holiness
The light of Christ enlightens all. Holiness is sanctification of the life of an individual with the love of Christ. Repentance is the way to holiness. It is through repentance that man receives graceful help and dares to go to the Light, to reveal his sinful illnesses, his infirmities. One's soul suffers from seeing his sins, it suffers because it cannot see its own God-created beauty. This pain and suffering teaches man to hate the sin. A man opens his eyes and sees that the sin does not bring joy or satisfaction. The sin deceives and kills his immortal soul. This is why repentance is the courage of the soul which does not hide from God, which does not try to deceive herself, to justify herself and hide behind others' backs. A person follows the Light consciously, understanding that he is going to suffer because of what he shall see. However, he believes in God's love, he believes that the Lord will be able to heal his sins, to give him power to defeat and hate the sin, and to sanctify his life.
It
is in the Church of Christ that man is nurtured and learns to live for the sake
of the Eternity, learns to live with God and build all his earthly
relationships through God. “Christ is in our midst! He is, and He shall be!” -
this is what priests say before the communion of the Holy Mysteries; and we
start having Christ before us and in our midst so that we could begin a new
life and new relationships through Christ, so that we would submit everything
we have, all our lives, into God's hands. By trusting God man becomes free, he
becomes free from within. Man is no longer bound or chained with his own
personal interests, desires and wishes. He wants the same things that God
wants; he wants to fulfil God's will, he looks for God's will because he
understands that even if it does not coincide with his own desires, even if his
heart protests and does not want to accept this will of God, it is still much
better and more trustworthy than our desires and emotional states, which push
us into this or that direction day after day. Man needs a solid foundation on
which to stand in this world when temptations, sorrows and stresses come and
make us feel desperate and hopeless.
This is why we build our lives upon the rock, and this rock is Christ. In fact, when man finds God and understands that God is near in each moment of his life and in all situations, he is able to hope for God's help and salvation. Likewise, when man loses his connection to God, he becomes desperate and depressed, he loses all his strength, and it seems to him that the sin has separated him from other people and from God for ever.
The
Church nurtures us and prepares us for the eternal life, like a loving mother.
This life becomes real for every believer even now, in this transient world.
When we come to church and participate in the Divine Liturgy, in the Sacraments
of the Church of Christ, we can feel the Eternity, we enter the Eternity
because we ought to leave all transient earthly cares at the threshold of the
church.
The
sin makes an individual inconsistent, it divides man within himself. One's mind
cannot stay still, emotions run wild and make one lose peace within his heart.
It is on his way to God that a person brings himself to reason, tries to bring
his mind, his emotions and all his heart together. Man is created in order to
allow God to dwell in him. God leads our lives when we humble ourselves, when
we reconcile with our neighbours, when we begin to value what we have got.
Grace
is given to the humble. This grace, the Holy Spirit, directs the life of that
person. The person does not suffer because of his problems and does not waste
his time thinking what he should do and where he should go in this life. He
begins and ends his every single day asking God, “Thy will be done!” His heart
becomes a compass that helps man find his path to salvation. The heart is deep,
and when it is peaceful, the person tries not to lose this peace and not to
make his neighbour lose this peace.
Our
journey to the Heavenly Kingdom is our journey inside our hearts; it is the way
of dying (when our old man dies) and rising from the dead for the Eternal Life,
for sacrificing all our lives to our Creator and for making our entire lives
filled with service and ministry. “Love God and thy neighbour” - these words
become the most important in our lives. We do not love anyone because sin
dwells in our souls; but when we struggle with our sins and make attempts to overcome
them, the Lord teaches us to love, the Lord reveals His love, which become the
fountain of everlasting life for us. Then we all become one, the entire Church
becomes one Body of Christ.
The people whom the Lord leads into the church,
change; it is the love of Christ that changes them; it enters our hearts and
sanctifies our lives. This is why the Church exclaims, “Holy things to the
holy,” this is why She calls us to praise God with one mouth and one heart;
this is why the Holy Fathers used to call the Church “heaven on earth” because
even here on earth we can enter into the Eternal Life and are sanctified by
this Light of Love, which defeats the darkness of this world and resurrects man
for the new life.
Sermon by Fr Andrew on June 22, 2008.
Sermon by Fr Andrew on June 22, 2008.
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