“Using his gift of clairvoyance the elder related various facts about the man’s own life to him and he advised him to get a job even if he didn’t need one…the work would do him good. Impressed by the elder’s spiritual gifts the man asked him about meditation and other spiritual techniques. “Techniques don’t matter […]

“Many people honored the elder as a saint. If you were critical of him and accused him of being a sorcerer, he would answer them with his full self-assessment. “I’m not a saint or a sorcerer. I’m a sinful human being who tries to struggle. I look at myself as a speck of dust in […]

“I can talk with everyone. I can spend time with them but then I want to be by myself…When someone can’t live in the desert he should try to create the conditions for the stillness wherever it is that he is living. If we’re careful to cut off our passions then will be in the […]

“I was traveling in the Holy Land and the man who was driving me around asked me which road we should take. I said to him, “Are we taking a world world tour or something? Whichever is shorter.” As we drove along he said to me, “You see Elder – that’s why didn’t want to […]

“A lot of people today are tormented because they don’t love what they are doing for a living. They can’t wait until it’s time to go. However when one has zeal for work and when one cares about the things he makes, the more he works the more his zeal grows. He is immersed in […]

“The way I understand it there are four kinds of people. There are the healthy and the frail as well as people with benign tumors and people with malignant tumors. The last kind are incurable. With the second and third kinds you’ve got to use discernment to treat them which also has to do with […]

“There are so many students who although they have studied all of the material will not go and take the exam because they fear failure! Even though they’re quite capable out of sheer cowardice they create a situation of panic. But if they humbly say,” Bless me that I may do well because I cannot […]

“Most of all the elder loved and cultivated the Jesus Prayer “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me,” which he had first learned as a boy from his mother. From his time at Sinai onwards with few exceptions the prayer took the place of the daily services. It became for him his nourishment, his delight […]

“When someone calls to sleep his self accusing thoughts he represses his conscience and when one goes to sleep and refuses to acknowledge these self accusations from his conscience for a long period of time he creates a another, his own à la carte conscience that is a faulty conscience. Such a person has no […]

“Repentance is a baptism of tears. Through repentance man is rebaptized, reborn. Through his denial the Apostle Peter betrayed Christ in a way but because he wept bitterly he received forgiveness for his fall. In other words his sincere repentance washed him clean again. You see God first created the earth He sees and all […]