Dear Father Gregory,
I ask for your Blessing!
I hope you have someone who can translate this message if you do not understand English.
I am feeling great sadness for the loss of your parish home, your heaven on earth — your place of worship. God’s ways are sometimes hard to understand and this Great Lent I have been holding onto St Gregory Palamas who prescribed the following,
“When we suffer, then, according to the Hesychastic Tradition of the Church, in the inner Tradition which St. Gregory Palamas expressed in concordance with the teachings of the ancient Fathers, we do nothing more than affirm the Grace of God in all things—in human happiness, in human adversity, and in human triumph and loss. A true Christian becomes passive to the world and treats all things with a quiet acceptance. This is a sign of our communion with God, since, when we touch and live in the other world, yet still exist on earth, we gain a perspective which makes the things of this world less threatening and, to be sure, less alluring.”
I hope and pray that you and your parishioners, when the shock and devastation settles down, can find the “quiet acceptance”. Whatever way your parish decides to respond to this great injustice and evil, be comforted by the strength that God always gives for us strength to endure and flourish.
In Melbourne, Australia where I live, after the Act in 2007, we lost our church building because we were the minority. We walked away from our old church building but we “built” our own church by cementing ourselves to one another and then God gave us so much more. He sent us a Priest, from nowhere – Father Andrei Erastov and a temple we now share with Belarusians. We have had miracles often, things way beyond our expectation! God will give you and your parishioners all you need to not only survive, but to flourish spiritually. Nothing in this world makes more sense than God exists and He loves.
I ask for your prayers, a sinner, someone who can often be despondent,
Mary.
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