Showing posts with label Elder Joseph the Hesychast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elder Joseph the Hesychast. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Elder Joseph the Hesychast: The time will soon come for us
Come, my good and beloved sister. Come and I shall comfort your sorrow once again. Come and we shall bless God with the sweet voice of our heart, intoned through our mouth, and resonating in our nous, saying, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within me bless His holy name.”1
O joy! O gratitude! O love of the heavenly Father! He cleanses us from all defilement, honors us, enriches us, bestowing His riches! There, my golden sister, there are no crafty people to wrong us. Envy and jealousy will have dis. appeared. There are no passions there whatsoever; those who have them have remained on the other side of the bridge. For a great gulf is fixed between here and there. 2
But, O sweet love of Christ, what good didst Thou see in us that Thou didst lead us along Thy divine path?
So rejoice and exult, my beloved sister. Thank and glorify God, and behold, the time draws near. The time will soon come for us to hear the blessed voice, “Come unto me,”3 And as soon as these bodily eyes close, the noetic eyes of the soul will open. Then as if from sleep we shall wake up into the other life. Then you will see parents, brothers, relatives. Then you will see angels, saints, and the blessed Mother of all, the pure Virgin Theotokos, whom we all call upon at every moment and to whom, after God, we owe everything. Then, whom shall we speak with first, who will kiss us first, whom shall we kiss? With all purity, with all modesty, with all holiness. So who, expecting such blessings, would not endure every sorrow here of this present life?
Therefore, my good beloved sister, make a review of your life. Examine in what manner you have passed your life. Recall the innumerable benefactions of our Savior Jesus Christ and His sweetest Mother, and be patient in the temptations that come.
God always helps. He always comes in time, but patience is necessary. He hears us immediately when we cry out to Him, but not in accordance with our own way of thinking.
You think that your voice did not immediately reach the saints, our Panagia, and Christ. On the contrary, even before you cried out, the saints rushed to your aid, knowing that you would call upon them and seek their God-given protection. However, since you do not see beyond what is apparent and do not know how God governs the world, you want your request to be fulfilled like lightning. But this is not how things are. The Lord wants patience. He wants you to show your faith. You cannot just pray like a parrot. It is necessary also to work towards whatever one prays for, and then to learn to wait. You see that what you longed for in the past has finally happened. However, you were harmed because you didn’t have the patience to wait, in which case you would have gained both the one and the other: both the temporal and the eternal.
Now you become angry and fainthearted and grieved, thinking that the heavenly Father is slow in answering. But I tell you that this will also happen as you desire – it will definitely happen – but first it takes prayer with all your soul, and then you must wait. And when you have forgotten your request and have ceased asking for it, it will come to you as a reward for your patience and endurance. When you reach the verge of despair while praying and seeking, then the fulfillment of your request is near. Christ wants to heal some hidden passion within you, and this is why He delays in granting your request. If you obtain it sooner, when you demand it, your passion remains uncured within you. If you wait, you obtain your request and the cure of the passion. And then you rejoice exceedingly and give warm thanks to God Who arranges all things in wisdom and does everything for our benefit.
So then, there is no point in losing heart, getting upset, complaining. You must close your mouth. Let no one perceive that you are disturbed. Don’t fume with anger, as if to work it out of your system, but rather be calm. Bum the devil through patience and forbearance.
The Lord, Who destroys all who speak lies, is my witness that I have greatly benefited by the advice I am giving you. The temptations I had were strong enough to make you think that your soul would depart due to the pain, as if from a flaming furnace. Nevertheless, once the trial is over, so much consolation comes that you feel as if you were in paradise without a body. Then Christ loves you, our Panagia loves you, the saints praise you, and the angels admire you.
Do you see how many good things temptations and afflictions cause? So if you too want to see, to taste the love of Christ, endure whatever comes upon you – not whatever you like, but whatever the Lord wants to test you with. What we suffer voluntarily is absolutely nothing in comparison with the trials the Lord sends us against our will. The hostile devil fights us bone against bone and blood against blood, as much as God allows. He fights so much, that one melts and flows like wax before the fire.4 But when the trial passes, you are totally filled with joy. You are encompassed with extraordinary light and see mysteries which the human tongue is unable to utter. And henceforth you thirst for more temptations, when they will come again, since you have already learned how salutary they are.
