Monk Pimen (Vlad)
What does salvation mean to us? What is our purpose here on earth? We say that our objective is salvation, but the Holy Fathers taught holiness, because we are called to it (cf. 1 Thess. 4:2, 7). It is also written that we must become children of God (Rom. 8). Becoming incarnate, the Savior took on our human nature and thereby made us children of God. God gave us time to live here on earth; someone will die in infancy, someone else at the age of ten, fifty, or 100, but no one will be here forever.
Our Purpose Is to Become Like Angels
He gave us time on earth so that we could prepare for eternity that never ends. God blessed us to live on this earth to replace the angels who fell away from Heaven. It means that we must become like angels, and when He fills all the places that became vacant, we will come to the end. Of course, we have the Revelation, which describes the signs of the times when this will happen: when human degradation exceeds an acceptable limit.
We see that when the Savior came down to earth, there was terrible corruption too, and He had to come to redeem us so that we could acquire grace and live on. What ways did God give us to attain eternity? We are in the Orthodox Church, and when the Savior founded the Church, He gave us the Church sacraments, which the Holy Fathers speak about.
Confession Allows Us to Take a Weight off Our Shoulders
We have Holy Baptism—without it we cannot be saved. We also have confession, because God knew that we sin; there cannot be a single person on earth (no matter how great he may be) who can say that on such and such a day he did not sin in anything. Even if he has not sinned by deed, he has surely sinned by thought: after all, even a thought that judges your neighbor is already a small fall. Therefore, we need to repent at a certain time, and if our father-confessor allows us, then we can receive Communion. And if we don’t confess, it’s like not washing: you can put on perfume all day long, but once you move, it will be a terrible stench. This happens when there is no confession.
Repentance helps us throw off the weight that we have taken on from our shoulders. Every day you accumulate sins. It’s like a bag growing on our hump: we put everything in there, and it gets heavier and heavier, and at some point it will weigh down on us. Then we will start to see only the earth without seeing heaven anymore, because the weight of the burden of sins has pinned us to the ground. And when someone asks us what heaven looks like, we will answer:
“What heaven? Can’t you see that there’s only earth around?”
We cling to this earth, quarrel over a piece of it or something else that binds us to these earthly things, and reach the point where we see only them, forgetting to look up and rejoice at the majestic beauty and freedom of heavens. We become enslaved.
Let’s Confess Sincerely
When we confess sincerely, when we take the blame for what happened on ourselves, we won’t go to the priest and say:
“Yes, I committed it, but because of my wife, my neighbor or God knows who else. Everybody else is to blame, but I am innocent!”
Instead, we should go and take the blame on ourselves:
“Father, I have sinned, I have done it! And it doesn’t matter who influenced me and what they did—it’s their business. I was weak and I sinned!”
We repent, the priest reads the Absolution over us, and we fly away from the epitrachelion as if on wings. Look at a person after a sincere confession—everything shines and becomes beautiful around him, he flies and feels that there is no weight left! The “bag” has disappeared, and it is much easier for him to walk through life. Therefore, confession plays a crucial role in our lives.
To See God in Your Brother
Then, little by little, we should start performing good deeds: giving alms, helping others, doing good as much as we can. There is a popular saying: “Don’t do to another what you don’t want for yourself.”
You’re like a person walking down the road, meeting others and having some friends: “Yes, I’ll go and meet one, then meet another. I want them to greet me, smile, and talk to me in a friendly manner. I don’t want to be cursed or robbed!” I want all this, but do I do this to others? After all, everybody expects the same things.
So, I’m walking along the road, but another is also waiting for me to show my attention to him, greet him, smile, and talk to him kindly instead of saying: “My God, he’s not my level; he doesn’t have designer clothes and he got out of a pitiable car.” So let’s respect our brother and see God in him. There is a spark of God in all people, and if we do it, God will gradually deign to make others respect us just as we respect them, for it is said: “With what hand you give, so shall you receive.”
If you have done evil, it will come back to you one day. Maybe not immediately, but years later, when you’ve already forgotten it, but you’ll see: It will come back to you. You’ve robbed someone and you think that no one has seen you, but years later someone will steal ten or 100 times more from you. You will resent bitterly, not remembering having stolen something yourself. It’s the same with good: you’ve done it and maybe you’ve completely forgotten about it, and years later you see that the good has returned to you a hundredfold.
Let’s not Covet Someone Else’s Things
I remember such an incident. I was a boy of about ten, living with my parents, and one of my mother’s sisters was a little better off. Her husband worked on a farm and rode a bike there, although the farm was not far away. One day as he was driving he saw a woman who had something—like a white piece of paper—falling out of her pocket. He rode up and saw that these were ten lei. Then he had conflicting thoughts: “Should I give it to her or not?” They had everything they needed at home, but that woman lived from hand to mouth and had to walk over a mile from village to village. Maybe it was the last money she had. But in the end, he decided: “Don’t I need it?” And put the money into his pocket.
And at the end of that week this man was supposed to attend someone’s wedding, and on this occasion he went with his wife to the city to buy himself a suit. They drove their car, because they had everything they needed. At that time, there were only three Dacias in our village—only the rich had them.1 So he bought a very beautiful suit for 500 lei. But when they got home, there was no suit—it had disappeared. They started looking in the car, but in vain, so the suit was lost.
My mother’s sister said that when they found that the suit had been lost, the first thought that came to her mind was that her husband had picked up the ten lei three days before. So he lost 500 lei, and God showed him what it means to covet someone else’s small things.
Let’s Prepare for Eternity by Attending the Holy Liturgy Weekly
If it’s not yours, don’t take it, and even if you find money and don’t know whose money it is, you’d better use it to buy a couple of loaves of bread and give them to someone in need. Use it for something useful, and God will reward you for it. Never think: “Never mind, let this money be mine!”
Let’s always be mindful of what we do, because life is short, and we will stand before God to answer for everything we have done. And He will say:
“Look, man, I gave you fifty years on earth. What did you do?”
And if we reply that we had no time, He will say:
“I gave you as many as fifty years. How is it that you didn’t have time? Have you ever devoted one day a week to Me, coming to speak to Me?”
On Sunday, when we go to church, we have a conversation with God at the Divine Liturgy.
So how comes that we are aware that we’re going to pass into eternity forever, but we “have no time” to prepare for it? You came here to Mt. Athos, and I think each of you took a couple of changes of clothes from home: “I’m going for two or three days/for a week, and I’ll need to change into something.” So you took a suitcase, a backpack, and several changes of clothes for this two-or-three-day trip. And if you go somewhere for a long time—for ten or twenty years—then you take everything in your home with you.
In Eternity, We Will Find What We Sent There
But when you move to eternity, it’s absolutely different—you can’t take anything there with you. It’s like getting on a plane and being told that you don’t have the right to take your luggage with you. What should you do then? You have to send it in advance. In eternity, we will find what we sent there. And do you know what we’ll find there? Not what we gained on earth for ourselves and our families—it will all remain here. Raising children and working are our duties, and neither of this good will be sent to Heaven. What matters is what you give to those who cannot repay you. If you gave alms, helped a family, said a kind word to someone, supported someone in need, offered up a prayer for someone, or sacrificed something for a family with ten children out of your abundance, you’ll find all this in the life to come.
When you die, it will be the “luggage” that God will tell you about:
“Yes, I see you have sent yourself enough. Welcome, you have what to live on—from now on your place is here.”
But He also may say:
“You did not send anything here, so you are assigned to another place—go to the one you served.”
Let’s not serve two masters—God and mammon—there is no neutral path. And God will tell you:
“You served someone else and didn’t send anything here.”
So, let’s try our best, because life is short and soon we will all depart to God. Who can guarantee that we will live until tomorrow? Everything is in the hands of God. So, let’s never allow ourselves to go to bed in the evening when we have fallen out with someone, especially with our loved ones. And no matter what happened: you must embrace them, tell them you love them, and then go to sleep, because one of them may die this night.
Everything Comes Back to Us
I remember once being in a village and being told about an unfortunate woman who kept crying because her father was dead. She hadn’t been on speaking terms with him for the final five or ten years of his life because he had deprived her of her due share of land and given her brother more. And she hadn’t set foot in his house since. Her father was old, he probably needed her support, but she severed all contacts with him, and now that he was dead she went to his grave and cried every day.
The person who told me this added that he had said to the woman:
“What do you look for on his grave now, if for ten years, when he, an old man, needed you, you didn’t go into his yard and didn’t even want to see him? And now you’re shedding tears in three streams in vain!”
What difference does it make what you are doing now that he’s gone, if when he was alive you didn’t go to him, didn’t sit next to him, didn’t strengthen him, and didn’t support him regardless of what he had done to you during his lifetime? Everything comes back. If you despise your parents because you think they were unfair to you, then don’t forget that you will live to old age and your children will do the same to you, and then you will understand how wrong you were then.
Let’s be zealous, for life is short, and prepare a little every day, with love and kindness. God is not a punishing cudgel, but He wants to see if we have the will to do good. Let us confess, receive Communion, do good, and step forward where God awaits us.
May the Good God and all the saints help us improve. Me first.
