The Catalog of Good Deeds

It is hard to speak about the true life, when you are clinically dead all the time, but we have to. This is why I would like to say: do not trust yourself, your feelings and mood, because all these temporary things mean nothing. We are living in a so-called shell, and a person is pressed in this shell – by his flash, by earth, by miserable human needs and relationships. Of course, we are used to live in this shell, because it is warm and pleasant for us. But if the shell is crashed, then how are we going to live? What should we do? However, we need to leave our shells. Perhaps, we will be face the beasts or temptations.. We should hope that we will be able to fly: we will get the wings and will get off the ground. This hope should make us stronger and encourage us.

How can we accept that we will be buried and there will be nothing left from us? Do we consider ourselves just as dead corpses? Christ tells us we are alive. He is risen and He gives us life, but we do not value it, we lose it. Of course, everything is not that simple. Today you may have some thoughts. You lay and get some sleep – and we’ll see what you will think tomorrow. You wake up, and you have completely different mood. People are fickle, and all these inner variations affect our lives. People are used to live and act in accordance with their own will… What if God’s will is different? He may tell you that it is your time to go home, that you should not moan and that there is nothing in this world you should hold on to. Father Nicholas Gurianov told many times: “Life will be much better there…” We do not trust God: who can say definitely, what awaits us there? However, in this life we think that we have at least something…

The closer you come to God, the stronger becomes your internal pain. Each step towards God tears a person apart. He does not want us to get attached to time, space or particular values. He wants us to be free. But we consider this freedom to be something tragic and unpleasant for us. It is really important to humble ourselves and to see the true aim of our life. Instead we always try to adapt God to our life, to tame Him and make Him serve us. In fact, we have to understand God: why did He come down to earth, what did He bring us? Why were the Cross and all His sufferings? He could just defeat the Scribes and Pharisees, sit on the throne in Jerusalem and create a new fair state, where all people have everything they need and are equal. Kind of “Christian Communism”, you know.

However, it is impossible to do this in our world, as it is impossible for our frail flash and blood, which do not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. That is why sometimes we feel exhausted: it means that God’s grace is with us. We think it is something bad. We cannot change our conscience and look at these things from a different angle. Indeed, a birth on earth means future funeral at the same time. A baby is born today, but in some years a haggard old man will be buried. You see, it is really difficult to stay strong in this world. What is more, the devil is constantly advising us something wrong and pushing us to sin…

This is why to be a Christian is a greatest art, or even boldness. Being a Christian does not mean that I just go to church, light up some candles, cross myself… Well then, I might also take the communion – I open my mouth and then I leave the church and forget about this. It is not about this! If we accept Christ, then we accept the death of the inner “old man” as well. We can say that Blood and Body of Christ is a poison for a sin and an “old man”, which will die slowly and painfully from this poison. At the same time it is the only opportunity for a “new man” to be born and to live forever. We cannot understand this on our own.

If you are attached to this world and you are satisfied with it, you like to live in this way, then it means that you lose, because it is a mistake. It is just a devil’s trap for you. On the other hand, if you manage to break out of this and to say “Enough! I trust God and no one can shatter my trust. I do not serve any lords and purposes!”, then you become one step closer to your freedom. In other words, you should test yourself whether you can leave everything behind and become poor or not. Should you try to hold on something material - houses, cars, comfort, people, hobbies – it is over. You are in a cage.

God wants to gift us the greatest freedom: “Follow Me”. – “But I have to bury my father”. – “Let the dead bury the dead, but you follow Me”. – “I can’t do it now. I have too much to do”. – “Follow Me’’…So we start to drown as we try to go this way, like Apostle Peter, because we hesitate. Apostle Peter wanted to go towards God on water – and Christ let him do that. The Apostle saw the storm and was afraid the waves would drown him. And he began to drown indeed, as he doubted in God. The Lord was near him, and Peter remembered that. Otherwise he would certainly sink to the bottom. The same is with us: we should s remember that God is always with us.

We think that everything is destroyed… What if it is not what we really need? What if it was just an illusion? What if it was something wrong and unnecessary? When we come to confess, we start to think, to recall recent sins. Instead we should speak about eternal life and our souls, about significant things which really matter and affect us. We should speak about how difficult and frightening it is to come out of the shell, how frightening it is to accept our “Cross”, our shameful execution for the greatest gift of love. If you want to love, then be ready to suffer. If you do not want to suffer, then how can you speak about love? Then it is a kind of mutual agreement: I give you money, and you give me comfort. But this is not love.

Love is when people forget about their personal needs. Today we are not ready for this. We have so many things to change in ourselves! It is too early to speak today about Christianity and Orthodoxy: you can raise an icon above your head, but people will continue to step on your feet – your love will end. We came are in the Church for healing, as there is a cure for any disease. For example, if a person with cancer knows that the Eucharist is taken for health of his soul and body, then he should believe that these Blood and Body of Christ will heal him by God’s will. The same is with any other illness. In the akathist to the Mother of God Pantanassa there are words saying that the holy water can heal. Then why does it not heal us? Why do we not fly? Because we will fly in a wrong direction and fall down. But we should remember, that “our tears will turn into happiness”.

