If you do not learn how to stay calm amidst life’s adventures, you will be constantly vexed, and the cause will be your reaction to what is happening.
So, master the art of staying calm and ‘indifferent’ towards all.
Whatever may come, the greatest temptation and the greatest difficulty and the greatest death, height, depth, whatever that may be, accept it, welcome it; God is in charge, God knows…
Thus, God will synergize with you, so that you enter His Kingdom.
Make peace with life’s adventures.
Whoever does not master how to live and move comfortably amidst difficulties, will never become a man of prayer.
This means that I will not pray for my difficulties to disappear, as most of us do.
But I will pray to make peace with the sorrows and the difficulties that come to me so that I can stay together with God.
This is the amazing story of a blind shepherd, Ioannis Hasiotis, who knows by heart all 27 books of the New Testament! Ioannis Hasiotis [Ιωάννης Χασιώτης in Greek] was born in a small mountain village, Milia, Metsovo (height 1300m) in 1947. After completing primary school, he started to tend his sheep, following the example of his father. There, one of his village friends approached him and offered him a prayer book to keep him company in his hours of solitude. While reading it, he saw references to the New Testament and wanted to acquire a copy.
In the meantime, he was diagnosed with a serious eye disease and doctors warned him that in 20 years’ time, he will gradually lose his sight. Fearing that with this health issue, he would not be able to read the New Testament in the future, he embarked on a wrestle with time to learn it all by heart. Thus, he succeeded in learning by heart the whole New Testament in three years, at the age of 25! In particular, he mastered the 14 Epistles of Saint Paul in 8 months and 10 days!
Ioannis does not recite the New Testament mechanically, which would be very difficult on its own, but critically so. He knows in detail the chapter and the verse of any New Testament quotation, how many times and where a specific reference may be encountered, which quotations refer, for example, to the divinity of Jesus, or the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and so on and so forth. Today, Ioannis Hasiotis is 76 years old, retired, married, with 3 children, and blind. A humble soul close to the Church and Her sacraments and services. Ioannis bears with thanksgiving the Cross of blindness, offers continual thanksgiving to our Lord, and recites the whole New Testament by heart at least once a week!
In the following Youtube link, you can watch him recite excerpts from the New Testament to Professors of Theology!
The following Youtube link is a playlist of some of his interviews and ‘homilies’ in local channels
Abbess Thaisia of Leushino together with St. John of Kronstadt, her spiritual Father
To this Gift of His Love, I would love to add a brief excerpt from an all-time classic, which I have repeatedly featured in this blog, Abbess Thaisia, An Autobiography, Ch. 4 “Preparation for a New Life”
where she describes how and why she learned by heart the Holy Gospel by the age of 16-17. “The book I loved most and treasured above all was the Holy Gospel. Not only did its words give comfort and sweetness to my soul, but I also felt a strange need to have these words always with me and never be separated from them. This not being feasible or possible, I set myself the task of learning the Holy Gospel by heart.
Thanks to my good memory, this gave me no difficulty at all, and soon enough I had learned by heart, word for word, the Slavonic text of all the Gospel events and teachings by those evangelists who gave a more detailed version of them.” Then follows a detailed description of her “performance” before the Bishop on the day of her last graduation examination, where the Bishop asked her to recite by heart chapters 14 and 15 of the Gospel according to St. John—the parting words of our Saviour to His disciples. (pp49-51)
May we follow their example! As St. Efraim the Syrian, the mystic and the poet, whose memory we honour today, acknowledges “Scripture brought me to the Gate of Paradise, and the mind stood in wonder as it entered.”
Dear Fathers and MOTHER’s, brothers and sisters in Christ,
Χριστός ᾽Ετέχθη! Αληθώς ᾽Ετέχθη! Christ is Born! Truly, He is Born!
Christ is born, Glorify Him!
Please accept my warm greetings for the Feast of the Nativity.
May our hearts become a Holy Manger and the Holy Babe of Bethlehem grant us all his blessings! (St Paisios’ prayer)
On this Feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, I extend my love and poor prayers in Christ. In dearest Father Jonathan’s words, “Let us remember in our prayers and through actions, the poor, the lonely, the oppressed, the sick, the housebound, those in prison, all exiles from their land, and those who suffer in war.”
“When God comes to us, May the joy of the archangels be yours,
May the wisdom of the wise men be yours,
May the watchfulness of the shepherds be yours,
May the contemplation of Joseph be yours,
May the humility of the oxen and donkey be yours,
May the brightness of the stars be yours,
May the love of the Holy Virgin be yours,
May the peace of the Christ Child be yours.
Today the earth gives a cave. Today the heavens give a sign!
