When we keep Christ’s commandments, we’re not offering anything to Him. Because He has no need of anything and is the Giver of all good things. In fact, we’re simply benefitting ourselves by making eternal life and the enjoyment of its ineffable bounties available to us.
For us Christians, who are enlightened and illuminated in Christ, everything in this world is of value and has meaning, insofar as it’s a means and path to eternity. Because we see what isn’t apparent and gaze upon the invisible. We arrange the whole of our life in time on the basis of what’s eternal; what’s human on the basis of the God/Human. As long as there’s something eternal within the bounds of time, we survive on this. But when it’s absent we seek it beyond time, in the kingdom of the unending and the invisible. We gaze upon everything through the prism of eternity, that is, through the prism of Christ, since He is the eternal God and Lord.
Elder Iosif the Hesychast had reached a level where he was replete with divine Grace and was able to transmit it to his disciples. Elder Efraim Katounakiotis confessed that ‘you couldn’t get enough of the Grace that the Elder gave you’ . This is unusual and difficult for even many virtuous elders to achieve. It’s something which indicates the greatest boldness towards God and manifests the authentic, true nature of an Elder in all its magnificence. An Elder who possesses spiritual riches can pass them on to his disciple and the disciple, with fear of God, is able to receive this gift, so that he can guard it and pass it on in turn to those who come after him. ...
When they’d suffered many tortures and had shown endurance unto death, the holy martyrs became worthy of crowns and glory. The more cruel the tortures they underwent, the more glory and boldness they acquired before God. In the same way, and provided they were patient to the end and didn’t complain, souls that were subjected to great sorrows, (either from other people or from bodily diseases), were also rewarded with the same crowns and glory as the martyrs. And such people will not only enjoy all this in the future, from God, but even here they’ll be granted the consolation of the Holy Spirit. Since the path leading to heavenly life is, indeed, narrow and full of sorrows, and there ...
It is with some trepidation that I set pen to paper to record -what? What can one write about a personality whose holiness and spiritual wisdom stretched over many decades, who was shepherd to thousands of souls, saving them from destruction and bringing them into ‘a place of verdure’? About the comforter, the advisor, the father, the refuge of every soul in pain and every confused thought? About the last person who walked and strove in the ascetic life with the holy fathers whom God was pleased to give our generation, those who died to live, because, in living they were dead to the world. ‘so that the world may live’ through Christ, to Whom he brought it through his ...
Almsgiving is a good and God-pleasing effort, provided you make sure to rid your heart of pride, wickedness, envy greed, deceit and other passions. Unless people try to cleanse their hearts and if they rely solely on their almsgiving, they won’t receive much benefit. Because they’re building with one hand and knocking down with the other.
At some point, the Cell's door, of the old and poor building, would open and the Elder, who had been inside involved in discipline and heart prayer for the salvation of his soul and the souls of his brothers, would appear. His face was always exhilarated and his attitude cordial. He would receive us and ask us to sit in the "outdoors dorter" on seats made of pieces from tree trunks. He would shake our hands and at the same time offer us loukoumia and water according to the tradition of Mt. Athos. There, under the trees, with the songs of the birds "as the vocal drone", the Elder would start talking to us with "the words of eternal life" (John ...
Living with Elder Iosif, Father Sofronios learned empirically that monasticism is nothing other than living in the kingdom of heaven, experiencing divine Grace. He stressed that he never forgot those days and the enthusiasm engendered within him by this spiritual way of life which quickly elevated those determined to follow it to a sublime spiritual state. What Father Sofronios wanted was to be formed spiritually by an elder experienced in the hesychast life. He was especially interested in acquiring the Jesus prayer. ‘When I went’, he relates, ‘from the very first day the Elder interpreted in detail for me the meaning of the spiritual life. In particular, he tried to interpret the matter of Grace, that it’s the main factor that ...
There have been cases where women severely injured in accidents or suffering from some other terminal medical problem such as stroke or advanced heart disease have been kept alive by artificial means in an attempt to save the child they carried. Usually, if all goes well, the child is delivered through spontaneous or induced labor or is taken by surgery at the earliest possible moment. In most cases the child is unaffected by the mother’s condition and will be perfectly healthy. After the birth, if no further medical intervention will benefit, the woman is allowed to expire naturally. In cases where the mother’s condition is not as extreme and life is still in evidence, the birth of the child has, ...
Christ, as the most biased referee and umpire in our contests, keeps the balance between us and our opponents, tempers the excessive power of their attacks and, besides, ‘together with temptation;’ gives us ‘the strength to win once and for all’. If we didn’t have this divine assistance the demons would certainly overwhelm us.
He was born in Moscow in 1896 and his lay name was Sergei Symeonovich Sakharov. As he himself recalls, his first experience of the vision of the uncreated light occurred in his childhood. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Moscow. At one stage, his religious pursuits took him into non-Christian mysticism. His artistic ambitions led him to Italy, Germany and France. He found, however, that art neither fulfilled nor enlightened him. Elder Sophrony as a young monk. Monastery of Saint Panteleimon, Holy Mountain His return to the love of Christ resulted in a new, very powerful experience of the uncreated light at Easter of 1924, in Paris. While there he was influenced by his acquaintance with Fr. Sergei ...
On July 25, 1924, the future Elder Paisios (Eznepidis) was born to pious parents in the town of Farasa, Cappadocia of Asia Minor. The family's spiritual father, the priest-monk Arsenios (the now canonized St. Arsenios of Cappadocia), baptized the babe with his own name, prophesying his future profession as a monk. A week after the baptism (and barely a month after his birth) Arsenios was driven, along with his family, out of Asia Minor by the Turks. St. Arsenios guided his flock along their four-hundred-mile trek to Greece. After a number of stops along the way, Arsenios' family finally ended up in the town of Konitsain Epiros (north-western Greece). St. Arsenios had reposed, as he had prophesied, forty days after ...
When they’d suffered many tortures and had shown endurance unto death, the holy martyrs became worthy of crowns and glory. The more cruel the tortures they underwent, the more glory and boldness they acquired before God. In the same way, and provided they were patient to the end and didn’t complain, souls that were subjected to great sorrows, (either from other people or from bodily diseases), were also rewarded with the same crowns and glory as the martyrs. And such people will not only enjoy all this in the future, from God, but even here they’ll be granted the consolation of the Holy Spirit. Since the path leading to heavenly life is, indeed, narrow and full of sorrows, and there ...
Elder Iosif Vatopaidinos made his renunciation at the age of 16, in the summer of 1937, at the Holy Monastery of Stavrovouni in Cyprus. The reason behind his doing so was the following event. He’d watched a film, a comedy, and afterwards felt a great vacuum in his life, a profound necrosis as regards everything transient. He was standing on a bit of a hill in the town of Paphos that evening, when suddenly, within an other-worldly, gladsome light, the comforting, form of the Lord, full of love and peace, appeared. Christ manifested Himself to Him and said: ‘Is this why I created people? People are immortal’. After this vision, he decided to abandon worldly things and become a monk. ...
