Elder Cleopa Ilie: “What has the Savior told to the Apostles? Thou don’t know where you come from or where thou go. So, be aware that we are wanderers and foreigners here…”

Tell me, where have you been one hundred years ago? Tell me quickly right now! Let me see. And where will you be after one hundred years? Do you know? Do you see that you don’t know where you have been and where you go? What has the Savior told to the Apostles? Thou don’t know where you come from or where thou go. So, be aware that we are wanderers and foreigners here. Have you seen in Psalms? Scoundrel I am on earth and a foreigner like all my parents.
Do you see that the sun has arisen? You know that it goes to the sunset. We do the same: immediately after we have arisen through the birth, we go in every moment to the tomb. Our birthday meets our death day, since we have been born, because we have no other sense but to travel. We have been born to die. An eternal law put by God between men.
If we do something good in our journey, we go to an unlimited joy and happiness. If we like in our journey to do worldly bad things and go from this life without confession and full of sins, we go to an endless suffering. God has brought us to life only for this goal, to prepare ourselves for the other life. What remains on the earth? The richness? The honor? The life? The youth? The joy of the world? What is on earth which is not dream and shadow? Don’t you remember that you have sometimes been a little child? Don’t you see that a baby has just arisen? Have you hears what it is written that the man is like the grass and his days like the flower from the field? A little flower has grown, the flower grows bigger. Then it is over, he or she marries, then the autumn comes as it has come to me or to you. The beard and the hair have begun to be white, then…the end. Our life has four seasons. The spring is our childhood; the summer is our youth; the autumn is our oldness. Then, it is the winter, our near end.
So, thinking of the fact that our life passes, we should try to do something good, every day. The Savior says in the Gospel that even for a glass of water offered in the name of the Lord you will not lose your reward.
I have a glass of cold water to give: if I have something else, too, it is better. Give a little slice of bread; maybe a coin, or some flour or even to learn to give something every day, because, in the other life, nobody may steal your good deeds.
We send before us what we do well or bad.
You see when you have to travel…your wife makes your luggage, she puts from in your bag all what you need for your journey.
The same happens on the way to Heaven you have sent a prostration with tears, a prayer, an alms, a good thing, a thank to God for the illness endured, a complete confession. What you have done for your soul, you will regain.

Source: text extracted from “Ne vorbește Părintele Cleopa”