Listen to a warmhearted discussion with pilgrims’ questions and answers from Father Pimen Vlad in which he tells us about special temptations and their wonderful solution.
Enjoy!
Temptations and passions, what can I tell you about this… everyone has temptations, everyone has passions, more or less. But it depends on how everyone struggles. To be helped in this struggle, one must start from the bottom steps. Alone, nobody can cope with anything, and then he needs God’s help. But for this one must start from the beginning: it requires confession, Communion, prayer, permanent participation in the Holy Liturgy because it is the connection with God, that’s where grace descends, it’s the connection of Heaven with earth. We must be close to God and then we can struggle.
We often say we will manage, when we have a problem, we say, “I will solve it, my mind works, I’ll figure it out somehow.” And you see that you go from pit to pit. This is what happens when we trust ourselves. That’s why, [have] complete trust in God, laying everything down at God’s feet. When we trust ourselves it’s like starting a business and if you look into it, you find out that a 1000 other people have started the same business and almost all have gone bankrupt, but you say, “No, for me it will go well, I will manage.” And later you also go bankrupt and you say, “I did not know,” although you had seen the failures of others before you.
That is why there is a saying, “The wise one learns from the mistakes of others, and the one who does not judge hits his head as others have before him. We must try to not also hit our heads and for this we need God’s grace. As I said, a person makes mistakes every day, and he needs to be able to make a good start, to start from scratch, and without confession he cannot do that. Man cannot do it alone!
Many say, “Father, I don’t need the Church, I don’t need priests, because I have faith in my soul.” Where is your faith? Because the Holy Scripture says, “I will show you my faith by my works.” (James 2, 18-20) Meaning, it’s easy to say that we have faith in our soul because we find it hard to go to Church, we are ashamed to confess… Just saying “I have faith in my soul…”
When a person says that he does good deeds, that he has faith in his soul, that he does not need priests, it is as if he never washed himself nor his clothes, but he only wears perfume. When he moves a little, it still smells like a carcass. Unwashed for months, sweaty, dirty, no matter how much perfume you put on, you still stink! So this is what happens to people who do not confess and have no connection with the Church and its Mysteries, but do good deeds which maybe come naturally to them. He still “stinks” because he does not unload all the burden he gathers.
That’s how God appointed it: to humble ourselves and to confess and to be nourished by the Mysteries of the Church. There is no salvation outside the Church because you cannot listen to your own confession, can you Commune yourself, can you celebrate the Divine Liturgy? These are the mysteries of the Church, and they were appointed to the priests of the Church. No one but the priests of the Church can do them. Like the holy apostles, bishops, and priests. Man can’t do it alone, he loses himself no matter how capable he is.
Science, or rather so-called science, has set God aside. You see medicine has reached such a technological level… and yet there have maybe never been so many diseases people die from, cancers… They cannot be helped at all despite their maximum technology. That’s because we have not let God into our lives. When we let God into our lives….
I talked to many doctors who said “Father, it was like someone was taking my hands and working with them!” There were people, doctors asking for God’s help! They made a cross and prayed, “Lord, I have a hard surgery, help me! St. Nektarios, help me!” and they felt that Someone was working with their hands. There were operations that seemed almost impossible, and yet they worked it out.
Recently there was an accident in Pascani, with a bus. One girl’s hands were severed. One hand was lost among the debris of the car, and the other was completely crushed, it was hanging in the skin. The girl was rescued by her brother who had been stuck in the debris saved by someone else. When he saw his younger sister whom he loved dearly, without hands, he searched for the other hand, found it (what strength he had as a child!) took his sister in his arms, and ran with her to the ambulance that had come in the meantime and took her from Pascani to Iasi. That’s how God arranged!
She was operated on by a very good female doctor. The operation took 12 or 16 hours. Think about it, we often say “What do doctors do?” I was sitting and thinking, getting into an operation that seemed hard, almost impossible, one hand found I don’t know where, the other crushed… The doctors said it’s much harder to reattach tissues when they’re crushed. And the doctor said “If God appointed for her to be removed from the wreckage, for her to have her hands, for the girl to be brought to Iasi within an hour and a half with the ambulance, it means God brought her to me and it is my duty to save her!” As a doctor, she did her best, she prayed too…
Do you realize what 12 hours means? Well, you stay in the church 2-3 hours and it’s hard for you… You sit down, you move around, you get out… But stay 12 hours focused to the max with someone, sweat dripping… Think about how many veins, how many threads are there, how many tissues… and they all had to be joined to restore blood circulation… We don’t realize what that means! What a sacrifice from a doctor to be able to do this! And how much he needs God in those moments! Not only to operate, but to succeed!
