There is a very good story about two fishermen who hated one another. One day, a storm burst out and one of the fishermen saw the other one drowning. He dashed to rescue his neighbor. When they were lying on the shore, all soaked and worn out, the saved one asked his savior, “Listen, you risked your life… but you don’t love me! Why did you do this?” “I do not love you just the way I used to. I simply remembered the words of Christ, Who asked us to compel ourselves to love, kindness, peace, reconciliation, and good life. This is why I dashed to rescue you, the person I do not love.”
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Christianity is painful, very painful.
It is not correct when we take it as a religion of well-being and comfort.
Once a novice came up to Elder Paisios and said, "I want prayer to give me peace, serenity and silence." To which the Elder answered him, "What do you seek? Nirvana or Christ?"
Christ will bring the pain of the entire world with Him.
Are you ready to accept Christ Who will come and disturb your peace?
Because He is inseparable from the pain of humankind.
Saints understood that and therefore gave their consent to this martyrdom, receiving grace and God's help at the same time.
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 - Today we are so cheerful that we do not want to hear about anything bad! Do you want to hear any bad news now?
- No!
- Because it is Pascha today, because Christ is Risen, because Christ is in our minds and hearts. This is the mystery of the Christian life, when we acquire the Kingdom of Heaven without changing the external world. The Lord said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” And Apostle Paul said, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
Nothing can separate us from the love of God, even bad weather and rain. It is when we have prayer inside of us, when we feel that we are with Christ, and when we say, “The Sweetest Jesus” and cannot utter anything more because tenderness makes us lose our breath. It is when Christ is not some distant historical or philosophical idea, or an epic personality, but when He becomes alive for us, every minute and every second, when we only say, “Christ, Jesus the Sweetest,” and He is already here. This is the point of our Christian life. Therefore, when we attain this goal in our feat, then we will have this “Christ is Risen” every moment. We will always have good and kind mood, and love, which is true happiness. The one who has love is immersed into happiness. Every minute, whether he is asleep or awake, or going to work, he is always immersed into joy because love dwells in his heart.
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I wish you to preserve your prayerful mood throughout the Bright Week and to bring it to Pentecost and to the next Pascha with you. The most precious thing today is not our breaking the fast and rest after our Lenten efforts, wakefulness, and feats. What is the most precious that we can bring with ourselves from church, is prayer in our heart. If today, in thoughtless relish and merriment, you lose your prayer, you will lose everything, you will lose the entire Great Lent that you have passed. No matter what, prayer should remain with you. Wake up in the morning and, may God grant that you say immediately on opening your eyes , "Lord Jesus the Sweetest, glory to You! The new day has come!" This is the sweetest thing you can have in your life, to have these kind words on your lips and in your heart, "Jesus the Sweetest, save us! Most Holy Theotokos, help us!" A blessed Feast to all of you! I have an Orthodox Paschal mood today too and I love you all. Christ is Risen!
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 All our earthly attachments and relationships are very unstable and unreliable. Today we have them, tomorrow we do not. Who is the most stable in the world? God! God, Who created this world and even time itself. We are all situated in some period of time, and our time always changes our state and being. Today we have a good mood, tomorrow we do not; today we are happy, tomorrow we are miserable; today we have Pascha, in a week, it will end.

However, when a person enters into a relationship with God, when he comes into God Himself, into the state of deification, he leaves the mystery of time, and God becomes now and ever and unto the ages of ages for him.
Whether it be yesterday, today or tomorrow, it is all the same today with God. It is always goodness and love. This is the purpose of our Christian life.

If Christians do not smile, it means that they lead a bad life, that something is wrong with their spiritual life. Their prayer does not work and they need to go to a spiritual guide and ask, "Why are we in a bad mood?" It means, they do not have prayer.

Prayer is the breath of life. It is the existence in God and union with God Himself. It is not a simple talk or reading of books or singing of akathists. A true prayer does not need any books. It may even be without words. A person stands up, raises his hands up to God and cannot say anything. But, on the other hand, why should he say anything, if he has already said everything and God heard him and he heard God?
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It happens that during Lent we have fasted properly: sincerely and diligently. We welcomed Pascha, celebrated it for a day, or two, or three… and then we find ourselves thinking that we have lost something that we collected throughout those forty days. Is it true? Unfortunately, it is.

Sometimes we immerse ourselves into celebration and breaking fast so much that we do not notice how we lose something thatt we have acquired. We do something wrong, we act unwisely and incorrectly because the result is bad. How we tried, how much effort we applied, and how much we endured… However, we welcome Pascha, a day, two days, three days pass, and we lose everything. And we say sometimes, “When will the year pass and there will be Lent again?..”

