With Christ’s blood, everything was pacified, on earth and in heaven. The heavens were sanctified, the devil expelled. Now he’s where the people are whom he deceived. ‘Your will be done’ means; ‘May peace come to earth as it exists in heaven’.
3. The anthropological unlocking as the universal paradigm of man’s constitution Our analysis of hesychast experience demonstrates its epistemological transparency. Now we come to the test of its anthropological full-bloodedness: is it possible to extend or generalize the principles found in hesychast anthropology to other domains of anthropological experience and eventually to the totality of the latter? First of all, hesychast anthropology opens the way to general anthropology of spiritual practices (its basics are presented in my works). The set of these ancient practices created by world religions is not big, but they are of considerable importance for understanding the phenomenon of man because they can be seen as schools of pure anthropological experience. The reconstruction of their anthropology is difficult since ...
Believe that it’s just as or even more easy to understand God’s spiritual gifts as it is to breathe the air that gives you life or to eat and drink. Prayer is the breath of the soul, it’s its spiritual nourishment.
Satan pressurizes only because we allow him to, he triggers our passions and the bodily and spiritual urges of our nature. He creates opportunities for sin, always reminds us of the times we’ve fallen, but he doesn’t have permission from God to force us into sin, because then we’d have no guilt and nobody would be able to escape his snares. But if we fall willingly into a decline, if we’re attracted by the bait the devil dangles and give in to sin, then it’s not the devil who’s to blame, but we ourselves.
2. Hesychasm in the prism of anthropological reflection Synergic anthropology starts with the complete reconstruction of hesychast anthropology. Let us point out its principal elements and stages. Hesychasm is ascetical and mystical practice of Eastern-Christian (Orthodox) Christianity which begins to form itself up together with the emergence of Christian monasticism in the 4th c. in the practice of the Desert Fathers of Coptic Egypt and Palestine. It achieves its accomplished mature form in a thousand years, in Byzantium in the 14th c. Still in the Middle Ages it spreads all over Orthodox oikumene and then undergoing many crises and breaks continues its living existence up to our days. As an historical and anthropological phenomenon hesychasm (as well as any spiritual practice) represents ...
Abba Pimin was right to say that the sign of a true monk is how he reacts to temptation. According to the Wisdom of Sirach (2, 1), a monk who truly comes to work for God should prepare his soul against temptations, so that he won’t be surprised nor upset by anything, but will believe that whatever happens is because of God’s providence. Where God’s providence is, everything is good and everything that happens is for the benefit of the soul. Everything that God does for us, He does in our own best interest, because He loves us and spares us. As Saint Paul says (I Thess. 5, 18), we have a duty to be thankful for His goodness and ...
Unless you sacrifice your self for the sake of the slightest virtue or shed blood in order to receive the Spirit, you’ll never achieve virtue. This is how God arranged things, with his providential power: that we should gain eternal life through our voluntary death. Unless you die voluntarily, you’ll never achieve eternal life and you’ll become moribund. Those who don’t die a perfect death, by cutting off their own will, won’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven. » Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
True autonomy is achieved through humility, in other words through the emptying of the self in order to make room for all others. The saints imitate the humility of Christ in His sacrifice on the Cross. The emptying of the self is the greatest Christian virtue. God raised Christ on high in return for His self-emptying and humility. This is why those who imitate Christ’s humility as a human person also partake in His elevation as God and human. It’s a grave mistake to isolate yourself from others, invoking autonomy in order to do so, because this actually leads to heteronomy, to being enclosed within yourself. All the virtues and gifts granted to saints are social in nature. This is why ...
If you don’t want to be enslaved to the passions and the devil on a daily basis, you have to set yourself an aim that you’ll always bear in mind and that you’ll try to achieve, overcoming all obstacles through the Lord’s assistance. What is this aim? The Kingdom of God. » Saint John of Kronstadt
One of the worst of the notions prevalent in the secular outlook is the tactic of least effort. Those who espouse it- and unfortunately they’re in the majority- seek, with the least effort, or none if at all possible, to gain as much as they can, perhaps even the whole world. And this outlook is cultivated so that it pervades society as a whole. So we see school-children being taught that they can acquire knowledge without trying and that, if they don’t succeed in this, there are other, more devious ways to ensure a comfortable life. The very people who are responsible for the education of our children are concerned, not with how to promote education, but how to ensure that ...
A very interesting conference will take place on 12th and 13th October, in Rethymnon, Crete. The title of the conference is “Visions,Vows and Wonders: Religion and the Sea in the Eastern Mediterranean, 15th-19th centuries”. For further information about the conference program click here
1. “The tiny rescued bit” What stands high on the agenda of modern philosophizing is radical anthropological reflection. The “overcoming of metaphysics” has been virtually completed in the last millennium, and together with classical metaphysics classical anthropology has gone that established the European conception of man based on three cornerstones: subject, essence, substance. Now all these three fundamental concepts are rejected, which happened, chiefly, due to the work of French thinkers of the last third of the 20th c. Evidently, anthropological reflection took place here, and it was intense and radical up to the limit. It presented harsh criticism of the foundations of European anthropological thought and aimed at their total deconstruction, and it accomplished this mission very successfully. Such a ...
Our moral us to take steps towards our salvation, because otherwise we’ll be lost. Formal recognition of our moral freedom by the Saviour teaches us that our salvation depends not only on the action of the Grace of God, but also on our own consent and simultaneous activity. » Saint Nectarios of Pentapolis
Our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed many wonderful truths, which until then were unknown. Many of these concern our relations with other people, either inside our homes or outside in society. Perhaps there is difficulty in remembering everything one has to observe in dealing with other people. For this reason, Jesus, as a wise Teacher, has today given us a Life Rule, named for its great value, “The Golden Rule.” What does this Rule say? “And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise” (Luke 6:31). Words that are simple, easy, understandable, short and something everyone can remember. In the Old Testament, we read: “What you yourself hate, do not do to anyone” (Tobit 4:15). ...
The passions are hard material: the Ural Mountains, kilometers high! Grace is the sun. It rises, but the shadow of the mountain prevents it from warming the whole created intellect of the person. >Blessed Joseph the Hesychast
All the virtues are aspects of the one, great virtue, the virtue of love. When, as a Christian, you acquire love, you’ve got all the virtues. It’s love that expels from our soul the root cause of all evil and all the passions, which, according to the Fathers, is selfishness » Blessed Georgios Kapsanis, Proegumen of Gregoriou Monastery
It’s not food or favourable living conditions that ensure our health. It’s a holy life, the life of Christ. I know ascetics who fasted very strictly and never had anything wrong with them. Nobody risks getting ill from fasting. Nobody’s ever done so. » Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia
Cultivate the Jesus prayer and the time will come when your heart will leap for joy, as it does when you’re about to meet someone dear to you. » Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos
Abba Olympios recounts: ‘One time, a pagan priest came down to Skete and slept in my cell. When he saw the way the monks lived he asked me: “The way you live, do you never see anything of your God?” “No”, I answered. He went on. “Well, with us, when we hold a service for our god, he doesn’t hide anything from us, but reveals all his secrets. You make so much effort, with vigils, stillness and asceticism and yet you say that you don’t see anything. If you don’t see anything, it must be because you have bad thoughts in your heart which separate you from your God and prevent Him from revealing Himself to you”. I went later and told the elders ...
When He came into the world, Our Lord Jesus Christ had complete respect for the freedom of us His servants: ‘Let those who wish to do so follow me’. So, are we, His supporters, to declare implacable warfare against anyone who does not accept our views, against those who disagree with our views on ideology, politics or party? – Elder Gabriel of Dionysiou