The doctor said “It was a miracle!” She was a good doctor but she said, “I was out of my depth. It was a miracle that now the girl can use her hands, for this to succeed. We see how God works! But to whom? To people who are truly anchored in God because they ask for help and God intervenes. We have cases where so many saints have appeared and helped, healed.
Recently I saw the testimony of a man who told that he had an accident, his chest was crushed, and the doctors gave him a few hours to live. His mother brought him to the hospital, it happened somewhere in Greece. He was unconscious, barely breathing with the help of his machines, but his mother prayed a lot and left him, next to his bed, a book with the concise lives of Saints Raphael, Nicholas and Irina from the island of Lesvos.
At one point that man came to and saw the book at his bedside, took it and began to flip through it, to read. He wondered at the miracles of the saints that were written there. He said, “Dear saints, if you really exist and what is written is true, Saint Raphael, help me too, you see the state I am in!” He prayed there in his own way, and at one point, as he stood there with the nurse (who was there all the time because of his state), he suddenly saw a monk floating in the air a few meters away.
Surprised, he called out to the nurse, “Nurse, nurse, the father, look at the father!” She looked over and said “Don’t worry, it’s nothing!” she thought he had little time to live… He said, “Look!” and the father stood, luminous, in the air a few meters away. He closed his eyes and thought “Well, that can’t be, something’s wrong!” and the saint disappeared. He stayed for a few more moments and the saint appeared again. The man said again, “Well, that can’t be!” He tried to determine whether he was sleeping and he wasn’t. He said again, “Nurse, look at the father!” and the nurse answered, “There is no father! Don’t worry.” And then he began to speak to the saint:
“Who are you?”
“Well, didn’t you call me?”
“But what’s your name?”
“Raphael!”
“Is it really you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“But come closer, so I can touch you!”
And as the saint approached, the man was frightened and shouted again, “Sister, the Father is coming to me, come quickly!” and he pulled her, putting her between himself and the saint, but then he saw the saint pass through her and come to him. And the saint puts his hand on his chest And he felt his hand on his chest. Then the saint asked him:
“Well, do you believe now?”
“I believe, holy father, I believe!” And as he held his hand on his chest… because he could not breath, his lungs were destroyed, he was hooked up to machines… he suddenly feels as if his chest is unfolding and a weight is taken away. The saint touched him for a few moments, and as soon as he took his hand, the man felt how he could breathe, and the saint disappeared. The man said then “I can breathe, I have taken a weight!”
They removed his machines and when they checked him, the doctors found that all the wounds had healed as if he had nothing. The saint had made him healthy! Then they all understood that this had been a miracle. The man was crushed, he had only a few hours to live and the next day he was discharged being healthy. Here’s how the saints work! What should we do? Let’s ask them for help! That man only said for a few moments “Holy, do you really exist? Come and help me!” And the saint has come! There are many such cases of healings of saints.
There was once a woman who prayed to Saint Irene. The saint was only 12 years old, and the woman prayed: “Saint Irinuca, please come and heal me! Can’t you see I’m here in the hospital, I’m miserable, I can’t take it anymore!” And as she was praying, at one point St. Raphael appeared and said, “You asked St. Irinuca to come and heal you, but you should know that she is being taken to Australia to heal a woman there. I came in her place to make you well. ” And he healed her! Here’s how the saints communicate with each other and help each other! Let’s just ask them for help with all our heart.
If we don’t ask them for help, then they don’t intervene because God has set us free and respects our freedom. And then if we don’t ask for help, God doesn’t intervene in our lives either. That’s why we must believe! Don’t you know what the man said?
– God, if there’s anything you can do!
– But you believe?
– I believe, Lord!
– May it be according to your faith!
And then his child was healed… Everything is according to man’s faith. But we must believe with all our heart. If we go with the idea of “God, if you can do something”… it’s wrong. God can do anything, with Him there is no impossible. But do we believe that he can do anything? Our faith must be with all our heart. When we ask God for something, we must believe that God gives it to us. And then God gives us only if it is useful to us.
