The life of a monk should be such that he should gradually become an angel on earth and a man in heaven.
Monastery of Grigoriou Spouts and water from the mountain, occasional springs here and there. Faucets and water at the entrance to the monasteries, cooling passers-by and visitors alike. Streams with refreshing, crystalline water, their sources in the ravines and, higher up, in the untrodden gorges or at the root of some oak tree seen only by God. Water that flows down to the sea, water that kisses Athos. Holy water in the forests of pine on the way to Saint Ann’s. A spiritual spring of holy water. Every corner has a spring, overshadowed by a broad-leafed plane tree or crisscrossed with ivy. Refreshing moments when you quench your thirst, bodily and spiritually. Under the dense foliage the weather takes a ...
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.
