Our Routines Can Imprison Us

Have you heard this before? "I don't have time for prayer or to attend all the Church services?"  "Why should I visit a sick person in the hospital -- it is a long way off and what the purpose of it?"  "Help the poor? That is impossible.  They need to learn to hep themselves. What can I do for them?"


This is what we often hear from people who seem to have everything but still feel stressed in their daily life. We are filled with busyness.


Elder Paisios says,

When we see a person who has everything be stressed, anxious and sad, we must know that God is missing from his life.  In the end even wealth will make people suffer, because the material goods cannot really satisfy them.  I know wealthy people who have everything and are miserable... I told someone, "since you have some free time, do something spiritual; read one of the Hours of prayer, read a passage from the Gospel." "I cannot," he said. "Then," I told him, "try doing something good; go to a hospital to visit some sick person."  "Why should I go all the way there," he says, "What will become of it?"  "Go help some poor person in your neighborhood."  "No," he says, "that does not please me either." ...Do you know how many people like this there are in society? And these people suffer to the point that they lose their mind.  What a dreadful thing!  And if they happen to be independently wealthy and do not work, then they are the most vulnerable of all....

The comforts of life, our satisfaction with our current routine blocks us from activities that allow us to practice the virtues taught to us by Jesus Christ. We can become corrupted by our own comforts where we are unable to even consider doing the will of God  We drown ourselves in a world made up of our will and thoughts.  This is the worst kind of imprisonment.  These are the chains that we need to liberate ourselves from and learn how to liberate others as well.


Reference: with Pain and Love for Contemporary Life, p 168-169