From time to time, God is kind enough to show us all His presence…and the aim of all of these assurances is so that we can be transformed, and become signs of His grace, His love, and His mercy to the world…So we venerate the image of the weeping icon of Mary, because she was the first human being since Adam and Eve, to be “truly human”…because to be truly human, is to be the revelation of God to His world.”  

It is a common practice in today’s world to blame God for when things become chaotic in our lives.  It is a trait that is found in all human beings, where we have this knack for ignoring the 99% of our lives that are going well, and concentrate on that 1%  that isn’t working as it should be.  But we learn throughout the Gospels somethingfundamentalto our understanding of why bad things still happen to good people…and it is that our Lord never came to this world to save us from that 1%...He came to save us THROUGH that 1%.

We are bombarded by this day after day in our society…and even those who faithfully do attend Church, who do have a strong prayer life, who do try to fast and bring God into their lives…every one of us is affected by some measure of Philavtia (Self Love).  We too often love ourselves more than God.  And when a human being becomes too full of themselves…there is no room for the power of the Holy Spirit to grow within them.   

What would our faith be without experience?  Imagine what our Christianity would be like if it we were not constantly having the experience of God?  We would read scripture, we would come to Church, we would learn about our Lord’s birth, His crucifixion, His resurrection, and we would chalk it up to an inspirational story about Love…not truly understanding or comprehending in our hearts what God means to mankind.

…We are all responsible for each other…and most especially, for our youngest siblings, in showing them how to maintain a close relationship with our Father.  When they weep and wail, we pick them up as our Father did us, and show them the icons of their departed relatives on the walls.   When they become pre-occupied in the services, we show them how to ring bells, or sing in the choir, or hold a candle….teaching them how to offer perfect praise through our own examples. When they lash out in the quietest and most solemn parts of the service, we show them what it means to be Christians by offering to help calm them down, instead of driving them out of the Lord’s house to be “hushed”. Our greatest gift that we can give to our children, is to show them what Christian beauty is all about...