We do something wrong. The Lord does not give His grace by measure. It does not depend on God. The Lord always gives His grace in abundance. We, however, cannot retain this grace. It is one thing to receive a gift from God, and absolutely another to keep this spiritual gift. To retain it, to keep it safe and, may God grant, to multiply it! If we cannot catch fish, it does not mean there are no fish. There are a lot of fish, but our nets are full of holes. And this “fish” is always slipping through our fingers. The Lord does not give His grace by measure. These words are taken from the Holy Scripture (Jn. 3:34). He gives it in abundance but we cannot keep it because we do not celebrate and act correctly. It resembles how a person acquired a whole bucket of treasure during Lent and was so happy about it that he ran with this bucket and splashed everything out. He then remembers himself but looks and sees there is only a bit left on the bottom…

I would like to tell you that to approach Pascha is half the business. To keep Pascha is the other half. There should be spiritual wisdom, habit, experience, and traditions for this to happen. Those who do not have them always wonder in bewilderment, “What’s going on? I fasted and fasted, and I lost everything.”

Once, I met a man from Orsk, who was absolutely secular, on Athos. He was vising Greece and came to the Holy Mount by chance. He did not realize anything when he was going there. He had never gone to Church, neither had he known any prayer… He spent three days on Athos. We met at the airport on our way back again. In a month, on Sunday, I came out of the church after the service and saw this man, named Alexander. I thought, he had come to me on some business. I approached him and smiled but he came up to me all in tears. I asked him what had happened. He was crying and saying, “There, on Athos, I acquired something, but now I have lost it.” He did not even have any Orthodox words in his vocabulary. He began to explain something. It was obvious that he could not word it but felt it well. He acquired something on Athos but came back home and in the vanity of the world, in the thoughtless joys of the world, he suddenly lost his delicate spiritual trea

 sure, which he should had kept safe.

I congratulate everyone on the Holy Feast – Bright Pascha of Christ! I wish you so much to preserve the grace of Lent, the grace of your feats, as long as possible. Do not relax today, as it often happens. I would like to wish that you pray like you prayed yesterday. Pray today, tomorrow, and during the entire Bright Week. Do not relax. We should have Pascha not only once a year but every day!
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If we do not have this kind and holy tiding about Resurrection, we can easily become desperate. We can simply give up and lose the point of our life. What do we live for, if everything is so unstable and unreliable? Our child is down with the flu, and we listen how he breathes at night. Is he suffocating this night? Is his temperature rising up to a critical point? We sit by the child ready to call the ambulance any moment and listening to his breath. Children also die. They will give birth to our grandchildren, who will also die. We are all subjected to this law of death. If there is no Resurrection, as Apostle Paul says, "If Christ has not been raised, then everything has no point" (1 Cor. 15:14). Then everything in this life is meaningless.
Glory to God, Christ is Risen!
Glory to God, we are Orthodox. We know that and we will live.
Christ is Risen!
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 The Lord does not give His grace by measure

How should we acquire spiritual joy, if we have so many sins?

Spiritual life does not exist within a rational framework. It is subjected to absolutely different laws. A person might commit a hundred sins, but repent only once and have joy coming to him. A hundred sins and one repentance. One humbling of yourself. God does not give His grace by measure. On Pascha we read the following words from St. John Chrysostom, "The Lord kisses even our intentions." It means that a person only turns towards repentance with his heart, he hasn't even repented yet, but the Lord already kisses him.
We are used to think standardly, "I did this much and I will receive that much." In the Kingdom of Heaven, everything is absolutely different. God always gives above measure. If you have many sins, you should not think about all of them. Start to do good deeds and pray immediately. Thus, you will have joy at once. If you think and root about million of your sins, you will not receive joy, but also you might fall into despair.
We should think about Christ. We should think about something bright, kind and pure. After all, in contrast with Christ, you will always feel sinful. And this will be natural and simple, because you will have nothing to be proud of.
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 Always try to be in good spirits

How to not take offense at those people who exaggerate my mistakes and vilify me?

