Listen to a word of instruction that Father Pimen Vlad addressed to young people when he was in Romania. The thorny problem of relationships between young people was mainly addressed.
Enjoy!
If you get carried away by the wave of the world, this wave with its temptations, these things of the world seem so beautiful when you first see them, especially the first time, it seems to you that that’s where beauty is, but in fact, it only brings pain. So there’s this temptation like the packaging to something. The thing inside could be the worst but if it is nicely packaged, then you think it is good. But you realize at some point when you unpack it that it’s not the same.
Therefore, try to be a little bit more discerning in what you see in the world, and whatever you don’t know, when you come back here, always ask if what you have seen, what you have come across is good or bad. Because when it comes to the most of you, your parents, the ones who take care of you and help you, are around.
As I said, in the first place is the Mother of God and God, then [ask] whoever you are more open to, the priest you confess to, ask the others who take care of you, so that you can make a little distinction between the good things and the less good things.
As you can see, we humans have a habit. Both the little ones and the big ones often. Until we get hurt, we don’t believe what we are told. As they say, “Until you bump your head on the top threshold, you can’t see what’s at the bottom”. I mean, it seems to us that it’s not quite what we’re told.
And you must try to see the good in every situation. I mean, you may often think you’re having a hard time, but think that there are kids who are having a much harder time. Even those who have families, I met children in distress who had nothing to eat, I met once a family somewhere, a grandmother who took care of four grandchildren. They didn’t have anything to eat, they had only one bowl on the table with food, and the grandmother would say, “I haven’t eaten anything, let the children have this bowl to eat.” So they didn’t have enough from one day to the next. She and her grandchildren lived in a small one-bed, one-room cottage. So there are many who live in the world and live in much harder conditions than you. They don’t have parents, nor do they have what it takes either.
God and the Mother of God have ordained that you here may have everything. Including people who love you, care for you, who wish you well. Because there are many sufferings in the world, troubles, I’ve met many children living in difficult situations. You have to count yourselves, no matter what the past is, “Mother of God took me in her arms, she brought me here.”
You see you have a church here too, so you are in the care of the Mother of God. You don’t have to think about what will be with you, because that is given from above for everyone, but if you try your best to stay close to God, to be obedient, you will see that in life it will help you a lot. You will find many things that you will remember in your life, that you have learned here and that will be useful to you.
Which one of you have been reading, there is a book, in fact there are four volumes, which one of you have read the book, “Pollyana”? Which one of you know about it, there are four volumes and it’s about a little orphan girl in the first book “Pollyanna” “Pollyanna Grows Up” [is] the second book, “Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms” the third book, and “Pollyanna’s Jewels” the fourth book, when she already has children.
So, you see, [she was] a little girl, she only had a father at first. Her father was a priest, her mother had died. And she wished for [things] too, they didn’t have anything, they lived in poverty…only once a year she received a package from an association from where they received some toys, some necessary things, otherwise they barely had food to eat.
And she wanted [things] too, she kept praying, she said, “God, I want a doll too,” and when she looked in the package, what was there? A pair of crutches. Some kind of crutches for those who have broken a leg, can’t walk, and she started to cry, “But I wanted a doll”, and then her father said, “You should be happy!”
“How can I be happy if I wanted a doll and got crutches?”
He says, “Be glad you don’t need them. Think of someone who has broken legs, how much they struggle because they need them. You should be glad you don’t need them.”
And her father said to her, “Let’s play a game. Let’s see the good in everything in our lives, everything, no matter how difficult it may seem, let’s think of the good.” Let’s say you need to go somewhere. You have to walk half a kilometer. And it’s raining outside and you don’t have an umbrella, and you’re thinking, how can you walk like this, but you can turn it into good thinking, to see the good side of things.
This little girl managed to transform everything, together with her father, when she was missing one thing she said, “Good that I don’t miss the other.” If she had any pain, if she had a toothache, she would say, “It’s a good thing I don’t have a headache, it would have been worse.” So she always looked at the good things. And of course, in the end she was orphaned, and she ended up in the village where she went to an aunt, she managed, a 13-year-old girl, to transform the whole village, to make the whole village happy.
She ran from house to house, and so changed everything for the better. And so her life goes on like this. There could be a hundred bad things and one good one, among all the bad ones she only saw the good one.
I mean somehow, out of everything you encounter in life that is hard, that is suffering, to think that there is a good thing there too. I mean, try to see the good in it. And moreover, here you are together with so many children. The Mother of God has ordained that you should be together, that you should try to help each other.
