Elder Paisios In the summer of 1975, I was blessed with going for the first time to the Garden of the Mother of God, Mount Athos (Agion Oros). I visited various age-long monasteries; I paid my respects to many of the priceless treasures of the Holy place, that is, holy remnants of martyrs and saints of our faith as well as holy icons. I participated in the daily all-night long masses which are concluded with the Divine Service early in the morning. I sat at the simple monastery table, where everything reminds you that you eat in order to survive and fight for your salvation and you do not live in order to eat, where the reading of the devout ...
As I mentioned in the recent article about the Elder, I was fortunate enough to translate his biography of Saint Arsenios. As a result of this, I met him on a number of occasions. Were I a more saintly person, I would no doubt have recognized more easily the sanctity within the Elder, but being a mere word-bodger and erstwhile teacher I noticed things which I had been trained to look for. The most obvious of these was his intelligence. He really was very bright. With very little formal education, he was still able to read the difficult Greek of the Fathers and quote it as required. When I’d finished the translation, I was asked to write an introduction and did so. ...
Eventually, Elder Paissios got cancer and was taken into hospital in Thessaloniki. At the hospital, they looked after him as best they could. Nevertheless, his cancer spread so much that the end was very near. His departure for Heaven was a matter of time. He had been preparing himself for this journey all his life. Thus, for whatever time was left, he wished to stay at the monastery of St John the Apostle in Souroti. Mr. Christofer Oikonomou, now deceased, was near him and he describes in a letter geronta’s departure from the hospital. Today, Fr Paisios left the hospital. There were many people there. We were told that he would give his blessing in the reception. Lots of people, women, doctors, ...
Almsgiving is a good and God-pleasing effort, provided you make sure to rid your heart of pride, wickedness, envy greed, deceit and other passions. Unless people try to cleanse their hearts and if they rely solely on their almsgiving, they won’t receive much benefit. Because they’re building with one hand and knocking down with the other.
(Previous publication...) We can see in this preamble to the law on the correction of social injustice that it has a theological basis. It refers to the passions which sway people when they distance themselves from God and which spur them on to increase their own wealth and the injustices heaped upon the poor. It also states that the adoption of laws to support social justice is motivated by love, is in accordance with Divine Providence, and that the survival of the empire is involved. It is apparent, then, that the emperors were not moved by some ideological social model, but by the theology of the Church. This law also failed to achieve the expected results. Thereafter Konstantinos VI Porfyroyennitos (Porphyrogenitus) passed ...
Many saints, before the final decision to embrace the Christian faith, had shown toughness, misanthropy and sin. So find application the Biblical words: "where sin increased, grace increased all the more" (Rom. 5,20). Where the size of sin seemed scary, the grace of God appeared much greater than previously. Something similar occurs in the life of the Russian Princess Olga, which was adorned with the nickname "Isapostolos" (that is, equal to Apostles), just as Constantine the Great. In the life of St. Olga, honored by the Church on July 11, we read that after the murder of her husband, prince of Kiev Igor, she behaved with incredible cruelty and avenged not only to the killers but also to the whole tribe ...
He was born in Vryoulla or Vourla in Asia Minor. As a seventeen-year-old, he and six other Christians were deceived and converted to Islam. When he appeared before his mother in Turkish clothing, she threw him out, saying: “I gave birth to a Christian, not a Turk”. He left, greatly saddened and soon came to understand the harm he had done himself. In Smyrna, he confessed to an Athonite spiritual father, who advised him to go to the Holy Mountain. He came under the guidance of Elder Stefanos at the skete of Saint Ann, at the house dedicated to Saint John the Theologian. “Persecuted and reviled”, he underwent “many trials and tribulations, because of the envy of the hater of good, ...
Christ, as the most biased referee and umpire in our contests, keeps the balance between us and our opponents, tempers the excessive power of their attacks and, besides, ‘together with temptation;’ gives us ‘the strength to win once and for all’. If we didn’t have this divine assistance the demons would certainly overwhelm us.
