Word from the Desert

Meditations on the Orthodox Life from the Early Church Fathers, Ascetics, Saints and Righteous

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Prayer, fasting, vigils, and all other Christian practices, however good they may be in themselves, certainly do not constitute the aim of our Christian life: they are but the indispensable means of attaining that aim. For the true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, vigils, prayer and almsgiving, and other good works done in the name of Christ, they are only the means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Note well that it is only good works done in the name of Christ that bring us the fruits of the Spirit.
~St. Seraphim of Sarov

In order for one to understand the Saints and Fathers of the [Orthodox] Church, it is not sufficient to merely read them. The Saints spoke and wrote after having lived the mysteries of God. They personally experienced the mysteries.

In order for one to understand them, he too must have progressed to a certain degree of initiation into the mysteries of God by personally tasting, smelling, and seeing. You can read the books of the Saints and become very well versed in them with a ‘cerebral’ knowledge without even minutely tasting that which the Saints tasted who wrote these books through their personal experience.

In order to understand the Saints essentially, not intellectually, you must have the proper experience for all that they say; you must have tasted, at least in part, of the same things as they. You must have lived in the fervent environment of Orthodoxy; you must grown in it… A Whole new world must be born in a Westerner’s heart in order for him to understand something of Orthodoxy.

~Alexandar Kalomiros, Against False Union, 1959

The mysteries of our Faith are unknown and not understandable to those who are not repenting.

~Archpriest Nicholas Deputatov, ‘Awareness of God’ in the Orthodox Word Magazine, July-August 1976

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Wednesday

07Oct2009

At the Lavra of the Towers...

Oct 7, 2009 |

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…there was an elder who practiced poverty to an exceptional degree and yet his particular spiritual gift was that of almsgiving. One day a beggar came to his little tower asking for alms. The elder had nothing but a single loaf of bread which he brought out and gave to the beggar, “It is not bread I want,” said the beggar. “I need clothing.” Wishing to minister to the man’s needs, the elder took him by the hand and led him into his tower. When the beggar found that there was nothing there at all other than what the elder stood up in, he was so impressed by his virtue that he opened his bag and emptied out all its contents in the middle of the cell. “Take this, good elder,” he said, “I will get what I need elsewhere.”

John Moschus, Leimonarion (The Spiritual Meadow) 9