Protopresbyter Georgios Dorbarakis An acquaintance of Saint Païsios once asked him to pray for a girl who’d become involved with the occult. The saint said: ‘I have to feel her pain’. The man didn’t understand and thought the saint meant that he’d cause her pain, but was told: ‘Tell me something about her so that I can feel her pain and pray for her with pain in my soul’. All believing Christians know the value
Protopresbyter Themistoklis Mourtzanos ‘For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life’ (Rom. 5, 10) In our spiritual tradition, the attitude of people towards God is often portrayed as being hostile. God and human beings seem to be two different worlds, between which there’s no love or co-existence, but rather a yawning chasm. It may
~Saint Theophan the Recluse You complain about the volatility of your inner state- sometimes it’s good, at others it’s bad. It can’t be otherwise. ‘I’ve undergone unpleasant spiritual states in a variety of forms and continue to do so’. All we can do is bear them with patience and fortitude, without relaxing our spiritual struggle and without neglecting our observance of God’s commandments, which is exactly what you’re doing. A good spiritual state arrives. It
Fr. Andreas Agathokleous It’s not easy to look at the world. You have to step back a bit, as you would with a painting. Not too far, though, because then you lose the relationship, you don’t hear the messages, the words of its silence. The world’s characterized by noise, bustle, cares and not insignificant problems. You can’t see everything. It’s impossible to know everything. You can just guess at it, looking through your own microscope.
~Metropolitan of Pisidia Sotirios In our reading from the Letter to the Romans, St. Paul lays before us two basic truths, which are of particular interest for us today. The first, is that we should desire and seek the salvation of our people with all of our hearts. Not only those close to us, but all people. Second, the Holy Apostle tells us that the salvation offered by Christ is open to all, and is
~Archimandrite Georgios Kapsanis, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Gregoriou † Elder Païsios has no need of any praise or introduction from us. With his imitation of Christ’s love, he satisfied both God and other people and this is why he’s widely praised in the Church of God. He had the rare gift of being able to bring solace to people of all works of life, irrespective of their level of education or their spiritual
Sister Parakliti, Holy Skete of Saint Mary Magdalene, in Liti Grief has its own stages. According to the psychological approach [1], we need to pass through them with care and support. We need time to begin to discover meaning in everything that’s happening to us. With Magdalene, it didn’t take much time. Christ appeared to her and told her about the resurrection. With this faith, she then continued her life, which had acquired a different
Sister Parakliti, Holy Skete of Saint Mary Magdalene, in Liti This year, we’d like to dedicate the great virtue, that of love, to the memory of Saint Mary Magdalene. In volume two of the Philokalia, we find the ‘Four Hundred Texts on Love’ by Saint Maximos the Confessor. There are many sayings by the saint, but we shall focus on the first two of the first hundred: ‘Love is a holy state of the soul,
† Dionysios, Metropolitan of Servia and Kozani Today the Church honours and celebrates the sacred memory of Blessed Kyriakos the Anchorite, who was born in Corinth in 408. His father was called Ioannis and was a priest, while his mother was Evdoxia. The then bishop of Corinth, Petros, who was Kyriakos’ uncle on his father’s side, ordained him reader. But Kyriakos did not find inner peace in Corinth and so, at the age of eighteen,
Archimandrite Varnavas Lambropoulos A superficial reading of the epistle for the 6th Sunday of Matthew gives the impression of dry moralism. The apostle twice repeats the exhortation to the faithful to learn to take the lead in the performance of good deeds, which he considers to be examples of spiritual productivity. And once he counsels them to avoid heretics ‘after one or two admonitions’. True or merely useful? The obvious question arises, one which is often
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