At Jacob's Well Christ Encountered the Whole Fallen World (Monk Moses the Athonite)

By Monk Moses the Athonite

In today’s Gospel passage from the Evangelist John the Theologian, we heard in our churches about the meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan woman beside a well…

This meeting is of especially great importance not only for the suffering woman. Christ meets the whole fallen world, even the world of today. He does not quarrel with, reject, or drive anyone away. He wishes to communicate with everyone, even the most downtrodden. Christ Himself said that He came chiefly for sinners. It is enough that they receive Him, that they open the leaves of their closed hearts to Him. He does not ask for much. A little water. Something very small, in order to become the occasion for an exit from the cage of our self-imprisonment.

At first the Samaritan woman is rather cautious. She is bound by mistaken opinions, fanatical ideas, long-standing prejudices, and therefore trapped, ensnared, blocked, and suspicious. According to her tradition, she is unable to give water to a Jew, to an enemy. Christ in truth is not greatly thirsty for water. He thirsts for the liberation of His afflicted interlocutor. The conversation begins to become fascinating and revelatory.

Song for Great Friday (Monk Moses the Athonite)

 Song for Great Friday 

 

By Monk Moses the Athonite

 

Great Friday

Always on Great Friday
be alone like Christ,
awaiting the final nail, the vinegar, the spear.

Hear the casting of lots without disturbance
as they divide your possessions—
the blasphemies, the provocations, the indifference.

Without Friday, Sunday does not come;
then you forget the sufferings of the roads
of the Great Friday of our life.

Homily on the Venerable George Karslides (Monk Moses the Athonite) - Part 3 of 3

 

...continued fro part two.

Venerable George foresaw and accurately predicted his blessed end. Having been prepared for a long time, he awaited it with longing and desire, increasing his prayer, tears, and giving his last advice to his beloved spiritual children. Three days prior, the Mystery of the Divine and Holy Anointing Oil was celebrated. He partook of the Immaculate Mysteries for the last time, as a provision for eternal life. He forgave from the heart, blessed from the soul, and prayed for all. On November 4, 1959, the last words heard from his lips were: “Open the gate of compassion, blessed Theotokos.” The Theotokophile Saint invoked the compassion of the Mother of God and of men, the Lady of the world who is full of grace, the Unwedded Bride of Gennesaret, the Ever-Virgin Most Holy Theotokos. She opened the gate of salvation for him, so that her Son and God, the Heavenly Bridegroom, the Crown-Giving Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the Universe, might welcome him.

An orphaned, mournful and inconsolable crowd followed him to his last residence, behind the sacred Temple of the Ascension, where he had served for about thirty years. His face was peaceful, cheerful and bright. His dead body was flexible, like that of the children of the Panagia, the Hagiorites. The two cypress trees next to his grave bowed down to adore him, as he had said. Many birds gathered at the time of his burial, without fear of the large crowd, to bid him farewell. Everyone was now certain that a saint was being buried. He asked to be buried with his vestments, his cross and his liturgical books, which he had brought from Georgia.

Homily on the Venerable George Karslides (Monk Moses the Athonite) - Part 2 of 3

...continued from part one.

Always frugal, simple, vigilant, fasting and praying. Selectively silent, taciturn, attentive, strict and serious. Although he loved the sick, was disabled and weak, he was not lazy, restless and yielding in his brave asceticism. While in great need, he himself visited the poor and sick. He had been helped a lot himself with his long, humble struggle and thus could help others crucially. At the Holy Proskomide he commemorated thousands of names of the living and the deceased, like his contemporary Saint Nicholas Planas of Athens. In fact, he noted certain names and, after the end of the Divine Liturgy, he called the particular relatives and told them precisely the problems of the living or the deceased and how they ended their lives. Pure and innocent people and young children saw him as a liturgist who hovered over the ground, like his contemporary, the late Elder Hieronymos Simonopetritis († 1957).

In the daily bloodless divine sacred ceremonies, the thrice-blessed one was bright, peaceful, serene, joyful, and beautiful. He concelebrated with angels and saints, like Saint Spyridon. “I rarely liturgize alone,” the venerable Elder used to say. He had, as we have said, a special reverence for the Panagia, the Honorable Forerunner, and the Holy Great Martyr George. Many sick people, out of great humility, he would send to various saints and with his blessing they would be healed. His humility did not allow him to be honored. He had a sincere sense of his unworthiness. He sought only the glory of the Most Holy God and His friends, the saints. He called the saints his guests. He had good company with them. He had the grace to see the state of the soul of churchgoers. He used this grace with discretely only for the correction and benefit of souls.

Homily on the Venerable George Karslides (Monk Moses the Athonite) - Part 1 of 3

Homily on the Venerable George Karslides 

By Monk Moses the Athonite

(Homily at the end of the Festal Great Vespers of the first annual commemoration of Venerable George Karslides at the Sacred Monastery of the Ascension in Sipsa on November 3, 2008.)

