A LIFE AND SOUL DEBT TO OUR BELOVED CHILDREN!!!
One day, a man met an acquaintance of his who was mourning and weeping bitterly. He knew full well that this man had everything in abundance and lacked nothing. Astonished, he asked him:
“Why are you mourning and weeping like this — you, the most blessed and favored of all?”
Instead of answering, the old man continued to wail and weep with an inexpressible, indescribable grief. His tears carved deep streams down the furrows of his cheeks, and his lament rose all the way to Heaven.
“Two young children left this life,” he replied after a moment. “Two of our children.”
“You knew them?” his friend asked. “How did it happen?”
“Every child is our child,” the old man answered. “In the faces of my own children I see the children of the whole world, and in the faces of all the children of the world, I see my own. Once, the children of our Fatherland fell from Zalongo dancing and singing, so they would not be captured and violated by the antichrist Muslims. Today, history repeats itself in a similar some-how way. Our children have fallen from the modern Zalongo of apostasy and this new antichristian age, so they would not be caught in its murderous and inhuman traps… and be destroyed.”
“But they perished in this way,” his friend objected.
“They did not perish,” the old man replied. “They remain, and they are alive forever. They stand as eternal reminders of our inadequacy and unworthiness — that we failed to stand by them and help them. They have left us a solemn charge: to wake up, to keep vigil, to sober up, so that our other children do not suffer the same fate!”
“As you say, you are right,” the friend conceded.
“What matters is that our lost children be vindicated. And that will happen only if no other child is lost, for any reason whatsoever. Only then will their sacrifice not have been in vain!”
At that moment, the friend joined in the old man’s tears and sighs. He felt the same weight of responsibility, the same burden and debt for the loss of those two children.
“What will become of their souls?” he asked.
“It is said,” the old man replied, “that a grieving pilgrim once asked the same question of the holy Elder Paisios about one of his own people. With all the holiness, clairvoyance, and sincere, guileless love that distinguished him toward our all-good God, the Elder answered:
‘Do you know how much time passes until a person reaches the ground after jumping, determined to end his life? Until that very last second, do you know how many times that person can repent and call upon God? What is it for our all-good God and Father to condescend and save His child who, even in the final second, seeks His help and love — or has repented even of something deadly?’
The brother left the Elder consoled, with his blessing.”
“So we too hope for these children — for our children. For He who was nailed to the Cross for the sake of that thief who stood on His right, was also nailed for all of us who repent and believe in Him. To us all, as to the repentant thief, He promised: ‘Today you shall be with Me in Paradise.’”
May the all-good God, who bends down to the pain of your parents and your siblings, who also sees our own tears and sighs, grant — through the depths of our hearts and the rivers of tears He Himself bestows — that our beloved and deeply cherished children find every consolation and blessed rest beside Him. And may all of us, especially their own families who loved them and now grieve them even more intensely, receive the same consolation and the living hope of their salvation.
Christ is Risen!!!
Τruly Risen!!!
