Spiritual Counsels of Fr Paisios

Many holy martyrs, when they did not know a lot about the dogma of the Church, would say that “I believe whatever has been proclaimed by the Holy Fathers”. When they said that, they witnessed to the faith. In other words, they may not have known how to show evidence to their persecutors of the truth of their faith and to convince them of this truth, but they trusted in the Holy Fathers. They thought: “How can I not trust the Holy Fathers? They were greatly experienced in matters of faith, and full of virtue and sainthood. How can I accept this foolish claim? How can I tolerate someone blaspheming the Holy Fathers?”

We must have faith and trust in the Tradition of our Church. Today, unfortunately, ‘European courtesy’ has entered into people’s mentality and they try to present themselves as kind and good and non-discriminatory. They want to show themselves as having superior virtues, and end up worshipping the Evil One. “One religion should exist,” they say, and they level down and relativise everything.

Some of these people came to me also and said, “All of us who believe in Christ should make one religion”. I answered them: “Now, it is like you are telling me that pure gold, which has been separated from all impurities, should be recombined with them. Ask a jeweller if it is correct to mix impurities with gold. So many great struggles have happened so that our dogmas and our beliefs can be refined and clarified.”

The Holy Fathers knew what they were doing when they forbid relations with heretics. Today people say: “Let us pray together, not only with heretics, but also with Buddhists, and fire-worshippers, and demon-worshippers. The Orthodox should attend their conferences and common prayers. It is a way for us to bear witness to Orthodoxy by our attendance at these.”

What witness are they making for Orthodoxy at functions such as these? They want to solve everything with logic and excuse the inexcusable! Western thought wants to put even spiritual issues on the ‘common market’.

Some Orthodox, who have a spiritual immaturity and want to show off and do what they call “missionary work”, organise conferences with the non-Orthodox, so that they can create a sensation. They think that in this way they are presenting Orthodoxy to the world, by becoming ‘taramosalata’ with those that have false beliefs.

Then the hyper-zealots take the other extreme and start to blaspheme against the mysteries of the New-Calendarists etc. and they scandalise those that are pious and are sensitive about matters of faith.

On the other hand, the heterodox come to these conferences, ‘act the teacher’, take whatever good spiritual material they find from the Orthodox, pass it through their own ‘workshop’ putting their own colour and brand on it, and represent it as their own authentic teaching. Today’s strange world responds to strange teachings such as these and is destroyed spiritually as a result.

However, when it is necessary, the Lord will provide people like St Mark of Ephesus and St Gregory Palamas, who will gather all of our scandalised brethren, and confess the Orthodox faith, giving great happiness to our Mother, the Church.

This passage has been translated from the Greek and is a section of the following book:

Γέροντος Παϊσίου Αγιορείτου Λόγοι Α΄ «Με πόνο και αγάπη για τον σύγχρονο άνθρωπο» Ιερό Ησυχαστήριον «Ευαγγελιστής Ιωάννης ο Θεολόγος» Σουρωτή Θεσσαλονίκης 1998, σ347-348.