My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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ON REMEMBRANCE OF DEATH, HELL, AND JUDGMENT (Part II)
[From the Letters and Homilies of Geronda (Elder) Ephraim Philotheitis and Arizona]
The word eternity is frightful! To understand in part what eternity means. I shall give you an example. Imagine that the whole earth is one big piece of granite, and every thousand years a bird comes to sharpen its beak on this rock. When the entire rock is worn away by the bird sharpening its beak, then we have some faint notion of what eternity means--not that we have actually understood eternity, immortality, or life without end! So this life of ours here on earth determines our eternity, like flipping a coin: Paradise or hell! Therefore, how much caution must we have!...
You were patient so many years, and they passed like a dream. But even if we lived a thousand years, they would still pass like a dream. Oh, how vain is everything that belongs to this world here! Every life is followed by death. Death is man's transfer from this world to the other--the one that is immortal and eternal.
It is not important if someone loses his life here. One way or another, we shall all die someday anyway. The important thing is not to lose our immortal life, the life without end. Endless life in hell--oh, what a fearful thing! My God, save us all.
When God brings the new day, let us think that it is our last day and that when the sun sets we shall depart to the judgment seat of Christ. How should we spend our last day? In silence, prayer, obedience, tears, and repentance, begging God to be merciful!
Likewise at night, we should think that it is our last night, and our bed will be our tomb! We should ponder these and many other things every day and night, living them as if they were our last! For we do not know when the telegram will come from God's headquarters, from the Capital, the Jerusalem above.
Be careful, my child; do not let time pass fruitlessly and without improvement in your soul, for death comes like a thief. Woe to us if it finds us in a state of sloth and laziness-then the mountains and hills will need to weep for us; then we shall be found empty of good works (works of compassion), and Hades will shepherd us eternally!
My child, why should we suffer such a lamentable shipwreck when we are able, with God's help, to avoid and be rescued at the saving harbor of the Kingdom of God! I know that we have to wrestle with formidable enemies and that the labor is great. But with God--that is, with the power of God--everything gives way when man's will and strength cooperate with it...
"...We should never lack this contemplation of death or other such meditations. All these contemplations create watchfulness in the soul and purify and cleanse the mind so that it may feel the contemplation better. This contemplation is a barrier for evil thoughts. When this spiritual contemplation is within us, we shut out evil thoughts; there is no room in us for them because that contemplation has occupied the space of the mind. When we do not have godly contemplation, then indeed we are overcome by passionate contemplations. (Source: Orthodox Heritage)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George