Română
In this video recording, Fr. Serafim (Badila) offers us 3 key points for a balanced Christian life: looking up, down and around us.
May 8th, 2019, Casiel Monastery, Cluj, Romania
Video source: Gheorghe Dracea
Fr. Serafim Badila:
What can we do to stay balanced?
We should look in three directions: up, down and around.
Up – the connection with God and with the Mother of God and with the Saints, to whom we pray and read their writings. That means to look upward.
The second one, we should look down in order to simplify our lives, because we will only need a grave one day. For example, I, Seraphim, the one who is speaking to you, one day I will only need [an area of] 2 meters long [6.5 ft], 2 m deep, 1 m wide and “STOP, you Seraphim, STOP!” It’s the same for everyone. So, let us simplify our lives, my dear ones!
We have a soul and the human soul has 3 powers: the intellect, the will and the senses. We develop our soul’s power with the mind that learns about God. Our mind should be filled with the teachings of God and the Holy Fathers and not with the score of a game. The will – we should strive to fulfill what we know. Some people in their 30s come to me (they are strong, like a mountain) and say, “I can’t fast because I see yellow, green and blue stars.” 😊 And a weak old granny asks for fasting food at the hospital, because she strives to keep the fast. And the relatives bring her fasting food [to her ward room]. If she has a strong will… This is the second power of the soul. The third – the senses, they help us to distinguish right from left, heresy from pure Orthodoxy. That’s why we should simplify our lives.
The third direction – let’s turn our eyes around us. If we turn our eyes around us, we find that others have more serious problems than us, they are in prisons, in hospitals, in debt, their families are like hell. And I should say, “I am more sinful than these people, but God didn’t give me according to my sins…” These are the 3 directions through which we keep our balance: up (at least 2 and a half hours [per day]), down (Seraphim only needs a coffin) and around.
