Bishop Athanasios of Limessol speaks about an experience he had with Elder Paisios.
Category Archives: St. Paisios of Mount Athos
Holy Mountain’s Secret Cry
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Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios, Hierotheos, speaks on Mount Athos’ secret cry: the Prayer of the Heart
As biological life is transmitted, so spiritual tradition is a whole life.
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A guide speaks theoretically, but the Fathers beget spiritually.
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The Holy Mountain is a living organism.
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May the Lord find us worthy to hear its secret cry!
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Already in his youth, Metropolitan Hierotheos was particularly interested in the Fathers of the Church, working for a time in the monastery libraries of Mount Athos, on the recording of the codices. He was especially interested in the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas.
The influence of Fr. John Romanidis, the study of the patristic texts and particularly those of the hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia, many years of studying St. Gregory Palamas, association with the monks of the Holy Mountain (Mount Athos), and many years of pastoral experience, all brought him to the realisation that Orthodox theology is a science of the healing of man and that the neptic fathers can help the modern restless man who is disturbed by many internal and existential problems.
Within this framework he has written a multitude of books, the fruit of his pastoral work, among which is Orthodox Psychotherapy. Some of these books have been translated into various languages, such as English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. With these books he conveys the Orthodox spirit of the Philokalia to the restless and disturbed man of our time.
Books
- The Seer (2014). ISBN 9789607070838
- Empirical Dogmatics of The Orthodox Catholic Church. According to the Spoken Teaching of Father John Romanides. Volume 1. (2012). ISBN 9789607070753. Volume 2. (2013). ISBN 9789607070814
- Hesychia and Theology: The Context for Man’s Healing in the Orthodox Church (2007). ISBN 9789607070609
- The Illness and Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition (1993). ISBN 9607070186
- Life after Death (1996). ISBN 9607070348
- Orthodox Psychotherapy (1994). ISBN 9607070208
- Orthodox Spirituality (1994). ISBN 9607070208
- The Person in the Orthodox Tradition (1999). ISBN 9607070402
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St. Paisios the Athonite
Icons, Photographs and Video on his feast day
I may be on a pilgrimage in Romanian monasteries, but St Paisios’ the Athonite, my patron Saint‘s, presence is strongly felt all over Romania. Plenty of icons of his and books with his services and spiritual counsels in all monasteries and churches I have been so far! I truly regret having to leave this week of all weeks Greece, but thanks be to God, while this was going on inside Souroti monastery church on July 12, and this outside the church, near his tomb
Much longer queues than in 2013 … every year longer! The Lord is glorified in His saints!
the faithful all over in Romania were holding Vigils and praying Akathists and Supplication canons, asking for his prayers.
Wherever I go, the moment Romanians realise that I am Greek and my home town is near Souroti, they start asking for my telephone number and email, so that I can make arrangements and help them go and venerate his tomb.
Just in case you missed it, this is a beautiful documentary (in Russian with English subtitles) about the life of St. Paisios the Athonite and his years spent on Mount Sinai in Egypt.
And another one:
And yet another one by the Patriarchate of Moscow (a film documentary of six episodes with total duration of 5 hours on the holy life and work of Saint Paisius of Mount Athos):
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Weak and Fallen Before Easter
We need to recognise that as Christians, if we are truly following Christ, not just abandoning him at the Cross, denying him or God forbid betraying Him, we will receive the same insults. Even Pilate would not remove that charge which he pinned to the Cross, Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews, though the crowd protested.
May we all be blessed!
In a few hours, I’ll arrive at The Orthodox Christian Parish of the Holy and Life Giving Cross at Lancaster (United Kingdom), accompanying the Byzantine St Anysia Choir from Thessaloniki for Pascha; this choir also visited last year to help with the worship, particularly the long, demanding Holy Week services. We will also bring with us a hand crafted Icon, a comb and a prayer rope, all by St Paisios of Mount Athos, a Reliquary for containing these holy relics, and a handwritten Icon of his. We will also bring on loan for Holy Week a piece of St. Paisios’ clothing, his undershirt, from another Monastery in Greece.
I am deeply moved by the fact that I am ‘carrying’ my patron Saint, Saint Paisios, though the truth is that the Saints carry us! This is the nearest that people will get to venerating Saint Paisios since his body is not to be disturbed in Souroti.
I am still packing, since so many monasteries in Greece have overwhelmed us with their generosity, and there are so many blessings, candles, incense, icons, secondary relics etc. to bring to the UK!
The hectic days to follow at the Holy Cross parish will take away from me all phone connections and internet, but they will give me in return a precious chance to shut the world away and lock myself in the heavy, crushing silence of the Holy Week.
Before I do that, I want to wish you with all my heart to enjoy a Blessed, Life-Changing Holy Week and Easter!
