—Geronta, when someone feels strained at work, what is to blame?

—Perhaps they don’t approach their work with good thoughts? If they confront it rightly, then whatever job they do will seem like a festival.

—Geronta, when someone is upset because his job is difficult or distasteful—for example, he works construction or washes dishes at a restaurant—how should he find peace?

—If he will remember that Christ washed the feet of His disciples [1] he will quit worrying. It’s as if Christ was saying to us: “You should do likewise.” Whether one is washing dishes or digging ditches, he should rejoice. Another cleans out sewers filled with germs because the poor man doesn’t have any other work. But is he any less of a person? Isn’t he also an image of God? Once there was a family man who cleaned out sewers for a living, and who had attained a great spiritual state. He suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis; and although he had the chance to quit, he didn’t want to, because he thought, “why should someone else have to suffer?” He loved the beggarly life, and for that, God gave him grace.

Work doesn’t make the man. I once knew a longshoreman who had raised the dead. One day, when I was dikaios [2] at the Skete of Iveron, someone who was around 55 years old visited me. He had arrived late in the evening, and slept outside rather than knock and disturb the fathers. When the fathers saw him they brought him inside and informed me. “My goodness,” I told him, “why didn’t you ring the bell so that we could let you in and take care of you?” “What are you saying my father?” he said to me, “How could I disturb the monks?” I noticed that his face had a certain radiance. I understood that he must have lived very spiritually. Afterward, he explained to me that he had been left a young orphan when his father died; as a result, when he married he greatly loved his father-in-law. At first he and his wife lived in his in-laws house but after a time they moved into their own house. But he was constantly worried because his father-in-law swore a lot. He had pleaded with him many times not to swear, but he got even worse. His father-in-law once became seriously ill. They took him to the hospital, but after a few days he died. The man, however, was not with him at the hour he gave up his soul because he was unloading a ship. When he arrived at the hospital and found him in the morgue, he prayed with great pain: “My God, I beg Thee to resurrect him that he may repent, and then take him.” Immediately the dead man opened his eyes and began moving his hands. As soon as the attendant saw him he fainted. They got his things together and took him home, perfectly well! He lived another five years in repentance and then died. The man said to me, “My father, I thank God so much for doing me this favor. Who am I that God would grant me such a gift?” He had great simplicity and such humility that it didn’t even enter his mind that he had raised the dead. Out of his gratitude towards God, he was blind to that which he had done.

Many people suffer because they fail to receive recognition through vain, worldly honor, or fail to become rich in pointless, mundane things. It doesn’t occur to them that in the other life—the real life—such stuff is not needed, nor can they take it with them. To that place we can only take our works, which here and now acquire for us a passport for that great and eternal journey.

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).