Thoughts from Priest Alexei Shishkin of Kirov.

Priest Alexei Shishkin of Kirov shares insights on attaining holiness in all vocations and stations of life...

 ~ In the striving to live according to the commandments of God, in reading the Gospel—the Word of God, and it does not really matter where you want to put it into practice: be it in church, during prayer or at work; whether you ride on a trolleybus, drive a car or stand at a traffic light—a Christian is always and everywhere a Christian. We can talk about details, but, in general, a real Christian remains one everywhere—in everyday life, in communication with a stranger; a seller or a buyer, a boss or a subordinate. For a Christian everything is subordinated to the same Gospel law, which is the basis of his spiritual life.

 ~ In modern culture, the word “faith” often implies that “there is something out there”, apparently something immaterial, but this approach has nothing to do with the Christian faith. For Christians, faith consists of three components: confidence in the existence of God—not an abstract “something”, but, according to Orthodox dogmatics, we believe in a concrete God Who created this world and man, Who acts in this world and takes care of it; the second component is trust in God, in His all–good Providence; and the third component is faithfulness to God—if God commands to do this, then I do this, and if God commands not to do that, then I don’t do that. All this makes up the Christian worldview, on the basis of which you can act as a Christian in every situation. And a Christian makes his choice every time: how he should act, behave, think and perceive reality.

 ~ Holiness will never seem normal even among Christians. If you take a crowd of Christians and single out one of them who aspires to holiness, everyone will say that he is strange and unusual. Holiness is always “strange”, “other-worldly” and “unusual”. Seeing someone performing ascetic labors, others will always say, “Isn’t this enough for you?! What else do you want?” An ascetic does not want to become a saint in order to be depicted on icons or to be venerated and respected (he will be dead by then anyway and it won’t make difference to him). A person striving for holiness wants to get closer to God. And it is hard for people who are far from God to understand that a saint wants to get closer and closer to the Almighty, because this is a quality of love...

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