Fr JOnah from Taiwan, speaks on the Gospel of the 5th Sunday of Great Lent (Mark 10, 32-45).
Today the Church is facing another iconoclast controversy: the pressure being exercised upon it by secular society to conform to its values and ideals, so that the Church will also become secularized. The danger to the Church from secularization is enormous. Instead of the Church helping society to become more ecclesiastical, the world is attempting to influence the Church and turn it into the world. So, the Church will retain its forms and norms, but will lose its faith. It will suffer the same fate as Papism, about which Saint Nektarios wrote: ‘Through the dogma of infallibility, the Western Church lost its spiritual freedom, it lost the adornment of this freedom, it was shaken to its foundations, it was deprived of the ...
All Christians want to go to paradise, but they don’t want to work for paradise. It’s not enough just to want salvation. For your wish to be fulfilled you have to struggle, you need iron determination. » Saint Theophan the Recluse
Before you come to Holy Communion, pay attention to what you say: ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors’. Do you forgive? You’ll be forgiven. Approach with boldness. It’s bread, not poison. So look to it. Have you forgiven? Because, if not, you’re lying. And, what’s more, you’re lying to Him from Whom you can’t hide it. You can tell God lies. But you can’t hide from Him. He knows what you’re up to. He sees through you. He examines you inside and out. He searches you inside and out. He judges you inside and out. And He either condemns you or crowns you. » Saint Augustine of Hippo
Fervent love for Christ nourishes more than any material food and gives lots of calories to the soul and body. It often heals incurable diseases, without medicines, and bring repose to the soul. » Venerable Païsios the Athonite
People’s need to confirm their faith in the inaccessible God and His energies leads them to seek miracles, to exaggerate them or even to make them up. In this sense, miracles as miraculous events can be found in all religions. In the New Testament, the various cures effected for the sick, the resurrections of the dead and other expressions of the love of Christ and the Apostles towards those in pain, are called ‘signs’. A miracle provokes astonishment, surprise, whereas a sign demonstrates something, that is, the kingdom of God- already in existence- where the results of decay no longer obtain. The challenge of the Scribes and Pharisees to Christ- ‘We want to see a sign from you’ (Matth. 12, 38) – ...
When we think of the saints, they think of us and help us. So you make friends with the saints, which is the surest form of friendship. Then you can be alone and live with everyone: with the saints, the angels and everybody else in the world. » Venerable Païsios the Athonite
16 April 1989 In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We keep today the memory of Saint Mary of Egypt in the gradual progression from glory to glory which Lent is, and which must lead us step by step to facing the supreme glory of the Divine Love crucified, the sacrificial love of the Holy Trinity. Saint Mary of Egypt was a sinner, someone whose sin was known to everyone and not to God alone; perhaps she was the only one who was least of all aware of it because sin was her life. And yet, one day, she wanted to go and venerate an icon of the Mother of God in a church. The supreme beauty of ...
When people begin to be steadfastly united with God in prayer, they never want to be separated from Him. Because the sweetness they taste through the Divine Presence is so great they never want to taste anything else. » Saint Theophan the Recluse
People who won’t accept a word of advice, even from people who love them, are, in the end, like warped pieces of wood and render themselves useless spiritually. Just as planks that you can’t plane to make furniture end up as scaffolding or a staircase where they’re trodden on and muddied and eventually end up in the fire, these people are also destroyed, in the end. » Venerable Païsios the Athonite
This period of Great Lent through which we’re passing, and also the worrying social phenomena we see on a global scale, challenge and invite us as people to reflect on and weigh up why it is that almost the whole of mankind is in turmoil. Tension between ourselves and between nations, loathing and intolerance within states and between different people are part and parcel of daily life. The result is conflicts, sometimes of considerable proportions, with people as the victims. Even worse, these victims often belong to the most vulnerable groups who have no responsibility for or relation to the criminal behaviour of those at whose bidding the disasters were created. What’s the cause of all the turmoil and confusion, which ...
