The Anxieties of People Today – Father Pimen Vlad

Watch a series of questions that a group of pilgrims from Italy addressed to Father Pimen Vlad, questions that express the anxieties of contemporary Romanians and to which the father answers with kindness and discernment.

Enjoy!

Father Pimen: As you can see, we are doing a different kind of video today. We have a group from Italy and we said that since you are used to a new video weekly, let’s do it with them today. The discussions will be free and will look at the problems you all face, especially those abroad. Welcome, may the Mother of God help you! We will discuss freely, each of you can ask what you want, and I will answer how the Mother of God will enlighten me.

Worshiper: Father, I tell you that we love you and that we follow you from Italy, where we are from. That’s as a start!

Father Pimen: I always try to look at it differently: how does God see me? Because God sees more than man sees, man sees the outside, God also sees the inside. And whenever I do something, I ask myself, “How does God look at me now? Does God like what I do?” That’s always supposed to be our state. Because, when a man sees you, today he praises you, tomorrow if you have upset him, he curses you… That’s the law. Don’t we see?

The Savior who was God; we are getting closer at once, to the entrance to Jerusalem: Hosannas, the Son of God, the clothes laid on the path, and immediately two days later, the same people cried out, “Crucify Him!” Yes! That is, man is weak and because of this we always have to relate to God, to think if He likes what we do.

Worshipper: Father Pimen, I wanted to ask you something. I noticed that we enter the church, we venerate piously, to the Mother of God we sing “Axion Estin,” we touch our things to icons or Holy Relics as a blessing and after we leave the church our mood changes. I don’t know, we were upset by somebody, even in the group we find people who no longer have the same mood as in front of the icon. How do we manage to preserve the state in the church? The state that a Christian should have permanently…

Father Pimen: You cannot maintain the same state permanently because of contact with people. It’s one thing in church when you sit and pray and then you put your worries aside and stay with God and the Mother of God… You pray, you tell your problems, you ask for help… When you leave the church, from that state, from the grace you have received, it is up to you as a person what you do next. We have both the commandments and everything from God, and we see that grace is so fine, so delicate that without doing anything or only judging anyone, grace begins to drift away. When you pray at Liturgy, you feel quiet and immediately afterwards, you talk to someone about so-and-so and you answer them… Two minutes, no more… Then look at your inner state!

What state did you have in the church and what state did you have after a two-minute discussion when, for example, you judged another. Suddenly, total coldness! The thing God dislikes most is judging others! That’s why He said the commandment, “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.” That is, it also comes with the reward “you will not be judged” because man is the weakest at this. In the case of certain sins he needs to have contact with them, whereas in the case of judging others, he can sit alone, locked within four walls, and surround this whole world with his mind and judge everyone. And then grace departs and you feel dryness, sadness, you have no desire for life, all because you judge others.

Man must struggle. That’s why they say the mind is like a mill and if you want it to get flour, you have to put wheat on it. But if you put stone on it, it will put out sand! That’s why we have to take a lot of care in this regard, otherwise we end up wondering why. Simple, because you judged, said a bad word to someone and grieved him, and their sorrow fell on you because their sorrow goes to God, and you are responsible for it. That’s only when you’re to blame, when you’re doing the best you can, and the other person gets sad because maybe he has a problem, that’s something else. It takes prayer not to commit this sin.

Without prayer we do nothing! Let us be clear, our minds must be occupied with good things and prayer. If we do not keep it occupied, then the others come, some by nature, others brought to us by the devil. And these things are slowly getting us into that state. And man, after he starts on a downhill slope, the other passions reach him because he is weakened. This is why we must stay close to God and the Mother of God and to achieve this we need frequent confession, Communion, going to church as often as possible, good deeds according to strength, mercy towards others. Without mercy, if we have wickedness, we can pray as much as we want. If we judge others, then it’s over! Only in this way can we move forward. You have come to the Holy Mountain, try to leave from here profitably!

Worshiper: What do you think about the covid vaccine?

Father Pimen: I knew that these things had calmed down. This is not my field, but when I was in Romania I talked to a doctor who told me that all his colleagues who have been vaccinated have health problems and especially heart problems. Everyone is free to decide, but they will take their toll. It’s public data now, how many died… Frightening! This war didn’t do as much as 10% as this did.

Worshiper: For example, in Italy a law was passed to make vaccination mandatory for those over 50 years old. Now those who did not get the vaccine have received fines of 100 euros each.

Father Pimen: It’s not a problem, give 100 Euros! Sometimes you go to a restaurant and give 200! So what? You gave 100 and what’s the problem?

Worshiper: Many say not to pay!

Father Pimen: If you are backed into a corner and have no other way, pay and escape! “Yes, sir, take 100!” that God can give you 1000 instead! Let’s not tense up when it comes to taking something out of our pocket. Sometimes we have to pay for certain things! Here you go, pay the fine and you’re off! Rather than being stressed for months over the 100 Euros you spend anyway.

