Thank you, Father Seraphim. I'm not sure how you are doing it, that you always find exactly those words and teachings I need right there in my life. Thank you for the faith. May God bless you always.
The closer I walk towards the light of Christ the more the light reveals my offenses. We must be able to shed the layers of fallenness to arrive before our Lord naked as the day we were born.
☦️ In my sufferings the world is a big place with many types of evil temptations, it takes many forms, negative thoughts, pain, isolation and loneliness, fear and sickness. I stay to myself to limit these temptations, it helps. I worship the Orthodox Liturgy on RU-vid for my Salvation, it keeps me focused on Christ.
Dear Father, this has been most useful for me. Pray for me, servant of God, a sinner, Anthonius. + I was welcomed to Holy Orthodoxy (from Roman Catholicism) some 7 years ago and am still I child with much to learn, especially with being more vigilant and in fasting the right way. Please pray for me, a sinner. Thank You!
Here is a testimony Brothers and Sisters! Just as I thought to myself, God wants me to come as I am, honestly so that he can change me as I am to become who we want me to be, this video popped up. I believe it is no coincidence. This is a revelation. Come as you are as the song says. Obey and trust in the Lord. Read the scriptures so you know his way and are able to discern from the enemy but just ask in prayer what you need and he will help you. I forgot the verse but it says somewhere in the new testament (I think 1 Timothy). That God will give you wisdom on subjects without fail if you just ask the father. So ask! And come as you are to his everlasting mercy. He loves you so just come as you are and he already know your heart he just want you to reveal yourself to him so you can join in perfect communion. I don't know if I am right on this but I hope so. Either way trust in the Lord and here's a little testimony for yah. Please pray for me 🙏
Dear Fr. Seraphim in my prayers for you and your Monastery on Mull Island. Please pray for me Paisios Thomas Victor Merlo Jr residing in Bethlehem PA USA. Please pray for my employment and health. Love to you. 🙏
Greetings from Cyprus, may God give you and us the peace of mind and wisdom through ceaseless prayer that we need to go through these difficult times, it's wonderful that your sharing your wisdom with us, God bless you and your spiritual work.
Dear Father, please, please don’t give up your videos, so many people are helped and inspired by them. I am RC but find your words more helpful than my priest’s. I would love to hear your thoughts on confession!
I'm learning that suffering is ultimately good for the soul. If we keep silent and accept it it can lead to sainthood. Thank you Father for reminding me.
Thank you Fr. Seraphim for this message. God desires that we remain true to Him and true to ourselves, even when we recognize the shortcomings, vices, and weaknesses we possess.
Thank you so much I listen and I'm cleansed by the tears I'm given. Thank you, for your guidance I listen and it helps me to look deeper in faith. I seek the lord and know him as he has known me from before this soul was given this body.
I thought that this was one of your most meaningful videos. Although I doubt I could ever afford to visit your monastery, I do take comfort from your messages. My love to you and your congregation and viewers. Tim.
Thank you 🙏 wonderful that Saint Sophrony can still speak to us through you. And that was a beautiful message you conveyed from him and all of us should hear it . God’s love and my prayers for you . Mark IC XC NI KA
Father, your words blessed me DEEPLY. Man it was like you went straight to my heart with this message!!! I am humbled to be listening to you. please pray for me (Steve)
Although I am just now seeing this video you posted over two years ago, it is very beautiful and timely. Your message is so powerful. Your passion for Christ and your love can be felt through this video.
