Spiritual Articles
This disease takes a great deal away from us, but at the same time, it gives us an opportunity to grow in understanding of what is most important in our lives! We were given a disease tailored to our needs! May God help us to humble ourselves so that humility will give us wisdom.
It is as if tears pour out of your letter. You strived to reach a high position. You thought that you would also find happiness. Many others around you did the same. So you had to fight for it, push, and endure anxieties. You figured that happiness, not just happiness, but life itself, would begin with obtaining this position. Until then, you considered yourself unfortunate, almost non-existent. Finally, you attained the desired goal. For a few days you felt like you were born again. Then the disappointment came. Of course, you were as far from happiness as you were before. Except earlier, you believed that happiness did exist—somewhere in the high positions—but now you have lost that faith. You have reached the clouds but not the stars. Now you regret your running after happiness on the wrong path and encouraging others to do the same. So you wish to go back to your former modest position where the burden of responsibility is lesser and the stings of envy weaker. Perhaps you will find this story useful:
There came to me once two brothers who were always rowing, and the elder was saying about the younger, ‘I arrange for him to do something and he gets distressed, and so I get distressed, thinking that if he had faith and love towards me he would accept what I tell him with complete confidence.’ And the younger was saying, ‘Excuse me, reverend father, but he does not speak to me with the fear of God, but rather as someone who wants to give orders. I reckon that this is why my heart has not full confidence, as the Fathers say.’ Impress on your minds that each blames the other and neither blames himself, but both of them are getting upset with one another, and although they are begging each other’s pardon, they both remain unconvinced ‘because he does not [from his heart] show me deference and, therefore, I am not convinced, for the Fathers say that he should.’ And the other says, ‘Since he will not have complete confidence in my love until I show him deference I, for my my part, do not have complete confidence in him.’ My God, do you see how ridiculous this is? Do you see their perverse way of thinking? God knows how sorry I am about this; that we take the saying of the Fathers to excuse our own will and the destruction of our souls. Each of these had to throw the blame on the other… What they really ought to do is just the opposite. The first ought to say: I speak with presumption and therefore God does not give my brother confidence in me. And the other ought to be thinking: My brother gives me commands with humility and love but I am unruly and have not the fear of God. Neither of them found that way and blamed himself, but each of them vexed the other.