“When we feel upset we should chant. Chanting drives away the devil because it’s prayer and at the same time it’s contempt for the tempter. We shouldn’t fight blasphemous thoughts with the Jesus prayer – that just opens up a new front with the devil and he attacks us even more. We ought to chant […]
“When I went through up there for 15 days, struggling with the tempter – it defies description, you can’t even imagine! He was constantly telling me to go down to the monastery to see people and visit with them to be consoled. I’ll tell you one thing: for 15 days, I felt like I was […]
“The righteous judgment of God is His forbearance, which also contains humility and love. God is very righteous and just but also most compassionate; and His compassion surpasses Is justice. I will give you an example to help you understand. If some person never had the opportunity to learn about God he would not be […]
“If Christ had the worldly logic that many spiritual people have today He would not have left His throne Heaven to descend to earth, to suffer and be crucified for us miserable human beings. But hidden within his apparently human failure… is this salvation of us all. And what he enduredto bring about our salvation! […]
“Human righteousness is not for spiritual people; it merely serves to restrain worldly people. A spiritual person is a fool if he relies on human righteousness which is nothing compared to divine righteousness. But even a worldly person, though he may achieve something in this life by applying human righteousness, will not have real joy […]
“Christ wants us to eliminate our own will to zero. If you obtain a single one of the following virtues: purification, divine justice, love, obedience, and voluntary poverty, bear in mind that all of these virtues may be found in just one of these virtues. The same thing applies to our passions; one passion includes […]
“During the nearly 40 days that we were at the monastery, Paisios was always the same: innocent, extremely spiritual, and thoughtful. While he silently labored at his assigned tasks he was most likely at prayer. On my final day there after having said my goodbyes, I departed with the certitude that I was leaving behind […]
“When we consider that the most wrongly accused is Christ, we would receive injustice with joy. Though He was God, He came down to earth out of great love and was enclosed in the womb of the Panagia for nine months. Then, for thirty years He lived quietly. From fifteen to thirty He worked as […]
“When I say someone has caught the Eastern spirit and abandoned the European, I mean that he has left behind logic, rationalism and has instead taking hold of simplicity and piety because that is the Orthodox spirit within which Christ rests, simplicity and piety. Today even spiritual people are often lacking in simplicity, the sacred […]
“So many people come and all of them are in pain. And all of them are happy and strengthened when they leave. But do they ever think about where this pain of theirs goes? All of it comes to me. They don’t realize what remains with me when they leave here happy. It’s fine for […]