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.
