in the history of all people and nations, we all forget that at every moment of our life we are standing in the presence of God.
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Elder Aemilianos
of Simonopetra
lasting tranquility
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The human soul can never be satisfied with material things; we have an infinite desiring capacity, in the face of which nothing finite can ever satisfy us…
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We live in a time of rapid change, when every innovation is presented to us as progress, but before real change, real progress can take place, something must first change within us. And for this to happen, we must become completely estranged to all things earthly and human, to all human logic, to all human ways of thinking and to every so-called material good. We must be indifferent in the face of all things.
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And only then, when we have become strangers to all, can God become all things to us, as if there existed nothing else in the world for us except God.
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It is this alone than can grant us true and lasting tranquility.
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Elder Aemilianos of Simonopetra
eternal joy
God is the one who gives us joy, and we should ascribe all our joy to Him. But what about those times when my life is not joyful? In a word, I am miserable. We should pity the man who does not feel this joy and this celebration. He loves only the earth. He is in love with only rubbish and dung. He gives God his debris, and when our heart produces only rubbish, it receives very much the same in return from God.
The soul that thirsts for God, on the other hand, is continually bathed in Divine Light. The face of such a person becomes divinely luminous. You see him and you ask yourself, could this man be Christ?
Thus the Christian becomes a strange spectacle, a Christ-bearer, a God-bearer, and a Spirit bearer. He or she reveals the unsurpassable beauty of Christ. And when Christ suddenly appears, resplendent in all His beauty, He fills one with joy, gladness and sweetness… Something strange takes place within us, something which cannot be grasped by human thought And how could it be otherwise? For our “desire for God transcends our desire for the world, and thus it cannot be satisfied by anything in the world”.
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Elder Aemilianos of Simonopetra Monastery
gladness of heart
gladsomelife.com 