Worshiper: Well, even if we pay it once, we will still have to pay, and whoever does not pay will be forgotten…

Father Pimen: You are not going to pay monthly! It’s not like you are employed by them! A man is punished one time for something! But you’ll see there, I can’t get into what I don’t know! I explained it in general. Everyone is free, but there are consequences. Our greatest salvation as Christians is confession and Communion! The more often, the better, because this is how we strengthen ourselves both spiritually and bodily. If we don’t do that, you can jab yourself wherever you want, it’s all for nothing, it doesn’t help you with anything.

Worshiper: Will something happen between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated in the future?

Father Pimen: What am I, a prophet? That’s what God knows! Why should I give my opinion and others take it as law afterwards? Or we give them reasons. Just like in the story of the 10-year-old child who went to confession and whom the father, examining him about what he had done, asked him if he had “Gone through his parents’ wallet,” and the child replied: “Oh, father, I didn’t know about that! You gave me an idea!”

Worshiper: Father, how do we manage despair when we fall?

Father Pimen: Despair is upon us until we confess. If we don’t confess, we don’t get rid of it because you don’t relieve the weight. For example, you have a 50kg bag on your back, right? And you walk and your back hurts, you can’t go any longer, it makes you hunch over, you can’t look up anymore and you ask everyone how you can get rid of the weight. And they say, “Simple! Take the bag down!” You disagree with them and go crazy to all the wise of the world asking how you can get rid of the weight, when in fact it’s very simple: you put down the bag to the confessor who releases you and you can look up again. The confessor advises you, if you have confessed with all your heart, the weight lifts and you gain courage and zest for life, and despair disappears, you look to Christ and move forward. So we cannot escape despair without confession! We can look for all possible ways, in all psychologists… you spend all your salary… At the psychologist you are released momentarily because you unload, he took your money, and the next day you start all over again, that’s what happens!

Worshiper: There are people who, after a lot of confession, do not forgive a certain sin and confess again and return to it.

Father Pimen: This also means not trusting God to forgive you. It does not mean that we should forget the sin, but we must also trust God to forgive us if we confess with repentance and sorrow. We must try to redeem sin somehow, but we must not remain stuck in it because then we cannot move on.

Worshiper: How do we avoid judging people and condemning them within ourselves when they repeatedly disobey? I mean, to end up feeling sorry for them?

Father Pimen: First of all, let us pray for them. Instead of judging them, let’s start praying for them! Someone told me that the confessor gave him a canon to make I don’t know how many prostrations at every judgment. As soon as he judged someone, he calculated, and in the evening he did prostrations until he could burst and he didn’t judge anyone anymore. Because in the evening a lot would add up and instead of resting, he would do prostrations for judging others. Thus, he calmed down about it.

So we have to fight with ourselves and feel sorry for them! You don’t go to a sick person and hit him, because he’s sick. Have mercy on him, help him! Likewise the man who has a passion, is sick, and to help him, we must pray for him. If we judge him more, we pressure him instead of lifting him up. But for this we have to fight with ourselves and think that today he fell, but tomorrow I may fall.

Don’t we see it in sports? You don’t get a medal if you don’t fight for years. Likewise in this regard, in order to pay more attention to ourselves and master our mind, we need to struggle and pray, to condemn ourselves immediately. As soon as the thought comes, say, “Look at yourself, who gave you the right to judge the other?” God will judge him, He knows why. We don’t know the reasons why someone fell, we only see the outside. Do we know what sufferings and problems he has in his family so that we can judge him? We have no rights!

Worshiper: And with smokers? I light a cigarette every now and then.

Father Pimen: Father Cleopas’ saying: “If God knew you had to smoke, he would make a chimney on top of your head, let the smoke come out, but He didn’t do it to you.” Many ask why it is a mortal sin. First of all, it’s suicide, you shorten your life, over time it destroys you. Everyone around you suffers because you give smoke to everyone, and you smell like smoke all the time. After that, it’s money thrown into the fire, in a year if you collect it, you can get a car with that money.

“I’m not a heavy smoker!”

“Then quit!”

“But I can’t!”

“Then you’re hardened!”

Any passion you can’t let go of means you’re hardened in it. More or less, but you do it. If it’s rare, why don’t you drop it? It means you can’t. Don’t blame someone else, that’s justification. It’s like stealing and saying, “But I don’t steal often, once a week,” or “But why? I see others stealing.”

Everything we cannot let go of is a passion, and every passion is a devil controlling us, let us be clear. The devil sits and teases you: “Come on, a cigarette now… an extra drink” Someone said that one who breaks one commandment and fulfills the others means that he does not love God. The commandments he fulfills are easy for him to fulfill because it is in his nature, and when he has to fight he falls, that means he doesn’t love God. When you truly love a person, you are very careful in everything. We say, “Lord, I love you,” and then I swear at someone or light a cigarette, so I prove the exact opposite to God. And when we go to God we say, “I loved you, but you know those cigarettes, how good they were?!”

We are clearly told: “We cannot serve two lords, or God or mammon,” there is no middle ground, no neutrality. The moment we took God out of our lives, the devil took us in his arms, and then we are under his control. There is a way to make amends, but we must fight.