God bless you Father Seraphim. Thank you very much for your spiritual guidance. It is true that only recognizing who we really are, only then God can save us. Through our baptism, we are all dressed up in Christ. Though our baptism, Christ is covering/ protecting us from the evil one, like an invisible cloth. This protection however is further consolidated if we take our own crosses and follow Christ, meaning that we must accept all what God gives us, the good ones as well as the things that help us to stay away from sin, things through which God shows us that we are not really on the right path, things that makes us spiritually stronger. Saint Apostle Paul had a physical disability and asked God to lift this up from him. However, God told him that such a physical weakness is good for him and that God's Grace is sufficient for him. By accepting this, and many other gifts, Saint Apostle Paul took his cross and followed God until his martyrdom in Rome. There is no resurrection if we do not take up our crosses and follow God. Personally, I fully trust God that He knows what is best for me, and this is why I am not asking God, why. As Saint Father Sophrony of Essex indicated in his letter, God kept silent on all his 'why questions', and therefore so he did too. Maybe God did so, because His Grace that was upon Saint Father Sophrony of Essex was enough for him, and the ones around him. It is true that most of times people ask God why, if things are less good in their lives. But, how many of us do ask God the following: "Why God, are you so good and kind with me/ my family/ my friends, after all my sins, after all my falls, after all my wrong-doings I have done?" The answer to all 'whys' would be, I guess: "Because I love you, and I want you all to be saved !" We are less convinced that God loves us when things go less good in our lives, but I am wondering how many of us think that God loves us, when all things are very good in our lives? We take for granted many things very easily in our lives, and many times we forget (unfortunately) to thank God for everything basically. God bless you all !
Thank you for your wise Holy Spirit guided words Fr. Seraphim. I've endured the most horrible suffering in the last 18 months and I have been struggling to understand why. I asked God and felt a certian sense that He was present and working in the midst of it all. I was led to the Prophet Jeremiah and his words about the Potter shaping the clay and I realised who am I as the clay to question the Almighty Potter? He is good and loving and always has my best interests at heart. May God bless you and your whole monastic community. -Fr. Brett
Sometimes.. we really are so unable to do 😥 ... hard to pray sometimes, hard to read books for growing in our relationship with Jesus. Seeing ourselves so tiny and little, and disappointed of us, we barely find words in prayers😥🙏🏻🪔 to be all of us in one little place in Heaven with our Jesus, our Father, to receive the good answer for our soul's Salvation😥🙏🏻🪔
Hello Father thank you for the beautiful sunset 🌅 and to hear the holy orthodox chanting. Reminds me at an early age, listening to my mother at home sing from her faith of Greek Orthodoxy 🇭🇺I cry for her memory Please pray for me Father. May God bless and protect in these times Amen 🙏🌟🎺
Fr. Seraphim. You didn't know if this message was going to benefit anyone at the close. Rest assured, it has. Thank you for the profound insight. I have been trying to, in my imperfect, sinful state, and in my weak willfullness attain a saintly state of being by rejecting every disgraceful thing that presents itself in my life. It is being revealed by the Lord, that my attempts are in vain. The Lord, in His abundant love, has permitted the attacks of the enemy in my life to teach me who NOT to be. He Is now allowing me to love Him, as is His due, and others as well despite all of our imperfections. Thank you, again for the reminder that my willfulness may not be what our loving Creator has in mind, and to face what He is presenting!
May God bless you, dear Donald. Thank you for sharing this with us - it gives us confidence and the courage to keep going forward. May we all be blessed.
Saint Joseph the Hesycast says something about how God tests us to see how much we love Him. Either way, Saint Sophrony has a LOT of faith and love to respond as he does: when asking God continuously the same thing, yet not loosing hope. That’s amazing!!!
Loved the sunset. Truly a gift of God. Thank you so much Fr. Seraphim. Your words make so much sense to me and help me so much with questions I always seem to have. God Bless you. You also are a gift from God.
Thank you Father Seraphim for sharing with us these little golden nuggets of thought about struggling with our human condition. It is certainly easier to accept, embrace, and surrender to Christ our unique situations of struggle with suffering and sin than to try and escape them with our own devices. I also take this opportunity to wish you and all your brothers and sisters in the Monastery with good health and pray for continued blessings from God to every one of you.
1) listen to your conscience, learn to discern it from the other voices in your head. It is literally God's voice and if you follow it you benefit from the wisdom of eternity. 2) Place mystery at the center of your life. Whatever disrupts your sense of mystery will lead you astray. 3) Never close off your perceptions, no matter no strange and overwhelming they are. By doing so you shut out God. Learn to have confidence in what your least explicable perceptions show you; do not seek vindication or recognition from other people regarding any spiritual knowledge. They are blind and will just sow doubt. 4) All good things come by grace. Do not senselessly try to replicate the conditions of your past happiness, instead be ready to receive grace in the most unexpected form. 5) Never forget that an infinite reality surrounds and and wells up within you, that is pure truth and light. No one can stop you from trusting your perceptions and perceiving it. Most of the time you only get glimpses -- allow these glimpses to accumulate into a larger pattern, instead of getting frustrated when they're rare.
