The fast is over, and Christmastime has come – the time of special joy. But why is this joy often short?

The problem, as always, lies in ourselves. After the pressure of fasting, we hurry to relax and plunge into the festive atmosphere. But, as it often happens, both in the fasting and in the breaking of the fasting we lose the sense of proportion.

It is not worth talking about banal overeating and other things – the harm from bodily satiety is clear to everyone without special explanations. There is a much more subtle aspect here.

The holiday is not only a visiting the temple, but also it’s a meeting with pals and friends, which means communication and sharing news. And here, there is a risk of falling into a fuss. Fuss is generally a dangerous disease.It’s dangerous because it becomes noticed not at the first time. Is it bad to communicate with friends, especially believers, after a festive service? Of course not. But even here, at the background of general post-fasting relaxation, we can turn a friendly conversation into idle talk. Probably, after such "conversations", which began quite innocently and even piously, many people had a feeling of emptiness and frustration.

This is subject to the pre-holiday fuss, when we forget about its essence in caring about the external manifestations of the holiday.

And there are a lot of such things that can distract us from the one for demand. However, not they are important, but our internal structure is. After all, if we, despite all the fuss, continue to remember the Lord, nothing will be able to shake us.

So, when we break fast, we should thank the Lord that our table is full with His cares, that we have our daily bread, and perhaps, we should also share it with those who are less rich than we are.

Or, during friendly conversations, if we see that the conversation goes "wrong way", we should delicately direct it intoa right direction. And so, it is in everything.

The memory of the Lord, sobriety, and helping our neighbors arethe guarantee that we will not lose our connection with Him, we will not lose the spiritual joy that we received during the festive Liturgy, we will not lose our Christian image.

Recorded by Natalia Goroshkova