In English

Like most of Abba Dorotheos’ work, this text is addressed to monks. Fundamentally, however, monastics of both sexes are simply people who have been called to live a particular way of life within the Church. So where Dorotheos says ‘monk’, it is appropriate to read ‘Orthodox Christian’. On a personal note, it’s always a pleasure to translate Abba Dorotheos. It’s notoriously difficult to transmit an experience from one medium to another, to describe the essence of a painting or a piece of music, for example, in words. One of the best examples of this is Saint Paul. There are passages in his epistles where he really struggles to convey an experience verbally. By and large, Abba Dorotheos deals with more ...

This virtue is related to the opening up of our heart, to an increase in its capacity. Other people’s faults have to find room, there has to be space for whatever they’ve done to our detriment, even their excuses, never mind whether we find these sufficient or true. All their weaknesses have to fit in. It’s often such a struggle to accept others as they are. Because we demand that they be as we want them to be. But it’s not like that. They’ve done us some harm, wittingly or unwittingly, They’ve got some strange habit or other. They may have been brought up differently from us, they may have certain external habits which jar, certain weaknesses, certain expressions of fallen, sinful ...

As the taste distinguishes sweet from bitter, so your heart, instructed by its feelings, will tell you what's good and what's bad.

According to the Scriptures, the most significant trait of the human soul is its likeness to the divine Being. This concept that human nature was built “in the image and likeness” of God indicates the highest value given to any being He has created. At no stage of the creation did God the Creator, express His satisfaction, except during the creation of man, which strangely enough did not happen by command like the other beings for which “he spoke, and they came to be” (Psalm.33, 9). Neither man’s abode came to be by command since “the LORd God planted a garden in Eden, in the east” (Genesis 2, 8) Therefore, the most crucial trait of the human soul is God’s breath; ...

Vengeance is the recollection of harm done to us and a desire for revenge. It's a wicked and tormenting passion, because it rots the soul, as well as clouding and troubling the mind and the heart. It doesn't understand forgiveness or sympathy. Being ruthless and merciless, it demands payback for the harm done. It's a disgusting evil, gestating in a malevolent soul.

The language of God is silence.

Rev. Patrick H. Reardon Inasmuch as the letters of St Paul are apparently the earliest writings in the New Testament, he is commonly—and not inappropriately—thought of as the Church’s earliest theologian. This persuasion, nonetheless, should not be taken to mean that the Church had no theology prior to Paul’s conversion. Indeed, on the very day Ananias baptized him, there already existed an authoritative body of Christian belief —a paradosis or “tradition”— of which Paul himself became both the appreciative heir and the ardent proponent. With respect to Christology, In particular, Paul was familiar with many points from that earlier tradition. He knew, for instance, that Jesus was a human being (Romans 5:15; 1 Corinthians 15:21). He also knew that Jesus was ...

How we should see them 1. As we’ve seen, there are a whole host of religious experiences. Some good, some bad. Beneficial and harmful. Revelations of God and black magic. In all these cases, however far removed they are from each other, in terms of both time and place, however different they are, we see that they represent a unified code of testimony to the existence of a world outside or beyond nature. We’ve been given genuine experiences in Holy Scripture. These are when God has spoken to people, has revealed Himself and the path of our salvation. Such revelations are:  His appearance to Adam  His appearance to Noah His appearance to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob  His appearance in the bush, on Sinai, at ...

The grace of our saints exists even on the wood of the holy icons. Once, in Asia Minor, a Turkish shepherd livestock farmer tried to chop through the old wood of an icon. At the first stroke, the wood started to bleed. The Turk was panic-stricken and gave the icon to some Christians, telling them about the miracle.

August is considered the month of the Mother of God. With the feast of her Dormition in the middle, canons of supplication are sung throughout the month in honour of Our Lady, culminating in the feast of the Precious Belt on 31 August. For centuries the Precious Belt has been kept in the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi. According to tradition, the Precious Belt of the Mother of God was given to Vatopaidi by Emperor Ioannis VI Kantakouzinos (1342-1354), who thereafter resigned office  and was tonsured a monk- with the name of  Ioasaf- at Vatopaidi, where he continued to live. This is the Dismissal Hymn of the Precious Belt, sung in the slow mode, in plagial tone 4, by the Daiilaii ...

When God turns away His face, then you really do fall into the darkness of Hell, into unbearable torments. Then you understand, even in part, what eternal hell will be like.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We have been keeping these days the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. There is a passage in the Gospel in which the Lord says to us, “No one has greater love than he who gives his life for his neighbor.” And these words resolve the antinomy between the horror of the Cross and the glory of it, between death and the resurrection. There is nothing more glorious, more awe-inspiring and wonderful than to love and to be loved. And to be loved of God with all the life, with all the death of the Only-Begotten Son, and to love one another (as well) at the cost ...

(previous publication: ) These well meaning Christians in particular no longer recognize that help, both for oneself and for others, requires the “prayer and fasting” commanded by Christ Himself. They resist the very idea that one must learn those difficult arts both through a life within the Church and under the guidance of someone with experience. In refusing such therapy, these Christians implicitly endorse the project which cost our forefathers Paradise:  They want to discern good and evil by themselves, and outside of obedience to God. Even if they do sometimes tolerate the idea of such obedience, they refuse to access its meaning by listening to their pastors. They have a deep suspicion of spiritual fatherhood, preferring guidance from therapists, friends, ...

Charity's one thing that shouldn’t be put off. Do it willingly. Because Scripture tells us to give alms with sweetness and joy. If you do it willingly, then you get twice the benefit. Because what's done with sorrow or out of necessity is joyless and without beauty.

‘No one has ascended into heaven other than he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’ (Jn. 3, 13-17). Christ’s words in this excerpt from Saint John’s Gospel form part of the discussion He had with Nicodemus, the Jewish leader who came ...

Prayer is approaching every one of God's creatures with love, and living in harmony with all of them, even the wild ones.