I think Christianity is not promising that there will be no problems if you believe in God. All your problems may get fewer. But the Bible promises you will overcome them. I think one of the keys to living the Christian life is greater understanding of the problem you face and how to overcome them. An illustration of this principle is the idea that you need to solve the problem through your own effort and the other help you can garner which is really you..because you asked!!
Thank you Father Seraphim. It seems like every video and message you share with us is perfect timing. I constantly revisit my favorites. God bless you and God bless all of us who love and pray for the Monastery. Jeannie💙🙏💙
A great message and I want to thank you for this!! I ve been struggling for years and I still wonder why God doesn't give me the A breakthrough.... I pray if he doesn't want to free me and blessing me at least maybe he likes to visit and encourage me to these difficult times!! We must keep our simplicity in Christ and do not pretend someone else's character!!
Sharing beauty is the greatest gift anyone can give others. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Your message has touched the depths of my soul and, I’m certain, the souls of many.
4:39 can relate and am not so Holy 6:24 discernment 7:37 yes 8:17 amen discernment: I need to exit this marriage 9:30 exactly the state I am in, I need actually physical help 10:34 I will never deny Christ 10:49 yep this is me, not a saint
Thank you for this beauty and inspiration. I will share my enduring thought in response. Perhaps it is because i have not been baptised and am a Jew: I do not know. But G/d does respond to this question when i ask it. He says loud and clear: "who told you there would not be suffering in this world?" And he adds: "of course there is suffering! And i am here to help you deal with it and find your way through!" :) :) :)
Thank you for your wonderful view sunset... love your talks don't let satans club that I can see you have looked in. We always get a reaction from the old nick, he hates people like you trying to save a soul or two...keep up the good work, Shalom.
Thank you father Seraphim for your soothing words. May I ask what is the hymn playing in the background at the beginning? I had sent you an e-mail some time ago. I hope I can hear from you soon 🙏
Jesus is the truth , the light , and the strength of this world. He said, what if one conquers the world only to be cast out of my Father's Kingdom. He also said, he who tries to save his life will lose it, and he who loses it by following my example will save it. To God is far less important to enable us to conquer this world in any way or means possible, but of the utmost importance to guide us through the salvation of our soul and for Him to be able to justify a judgement upon us which will allow us to enter His Kingdom, and spent eternity by His side. Jesus loves us in a way which is beyond our wildest dreams, in a way that no human being can express and apply his love to another, His love is truly divine, not of this earth. Please do not lose your faith in Jesus, no matter what you've been or go through. This does come from someone that has experienced severe lengths of pain and suffering, both physical and emotional, throughout his entire life, and still is up to this day. Jesus is the answer to everything in your life, to every aspect of it. The more you bond with Him, the more everything will make sense, including any questions or doubts you have in regards to your personal existence and place in the world. Many ask , what is the point, and the meaning of life. The answer is , love. Love is the meaning of life. Love is the reason God has created the universe and the human species, and all the other forms of life on our planet and beyond. Jesus Himself answered this, when he was asked what one should do to become able to enter His Kingdom. He said that one needs to obey the two great commandments, the first one is to love God with all your heart , mind and soul, and the second and as important as the first one, to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I've been an orthodox Christian for almost 42 years, and I have seen and heard people ask the same question over and over again. If God is an all merciful and loving being, why does he allow pain and suffering. And then there are those who actually say and believe that God causes pain and suffering to punish people or to test people's faith. God does not work in such ways. To do so would be to contradict and cancel Himself, and one's such a thought is idiotic by default. He does not cause any suffering and He is certainly not the cause of any pain or evil. All pain, evil comes from satan and man. God only allows for pain, evil to take place as He has built an autonomous universe, and He has granted it with free will. He allows things to happen and he respects our free will. He also allows satan to tempt people as he was allowed to tempt His only and beloved Son. He does so because we as His creation need to be aware of what is evil, what is sin, what is hell, and how to fight it and discard it from our lives. There is also a question lingering about in people's brains, and that regards the fact as to why God has created evil in the first place. The answer is , he did not. He did not as he has no connection to evil whatsoever, God is sinless, He cannot be touched by evil, and is the most pure and clean