It is said that the month of Ramadan is the month of a divine feast and I would like to tell you dear brothers and sisters what could be expected to be offered in this feast. One of the things that is offered and people like you and I should benefit from it, is fasting. Another thing is the Holy Quran. The Holy Quran has been placed on this blessed table and we have been given more opportunities to recite it in the month of Ramadan than in any other month.
Another thing is prayers such as Dua Iftitah and Dua Abu Hamza. All of these things are the blessings that are offered at this divine feast. There are some people who are so much distracted by other things that they do not even notice these blessings. There are people who do not see the blessings of the month of Ramadan and they do not even remember that another month of Ramadan has passed them by. There are other people who see the blessings, but they do not have much time to spend in this divine feast because they are too busy with work and entertainment. They want to go after certain amusements. They have other things to do. They have to take care of their shop, their business, their worldly matters and their carnal desires. They do not have enough time to attend this divine feast and benefit from it. There are other people who realize that there is a divine feast and they attend it. They see the blessings and appreciate them, but they are easy to please. They feel satisfied once they have had only a few morsels of spiritual nourishment. They attend the feast for a few minutes and they leave. They do not stay and benefit from all the blessings. They stay for a moment and they leave. There are yet other people who are not interested in benefiting from the spiritual nourishment because they have already satisfied their appetite with useless things and they are not willing to benefit from the different kinds of interesting and beneficial nourishment that is offered in this divine feast.
Unlike these people, there are others who benefit from the blessings of this feast and their appetite is never satisfied because the nourishment is spiritual. Benefiting from this nourishment is a virtue because it leads to transcendence of the human soul. The more a person benefits from these blessings, the more spiritual transcendence he achieves and the closer he moves to the goals of creation.
This spiritual transcendence is different from material blessings. The purpose of material blessings is to enable human beings to satisfy their physical needs and to keep their bodies functioning. As far as material blessings are concerned, it is a mistake to have too much - it is wrong. But this is not the case with spiritual blessings because basically we have been created to achieve spiritual transcendence. Spiritual blessings make it possible and easier for us to achieve this spiritual transcendence. Therefore, we should try to benefit from them as much as we can.
In the case of certain pious and sincere people whose names we have heard, even when their actions are explained to us, we have difficulty understanding how they did those truly amazing things. Such people can wake up two, three hours before the dawn prayer and they can stay awake during the nights of Ramadan and shed tears. It has been said that when the late Mirza Javad Agha Maleki would wake up in the morning to perform wudu at a pool of water, he would look at the water and he would pray and shed tears. He would wash his face and continue shedding tears. He would look at the sky and he would pray and shed tears until he came to his prayer mat to perform midnight prayers in a characteristically enthusiastic, lively and energetic way. The same was true of the late Hajj Mirza Ali Agha Ghazi. We have heard certain things about his fasting, his attention to God, his divine remembrance and his praying. We cannot understand such things clearly, but they show us a clear path and we should make the best out of this path.
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