So it’s natural for people, who’ve been made in the image of God, to desire their Creator as their model. It’s this longing for the divine that’s the foundation of our being. Whatever God has, the eternity, the infinite, the immortality, the living forever, the bliss are what the human spirit is continuously reflecting upon. That’s what it imagines and longs for, inventing ways and means and schemes to satisfy this thirst and desire. Confirmation of this is the effort we put into it and the aversion we feel for any other pursuit we might engage in. Look at the various achievements we’ve made. As soon as we’ve achieved them, we tire of them and turn to others and others ...
A good analysis of these efforts on the part of the emperors is presented graphically by Gerard Walter in his book La vie quotidienne a Byzance au siècle des Comnènes (1081-1180) . Writing about the privileged classes, among whom were the nobility, he says that the rich in Byzantium were called the magnates and were prominent among the military leaders and the administrative class. The administrators were also land-holders who ran the Empire and would often buy parcels of land in their provinces. The rich land-holders also aspired to an administrative position in order to enjoy the title associated with it. So civil servants were also land-holders, that is they ran the administration and also owned stretches of land. At the ...
‘I don’t know with what method and in what way I’ll ever bind this friend of mine (i.e. the body) and bring it to judgement. Because before I bind it, it’s loose again and before I can judge it, I’m reconciled to it. Before I punish it, I feel sorry and relent. How can I defeat it, when, by nature, I love it? How can I be free of it, when I’m joined to it eternally? How can I condemn it, when it’ll be raised with me? (Ladder 15, 83).
Ambition is the intense desire of those who love glory to acquire it and a good reputation. Ambitious people chase after glory, which is the aim of every one of their works and actions. They pursue it by every available means, fair or foul, and do whatever it takes to achieve it.
Any serious observer of the creation of the world, no matter from which side they approach it, the material or the spiritual, will feel the presence of an inexpressible mystery in all phenomena. But only a healthy spirit will be able to orientate itself properly and provide a proper interpretation to the enigmatic mystery of the cosmos. The experience which a healthy human spirit acquires through contact with perceptible and notional things leads directly to a longing for the infinite, the eternal, the absolute and deduces that the basis and purpose of everything is ‘eternal life’. In its proclivity for the absolute, the human spirit focuses all its efforts on taming the finite, the mortal, the perishable and, in general, on ...
SACRED AND SECULAR IN LIFE AND ART A WORKSHOP DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF PHILIP SHERRARD OXFORD, 14-17 JULY 2016 All sessions to be held at ST GREGORY’S HOUSE - 1 Canterbury Road, OX2 6LU, except Saturday afternoon session which will be held at the Ioannou Centre, 66 St Giles, OX1 3LU Organized by the Ainos Cultural Society in cooperation with the University of Winchester, the Orthodox Theological Research Forum, the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius and the House of St Gregory and St Macrina This event, dedicated to the memory of Philip Sherrard, on the occasion of the twenty years from his death, will focus on various aspects of the always interesting topic of the sacred in life and art. The workshop ...
You’ll be a spiritual person when you can see that making money and spending it freely is no more than a short-lived fantasy, when you know that the virtuous and God-pleasing way of life is very different from wealth. When you consider this carefully and retain it in your memory, you won’t sigh, you won’t mourn, you won’t speak badly about other people, but rather you’ll thank God for everything, seeing those worse than you depending on words and money. That’s the worst passion of the soul, together with desire, glory and ignorance.
The consumer society and capitalism are associated with the effort to accumulate wealth and material goods and with personal prosperity. But when some people manage to concentrate in their hands a great deal of material wealth, this means that some others are deprived of it. In this way, social injustice is created and people are divided into the rich and the poor. Of course, the ‘spirit of capitalism’, as desire, ostentation and enjoyment is associated with all social classes. We shall look below at how the Christian Roman Empire (‘Byzantium’) addressed the problems which arose from social injustice. With its headquarters in Constantinople, so-called Byzantium, the Christian Roman Empire was distinguished for its charity, which is how it survived for a ...