being there could ever be. Evil was let's just say a natural consequence of his whole creation, it was something that immersed through the natural order of things. God was of course aware of this, but for His own reasons allowed it to immerse and evolve. To my understanding, He did so, because there needs to be a balance in the way the universe works. Another reason God allows pain and suffering to happen, is to give us a way to cleanse our souls, to redeem ourselves, to guide us towards the right path and through the narrow gate, which is not for the many but for the few. Jesus has suffered and had gone through a lot of pain in his earthly life caused by us mere mortals, and He allowed us to do so and to crucify Him in order to save us, to grant us a clean and pure soul as we are born into this world without carrying the burden of sin of our forefathers, to give us the right through His sacrifice to ask for forgiveness in His name for our sins and to be able to get it while we are still on this earth and to show us that no matter what we go through we should never lose our faith to the divine holy Father , to Him, and to the Holy Spirit, as He has done the will of His Father and not His own, and remained unchanged in His faith to the Holy Father throughout His suffering and sacrifice, and that as He has risen , defeated death and is living in us and among us, so shall we, be risen and live by his side for all eternity. This earthly life and all of its wonders, is the ultimate gift to us by God, the creator and master of all and of everything, but it is also a test, we all need to pass, by living our lives through God's way, which must become our way of living. Do not feel bitter because you are in pain and you are going through suffering, whenever that comes into your life, as it is not God's work but of someone else's, while God instead will know your pain, He will take it into His arms, and He will give you the strength to endure it and most of the times overcome it, as although man considers himself the master of everything, and a powerful being, with his own strength and impact on things, he is mistaken, as he is master of absolutely nothing, he is powerless towards everything , and he only perceives the opposite and is able to act as he does, because the Almighty wishes it so. Absolutely nothing in the universe happens without God's permission, blessing or knowledge. Know that all of you who cause pain and suffering , damage to other children of His, God is angry with you. Know that all of you who suffer and are in pain, God knows your pain as he knows yourself better than you do, and He cherishes that pain, He values it, and He is heartbroken that you suffer, and Jesus will count this in your favor when you stand before Him. Suffering has a special place in God's heart, he perfectly comprehends and feels your suffering and what you go through, as it is through suffering and sacrifice as the ultimate act of love, through which he chose to save the world. God is angry and very sad with people who sin and who enjoy sinning , who do not repent nor ask to be forgiven by Him but instead push others into sinning as well. He is also a merciful and loving God, and He will allow one to sin his whole life as he has that right of free will, but also so as to give him the chance up to the last days of his life to truly repent and return back to Him. This is also where many people are mistaken, as a few days of so called repentance cannot make up for a life full of sin, and people who spent their life in sin and away from God because they do not believe, can never truly repent, nor can they trick and deceive, God, but only themselves. So do not envy those who sin, those who are unbelievers , those who live their life according to satan , those who seem so eager and would do just about anything to conquer this world, those who have an abundance of what this world can offer but do not share their wealth, their prosperity with those in need, as everything they have, everything they achieved in life, all the wealth and happiness they gained, all was given by God, and none of these will enter His Kingdom. May God bless you all, and may illuminate your life with His everlasting righteous light.
Not in that sense. In we are eternal in the sense that We have always been in the plan of God, (from eternity he loved us) and we will live forever sice we are created in the image of God (for eternity). That's why it is so important to not fail our existence, I remember a phrase someone said "if angels could envy, they would envy the fact that we have the Eucharist (Communion with God in a way that even angels don't) and the fact that we can suffer (cause we get eternal rewards for our suffering in time)". There were those who held we always existed, but that is heresy both for the Catholic and the Orthodox Church, since the first councils, even before the muslims caused the division of the Church... yet in a certain sense we were in the Mind of God, potentially but not actually, so we were going to exist, but didn't exist yet (it is too difficult to explain without having studied theology in depth), but the point is that we were created and didn't exist before, while only the Word of God was "generated from eternity" (he always existed)
Father I have a question. I truly need help with. What do you think of ecumenism? And the old calendar new Calender issues?I know this is a touchy subject but I need guidance on it.
