DAY EIGHTEEN 21. It happened one day that one of the brothers in the monastery of Father Elias was tempted. Cast out of the monastery, he went over the mountain to Father Anthony. The brother lived near him for a while and then Anthony sent him back to the monastery from which he had been expelled. When the brothers saw him they cast him out yet again, and he went back to Father Anthony saying,
DAY THIRTEEN 16. A brother said to Father Anthony, Pray for me,” The elder said to him, “I will have no mercy upon you, nor will God have any, if you yourself do not make an effort and if you do not pray to God.” DAY FOURTEEN 17. One day some elders came to see Father Anthony. In the midst of them was Father Joseph. Wanting to test them, the elder suggested a text from
DAY EIGHT 10. He said also, “Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of inner peace. So like a fish going towards the sea, we must hurry to the cell, for fear that if we delay outside we will lose our interior watchfulness. 11. He said also, “He who wishes
DAY ONE 1. When the holy Father (Abba) Anthony was living in the desert he was afflicted with lethargy (“accidie” – despondency/melancholy), and attacked by many imaginations (“logismoi”- thoughts/imaginations). He said to God, “Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts will not leave me alone. What shall I do in my afflictions? How can I be saved? A little later, when he went outside, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his
By Fr. George Morelli “But whosoever shall cause one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be to his advantage that a millstone turned by an ass were hung upon his neck, and he were drowned in the deep of the sea.” (Mt. 18:6) In the United States and many European countries as well, we are coming up to the annual festival of the celebration of “All Hallows’ Evening.”
By Father Lawrence Farley We Orthodox confess that we are amphibians—that is, that we are part animal, part angelic, that we simultaneously inhabit both the visible and the invisible world, the realms of both men and spirits. We have prayers in our daily prayer rule to our guardian angel, and we ask for help against the attacks of demonic spirits. For most of us, this bi-partite existence remains mostly theoretical, in that while we acknowledge
SUNDAY 1. Be always with Christ and trust God in everything 2. Pray as you can, not as you think you must 3. Have a keepable rule of prayer done by discipline 4. Say the Lord’s Prayer several times each day 5. Repeat a short prayer when your mind is not occupied 6. Make some prostrations when you pray 7. Eat good foods in moderation and fast on fasting days MONDAY 8. Practice silence, inner
From time immemorial, the Church has celebrated the Most-holy Theotokos as the patroness and protectress of the Christian people, who, by her intercessory prayers, implores God’s mercy for us sinners. The help of the Most-holy Mother of God has been clearly shown numerous times, to individuals and to nations, in peace and in war, in monastic deserts and in densely populated cities. The event that the Church commemorates and celebrates today confirms the Theotokos’ consistent
Watchfulness and vigilance in thoughts, in feelings, and in our heart is the work of all Christians, and Holy Scripture itself has become the first source of inspiration and valuation of watchfulness. And Holy Scripture does not address monastics only. It addresses all Christians. If watchfulness be the lot of the monastics- ascetics because of the conditions of the physical and spiritual environment in which they live, it is equally true that the faithful, within
Let us begin by trying to understand the nature of malicious gossip and passing judgment on others. “Malicious gossip is to talk about your neighbor’s sins and mistakes, for example, to say that someone lied or became angry or committed fornication … Saying any of this is denigration, that is to say, speaking maliciously against somebody, talking maliciously about his sin. Passing judgment is when you condemn the actual person, saying he is a liar,
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