This is truly the road, my sister, and the one writing to you bears witness to the truth out of his own experience. So be brave and strong in the Lord, enduring whatever comes to you, expecting, along with the pain, the peace and grace of God. Be strong and give courage to your soul, considering that the lame and the maimed do not enter into these good things. Christ allows temptations so that we may be purified of our predispositions. Temptations are like soap and a mallet which hits us and whitens us. All the clothes that are firm are useful for the Bridegroom. But those which do not endure the mallet are tom and thrown out in the trash.
Therefore, let us exert ourselves a little bit here, for the time draws near. Keep the letters I send you, so that you will have them when afflictions trouble you, because it seems to me that I shall soon leave you. The more that time passes, the more seriously ill I become. I am like a paralytic now.
Postscript:
I don’t have time to write to you about the miracle that the Lord showed me to correct a mistake I was making out of ignorance, as you know. So, do you see the great goodness of our Lord? Do you see that He even works miracles when His divine providence deems it suitable? Many times a person is deluded out of ignorance or because others mislead him. But when he has an upright soul and good intentions, the Lord does not abandon him, but will bring him enlightenment in various ways. This makes me feel like dirt, ash, and a worm of the earth.
Most truly, great is the mercy of the Lord. The Psalmist is right in saying, “Not according to our sins hath He dealt with us, nor according to our iniquities hath He rewarded us.”5
So then, why shouldn’t you thank God? Why should you grumble? If I were to write to you the temptations I undergo, you would not be able to bear it. Nevertheless, the grace of Christ and our Panagia dispels them all. Have patience, for the Theotokos, the Queen and Lady of all, does not abandon us. She prays for us.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi: I became an orphan again
Grandpa kept his word and asked me to visit him in Thessaloniki, when he came down from the Holy Mountain. I flew there on Monday and stayed till Tuesday 11th of November. It was a day and half filled with Grace and peace. Everything happened so quickly… Was it a dream?
I met grandpa from two in the afternoon until six when I left for the hotel and the following day until five o clock in the afternoon when I had to leave for the airport. He greeted me with such affection and kindness that all the fatigue from the trip disappeared immediately! He was telling me about his life, how he wanted to become a monk, how he started and also about the great and many hardships he faced in the various monasteries. (‘I am not telling you all these to brag, but to show you that what you are now going through is nothing!’) He was also describing his spiritual father – Elder Joseph the Hesychast- and was telling me about the abundance of blessings and the presence of grace all of his spiritual children inherited after this great man’s death.
Elder Joseph: ‘His ‘testament’ was revealed after his death, and we, the ‘nobodies’ and the despised, suddenly became like giants!’
He also described the lives of several of his spiritual children as examples of patience and perseverance. His eyes would fill with tears, especially when he was humbly referring to the many blessings he had received from the Lord and for His great love ‘to me, the abandoned, the insignificant and the dead thing. I looked like I was being aborted, when I was born!’
He would shower me with advice on how to show patience and taught me how to pray. Twice he offered a prayer to the Lord in order to teach me how to pray and what to say to Him. ‘My All Merciful Father, while you knew who I was, you did not despise me; you pulled me out of the latrine, instead. Do not let me wander off, keep me with you; give me Your Grace and teach me how to obey your commands’.
Unfortunately, I cannot remember all his words during those very emotive prayers. However, he would insist: ‘When you say these things, you say everything. You do not need anything else’. He was stressing that if I keep blaming myself and if I genuinely believe that I am the lowest of all creatures, I will be saved and there will be no possibility for me losing my soul. And his eyes would constantly fill with tears. And so would mine…
I was sitting on the floor by his feet and occasionally he would caress my head. Heavenly moments… Who can describe them? I kept hanging on to him, to his love and his prayers…
Several times he would repeat to me that ‘the more you love your spiritual father, the more treasure you will be able to take out from the chest, which is filled with his prayers. And more you will be able to feel the love your father has for you, his child’.
