THE LATE LEADER CHRISTONYMPHI

Consciousness

Many times conscience cries out: “What you are going to do is not good, what you are going to say is not right, what you are thinking is wrong.” It rings the bell. The voice of conscience is the voice of God. What we are thinking, what we are going to do, what we are going to say, we should pass it through the Gospel. Do we find it in the Gospel? Did Christ teach it? Did He or the Virgin Mary or our Saints give us an example? If we search within ourselves, we will listen to it and it will tell us many things.

Confession

We go to confession to denounce ourselves. Not to express our complaints, what each other did wrong, or to denounce those around us. Where do we fall? If we have a pure and sincere confession, and when we truly repent, we are cleansed and receive Grace. Pure confession first has repentance. You hate sin and you tell it to the spiritual in order to be forgiven. We embellish it, we blame it on others, and so we have no progress.

The treatment

Healing begins from the moment we identify our mistake. Whether it is passion, illness, psychological, pathological, or anything. Healing begins from the moment we accept ourselves. I am this/that, I am like this, I have this passion. From there you will begin to accept some medicine. If we do not see and if we do not admit our mistake, our passion, healing does not happen.

To accept ourselves as we are, that it is this way, it is otherwise. Neither to embellish it, nor to feel embarrassed. The “know thyself” that Socrates also said. To know who one is, but also to tolerate one. We do not want to know one, because we fear one. It is a great virtue for someone to know oneself and to lift one up. We try to hide it. It is not hidden from God or from men. To look at ourselves. When we look at others all day long, we have no time left for ourselves.

Others see us and know us much better. Just as we know others. It is ourselves that we do not know. We give him a fictitious, false image. While we say that I am like this, we will accept him and move on.

As fallen people we have a lot of passions. We will neither lose them, nor be disappointed. I am this and I will fight it. But others tell us a story, to check it because they told us. It seems that I have something. To find an opportunity to correct something in what they told me. Try to find why they told you this thing, there is something. They are opportunities to find ourselves, to get to know him and to fight.

We are showing

We project onto the other what we have within us. The other is my mirror. What I see in the mirror in you is what I have within me. If I don't have love, how will I see love? The one who truly loves doesn't calculate what he gets. No one can love and think that others don't love him, because the love he gives is so great, without expecting to receive. He is not even concerned with the other. He is concerned with himself. I love, I give myself? Am I in a good mood for the other? Everything starts with love for God. If you believe in God and love Him, you certainly do not want to embitter Him. This selfishness is what destroys us. Whoever says that they do not love me, means that he himself does not love, does not have love.

Take revenge with your love on those who have wronged you. Whoever endures injustice, wins the justice of God. Christ says “if your enemy is hungry, give him food”. And if you do not turn to pray for your enemy, to love him and even to say: “through his prayers have mercy on me too”, we do nothing.

A good example helps others, while a bad example destroys others. The other person, even if he has a good disposition to do something, if he sees grumbling and ingratitude, loses his courage, loses his effort, loses his disposition, loses everything.

Everyone has a different struggle,

because it has a different character. So the struggle is not like the other. He gave one talent and two and five. Yes, but who did he praise? Those who cultivated them, doubled them and was pleased. Let us make an effort and God will see our struggle. We fall and get up with repentance. We suffered because we fell and we do not want to fall again.

God will see the pain and the effort that the soul feels: “why did I do this, why did I say that, why did I not do what I should have done?” and little by little He has mercy on man. But we must want to.

It is not an easy thing to get the evil out of yourself. It is all your selfishness, all your being, all your self. You have to take a knife and cut piece by piece from your heart.

Man has inherited too many evils. Much cruelty, anger, jealousy, envy, hatred, condemnation. Let us put the good mood first, let us make peace and let others make peace and let us move forward.

It is a divine law: every time we judge the other, Grace leaves us and we do worse. Let us have a good mood and see the other's mistakes with a positive mindset. Let us accept them and say: “now he is the one who fell and after a while it will be me!”

Selfishness will bring us condemnation, to eat away at those around us. If you do not put yourself down and if you do not feel that you are the last, you will not succeed. The devil will bring you this and that and you will accept it, you will cultivate it, you will discuss it and you will be grateful for it.

From the moment someone puts themselves below others and says that “I am the most sinful, I am the worst and others are the best,” then they become scornful. The saints put themselves last, and they also raised slanders. We want praise, to be looked at, to be noticed.

The Grace of God

For God’s Grace to come, He wants true repentance. He really wants us to ask Him to deliver us from our passions and vices.

To call upon Christ, the Virgin Mary, our Saints. “Call upon me and I am here.” This is what the Saints want. We call upon them and they rejoice and give thanks.

