Homily for the Ninth Sunday of Matthew - The Internal Problem of Mankind (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

Homily for the Ninth Sunday of Matthew

The Internal Problem of Mankind

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

"Take courage, it is I; be not afraid" (Matt. 14:27)

Sacred Chrysostom, interpreting the event according to which the Apostle Peter, while walking on the waves, then sank, says that Christ at that moment did not stop the wind, but stretched out His hand and caught him, saying "O you of little faith, why did you hesitate?" (Matt. 14:31). In this way, Christ showed that the change in Peter was not caused by the force of the wind, but by his lack of faith. If his faith did not weaken, then he could easily face the wind. That is why Christ took him by the hand and let the wind blow, showing that the wind cannot do any harm when the faith is firm.

Venerable Ephraim the God-seer: The Mysteries of the Spiritual Life According to Saint Ephraim of Katounakia

 

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

On a few occasions I had the great blessing from God to talk [with Papa-Ephraim of Katounakia] about matters of the spiritual life. He had read some of my books and wanted to reveal to me various obscure aspects, of the many, from the lives of the deified saints, so that I could write about them for the benefit of the brethren. I remember with nostalgia a unique day when Papa-Ephraim opened his heart and told me about the mysteries of the spiritual life. He told me about the importance and results of the tears of repentance, that all reasoning is cleansed by tears, that tears have nothing to do with the vision of God, since, when man sees the uncreated Light, tears cease; about the experience he had of the vision of God, when he saw three Lights, Lights which flooded the whole space of his cell and embraced him; about the posture of the body during the vision and so much more.

Galatians 6:14 in Light of the Fathers of the "Philokalia"

"But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

- Paul the Apostle (Galatians 6:14)

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76. A  man  who  through  ascetic  effort  withers  the  flower  of  the  flesh,  and  cuts  off  all  its desires, bears in his mortal flesh the marks of the Lord (cf. Gal. 6:17).  

77. The  hardships  of  the  ascetic  life  end  in  the  repose  of  dispassion,  while  soft  ways  of living breed shameful passions.  

- St Theodoros the Great Ascetic (A Century of Spiritual Texts)

First Sunday of Great Lent - The Secret Life of Orthodoxy (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

 

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

"...hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (Jn. 1:51)

Nathaniel is surprised because the Lord revealed the guilelessness of his heart and the place where he was. Answering his question, the Lord offers a new revelation: "I assure you that hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." This gives us the opportunity to make a small comment and to present very quickly the greatness of Orthodoxy, which we honor today.

The Church as a Therapeutic Center

 

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

 

The subject of the therapy of the soul is extremely important for the Orthodox Church because it expresses the essence of spiritual life. Before elaborating on this crucial topic, I would like to give some introductory explanations.

First, when discussing the therapy of the soul, we do not believe in dualism, which makes a clear distinction between soul and body, as is the case in ancient Greek philosophy or some present Eastern religions. Man has two hypostases,1 since he consists of soul and body. The soul is not the whole man but just the soul of man; the body is not the whole man but just the body of man. The body is tightly connected to the soul and takes part in all its states. The body receives both the fall of the soul as well as its resurrection. Thus we speak about the death of the body, which is an outcome of the death of the soul, and about the deification of the body, which comes as a result of the deification of the soul. Saint Gregory Palamas teaches that the nous2 is man’s first physical intelligent organ and also teaches that the Grace of God is ferried through the soul to the body, which is attached to the soul.

On Self-Examination (St. Tikhon of Zadonsk)

By St. Tikhon of Zadonsk (+ 1783)

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith, prove your own selves" (2 Cor. 13:5).

Glory to God! We are all called Christians; we all confess the one God in Three Persons, the living and immortal God; we were all baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity of One Essence: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; we all believe in Him Who was crucified and rose from the dead, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and, as a sign of this, sign ourselves with the Cross; we all enter the holy Church, and we pray and we entreat, we sing and we praise the holy name of God; we all listen to the holy word of God; we all commune Life and the Heavenly Kingdom, and we say in the holy Symbol of Faith: "I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come."

Homily on the Conscience (St. Dorotheos of Gaza)

By St. Dorotheos of Gaza

When God created man, he breathed into him something divine, as it were a hot and bright spark added to reason, which lit up the mind and showed him the difference between right and wrong. This is called the conscience, which is the law of his nature. This is compared to the well which Jacob dug, as the Fathers say, and which the Philistines filled up. [cf. Genesis 26:15] That is, to this law of conscience adhered the patriarchs and all the holy men of old before the written law, and they were pleasing to God. But when this law was buried and trodden underfoot by men through the onset of sin, we needed a written law, we needed the holy prophets, we needed the instruction of our Master, Jesus Christ, to reveal it and raise it up and bring to life through the observance of the Commandments that buried spark.

