What a fallen world lives today! The women put some glues in their hair and it smells so bad. It gives you allergy. When I see a modern woman with worldly beauty artifices and perfumes I feel disgusted. Once some people told me: Madam sos and so went to Germany to study aesthetics. But what is that aesthetics? I asked. Aesthetics makes the old women look young, he said. Then I remembered I had seen once an old woman who had a horizontal line on her forehead. I asked an acquaintance of hers: What happened to this poor woman? `A, nothing`, he said. She had some lifting surgery for removing her wrinkles. And I thought that she had hurt herself and had surgery for that. Where goes the world of nowadays!
Today beauty artifices are not considered a sin anymore.
Yes, I understood this. I saw a girl who although was like an angel before, I could not recognize anymore, so much make up she used.
`God made everything fine but with you made a huge mistake!` I told her.
`Why, father?` she asked me.
`Your eyes are blotched with ink. This is the mistake. While He made all the other people look beautiful, with you He made a mistake. Don’t you understand? You uglify yourself in this way! It’s like you have a Byzantine icon and draw a line with the brush here and one there and you spoil it, you dirty it. To put paint on the face of God? It is as if a painter made a nice icon and one who doesn’t know anything about painting would go take the brush and make some splotches, spoiling the icon made by the painter. This is what you do. It’s like you said to God: `God, You didn’t do them right. I will improve them!`
Another one came once with some long red painted nails as if they were some hawk claws and told me: `My child is sick.` `Please pray for him, father.` `I pray for him too but…`
`How do you pray?` I asked her. `You scratch Christ with your nails!` `Cut them first then your child will get well.` `For the health of your child you should at least cut your nails and wipe your make up.`
`Shall I paint them in white, father?`
`I tell you not to paint them at all and cut them. Make a sacrifice for the henalth of your child. What means this? If it had been fine like this God would have made you with red nails.
` Shall I paint them in white, father?` Make her understand if you can!
`The way you do that way you will go you and your child` I said for myself. And the children slack off their feelings if their mother is not dressed humbly and even tries to pluck off her children.
It might be possible that there is someone who is ugly or has an infirmity and this God knows that helps him spiritually. Cause He is more interested in our soul than in our body. We all have our qualities but also some shortcomings – some crosses which help at the salvation of our soul.
Source: Pious Paissios the Athonite, With pain and love for the man of nowadays, Evanghelismos Publishing, Bucharest, 2012.
