Question: I often have this feeling that I'm never doing enough or I'm never good enough as a Christian. I participate in the Church, in its sacraments, and the Gospel moves me deeply. However, I feel this burden as if I could serve more, and therefore feel guilty most of the time. How would you approach this set of circumstances to gain a renewed focus and perspective when seeking and receiving Communion with the Lord?
The answer of Fr. Andrey Lemeshonok to the question:
The more often you do the right thing, the stronger this sense will grow in you. And it is a good feeling — this awareness of your own guilt.
The best moments in our life — I mean our spiritual moments — are those times when we felt our complete guilt and unworthiness. At such times, we are as close to God as we ever can be. With the fear of God we believe and approach the Chalice, and we say that we are the first of sinners.
I think if this feeling leaves you, then your progress in faith will come to a halt. The saints say that when an ascetic loses the grace of God, his grief is such that it is greater than the grief of a mother who has lost her only child. “Well, he lost grace — so what?” We do not understand that, do we? Yet it really is true, as they wrote from direct, lived experience.
Thank God that you are making an effort. It is God’s grace that you read the Gospel, that you feel unworthy, that you try to do more, and that you try to come closer to faith in a deeper way. And this matters immensely. It does.
Further down the line, it will get harder still. A saint said: “Where the demons are, there am I.” Could an ordinary soul live by such a standard? Of course not. They simply could not bear it. That is a saint’s rule. That is the state of someone who declares they belong among the devils.
But you and I — we are good, and we want to be good. We want respect, we seek honour, affection, even a bit of pity. Yet to say, “Where the demons are, there am I” — we do not have the strength for that. And we do not need it. It is not our measure. We do not need it.
