The Essence of our Heritage

I have met many people from our country who had left to come here. It struck me from the conversations we had that there are people from among our own who have forsaken the connection with their heritage. If you let the world strip you of yourself, it will not keep you well, but rather swallows you up, leaving nothing much of you! I am not discrediting anyone. One thing I am saying: "wherever you are, you are your heritage". I am talking about the divine as well as the human heritage. For example, a person who abandons his connection with his Church, abandons his prayers and his fasting, abandons his being responsible for serving people, and who severs every relationship with the places from which he came, with the concerns of their people, with his mother and his father…, is not just living in estrangement, but rather it is estrangement that is living in him also. One of the friends to whom I talked here told me that “so-and-so protected me from insanity”. You do not know what these words have done to me. I heard about some expatriate friends who had gone through a very tough time before they settled down. This is a complete work program for the righteous. The essence of our heritage, wherever we may happen to be, is to eradicate estrangement both in ourselves and in others.