Without freedom, people would be just like any other animal. We’d be subject to servitude and our thoughts would revolve in a tight circle, within which they’d be restricted. Ideas of good and evil would be beyond our ken. We wouldn’t know what was shameful, wicked or false, we wouldn’t have the authority to act on out own volition and so emerge from the restricted circle of our innate impulses.
When the Lord enters our heart, the desert of the soul blossoms like a lily. Ah, why don’t we turn our hearts to the Lord more often? How much peace and consolation God has in store for us.
4. The slanders We have left to the end any reference to his cross. At various times people came to him asking for spiritual guidance. But these people had wicked thoughts, either from their passions, which had taken over their soul or from some undiagnosed mental illness, in the medical sense. They became tools for the prosecution and were the cause of great tribulations and sorrows. Although he was endowed with extraordinary mental acuity, the blessed man , was unable to see the danger. He saw the good in everyone. According to the Old Testament Proverbs, ‘the innocent believes every word’. He welcomed everyone with the same goodwill and alacrity. ‘I am indebted to both the wise and the foolish’, as ...
The closer people draw to God the more they approach each other. And again, the more they approach each other, the closer they draw to God.
We have to learn to bow our head to the will of God and not insist on having our own way. Obedience to God is achieved through obedience to our spiritual guides, our parents, out teachers, and those senior to us at work. If we’re obedient, we’ll realize that it is that’s required of us.
2. His zeal The Elder was a phenomenon as regards his conscious zeal, as the reader will easily recognize. It was imprinted on all areas of his activities and service, as also in his internal diligence. He demonstrated his unremitting zeal as a monk of the Monastery of Stavrovouni, in the brotherhood of the great hesychast , in the public affairs of New Skete, in Minthi, Koutloumousi and Vatopaidi. It was always intense: in times of calm, in persecutions, in his youth and in his old age. The most amazing thing is that, as soon as he recovered from the heart attack which brought him to death’s door, he immediately found his rhythm again. With this unrelenting zeal, he inspired his ...
Sin really is a dreadful tyrant, issuing wicked commands and shaming those who obey them. From the time it entered the world, it has destroyed freedom, debased the value we have as our natural right and has introduced enslavement.
1. The call through a divine vision In his fifteenth year, while he was on a hill at Paphos, floundering in the dark void because of a sense of the pointlessness of it all- he’d watched a documentary with scenes from World War I and the Asia Minor Catastrophe- the Lord appeared to him perceptibly, in a transmundane light. He was full of love and said to him: ‘Sokratis, this is why I made human beings. People are immortal’. Even he himself was never able to put into words the miracle which occurred in his adolescent soul. What he did realize, however, was that everything to do with his divine calling began then. The kindling of his heart with love for ...
Fatherly Exhortations to Students, Graduates and Clergymen You are human, the most beloved creature of God. The creature that God ordained to live forever. No other creature was destined to live forever. You did not choose the path of God. You chose your own path, the path of disobedience. That is why you were exiled on earth. Yet, God loved you so, that He became man. The God-Man. Who is both God and man. He died on the cross like a man for you. He descended into Hades. He defeated death. He completely shattered the very core of death. Christ rose from the dead in order to resurrect you. To grant you eternal life once more. This God, the God-Man Christ, called you. He ...
Cutting yourself off from the link with other people isn’t a feature of those who live in accordance with the commandment of love.
‘They will worship the Father in spirit and truth’ There was conflict between the Jews and Samaritans. They weren’t related peoples. Samaria was a region totally foreign to the way of life of Israel. The Samaritans took their name from Mount Shomoren. They believed that the true God was a local deity and they also believed in idols. The Israelites viewed the Samaritans with repulsion, and the Rabbis ordained that Jews were to have no dealings at all with the inhabitants of Samaria. Christ stopped to rest in this region, specifically in the town of Sychar, close to Jacob’s well. It was there that He had a dialogue with a Samaritan woman. The dialogue between Christ and the Samaritan woman From her questions and ...
At the presentation of the book on Elder Iosif Vatopaidinos, at the Athens Concert Hall, 19 April 2018. Nine years have passed since the demise of our blessed Elder, Iosif Vatopaidinos. Throughout this time, many devout souls were hoping earnestly to see his biography published. Naturally, there was not the slightest chance that the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi would fail to proceed with such a publication about the man to whom it owes its regeneration. It was in no rush to do so, however. For its capable helmsman and unflagging labourer for the cause of good, Elder Efraim, it was not his first priority. With great insight, he determined that the passage of time would preserve the text from any shades ...
There is a way for us to show good avarice. Let’s give just a little in this present life so that we’ll be rich in the next.
Though God is indescribable and unapproachable in His essence, and can change events with a single word, He came to us, descended to us, and submitted Himself to the whole of the human condition: the humiliation, the passion and death. He did all of this precisely in order to meet us. He didn’t say: ‘Here I am. Come and find Me’, but Himself came to us. What does this mean for us, in our everyday lives? We, too, must descend to where other people are, meet them there and stop demanding that they should come and find us. We have to take that step which Christ took when He came and found us- not so that we’d remain as we ...
Love of God is born of genuine faith, because those who love God can’t bear ever to leave Him. Grass can withstand fire more easily than the devil can deal with the flame of love. Love is a better defence than a wall and more resilient that diamonds. Love isn’t human words and concepts, nor mere declarations and addresses, but obvious concern backed up by works.
A large delegation of Norwegians was received by the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki, His Eminence Mr. Anthimos, on the occasion of their educational tour and pilgrimage to Byzantine churches and other Christian monuments of the city of Thessaloniki. The delegation headed by Torstein Theodor Tollefsen, professor of Ancient and Byzantine philosophy at the University of Oslo, was consisted of emeriti professors, doctors, researchers, other philhellenes and friends of Orthodoxy from Norway, as well as members of the Norwegian Orthodox Parish of St. Nicholas in Oslo, which belongs to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the Parish of the Metropolitan Church of The Annunciation of the Mother of God in Oslo of the Metropolis of Sweden and All Scandinavia. His Eminence, the Metropolitan Anthimos received ...
We think of as polite and cultured those people who aren’t conceited and don’t look down on others of their acquaintance who benefit from their generosity. They don’t ignore them, don’t think disparagingly of them, but appreciate them as they did at their first meeting.
In his second epistle to the Corinthians, at chapter 1, verse 26, the Holy Apostle Paul enumerates the dangers facing the Apostles. There were eight such dangers, the last being ‘perils among false brethren’. A short interpretation provided by the late Panayiotis Trembelas states: ‘in perils from people who were false friends and who bore name of “Christian” under false pretences’. Trembelas was right to point this out because false friends are those who come to us as friends, whereas in fact they’re anything but, because they have a different outlook, which is hostile towards us. Saint Paul departed this life on earth in 64 A.D, as a martyr. We may assume that he wrote the epistle sometime between 50-60 A.D. ...
Let us be ashamed then, my friends, ashamed, and bemoan our excessive indifference. Thirty-eight years that man had been waiting without getting what he wanted, but he didn’t give up. And he’d failed not through any carelessness of his own, but through being hindered and pushed aside by others. But he still wasn’t disheartened. On the other hand, if we’ve persisted for ten days to pray for something and haven’t obtained it, we can’t then be bothered to continue with the same fervour. And we often wait upon other people for a long time, enduring a lengthy campaign and performing servile tasks, very often with nothing to show for it, but we can’t abide to wait upon our Master with ...
I abandoned surgery in order to preach about Jesus Christ. I didn’t even think about the prestige of being a surgeon, which I certainly enjoyed.
