Sometimes we think we have no energy , but we have an incredible amount of energy in us. The secret is to find a humble thought which will put us to shame, which will bring contrition to us and release that spiritual energy in us. That is why we have  to put ourselves in the humble way of "going down", in order to "fish out" those humble thoughts that release the internal spiritual energy that will enable us to do the work of God. I have a fellow priest and one day he was very tired from his ministry with the people. It was a Sunday and he was completely exhausted. He told me, "In the night when I am so exhausted, I usually just go to my room, look at the icons and say, 'Good night to all of you', and go to bed." But that night he felt ashamed of doing that, instead he walked up and down the corridor saying, "Sorry Lord, I cannot pray tonight. Forgive me." "Sorry Lord, I am tired, I cannot pray tonight. Forgive me." For half an hour he went up and down the corridor saying these words, and in that way God enabled him to perform the rule of his prayer. So we can always discover in ourselves an incredible amount of spiritual energy, if we find the right key, "the key of David" (cf. Isa. 22:22, Rev. 3:7), and make the right movement to release it, that is to say, a humble thought, given to us by the Lord, when we put ourselves in His judgment, by "going down". He gives us "a mouth and wisdom" (Luke 21:15), the humble thought that releases spiritual energy.

The Annunciation is the beginning of all the feasts of the Lord. In the dismissal hymn of the feast we chant: "Today is the crown of our salvation, and the manifestation of that mystery which is from everlasting...". The content of the feast refers to the event in which the Archangel Gabriel - the angel with whom all the events related to the incarnation of Christ are connected - visited the Panagia at God's command to inform her that the time had arrived for the incarnation of the Word of God, and that she would be His mother. (see Luke 1, 26-56).

The Greek word for the 'annunciation' (evangelismos) means literally 'good news'. This refers to the information given by the archangel that the Word of God would be made man for man's salvation. Essentially this is the fulfilment of God's promise given after the fall of Adam and Eve (see Gen. 3, 15) and is called the protoevangelion. Therefore the information about the incarnation of the Word of God is the greatest piece of news in history.

According to St. Maximos the Confessor, God's good news is His embassy and consolation to the people through the incarnation

of His Son. Parallel with this is the reconciling of the people by the Father, Who repays those who obey Christ with ungenerated deification. This deification is called ungenerated because it appears in the worthy without having been born in them. Thus the deification offered by the incarnate Christ is not a birth, but a manifestation through personal illumination in those who are worthy of this revelation.

The good news, the gospel, the annunciation is a correction of the events which took place at the beginning of the creation of man, in the sensible Paradise of Eden. There, it was from a woman that the fall and its consequences began, and here it was from a woman that all the good things began. Thus the Panagia is the new Eve.  The sensory Pardise was there, here the Church. There Adam, here Christ. There Eve, here Mary. There the snake, here Gabriel. There the whispering of the serpent-snake to  Eve, here the angel's salutation to Mary. In this way the error of Adam and Eve was corrected.

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, speaking of the Annunciation, also goes on to a personal and existential approach to this event. For it is not enough just to celebrate the events of the divine incarnation outwardly, but we need to approach them existentially and spiritually. For this reason he collected many passages from saints which speak of this existential approach.

The saying of the Prophet Isaiah is characteristic: "In fear of thee, Lord, we were with child, we suffered pain, we have given birth. We have brought forth a spirit of salvation upon the earth" (Is. 26,17-18). According to the interpretation of the holy Fathers, the word of God is a seed, the nous and the heart of man is a womb. Through faith the word of God is sown in the heart of man and impregnates it with the fear of God, the fear lest man remain far from God. With this fear the struggle to purify the heart and acquire virtues begins, which is like the labour and pains of childbirth. In this way the spirit of salvation is born, which is deification and sanctification.

The forming of Christ in us happens through spiritual labours. The Apostle Paul says: "My little children, for whom I labour in birth again until Christ is formed in you" (Gal. 4, 19)The labours are the ascetic struggles, and the forming is the deification and the sanctification.

