Saint Andrews Theological College Student Q&A Session

9th April, 2021

This is a fellowship Q&A session taken by His Grace Bishop Emilianos of Meloa with students at Saint Andrew’s Theological College in Sydney, NSW. He answers many questions including: balancing our spiritual life with everyday life, understanding of repentance over time, prayerfulness and work, the possibility of eliminating our ego, and forgiveness. But he spends the most time answering this question: Why do we have anxiety when things change around us?

“If someone who has anxiety enters a situation where he has no control over, his anxiety flares up. Because we think that we are in charge and we are not, and this gives us insecurity and we become anxious. That’s correct. But why is this happening?

So, let’s say that someone is somewhere and he understands that Gods wants him to change his life and to take a step forward and do something different; it could be in a job environment, it could be in a church environment, or it could be in a social environment. What he is trying to do will give him a lot of uncertainty because he leaves a secure place and goes to an insecure place. But he understands this is God’s will. Will there be anxiety there? Yes, there will be.

[...] Let’s say you have a rope that goes around and you try to catch it. If you try to catch the lower part of it, it moves quickly and you might not be able to. But if you were to catch the top, it’s stable because that’s where the movement starts from.

So, if you aim on God where everything starts from, regardless of today or tomorrow’s environment or situation, this gives you security and this can make your anxiety go away. And this can make you walk on the waves without drowning. But if you focus on the waves, you focus on the difficulties, if you focus on the things that change around you, if you focus on what people are saying around you, you will drown. Because you lose the focus which is Christ. This is why when we hear things around us that disturb our peace, we can understand that they are from the devil... like in Greece there was a lot of talk about the triple six.

[...] They say that the gift of foresight is the smallest gift of the Holy Spirit and we all want to know the future. We are obsessed with the future - but this is the smallest gift of the Holy Spirit. And how does it happen? The fathers say it’s like when the sun sends its rays on earth: you can see the dust in the air, without the sun trying to prove anything through the rays. This is what the foresight gift is. You see God or God gives you His Grace, and through His Grace you can see the dust which might be the future.

[...] What should be occupying our mind is God, and by focusing on God whatever is in between on our journey to Him, which is in the future and in the present, will be revealed to us. Or a door will close and another will open. Very simple. But no one can touch us if it’s not our time. See, the Jews were trying to capture Christ many times, but the Gospel says it was not his time yet. So if it’s not our time nobody can touch us.

But, if it is our time, like with Saint John Chrysostom or Saint Athanasios The Great, people can send us to exile. But this is under God’s providence; and still there is nothing to worry about. Our focus stays the same: Christ.

In theory it sounds simple, but it’s not easy. When we have the waves around us, it’s not easy to focus - that’s why we have Nepsis. This is what Nepsis does: it helps you to stay focused. And this is the answer to all our problems: we are not focused.

English