Sleep. It’s enough that you’re vigilant. Some people are vigilant for a few, others are vigilant for everybody
People are born with a dual nature: they are both material and spiritual. With the dust of the earth, God made our body and He gave life to this body by breathing into it the soul. The soul and body are indissolubly united. Neither is superior to the other; neither is opposed to the other. To the body has been assigned the precious role of being the temple of the soul, not its place of confinement, as in non-Christian philosophy. The soul has been given to us as being bodiless, rational and immortal. Body and soul have been fashioned by the Creator to co-exist and collaborate in absolute harmony. In this way, the aim of human existence will be fulfilled, ...
In the year 1628 the holy martyr Athanasios, a Greek by birth, the son of a çavuş who had converted to Islam, was martyred for his faith in Christ, with the collaboration of his father, who had urged him to convert from faith in Christ. From an early age, when he was twelve years old, this holy and blessed man abandoned his parents and the Mohammedan faith and fled to the Holy Mountain, where he became a monk in the monastery of Iviron. When he’d been in the monastery for eight years, he went to the khan to ask him if there could be a return to the Christian faith for his mother and father, who was a harsh, ...
Don’t accept bad ideas and you won’t be forced to sink into evil and its works. Because if you don’t sin in your mind then you won’t sin in deeds either. When you fall into various temptations, think of it as a great joy.
All those who are glorified in this world are lost with it. But those who are glorified by Christ are glorified through Him. The glory of the world is death, whereas the glory of Christ is life - life eternal and immortal.
This has led, in the West, at least, to humanists/secularists pushing their own agenda, which is a ‘logical’ (humanist) approach to social issues. A man and a woman love each other and want to marry. No problem. But if a man and a man or a woman and a woman love each other they must also be allowed to marry. It’s only ‘fair’. Men can become priests; women are also people, so they should be able to become priests, too. It may be (though it is highly unlikely) that the Church will adopt these positions, but if it were to do so, it should be on theological and ecclesiological grounds not because of secular or sociological demands. If this were ...
It’s estimated that more than 1,000 monks hand nuns have sprung directly from the ‘root’ of Elder Iosif the Hesychast. Because he had foreknowledge of this, the Elder didn’t allow his disciples to continue to live together after his death, but separated them, in an unusual step for the order of things on Athos. He knew in advance that they’d become Abbots and Elders of large coenobitic monasteries. When he was in the caves at Little Saint Ann’s, he was visited by Ioannis Bitsios, from Oranoupoli. This was at a time when he’d acquired three disciples: Elders Iosif Vatopaidinos, Efraim Filotheïtis, and Haralambos Dionysiatis. Mr Bitsios asked the Elder if these three young monks were part of his brotherhood and ...
Despair! A terrible word, a word that denotes catastrophe and calamity. From every kind of hardship. There’s nothing worse than despair. When people are in despair, they don’t go anywhere to be cured, but leave the untreated wound to fester, to eat away at the heart and to gnaw at the soul.
In confession, as in the whole of his everyday behaviour, Fr. Symeon was all love. Love overflowed from within him. He radiated love, not with words, nor with actions, but with his mere gaze, his smile, with a single word. He was formal, but not a slave to formalities. I remember one incident in particular. He’d given me the number of his personal telephone, the one in his room. I would usually phone him between 11-12 in the evening, which was the best time for him because, as he explained: ‘Now it’s the afternoon for me’. We’d speak without restraints of time, but he would still be up in the morning for his rule. One evening, around midnight, the son ...
From Arethas, Bishop of Caesarea: ‘Letter to the Emir of Damascus’ Arethas, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia (850-932) was born in Patras, in the Peloponnese and from 902 onwards was Bishop of Caesarea. He was a student of Fotios the Great and was distinguished for his great scholarship and his extensive interest in Classical and ecclesiastical philosophy. Together with Fotios, he was one of the foremost representatives and prime movers of the general revival of interest in arts and letters which occurred in the second half of the 9th and early 10th century . He was outstanding as an interpreter of the Scriptures, but also as a commentator on Plato, Loukianos (Lucian) and Efsevios (Eusebius). He also wrote scholia on ...
Our starting point is always wrong. Instead of starting with ourselves, we always want to change other people first, and ourselves last of all. If we would all just start with ourselves there’d be peace all around us.
A collaboration between N. Papakostas, Th. Papayiannis and N. Desekopoulos. The Revelation of Saint John according to Nikos Papakostas is being successfully presented in Greece and abroad for the fourth year in succession with glowing reviews from all the media. The work, as staged in the Theatre Saint Michel in Brussels, was broadcast by ERT WORLD throughout the world, while the performance in the cathedral of the Holy Cross and the Archangel Michel, in London, was transmitted by HELLENIC TV to an audience of Greeks abroad. The Revelation of Saint John is a work that touches all people, which moves between prophecy and vision, anxiety and transcendence, and has acquired a new and different form through its poetic rendition and musical setting ...
Over the last month or so, we at Pemptousia have run a series of articles in which prominent members of the Church (Abbot Efraim of Vatopaidi, Metrop
It wasn’t an easy matter for someone to become a disciple to an Elder such as Elder Iosif the Hesychast. Many tried, but couldn’t manage and left in the end. This is why the Elder didn’t initially want to accept Fr. Sofronios. But once he’d accepted him, by divine information as we’ve already mentioned, he was demanding with his disciple. And this, of course, was not for self-serving reasons, because he was always concerned about the spiritual benefit and progress of his disciple. He trained him with strictness and love, with penances and admonishments. He made the necessary incisions to cleanse his heart of the passions, so that he could begin to experience the Grace of God and sanctification. Our Elder ...
In the ranks of the Old Testament prophets, a special position is occupied by the Prophet Elijah, whose sacred memory the Church honours and celebrates today. In the New Testament, the name of the Prophet Elijah is frequently mentioned by Christ Himself. Zacharias, the father of the Forerunner, said that John would come “in the spirit and power of Elijah”, that is, that he would have the features and the zeal of the Prophet Elijah, that he would be the Prophet Elijah himself, whose return the people were awaiting. When Jesus bore witness to John the Baptist and praised him highly, He said that he was Elijah: “If you want, accept that he is Elijah who was to come”. The most ...
