This is an excellent parable, a lot of thoughts & recollections arise & revive in my head when I read it.

Some time ago there was a film shown in Russia, “Repentance”, – by Otar Ouseliani, if I am not mistaken. In this film an old lady says: “What’s the sense in the road if it doesn’t lead to a temple?” And I think
what’s the sense in a person’s life if it is spent far from a temple, the Church, our Lord? and see no sense in such a life. In this case a person builds a house, carrying stones all his life, spending his health & time on it, and he manages to build a house, to create a building…without soul, which will serve for nothing, and which will be ruined in the course of time, and the builder will be forgotten, without having left anything eternal to anyone. A house on sand. When I was in Cyrus, I went for an excursion, and on the route we saw Tombs of the Kings (in Paphos) – big & solid stony burial-vaults, half destroyed by the time & people. But even in this condition they looked quite preserved & imposing. But – with no soul, no life. It was a strange impression – “faceless” masses of stones, with no sense but just “watching at something ancient” for tourists (and even for many of them presenting no interest), and of course – with no sense for those who were buried there much time ago, though they pit so much of themselves in constructing these “picturesque” graves. Thus our souls resemble them, if we live “face down”, carrying things & not glancing up at sky, if we do not look for any mundane meaning in our everyday life, every action, if we do not realize that absolutely everything we do will echo in Eternity.

After that boring visit to the Tombs, we (my mother & I) departed from the excursion & proceeded to the burial-vault of St Solomonia – a modest but tiny place, and I felt…Life there. Everything there breathed Heaven & Eternal Life. It was not she, who built this place & takes care of it regularly through centuries, she did not arrange for a burial place for herself, as she was busy…building a temple. A temple of her own soul & body, a temple of God Alive. And this temple still alive & will remain for ever.

Everyone of us is building a temple, and we should pray to God so that it can really be a temple, not a mass of stones – in our soul. God doesn’t need a monument, and if we think well – we don’t need it either…

So often I want to say to myself that I m building a temple, realizing high aspirations of my soul. But when I think a little, I say – no, I am carrying stones.

There can be two outcomes often: a person may think with humility that he earns for a living, carrying stones, but unnoticeably he in reality is building a temple. And it may be vice versa: a person may be 100% sure he is building a temple, and may remain all his life in this illusion, but he may just carry stones…

Another thought came to me today: we cannot build a temple without having carried many stones, without hard work, without carrying our individual, often unnoticeable by others, crosses…Because a temple can be built not in our imagination, it can be built only by our own hands, with support, encouraging of our Lord. On this will depend – whether our temple is real or artificial. Let God give us enough wisdom to differentiate one from another!

In Christ,

Natalia
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