You have to know and always remember that you’re a fallen person. And since you fell through your reason and your free will, you have to rise from your fall through the same weapons, illumined by the light of the Word of God and strengthened with the Grace of the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus. » Saint John of Kronstadt
People who are humble are cognizant of their inner state and however bad it is, don’t lose their personality. They know they’re sinners and they mourn over it, but they don’t despair, they don’t exhaust themselves. Those who have holy humility don’t talk at all, in other words they don’t react. They allow others to rebuke them, to reproach them without getting angry and finding excuses. » Venerable Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia
For head of the Orthodox Church is neither a man, nor an angel, not even any other creature of God, but the very God-Man, the historical Christ, the Son of the Virgin, Perfect God and perfect Man, Son of God and Son of man. Now, all the meaning, the beauty, the divine-likeness and the kallos of the created world are realized in the person of the Virgin Mary, the daughter of Israel, the Mother of God. That is why the Church is in a certain way realized through the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary and through the Holy Spirit. Through the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the created is rendered indeed from Church in potency Church in actuality, that is Body ...
Christians exchange their distorted intellect for that of Christ, their distorted heart for the heart and tenderness of Christ, their distorted ethos for that of Christ. » Blessed Georgios Kapsanis, Proegumen of Gregoriou Monastery
The remembrance of God in a person reveals communion with God and is therefore like a prayer. The effort of constantly calling upon of the holy name of Christ using the prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, sinner that I am’, continually renews the remembrance of God and communion with God. It’s because of this, that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: ‘Pray unceasingly’. With the remembrance of God and prayer, people reveal the true nobility of their nature, which is the border between the visible and invisible world and ‘deification in Christ’. They overcome physical necessity, and extend their existence to God, feeling free from anything which holds them captive on earth. However, for prayer to be real, ...
It’s so distressing to see that, at feasts and festivals of the Lord, the enemy also has a portion, that is, a tax from Christians. And this tax is exceptionally high. The greater the feast, the higher the tax that Christians pay to the enemy.
The initial gift of deification, offered by the Living God to His cosmos and His beings, is so powerful that, at the end, created cosmos gave birth to Panaghia, the Mother of God, through Whom the Living, Uncreated Hypostatic God the Word was incarnated and became perfect man. Namely, He became the truly Messiah and the truly Savior of the world, visible and invisible. Thus, through Christ, created cosmos, the church in potency, becomes, indeed, Church in actuality. But, in order for something to be a church, it must primarily be Orthodox. That is, it must have a proper account (doxa) and theory (theōria) about God. Without proper account and knowledge of God we lie not only about God but also ...
The most important issue is that of judging others. We should be very wary of that. In other words, the greatest toll-house we have to get through will be that of passing judgement on others.
In the course of His earthly travels and in the context of teaching about the coming of the Kingdom of God, Jesus performed many miracles. In the Gospel reading for the third Sunday of Luke, we see how a miracle performed by Our Lord Jesus Christ actually unfolded. During his ministry, Jesus travelled to towns and villages, where he taught and worked wonders. The Lord had no sooner approached the gates of the city of Nain, together with the crowd of people who accompanied Him, than He was met by a procession leaving the town, accompanying a dead young man. The small town was deeply sad. A stricken mother was walking behind her precious, only son towards his last resting-place. ...
When you want to know God’s will, set your own aside, together with any other thought or plan and, with great humility ask to become aware of it in your prayers. Then, whatever is formed or bears weight in your heart will be from God. Those who have greater boldness and practice in praying for this hear the instruction more clearly within themselves and become more careful in their lives, doing nothing without divine instruction.
In today’s passage, from the Apostle Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, a very unique experience is revealed. This was something that had never happened to anyone before! What was this experience? It was this: The Apostle Paul ascended to the third heaven, over all creation, and reached the spiritual realm in Paradise. He heard so much adoration in Heaven, but he could describe none of it to the people! The Apostle of Christ was in no hurry to announce this to the world. He kept it secret for fourteen years! Perhaps he never would have spoken of it, if his love for the Christians in Corinth had not compelled him to support them in the faith. What had happened? We ...
The following text which will be published in three parts, is Georgios P. Pavlos’s talk at the 8th International Conference of Orthodox Theology, Under the Auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate “The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church: Orthodox in the 21st century”. All Christians are watching today in agony and prayer the blessed struggle of the Patriarchate of Constantinople for the unity of all Christians and the transmission of Christ to all Nations and all people. Therefore, I dedicate this talk to the martyric Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in New Rome and to the martyric person of the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew, who silently and in simplicity expresses this agony for the unity of the entire Christian world, no least ...
Avarice makes many people unjust, in the hope of acquiring wealth, and it becomes the cause of much evil among people. It’s a passion of the soul that causes a thirst for gold, and that eats away at it no matter how much gold is amassed. Avarice is a master at poverty, because it enriches itself but not those who have it. They are left lacking and, essentially, impoverished.
Instead of starting with ourselves, we always want to change others first and ourselves last. If only we would all start with ourselves, there’d be peace all around. Saint John Chrysostom says that no-one can hurt people who don’t hurt themselves- not even the devil himself. Do you see, we’re the architects, the sole architects, of our future.
With Christ’s blood, everything was pacified, on earth and in heaven. The heavens were sanctified, the devil expelled. Now he’s where the people are whom he deceived. ‘Your will be done’ means; ‘May peace come to earth as it exists in heaven’.
3. The anthropological unlocking as the universal paradigm of man’s constitution Our analysis of hesychast experience demonstrates its epistemological transparency. Now we come to the test of its anthropological full-bloodedness: is it possible to extend or generalize the principles found in hesychast anthropology to other domains of anthropological experience and eventually to the totality of the latter? First of all, hesychast anthropology opens the way to general anthropology of spiritual practices (its basics are presented in my works). The set of these ancient practices created by world religions is not big, but they are of considerable importance for understanding the phenomenon of man because they can be seen as schools of pure anthropological experience. The reconstruction of their anthropology is difficult since ...
Believe that it’s just as or even more easy to understand God’s spiritual gifts as it is to breathe the air that gives you life or to eat and drink. Prayer is the breath of the soul, it’s its spiritual nourishment.
Satan pressurizes only because we allow him to, he triggers our passions and the bodily and spiritual urges of our nature. He creates opportunities for sin, always reminds us of the times we’ve fallen, but he doesn’t have permission from God to force us into sin, because then we’d have no guilt and nobody would be able to escape his snares. But if we fall willingly into a decline, if we’re attracted by the bait the devil dangles and give in to sin, then it’s not the devil who’s to blame, but we ourselves.
2. Hesychasm in the prism of anthropological reflection Synergic anthropology starts with the complete reconstruction of hesychast anthropology. Let us point out its principal elements and stages. Hesychasm is ascetical and mystical practice of Eastern-Christian (Orthodox) Christianity which begins to form itself up together with the emergence of Christian monasticism in the 4th c. in the practice of the Desert Fathers of Coptic Egypt and Palestine. It achieves its accomplished mature form in a thousand years, in Byzantium in the 14th c. Still in the Middle Ages it spreads all over Orthodox oikumene and then undergoing many crises and breaks continues its living existence up to our days. As an historical and anthropological phenomenon hesychasm (as well as any spiritual practice) represents ...
Abba Pimin was right to say that the sign of a true monk is how he reacts to temptation. According to the Wisdom of Sirach (2, 1), a monk who truly comes to work for God should prepare his soul against temptations, so that he won’t be surprised nor upset by anything, but will believe that whatever happens is because of God’s providence. Where God’s providence is, everything is good and everything that happens is for the benefit of the soul. Everything that God does for us, He does in our own best interest, because He loves us and spares us. As Saint Paul says (I Thess. 5, 18), we have a duty to be thankful for His goodness and ...
