God
arranges things correspondingly. When I hear of the death of some youth, I
mourn, but I mourn as a man. Because, if we examine things more deeply, we see
that, the older someone gets, the greater struggle he has, and the more sins he
adds. Especially when he is wordly, as the years pass by, instead of his
spiritual state improving, it gets worse with cares of life, with injustices,
etc. Because of this, it is more triumphant when God takes a youth.
-Elder,
why does God allow so many young people to die?
-No
one has a say with God when he will die. God takes each person in the best
instant of his life, in a special way, for him to give up his soul. If He sees
that someone will become better, He allows him to live. If, however, He sees
that he will become worse, He takes him, in order to save him. There are some
further who have a sinful life, but have the attitude to do good, and He takes
them near Him, before they are allowed to do it, because He knows that they
would do good, if only He would give them the chance. It is as if He tells
them: “Don't tire yourself; your good intentions suffice.” With others, because
they are very good, He decides to take them near Him, because Paradise requires
flower buds.
Naturally,
it is difficult for parents and relatives to understand this. They see that a
small child dies, that Christ took a little angel, and the parents cry and
wail, while they should be joyful, because, do they know what would happen if
he grew older? Would he have been able to have been saved? When we left Asia
Minor by boat in 1924 to come to Greece, I was a baby. The boat was full of
refugees, and, as my mother had me in swaddling clothes, a sailor trampled on
top of me. My mother thought that I had died and began to cry. A fellow
villager of ours opened the swaddling clothes, and confirmed that I had not
been hurt at all. If I had died then, I surely would have gone to Paradise. Now
that I am so old, and [though] I have done so much asceticism, I am not sure
that I will go to Paradise.
But
parents can also be helped by the death of children. They should know that,
from that instant, they have an intercessor in Paradise. When they die, their
children will come with the six-winged angels to the gate of Paradise to greet
their soul. This is not a small matter! To small children who were further
burdened here by sicknesses or by some disability, Christ will say: “Come to
Paradise, and receive the greatest portion.” And then they will tell Him: “It is
beautiful here, our Christ, but we want our mommy to be near us.” And Christ
will hear them and save the mother also in some manner.
Of
course, mothers should not reach the other extreme. Some mothers believe that
their children who died became Saints, and they fall into error. One mother
wanted me to give me something from her child who died as a blessing, because
she believed that he became a Saint. “Is it blessed,” she asked me, “for me to
give away his things?” “No,” I told her, “it is better to not give them away.”
One other had attached a photograph of her child who had been killed by the
Germans to the Crucified One on the evening of Holy Friday, and said: “And my
child suffered like Christ.” The women who were sitting around passing the
night by the Crucified One let her go, so that she would not be wounded. What
could they say? She was [already] wounded.
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