According to the holy Fathers (St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximos the Confessor, St. Symeon the New Theologian, St. Niketas Stethatos, etc.), what happened physically in the Panagia happens spiritually in everyone whose soul is living invirginity, that is to say, is purified of passions. Christ, who was once born in the flesh, always wants to be born in the spirit in those who wish it, and so He becomes an infant, forming Himself in them through the virtues.

Spiritual conception and birth become perceptible by the fact that the rush of blood stops, that is to say there cease to be desires to commit sin, passions are inactive in the person, he despises sin and constantly wishes to do the will of God. This conception and birth is acquired through following God's commandments, mainly through the return of the nous to the heart and the unceasing prayer of a single word. Then the person becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit.

The Annunciation to the Theotokos is an annunciation to the human race, information that the Son and Word of God has become incarnate. This universal feast should contribute to our personal feast, our personal annunciation. We must accept the preface to our salvation, which is the greatest piece of news in our life.

Question for Archmandrite Zachariah: We have a parish and a family, how can we keep this monastic life as a family, as a refuge? 

Answer:  I do not think you can keep a monastic life. I think it is wrong when some monks impose obedience on people in the world. Obedience is only for monks, in monasteries, where the whole life is organized in the name of God and for the Liturgy. you cannot expect this from people living in the world. There, there are other rules. But we all have an obligation of obedience to the commandments of God. You have to respect your wife and your wife has to respect you. You have to be open and transparent, having no secret from your wife, and she from you; and you can have a competition between the two of you: who will do the will of the other more? Then life is beautiful. Concerning children, I do not believe that it is through words that children learn and receive the spirit of God. I will tell you a story. I know a priest who had three sons. He never taught them, and all of them are in the Church now, and one of them is a clergyman. What he did was the following: he waited until they went to bed, and when they were asleep, he went and knelt by their bed and prayed for some time, and, in this way, the spirit of the prayer of the father was imparted to his sons. He never instructed them, but he spoke to God, and God spoke to their hearts. Now one son is a deacon and the other two are his chanters in his parish. Sometimes we think that with words we can accomplish something, and it is the same when we try to help people. If we speak to God, on many occasions it will be more effective, and He will find ways of speaking to them.

Tuesday, March 25

Tuesday, March 25: THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE HEART, PP 134-135

Once I remember a Cypriot girl who came several times to the monastery. She was a student in London, and she was having some problems. The first time she came, I consoled her, I prayed for her. She came again; she wept; I did the same. When she came the third time, and the same thing happened, I began to think, "My goodness, after so much effort, by now, she should have left this problem behind. What is the matter?" Suddenly in our conversation, I discovered that she was not attending the Liturgy, and I said to her, "If you do not attend the Liturgy, even God cannot help you." As we said yesterday, from the moment Christ perfected the Body of the Church in history, we cannot be saved unless we enlist ourselves in this Body. Salvation is a very concrete thing, within this Body, the Church, of whom He is the Head. There is a rule that if somebody, without really an extreme need, does not attend the Liturgy for three weeks, that person has to be excluded from the communion of the Church. We must not see it as a punishment only, but rather as a measure telling us how long man can remain spiritually alive without the Liturgy. I have read the rules many times in order to see how much deadening each sin brings to the soul of man. If there is a rule which says that when a certain sin is committed the person concerned must abstain from Holy Communion for two years, this means that there is a considerable deadening that takes place in that soul because of the sin. Of course, no spiritual father will require two years. But it depends, I have no judgement on that matter; every case is unique. But at least you know how much he must take upon himself, and how much effort he must make in order to help this person to accelerate the process of healing. If the person is willing, and if the spiritual father is willing to co-work with the person, things can be accelerated. Even time is a relative factor. But now we touch upon areas where there are no recipes. I do not think that we can have any assurance when we are spiritual fathers; many times we are in the dark, but we put our trust in God. It is a very complicated ministry.

