The greatest sickness of our age is the vain thoughts of secular people, which bring stress. Only Christ can provide a cure with spiritual serenity, along with eternity, provided you repent and turn to Him.
- Elder Paisios
This grass is an icon; this stone is an icon; and I can kiss it, venerate it, because it is filled with God’s grace. The world is not for us to take things from, but a place where we cast off our passions and desires.
– Father Paissios, Mt Athos
…Because when Christ received the spitting, the blows and the beatings, the kingdom and the power of the devil were crushed. How wonderful is the way in which Christ defeated the devil! “The devil’s dominion was crushed with a reed,” used to say a Saint. When Christ was given the last blow with a reed, at that very moment, the devil’s power was destroyed. In other words, patience is our spiritual defence and humility our greatest weapon against the devil. The greatest balm that Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross gave us is the crushing of the devil. After the Crucifixion of Christ, the devil is like a snake with no fangs, with no poison; he is like a wild dog without teeth. All poison was removed from the devil; all teeth were removed from the wild dogs that are the demons. So, they are now disarmed, while we are armed with the Cross. There is nothing, really nothing that the demons can do to a creature of God when we ourselves don’t hand over rights to them. They only make noise; they have no authority over people.
- Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos
Elder Paisios (1924-1994): An Orthodox Christian monk who had given by God the prophetic insight. He was very sensitive to other people and their needs, despite the numerous and persistent health problems:
Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997): A Catholic nun of Albanian ethnicity and Indian citizenship. An admiring personality who placed herself completely at the service of others:
When you ask God for something, and for a long time He doesn’t help, you should know that there is pride. If we have passions - for example: gluttony, vain talk, anger, envy and so forth - and, in addition to that, we also have pride, God won’t help us; because we are obstructing divine Grace with our passions. And even if we only have a tendency to pride within us, we still obstruct God from helping us; though we may be struggling, and perhaps praying more than is needed.
-Elder Paisios of the Holy Mount Athos
…The problem is that we do not see the saints, do not feel them, do not smell their presence. This is because we do not have high pursuits, we do not have spiritual senses to recognize them and to feel them. We can apply in this case the words of Christ: “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matt. 7:8). Those who truly seek God and His saints, they will certainly encounter them, or rather the living modern saints themselves will go to find them and fill them with the gifts of God. Such is our God. He comes secretly, He likes to reverse all logical possibilities, He shows His love loudly, suddenly and surprisingly to those who hurt and are looking for Him. Soberly intoxicated are those who seek “the good wine”, the strong wine.
(You can find the whole post here)
Blessed are those who were born crazy and will be judged as crazy, and, in this way, will enter Paradise without a passport.
-Elder Paisios
The world has lost control of itself. Honor and self-sacrifice have abandoned people. The taste of sacrificial joy is unknown to today’s people, and that’s why they’re so tortured. For only when you co-participate in the pain of another do miracles happen.
[…] Possibly we may meet not only with sudden death, but with other dangers. So let’s drive away the desire to arrange our lives comfortably! May love of honor and the spirit of self-sacrifice live in us.
“You must see everyone else a Saints and only yourself - only yourself - as a sinner and inferior to all, no matter how sinful other people may be.”
-Elder Paisios
I once asked someone: “What type of warrior do you consider yourself to be? Christ’s warrior or temptation’s warrior? Are you aware that the evil of temptation also has its own warriors?”
-Elder Paisios
“Do not forget Christ, so that He also remembers you”
-Elder Paisios the Athonite
God, if He wishes to, can make with one of His miracles everybody instantly believe. However He does not do so, because He does not wish to exercise force on man’s free will; man will then end up believing in God, not out of gratefulness or due to God’s excessive kindness, but due to His supernatural power.
-Elder Paisios
With special thanks to the author of the book who went on such a dangerous journey and shared his experiences with us!
This powerful memoir tells the story of a Greek youth who, out of a desire to know the truth empirically, began to experiment in yoga, hypnotism, and various occult techniques. Eventually drawn back to the Faith of his forefathers Orthodox Christianity he visited the ancient monastic republic of Mount Athos in his native Greece, where he was brought to a knowledge of the Truth of Jesus Christ by the saintly Elder Paisios (1924 1994). Nevertheless, believing he had only found part of the truth on the Holy Mountain, he chose to give the same opportunity to Hindu yogis that he had given to Elder Paisios and other Orthodox monks. Thus, at the age of twenty-five, he embarked on a trip to India, where he undertook his search in the ashrams of three famous gurus, one of whom was worshipped as a god. His experiences in India, along with his subsequent encounters with Elder Paisios on Mount Athos, are recounted in the present book in vivid detail. Popular in Greece since its first publication there in 2001, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios is a page-turning narrative of both outward adventures and inward struggles. What stands out most in this book, however, is the radiant image of Elder Paisios, possessed of divine gifts, laboring in prayer for his fellow man, and overflowing with unconditional love. Through this, one sees the uncreated Source of the elder s love and of the author s spiritual transformation: the true God-man Jesus Christ, Who honors man s personal freedom while drawing him, through love, into everlasting union with Himself.
Click here to listen to a podcast about this book
Freedom is good when the person can use it appropriately. Otherwise it is a disaster.
-Elder Paisios
The quote “There is nothing worse than having it all and still feeling sad” reminds me of an Elder Paisios’ following quote:
When you see a man who has great anxiety, worries and sadness, while nothing is missing, know that God is missing from his life.
