The Metropolitan of Syros-Tinos-Mykonos Mr. Dorotheos B.’
When in a recent visit to Greece the Ecumenical Patriarch Mr. Bartholomew advised the Greeks to be patient, there were not a few who judged and criticized him, arguing that…….
with this reason he accepts and, way, adopts the gloomy state, which like a black cloud has settled in the last years in our life and soul, and constitutes passive acceptance of it…
This is also an attitude… It feels… Especially in this day and age, where everything runs, everything changes, everyone is in a hurry, everyone runs chasing the horizon!
And yet! More Christian, Greek decent and effective recommendation, life advice and suggestion by’ she could not exist.
"Drops of stone water sink" our ancestors used to say, referring to the great power of determination and patience.
Because in life, as in nature, nothing happens suddenly and in a flash. Big changes and upheavals don't happen overnight. And if they happen, they carry within them the seeds of failure, as happened in the great revolutions, as in French, which descended into terrorism and resulted in the reconstitution of the monarchy, and Russian, which degenerated into an extreme form of dictatorship.
Christianity, on the other hand, is innate with the determination and patience that first characterized its God-man Founder.
Christ came into the world to change the world not like a rushing torrent, but like a calm and deep river, like an infinitesimal mustard seed, which will slowly become a tree to cover the earth…
The patience that Christ showed in the various situations, challenges, insults, injustices, humiliations, slanders, even on the Cross, shows its measure and greatness.
All of us, another a little, another much, sometimes less, sometimes more, and today much more, we experience circumstances in our daily life so difficult and painful, that dishearten us, they threaten to bend our temper and paralyze our strength.
But, even in our justified rage, to the all-pervading tension and the pervading atmosphere of fear we must show the patience of Christ; a patience which is not identical with the stoical handling of life's difficulties, it has nothing to do with passively dealing with events, with waiver of liability and fair claims, indifference to social action, instead it is the driving force for action and change.
Its secret is that it gives us the strength not to submit to the violent and personality-destroying situations of life., not to surrender to despair and inaction, but to maintain our inner peace and our personal autonomy.
Could Christ have lost His patience and driven from the temple with a whip those who had made it a "house of commerce", but at the same time he invites us to learn from Him, who is "meek and lowly in heart", the deep inner patience, so that we can find peace and balance in our souls, even when we are unjustly crucified.
Christian patience is not a weakness of character, but it presupposes strength of soul, which transforms even the greatest sorrows and trials into precious experience.
In order to overcome our personal and collective impasses and selfish anchors and to achieve the solidarity and like-mindedness that the place needs, patience is needed.
(agioritikovima.gr from the insert of the Republic for Orthodoxy)