I was pressing him to admit if he does indeed visit me every time I feel that he does, but he would deny this out of humility. ‘I am sleeping in my bed’ he would reply. But he would admit that ‘everything is possible to the one who has faith’. Indeed…
What can I say about the so many times, he would jump up, like a young man despite his many years, to offer me either some sweet, or a cup of coffee or cheese pastries…
Nevertheless, he would always try to preserve a spiritual level to our conversation even though he would occasionally refer to politics, crack a joke, or talk about the future … He would say that in a few years there will be another great European war, in which Russia will be involved because Turkey will attack Greece in the Aegean to capture its oil reserves. Two hundred and thirty million people will be killed, he would say, and then John, who will be asked by an angel to intervene, will be gathering the bones of those killed for many years to come….Then there will be a revival, so that the Christians will be able to recover before the appearance of the Antichrist. Then even nature will be disturbed. The rivers will dry up and the sea will flood the shores for miles inland and then withdraw. The air will be filled with the stench of death… (Didn’t this take place a few years later in north eastern Asia when the tsunami left hundreds of thousands of people dead?) The wind will not blow and rains will not come. People will plead to be allowed to die, but death will not come. However, the Lord will shorten those days for the sake of the very few, the chosen ones …
He had to rest for a short time after lunch. I went for a walk and bought some books from the bookstore. They were ‘Pneumatika gymnasmata’ by St Nicodemus the Hagiorite.
Elder Joseph: I also used to read this book; Also the ‘Spiritual War’ because the language was easy and I could understand it. I learnt how to blame myself from these books. This is what you must also practice and do not worry.
Author: Grandpa, I have read hundreds of books and I do not remember anything!
Elder Joseph: No. Don’t say that. This is the seed. It will flourish when the Lord wants it to.
When I tried to confess some of my worst sins he would stop me. ‘No. Don’t think about them. Think only about the Lord’s infinite mercy’.
Elder Joseph: I lose my wits when I think about the Lord’s mercy. How He chose us, the lowly, the inferior out of so many millions of people …!
He would always count himself among the sinners and would say:
Elder Joseph: You must be satisfied for all that you’re suffering in your family because it means that the Lord has accepted your repentance. He is cleansing you here so that you repay your dues in this life before you go to Heavens!
While sitting with him, I felt eager to put even more effort into my spiritual struggle to please him and show him my obedience to him. I told him.
Elder Joseph: I do not want anything, my child. It is the Lord you must please. What kind of obedience do you want to show me? You are a social person not a nun. You must obey the Lord’s commands and persevere in your spiritual struggle. Your attention must constantly be turned towards the Lord… Nothing else matters. I, myself, am ready to go… Nothing bothers me and nothing captures my attention.
I asked him what will happen to me when he dies. He raised his voice.
Elder Joseph: Where is the Lord, my child? Has He disappeared? HE IS EVERYTHING. We are only His levers. You hold on to us in order to walk the path which will take you to Him.
When the time came for me to leave, I started feeling the pain. He would crack some jokes to make me smile… Truly ‘he became all things to all people’. When I said my goodbyes, he came to the lift to see me off. His face was illuminated again with a soft, white light. This was strange. The light from the lift was orange and the corridor was dark…. Indeed, the Divine Grace was illuminating his face and the Lord permitted me to see it in order to remember it as a consolation for my separation from him…
I still do not know how I manage to leave him… On the airplane I was emotional but in the mood for praying. I was certain that this was the result of his prayers. At home I slept peacefully.
Temptation struck me hard the following day with melancholy. What was the result of this blessed visit in Thessaloniki? It was plenty. His abundant affection… the peaceful and tranquil environment… his so much advice.
When I called him on the phone to tell him how upset I was for leaving him, he said:’ But you did not leave! I do not feel that you have left!’
Author: Yes, but why is it that I feel this way?
Elder Joseph: This is the Cross we have to carry. We live in exile. We keep forgetting this and we think that it is not so. But it is. We are deceived. You are feeling the effect of ‘the changes’. The sun has hidden behind the cloud. It is nothing. This is how things are. It will pass.
Author: I wish I was still there… I came back to my Hell. (I start crying)
Elder Joseph: It is good to cry! The way to save yourself is through your tears. Go to Church, anywhere, so long as you cry! You must cry if you are to flourish. This is the way to progress.
