In With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, Elder Paisios says, “You must know that a hard-working man will prosper no matter what he does. A hard-working family man would also make a good monk, and a hard-working monk would also make a good family man.” The Elder says this in the context of a conversation he is having with his nuns toward the end of his life. He is speaking about…
Considering what they have done to their lives, if people lived eternally in this life, there would be no greater hell. Elder Paisios Back in the mid 70s, when I was a teenager, I had a foster brother who listened to a punk rock group called The Tubes. I never liked loud music, so didn’t much know about contemporary pop music. However, my foster brother made me listen to The Tube’s album…
I’m reading With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, volume one of the five volume “Spiritual Counsels” of Elder Paisios of Mount Athos (it is a collection of his sayings recorded by his spiritual children). I’m finding myself blessed reading it. There is much, however, that doesn’t directly apply to a Canadian context–his counsels on curses and the evil eye, for example do not directly apply to the contemporary Canadian context. I’m…