Today the Magi offer gifts
Today the angels glorify in praise
Today the shepherds hear the proclamation
Today we offer our hearts”
“We worship thy Nativity O ChristShow us also Thy Divine Theophany” Eν Χριστώ
Today, at the age of 100 years old, Sister Eirini (Vasiliki Ralli) fell asleep in the Lord, at the Holy Monastery of Theotokos the Merciful in Patra. «Blessed is the way wherein you walk today, for there is prepared for you a place of rest.» in the company of your beloved patron Saints. Memory Eternal!
We are all born with a set of keys in our hands… And it is up to us to decide what to do with these keys. It is up to us to decide who will do the driving.
I have watched people grab the wheel of their life. Struggle to keep the car on the track. Get stressed with the route, with the destination, with the angles, the curves, and the hills. Get stressed with the fuel, get confused with the maps. I have watched them get angry with their fellow passengers, fall ill from trying so hard and get lost amidst so much care and such stress.
But I have also met others. Humble people. People who sit in the back seat. People who, day by day, try to do their best but do not worry. Day by day, they do their best, and then, they let go… They sit in the back seat and let God be God. Let God do the drive…
I will tell you the truth. I envy these humble people and want to become one of them…
I would like to share a few thoughts about mental health disorders from the point of view of a carer. While in the UK, I worked in a care home for some time and had some experience interacting with mentally ill people. However, I was a member of a team and was not fully responsible for anybody. Now, things are tougher because I am in many ways wholly responsible and a carer 24/7. In so many ways I feel I too need long-term support…
‘Give blood and receive the Spirit’
“A woman knows she has conceived when she stops losing blood. So it is with the soul, she knows she has conceived the Holy Spirit when the passions stop coming out of her. But as long as one is held back in the passions, how can one dare to believe that one is sinless? Give blood and receive the Spirit. (Abba Longinus, Sayings of the Desert Fathers)
During this week my thoughts were on a recent saint, Elder Efraim of Katounakia, famous for his 42 years of the martyrdom of obedience to a very difficult, harsh and especially towards the end mentally unstable Elder Nikiforos.
I also reflected a lot on Sister Aggeliki of blessed memory and her obedience to her mentally disturbed sister, keeping her awake with all kinds of ‘happenings’ every single night for about 60 years (!), after her unmercenary doctor’s duties all day and night! I was reminded especially of her obedience to all kinds of crazy errands she was sent and/or accompanied and her long-suffering to all the insults and every name under the sun her sister was calling her for decades! Why did Sister Aggeliki not leave? For the salvation of her sister’s soul. Because, as much as she wanted to become a nun in a monastery, she knew that her sister would then be committed to a mental hospital and there she would be deprived of all the church services she so longed to participate in. And it was only during these church services and Holy Communion that she would be so surprisingly quiet, ‘sane‘ and absorbed …
These were precisely my Elder’s words upon this new obedience: “it is very important that you are patient and do everything that you can so that this poor soul is saved and enters the Kingdom of Heaven!” Not that I bear any resemblance to these exalted ones, but I too must give blood to receive the Holy Spirit and thus receive the baptism of long-suffering and obedience.Grace does not come without blood and tears.
Greek yiayia prays for her fellow man each and every day
The Greek yiayia, who feels moved every morning by the beauty of her surroundings to pray for her fellow man, stands in her yard (which has an incredible view of the two waterfalls on the mountain) each day to do just that.
Yet recently, in a moment captured by her grandson Dimitris, and posted on his social media accounts, Anthi decided to pray indoors.
It was raining and the temperature had dropped significantly. Life in the village, which is located quite high on the mountain slopes, is quite difficult under these weather conditions.
Rather than stepping out into the cold, Anthi stood in her kitchen and opened a window to look out on the stunning mountain range before her.
When Dimitris asked his grandmother why she opened the window, she answered:
Now:Nun Eirini at 100!Then: Vasiliki Ralli, a ‘simple’woman to whom St Raphael revealed his martyrdom after 5 centuries!
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Vasiliki Ralli, a resident of Thermi Lesvos, was one of many witnesses of miraculous events which took place in the area and led to the discovery of the holy relics of Saint Raphael, Saint Nikolaos, Saint Eirini and other martyrs on the hill of Karyes in Mrs Ralli’s olive tree orchard.
Now:Nun Eirini at 100!At 100, at her ‘birthday’, before the tonsure!
Yesterday, 5/2/2022, at her 100 years old ‘birthday’, Vasiliki was ‘born’ again and was tonsured as nun Eirini!Saint Raphael himself in a vision 64 years ago (!) had foretold to her that she would become a nun at the end of her life and she would receive the name ‘Eirini’!
Then: Vasiliki Ralli in Lesvos together with pilgrims and Gerondas Theoklitos on the left
ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE 