Fr. Andrew gave the following homily at St. Elisabeth Convent in Minsk on November 23, 2025.
Archpriest Andrew Lemeshonok
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We’ve won again. Again, despite all our sins and weaknesses, God has entered into us. The enemy does everything to prevent us from uniting with God, but the enemy is powerless, while the Lord is all-powerful. And even if you feel like you’re unable to walk to church—crawl there. If you can’t crawl, ask someone to take you by the scruff of your neck and drag you to church, and you’ll feel better.
No need for sentimentality, no need for any human feelings, moods, conditions. We face a question: to live or not, to be or not to be. This world does everything it can to keep us out of eternity. It throws anything and everything at us: “Look over there, look over here… You’ll still have time to get to church, you’ll still have time to make it to that service... Take care of your health, think of your nervous system, focus on healing your dying body.” Insanity! For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Gen. 3:19). What are you going to treat, what are you going to heal?
Basically, we’re doomed to die. This is both our fault and not our fault. We can say we would’ve lived forever if Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned. But to eternally live the kind of life we live today would be the most terrible sentence. And yet we hope that we’ll suffer through it all, and then perhaps everything will be different... Perhaps we’ll end up in a place where people will love one another, smile at one another, where they won’t push ahead saying, “Me first, then you! I’m important—you’re nobody. I do everything for you here and you don’t do anything!” Maybe everyone there will try to live in God—in the fullness of love where there’s no “mine,” but everything is God’s; in that beauty where everyone will be illuminated with the light of Christ’s love. Some will have it more than others, but everyone will be warmed by this love.
We can be very cold and hungry today, and it seems like someone got ahead of us somehow, that we were shortchanged, that we’ve been forgotten. No one is forgotten; nothing is forgotten. My friends, there’s a law that was formulated by the Holy Fathers: Give blood, get spirit. If you don’t give blood, what kind of spirit will you have? A whiff. Your soul will be this pitiful little thing—a pitiful little soul, not a life-giving spirit. So, of course, as distressing as it is by earthly standards, you have to go to death to help someone. A husband’s been drinking for twenty years, he’s drunk everything away, but his wife loves him… I tell her: “You have to go further. Your prayer alone isn’t enough. Get down on your knees and weep all night long, cry out. Then God will have mercy on you and your husband.”
At some point, people say: “This is for me, and this is for God.” Yes, you can strike a bargain, find the right balance, saying: “I gave this to God, but that’s enough now.” For now, this is our way of life. I live exactly the same way, even worse than you do. But I understand that at some point I’ll have to crucify myself with my passions and lusts (cf. Gal. 5:24), that is, completely renounce my own life. That moment hasn’t come yet. God grant that it does come. Don’t be afraid—it’s good to be with God!
Fr. Nikolai Guryanov once told me something. We were sitting, drinking tea. He always gave his guests tea. He had specific cups, one with an image of the Savior in the crown of thorns, and he had a kind of poster-icon of Heaven and hell hanging on the wall. He said: “Look, how good it is in Paradise.” It showed the righteous there. I looked at him and I could see that he truly knew how it is there, in Paradise… And I felt such joy! But where sinners are tormented—it’s very bad there.
Listen, let’s all go to Heaven! Let’s stop fooling around. What does it really cost us to get to Heaven? What does it cost us to put our lives in God’s hands? We think we’re going to become generals, government officials, presidents, businessmen. Why? If it’s necessary, you will. But if it’s not necessary, then it’s not necessary. We have to become human. Who is my neighbor? (Lk. 10:29). Today we heard in the Gospel about how a priest is rushing to church, he’s running late, and he couldn’t care less that a man’s lying there beaten: “Forget him! I’ll get dirty, and I need to be clean for the service.” A Levite (a deacon) passes by and also thinks: “Ah, forget him!” But a Samaritan—someone the right-believing Jews wouldn’t associate with—helped this unfortunate man. So let’s think about who our neighbor is.
The hardest thing is to live in a family. Family life is a cross, when you see all the flaws of the other but you still have to love them. It’s Pascha, but it’s also the Resurrection from the dead. How can you love this blockhead or this “nice lady” who’s already devoured your whole soul? How can you love her? Think about how. I can do all things through Christ Which strengtheneth me (Phil. 4:13). If people learn to love each other in a family, then the end of the world won’t come anytime soon—believe me. But if not, that’s it… The devil does everything he can in this world to destroy families, to destroy family chastity. He comes up with whatever he can—”civil marriages,” or “relationships,” or fornication, which become the norm.
One of the sisters told me: “Father, I met a man who is younger than me, but he’s so good and he loves me so much! Maybe I should be with him…”1 I told her: “Listen, ask him if he’s going to marry you or not. First apply to get married, then a relationship.”2 And she got discouraged: “He says he doesn’t want to get married or start a family: ‘I love you, and that’s it.’” This is freedom of love, which is called fornication.
But love is taking on responsibility. “Yes, I love you. Today you’re beautiful, but tomorrow you might become ugly. Today you’re so sweet and easygoing, but tomorrow you’ll be prickly. But I’ll love you anyway, because God gave you to me.” That’s what a real family is, and everything else is just fooling around. Forgive me for speaking this way—maybe I’m offending someone. We all love one another, we all want to be good, wonderful people, and that’s what we are. Really, just look at us—what a sight! You could just stand there admiring us and saying: “Glory to God for everything.”