Many times we ask for things that are to our harm and then we cry out that why doesn’t God give them to us. Well, that’s why he doesn’t give them to us, because they are for our harm. Whenever we ask, we must end our prayer with “Lord, if it’s Your will!”. And then God knows that he can work freely and looks whether it is useful or not and gives us or not.
We can make our life beautiful, live it beautifully. But how? You can not hurt others and at the same time be happy, live well, have a good time when you actually step on the heads of others. To have a beautiful life you must do good. As the Savior said to help the poor and that some will be on the right, some on the left. And the Saviour will say: “Get away from me, those on the left!” I was poor and you gave me nothing, I was hungry and you gave me no food, you did not clothe me, I was in prison and you did not examine me!…
– God, when did you need it and I didn’t help you?
– Once you didn’t help the poor around you, you didn’t help Me either!
And to those on His right hand He will say:
– Come, you blessed of my Father, for I was hungry and you fed me, you clothed me…
– God, when did we do this? That we haven’t seen you before!
– You did it for my smallest and poorest, and that means you did it to me!
We often see a poor guy and say “Forget him, he’s a drunk! What should I give him?” But that drunkard maybe God took out in front of you to see your heart. Are you giving or not giving him something? If we think like this, we will not give anything to anyone all our life. To each of them we will put a badge after our head: that’s a thug, that’s a drunkard…
We must think that if God gave us, maybe He did it for a reason. Why did he give us? Maybe we’re a little bit overdue… He gave us to give to those who do not have. Being busy with business, you don’t really have enough time to pray. But if you give alms to two, three, five poor people, they will pray for you and fill in where you do not pray. Here’s how you can actually get better!
What else does it say about the Holy Scripture? Do not store up treasures here on earth where thieves steal and moth and rust eat them! Gather treasures in the sky! Nothing can affect them there. What does it mean to collect such treasures, that you do not just put them in chests and send them just like that! Giving to the poor, giving alms, helping others, all these go to Heaven! That’s where we’ll find them all. And the parity will not be one to one, but we will find them with interest. We will find them a hundredfold and a thousandfold, God will give us more and more, but in a spiritual way.
All these good things that we do on earth will be there for eternity. Good deeds should not be postponed for old age, they should be done every day and at every opportunity that arises! Opportunities arise every day: you meet a man who asks for your help and you do not say that you have work and you do not have time. Someone asks you something, you can answer nicely, not scolded or upset even if you see that he is a poor man. Or if the two of them are arguing and you know you can’t intervene, make a prayer for them in your mind: “Lord, please tame them so they don’t fight anymore!”
The same for families where there is no good understanding, make a prayer, three prostrations for them and say “God, calm them, bring peace in this family!” Even unseen, all these deeds go to God and gather there. Otherwise we live in vain on earth, we torment each other, we struggle to accumulate fortunes, cars I don’t know of which, villas I don’t know of which, and one day an earthquake comes and we are left without them. And on top of that you see that you have not sent anything beyond, and you have nothing here either.
What did you get out of what you worked for years? Let’s say that if you had done charity with 10% of what you had, even though you lost your wealth here on earth, you could have earned it in Heaven. This way you have neither here nor there. That’s why we mustn’t leave a single day without doing a little bit of good! A little today, a little tomorrow and so unnoticed, they gather and in the end we can enjoy them.
Know that life here on earth is short, whatever we do one day ends. We see around us that people are always leaving. Who guarantees that we won’t leave tomorrow? Anything can happen: your heart stops, something falls in your head, it’s a landslide, an earthquake… anything can happen and we’re leaving! It may happen that we cannot postpone the departure, so do not postpone the confession!
Someone told me that he had prepared himself for confession around Christmas, but the next day he changed his mind… and Easter came. And now for Easter if he postpones again, Christmas catches him without confession. And how do you know you’re catching him? You risk leaving without confession. And what are you going to tell God?
– God, I didn’t have time!
– Didn’t have time? You’re in a country where you bump into a priest at every corner! You could have gone to confession for 10 minutes, half an hour, an hour… so you wouldn’t feel loaded. You could confess, you didn’t have to go a thousand kilometers or I don’t know where! You could!”
