Cultivate the Jesus Prayer and a time will come when your heart will leap with joy, just as it does when you are about to see a person who you love very much.
Monastic life is called the art of arts and the science of sciences; for it does not bring perishable blessings akin to the things of this world, which drive the mind from what is best and engulf it; but monk hood promises us wonderful and unspeakable treasures which the ' Eye that not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man' (1 Cor. ii. 9). Hence, ' we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world' (Ephes. vi. 12). If therefore present existence is but darkness, let us flee from it, let us flee by returning our mind and our heart. Let us have nothing in common with the enemy of God, for 'whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God' ( James iv. 4). And who can help the enemy of God ? Therefore let us imitate our fathers and, like them, let us seek the treasure existing within our hearts and, having found it, let us hold fast to it in doing and guarding - for which task we were destined from the beginning.
When the enemy tempts you with thoughts of faithlessness, with all your heart say, I believe completely whatever the Church believes, whatever Christ says in the Holy Gospels, whatever the Holy Apostles and the Holy Fathers said. 'I don't, however, believe you, devil, for you are a liar and a thief.'
Often when someone throws a rock at a dog, rather than rushing at the person who threw the stone, the dog will run and bite the stone. We do the same thing. The tempter uses someone else to tempt us, either in word or deed, and, rather than deal with the tempter who threw the stone, we bite the rock, our fellow man that the hater of the good used against us.
The present age is temporal. In comparison with the future one it is like a drop in the oceans. So no longer attach your mind to temporal and earthly things, but to the incorruptible and heavenly things. Let us long with our whole soul for heavenly things, and with God's help we shall obtain them. Let your recollections, says Saint Yperechios, be in the Kingdom of Heaven, and you shall quickly inherit it. So please, my brethren, let us not be negligent and drowsy.
The Panagia is the salvation of the whole world, she is the only mother for all Christians… She has much love for the human race, especially for sinners.
Let not us who would be Christians expect anything else than to be crucified...for to be Christian is to be crucified in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example and warning to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection, if we would rise with Christ, we must be humbled with him even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world...we must be crucified outwardly in the eyes of the world, for Christ’s kingdom is not of this world and the world cannot bear it, even a single representative, even for the single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist now or at any time.
The Antichrist must be understood as spiritual phenomenon..., why will everyone in the world want to bow down to him, obviously it is because there is something in him that responds to something in us, that something being lack of Christ in us, if we will bow down to him (God forbid that we do so) it will be because we feel an attraction to some kind of external thing which might even look like Christianity since Antichrist means the one that is in place of Christ or looks like Christ.
Love giving hospitality, my child, for it opens the gates of Paradise. In this you also offer hospitality to angels. 'Entertain strangers so that you won't be a stranger to God.'
