2021

‘Just as the darkness doesn’t disperse unless there’s light, in the same way sickness of the soul can’t be avoided unless the healer of our ailments comes and we’re united to him’. (Saint Symeon the New Theologian). The great saint, Symeon the New Theologian (who is given the same title as Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Gregory the Theologian) writes about the healing of the soul, a subject which, particularly today, is the most pressing concern for a great many people. Recourse to psychologists, the development of psychological sciences, the ambition of many young people to study psychology (as well, unfortunately, as the resort to occult groups who promise to ‘cure’ the soul, but simply confuse people even more), ...

When we look askance at somebody, some wicked force comes out from us and is transferred to the other person, just as the voice is transmitted through sound waves, and they really do suffer some ill. It’s like the evil eye, when one person has wicked thoughts about another. It’s not God who causes the harm but the evil thoughts of us people. It isn’t God punishing us but our wicked intention being transmitted to the soul of the other person in a mysterious manner which causes damage. Christ never wants harm to come to anyone. Saint Porfyrios Kavsokalyvitis

On the one hand there is the secularization which is threatening the Church, external, moralistic  and Puritan paradigms which are making Orthodoxy a religion. One the other there are the cerebral models and flimsy intellectual constructs, as a phenomenon of our post-Modern era, or post-Christian, as many people would have it. These can be combatted only through empirical theology, through actual communion with the Uncreated, through the discovery of the real person. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos

Our Lord loves us as his children and his love is greater than that of a mother. Because a mother might forget her child, but the Lord will never forget us. And if the Lord himself hadn’t given the Holy Spirit and our great shepherds to the Orthodox people, we wouldn’t know how much he loves us. Saint Silouan the Athonite

When you don’t sin, don’t lie, don’t plot against your neighbor, then you have fear of God. Then you’re wise, you understand God and, in order not to sadden him, you don’t sin. Saint Iosif the Hesychast