One day it all ends, “Watch and pray you don’t know the day and time!” Today we are here, but in the morning half of us may not wake up, or something else will happen. And then we say, “Lord, I didn’t have time!” Seriously? You were 40-50 years old, how come you didn’t have time? Did you want to get to 90 and in the last week confess and straighten out? It’s up to us!

Priest: How should we behave when some people want to be very familiar with the priest, sometimes they speak informally, or sometimes they are even arrogant. There are sometimes situations in parish life where people speak very directly.

Father Pimen: It needs the priest’s attention from the beginning. If he commands a bit of respect and keeps a line….. Because if you can accept anything with people, then they start to allow it too. For there to be respect, there doesn’t have to be that close friendship with the one you hear the confessions of. It has to be like respect between parent and son. Then he also comes with respect, respect that must be on both sides. Especially when you go to confession, that’s where any friendship ends. You repent, you confess with tears if you can, and then the father works spiritually, cuts a little from here, heals a bit there, gives you a bit of canon… 

In order to be able to heal the soul, there must be this respect, even more so at confession to be able to give the treatment. God gave the priest this gift of binding and loosening, of doing the Divine Liturgy through which Heaven descends to Earth. He gives you Communion with the body and blood of the Lord. There are things you can’t allow to be made fun of.

Worshipper: I saw in the Holy Mountain that there is a whole observance. There is obedience, then prayer, normally monks are an example for Christians in the world, for laymen. What is the observance we should have in our Christian life? What would be the observance we would have to have during a day to separate ourselves from the things of the world and at the same time to do the things ordained by everyday life?

Father Pimen: An observance must be everywhere. You cannot in the life of the world have an observance as in a monastery where everything is under an obedience, but we see that starting from above, from God, there is an observance. Even in angels, archangels, seraphim, cherubim, there are bands of angels higher over angels, that is, they are in an order, each angel has his role. There are guardian angels who take the child to baptism, they are all in an observance.

We see that the Church did likewise, the successors of the apostles, the bishops, then the priests, the deacons, all in one observance, every diocese of a bishop, everything is organized to be in a good order. We can say that God, besides being the God of freedom and love, is also the God of harmony, and there can be no harmony if there is no order. Likewise, in a Christian family, there must be an observance!

The child goes to school, the husband goes to work, the wife may be a housewife or go to work, a schedule must exist in the family. And then because in the morning everyone leaves at different times, they do not wake up at the same time and cannot all be together. But it is good that when they come home there is a schedule, especially in the evening there is a certain time at which everyone prays together if possible. One can read aloud and the others can listen. Or those who are younger can do prostrations at the same time. When we were kids, we used to do this, one read aloud and the others did prostrations. Thus, everyone is involved in prayer. In the evening there should be a little time spent with the family, praying together, dining together, talking.

This is necessary to discuss in the family, to listen to the children, to see what problems they have. Let Mom and Dad be there in their lives, talk to them. Don’t come home thinking “I’m tired!” and watch TV and put your kids in front of your laptop, get rid of them! No! There needs to be daily involvement! There was a family where the father was busy, he had a company with many employees and he told me “Father, I turn off the phone in the evening from 7 to 9, two hours are for the family, regardless of the needs of the employees. They all know I’m not responding anymore.” He said, “I sit, I play with the kids, I talk to the kids, I get involved in the family.” 

This is absolutely necessary. If we don’t get involved, then children find their escape in the internet or in their entourage and take from there what they think is good. And then we bear the consequences. That’s why we have to take great care that there is a program, and parents have to be a good example for children. If your parents are not a good example, you as a father are with a cigarette in your hand, but you tell him not to smoke because it’s not good, then you can tell him until you can’t anymore, because he will still take the cigarette because that’s what he saw. Or they see that dad and mom lie to each other, or you give them money and tell them not to tell the other parent, all this will cause them to do the same, to be cunning, to hide from each other. 

The example in the family matters a lot. If you do not have a good example in the family, then later it will be difficult for children because they will do the same. Pay close attention to the example in the family! And as I said before, let there be no day without prayer!

Worshiper: Is it okay to have a fixed hour of prayer? Because often…

Father Pimen: Somewhat because sometimes something can intervene, you cannot at that fixed hours, set in stone. But when the chores are done a little, then it’s good to try to do this.

Worshiper: Do you know why I’m asking? Because here if Vespers starts at 6 o’clock or we saw that at Prodromos it started at 2 o’clock. 2 o’clock is set in stone, the monks know…

Father Pimen: Here there is something else! Monks do not go to work, they have their obediences. There are certain chores for which a certain time must be settled. For example, when the morning Liturgy ends, you immediately go to eat and automatically the cook has to make the food, so he cannot be present at this service… But everyone else is at church. At home you don’t always succeed because one is with work, another is with school… They can’t all be the same. But in the monastery an observance is kept, everyone goes to church, when they have obediences, each goes to their obediences…

Here the observance can be kept because we do not have families, children, or other responsibilities. For example, you have a small child, he doesn’t fall asleep or falls asleep later… or other responsibilities. In the monastery there is an observance that is preserved, it is attempted to do everything in common, together, with respect, with obedience… For example, no one leaves the monastery without a blessing, everything is in an order… 

If you have no further questions, then we’re done. May the Mother of God help you, Lord help us!

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