The intellect is the organ of wisdom, whereas the reason is that of knowledge. The natural, internal certainty of the intellect and of the reason is the organ of faith, which is a product of wisdom and knowledge. Natural charity is the organ of the gift of healing. Because every divine gift has the apposite and appropriate receptor of the organ as a force or attraction or inclination. For example, people who cleanse their intellect of every fantasy, receive wisdom. People who have set reason in control of their innate passions, I mean longing and desire, receive knowledge. People who have unshakable certainty, with their intellect and reason, as regards divine matters, receive faith that is capable of anything. And those who have performed ...
Watch Fr. Joanh’s from Taiwan sermon on the parable of the possessed young man (Mark 9, 17-31).
A very active priest had a dream once, which he described to us as follows: ‘I was sitting in an armchair, drained and exhausted from all my work. My whole body ached from weariness. A lot of people in my parish were seeking the ‘Pearl of great price’. And many had found Him. The parish was doing well from every point of view, and my soul was overflowing with joy, hope and courage. My sermons made a great impression. Lots of people were coming to confession. My church was always packed with people. I’d managed to galvanize the whole parish. I was so pleased with all this that I worked every day until I was exhausted. While I was thinking about all this, ...
If somebody accuses you of committing a sin that you didn’t do, humble yourself and you’ll inherit the crown of incorruption. You’ll be wise when, through your silence rather than anger, you stop the mouths of others, who speak evil. Don’t become angry or enraged except with yourself. Anger and stubbornness are uncontrollable forces of the soul. » Elder Arsenie Boca (of Romania)
Every power of the enemy and the devil is destroyed by patience. Cut off your will and don’t seek any other path to salvation. You should know that those who don’t subject themselves to one (their Elder or Confessor), subject themselves to many, and in the end are subject to no-one. Every time you cut off your will, you’re counted as a martyr before God. >Blessed Joseph the Hesychast
The blind monk There was a blind monk in Cyprus who, when he heard that the saint had the grace of healing those with impaired vision, came to him and begged him for a cure. He promised: ‘If you have mercy on me, saint of God, and give me my sight, I’ll stay here and serve your holy church till the end of my days’. Having promised this and entreated the saint with a heart full of pain, he was cure by a visitation of the saint and saw very clearly. He remained with the saint for a certain length of time, but, because of demonic action, he fell into the sin of sloth. He forgot his promises, left the place ...
People who are proud of the gifts they’ve received and boast as if they hadn’t received them from God (I Cor. 4, 7) rightly call down upon themselves the wrath of God, Who allows the devil to wage mental warfare against them, to disturb them in the manner of practicing the virtues and to muddy their transparent knowledge in contemplation. In this way, they’ll learn about their sickness and recognize the only force within us that fights against the passions. And when they’ve repented and been humbled and have cast off their boastful conceit, God will have mercy on them and they will avoid the wrath which descends upon the unrepentant and which takes away the Grace which guards the soul and ...
The Church of Christ is Catholic in the sense that it contains the full complement of truth and Grace for the enlightenment and redemption of the world. It is also Catholic in the sense that its potential strength is not to conquer, but to hallow the world. The head of the Church is Christ and we are members, linked by common faith in an ‘association of love’. The history of the Church is one of struggle for the sanctification of the faithful. » Elder Ephraim of Arizona
Those who believe that they’ve achieved the limit of virtue will no longer seek the ultimate Cause Who provides all good things, because they have restricted the force of their desire to themselves alone and they lose the necessary requirement for their salvation. I mean God. But those who are aware of their natural poverty don’t stop running in haste to Him Who can make up for our shortcomings. Those who have understood that virtue is boundless never cease to run towards it, first so as not to miss the beginning and the end of virtue, that is God, by restricting the movement of their desire to themselves, and secondly in case, without realizing it, they believe that they’ve reached perfection and ...
