While we’re in this life, we have the power and authority from God to break by ourselves the chains of the desires of the enemy, to cast off the burden of our sins through repentance and to be saved, thereby gaining the kingdom of heaven. Saint Efraim the Syrian
When I love another person with all my soul, it means that I pray for them. Those who have this experience are in Paradise. Abbess Gavriilia Papayianni
The yard of the Monastery of Saint Patapios at Loutraki, Greece Today the Church celebrates and honours the memory of the blessed Patapios the Desert-Dweller. This is the title accorded to the saint who lived in isolation in the desert, leaving behind the turmoil and joys of the secular life. He was born in Thebes, in Egypt, of devout Christian parents, by whom he was brought up with great care and concern and from whom he learned the Scriptures. What Saint Paul wrote to Timothy applies very well to Saint Patapios: “from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus”. Faith in Christ and in the ...
Once again we’ve been given the opportunity to devote a little time to the study of Christ’s Nativity in our life, as we approach Christmas, the great feast of the Lord. We’re given the opportunity to look at how we experience the personal advent of Christ, in our homes, in our monasteries, and wherever else we may be, but particularly in our soul. There are so many aspects of Christ’s incarnation that deserve comment and study. For example, we might look carefully at the icon of the Nativity where we will see a number of people and a variety of attitudes. And just as, in order to help a child to understand its own nativity we might call on it to ...
In the icon of the Holy Monastery of Stavronikita, there is a mosaic icon of Saint Nicholas, the patron of the monastery, which has an eight-centimeter long vertical split on the forehead. This is from a large mollusk which had embedded itself there during the period when the icon had lain at the bottom of the sea. So the icon gained the appellation ‘Saint Nicholas the Oysterman’. *** Tradition tells us that ‘it was drawn from the sea by the fishermen of the monastery at the time when it was being re-founded’. This occurred by chance when the nets revealed the shellfish in the forehead of Saint Nicholas. The fishermen attempted carefully to remove the oyster from the saint’s forehead. No sooner ...
God knows when there’s room in your heart. If you haven’t received something yet, it means that your heart’s not big enough for it. Your heart’s packed tightly, as when you force lots of things into a container and press them down so that there’s no room for air. There’s no room in your heart even for air and yet you want to make room for God, whom all the heavens can’t contain? Elder Aimilianos Simonopetritis
Saint Nicholas was born at the south-east corner of Asia Minor, in the town of Patara, in the 3rd century (at the time of the persecutions of Diocletian and Maximian) of devout and rich parents, who had been childless for many years. From an early age it appears that God had destined him for a life of sanctity and of dedication to Himself. The fact he became a “teacher of abstinence” is demonstrated by the fact that, on Wednesdays and Fridays, he took his mother’s milk only once a day. His parents brought him up as an observant and reverent Christian and taught him the Scriptures. Very early on, the Christians of the town of Patara decided he would make ...
The scene described in the Gospel reading for the 10th Sunday of Luke is both moving and revealing, as regards the intentions and sincerity of ordinary people and the attitude of our Lord towards them. Among the crowd, there was a woman of skin and bone. She was doubled over and in pain. She could hear the voice of Jesus, but wasn’t able actually to see him. Jesus made his way to this tormented woman. When he reached her, he said to her tenderly: ‘Woman, you are freed from your infirmity. Now you’re well’. Power surged through her limbs. Her body regained its strength. There was praise and gratitude in her heart. Wonder, joy and delight. The hypocrisy of the ruler of ...
