Gleanings from Orthodox Christian Authors and the Holy Fathers

modern_life

6 Entries

Now is the time for us to cry and pray for the state the contemporary world ended up in…We are not well, God will punish is, because we abandoned Him… REF:Blessed Fr. Dimitrios Gagastathis +1975



Great misfortune and poverty is being foreseen, but that also must happen. We need to be given a slap so that we can recover. As we will work, thus we will be paid by the Lord. REF:Blessed Fr. Dimitrios Gagastathis +1975

Unfortunately people today, aside from a few, are deaf in soul; they don’t hear. They are blind; they don’t see; they walk in the darkness of sin… REF:Elder Joseph (trans. from Greek by Elizabeth Theokritoff), "Elder Joseph the Hesychast," (Mount Athos: The Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1999), pp. 195 - 198

…As at the time of Noah, thus also the flood of sin, of corruption, of disbelief and impiety, threatens to drown everyone…people run with eagerness along the path of perdition. REF:Elder Joseph (trans. from Greek by Elizabeth Theokritoff), "Elder Joseph the Hesychast," (Mount Athos: The Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1999), pp. 195 - 198

Unfortunately today sin superabounded and superexceeded and people who call light darkness and darkness light. Truth falsehood and falsehood truth. Sweet bitter and bitter sweet. Good evil and evil good. We find these people in all ranks of society except for a few select people, for whose sake may the Lord have mercy on us… REF:Elder Joseph (trans. from Greek by Elizabeth Theokritoff), "Elder Joseph the Hesychast," (Mount Athos: The Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1999), pp. 195 - 198

The Lord rose from the dead. He lives and reigns forever, but His disciples today, the millions of baptized Christians, are for the most part dead in a spiritual sense. Christ does not live in their hearts. They show no tangible proof of their faith.

Where is their fiery zeal to spread the Gospel? Where is their burning love, their bold decision to go out and demolish the strongholds of Satan? They are indifferent -- cold as the marble slabs that cover the tombs of the dead. They are dead, unburied dead. The laity are dead, but so too are the clergy, especially bishops, in whose chests Christ is supposed to live and reign.

What a great calamity! Our bishops are dead, faithful copies of the sluggish, useless bishop of the church of Sardis whom the Holy Spirit rebuked saying, "I know your works, that you have a name, that you are alive, but you are dead!" (Rev. 3:1). A church comprised of spiritually dead clergy and laity, a church that carries death and spreads it, cannot be called anything else but a dead church.

Take comfort. Amid all the coldness that transforms people's hearts into snowballs, there are still sparks -- burning coals and hearths of spiritual life in the modern world. Wherever a child stammers a quick prayer through innocent lips; wherever a boy or girl actively listens to catechetical lessons and sings joyous songs to the resurrected Lord; wherever a faithful mother prays for her children's salvation; wherever a young man or woman in the flower of youth offers himself or herself to the Lord's service; wherever a faithful nurse spends the night at the bedside of a sick person; wherever a missionary goes through virgin jungles to spread the light of the gospel to spiritually unenlightened lands; wherever there is a mighty battle against the dark powers; wherever sinners repent sincerely for their miserable past and, like Mary Magdalene, shed tears by their own tomb and seek forgiveness in confession; wherever there are holy pulsation's; wherever hearts are warmed in reading the Scriptures -- there are the sparks, the blazing coals, the spiritual hearth, the living Church. There is where Christ lives and reigns to the ages of ages.

Faithful souls, whenever earthquakes topple our world and whenever you see the ruins left behind by the faithlessness and corruption of our times, do not be disturbed. You have a rock upon which you can stand and an anchor upon which you can depend. You have a light with which to pass through. You have the sun that rose out of the tomb -- Jesus, crucified and resurrected from the dead. Why are you afraid? What is there to fear? Come, let us worship and bow down to Him, Christ, the Victor over Death, the Kind of the Ages. "Follow Me," by Bishop Augoustinos N. Kantiotes (Bishop of Florina in Greece), (Belmont, Massachusetts:Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1989), pp. 265-269






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