4- Your Father is Sick, Come after the Exam

Once, as I was going through the college dormitories, I found a student in a state of great perplexity.

“Why are you so upset?” I asked.

“Our fellow student”, answered one of the students, “is disturbed by an idea that might destroy his future.”

“What is this idea?”

“He is insisting on leaving during his exams and going to Upper Egypt, because he has the idea that his father died today even though it isn’t true. He’s a pre-med student and his absence may result in his failure. He would lose his chance to join college.”

St-Takla.org Image: His Holiness Pope Kirillos VI sitting and carrying the Holy Cross. صورة في موقع الأنبا تكلا: قداسة البابا كيرلس السادس وهو جالس ممسكًا بالصليب المقدس.

He said to me, “I’m sure that my father died today. I can’t finish my exams, I’ve to leave today.”

Then one of his fellow students intervened saying, “We all suffered from homesickness in our first year away from home and imagined that we had relatives who died, got sick, or even got involved in accidents.”

Nevertheless, the student said, “I’m sure my father died today.”

I tried to calm him by saying that we could send a telegram to his father, asking how he was doing and then wait for an answer. He liked the idea and therefore wrote a telegram to his father. Afterwards, he began studying for the exam. The next day, the answer to his telegram came, “Your father is sick in the hospital. Come after the exam.”

The student completed his exam and got there to find that his father had indeed died. He had actually passed away at the same hour that the student had shouted, “My father’s died!”

This is what psychiatrists call the sixth sense, where a person feels things, which are invisible as if they were visible and definite. This is a true event that I experienced.

If you can, through the sixth sense, join your loved ones and experience their feelings while they are here in the flesh, how much more can you experience this with those whose spirits have departed to paradise where they have joined God. In all their love, they feel your presence and ask that you participate in their glory. Their heart is enlarged and filled with love towards you. You should have friends in paradise who share with you your feelings and who work for you so that you don’t live totally isolated.

Father Pishoy lived among us as a friend to the Archangel Michael and many others. This gave him power and filled his life with hope. This friendship gave him his characteristic smile.

 A lot of those who lived among us had the spirit of friendship. The first among them was the late St. Pope Kyrillos VI who was famous for his deep friendship with St. Mina. It has been said that he had been seen in his company, now he is with him in supporting others.

→ English translation of the story here at St-Takla.org: والدك مريض بالمستشفى، احضر بعد الامتحانات!

I am not alone

I suffer a lot from loneliness.

It is as if my parents have left me,

Even my closest friends do not understand my feelings.

O God, You fill my heart. You fill my life and grant me power and victory.

Talk to me and let me talk to You because You are the desire of my heart.

Through You, God, I am close to Your angels.

I can be a friend to Your Saints, love them deeply and suffer no more from loneliness.

Transparent Glass

Short Stories (Stories for the Youth) Books by Father Tadros Yacoub Malaty

They Are All Impure, They are All Pure