Thank you for giving us access to these precious teachings. I'm from Brasil, and the nearest Orthodox church is beyond my reach right now, but the Lord's grace is so abounding that I've been helped by the priest of the parish I want to be with, and I've also been greatly helped by people like you who make such helpful content available to us all. Thank you, I'll be humbly praying for you too. May God bless you always.
I am afraid that all these dos and don'ts not to think or feel or react about feels like we would not even be human, or like denying being human. Won't we become like robots?
Humility: To recognize our weakness, sinfulness, and deep need for God. To recognize God's mercy, grace, forgiveness, and providence in spite of our sinfulness. To recognize we are always God's debtors - We don't sufficiently show our gratitude and thankfulness for God's providence and forgiveness even while we were/are sinners. To regard others as superior to oneself. To refuse to judge others. To attribute all spiritual progress and virtue to God's grace and not to one's own efforts. Even our free will to choose to obey God is His gift to us. All good things that we have been given or those we have done (with God's grace), are given to us from God. As such, there is no rightful place for ego, vainglory, or pride. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners and save us. Amen
Can the soldiers that guarded the tomb of jesus christ could they mean or represent our eyes ? We guard the nous and christ ressuracts within us ... after this video this view came to my mind
Greetings. Turning to God and remaining in that state until the return of the messiah is the summary of all christian perfection, all national traditions of the Catholic Church like the Greeks, Russians or the Egyptians, as well as the Charisms of the Latin Church vary only on the emphasis of the means, which can all also be summarized to the sacrifice of our own human means and aspirations in the name of attending to the Loving Mystery of the Salvific Passion. Blessings
This was really good, thank you, Father, I am better understanding the Passions like I have never really paid a lot of attention to before, and I really want to bring into consciousness all that I need to clean up. After hearing more and more of this discussion has really helped me, and I appreciate all this so much. I identify myself in some of these scenarios, and it is good to hear discussion like this with others. Thank you, very much. "Praise be to God under all conditions."
I have a textual question about the Philokalia: What is the source(s) of the additional material in many of the Philokalia texts that we find in the Russian edition made by St. Theophan the Recluse?
Our family copy of Theophan's edition has footnotes where there are additional chapters (St. Symeon the New Theologian, for example, is longer in Russian.) The footnotes for these additional paragraphs indicate that they are not in Greek editions. Met. Kallistos (Ware) also indicates in passing in the introduction of his English edition that St. Theophan included texts not found in the Greek philokalia. His English edition does not include these extra passages. Neither of these editing notes hint at where these additional sections in St. Theophan's came from. I am curious about their origin. We also have clues from the Way of the Pilgrim that the older Russian editions of the Philokalia were shorter than St. Theophan's expanded edition (though I have not seen those versions in person.)
I’m going to speak with my spiritual father also, but I have a question. Vaping (nicotine) is my only EXTERNAL passion….No drinking, drugs, or sexual passions. Should I not move forward with the philokalia until I am able to completely stop nicotine? Thank you Fr God bless.
I asked Vladika about this afterwards: he recommended I DIDN’T read it. He says the Philokalia is like a manual for a spiritual father. Not something we should concern ourselves right now. Snippets like these are good, but I don’t think he recommends that we crack open the Philokalia and read everything
As far as Nicotine and our passions, I recommend just keep fighting, go to confession, and let the Holy Spirit excise the passions out of you. The Holy Spirit will guide you to your next passion you never knew about
@@jashergrunau8235 also meant to say, I have plenty of internal passions. I just really want to get rid of nicotine because it is a distraction between communion with God.