What about us? We postpone and postpone. The devil’s greatest deception is procrastination. We postpone permanently, let me do it, let me do it until we put our hands on our chests. And in the end we realize that we went with all the weight. What did the Holy Spirit say to the apostles? What you bind on earth will be bound and what you loose will be loosed! So if we don’t go to the confessor to untie us through confession, then we will go with all the difficulties beyond and they will also be bound in Heaven.
It is said that nothing unclean will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This means that unconfessed sins will bring us down by losing our souls. For what? Because we got lazy? Because we are ashamed? For carelessness? For “let me do it”? Because you find it hard? Because if you confess and the priest tells you not to do it, you better stay and have fun for a while?
Worshiper: Does Confession without Communion count?
Father Pimen: What’s going on? It has nothing to do with each other! Confession is to escape, to cleanse yourself from sins and depending on what sins you have, the priest can say that a month, a year or a period you cannot have Communion. And Communion is for the health of body and soul. A man may take Communion every day, but if he does not confess, it is of no use.
So the basis is confession, let us be clear! Without confession, man does not save himself because he leaves with all the weight behind him. That is why in Orthodoxy we have confession. The other sects that have appeared, they have lost this, they carry all this weight because they have no priesthood, they have no Saint Sacraments. God gave us this chance of confession. Why waste it? Why should we lose it and leave with all of us?
Worshiper: Father, how often should we confess?
Father Pimen: How many times do we feel the need! It’s not a fixed number or calendar. If you feel the need more often, you go more often. It’s generally fine at one month.
Worshiper: Mainly in the four fasting time, right?
Father Pimen: Not only in the four fasting time! Well, you eat whenever you’re hungry, you wash whenever you get dirty… it’s the same with confession. As many times as needed or as many times as you feel the need, but the more often the better. And if you can, have the Communion! In fasting time even a little more often, even every Sunday. It also depends on the confessors, that I do not determine, but the more often the better, the more power you gain.
Worshiper: Father, how do we find our way in life? How do we find out what our purpose on earth is?
Father Pimen: Through the connection with God! As I have said so far, God is opening the way for us, but that is not enough. We must also wave our hands, be close to God through confession, Communion, go to the Holy Liturgy every Sunday and God will open the way for us as He knows it is best.
But we must struggle too. Man feels what he has the inclination or talent to do. Maybe you are a good tailor… your parents can tell you to become a doctor, but you feel that God has given you this talent and you are good at this and what you do very well. But no matter what you do, do it with love, choose the job in which you put your whole soul and do it with love all your life.
If you choose a job only because it is well earned and you have no pleasure in doing it, you will never do anything with love and nothing will ever come out of your hands properly because you are already bored and tired. When you choose your job, you have to figure out if it’s the right thing for you, that you love to do it.
Worshiper: How is it better to stop the passions, the vices?
Father Pimen: They have to be cut, right?! Back to what I have said so far, we cannot do it alone! Through confession and prayer we ask for God’s help and we can avoid them. If you see that you can not get rid of drinking, you no longer keep alcohol in the house, you avoid going out with friends who drink. You reduce all these temptations. With smoking the same… these do not go slowly, slowly, these must be cut at once!
To get rid of all these passions, we must cut them off! if we do not cut them, we will always have temptations around us and all our lives until old age you will stay with the bottle in your hand. And you’re not only hurting yourself, you’re hurting your family, you’re destroying around you… No one trusts you at work either, you upset them and it’s the ones at home and we end up destroying ourselves and the others.
Look at a smoker, he smells all the time… besides destroying himself, he practically kills himself slowly, slowly, you disturb others. They endure you that they have nothing to do or are part of the family, but you are a torment for all. For what? Just to satisfy a craving that also destroys you? Here you must ask for God’s help, but you must also fight. The man must cut it, give up himself, it doesn’t matter if it hurts or it’s hard for you, you must fight! In life if you don’t fight, you don’t do anything, you must fight permanently!
I think I’ve told you enough. May the Mother of God help you! Now that you have enjoyed the Resurrection, maintain the joy of the Resurrection. To maintain it requires the Grace of God, namely confession, communion and participation in the Holy Liturgy. But do not go to the Holy Liturgy just to see with your friends or to see what clothes they have put on. You go to church, sit in a corner and talk to God! Then you truly live the Divine Liturgy and come out graciously from there.
May the Mother of God help you!
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