That is, to have love between you. The older ones with the younger ones, let there be respect between you. If one is weaker, if one can’t learn well, or doesn’t have certain qualities, think, “Look, God didn’t give me this, He gave me that so I can do better, and be there for others. Know one thing: whatever you do, you do for yourself. If you care for and help a younger person, it reflects on you. So God gives you abundantly, both help and grace, and takes care of you in life. If you somehow wrong someone, or, you guys beat someone, it all comes back on you. So always try to be loving towards each other. I mean, be true friends.
Often a few people get together and laugh at each other, or take advantage. No! Always try to see the good in everyone around you, in every child, and help them. Be supportive, because this will help you a lot in life. Many times you can wrong someone, make fun of them, only to have it come back to you twice as bad. Because God sees all and knows all. So every thought comes to Him, whether it’s bad or good, whether it’s a prayer, or when you see that one of you is in trouble, suffering, you can pray for him.
All of you who are here, if you say “God help this child, this girl, that one”, then you will see God working, and the Mother of God, and helping him. That is, you can come as a strong circle to support each other, to help each other, that is, not only in practice, but also in prayer. And then you can help each other, because I’ve come across cases, a teacher who once had a problem, so he asked all the children in the class to pray. And he was telling me, he was somewhere in Athens.
He was a sports teacher, but he had such a special connection with children. And he used to say, “When I have a sick person, I make everyone pray”. And miracles were worked and they were healed. So powerful were the prayers of the other children, being purer. And they always helped each other.
The older ones, you see, now come the temptations of life, boys, girls, as you grow older, there is this excitement, you get to schools, you may like girls for boys, boys for girls, you have to think that you have time for this, things should not be rushed. Go to school, everything comes in its own time, without going overboard. You arrive and fall in love and you don’t know what’s wrong with you, school doesn’t work anymore, others come one after another… so let these things come in their own time. I mean, you have to think “I have to finish my school”, these things are left by God.
Falling in love is God-given, it is natural in the human soul, it is something beautiful. But when this falling in love thing turns ugly, it’s no longer beautiful. And not only that, even towards one or the other who understand each other better, so that thing to a certain extent is nice. If it goes beyond a point it gets ugly. We also see with this falling in love thing, how it was in the old days, you see now there are phone calls, there are all these, you send a hundred messages a day.
Do you know how it used to be? It was a simple life. You liked a person, sent them a letter, put a petal, a little flower, and waited eight months for a reply. You were patient, you liked that person, you thought about that person, but you were patient until you got the answer, depending on where it was, in what area, until the letter arrived, sometimes it reached the parents…but there was a lot of respect before, there was beauty.
So this thing, to send the other person a letter and to be patient, there’s a petal, there were people who kept that petal which was received in a letter for life. All these simple beautiful things were highly valued. Now you write a hundred messages in a day, if he upset you, you swear at him a hundred times, or you swear at her, that is not swearing in a bad way, but that you get angry that he didn’t reply in time, that is beautiful things we turn into something ugly.
Because something is beautiful as long as it is respectful. If two people get along well, if there is respect between them then it’s nice. The moment there is no respect, the thing is no longer beautiful. No matter how much you care for someone, if there is no respect for each other, then beauty is lost.
You will have families, always, respect in the family keeps the family together. So it’s love, it’s everything else, but never lose the respect. When there is respect for each other, and even between you children, let there be respect for each other. Respect him as a person, as a soul. Whether small or big, in God’s eyes it has a soul, it has value. So you respect him for the soul he has and because he has a guardian angel. Just think, the child at 3 has a guardian angel. If you don’t respect that child, you don’t respect his guardian angel. But it says somewhere in Holy Scripture that angels every day see the face of God. So what you do all day, he runs to God in the evening, “Look what this soul has done.”
And then we if we wrong someone, hurt another child, it comes to God. And he says, “He didn’t do well! Go make the other one understand.” And he gives him a trouble, you feel inside you have no joy, you no longer rejoice, because you have not behaved properly with those around you.
So always, as I told you before, never lose respect for each other. And by this respect, respect for each other as children, respect for those older, always. And then it is further poured out through respect for God, for the Mother of God, and then we form our life beautifully, enrich it and enjoy it.
And like I said, try to live in the present. That is to say, don’t jump into the past, the past times, live in the present. Look how God has will for you to have loved ones around you, a warm bed, a meal, the opportunity to learn, to be more of you together, not to be alone and abandoned, all these things are reasons for joy.
And seek to live in the present. Or we can often think about the future but not just live there and not understand others. That is, let’s try to be happy for what we have, for today. For the people around us, for all the loved ones around us and let’s try to live beautifully and rejoice. Because if we do not rejoice, then we suffer and others around us suffer.
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