When we have a serious illness, it does not mean that this is a revelation from God that we will die. Or, to express it more exactly, we don’t know the outcome. However, such a serious illness can be used as a revelation from God that we must prepare ourselves more intensely for death.

Let us separate ourselves from our worldly matters. Essentially, with illness, God is telling us that “we are on the runway.”

When will we take off? We don’t know. We only know that we can now concentrate more on keeping ourselves correctly on track in our lives—because the evil one is now trying to force the plane of our souls to crash at take-off.

Although we do what is humanly possible to avoid death, in order to have time to repent, we must be careful not to have a morbid fear of death. In any event, death still comes.

The devil’s strategy in the case of a serious illness

It is a classic strategy of the devil to induce us to panic, or to at least give birth to anxiety related to whatever disease we may be afflicted with—so as to paralyze or at least darken our minds, so that we fight between us, can no longer pray and act with discrimination.

Our main focus should be that, at the moment of death, we must be ready to take off in the right direction—which is the direction of a loving heart.

Because of this, we must always live as if it were our last day.

The photos depict the procession with the holy relics of Saint Tryphon and Holy Belt at the Chapel of Saint Tryphon where a service of Holy Water was held. Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos

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