Homily 19 of Saint Makarios of Egypt

HOMILY 19

Christians, wishing to advance and grow, ought to push themselves toward every good so as to free themselves from every habitual sin and be filled by the Holy Spirit.

 By St. Makarios of Egypt

1. The person that wishes to come to the Lord and to be deemed worthy of eternal life and to become a dwelling place of Christ and to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that he may be able to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit and performs the commands of Christ purely and blamelessly ought to begin first by believing firmly in the Lord and giving himself completely to the words of his commands and renouncing the world in all things so that his whole mind may not be taken up with anything ephemeral. And he ought to persevere constantly in prayer, always waiting in faith that expects his coming and his help, keeping the goal of his mind ever fixed upon this. Then he ought to push himself to every good work and to doing all the commandments of the Lord, because there is sin dwelling within him. Thus let him strive to show humility before every person and to consider himself the least and the worst. Let him not seek honor or praise or the glory of men as it is written in the Gospel (Jn. 12:44). But let him only have always before his eyes the Lord and his commands, wishing to please him alone in the meekness of his heart, as the Lord says: "Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11:29)

Saint Menignos the Fuller as a Model for our Lives

By Protopresbyter Fr. George Papavarnavas

Saint Menignos lived in the 3rd century A.D., during the reign of Emperor Decius. He was from Colonia on the Hellespont, from the city of Parion, named this way because it was founded by residents of the island of Paros, and it was between Kyzikos and Lampsakos. He was a fuller by trade, that is, a launderer who washed and cleaned clothes. During that time a great persecution broke out against the Christians, and among those who gave their confession of Christ and sealed it with their blood was Menignos.

Directions on the Spiritual Life (St. Dorotheos of Gaza)

By St. Dorotheos of Gaza

1. In His loving-kindness God has given us purifying commandments so that, if we wish, we can by their observance be cleansed not only of sins but also of passions themselves. For passions are one thing and sins another. Passions are: anger, vanity, love of pleasures, hatred, evil lust and the like. Sins are the actual operations of passions, when a man puts them into practice, that is, performs with the body the actions to which his passions urge him. For it is possible to have passions and yet not to act from them.

2. The (old) law had as its purpose to teach us not to do what we did not want done to us; consequently it forbade only the actual doing of evil. Now however (in the New Testament) we are required to banish the passion itself, which urges us to do evil—hatred itself, love of pleasures, love of fame, and other passions.

When the Holy Spirit Liturgizes in the Heart: A Most-Illuminating Conversation

I recently had a conversation with someone inquiring of me about the meaning of 1 Corinthians 6:19, where Saint Paul says, "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" This is basically how it went:

"John, I have a very specific question: When do our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit?"

"St. Paul is very clear in 1 Corinthians that our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit when we receive the Holy Spirit into our hearts."

"And when exactly is this? Are we born with the Holy Spirit in our hearts?"

The Road to Heaven is Three Miles Long

"Many call the road to heaven 'three miles long.' The first mile is the mile of correction, the second mile is the mile of illumination, and the third mile is the mile of union with God."

- St. John of Tobolsk (1651–1715)

Overcoming Slavery to the Passions as Typified in the Prophet Elijah (St. Maximus the Confessor)

By St. Maximus the Confessor

(On the Lord's Prayer)

It is our aim to make the nous stand alone, stripped through the virtues of its affection for the body; for this affection, even when totally dispassionate, is still natural. The spirit, completely triumphing over nature, has to persuade the nous to desist from moral philosophy in order to commune with the supra-essential Logos through direct and undivided contemplation, in spite of the fact that moral philosophy helps the nous to cut itself off from, and to go beyond, things pertaining to the flux of time. For when the nous has become free from its attachment to sensible objects, it should not be burdened any longer with preoccupations about morality as with a shaggy cloak.

Holy Abba Moses the Anchorite

Verses

For the sake of virtue Moses ascended the mountain,
There he died, like Moses on the mountain.

In his Synaxaristes, Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite informs us that the Moses commemorated on June 28th is not the Ethiopian, because he is commemorated on August 28th, therefore it is believed that the Moses referred to on this day is the Moses that Saint John Cassian spoke with, their conversation being recorded in the first two books of the Conferences. We know that this Moses is not the same Moses as the Ethiopian, because he specifically says in this text that Moses entered the desert monastery in his youth. Below is the complete text of the first two conferences recorded by John Cassian.

Baptism as a Door Towards Spiritual Progress (St. Gregory of Sinai)

By St. Gregory of Sinai

Everyone baptized into Christ should pass progressively through all the stages of Christ's own life, for in baptism he receives the power so to progress, and through the commandments he can discover and learn how to accomplish such progression.