Archmandrite Zachariah

Tuesday, March 25: Elder Sophrony comments on the Jesus Prayer

March 27, 2008: Elder Zachariah on Pain

Question 6: You said something very briefly about pain being necessary. What do you mean by that? Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

 Answer 6: Pain is a way of showing concretely that we have love. As Christ showed His love by suffering for us, so we also, when we endure pain, show our gratitude to Him, and put ourselves on the Way of the Lord. Pain has the following beneficial aspect: for example, if now I break my finger, my whole mind is there, because it is painful, my finger burns with pain. I broke the bone of my finger and my mind is concentrated there. If my heart is broken with pain, my mind will go there naturally; and that state is very beneficial. Weeping, fasting, vigilance, accepting offence, all these things have one purpose: to unravel the "deep heart", to help the mind find the "deep heart". That is why humility finds the heart, while pride buries it. Someone who is proud cannot feel his heart, he has no heart. Vainglory covers the heart completely. So we have to go through the pain of humiliation in order to find the heart, because the heart is not only the physical centre of the human being, or the psychological one, but also the spiritual centre of personhood. The whole Bible speaks about the heart as the place where the choice is taken for God, as the place where man meets God and where God speaks to him. What is precious in the eyes of God, says St. Peter is the “hidden man of the heart.” (1Pet. 3:4). Pain helps us to find the deep man of the heart.

March 28, 2009: Pain that Saves: A story by Archmandrite Zacharias, THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE HEART

I knew a sixty year old Cypriot lady who had cancer. She came to the monastery, and told me, "I have cancer. The doctors told me that in six months I shall die." I said to her, "Androula, then go for the meeting with the Lord, hold on to His word: whether we die or live we are the Lord's (cf. Rom. 14:8), and prepare for this meeting. You have six months. Wonderful! It is the greatest moment of your life." She was a woman of prayer. I never console people, "Ah, you will live, it will pass." I say rather, "Prepare for the meeting", even if they live afterwards. The woman accepted it, and started saying, "Glory be to Thee, 0 Lord", all the time. One day she said to me, "I want you to promise me just one thing: when I will not be able to come to the monastery any more, that you will come to see me once in the hospital, before I die." I agreed, and before she died I went twice. The first time I went she was in a pretty bad state, but very peaceful, and I asked her how she was. She said, "Thanks to God, I am well", even though she was not well - she was dying. She kept saying, "Glory be to Thee, 0 Lord", and she was saying another prayer that I had asked her to say, "Lord, I am Thine, save me" (cf. Ps. 119:94). "Just surrender to the Lord with this prayer", I said to her, "you do not need any other prayers." After a while, I went to see her again. Her situation had worsened. They phoned me, and I left for the hospital taking Holy Communion with me, although I was not sure if she would be able to partake. I arrived and I saw her: her tummy was like a balloon, from the cancer. The only part of her body that was free Andfrom cancer was from the throat up. I asked her, "How are you? Her face was pale but luminous. She started crying. I was thinking,   “Oh, my God, I hope she is not fainthearted." I Said, "Why are you crying?" Do you know what she told me? "Am I not worthy  to be given such a grace to bear this monstrous thing? Who am I?  

Glory be to the Lord!" She was in such deep humility. She could not thank God worthily for the grace that she had be given to bear that terrible cancer. She added, "My relatives come here thinking to console me, and they disturb my prayer, and they do not understand it. And the Lord is there — she pointed to the corner of the room — waiting for me." And her soul departed like that, like lightning. After that, I returned to the monastery, and' the next day celebrated the Liturgy. During the Liturgy, these words were sounding in my heart: "She is saved." "She is saved: "She is saved." I could hear these words sounding in my heart And I was crying and could not control myself. I normally control myself, because it is not proper for a monk to cry before others. Fr. Symeon, who is the oldest priest of our monastery, asked me. "What is the matter with you today?" I said, "I just cannot control myself." I had such joy, and the only thing that was sounding in my heart was, "She is saved." "She is saved." "She is saved." It was such a beautiful Liturgy, and I thanked God who informed my heart that she was received as a saint in the kingdom. I have seen many people, who had cancer, who came to have a similarly glorious end, after accepting their cancer in accordance with the word of St. Paul, who said that whether we live or die we make our purpose to be pleasing to God (cf. Rom. 14:8).

March 29, 2008  What the Chruch is....

March 29, 2008....Grace