When we look back upon this time, when we look back upon this pandemic,
the only thing that we shall see, the only thing that we'll notice is the
love that we've gained or the love that we've
lost. One year from now, looking back upon our actions and the way
we behaved in the world towards the people around
us, the only thing that will be noticeable, the only thing
weighing on our conscience will be the love we've gained
or the love we've lost, depending on how we responded, how we reacted to all
of this, because this will pass; this will pass,
sooner or later this will pass, and what will be left
is just us, these shells, empty shells of our beings
filled with more love or more hatred. You see, the great
temptation is to think that just because this is a
difficult time, just because this is an extraordinary
time, somehow the rules have changed, somehow the
commandments of Christ have been adapted or diluted somehow, and that has
never been the case and that can never be the case,
because the commandments of Christ are nothing else except
descriptions of who God Himself is, and Christ is simply asking us
to be like God. When Christ tells us to love our neighbour, when Christ tells
us to forgive seventy times seven, when Christ teaches us
about obedience and endurance and patience,
that's not because these are somehow the virtues that are high up on His list
of virtues: He is simply telling us who
He as God is, and He is inviting us, describing to us
what we need to do in order to become God-like,
and because God never changes, His commandments to us cannot change
because His will for us is always the same: that we should be
saved, which means that we become Christ-like,
God-like; we were created in this image in order
to actualize that potential into a reality.
God doesn't change and therefore His commandments do not change because we
live through times of peace or times of war,
through times of health or times of pandemics.
Nothing has changed, and our actions and us, we shall be judged and we shall judge
ourselves according to the same criteria
as at any other given moment in the history of this Church. Trust
the Church, not your own wisdom; trust that this Church that has survived
through real persecution, not what we are going
through, has survived through the persecution of
the first three-- four--five centuries of its history, has
survived through centuries of occupation by the Ottoman
Empire, has survived through the horrors of
communism: trust that this Church, it will also survive this
year-long pandemic. My wisdom is nothing compared to the wisdom of the
Church, and with all love, all the love I have, I
tell you the same thing about yourself: your wisdom, your experience is
nothing compared to the experience, the millennia-old experience of this
Church that has survived through real
persecution. This is not a time of persecution,
this is---I'm embarrassed and ashamed to even use our time in the same
sentence with the times of the Holy Martyrs of
the first centuries, or the times of those Martyrs during the
occupation of the Ottoman Empire, or the times of communist
regime. We are the modern martyrs, aren't we---
the ones who have everything we need, we live in the comforts of our homes,
we are free to call ourselves Christians, we live in countries that do not
kill us for being who we are, we think that the main enemy is actually the
Church itself, the bishops themselves. This is our new modern martyrdom. May God
protect us against that kind of martyrdom. May God
protect us against this kind of spiritual temptation,
because we would not be the first ones to fall into that. This
is not a time of persecution. What rules us right now, what makes us
think and behave as if we were persecuted: anger is
the primary force behind the actions of anyone who decides to disobey
their own bishops, whatever their bishops may say.
If your bishop tells you to do something, and you disobey your bishop,
and there is no reason, canonical, dogmatic reason for that disobedience---
and there is none at this moment---then, my dear beloved
one, you are not a martyr who is persecuted for your faith,
you are just controlled by your own anger.
Do you remember that rush of blood, that flow of blood that
climbs to your head, that short of adrenaline
that comes with any temptation? Can you recollect the adrenaline that comes with
anger? Can you recollect the rush of blood that
comes with greed or with lust? The same
applies now. This is the chaos of temptation. When temptation
descends upon us, there's that darkness that makes us
not think clearly anymore: we act in haste, we act with anger,
we act based on impulses, instead of following the commandments, instead of
having the calmness and the patience and the
endurance that shapes a true Christian.
Anger and obedience shape one's being to the same degree,
but who you become shaped by anger is a far cry away
from whom you could become if you are shaped by your endurance.
Both anger and impulsiveness and patience,
endurance, and obedience: both these categories are chisels
that shape who we become, are fires that burn something in us---but what they
burn is very different. Anger, a person who gives himself or
herself to anger will burn everything good in him
or in her, and will feed everything that is from the evil one.
Obedience and patience will burn with an equally bright fire---and it is a painful
cross to take upon oneself--- but this fire will burn the evil things
in oneself and will allow, will prepare the ground,
the soil for the good seeds of true virtues to grow.
