In the texts of the holy fathers we frequently encounter the exhortation: “to make a beginning”.

Someone ought not only to think that it’s good to say and good to do such a thing, but should also feel the need to say “I am making a beginning”, “I will make a beginning”, at every moment. Not only should we think and feel this in the beginning of a year, not only at certain life milestones, nor only at the start of the week, but at each and every moment of our lives. Certainly, the more often someone makes a start, the better.

People create their problems by having the wrong attitude before God

–What would you like to talk about this evening? Do you have any topics that you think are good to discuss?

–Could you speak to us about anxiety?

–As you know from the fathers of the Orthodox Church, evil is the absence of good. Evil cannot exist in and of itself. It is the same with darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. Wherever there is light, it would be impossible for us to say that we could gather darkness in order to darken the light. If there is light, darkness has no hold; it is non-existent because it only exists in the absence of light. This is also how evil exists in the absence of good.

With God’s help and with the help of certain things we know we’ll try to make a dive into our soul. Let’s offer an example. We see a lake. The water appears calm or perhaps there’s a little movement, but nobody knows what’s deep within it. However, when someone who is trained in such things – a frogman, for example – plunges in and goes a meter below the surface, two meters, three meters, he goes to the bottom of the lake provided that it isn’t extremely deep, and he sees what’s down there and informs us.