"Don't worry too much about comfort"

"Don't worry too much about comfort"

- Geronda, when I say that I can work so much and that this is the limit of my capabilities, do I say this out of selfishness?

- The longer a person sits idle, the more relaxed, and the more he works, the stronger he becomes. In addition to the fact that by work he drives away sadness from himself, he also helps himself spiritually.

The goal is for a person to enjoy inconvenience and difficulties more than comfort. If only you knew how some elders live on Athos and what joy they experience! You know what selflessness one elder had, who lived a kilometer from my cell, high on a mountain, on a steep slope. The poor man was on all fours going down the path when he needed to go to the elder who lived below. They wanted to take him to a monastery so that it would be more convenient to take care of him, but he did not agree. Then everyone began to say: “Yes, he is delusional,” since this elder lived alone in the cell.

One day he came to me and told me why he did not want to go to the monastery. Once they didn’t have a temple in their cell, he persuaded his elder to build a temple for a long time, and finally his elder said: “Okay, let’s build it, only you won’t be able to leave this place, because the temple will have its own Guardian Angel and you can't leave him alone." He promised that he would never leave the cell, and they built a temple. In the end, the cell in which the elder lived collapsed, and he began to live in the temple. There he slept, sitting in a stasidia. What selflessness! I brought him some clothes because he didn't have anything at all. He was also sick - he was constantly tormented by pain in his stomach. One day I sent a doctor friend to him. He went along with his friend, but they found the elder already dead: he was sitting in a stasidia, wrapped in a blanket. This is how a man went to the Lord!

Life in harsh conditions for the sake of the love of Christ brings the tenderness of Christ into the heart. Divine pleasure is born from bodily suffering. The holy fathers gave blood and received the Spirit. Then, by hard work, they acquired grace. They renounced their "I" and found it in the hands of God.

I am moved when I read the synaxarion of the holy ascetics of Mount Sinai. Five thousand ascetics lived on Sinai, and how many more on Athos! How many fathers have been sanctified in a thousand years! And how many sufferings the confessors and martyrs endured! And we grumble at the first slightest difficulty. We want to easily acquire holiness.

Self-denial is rare. Even we monks do not understand that blessings are acquired by labor, and we pity ourselves, justify and find extenuating circumstances. This is where evil comes from. The devil helps every person find justification, and the years pass. Therefore, do not forget about death. And if you die anyway, then you should not take too much care of the body, not in the sense of bringing it to illness, but in the sense of not caring too much about comfort.