Listen to a comforting word from Father Pimen Vlad held at Pasărea monastery pertaining to the mercy of the saints and the help of the Mother of God in which the father gives impressive examples on this topic.
Enjoy!
Good deeds must be done wholeheartedly
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Reverend mothers and faithful loved ones We heard it so beautifully said in today’s apostle reading, “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully.” For God loves a good-hearted giver. You heard how nice he tells us. What we sow in our life with stinginess, we reap with stinginess. Here it refers to our whole life. What do we do well in our life?
When we do good with our entire heart , do we do it with love or do we do it out of need? Or is it because we feel obligated to? No, my dears, we must do good with love and from the entire heart because when it goes from heart to heart, [the gesture] means something! When you do good to someone with all your heart, that good achieves its purpose, it truly helps the other person. That is why we say that he who sows kindness will also reap kindness, not only here on earth, but even after our departure. Because everything we do out of charity is not lost here on earth. Any charity you do with love, from all your heart goes to God and we find it beyond when God helps us and we pass beyond. Therefore, everything we do in our life should be done with love.
I remember St. Philaret the Merciful, who is an example for everyone. His hope, faith and mercy were undeniable. It is said that he would not let any poor person who came to his gate leave without solace. Slowly, with what he had, with what he could. And by always giving to everyone, he also became impoverished by God’s mercy. People came and said to him, “Give me some of your animals, for I know that you are blessed by God, and all that you give me is multiplied.” At one point, he was left with only two oxen, and when a man asked for them, he gave them to him.
His wife was angry with him because they had also become poor, sometimes she would not even have him for dinner saying: “You should eat from where you’ve given, because you’ve brought us to poverty.” Of all his wealth, he had been left with a cow with a calf, and a poor man said to him: Man of God give me calf too, to have your blessing. Then St. Philaret took the calf from the cow and gave it to the poor man. As the poor man tried to leave, the calf was pulling one way and the cow the other way. Then his wife started screaming: “You wicked man, can’t you see you’ve separated the calf from the cow, you didn’t feel sorry for it?” Then he ran after the poor man and said to him: “My wife is right, come back and take the cow, let’s not separate them.” Then his wife started screaming: “What did you do? You left us with nothing.”
But God saw all this from above, and He thought at that time that the king, being of old age, and he wanted to enthrone his son in the kingdom and he is looking for a faithful wife for him for his son to marry. So he sent men all over the kingdom to look for a faithful and humble girl, who would be a good queen. Arriving at Saint Philaret’s, he received the emperor’s envoys in his house. He already had grandchildren. He had reached an age. And among the grandchildren he had a very beautiful and very faithful and humble granddaughter. And the emperor’s envoys liked her a lot when they came and arrived there. That they stopped at St. Filaret, seeing that he had a big house, thinking that he must be a richer man. And he received them with all his love and of course being the emperor’s envoys. It was the Saint’s granddaughter who served the guests and they liked her a lot and talking to her they realized that she was the girl they were looking for to be the wife of the emperor’s son. And they took her to the palace, He liked her the emperor’s son fell in love with her and took her as his wife, thus making her empress.
Because she loved her grandfather very much, she took the whole family to the palace, the entire family. And she gave to her grandfather a palace and she always supplied him, people say, he had three bags of money to give to the poor. And he always helped and continued to give as he did all his life. See what it means: “Plentiful you give, plentiful you receive.” That is, to sow generously. So did St. Philaret. I have told you about his life so you can see that God never leaves us. Whatever we do in our lives, however much we help those around us, God does not leave us. That’s why it is said that if you give one, God gives it back multiplied. And we have many such cases among us or in the lives of the saints, in which indeed this is how God worked. because God who made everything can give us everything we need, even though we often do not trust Him completely.
We often trust in our own wisdom, sometimes in those around us, and leave God out of it. We don’t cry out to Him when we should, we don’t ask for His help and we turn away from Him and then God leaves us to our own devices and we see trouble in our lives, misunderstandings, suffering, sickness. All this does not come because of God’s punishment, it comes because we turn away from Him and then He leaves us to our own devices. And then we drown in everything around us, from bad to worse.
And let’s not forget one thing, we have the Mother of God, who is our link with heaven, she is our mediator. That is why we should never be afraid of anything. In any trouble, in any suffering or in any joy, let us cry to the Mother of God, let us thank the Mother of God and ask for her help, for she has great power before God. She is never refused because she is the mother of God and the mother of us all. She has a mother’s heart, that’s why she always listens to us, is by our side, cries and rejoices with us. In the same way, we too must show that we are her children, that we love her with all our heart, and that there is not a Christian who does not have an icon of Our Lady in his house and a lighted candle her icon.
When you leave home, kiss the icon and ask for her help to protect you, and when you return, don’t forget to thank her, because we often ask when we need it, and then forget to thank. Let’s thank her, always when we return home to our families, kiss her icon and say: “Mother of God, thank you for taking care of me, for bringing me home again, and for those at home being well.” In this way, we have the Mother of God and our mother, and our patroness.
May the Good Lord help us to be kinder, more tender with one another, and to pray more to the Mother of God to intercede for us always. Amen.
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