Man, from God you took all things: understanding, thought, skill and mind. Everything is under your control: those from the earth, from the mountains, from waters and from the skies and they were given to you as nourishment. But they were given to you as a loan to pay for them with: justice, love, gentleness, humbleness and mercy. And that One will give you gifts which the eye didn`t see and they ear didn`t hear and which didn`t reach the man`s heart, which God prepared for those who love Him.
Man, as long as you are in the landscape of this life and the bargain has not been lost yet, buy God`s mercy with your mercy for the poor , with your humbleness an eternal glory, with justice the endless life, with purity, a wreath, with gentleness, your entrance in heaven, with the prayer, the life lived among the angels. Buy with your toil your rest, with the vigil, the unseen face of God and with the fasting and with the thirst the delight of the eternal goods. Man keep in your head your mind and ability and in your eyes the look to God and down the earth where you will go; in your ears the listening of the Scriptures; in the heart the sighing for sins; on your tongue, the truth; in your mouth, the prayer, in your hand, the alms for the poor, in your soul, the lack of anger; in the body, purity; in your stomach, hunger; in your knees, the worship of God. If you keep all these you will be a son of light and a partaker of the Kingdom of heaven and the inheritor of the eternal joy and a dweller of the Jerusalem from above, this you will be
Glory to our God now and forever! Amen.
IPS Pimen Archbishop of Suceava and Rădăuţi
Excerpt from From the spiritual words of the Holy Fathers, The publishing house of the Archiepiscopate of Suceava and Rădăuti.