Yes & yes & yes!!! Now Please VERY Important I just heard yesterday! A woman who makes soap for cleaning clothes . Discovered when she made her own laundry detergent With out chemicals & Scents (smells of perfume). Her Very strong sweet migraines stopped!!! It is Very important possible that could be Causing yours as well. Maybe your bed sheets and pillow??? Maybe you or who ever does Your laundry could take your sheets and pillow cover out and put them threw a prince with baking soda. It removes odors. I sincerely hope You try this!!! Please try!!!
I used to think being a true Orthodox Christian meant being weak. I could not have been further from the truth. When God says if you want to follow me pick up your cross and follow me, He wasn’t kidding. The journey for me has been tough and incredibly fulfilling. God works in mysterious ways.
Multumesc Parinte Serafim pentru ca ne inspirati ceva de nedescris in cuvinte. Sa va binecuvinteze Bunul Dumnezeu si sa aiba grija de toti fratii din Manastirea Mull.
"I'm sorry. Now we are turning to something much less beautiful than the sunset. It's me." As a protestant brother who grew up in Montana (the land of the big sky), I have a great appreciation for beautiful sunsets. This was a beautiful sunset. It was not as beautiful as you. You are beautiful because God has made you, and He has done beautiful things through you. My soul has been blessed through you, my brother. Thank you for following God and trying to promote Him in your videos. Even if you were to never post a video again, God has used you mightily in the lives of people like myself who strive to give our lives to God. Be blessed, my brother!
O,k I am very critical about everything. Questing every thing. Believe nothing. But feel your heart. Feel your heart. I start crying. I don't believ in sjit anymore. Not in soft words any more. I believe no one anymore. But feel your heart and love. Tears drip from my eyes.
If God is silent I will be silent too. So beautiful. Suffering united to Christ crucified is salvific. St. Pio said if we knew the value of suffering we would pray for nothing else. Only here do we find any answer to the problem of suffering even though it remains a mystery. The benefit is enormous. You mean our suffering has benefit for eternal life. Alright! I might still suffer but now I accept it gladly and stop worrying about it! What a huge psychological boost! Thank you once again Fr. Seraphim. What a great voice you are in this life.
As a mother of 2 boys who both have learning issues, I've been struggling with my faith and wondering what I've done wrong, and why God hasn't answered my calls for help....you said just what I needed to hear. Thank you for this video - perhaps keeping my silence and letting God do his work in his time, is what I need to do. God bless you. Amen.
Prayer is a very good choice. May God give you strength to go on with your prayers and help your boys. Bring your boys to the Divine Liturgy such that they can take the Holy Eucharist. This will help your boys on the learning issues. Ask the advice of the spiritual Father, remain close to the Church and things will be good in time. I have witnessed so many miracles in numerous families that grow up in the Church, but this takes time. God bless !
I have a learning disability myself and because l just don't look like or sound like it my teachers wouldn't believe me, shame me and call my lazy until it was too late and l never got any sort of therapy or training to help my learning disability. I'm 20 and struggle to operate with even single digit numbers, mix up left and right, struggle to copy ornaments even though l'm a painter now. The advice I could give as someone who has been there is to not let teachers call them lazy, help them find what they are good at and let them have enough time doing something they enjoy and gives them a sense of accomplishment. May God help you!
Thank you 🙏I have been under grate spiritual warfare for so long it is very tormenting. GOD was with me as a young child I have been waiting my whole life for his coming and to have these thoughts are horrifying that everytime I pick up the bible very intense thoughts that I put have to put the bible down. There is nothing i love more or than GOD AND YASHUA. When YASHUA said to the Father why has thow forsaken me. To be separate from the Father is being in hell😪🙏