I put the phone down. I became an orphan again…
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Elder Arsenios Spileotis (1886-1983)
Elder Arsenios Spileotis (1886-1983), fellow struggler for more than 40 years with Saint Elder Joseph the Hesychast ( 1897-1959)
It is not easy to describe in a few
pages the life and works of a great ascetic of the might of blessed
Elder Arsenios. He was born in Pontos. While still young he was burning
with Holy zeal. He decided to leave his country and walk from Russia to
Constantinople and from there to the Holy Land, where he served at the
Holy Sepulchre and at other Holy places for almost ten years.
The Church
of the Holy Resurrection in Jerusalem, where blessed Elder Arsenios
served for more than ten years (among other Holy places)
There, it was God’s will to meet
with the well known great ascetic of Egina, Ieronymos, from whom he
received the higher teachings of monastic life.
The blessed Elder Ieronymos of Egina, who was the first teacher in Christ of blessed Elder Arsenios Spileotis and Hesychast.
His soul, thirsty and burning with Holy
adoration, was calling together with David: “Truly my soul waits upon
God, from Him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation,
He is my fortress, I shall never be shaken”. He then left the wiles of
the world and ascended to Mount Athos, the Holy garden of our Lady.
While totally submitting himself to the
guidance of the Holy Spirit, initially he stayed for a few years at the
Holy Monastery of Stavronikita where he received the holy schema of the
monk and was renamed Arsenios from Anatolios, which was the name he
received during his tonsure in Jerusalem.
Fr Arsenios took advantage of the then
unruly state of the monastery and began practicing tougher and higher
struggles by himself.
However, he was so keen for more
difficult struggles that he decided to reach deeper into the slopes of
the Holy Mountain, to look for ascetics who would be able not only to
teach but also show him the road to perfection.
The Lord saw his genuine desire, and did
not take long to reveal to him that which he most wanted. And what he
wanted was another young man, who was also looking for the same thing
with the same fervor. These two young people met for the first time high
on the summit of Mount Athos. As the magnet captures the iron, likewise
the Holy Spirit drew them together. They then remained together in
Spirit as companions and never parted from one another in accordance
with the promise they made until death separated them.
The other young man was the later renowned great ascetic of the 20th Century, Joseph the Hesychast, who was then called by his Christian name, Francis Kottis.
These two young people became like bees
and collected whatever exceptional goodness they could find in the
desert of the Holy Mountain in order to harvest the sweetest fruits of
the Holy Spirit.
They first met with the well known elder
Daniel Kantounakioti, with Kallinikos the Hesychast, with Yerasimos,
Ignat and other sweet smelling flowers of the desert.
The blessed, wise and perceptive Elder Daniel Kantounakiotis ( 1846-1929) of Ayio Oros
In one of his letters, Father Joseph
writes:”I counted the caves of the entire Mount Athos step by step,
looking for a spiritual father who was going to teach me the spiritual
theory and practice”.
Finally they encountered the most
special rose of the desert, Fr Daniel the Hesychast, who was living high
in the cave of St Peter’s.
This ascetic was holding the Divine
liturgy every midnight, lasting 3-4 hours. It was taking this long
because he was feeling great reverence and was taking small breaks while
the earth was getting muddy from his constant tears. This elder had
many virtues among them the charisma of foreseeing. For the whole year
he was eating uncooked food once a day only.
This was copied by elders Joseph and
Arsenios as well as the all night vigils which they performed every
night for the rest of their lives.
During the all night vigil, Fr Arsenios
confided in me that he was kneeling three thousand times every night.
For the rest of the evening he was standing up. Neither of them ever
rested on a bed. However, after the end of the vigil they would only
allow themselves to sit at a small bench to rest.
Their food usually consisted of some
dried bread, most of the time stale and molded and was eaten only once a
day. During the weekend they would eat whatever was available, except
meat and even that only once a day.