We should gain spiritual experience from any life situation. Analyze our lives, and seek for God’s will, because God is always around. He will reach out His hand to you, just like He reached it out to Apostle Peter. No matter how deep we mired in sin, He will help us to keep us from despair. Trust and be saved.

Father Andrew

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Greetings to everyone who have come to the God's church this morning because our souls are looking for the life that the temporary world cannot give. Our souls look forward to enjoying the food that they deprived themselves of when they lost their connection to God.

The connection to God means trusting Him and struggling with the sin that has pervaded our lives, our flesh and our souls. It means the death of the old man that continues to live today, nurtured with knowledge, laws and false truths of this world, which are temporary. For instance, some people are childless. Some people kill their children because they do not want to have them, some people make their human plans because they want to live for their own sake (isn't it strange to live for one’s own sake?) but there are people who are childless although they want children and pray to God for them. Doctors cannot help such people, and nothing can help them, in fact.

Zechariah and Elisabeth could not have a baby according to the laws of nature. However, everything is possible with God. That was how this old couple who were thought to be incapable of childbirth finally gave birth to a baby who was destined to become the greatest of all who were born of women.

Nevertheless, we do not believe it... It happened long ago, it was a different time. What is the present time like? It is the same! This is a general rule: we only make a single step towards God when suddenly a wind blows and we digress from the right path. As soon as we encounter hardships, we say, “Oh, we cannot do anything! Help, save us, O Lord, we are dying!” The Lord continues to hold and protect us in spite of the fact that we try to break loose.

We read in Gospel episode that the fishermen worked all night and did not catch anything. The Lord said to them, “Cast your nets over there...” And they caught a lot of fish. That is how it happens in our lives as well: we are doing something and cannot succeed because everything fails. How important it is for us to seek for God's blessing, to keep an eye on God's Providence and trust the Lord, and to do what we ought to do in reality in order not to lose connection to God, not to sin.

Our entire life is something like a choice between the old and the new, the transient and the eternal. This choice is hard to make because we are weak, vulnerable, and proud, so each word we hear might offend and hurt us. The circumstances that interfere with our plans may make us depressed and indifferent towards what we do. It is vital for us to be guided by God's will and the goal that every Christian has – to be saved.

Do not be depressed, my dear brothers and sisters! Even though today we are paralyzed by sin and are about to lose the entire battle, if we manage to preserve our Orthodox faith according to the words of the Holy Fathers, our predecessors, if we do not turn our backs to God and do not reject Him, this will make up for the ascetic lifestyles we are unable to lead nowadays. It is not that we cannot sleep on a nail mat (many people can), not that we cannot walk on hot ashes (pagans can). We realize that pride dwells inside our hearts, and if anyone does anything without humility, it is deadly for him. He is infected with pride and may perish forever.

That is why we work as hard as we can, beginning with a small prayer, and finishing with the prayer for the whole world, as Fr. Sophrony (Sakharov) said. We begin with a little of self-control: I will not eat this and that during fasts because the Holy Church tells me so. This small victory may grow into a big one because he that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much (Luke, 16:10).

On the other hand, the life of the Church and a Christian may become bleak, with no room for heroism of renouncing one's self, one's ego, one's old man, for the sake of love of God. Each one of us faces this inevitable need to overcome sin. Of course, we do not triumph over sin but if an individual makes efforts, there comes the divine grace, which always heals that which is infirm and completes that which is lacking...

Therefore, do not be depressed but go, crawl, to God's church instead, in order to touch holiness and to breathe in the air of the church. This air is so clean; there is nothing like this air neither in the mountains, nor in the woods, nor by the seas. Everything in the church is filled with God's grace. Listen to every word, and if this word makes way to your hearts, they will be filled with grace. Struggle for your mind, for your heart, for being attentive to your emotions and thoughts, for it is so easy to lose, to ruin, and to spoil everything! We can see with our own eyes how man gives in to the sin, how he exchanges God's grace for the joys and entertainment of this transient world.

However, if there is no God in our lives, if there is no hope for the resurrection and the life of the age to come, our life is absolutely meaningless and futile. This is absurd.

Let us thank God today for giving us the chance to enter His house and to participate in the Divine Liturgy. Some of us have partaken of the eternal life, regardless of his or her unworthiness and unpreparedness. The Lord feeds us with a spoon like babies so that we could grow and develop, so that we could say no to the sin, so that we could live for the sake of our neighbors, not for our own sake. This is when God's power is made manifest in weakness (2 Cor., 12:9). May the Lord help us and protect everybody.

Father Andrew

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My parents came from Kuban. My father was killed in the wartime, and my mother moved to Transcarpathia, where I was born. Our house stood near the church in honour of the Nativity of Mother of God, at a distance of about four hundred metres. The priest who served there had two children, a boy of my age, and a girl a bit older. So I spent almost all my time in the church. The time was very hard, and the priest had something to eat. We spent nights in the church as wards.