Humanwise, it is hard. Look, at the words the Lord says, "You are gods" (Ps. 81:6). He calls us so we jump out of our short human pants and come into the world of angels. When a person is in God, he easily forgives injustice and even slander that happens to him. He sometimes does not even notice some things. He celebrated Pascha well, or went to confession, gloomy under the heavy weight of his sins, but repented sincerely, his confession was successful, lightness and joy came into his heart, and he did not even notice that someone pushed him or treaded on his toes. On the contrary, when a person is in bad mood, every trifle is the end of the world for him. This is why we must always try to be in good mood. St. Poemen the Great told his disciple, "Always have good thoughts and you will be saved."
Even when everything is dark around you, find some kind thing. The most kind One is Christ. We are all in the same situation. We live in the same world. However, some people think about the end of the world every day and walk around gloomily, and some people, at the same time, think about Christ.
Once, on Athos, a pilgrim began to gloomily and dismally talk with a novice about the end of the world. The novice was in good spirits and answered him cheerfully, "Great! Christ is coming soon!" It is really so. One Elder was asked, "Will antichrist come?" He said, "Certainly, he will! If he does not come, how will Christ defeat him?!"
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One of the main characteristics of love is self-sacrifice. If a person is ready to die for his beloved one, then he loves. If he is not ready to die, then this is something else. For a loving person, such sacrifice is not burdensome, but sweet. A loving person is ready to suffer voluntarily in order to please his beloved one and is even happy to suffer. After all, as far as gifts are concerned, it is more pleasant to give them then to receive. Thus, the point of human happiness is in love. However, people have committed some deeds that are contrary to love and let egotism into their hearts. I say it again, love is one's readiness to die for the beloved one, while egotism is readiness to kill the beloved one for one's own sake. This was the reason why paradise was lost. Egotism is the reason why we all suffer here on earth. God does not punish us. We ourselves came to this!
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What is happiness for the monastics?

We should not divide people into monastics and lay people. Happiness is one for all Christians. It is Christ. Christ is the source of happiness, joy, well-being and peace. Through Him we receive every good thing. Christ is happiness not only for the monastics but also for all of us.
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In order to fly, we need to drop the dead weight, every unnecessary thing, and become lighter than the air. For this reason let us drop all misunderstandings and forgive one another easily.
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A mild and humble heart avoids any conflict. A conflict, even if it is a righteous one, never brings happiness. There should be no conflict in your heart.
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We may sigh. I sigh very often myself. But we should not give up. You sigh and go on.
We should not complain about our life and be disappointed.
We should understand that these sighs are salvational, they bring us closer to perfection. Do not despair, groan for a while and go further. No need to say, "Why is this happening to me?"
This is your script. The Lord gave it to you, and you should accept it from the hands of God.
When you realize that it is from the hands of God, you will accept it with joy.
But when you do not see the point, it is unbearable.
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If you begin to talk with lay people about the categories of humility, they say, "It is slavery, weakness, and humiliation."
In fact, it is not weakness. If someone has tried to defeat his pride, self-opinion, his "I," he would certainly feel what a struggle it is.
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Everyone who has come to the Orthodox Church to have some white bread, you are wrong. This will be in the end. But before that you will need to work very hard. You will work hard, bearing the cross of the Orthodox asceticism, and the cross of outer sorrows, which the Lord sends us, such as illnesses, loss of relatives, and misunderstandings with the people surrounding us. You will also have the inner cross of your thoughts, which may prove stronger than the outer one, as sometimes thoughts burst one’s head and heart, so that the person says, “I wish my hand or my leg ached, rather than to have this inner pain.”
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 Our ascent to God starts on the rock that we should shove ourselves off, the rock of repentance. It should be a solid rock, not some ooze. Our repentance should ripen and harden, so we can push off it and say “O Most Holy Theotokos, I am nothing! But I need You badly.”
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https://vk.com/video-210302276_456239199

Repentance can comprise joy. The Holy Fathers have such a concept that encompasses both antipodes – sorrow and joy. It is when we cry over our sins, but in no way become desperate and discouraged, and our sorrow is dissolved by happiness, as we know that God loves us, no matter what and there is always hope and an opportunity, even for us the way we are… Our Church is full of such opportunities for a person to change and become a friend of God.
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The point of humility is to be at peace, whether you pray, work, or face some life circumstances. We should accept everything with peace and should not be angry with anyone, even with ourselves. I am not saying, “We should encourage our imperfection.” I mean we should not allow anger to come into our life. No matter how bad it feels.
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The only way to defeat our thoughts is to direct our mind and heart towards Christ.
Remain mild and say without ceasing,
"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."
Your heart will focus on what your thought is focused on.
For this reason, focus your thought on Christ through the Jesus prayer.

Therefore, the struggle with our thoughts is the filling of voids with Christ.
It can be compared to a wall with cracks. Where will the draft blow? Into a crack.
If irritation, blasphemy, fornication, and judgment come in, then there is a hollow space somewhere and the only way is to not contradict them, as it is useless, but instead to fill these cracks with Christ all the time.
"Lord Jesus Christ..."
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