I want to share with you today something that has been on my mind for a very, very long time, and it is something I wanted to tell you many times in the past, but I’ve been stopped because of this uncertainty of whether or not Christ wants me to share it with you. Sometimes there are things that are revealed to us on a personal level, and it’s always a very thin, fine line between what is useful to you and what could be detrimental to other people. But this image, this word of Christ to me, has been so useful on so many occasions to me that I feel it would be almost a lack of love on my part not to share it with you, and if it is something wrong, at least it’s something that I do wrong out of love. I’d rather take a risk to be on that side of being wrong than being on a side of those who do not have enough love. So I’d rather share a bit too much rather than not enough.

There’s been all these videos that I’ve recorded in the last two, three years: Why can’t I stop sinning? Why can’t I lift myself up from my own sin? Why can’t I let go of my passions? Why can’t I pray the way I want to pray? Why can’t I basically be the person I want to be? I truly want to be a certain way. I want to behave a certain way. I want to pray and live my life a certain way. I truly want that—and then I can’t. And that happens again and again and again, until ultimately I’m crushed to just dust, and that’s when the risk of despondency and abandonment and just losing hope that anything can ever be done, that’s when that risk is at its highest. And it’s then that this image has helped me tremendously.

The real answer is that I can’t pray the way I want to pray, the way my heart wants to pray, because it is impossible. Prayer is impossible for me, and for you, and for this generation of ours. The reason why I can’t let go of my passions, of my sins, of my faults, is not that I do not want to let go of them; it is not that I do not try to let go of them, but that it is impossible. It is impossible for me and you, children of these generations, last generations, to pray. It is impossible for us to let go of our passion, and it is impossible for us to stop sinning. And yet, hear me out.

When I was I think in my late teen years—I think I was 17 maybe, maybe 18—one of my grandmothers, who had been sick for quite some time, died. She had heart problems, as we all knew, for decades of her life. But ultimately she died because of a stroke, as many in my family have died: strokes and neurological problems usually are the end of us. So she had a stroke, and she ended up in a hospital in Bucharest. Her body was dying. It actually had let go and was dead—except that her heart refused to die. And there was this period of time—I can’t remember how long—when we were waiting for the doctors to tell us that she’s dead, because all her organs had stopped functioning; all her being, her entire body, had let go and had stopped living, except that in this dead body, this corpse, that heart that had been sick for so long, kept beating, and refused to die, and kept wanting to be alive—until eventually, of course, it stopped beating. And they came and let us know that my grandmother died. May God rest her beautiful soul.

But what stuck with me and has traveled throughout all these decades since then is this image of a dead corpse, a dead body, with one organ that refuses to die, that stubbornly believes and hopes and tries to stay alive, and not only to stay alive but to keep alive the whole body, to resurrect the whole body, to keep it into life, into being. That image took a spiritual significance for me, a deeply personal spiritual significance to me. When I hit my own spiritual walls, like you know, and when I asked the same questions—“Why can’t I pray? Why can’t I stop sinning? Why can’t I let go of my passions and of my past and just move, full steam ahead, into the love of Christ? Because this is what a want, this is what I crave for, this is what I gave my whole life for, so why can’t I do that?”—and the answer for me was that beating heart of my grandmother in her dead body, because it is impossible; because, like that heart of my grandmother, it did not exist by itself, separated from the body.

A heart outside the body is a dead heart. That heart existed within the body. And just like that heart, I exist within the body of the entire humanity, and you exist as one organ, one cell, even, of this body of the entire humanity, the whole human being. And because this entire body of our common humanity is so dry and cold and spiritually dead, it becomes impossible in a literal sense of the meaning for those cells that are still alive here and there, those organs that are still beating here and there, to keep beating, to keep life within themselves. When the entire body of humanity is as fallen into sin as it is today, it is impossible for a cell here and there, for an organ alone, to keep beating. When the entire body of this world is dead and there is no prayer anywhere, if not even opposition to prayer, it is impossible for a cell here and there, or an organ only by itself, to keep alive, to keep beating. The paralysis of this whole body is so strong that it is physically impossible—it is humanly impossible—to stay alive, spiritually speaking, as a reflection of that physical image.

And yet—does that mean that we should abandon? Does that mean that we should stop even trying and just collapse into despair and abandonment? Not only that we should keep on fighting to keep ourselves alive, that we should keep on fighting so we keep on beating despite the generalized death that surrounds us, that is one with us, of which we are part—not only that, but we have to keep on beating so that we, in our madness that comes from the madness of the love with which Christ has loved us, we have to keep on beating to keep ourselves alive, and also the entire body. We have to keep on fighting, even if you are just a speck of a cell, like the tip of one of the fingers of this dead body. You have to keep on trying, knowing that what you’re trying is impossible, but also knowing that the words that came out of Christ, who is God—Christ’s lips are: “What is impossible to man is possible with God.”

We have to do the things that we know are correct, and express a will to stay alive. We have to pray, although prayer keeps dying in us. We have to keep on getting up and putting a new beginning, so we don’t fall back into our sin, we don’t collapse back into our passion, although we’ve seen it happen a thousand times before, and although it may happen a thousand times more. Keep on acting as if there is hope, but be aware that what you’re trying to do is impossible and there is no hope until—because there is an “until”—until Christ steps into this body and breathes new life into it. And this is what Christ’s incarnation has done to this dead body of our humanity.

His incarnation has made it possible for these singular, these few cells and organs here and there, that are refusing to die in this dying body of humanity—his incarnation, his crucifixion and his resurrection have made it possible for those few cells and organs to not only survive but to become the vessels through which new life is breathed into this huge body so that this entire body on the day of judgment may stand a chance.

Until Christ’s grace comes upon us, everything we try is doomed to fail, not only because of our own weakness, but also because we belong to this dying body of the entire humanity. But sooner or later if we keep doing all the things we’ve been commanded to do, despite our faults, despite the grip of despondency and the temptation of abandonment, if we become blind and deaf to our own need to abandon, and we keep on pushing, we keep on beating, then we are not going to fail the way my grandmother’s heart eventually failed, because, sooner or later, Christ’s grace will step in, will be poured into us, and then what was impossible for us, for years or decades of our lives, will become not only possible, but it will feel natural; it will feel proper to us.

Don’t abandon. Be aware that we are trying something that to us is impossible. Break away from your self. Let go of this temptation of abandonment. Just put a distance between that weak version of yourself and keep going forward. Fall—get up. Fall—get up. Fall—and get up again and again and again! Because, sooner or later, Christ will breathe in life in you, my brother and my sister, and you will be one of those few cells that, although part of a dead body, remains alive. And who knows, my beloved one—who knows? You may just be one of those few cells through which life is once again imprinted onto the whole body, of our whole common humanity.

I’ve carried this image of my grandmother’s sick heart—not a healthy heart, but a sick heart—like you and like me, that refused to die in a dying body. And at the right time, in Christ’s time, this image became something that was my grandmother’s most beautiful and treasured gift to me. And in that sense, her death became so painfully, deeply, and personally meaningful.

May this new year be a new beginning to you, my brother and my sister. I love you in Christ. I pray for you. Pray for me. Pray for the monastery. Keep supporting us if you can. And may we meet at the right time up in Christ’s kingdom. Be blessed, my dear ones. Be blessed. Amen. Amen. Amen.