—Geronda, where does complaining come from and how can one avoid it?
It comes from wretchedness, but in giving glory to God one is able to defeat it. Complaining gives birth to more complaining, and glorifying God gives birth to glorifying Him more and more. When someone doesn’t complain about a difficulty he finds himself in, but instead glorifies God, then the devil is thwarted. He goes off to find someone else who complains, for whom the devil can turn everything even more upside-down. To the measure one complains he also destroys…
Sometimes the “little-horned one” steals from us and we never give thanks for anything; but others are able spiritually to escape everything with glorification and thus be blessed by God. I know someone on Mount Athos who, if it rains and you say to him “rain again?”, he starts with “Yes, it’s always raining! We’re going to rust away because of all the humidity.” If, after awhile the rain stops and you tell him, “Eh, it didn’t rain that much,” he says, “Yeah, was that what you call rain?! The ground is going to dry up…” No one can tell him that he is sick in the head because he has become so used to complaining. To be created with logic and to think illogically!
Complaining is a curse. It is as if one curses himself; and upon him then comes the wrath of God. In Ipeiros I knew two farmers. One was a family man who had one or two little fields, and who entrusted everything to God. He would work as much as he could without stress. “I will do whatever I can get to,” he would say. Sometimes his things would rot because of the rain, or he didn’t anticipate having to gather them up, and they would get scattered in the wind. But in every circumstance he would say, “Glory to Thee, O God,” and all went well for him. The other had many acres and mules, but no children. If you asked him, “How’s it going?”, he would reply, “Leave me alone! Don’t ask!” Never would he say, “Glory to Thee, O God”. He would only complain. As a result one of his cows would die; or sometimes this would happen to him, and sometimes that. He had everything except prosperity.
Therefore, I say glorifying God is very important. It depends on us: will we fail to acknowledge the blessings God gives us? Yet how are we to recognize God’s blessings when, for example, God gives a banana and all we can think about is that the other guy is eating better? Do we realize how many people there are who eat only dry rusks, yet who glorify God day and night, and are thus nourished with heavenly sweets?! Such people acquire a certain spiritual sensitivity and can easily recognize God’s “hugs,” that is His special, even intimate provisions. We don’t acknowledge them because our heart is a wreck, and thus we cannot be appeased by anything. We don’t understand that happiness is in eternity, and not in the vain things of this world.
Translation by Fr. Luke Hartung from the book Family Life [in Greek], by Elder Paisios the Athonite, published by the Sacred Hesychastirion of St. John the Evangelist, Souroti, Greece (2002).
