The more people approach God, the closer they come to other people. And the closer they come to other people, the more they approach God.
Once upon a time there lived in the desert by the Jordan River a very holy hermit. His name was Gerasimos. Gerasimos had become a monk when he was still young man. Because he wished to perfect his spiritual life, he left the monastery and withdrew deep into the desert, far from the noise and vanities of life in the villages, towns and cities of the world. There alone with nature and the divine Creator of the universe, Gerasimos spent most of his long life. In the solitary stillness of the open desert the hermit could commune without interruption with God. Even words were not necessary for this communion. By day and night Gerasimos prayed and meditated silently within his heart. ...
Difference without Division. Communion and Otherness Written by John D. ZizioulasT. & T. Clark, 315 pp. In his foreword to Communion and Otherness, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, calls it “a great book and a converting one.” Williams warns that readers will have to work hard to understand parts of the book, and he is right: this is not an easy read, but it is very much worth the effort. John Zizioulas, an Orthodox bishop whose title is Metropolitan John of Pergamon and who has taught for years in Scotland and England, bases his work solidly in the Orthodox tradition while looking also at Levinas, Buber, Heidegger, Husserl, Lacan, and other more recent thinkers. Like many Orthodox writers, Zizioulas is sometimes critical ...
On many occasions, at the big feast of the province, instead of being the chief celebrant at the liturgy, as was his right, grandly wearing his monastic veil and expensive vestments and ordering his juniors about, the Elder would wear a shabby habit, would not concelebrate, but instead assisted and served the other Fathers as if he were the least of them. He’d carry the candles and do similar humble tasks. Needless to say, his great maxim was, as far as I can understand, the following: ‘Miss no opportunity to humble yourself”. Moreover, he never told a spiritual child of his ‘Do this’: for example ‘Bring a candle’ or ‘Polish a candelabra’. He would even, on occasion, actually pretend not ...
We have to learn to bow our heads to the will of God and not to insist on what we ourselves want. Obedience to the will of God is achieved through obedience to our spiritual guides, our parents, our teachers and our superiors in the workplace. If we practice obedience, we’ll understand what’s required of us.
Archimandrite Ioakeim Spetsieris, New Skete, (September 1943) Anecdotes from his life * His grandfather was a married priest called Ioannis. When Fr. Ioakeim, (Ioannis in the world) was born, his grandfather foretold that he would have his name, that is Ioannis, and become a priest. This grandfather had such virtue that he even had foreknowledge of his death. At the end of a liturgy he came to the Royal Doors and told the congregation: “This was my last liturgy”. He went to his daughter’s, who was married and they gave him a coffee. And there he told them: “That’s the last time in my life I’ll drink coffee”. * Ioakeim (Ioannis Spetsieris in the world) came from Kefallonia. His father was a farmer ...
Sin really is a horrible tyrant. It makes evil demands and shames those who give in to it. From the time it entered the world, it’s destroyed our freedom, corroded the worth that’s ours by nature and has brought us into slavery.
The negative arguments against transplants The negative arguments against transplants mainly invoke the sanctity of the human body and the spiritual dimension that these basic organs have in Old Testament anthropology, which is retained in the Patristic tradition. The heart, the blood, the liver and the kidneys are linked, in particular in the Old Testament with the spiritual life of the believer. In the Orthodox ascetic tradition, too, the physical heart is directly linked to the spiritual life. The way to a person’s deeper, spiritual heart is through the physical heart. Besides, the negative arguments claim that we owe our body to God and can’t simply give it away. A Christian’s body is the temple of God, or a member of ...
It has become a commonplace to hear someone say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Most people have a general understanding of what is meant. I usually assume that the person holds to a number of ideas that are considered “spiritual” in our culture, but that they are not particularly interested in “organized religion.” I understand this, because organized religion can often be the bane of spiritual existence. I am an Orthodox Christian – which is not the same thing as saying that I have an interest in “organized religion.” There is much about organized religion that I dislike in the extreme, and I occasionally see its shadow seep into my experience within Orthodoxy. But I repeat unashamedly that I am an Orthodox ...
July 12, the Feast of Saint Païsios People weren’t made to stay where they are. They were made to become what they aren’t. Our majesty isn’t to be found in the present or the past, but in our future. Stagnation in the present, as immobility, is the equivalent of death. And any movement towards the past is motion towards the non-being from which we were called by the Creator’s command. It’s only movement towards the future that denotes vitality and the chance of prospering. The time of our life acquires meaning and content only when it unfolds as a movement towards the fulfilment of the purpose of our existence, the purpose for which we were created. And that purpose is for us ...
Cutting yourself off from your brothers and sisters isn’t a characteristic of people who are living in accordance with the commandment of love.
Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou, Publisher: Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist 2010 - ISBN: 1874679738. To the always impeccable series of publications from the Holy Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, in Essex, England, has been added another exceptional book, inspired by the late Elder Sophrony and written by his beloved spiritual child and the person who is continuing his work, Archimandrite Zacharias. This book sketches the three stages of the spiritual life, on the basis of the theology of Elder Sophrony. The introduction presents, in masterful fashion, the nature and evolutionary path of faith. Initial faith is not born of fear, but precedes fear and then goes on to give birth to the beneficial fear of God which takes people’s hearts prisoner. Erroneous ...
It’s possible to be mercenary in a good way. We give a little in this present life, so as to be rich in the next one.
Byzantine and post-Byzantine Musical Manuscripts of Mount Athos and their Importance in Modern Research* The year is 1907 and the place is Mount Athos. A young man of not more then twenty-five years of age named Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard visits the Holy Mountain for the first time. The purpose and interest of his visit is the study of the musical manuscripts of Mt. Athos in his quest to decipher the earlier phases of Byzantine music1. With this visit of Tillyard to Mt. Athos the modem phase of musicological study of Byzantine music is born. To appreciate the significance of this event even more, let us mention that today, with our modem means of transportation, the tlip from the city of Thessalonike ...
5. According to the mystical interpreter Saint John of Damascus, in the human world the God-man, Christ, is "the only thing new under the sun."2 Indeed, this eternal news applies not only to His Theanthropic Presence but also to His Theanthropic Work and His Theanthropic Body, the Church. And man also is always new, eternally new, ("a new creation") in his theanthropic newness, in all his theanthropic experiences on the road to salvation, to sanctification, to transfiguration, to theosis, to becoming like the God-man. In this terrestrial world everything ages and everything dies. St. Justin Popovich (right) together with Elder Cleopa of Romania - Chelije Monastery, 1977 Only the person who has embodied himself in the God-man and is becoming like ...
The late Elder Ioakeim was a real Athonite. He loved the Mother of God, the Holy Mountain its history and the Athonite fathers. He was distinguished for his devotion to works, learning and virtue. He avoided care and verbosity. He was a forgotten, humble and good monk. His poverty gave him a rich heart. Fault was found with Elder Ioakeim, but he never found fault with anyone else. He was born Ioannis Balasis, in 1893, in the village of Dafni, in Kalavryta, of devout parents who had many children. He was the oldest child of eight. As a child, his first words, in a weird and wonderful fashion, were “I’m going to be a monk”. After leaving school, he worked for ...
