Glory to Jesus Christ!

Dear brothers and sisters! I congratulate you with the Holy Communion, with the consecration of our souls and bodies.

Today we have heard very interesting Gospel of Matthew (Mt. XVII:14-23) about the healing of the boy with a demon, about the secret of the effective prayer and about the power of the faith.

Let’s think over a bit. Look, Jesus Christ saw how the father of the ill boy kneeled before Him and asked for the healing for his son. And the Lord showed His mercy, He healed that boy. He showed that Our Heavenly Father is merciful; He wants to help people to become purified from sins. What did God do to gain this goal? He healed people spiritually and physically. He did miracles and taught Truth – how should we live and do not sin. He gave knowledge to them and in such way their souls were purified.

He also gave prescriptions: what should they do to be healed from all illnesses, all demons. We have to pray and keep the fast.

But we also see that God talked to His disciplines with gloom: “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? ” Because at that time they were not completely clean. Their faith was not completely full. But they worked hard. And when God was risen and the Holy Spirit descended upon Apostles Father did a lot of miracles through them. We know that they converted the great part of the world into Christian faith. Dear brothers and sisters, it happens that we are not completely faithful to God; we are spoiled or lazy in front of God. And the Lord looks at us and He is sad. But if He sees that we try to become clean, we try to have faith in Him, we try to change something in our lives for good, He becomes happy and smiles. He gives us chance and strength to become purified spiritually and physical. He gives us strength to create and do good, the same way as He did.

Because Apostle Paul (Cor. IV:9-16) told today: “Follow my example.” Why should we follow his example? And he explained why. Because he followed Jesus’ Christ example. So I tell you: “Follow Jesus’ Christ example, because He is the basic. Follow the example of His life: how did He live? What did He do? Let’s all follow Him and act like He.”

Yes, it is difficult. But it is worse if we don’t do good things. Because that darkness, which surrounds us, obsesses us . And it can even do the same thing, which happed with that boy from the today’s Holy Gospel.

That is why, dear brothers and sisters, let’s work that God could purify us. Let’s confess in all our bad doings in front of God. Because bad doings give us obsessions. And in such way we become obsessed with the spirits of offence, anger, etc. When we confess and ask: “Oh God, purify me from this and that…” God purifies us. How? We can’t see it, or understand in full. But God can do everything. He purifies us in one second.

We know that the person should cross himself before entering the Temple. People can ask: “Why do we do it? We can enter without crossing.” But when we come into God’s Temple, we appear under the magnifying glass in God’s eye. And the Lord sees all our sins. And God can even punish us, because we entered the Temple and we were spiritually dirty. In order to avoid punishment we must cross ourselves and say: “Oh God, forgive! Oh God, purify! Oh God, sanctify!” And God’s Angels purify and sanctify us in a second. That is why, dear brothers and sisters, remember this secret.

Also, remember the words of Apostle Peter: “Brothers, if you pray and the Lord does not react on your prayers, it means that you do something wrong.” If you want the reaction of the Lord on your prayers, remember simple praying secret. Before the beginning of the prayer, you should cross yourself. But the basic of the prayer is the confession. We don’t say at once: “Oh God, give me million dollars, cars, health, wealth…”. First we have to confess, we ask God for purification. And only after the confession while we stand, sit, or kneel, we ask God for forgiveness. After that we ask God for His gifts. And one of the gifts, which we can ask is the strong faith. “Oh God, give me so strong faith, that you could hear my prayers. Give me this faith.” And it is clear that the basic of the faith is God’s Love. That is why let’s ask God for His Love to fulfill the main commandment – to love God. And after that we can ask for the family, ask healing for soul and body.

Do you understand? If we do not pray in such way, we will have no result. A lot of people say:
- I make long prayers, but I have no result.
- How do you pray?
- I ask God for this and that.
- But you did not ask God for the main thing – forgiveness for our bad doings, which you did during all life.
- I don’t ask forgiveness. Why should I? I did not kill anybody, I did not steal money. I don’t sin.

Dear brothers and sisters, we sin every day, every hour. We don’t want to sin? But it happens. That is why I call you to remember: pray with the wisdom, keep a fast with the wisdom, save your soul with the wisdom; do good, improve yourself and be with God.

Glory to Jesus Christ!