Metropolitan Naum of Strumica: Everyone wants to be someone, nobody wants to grow
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Many people are dissatisfied with the state of affairs. The state of affairs can affect them personally, it can affect the general public, as well as the whole of society.
Everyone wants such a state of affairs to change and many of them express their desire publicly; individually or in an organised manner.
Most often, people desiring these changes, begin with the best intentions; or at least they think the change they want is good. That may not be true, but in this case, it does not matter.
What is important for the change to take place? Does the thought matter? Is prayer important? Does the desire matter? Does the word matter? All this is important, but not decisive.
The deeds are decisive. Deeds give strength to the thought, to the prayer, to the desire and to the word. Even the faith without deeds is dead.
Someone expressed this very well: “Everyone wants change, but no one wants to change; that is, rarely does anyone want to change themselves; and yet, every change starts within ourselves.
Now, if most people want the change for the better, and there are not many who want to change themselves for the better, then how can we expect change for the better? Logically, we cannot at all.
Goethe described this condition in the sentence: “Everyone wants to be someone, no one wants to grow.” What is meant by this statement? With this sentence he tells us that self-change requires personal sacrifice.
Without personal sacrifice and exertion, one can neither change oneself nor the community in which one lives. From the quality of our own change depends the quality of the general change.
Changes in the society are not so much my topic as are the changes in the Church. And not so much the changes in the Church as the change of at least one person in the Church.
I think that Saint Seraphim of Sarov had said: “Humble yourself and thousands around you will humble themselves.” You can see for yourself how important the change of just one person is.
What do we see today? We see people who think that if they say something in public, without changing themselves, will cause some change. No, they will not, they are only spreading the wrong paradigm.
We are witnesses that the wrong paradigm has spread to the level of general hysteria. Nothing good can come from it. It is possible for only one evil to be replaced by another evil – a greater one.
Consider, do you not see how much self-sacrifice even ordinary criminals do in order to achieve some individual benefit? And what do we Christians hope for without self-sacrifice and toil?
You want to sit at in a comfortable and warm home, well-fed and hydrated, together with your family, and you want essentially to command with the Church from there. Even if you have the best intention, you will not be able to.
Who will command with the Church, formally? The ones who sacrificed everything that they had, and you still have and enjoy, even if he has not the best intention, even if he is with the premeditation to come to that position. He who takes risks.
Then you get angry when I tell you openly with whom I can talk about some things, and with whom I cannot talk about certain things. Everything is very simple … And I cannot be with you … except honest …
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner!
Metropolitan Naum of Strumica
(02.01.2021 10:54)
Photo by: Fr. Gavril Galev
