The essence of the whole thing

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Administrator

The various methods described by the Fathers (sitting down, making prostrations, and the other techniques used when performing this prayer) are not suitable for everyone …. There is just one method which is obligatory for all : to stand with the attention in the heart. All other things are beside the point, and do not lead to the crux of the matter.

It is said of the fruit of this prayer, that there is nothing higher in the world. This is wrong….. All fruit can be received without this prayer, and even without any oral prayer, but merely by directing the mind and heart towards God.

The essence of the whole thing is to be established in the remembrance of God, and to walk in His presence. You can say to anyone: ‘Follow whatever methods you like—recite the Jesus Prayer, perform bows and prostrations, go to Church : do what you wish, only strive to be always in constant remembrance of God.’ I remember meeting a man in Kiev who said: ‘I did not use any methods at all, I did not know the Jesus Prayer, yet by God’s mercy I walk always in His presence. But how this has come to pass, I myself do not know. God gave !

– Theophan the Recluse, The Art of Prayer, pp. 97-99, Igumen Chariton of Valamo

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Three Good Books

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Administrator

THEODORE OF PHERME

Theodore was trained as a monk in Scetis, probably by Macarius the Great. He was an educated man, and was ordained deacon, though he refused through humility to exercise this office. After the first devastation of Scetis he went to Pherme, which Palladius describes as ‘a mountain in Egypt… which borders on the great desert of Scetis’.

1. Abba Theodore of Pherme had acquired three good books. He came to Abba Macarius and said to him, ‘I have three excellent books from which I derive profit; the brethren also make use of them and derive profit from them. Tell me what I ought to do: keep them for my use and that of the brethren, or sell them and give the money to the poor?’ The old man answered him in this way, ‘Your actions are good; but it is best of all to posses nothing.’ Hearing that, he went and sold his books and gave the money for them to the poor.

(Sayings of the Desert Fathers, B. Ward, p.73)

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Thy will be done

Posted on June 14, 2015 by Administrator

So He said to them, “When you pray, say:

Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done (Luke 11:2)

Saint Gregory of Nyssa: “Now the will of God is the salvation of men. If therefore we prepare to say to God, ‘Thy will be done also in me,’ it is absolutely necessary first to renounce that which was contrary to the divine will and to give a full account of it in confession….When Thy will is done in me, every foul and wicked movement of my free will is brought to nought….If we have an inclination towards something good we need God to carry the desire into effect. Therefore we say: ‘Because Thy will is temperance, but I am carnal and sold under sin, may this good will be accomplished in me by Thy power’; and so it is also with justice, piety, and deliverance from passions.” [The Lord’s Prayer, Sermon 4, 58-60.]

Orthodox New Testament, Volume 1.

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A Letter to a Bishop

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Administrator

3. I beseech you, spare yourself and us. Yourself, lest you run into peril; us, lest we be grieved because of you. Take thought of the Church, lest many of the little ones be injured on your account, and the others be given an occasion of withdrawing. 

Nay but if you feared the times and acted as you did from timidity, your mind is not manly; for in such a case you ought to manifest zeal for Christ, and rather meet circumstances boldly, and use the language of blessed Paul: ‘in all these things we are more than conquerors;’ and the more so in that we ought to serve not the time, but the Lord But if the organising of the Churches is distasteful to you, and you do not think the ministry of the episcopate has its reward, why, then you have brought yourself to despise the Savior that ordered these things. 

I beseech you, dismiss such ideas, nor tolerate those who advise you in such a sense, for this is not worthy of Dracontius. For the order the Lord has established by the Apostles abides fair and firm; but the cowardice of the brethren shall cease .

St. Athanasius, A Letter to Dracontius, NPNF II, Volume 4, p. 557

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How do some fall?

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Administrator

9. Question. How do some fall after the visitation of grace? Is not Satan shown to be much the weaker? Where it is day, how can there be night? 

Answer. It is not that grace is quenched or feeble; but in order that your free-will and your liberty may be tested, which way it inclines, grace makes way for sin ; and then you again draw nigh to the Lord with your will, and entreat that grace may visit you. How is it written, Quench not the Spirit ? (i Thess. v. 19)
The Spirit cannot be quenched, but is always light ; but you, if you are careless and do not with your own will correspond, are yourself quenched and lose the Spirit. In like manner it says, Grieve not the Holy Spirit, whereby ye were sealed unto the day of redemption (Eph 4:30). You see that it lies in your own will and freedom of determination to honour the Holy Spirit and not to grieve Him. I assure you that freedom of choice remains even in perfect Christians, who are subjugated to what is good and intoxicated with it, and the consequence is that, though put to the proof by ten thousand evils, they turn to that which is good.

St. Macarius of Egypt, Homily 27.9, Fifty Spiritual Homilies.

