The quintessential things are humility, kindness and simplicity. Kindness means to try to see what pleases the other not what pleases us. God is not unjust. He completes afterwards what we have spent for our brother.
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All those who have much enthusiasm and selfishness have to prove obedience, to cut their will.
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The evil has advanced a great deal and many changes have taken place lately. But there is still found some good leaven. For its sake God has mercy on the others too. God forbids that this leaven decay – cause then woe to us!
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The prayer for the reposed helps a lot. Every time I was tired or didn’t have time to pray for the reposed the following night I saw my parents in my dream and I never pray for them. [1]
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For the pious martyr women suitable is the parable of the 10 Virgins – because these saint women were among the wise ones – not that of the woman with blood leakage.
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The pious parents who want to see their sons become monks should not tell them to become monks, but should live like monks themselves. They shouldn’t promise to God that their sons would become monks, cause if their sons have no vocation for that would be tantalized all their life. However if this happens, the bishop should read them a prayer and they should not become monks.
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We must say our thought humbly to the great ones. Maybe we help them to think wiser.
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Each one should act in accordance with his own spiritual condition. Meaning to do things which are in accordance with his spiritual condition. (He should not overcome his spiritual measure)
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During day you should do what Saint Anthony the Great did. A little handicraft, a little prayer. And during night a little spiritual study and the Jesus prayer. A little bit of powerful spiritual study helps a lot.
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The man has to meditate at the blessings of God, at his great ingratitude and to ask God’s mercy with broken soul. We should find a reason in everything for thanking and glorifying God.
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Nowadays is the time when the prophecy of Saint Anthony the Great is to be fulfilled: There will come a time when people would go crazy and if someone were sane, they would call him crazy. And this because you are not like him.
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I knew people who were fleshly and married spiritual women. They felt so intensely their spiritualness that they did not dare to get close to them and thought about leaving them. If these women changed so much their fleshly men, Theotokos changes even more the souls of men.
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Where the Gospel says that Jesus increased in wisdom and grace it does not mean that at the beginning He had incomplete knowledge and virtue and these grew in Him with age, but that having from the beginning all the Knowledge and Holiness (since He was from the beginning united with God) He revealed them gradually, while growing, for being accepted by men and for not being considered a monster.
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The grace of priesthood is something special like a strange battery that gives us energy. It is not something belonging to us, something which we gained by our own strive.
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The fools for Christ have much humility and something special compared to the other saints: that is why they find the mysteries of God. Aforetime here in the Holy Mountain someone could see many like this. When for instance the Holy Community made a certain mistake they went and rang the bells from Protaton as a sign of mourning. Many who had piety for them understood what happened.
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The devil nowadays with his great malice does the greatest good to mankind. Because the pious men seeing this situation get together with other pious men and support each other.
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I don’t see too much progress at those many who partake the Communion regularly. Nowadays the Holy Communion started to be part of a regular program. In the same way we fast on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the most of men partake the Holy Eucharist. Aforetime at the skete we used to partake the Eucharist every week and during the week only if it was a great religious feast of the Lord, of the Theotokos or of a great Saint. In the previous day we fasted and took the high holy water and the next day the Eucharist.
[1] Meaning that he considered this as a remembrance of his duty to pray for the reposed ones.
From the book From the Ascetic and Hesychast Tradition of the Holy Mountain –Evanghelismos Publishing, 2016.