Soon persecutions began. A man who had been an officer of the White Army hid a lot of spiritual books from the Cheka officers under the ground of his house. Such books could hardly be found even in the church. We copied these books into our exercise books secretly. Once, when I was very tired, I took this exercise book in school by mistake. When my teacher saw this exercise book, she took it away from me and sent for the district militia officer. They took me directly from the school and sent me to Saratov oblast into an orphanage. I was ten at that time.

What I experienced in the orphanage cannot be expressed in plain language. It was the time of war and hunger. When they took us to the city, kind people gave us something to wear. Some boys smoked. I was always asked about my parents, whether they were believers or not, although they could read it in my biographical particulars. When there was somebody from a Christian family, life was very difficult for him, he was beaten even by counselors. Thus I had everything beaten out of me in a couple of years; I was scared to death to say that I believe in God. During my last year in the orphanage, when I only had to stay there for half more year, my mother died. We heard then that orphans can enter military institutions. I was one of them.

The school taught students who were to serve the nation beyond its borders. I graduated from this school, had practise at the state border, and then I found myself in special missions military unit. My life went astray after that: Serbia, Bulgaria, five years in Angola. So I completely stopped going to church.

When I was wounded for the first time, I recalled my childhood and our church. I had not prayed throughout all those years, I had forgotten about God. But here I remembered that when I was a young boy during the war, a bullet went one centimetre close to my head and did not hurt me. My mum then said that I was saved by Mother of God.

After I was wounded, I started looking for any literature. At that time there were few churches, one priest for five or six villages. However, some people helped me. I met an old woman who brought me some books and two small icons of the Saviour and of Mother of God of Kazan. This old woman told me that she knew Marshal Zhukov very well. She said that he also had the icon of Mother of God of Kazan in his car, although he was a Marshal!

Finally, I returned to the Soviet Union. I visited some churches in Ukraine, spent some time in Lithuania, and eventually settled in Pskov oblast, where I was in charge of a huge farm. Everything was fine but suddenly an accident changed all my life. I had to leave my house and go to the place where nobody knew me. That was how the Lord brought me to Pskov-Caves monastery.

I stayed in the monastery for more than ten years. At first it was difficult to get rid of my past. First, I had served in the army in the past. Second, I missed the large farm where I had worked because there were about one hundred bulls, eighty pigs, a mill, tractors, and everything worked very well. I had to lose it at a glance. Later I somehow reconciled myself with this fact. Besides, Fr. John (Krestiankin) helped me a lot. He allowed me to come to him anytime to talk. So when I had problems, I went to him. We prayed with him and talked, he anointed me with oil and everything became fine at once.

I decently tried to work diligently; I quickly got accustomed to the life of the monastery. I worked in the fields on a tractor and guarded the holy monastery. Later, because I knew foreign languages, I was told to serve as a guide for tourists. The Lord strengthened me, it was easy for me to pray, I could sit in church nights away.

In 1993, I had terrible aches in the throat. I could not understand what was going on with me. So I went to doctors. They said I was contused, and they could not do anything for me. I suffered like this for half a year. No medicine could help me. It was impossible to endure pain, so I began to cry at nights, and I even had thoughts about suicide. All of a sudden, the doctor of our monastery called me. She inspected me carefully and said, “Here is your referral for treatment. Go to Pskov immediately.” There they dragged me through hospitals, when at last, a young doctor said, “You are ill with cancer, but do not be in despair.” He helped me to get into an oncology clinic, where I stayed for six years. They would let me go the monastery for a couple of days, and then they would take me into the hospital again. Finally, I lost fifteen kgs and was carried in a stretcher. The doctors were sincere about my diagnosis. My brothers in the monastery even made a coffin for me. I saw it in my dream, and I did not like it.

It was Christmas eve. The ward assistants brought me to the ward and lay me onto my bed. There happened an event I will never forget. It was not that I fell asleep, but I could dimly see St. Michael Church in Pskov monastery. Light showed in the left choir (where I had never been). Mother of God, clad in red, went out and knelt. I cannot explain what it was but I could walk again in a couple of days. I still live because of Mother of God. God’s Providence led me to Belarus, into St. Elisabeth Convent. Belarus is dear to me because it was in Minsk, in Novinki, that my older brother died. Now I search for the place of his burial. I would like to consecrate this land, and build a chapel.

That is how I live and work. May the Lord help me to serve Him, His Church and people as much as I can.

A Story from 2009 by Monk Pavel

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Father Andrew: Being a Christian is a Great Boldness!

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Sermon: Isn't it Strange to Live for One's Own Sake?

Q&A with an Orthodox priest: Spirituality vs Warm-heartedness

Photo Report: The Dormition of the Mother of God in St. Elisabeth Convent

Personal Stories: I live thanks to the Mother of God

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