Saint Nikiforos (1887-1964) is a saint of our time. He suffered from Hansen's Disease, leprosy, in a time when little was known about the disease or potential cures. Lepers were forced to live in Leper colonies. Some lepers gave in to despair but others like Saint Nikiforos became leaders in the Orthodox Christian faith, true saints who suffered in love for Christ and his fellow man. He encouraged many people in his life and many miracles surround his life. Come, read about joy and love in suffering...
Presented here for the first time in English as "Monastic Wisdom," this collection of Elder Joseph's letters makes the wealth of his wisdom and experience available to readers from all walks of life. As his struggles and lifestyle of stillness unfold, readers witness his difficult trials and battles with the demons, his profound visions and spiritual guidance, his martyric endurance in illnesses and finally his holy repose.
"May our love for the Sun, the will of God, be as strong as the sunflower's, so that even in days of hardship and sorrow we will continue to sail unerringly along the sea of life, following the directions of the barometer and compass of God's will that leads us to the safe haven of eternity." This is a thoroughly practical manual of the spiritual life focusing on the central goal of every Christian: learning the will of God and struggling to mold our life to it, just as Christ "humbled Himself and became obedient." (Phil. 2:8) Even more fundamentally, St John addresses the question of why we should care about God's will. Finally, the reader will find eternal wisdom running through these writings on questions of theodicy, free will, and Divine Providence. This work is reminiscent of the classic text Unseen Warfare in its historical genesis as an Orthodox redaction of an originally Roman Catholic text. First published in 1627 as The Heliotropium it was the work of a German Jesuit writer Jeremias Drexelius. The future St John adapted this text for an Orthodox audience as a student and then teacher at the Kiev Academy in the 1670's but it was not published until 1714, just a year before the author's death. This is the first English edition of St John's text, further edited and abbreviated for the contemporary reader.
What does it mean to "think Orthodox"? What are the unspoken and unexplored premises and presumptions underlying what Christians believe? Orthodox Christianity is based on preserving the mind of the early Church, its phronema. Dr. Jeannie Constantinou brings her more than forty years' experience as a professor, Bible teacher, and speaker to bear in explaining what the Orthodox phronema is, how it can be acquired, and how that phronema is expressed in true Orthodox theology-as practiced by those who are properly qualified by both training and a deep relationship with Christ.
This treasury of personal counsels and homilies given by Elder Ephraim clearly delineates the Patristic path to sanctification. In "Counsels from the Holy Mountain" he gives advise on every aspect of the spiritual struggle with insight acquired from his experience as a monk for more than fifty years and as the spiritual father of thousands of clergy, monastics, and laymen.
This work is written during his resting periods at Lake Ochrid (1921) in poetic-prose style, similar in spirituality to the Psalms of David. Can those who are themselves homeless really build the temple for the Teacher of all builders? (...) When you build the best for Him, you are setting an example for your soul, showing her what she should be building within herself (...) You build Him expensive edifices, in order to remind your soul that she was intended for, a royal palace, and not for hovels of clay (...) But what will become of your temples (...) If the domes of your temples are forever higher than your souls? (...) If the width of your temples is forever wider than the narrowness of your souls? (...) If your altars are forever shining more brightly than the shrines of your souls? (...) They will become the dead monuments of dead souls. Meet one of the greatest Orthodox bishops of the 20th century, an theological writer and a highly gifted orator, known as "The New Chrysostom." Saint Nikolai Velimirovich of Ohrid and Zhicha (1880 - 1956) was bishop in the Serbian Orthodox Church and the author of many Orthodox books.
