Ξένες γλώσσες

People who are overcome by the desires and pleasures and spend their lives out in this world will quickly fall into the snares of sin. And once sin's occurred, it's fire on dry grass, a stone rolling down a steep slope, a gully channeling rushing streams. And it plots people's perdition in all manner of ways.

Elder Païsios has no need of any praise or introduction from us. With his imitation of Christ’s love, he satisfied both God and other people and this is why he’s widely praised in the Church of God. He had the rare gift of being able to bring solace to people of all works of life, irrespective of their level of education or their spiritual state. I remember the case of a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst who came to visit out monastery after an encounter with the Elder. Not only had he found peace, but he also told me that what the Elder had said to him was the last word in modern psychiatry. It’s well known that the Elder didn’t read books, other than ...

All the evil you'll ever come across is the offshoot of the love of money. Wherever you find it growing: in the home, in the market-place, in the courts, in the legislatures or in the highest places in the land.

Let's not expect spiritual understanding from people who don't believe in God. Let's pray that God will forgive them and show them His light. And don't tire yourself out trying to talk about the truth to people who are full of selfishness and wickedness (even if they do call themselves Christians), because they've got no room for it.

Few would argue against the statement that the Sacrament of Confession is on the decline in the Greek Orthodox Church. While it is not my intention here to explain the reasons for it, one could speculate that this decline is due to the morally and spiritually lax standards of our modern society to which we have become accustomed. Perhaps sins which in the past would have given rise to a sense of regret and a desire to be forgiven now seem to us to be normal. This decline may also be due to the individualistic attitude of modern society which has influenced Christians also, and which extends even into the area of religion. What I mean by this is that ...

Without Christ, it's impossible to set ourselves straight and to free ourselves from the passions. We can't become good on our own. Love for Christ's the only remedy for the passions.

Monks and nuns aren’t weird people who, out of some sort of personal whim, have left the cities to go and lived in some monastery or other. They are, in fact, ‘angels of God’ according to Saint John Chrysostom; ‘those who live in accordance with the Gospel’, as Evagrios Pontikos calls them; ‘witnesses to free will’ according to Athanasios the Great, ‘the heirs to the suffering Church’ as Saint Symeon the New Theologian puts it; ‘the adornment of the head of the Church’, to quote Saint Gregory of Nyssa, since they have become dead to the world and bedeck the head of the Church. There should be no distinction between the monastic and the married life, because, if there is, ...

They say that these are fugitives, foreigners and wretches. That they’ve left their homelands in order to gather in our city. So tell me, is this why you’re distressed and want to destroy the glory of our city, because everybody considers it their own haven and they prefer it to their own land. This is precisely why you should rejoice and be exceeding glad, because just as people hurry to you to buy goods from your hands, so all the nations see our city as their own mother. So don’t destroy the honor they’re paying it and don’t cut short the praise they’ve given it even from ancient times. There was once a famine and the citizens of this town ...

‘Father’ said someone, ‘Holy Scripture advises us to be “wise as serpents”. Explain to us the meaning of the phrase’. ‘When the time comes for the snake to change its skin’, he answered, it goes through a narrow place. In this way, it gets rid of its old skin easily. The same with us. To get rid of our former self, we have to pass along the narrow path of the Gospel. But there’s something else, as well. When it’s in danger, a snake is interested in protecting only its head. We should imitate it. Our first concern should be protection of our faith. As long as we keep the faith, everything else is fixable. Somebody else asked: ‘Father, when, without me ...

Prayer's a spiritual weapon with which we solve all our problems. It's the master key to all the locks in the world, all the difficulties of life. Through their prayers, people who believe properly bring down heaven to earth and have God at their service. Prayer’s the oxygen for our soul and people who don't pray are consumptive. In effect they're dead.

Once, in a skete, a brother fell into error and after a conference, the others sent word to Abba Moïsis, asking him to come. But he didn’t want to. So the oldest of the monks sent a message to him saying: ‘Come, because people are waiting for you’. So he set out and made his way there. He picked up a basket with holes in it, filled it with sand and carried it on his back. The brothers came out to meet him and asked: ‘What’s this, father?’. The elder said to them: ‘My own sins are behind me and I don’t see them. And I’m supposed to come here today to judge the sins of somebody else?’ When they heard this, ...

Consider yourself lower and worse than everyone else and don't seek praise, honor or glory from other people.

  ‘I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Saviour; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth’. This great thinker could hardly fail to be attracted to the majesty of Optina. He was very interested in following the process of eldership and in becoming acquainted with the enlightened starets, Amvrosij. And in June 1878 he visited him and stayed for two days. ...