I must admit that I am very tired. I feel tired, vulnerable and afraid, with no control over anything. I am so exhausted! Indeed, “Lent is a horrid period. Year by year, Lent is when some force within me pushes me out of my comfort zones, and I find myself in a lions’ den, face to face with the beasts, utterly unprepared to fight, totally helpless, fully aware that the only possible outcome is to be slaughtered.”
Slaughtered indeed! This is exactly what I feel! A corpse!
“This is nothing new. This happens every year. Yet, I somehow survive, because the same Force that pushes me out of my self-created kingdoms, out of my self-created games – that same Force saves me from those wild beasts at the last moment.”
And this changes everything.
And yet, every time, I forget all about this, and I experience such despair and death, just before God intervenes! As if He has utterly forsaken me!
Now I understand why one focus of the Resurrection icon is Christ’s hands, pulling Adam and Eve! I desperately need this Hand to pull me out of this Hell!Weak and Fallen! In such a desperate need of healing, repentance, an intervention, a meeting with my spiritual father, a literal falling into his arms, the Sacrament of Confession! Is this who I really am? How can just 40 days reduce me to this? Is this the real starting point of my change, repentance and redemption?
Deep in my heart, I bitterly realise that no healing is possible. No repentance is possible. No prayer is possible, until the heart that heals, repents and prays is my sinful, fallen, yet beating heart. False images do not have hearts. False images do not love. Most painful than all, false images will never reflect Christ, because there is nothing false in Christ, nothing common between Life and void. Prayer begins with pain at one’s fallen nature; it grows out of this pain, and its flowers bloom out of it.The taste of ashes in my mouth. Am I, fallen and depraved and sinful that I am, still the image of the Immortal God?
I need to hold on, just a little bit more, to the Living God, and may His immortal image remain within me. It may then reflect on me, bless me and I may grow into it. Day by day, year by year, I may grow into this image, and be more Christ-like. Then His Life will be mine, His Resurrection will be mine.
So many miles to go before I sleep!
If you have ever experienced such confusion and fallenness, have courage and pray for me. Let us all fight in our body and spirit. His Resurrection is real, and it is coming. In His Resurrection we shall all be one!
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To Bear The Beams of Love
After Epiphany — Yearning for a Retreat
Yearning for ‘Thin Places’ where Cassocks can by Hung on the Rays of the Sun
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Beating Christmas (and Life) Blues
“My God, I cannot ‘stand’ your Love, because It is Immense and there is no place for It in my small heart ” (Translation of the scroll)
1. Blessed are those who love Christ more than all the worldly things and live far from the world and near God, with heavenly joys upon the earth.
2. Blessed are those who manage to live in obscurity and acquired great virtues but did not acquire even a small name for themselves.
3. Blessed are those who manage to act the fool and, in this way, protected their spiritual wealth
4. Blessed are those who do not preach the Gospel with words, but live it and preach it with their silence, with the Grace of God, which betrays them.
5. Blessed are those who rejoice when unjustly accused, rather than when they are justly praised for their virtuous life. Here are the signs of holiness, not in the dry exertion of bodily asceticism and the great number of struggles, which, when not carried out with humility and the aim to take off the old man, create only illusions.
6. Blessed are those who prefer to be wronged rather than to wrong others and accept serenely and silently injustices. In this way, they reveal in practice that they believe in “one God, the Father Almighty” and expect to be vindicated by Him and not by human beings who repay in this life with vanity.
7. Blessed are those who have been born crippled or became so due to their own carelessness, yet do not grumble but glorify God. They will hold the best place in Paradise along with the Confessors and Martyrs, who gave their hands and feet for the love of Christ and now constantly kiss with devoutness the hands and feet of Christ in Paradise.
8. Blessed are those who were born ugly and are despised here on earth, because they are entitled to the most beautiful place in Paradise, provided they glorify God and do not grumble.
9. Blessed are those widows who wear black in this life, even unwillingly, but live a white spiritual life and glorify God without complaining, rather than the miserable ones who wear assorted clothes and live a spotted life.
10. Blessed and thrice blessed are the orphans who have been deprived of their parents’ great affection, for they managed to have God as their Father already from this life. At the same time, they have the affection they were deprived of from their parents in God’s savings bank “with interest”.
11. Blessed are those parents who avoid the use of the word “don’t” with their children, instead restraining them from evil through their holy life – a life which children imitate, joyfully following Christ with spiritual bravery.
12. Blessed are those children who have been born “from their mother’s womb”(Mt. 19:12) holy, but even more blessed are those who were born with all the inherited passions of the world, struggled with sweat and uprooted them and inherited the Kingdom of God in the sweat of their face (Cf. Gen. 3:19).
13. Blessed are those children who lived from infancy in a spiritual environment and, thus, tirelessly advanced in the spiritual life.