On the Acquisition of the Holy Spirit (The Conversation of St. Seraphim of Sarov with Nicholas Motovilov)

Introduction

In November of 1831, a pious Orthodox Christian named Nicholas Motovilov met with Saint Seraphim, and recorded his conversation. The notes by Motovilov were transcribed and published by Sergius Nilus, who wrote the following introduction:

This revelation is undoubtedly of worldwide significance. True, there is nothing essentially new in it, for the full revelation was given to the Apostles from the very day of Pentecost. But now that people have forgotten the fundamental truths of Christian life and are immersed in the darkness of materialism or the exterior and routine performance of "ascetic labors," St. Seraphim's revelation is truly extraordinary, as indeed he himself regarded it.

"It is not given to you alone to understand this," said St. Seraphim towards the end of the revelation, "but through you it is for the whole world!" Like a flash of lightning this wonderful conversation illumined the whole world which was already immersed in spiritual lethargy and death less than a century before the struggle against Christianity in Russia and at a time when Christian faith was at a low ebb in the West. Here God's Saint appears before us in no way inferior to the prophets through whom the Holy Spirit Himself spoke.

Saint Nikephoros the Monk, also known as the Hesychast

St. Nikephoros the Hesychast (Feast Day - May 4)

Verses

You know grace well O Father Nikephoros,
The art of prayer, you dispatched in life.

Saint Nikephoros the Monk, also known as the Hesychast, is known to us from the life of Saint Gregory Palamas, who had Saint Nikephoros as a teacher and guide. According to Gregory he was ‘an Italian’ who converted from Catholicism to Orthodoxy. This could mean that he was of Greek descent, from Sicily or Calabria, but whose family had been forced into union with Rome, or it could mean that he was an Italian of mixed Greek and Italian parentage. This we shall never know for certain. However, we do know that when he came to Constantinople, Nikephoros opposed the Unionist policies of Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologos (1259-1282) which were later agreed upon at the Synod of Lyon in 1274. Because of this, he was imprisoned in 1267-8 and later wrote an account of his ordeal. Moreover, by his stand for Orthodoxy, he won many disciples among the elite of the Imperial Capital.

The Ladder of Ascent to Spiritual Rebirth (St. Symeon the New Theologian)

By St. Symeon the New Theologian

Above all else you should strive to acquire three things, and so begin to attain what you seek. The first is freedom from anxiety with respect to everything, whether reasonable or senseless - in other words, you should be dead to everything. Secondly, you should strive to preserve a pure conscience, so that it has nothing to reproach you with. Thirdly, you should be completely detached, so that your thoughts incline towards nothing worldly, not even your own body.

Then sit down in a quiet cell, in a corner by yourself, and do what I tell you. Close the door, and withdraw your intellect from everything worthless and transient. Rest your beard on your chest, and focus your physical gaze, together with the whole of your intellect, upon the center of your belly or your navel. Restrain the drawing-m of breath through your nostrils, so as not to breathe easily, and search inside yourself with your intellect so as to find the place of the heart, where all the powers of the soul reside. To start with you will find there darkness and an impenetrable density. Later, when you persist and practice this task day and night, you will find, as though miraculously, an unceasing joy. For as soon as the intellect attains the place of the heart, at once it sees things of which it previously knew nothing. It sees the open space within the heart and it beholds itself entirely luminous and full of discrimination. From then on, from whatever side a distractive thought may appear, before it has come to completion and assumed a form, the intellect immediately drives it away and destroys it with the invocation of Jesus Christ. From this point onwards the intellect begins to be full of rancor against the demons and, rousing its natural anger against its noetic enemies, it pursues them and strikes them down. The rest you will learn for yourself, with God's help, by keeping guard over your intellect and by retaining Jesus in your heart. As the saying goes, "Sit in your cell and it will teach you everything."

Asceticism, the Mother of Sanctification

By Metropolitan Seraphim of Kastoria

The philanthropy of God makes us worthy once again this year to go through the blessed period of the Triodion and with His grace and infinite mercy we will enter in a few days the Holy and Great Lent.

Let me once again remind you, as well as myself, of a counterproposal of the Church in the contemporary world and in the consumer society. And this is asceticism.

It has been called the mother of sanctification, a bridle against those things which bring spiritual death, a discipline towards all the members of the body, as well as the elimination of the vile taste of the tree [the Tree of Knowledge], according to the expression of Saint Gregory the Theologian.1

Fasting as a Weapon in Spiritual Warfare (St. Isaac the Syrian)

By St. Isaac the Syrian

The Savior began the work of our salvation with fasting. In the same way, all those who follow in the footsteps of the Savior build on this foundation the beginning of their endeavor, since fasting is a weapon established by God. Who will escape blame if he neglects this? If the Lawgiver Himself fasts, how can any of those who have to obey the law be exempt from fasting? This is why the human race knew no victory before fasting, and the devil was never defeated by our nature as it is: but this weapon has indeed deprived the devil of strength from the outset.