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The Ascension

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Administrator

Luke 24:51-52

“Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven.† And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy,”

…….on the fortieth day after the Resurrection in the presence of the disciples, was raised into heaven, and terminated His presence with us in the body, to abide on the Father’s right hand until the times Divinely fore-ordained for multiplying the sons of the Church are accomplished, and He comes to judge the living and the dead in the same flesh in which He ascended. And so that which till then was visible of our Redeemer was changed into a sacramental presence, and that faith might be more excellent and stronger, sight gave way to doctrine, the authority of which was to be accepted by believing hearts enlightened with rays from above.

Leo the Great, Sermon on the Ascension, Sermon 74, paragraph 2. NPNF2, Vol. 12.

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Washing his feet

Posted on May 17, 2015 by Administrator

184. Abba Isaac came to see Abba Poemen and found him washing his feet. As he enjoyed freedom of speech with him he said, ‘How is it that others practice austerity and treat their bodies hardly?’ Abba Poemen said to him, ‘We have not been taught to kill our bodies, but to kill our passions.’

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, B. Ward, p. 193

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Falsely accused

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Administrator

Once, the young Ephraim was falsely accused of stealing  a sheep, and was cast into prison. Two others likewise innocent, were imprisoned after him. “Seven days passed,” the venerable one recounted later in life, “and on the eighth I had a dream in which someone said to me: ‘Be

pious, and thou shalt comprehend the providence of God. Ponder in thy thoughts what thou hast thought and what thou hast done, and thou shalt come to the realization that these men are not suffering unjustly; the guilty cannot elude punishment.’ Later that same night I saw the same person, who said to me: ‘Return to thine own place, and repent of thine unrighteousness, in full awareness that there is an Eye which watcheth over all.’ And having thus threatened me soundly, he withdrew.” Ephraim was faithful to the instruction of the one who had appeared to him. While still in prison, he vowed an oath to dedicate hisMentire life to repentance, and he soon forsook the world and withdrew into the surrounding mountains, where he sought out the hermits who lived there. There he became a disciple of the holy James, who subsequently became the great hierarch of Nisibis tcommemorated January 12th. 


A Spiritual Psalter, excerpted by Theophan the recluse.

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I am the bread of life

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Administrator

John 6:35

67. ….. In the same  way, in His unutterable and inconceivable bounty  Christ  reduces and  embodies  Himself, commingling  with  and embracing the soul  that aspires to  Him  with  faith  and  love  and, as  St  Paul  puts it  (cf.  1  Cor. 6:17), becoming  one  spirit with  it, His soul  united  with  our soul  and  His Person  with  our  person.  Thus such  a soul  lives and  has its  being in  His divinity, attaining immortal  life and  delighting in  incorruptible  pleasure  and inexpressible glory.  

68. In  a soul  of  this  kind  the Lord  when He wills is  fire, consuming  every sinful  and  alien  thing  in  it, in accordance with  the words,  ‘Our God is  a consuming fire’  (Deut.  4:24); at other  times  He  is repose,  wondrous and indescribable; or else joy and peace,  cherishing and embracing it. Only it  must  aspire to Him  with love and devote itself to  holy ways  of  life, and  then  through  direct experience, with  its own perception,  it  will see itself partaking  of unutterable  blessings that  ‘the  eye has not seen, and the ear has not heard, and  man’s heart  has not  grasped’  (1  Cor. 2:9). For to  the soul  that proves itself worthy  of Him  the Spirit of the  Lord  is  now  repose,  now intense  joy,  now delight  and life. Just  as  He embodies  Himself in  spiritual  food, so  He embodies  Himself in indescribable raiment  and beauty, so  that He fills the soul with  spiritual gladness.  As He Himself said:  ‘I am the bread of life’  (John 6:35); and: ‘If anyone drinks of the water that I  give him … it will be  in him a spring of water welling  up for eternal life’  (John 4:14).  

St  Symeon  Metaphrastis, Paraphrase  of  the  Homilies of St  Makarios  of  Egypt,  IV  The Raising of the Intellect, Philokalia, V3.314

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Not my own will

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Administrator

We have to make strenuous  efforts when  we  first try  to return  to where  we fell from.  For  we  resent  abandoning our own desires, and we think  that  we can carry  out  both  God’s wishes and our  own  – which is  impossible. Our Lord Himself said,  ‘I have  come  to  do,  not  My own  will, but the will of  the  Father  who  sent  Me’  (cf. John  6:38), even though  the  will of  Father,  Son  and  Holy Spirit is one, since they constitute a single inseparable nature. But He said this on  our account and  with  respect to  the will of  the flesh.  For if  the flesh  is not consumed  and  if  a man  is not wholly led by  the Spirit of  God, he  will not do the will of God  unless  he is  forced to.  But when the  grace  of the Spirit rules within  him,  then  he no longer  has a will of  his own,  but whatever  he does is according to  God’s  will. Then  he is at peace. Men like that will be called sons  of God (cf. Matt.  5:9), because they will the  will of  their Father, as  did  the Son  of  God  who is  also  God. 

St. Peter of Damaskos, Philokalia, Volume 3, p. 84.

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