Whoever is naked of virtues seeks the glory of men. We want to be seen, to be praised. Humility is not learned with words. Humility is to consider yourself below all Creation and to pray unceasingly. There can be no joy if there is no love.

All evil begins with selfishness. Our passions, our mistakes, our vices, our difficulties. If we manage to step on the “ego”, then we will become people of Christ and we will rest in Him.

Today’s man wants to get God out of the way, to become independent! We need Him. Yes, but the need of men created gods. We fear that God exists, because He sees everything and does not benefit us.

Our Christ was hurt by ingratitude, as mentioned in the parable of the ten lepers. He was not hurt by the sin of the sinful woman, nor by the wickedness of men. And murmuring declares ingratitude to God and then to men.

When someone recognizes his mistakes and understands that he created a situation, he must repent and not wait for the other to do so. Whoever repents first and falls for the other, he is the first to receive the crown.

Christ is not only in heaven.

Christ is all these around us. Every moment and every minute, let someone examine himself, investigate him and say: “What am I doing?” Let him gather himself and anticipate evil, because if he is defeated, he cannot defeat it with anything.

Rotten thinking will bring rotten results, while good thinking will bring something good. No one can say the prayer and immediately get angry or speak against it. While he is being eaten, because he is that person and not me, and how this and that, he will certainly get angry, he will speak against it, everyone and everything will be blamed for him.

Let us not have grumbling, demanding, selfishness, complaining, tongue-tiedness, judgment, condemnation. Whatever the good God sends, let us say 'glory to you, God' and thank Him. A grumbling can cost us dearly. Temptation comes and damage is done.

If we do not know ourselves, there is no way we can find God. Do not expect others to correct themselves. Correct yourself. You will not be saved if others change. In order to be saved, you must change yourself.

Every fall we make is a denial of God.

Whether it’s a word, a look, or a thought. When we embitter others, we embitter God. We are human and we will fall every moment and every minute. At least we should get up at that moment and say: “forgive me, I made a mistake.” When Christ comes to judge us, He will not ask us why we sinned — we are all sinners — but why we did not repent.

Christ speaks of humility and He Himself was the Extreme Humility. And what did they not say to Him and what did they not do to Him? He put on a girdle (=legs) to serve His disciples. To teach us this service too. To strive simply and humbly, not to ask for many things from God.

Evil, jealousy, complaining, demanding, grumbling, condemnation, and gossip drive God away. Kindness towards God and people is rewarded by God.

Love is that which comes from within the soul, the heart. To forgive the other, to put him into your heart, to lift him up.

True fasting is not to leave our stomach empty. It is to leave ourselves empty of vices, envy, condemnation, jealousy, antagonism, selfishness, stubbornness and so many others. And the devil never eats, nor drinks water, but is a devil.

Fight with yourself and your passions. When you put desire within yourself, then you will notice some things, then you will pursue and find the opportunity to do what you thought. Eve had not seen the apple for so long; She saw it, but she did not notice it. But because the devil put the desire in her to become gods, then she noticed it. This was the evil that put desire within her.

Our mistakes

Let us at least acknowledge our mistakes. They are from my selfishness, my will, my stubbornness, my bad mood. Everything starts from this bad mood. We will also have shortcomings and falls. But this fall depends on what scale it is, how great a sin it is and how we recognize it and how we fight. Not to blame it on others, because it is their fault.

Our treasure is Christ, not to project ourselves, our wills and our selfishness. The Christian must be the last. To project himself before Christ, not so that people can see him. How will Christ like it? Christ has marked out a path. If we want to meet Him, we must walk behind Him, not Him on the right and us on the left. To be happy with what God has given us.

Christ wants a right struggle: love, kindness, cooperation. Be careful not to hurt others with your fantasies and selfishness. To stifle evil. In good cooperation it will be seen if you love the other. Our passions and our thoughts are our fault; but we will fight. Let us not let them come out. Our Christ is the Extreme Humility. Everyone loves the humble.

Does God want our injustice?

If people wrong us, God will come to vindicate us.

We should be humble and grateful for what we have and what they have given us. The poor Joseph was sold as a slave to the Egyptians by his own brothers, after they had first thrown him into the pit. God saved him and placed him next to Pharaoh. God will not wrong us. If we are for something better, God will bring it. If people wrong us, they will do us good.

“Many words are poverty.” When there is prayer, evil stops, it will not break out. Fight the evil thoughts that come. We are human and thoughts, evil, hatred, condemnation and others will come to us. That is our fight. Put Christ and the Virgin Mary in front. Love heals the soul and the passions, physically and mentally. If we say the prayer, we will then be able to repel the thoughts, no matter how evil they are. If there is prayer, Grace will come to enlighten us. At least let the evil within us stop, so that it does not come out.

Step on your selfishness. That selfishness destroyed everything: the Angels and the Firstborn and our soul. We destroy and embitter others, but primarily our own soul.

Everyone will judge themselves by their actions, their dispositions, and the struggle they wage.

Man reaches any sin from the thought, if he accepts it and works on it. God protects us when we fight the right battle.

Whoever judges will be judged. We read in the Gerontikos about a very negligent monk. He was in the Monastery, but he was negligent everywhere, even in the Services. The time came for him to leave for heaven. They saw him happy, peaceful, and the Fathers departed. They said to him: “But you were not right in the Services, nor in your monastic life, nor anywhere.” He answered: “What did Christ say? ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged’ (Mt. 7:1). I have never judged anyone, so I will not judge.” And he was sure of this, that he would go to Heaven without Judgment. God will not say to him: “But you did not fast, but you did not love your brother.”

When we judge, we will be judged, and when we do not judge, God will not judge us, Christ Himself said so.

"Before you called Philipon, I saw you under the fig tree,"

says Christ (John 1:49). Christ sees much further ahead. We do not need to go to Him to see us. He sees our hearts and our dispositions and our thoughts and our reasonings, everything. He gives us all opportunities, but it depends on us whether we will seize them and whether we will exploit them for our salvation.

Let each one look at how he stands before God. But if we go to the Criterion, we will not say to Him: “But where was this one and that one at fault, but he did not do this right, he did not speak right.” What did you do? Let each of us look at this. How will we fight our passions and how will we get rid of our vices? If we don’t fight them and if we don’t struggle, we will cultivate them. Later we won’t be able to get rid of them, because we have become accustomed to them. Once a tree takes root, it doesn’t easily grow back.

Christ will tell us: “For so many years I have cared for you and sheltered you. What have you done to please me? By grumbling about one, by not liking another, by sticking your tongue out at another?” What do we do? How do we stand in the face of a temptation or a strangeness of the other? Let us put love and humility first.

· If the other said to me and did something to me, “may it be blessed.” I have nothing to suffer, I do not lose, the other is the one who loses. Equally, we must feel sorry for the other and pray that God will enlighten him, that what he is doing is not right.

"Whoever wants to come after me"

» (Mt. 16:24 and Mt. 8:34). Christ does not force anyone. Do you want to be with Him? Surely you must take up the Cross. This tells us: What do you want, to find everything good and beautiful? Whoever wants to follow me. He does not force anyone, but to know that he will have to go through the Cross. And who has not gone through this earth? One God and went through so much. His mother? A sinless person, pure and clean. She drank bitter cups to see Her child being mistreated and cursed and Crucified.

“Do you want to be saved,” says Christ? “Come. You don't want to? I'm not forcing you."

Don't close yourself off in yourself and your selfishness. The selfish person will never love, will never sympathize, will never care. Because above all he has himself, and after all everyone else is trash.

When we have a good mood inside, we realize the evil we have. The Grace of God is above us and does not leave us. And from a wrong thing we find the opportunity to search within ourselves and see where we are limping.

Saint Mary of Egypt could not enter the Temple to worship the Holy Cross and then she realized that something was wrong with her.

The rest of the world was going and worshiping. Then she made a promise to God: “Make me worthy to enter and worship and from now on I will change completely.

It’s all over! I am leaving sin and making this conversion, I give my whole self and my soul to you, my Christ!” God saw in her that she had true repentance when she asked to worship, because she promised that she would change radically.

"It demands heart and kidneys," that's why he gave her so much Grace, so that she could change, to overcome all these passions. She had good will and perseverance.

Let us fear selfishness and pride, because that is where many evils begin.

Someone loses the Grace of God and then he is worthy of any sin and fall. While the humble one gains the Grace of God and therefore acquires many virtues.

Whoever prays is enlightened and receives strength. In our struggle we are not alone. We all have our flaws, our vices, but this is where we will all struggle. Each with his impulses, his habits, his shortcomings, his passions, his wills, with various others. It is better not to create a problem for the other. Let us at least keep them within ourselves and fight them. Let us pray to receive Grace and strength.

Be careful of your thoughts, because everything starts from there. From the moment Adam and Eve fell, all the virtues that God had endowed us turned and became vices. In the place of love, hatred entered, in the place of goodness, evil entered, etc. We all have passions within us. Every passion will begin with a thought. A thought will come to me. If I accept it, I have sinned. If I do not accept it, I will fight it. It will go away, I am not responsible. I am responsible from the moment I accept the bad thought.

Without repentance, no one is saved, neither the sinner nor the righteous. The sinner with many sins, the righteous with few. Mercy helps and God gives the merciful man the opportunity to repent.