Thrice blessed, however, are the mistreated ones who were not helped at all (on the contrary, they were pushed towards evil), but as soon as they heard of Christ, their eyes glistened, and with a one hundred and eighty degree turn they suddenly made their soul to shine as well. They departed from the attraction of earth and moved into the spiritual sphere.
14. Fortunate, worldly people say, are the astronauts who are able to spin in the air, orbit the moon or even walk on the moon.
Blessed, however, are the immaterial “Paradise-nauts”, who ascend often to God and travel about Paradise, their place of permanent abode, with the quickest of means and without much fuel, besides one crust of bread.
15. Blessed are those who glorify God for the moon that glimmers that they might walk at night.
More blessed, however, are those who have come to understand that neither the light of the moon is of the moon, nor the spiritual light of their soul of themselves, but both are of God. Whether they can shine like a mirror, a pane of glass or the lid of a tin can, if the rays of the sun do not fall on them, it is impossible for them to shine.
16. Fortunate, worldly people tell us, are those who live in crystal palaces and have all kinds of conveniences.
Blessed, however, are those who have managed to simplify their life and become liberated from the web of this world’s development of numerous conveniences (i.e. many inconveniences), and were released from the frightening stress of our present age.
17. Fortunate, worldly people say, are those who can enjoy the goods of the world.
Blessed, however, are those who give away everything for Christ and are deprived even of every human consolation for Christ. Thus it is that they manage to be found night and day near Christ and His divine consolation, which many times is so much that they say to God: “My God, Thy love cannot be endured, for it is great and cannot be fit within my small heart”.
18. Fortunate, worldly people say, are those who have the greatest jobs and the largest mansions, since they possess all means and live comfortably.
Blessed, however, according to the divine Paul, are those who have but a nest to perch in, a little food and some coverings99• For, in this way, they’ve managed to become estranged from the vain world, using the earth as a footstool, as children of God, and their mind is constantly found close to God, their Good Father.
19. Fortunate are those who become generals and government ministers in their head by way of heavy drinking (even if just for a few hours), with the worldly rejoicing over it.
Blessed, however, are those who have put off the old man and have become incorporeal, managing to be earthly angels with the Holy Spirit. They have found Paradise’s divine faucet and drink from it and are continually inebriated from the heavenly wine.
20. Blessed are those who were born crazy and will be judged as crazy, and, in this way, will enter Paradise without a passport.
Blessed and thrice blessed, however, are the very wise who feign foolishness for the love of Christ and mock all the vanity of the world. This foolishness for Christ’s sake is worth more than all the knowledge and wisdom of the wise of this world.
I beg all the Sisters to pray for God to give me, or rather take from me my little mind, and, in this way, secure Paradise for me by considering me a fool. Or, make me crazy with His love so I go out my self, outside of the earth and its pull, for, otherwise my life as a monk has no meaning. I became externally white as a monk. As I go I become internally black by being a negligent monk, but I justify myself as one unhealthy, when I happen to be so; other times, I excuse myself again for being ill, even though I am well, and so I deserve to be thoroughly thrashed. Pray for me.
May Christ and Panagia be with you,
With love of Christ, Your Brother, Monk Paisios
(“Timiou Stavrou”, December 2, 1972).
“Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger.
“Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.
“Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did
to the false prophets… (Lk. 6:24-30)
to the false prophets… (Lk. 6:24-30)
“The Beatitudes” with Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (Taken from the Elder’ Sixth Epistle)
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Sister Abbess Philothei, Your blessing,
Today, a kind of craziness took hold of me and I took the pencil, as does the madman who writes his outbursts on the wall with charcoal, and I sat down to write my own things on paper like one crazed, and, again, like a lunatic, to send them to you in writing. I am doing this latter craziness out of much love for my Sisters, that they might be edified, even if only a little.
The reason for the initial craziness was five letters, one after the other, from various parts of Greece on a variety of subjects. While the events described were great blessings of God, those who wrote to me had fallen into despair because they dealt with them in a worldly way.
After replying accordingly to their letters, I took the pencil like a madman, as I have said, and wrote this epistle. I believe that even a fifty-cent piece from your journeying brother will be something toward a flint for each one of the Sisters so as to light a little candle in her cell and offer her doxology to our Good God.
I feel great joy when every Sister, with her particular cross carries out the equivalent struggle with philotimo.
It is a small thing to give to Christ a heart equal in size and as luminous as the sun out of gratitude for His great gifts, and especially for the particular honour He showed us monks by conscripting us with personal summons to His Angelic Order.
A great honour also belongs to the parents who were thus made worthy of becoming related to God. Unfortunately, however, most parents do not realize this and, instead of being grateful to God, are infuriated etc., for they see everything in a worldly way, like those people I mentioned earlier, who became the reason for me to take the pencil and write everything that follows. …”
ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE 