“I feel sick with the love of Christ”

˜Christian, your love has no limits

I thank God for giving me many diseases. I say to him many times: “Christian, your love has no limits!” How I live is a marvel. In addition to the diseases spreading in me, there is cancer in the pituitary gland in the brain. As a result, a tumor formed that began to grow and put pressure on the optic nerve. So now I've lost my sight. I am in severe pain. But I pray, patiently carrying the cross of Christ. Did you see how my tongue is? He has grown up, he is no longer what he used to be. This is due to the cancer in my head. As I get older, my condition gets worse. My tongue will grow even bigger, it will be difficult for me to speak. I am in a lot of pain, I suffer, but my illness is very beautiful. I feel it as the love of Christ. I humble myself and thank God. This disease is for my sins. I am a sinner and God is trying to make me pure.

* The righteous father was suffering from the following diseases:

1- Heart muscle obstruction, 2- Chronic kidney failure, 3- Duodenal ulcer (with intermittent bleeding), 4- Glaucoma surgery in the eye (with loss of vision), 5- Zoster herpes (shingles) in the face 6- Skin infection (staphylococcus) in his hand, 7- Hernia (hernia), 8- Chronic bronchitis, 9- A malignant tumor in the pituitary gland in the brain *.

When I was sixteen years old, I was asking God to give me an incurable disease, cancer, so that I could suffer for His love and glorify Him through suffering. For a long time I have been praying this prayer. But my spiritual father told me that my request was selfish and that I was obliging God. God knows what He will do. Then I could no longer complete my prayer. But, look, God did not forget my request and gave me this blessing after several years!

I do not ask God now to take from me what I asked of Him.

I rejoice because I bear the disease, so that I too - out of my great love for him - become a partner in his suffering. God's discipline is with me.

“For whom the Lord loves, He disciplines.” (Hebrews 6:12).

My illness is a special appreciation for me from God, by which He invites me to enter into the secret of His love, and to try, with His special grace, to respond (to His love). But I am not worthy. You will say to me: “Whatever God reveals to you does not make you worthy?” This condemns me and is from the grace of God. Nothing from me. God gave me many blessings, but I did not respond to them. I appeared unworthy. But I did not give up trying, even for a moment. Perhaps God gave me His help to surrender to His love.

So I don't pray that God will make me okay. But to make me good. I am certain that God understands my pain. But I pray for myself that my sins may be forgiven. I do not take medications, and I have not gone to surgery or tests, and I will not accept surgery. I will leave the management to God. And what I do is only try to become good, which you also ask of me. God's grace holds me. I try to give myself to Christ, to get closer to Christ, to unite with Christ. I am looking forward to this, but I have not succeeded in it yet - I do not say this in humility - but I have not lost my courage. Be patient. I pray that God will forgive my sins. I have heard many people say: “I cannot pray.”

But I did not suffer from that. Only once, “because of my disobedience,” did this happen to me on the Holy Mountain.

I am not concerned about how long I will live and if I will live, I have left this to the love of God. It happens many times with some of them that they do not want to remember death, and this is because they desire life. This is the point of view and sign of the soul's immortality (its immortality). But, “If we live, we live to the Lord; but if we die, we die to the Lord.” (Romans 14:8). Death is a bridge that will take us to Christ. The moment our eyes are closed, they will be opened in eternity. We will appear before Christ. In the afterlife, we will experience God's grace more intensely.

4 I felt great joy at the thought that I would encounter the Lord

I once came to death. *This event happened in 1983*. I had severe gastrointestinal bleeding from the cortisone they put on me at the hospital when I had surgery on the eye that I eventually lost. At that time, I was living in a small cell. The monastery had not yet been built. As a result of a strong dissolution that befell me, I became unable to distinguish between day and night. I came to death, but I lived. I was very weak. I lost my appetite for food. For three months I lived on three spoons of milk a day. I survived a goat!!

I was living with the idea of leaving. I felt great joy at the thought that I would meet the Lord. Deep down I had a feeling of God's presence. Then God wanted to strengthen me and console me with great blessings. Whenever I felt like I was breathing, I would see a star shining in the sky, throwing sweet, delicious rays around it. She was so bright, so beautiful a star! Its light had a wonderful, indescribable magic. It was a light sky blue color, like a diamond, like an expensive stone. She filled me with consolation and joy whenever I saw her, because I felt within her that she was the entire Church, the Triune God, the Most Holy, the angels, the saints. I had a feeling that my relatives were there, the souls of all my dear ones, my venerable fathers. I believed that when I was going to leave this life to that star, I would go there out of God’s love, not out of my virtues. I wanted to believe that God, who loves me, was showing it to me, to say: “I am waiting for you!”

I didn't want to think about hell or evil spirits. I did not remember my sins when I had many of them. I left her. I was just remembering God's love and I was rejoicing. And I was hoping: “That I would be there, “in that star,” for your love, oh my God! But if it is because of my sins, I must go to hell. May your love place me wherever you want. It's enough to be with you!».

The long years I lived in the desert were a result of great love for Christ. I used to say to myself: “If you went up to heaven and God asked you: ‘My friend, how did you get in here without wearing a wedding dress? (Matthew 12:22). What do you want here?” I will answer him: “As you wish, my lord, as your love desires, let your love place me wherever you desire. I surrender myself to your love. If you want to put me in hell, put me, It is enough for me not to lose your love!».

I had a feeling of sin, so I was saying implicitly and without interruption the prayer of Saint Simeon the Modern Theologian: “I know, O Savior, that no one else has sinned against you as I have sinned. Nor did he do what I did. But I know, O my God, with certainty that neither the greatness of transgressions nor the multitude of sins outweighs Your great long-suffering and utmost love for mankind.” (The eighth verse by Simeon translated in the Mutalibsi prayer). These words of prayer are not our words. We cannot think or express sayings like these, which were written by saints. We must embrace these words written by the saints, feel them and live them. I like what follows from these students.

“Not a drop of tears, not a part of a drop, is hidden from you, O my God, my Maker and my Savior. Your eyes have seen my inaction. And in your book is written what I have not yet done as well. Look at my humility, and how great my toil is!! Forgive all my sins, O God of all....”

I always repeated this prayer with joy, to leave with its thoughts. The more I repeated it, the more the star, my comforter, appeared, far above in infinity. That star was staring at me throughout the days that I was suffering. When it appeared, my soul would fly with joy and I would repeat deep down: “My star has come!” I felt like it was drawing me to it from the ground. I felt great joy when I saw her. I did not want to think about my sins, as I told you before, because my sins would have taken me out of this secret. Only once, just once, did I feel the star empty, without any shine or anyone in it. I understood that this was from the evil one. I ignored this, turned to another place, and talked to my sister about business, and after a while I saw the star again shining brightly. Joy came back to me again with more vitality.

The aches were terrible throughout my body all this time. Others saw me as I was taking my last breath. As for me, I had surrendered myself to the love of God. I was praying for God to free me from these pains. My longing was only for him to have mercy on me. I had leaned on Him, waited for His grace to work, and it did. I was not afraid of death. I was going to go to Christ. As I told you, I always recited the prayer of Saint Simeon the Modern Theologian, but without any self-interest, not even to give me my health. I felt this prayer word for word.

5 The secret of illness is to strive to gain God’s grace

We gain great benefit from diseases. It is enough for us to be patient with them without complaining and to glorify God, asking for His mercy. The point is, when we get sick, it does not mean that we should not take medicines or go and pray to Saint Nectarios. Rather, we must know the other secret, which is to strive to gain God’s grace. This is the secret. Other matters will be taught to us by grace, namely, how we should surrender ourselves to Christ. That is, to disdain the disease, not to think about it, but to think simply, without emotion and without interest, and God, in turn, works His miracles for the benefit of our souls. As we say in the liturgy (the Divine Mass), “Let us entrust ourselves and all our lives to Christ God.”

But we must disdain the disease. If we do not respond, it becomes difficult to say, “I despise him.” The moment we think that we disdain it, and that we do not give it importance, we have in fact given importance to the disease and it is always present in our mind and we cannot then achieve a peaceful state of calm deep down inside us. I will show you this. We say: “I believe that God will heal me. I don't take medications. I will do this. I will stay awake all night long, hoping for healing from what I am suffering from. God will hear me.” We pray all night, we hope, we plead, we ask, we cry, we enrage God and all the saints to make us healthy. We rape them day and night. We run from here and from there. Eh, aren't we indicating by our actions that we have not disdained the disease?? The more we insist and force God and the saints on becoming healthy, the more we experience illness. As much as we care about expelling him, we also live with him. Therefore, we do not recover. We have the impression that a miracle will undoubtedly happen. -But in reality we do not trust that, and in this way we do not recover.

We pray a lot, we don't take medicines. Thus, we do not calm down and the miracle does not happen. But you will say: “I did not take the medicine. How can I not believe?” Deep inside us there is doubt and fear and we think: Will this miracle be solved?? Here the saying is valid: “If you have faith and do not doubt, you will do not only what I did with the fig tree, but if you say to this mountain, ‘Be uprooted and cast into the sea,’ it will happen.” (Matthew 21:21) When faith is real, what will happen will happen whether you take the medicine or not. And God does what doctors and medicines do. The wisdom of Sirach says: “Give honor to the doctor for his services, for the Lord also created him. The Lord brought medicines out of the earth, and the wise man does not take them lightly. Then see a doctor, for the Lord also created him and will not leave you, for you need him.” (Sirach 38: 1, 4, 12)

The whole secret is faith; To be spontaneous, simple, obedient and pure. “Simply and pure of heart.” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:1). The subject of faith is not imposed. It is possible that this assumption was made by a poor person (a charlatan), and the occurrence of this word is not desirable. Let us have faith that God's love for us surpasses all love, and that He wants us to become His own. That is why He allows diseases, so that we can trust ourselves to Him.

Let us love Christ, and everything in our lives will change. Our love for Christ is not in order to receive in return, for example, health. However, we must love him eagerly, out of gratitude for his beauty, without thinking of anything but divine love. Nor should we pray for a benefit, nor should we say to God: “Make so-and-so in good health so that he can come to you.” Our suggestion of methods is not correct. How do we say to God: “Make me well?” How do we tell him, when he knows everything, what are we going to teach him? We will pray, but God may not want to listen to us.

A long-time patient asked me:

-When will I become healthy?

- Oh, I told him. If you say, “When will I be healthy?”, you will never become healthy. It is not right to hope in God with requests like these. You anxiously ask God to take the disease away from you, and then the disease overwhelms you and distresses you much more. We must not hope in God for this. Nor should you perform a prayer for this.

He was afraid and said:

- That I should not perform a prayer!?

- And take care! I Saied to him. Yes, to pray a lot, but for God to forgive your sins and give you the strength to love Him and surrender yourself to Him. Because as much as you hope that the disease will leave you, the more it clings to you, engulfs you, restricts you, and does not move or separate from you. If you really feel inner difficulty and weakness, then I humbly ask the Lord to remove the disease from you.

6 Let us confidently surrender ourselves to God’s love

When we surrender ourselves to Christ, our spiritual structure is surrendered, and this peace produces normal work for all of the body’s organs and glands. Everyone is affected. We become healthy and stop suffering. If cancer occurs and we leave it to God and our soul is calm, then with this calm, divine grace can remove this cancer and eliminate all other diseases.

If you want to know, stomach ulcers consist of innervation. The nervous system is put under pressure, it becomes constricted and it suffers, and so an ulcer is formed. Once, twice, three times, narrowing, narrowing, narrowing, upset, upset, upset, worried, worried, worried “Pop” and the ulcer comes: an ulcer or cancer, depending on the case. When there are complexities in our soul, these complexities affect the body and make it ill, and health deteriorates.

Perfection is not praying for our health. We do not ask to become well, but to become good. And I myself call this, I tell you. Did you hear? Not to be good, meaning virtuous, “to become this, and this, and this...” but to gain divine jealousy. To surrender ourselves with confidence to His love. To pray much more for ourselves. By our soul, we mean a soul united to the Church - whose head is Christ - with everyone who lives with us and with all the brothers in Christ.

As for me, I open my hands and pray for everyone. In front of the Holy Cup, when I take communion, I open myself to receive the Lord, bowing my head, praying to you, to others, and to the entire Church. This is what you do. Do you understand? Not to pray for your health. Not to say: “Lord, make me well.” no!! Rather, they said: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me“Ask this without interest, with love, without expecting anything.

“Lord, as Your love desires...” This is what you will do only from now on, loving Christ and our brothers. Love Christ. Become saints. Throw yourselves only in friendship with Christ, only in His love, only in divine adoration.

Is it not possible for me not to be humiliated by illness or cancer, when I am the one who feels this passionate divine enthusiasm and this worship, even if I feel the weariness of my body? I must not speak, but my love for you and for the whole world does not allow me to be silent. As I talk to you, my lungs are left without oxygen, and this is very bad, because the heart becomes like this. I had something much worse than this with a blood clot, but I'm alive. Isn't this divine intervention? Yes, and I am obedient in illness to the will of God. I am patient without complaining and...with my self-conceit, because “no one is free from impurity.” (Job 14:4). I am disgusted and my soul suffers from illness.

I said to the hermit I was calling:

-Pray for me. I love you! And you love me and have pity on me, and to God, pray for me so that He may have mercy on me.

“Eh, you pray,” he told me.

- I told him, I am now starting to undo everything I have been doing all these years. What does the troparion say?

“The mind has been wounded and the body has been exhausted

The spirit has become ill and speech has become weak

Life is dead and achievement is at hand

So what do you do, you wretched soul?

The judge came to investigate your affairs?

(The Great Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete, First Troparion, Ninth Odes).

This troupe suits me, this is how I see myself. I think that if I had not done this and that, I would not be in pain now, and I would have been closer to Christ. I say this to me, the reckless one. ....

If you want to have health and live many years, listen to what the Wisdom of Solomon says:

“The fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy One is the beginning of wisdom. For by me your days will be multiplied, and the years of your life will be increased.” (Proverbs 9:10,11).

This is the secret, to gain this wisdom, this knowledge, and then everything will work well, everything will be in harmony, and we will live in joy and health.