Humility isn’t a matter of whether we’re prepared to dwell in a manger or in a stable. The essence lies elsewhere and it’s elsewhere that Christ wants us to be like him: by becoming meek and humble in heart. Not in what’s apparent, but in the depth of our heart. Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol
The aim of theanthropic education is the same as the goal of the Church, which is none other than our sanctification. Guardians and protectors of this education, which seeks our glorification not through ourselves but through Christ, are the Three Hierarchs, as luminaries of the Triune God and as glorious members of the Body of Christ. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos
You should come to Holy Communion in fear and trembling, with a clear conscience and having fasted and prayed. You shouldn’t make a noise, nor push or tread on other people. That is the greatest madness and the worst disrespect for the holy sacraments. Saint John Chrysostom
We should bombard people with our love. Elder Gavriil Tsafos
d) Immortality The victory over death, the sense and assurance of immortality is an experience that is common to all the saints and Elder Porphyrios himself. In the recorded interview mentioned above he also says: ‘The man who belongs to Christ should love Christ, and when he loves Christ he will be freed from the devil, from Hell and from death’. These are not the words of someone who has thought of this truth himself. They are words drawn from real personal experience and therefore possess the value of an eye witness’s testimony. It makes no difference that Elder Porphyrios, out of humility and a profound sense of human weakness, tells us that he has not yet reached that state. Rather, ...
‘Just as the darkness doesn’t disperse unless there’s light, in the same way sickness of the soul can’t be avoided unless the healer of our ailments comes and we’re united to him’. (Saint Symeon the New Theologian). The great saint, Symeon the New Theologian (who is given the same title as Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Gregory the Theologian) writes about the healing of the soul, a subject which, particularly today, is the most pressing concern for a great many people. Recourse to psychologists, the development of psychological sciences, the ambition of many young people to study psychology (as well, unfortunately, as the resort to occult groups who promise to ‘cure’ the soul, but simply confuse people even more), ...
When we look askance at somebody, some wicked force comes out from us and is transferred to the other person, just as the voice is transmitted through sound waves, and they really do suffer some ill. It’s like the evil eye, when one person has wicked thoughts about another. It’s not God who causes the harm but the evil thoughts of us people. It isn’t God punishing us but our wicked intention being transmitted to the soul of the other person in a mysterious manner which causes damage. Christ never wants harm to come to anyone. Saint Porfyrios Kavsokalyvitis
On the one hand there is the secularization which is threatening the Church, external, moralistic and Puritan paradigms which are making Orthodoxy a religion. One the other there are the cerebral models and flimsy intellectual constructs, as a phenomenon of our post-Modern era, or post-Christian, as many people would have it. These can be combatted only through empirical theology, through actual communion with the Uncreated, through the discovery of the real person. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos
Our Lord loves us as his children and his love is greater than that of a mother. Because a mother might forget her child, but the Lord will never forget us. And if the Lord himself hadn’t given the Holy Spirit and our great shepherds to the Orthodox people, we wouldn’t know how much he loves us. Saint Silouan the Athonite
When you don’t sin, don’t lie, don’t plot against your neighbor, then you have fear of God. Then you’re wise, you understand God and, in order not to sadden him, you don’t sin. Saint Iosif the Hesychast
His most essential characteristics In our opinion, the most essential characteristics of Elder Porphyrios’s personality were as follows: first of all, the fact that his membership of the Church was of a substantial and not a nominal kind; secondly, his boundless love for Christ and through Him his fellow men, which was accompanied by a saintly humility; thirdly, his experience of mystical joy in Christ; and fourthly, his sense of immortality in Christ. a) Membership of the Church Elder Porphyrios used to say, like all the saints, that Christ should be in the Church. This means that the faithful should be united with Christ and all of His people, and particularly with His archpriest, who is Christ’s representative. Yet this, being ...
‘Educated people are very difficult, because they have strong inclinations towards individualism. I’d even say this: the educated among us won’t stand for any adverse comment on their behavior, but instead each thinks he or she is always right about everything’ (Saint Sophrony in Essex). Clearly the saint wasn’t against letters and education. This would hardly have been consistent, since he was vastly educated, the author of many books filled with wisdom, and an artist of merit (graduate of the Moscow School of Fine Arts) recognized widely throughout Europe. He does, however, point to a problem of our times, and, perhaps, of every time: that people educated in secular matters, people of the arts and sciences, ‘have strong inclinations towards individualism’, ...