We honor the Saints only when we imitate them. We will not go and fall to the beasts like the Martyrs, we cannot. But can we remove all those “beasts” that we have within us? Can we banish those vices, selfishness, stubbornness, desires? If we want, we can.

We keep Christ within us through prayer.

Love and kindness bring the Grace of God. If we have evil within us and we do not have love, then we kill others. The humble person is calm, beloved and God-fearing. His guardian Angel is near him. He can cooperate, love, serve. The root is humility.

Let us understand our mistakes and try to correct them with prayer, with the Grace of Christ and the Virgin Mary. It takes a struggle to discover ourselves and to fight with it. Let us not be afraid of discovering ourselves, because this is selfishness. Let us admit it and fight with humility and not with selfishness. Without humility we do not discover ourselves and we do not correct ourselves. Let us find ourselves and say: I have this vice, I am like this, I have this flaw. Sometimes temptation can panic us, but with confession these are corrected.

If we lay the right foundations from the beginning, we will move forward well to the end. A Christian must be simple and humble. If he has simplicity and humility, God enlightens him and he sees his mistakes and tries to correct them. If he has humility, he also has love, he also has obedience, he also has violence towards himself, he also has so many others. Let us search within ourselves and not immediately kick it with selfishness, that I am not like that. No, that is how I am and let us fight it.

The Conscious and the Unconscious

In addition to the conscious, we also have the unconscious within our soul. The conscious is a spark, it is the breath of the soul that God gave to man, say the Fathers. The unconscious is much greater within the soul of man than it is the conscious part. These unconscious things are much more and they are all black and dark in the unconscious. There is nothing obvious, good, or beneficial. It is darkness and they come out of us. If we learn to observe ourselves and examine our actions, words, and behavior, we find the reason and the reason why we did something. We understand the conscious a little - a lot. The unconscious is very difficult to understand. It requires a lot of searching, a lot of humility and a lot of prayer. The first psychologists were the Fathers of the Church, who systematically monitored their mental world, because they wanted to purify themselves. While they were praying or doing something else, temptation would come and make them think another way: “Where did this come from?” It was from the unconscious that it came. And if we seek to find within ourselves in what spirit we say something, why I said it, what I had in mind at that time, what I intended, we will find that, for example, I wanted to be heard, to be understood, to be seen, to be seen, etc.

One must constantly search for oneself with sincerity and prayer. Every time one notices something, one should ask God for help to cast off the passion and evil that is within one, so as not to repeat the same mistakes and to correct them. These gradually disappear when we say them in confession. If someone truly searches for themselves in order to correct themselves, Grace comes and helps. Next time they will understand their mistake more clearly and will know its root and origin. It will go deeper within them. For example: “Now you spoke selfishly, now you behaved abruptly, what you did was hidden by pride,” etc. This is how someone searches for themselves, but also admits it.

The humble is humble in all things:

and for himself and for his own and for all. He thinks, expresses himself and lives humbly. His mind does not take in air. Selfishness is a very ugly thing. And the selfish one is visible.

He is despised by all, because no one can lift up the selfish one. God does not want him. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Christ is the Extreme Humility, and should we turn our noses up?

Let us not be frightened by the discovery of ourselves. This is selfishness. Let us fight to correct ourselves, but let us fight with humility and not with selfishness. Those who struggle are those who seek their salvation. So they must discover themselves. But without humility this cannot be done. Let us find ourselves, say that I am like this, like this, like this and so on, and try to correct it. We always correct ourselves with humility and not with selfishness. Sometimes temptation panics us, but with confession these things are corrected.

Without love for our brother, Paradise does not exist. Everything beyond is focused. Without love for one's brother, there is no salvation. Love for one's brother may not be money, food, a house, we may not have anything to give. However, we can give love, which is God himself and he put it within us. What is easier than loving another? Why should I hate him, envy him, want his harm? Does he deprive me of anything? I am what I am, what God gave me.

A God humbled himself and was executed for us.

He lived so simply and gave love on the Cross. He forgave His crucifiers.

To the good thief who confessed Him, He told him that He would open Paradise and that He would be with him. The selfish and the arrogant are not for Paradise. The Pharisee did what the law said. He applied it to be seen, to show off. While the Publican wept on his knees over his sins.

Purity is not just the heart, it is the whole being: the body and the mind. Evil first comes to mind with thoughts and knocks on your door, say the Fathers. If you open it and it enters, after a while you will arrive at the act. It tells you to go and steal. You will not go straight to steal, nor to lie or commit any sin. It will tell you again and again until it defeats you.

The saints are united with God because they are given entirely to Him. The Grace of the Holy Spirit comes to them because their mind, heart, disposition, body, everything is united with God. Grace does not come if it does not find a place to dwell. Thus they become Monasteries of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Trinity dwells within them.