This is a period of chaos and of darkness
because we have allowed ourselves to be carried forward
in this temptation, we have allowed ourselves to be
controlled by anger. The truth is simple: anger
feels good. Anger and demonizing someone else feels
good and serves every wrong thing in our being. To be angry
and to look down upon someone, to paint someone else as being
worse than you are, to focus on someone else and to depict him or her
as being lower than you are, and then to be angry and condemn
that person, that feels good because comparing yourself with
that someone--- who is not the real person but only an
image you have built, you have constructed of
that person--- compared to that low image of that
person, you look virtuous, you feel good;
whereas repentance and humility and always
blaming oneself does not feel good at all, feels like a constant
cross, feels like you are in a constant position of
tension, in a constant position that kills you,
that position of the crucifixion. We are now like children having a tantrum:
we want things done our way and now---'How do you mean I cannot get
things done the way I want them done? How do you mean they
cannot be solved right now, in the manner in which I think
they should be resolved?' That is so typical
of our fast food society, of our society that values individualism
and pride and a personal solution to
everything, a go-get-it sort of attitude. But this is not Christianity, my dear
ones, this is not love crucified,
this has nothing to do with that. Disobedience
and pride and anger are the main ingredients of our society today,
they go with everything that this world of ours stands for, whereas
obedience and patience and endurance go against everything the world stands
for, go against every value
of this fast forward, fast food, impersonal world we have created for
ourselves. We want to rebel against the world:
well, the same rebellion is available to us
as was available to the Martyrs of the first centuries or the Martyrs
of communist prisons--- we can rebel against the disobedience of
this world by obeying to Christ,
we can rebel against the pride of this world by being humble,
we can rebel against the anger and the finger-pointing of this world,
always identifying someone else to hate in someone coming from another country,
in someone looking differently, in someone who lives
differently from us, and we can rebel against
this anger and lack of love by
judging ourselves and condemning ourselves
and humbly keeping our heads down before God,
because the one who keeps his or her head down
is the one whom Christ himself will lift up on the day of judgment,
and this is what I pray for, for myself and for every single
one of you with absolutely no exception. Our hearts
belong to God: give them to God and allow God
through His shepherds and His Church to guide you, to guide us
through this moment of darkness to the light
because the light is there, the light will
shine again, and when we look back upon this time let's try to be
spiritually proud of our reaction, let's take
pride in our love, let's take pride in our
sacrifice for the good of the ones around us,
let's take pride in our endurance and ability to bow
down and to keep on going, because these are the commandments of Christ, nothing
else, my dear ones, nothing else. At this point it feels
almost like we are wasting time discussing a
shell of a problem instead of addressing the the real issues within
the problem. Yes, this is not the ideal time;
no, this is not a time of persecution. But let's move beyond this obvious
level of our conversations: yes, this is a moment of darkness;
yes, this is a temptation---what are we going to do? Are we going to just keep on
banging our heads against the same wall, screaming 'We are tempted! We are tempted!
We are tempted!' Yes, we are! So, what do we do about it?
When are we going to talk, all of us, about
how to pray better together, how to pray better for the world, how to
learn and what to learn from this experience, how to
exercise patience and endurance, how to exercise
self-condemnation, what is there to learn from this moment of temptation which can
also be a moment of immense opportunity for our spiritual lives. Are we
really going to keep on staring at the wall of this temptation until the
end of it, and just say, 'Oh, it's a temptation, it's a
temptation!' Yes, there is a temptation! Whether or not it's a big one, whether or
not it's a major one, let's accept that we have
different views on that, but when are we going to
go beyond that and think and learn together
how to do the things that truly matter: to love and to pray and to forgive and
to endure and all those true Christian virtues?
Are we really going to waste this entire time learning nothing?
I love you from the toes of my feet to the top of my head,
and I want nothing but what is absolutely best for you. What I
pray for for myself, I pray for you as well. Let us try to
learn, let us try to move forward a bit, let's move the
conversation a step forward. Let us learn how to stay
away from anger and pointing fingers and
condemning, and move towards condemning ourselves
and pointing fingers at ourselves and
learning how to deepen the understanding of
all the Sacraments in our lives. We have such a
great, immense, probably unique opportunity in our lives: let us
do all we can so we don't waste it, because again, when we look back
six months after all of this is over or a year after all of this is over,
all we shall see, all we shall feel is the emptiness
or the coldness of the love we lost or the fire of the love
and the prayer and the intimate closeness to Christ that we have gained.
May we all be blessed to the core of our being,
dear ones. Amen.