The chapel of St John the Baptist, Prodromos, at the Skete of Saint Basil
Fr Arsenios was also undertaking all the
manual work. During their first years high at Saint Basil cave, Fr
Arsenios was going up and down the mountain, which meant 1-2 hours steep
climb, ferrying supplies not only for themselves but also for all the
other ascetics. He was also carrying on his shoulders stones and other
building materials to repair and conserve the stone fences and huts.
Since this hard work was beyond human
ability, I once asked him how did he do it and he confided that as soon
as he would ask for his elder’s blessing, the load would get lighter and
a mighty force would push him so that he would easily ascend the steep
mountain; even more so during the mighty heat of the summer. At the same
time he would whisper the Jesus prayer nonstop.
As for their clothing, the two ascetics
were dressed in rugs come winter or summer and were without shoes, so
that many were regarding them as “crazy”. They were not crazy in the
common meaning of the word but”crazy” in Christ.
In the words of St Paul: “They went
about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and ill
treated- the world was not worthy of them”. (Heb.11.37-38)
The chapel of Saint John the Baptist, Prodromos, in the cave of Saint Anne
In 1938, these two great ascetics having
lived for twenty years high in the Skete of Saint Basil, decided to
descend to the Little Saint Anne together with their small brotherhood
who had already been assembled. They stayed there until 1953. Afterwards
they descended even lower towards the New Skete. The great ascetic
Joseph had already gone to Heaven in 1959. I never had the blessing to
meet him. But in 1964 I was blessed in getting to meet Fr Arsenios.
Both Fr Arsenios’ and Fr Charalambos’
virtues wiled me into staying with them until their repose. Fr
Charalambos was the nephew and godson of Fr Arsenios and was staying
with Fr Joseph and Fr Arsenios.
A view of New Skete which constitutionally belongs to the Holy Monastery of Saint Paul
I lived with Fr Arsenios for eighteen
years. I got to be acquainted with his virtues, the rich fruits of the
Holy Spirit: love, happiness, peacefulness etc but especially his
blessed simplemindedness and lack of animosity, his straightforwardness,
sincerity and great humility, his enormous love for discipline and many
others.
I will be left with no time if I was to
describe the incredible life of this great ascetic. But the limited
space will not allow me to do this. As a conclusion, however, I will
recite instead some pages from the book: “Elder Arsenios Spileotis”
written by another special member of their group, blessed Elder Joseph
of Vatopedi:
“One could apply to Elder Arsenios what
the Scriptures said “here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing
false”. He was by nature direct, simple, harmless, meek, obedient and an
extraordinary, hard working spiritual fighter, who had not a single
material possession. One could say that he was simply a “Yes” or a “No”
man.
He never held grudge with anyone whatever one would do to him, he would never get angry and he would never hurt anyone.
He was meticulous in his obedience and
because of this and his absolute faith in his Elder, he lived his days
beyond the laws of nature.
When he was holding an all night vigil,
he would start in the early evening and wear himself out kneeling
thousands of times with the face down and standing up all night until
the morning.
He was concentrating on saying Jesus
prayer so intensely that on several occasions it was time to start work
and he would not let go of the prayer. Then we had to call him tapping
on his window and we would see that he was standing up and elevated.
-Yeronda, it is time to start work. And father Arsenios coming to himself would curiously ask:
-Is it morning already?”
The brotherhood of Fr Arsenios the
Hesychast near Karyes, at the Holy Hilandarino chapel of Saint Nicholas,
Mpoyrazeri, during 1967-1979
I lived three years with this holy
grandpa in New Skete; twelve years at the Hilandarino house
“Mpourazeri” and during the last three years of his life at the
charitable monastery of Dionysiou, whereby my blessed father Charalambos
was invited to be in charge and become the Abbot because of its lack of
monks. This monastery is named after Saint John the Baptist.
The Holy Monastery of Saint Dionysos, Mount Athos
Saint John the Baptist was the patron
Saint of Fr Arsenios. In that place, Fr Arsenios had a blessed end to
his full life and handed his soul to the hands of Saint John the
Baptist, on the 2/15 September 1983. May his memory live forever.
Let us have his prayers.
Joseph Monk, D
The Most Holy Archmandrite
Charalambos ( then Abbot) of the Holy Monastery of Dionysiou gives the
last embrace to the late, blessed elder Arsenios.
The End
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
