Even I, at a far distant corner, feel it! And it once occured to me that your diocese may be of this kind, not only your church & parish. As i got to know some of your parishioners, I thought they can reinforce my supposition.

Tha main thing is for us is to realise it, to the extent possible, as it is possible to realise all the blessings NOW, not when time passes & we turn back to the past with regret, shaking our heads - “how wonderful everything was, how happy we were - and never imagined that! How many opportunities we had & did not use!” It often becomes axiomatic - everything in the past is good, and everything in the present is bad. Thus making it all bad And instead of cherishing our present & trying to make advantages of what is given to us by God, we linger on in the past (which seems us like a fairy tale, though it may not be so - and it seems us good only because it is already the past). Or we look into the future, which has not arrived & we don’t know whether it will…I think this is also a tricky thing the enemy plays with us - distract us from today’s blessings, and concrquently, from our actual salvation, from our todays sins & God’s gifts. Church, parish, diocese - these are the blessings & gifts. Church is not a beautiful building with rich decoration. Of course, it’s a temple. But it’s God’s House. church in a broader sense is people. A family is also called “a small church”. We are. Are we?

Bless,

Natalia