Today, my beloved brethren, we honor an unknown hieromonk, a poor priest, a nearly illiterate cleric, a compassionate man. He was hidden, invisible, inglorious, unknown to many, sometimes misunderstood, hunted, without outwardly flashy qualifications in scholarship, rhetoric, high acquaintances, dynamic interventions in social life, a large entourage and publicity. Where did God find him? What was it that made him prominent? We will immediately say that he attracted the grace of God with his great and eternal love for Him and His creatures and his constant and genuine humility. “On whom shall I look, if not on the meek and humble of heart.” There the Spirit of God rests and there His grace dwells.

Saint Gregory Palamas and the Second Sunday of Great Lent (Monk Moses the Athonite)

By Monk Moses the Athonite

On the Second Sunday of Great Lent, our Church celebrates the memory of the great Saint Gregory Palamas. He is celebrated normally on November 14, but because he was a champion and defender of Orthodoxy, he is also solemnly honored after the Sunday of Orthodoxy. The holy and saint-bearing Thessaloniki is particularly associated with Saint Gregory, because he was its brilliant archbishop. He is considered, along with the Great Martyr Demetrios, as a co-patron of the city.

We will not refer to his well-known biographical details, his illustrious lineage, his many good studies, his unblemished ethos, his years of monasticism on Mount Athos, his struggles for Orthodoxy, but we will instead focus on his work in Thessaloniki.

Venerable Euthymios and the Twelve Venerable Martyrs of Vatopaidi Monastery (+ 1280)

 

By Monk Moses the Athonite

Venerable Euthymios served as abbot of the Vatopaidi Monastery in the second half of the 13th century, at a critical period for the course of the Orthodox Church and Mount Athos. After the Council of Lyons in 1274, where the union of the Churches was supported, the Latin-minded envoys of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259-1282) and Patriarch John XI Bekkos (1275-1282) wanted to convince the Athonite monks of the heretical dogmas. This happened around 1279/1280. Unfortunately, some researchers dispute the facts and confuse them with later events, attributing them to the Catalans.

Venerable Euthymios “holding fast to the Orthodox traditions, rebuked the Latin-minded.” Therefore, according to Venerable Nikodemos the Hagiorite, “he was bound with chains and drowned by them in the sea of Kalamitsi.” According to Manuel Gedeon, “they tied Euthymios the abbot with chains across the sea at the seaside, called Kalamitsi, and, having placed him on a rocky reef, the remowned one drowned.”

Christ, Lazarus and the Cross (Monk Moses the Athonite)

By Monk Moses the Athonite

The resurrection of Christ's friend Lazarus in Jerusalem a week before the Jewish Passover, where a crowd of celebrants had gathered for the feast, definitely increased Jesus' popularity. He did not cause it, He was not interested in it and He had no desire for self-advertisement and self-promotion. He never wanted to create noise around His person. He didn't want fans cheering and clapping. Nevertheless, the scribes, Pharisees and chief priests of the Jews became seriously worried.

The physically dead Lazarus came out of the tomb with a word from the Lord. The spiritually dead are very difficult to raise. All the spiritually dead considered the presence of Christ near them dangerous. They were afraid of being exposed, revealed and unmasked. They are meeting to exterminate Him by any means. They don't want to allow this miracle worker to bother them anymore, who spoils their plans and takes the people away from them, sowing weeds on their prestige and authority. They wanted to destroy Lazarus as well, so the people would forget the miracle. But it's not that easy.

Saint Ignatios, Metropolitan of Mariupol (+ 1786)

By Monk Moses the Athonite

He was born at the beginning of the 18th century on the island of Thermi. This is probably Kythnos, in the Cyclades, which was also known as Thermia, because of the healing hot springs there. He was the scion of the well-known and devout Yezedinos family.

As a young man he went to the Holy Mountain, where a relative was a monk at the Monastery of Vatopaidi. Because he loved the monastic state with his whole heart, he abandoned every worldly vanity and was tonsured a monk with the name of Ignatios. Later he was ordained priest.

Because of his virtue, he was invited to be the shepherd of a far away flock, which was under the harsh yoke of the Tartars. In 1769, he was consecrated Bishop of Gothia and Caffa [Готфейский и Кефайский] in the Crimea. He was known as a kind-hearted and indefatigable bishop, who won the love and respect of his downtrodden flock. As a reward for his great service, the Patriarch of Constantinople gave him the title of Archbishop and made him a member of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The Three Hierarchs and Mount Athos (Monk Moses the Athonite)

The Three Hierarchs and Mount Athos

By Monk Moses the Athonite

The three greatest luminaries of the three-sunned divinity have some, little known, relationship with this Holy Mountain of the Triune God and the Mother of God.

An ancient and sacred tradition of the Athonites speaks of the revealer of heavenly things Basil, the lover of silence, the ascetic of Pontus, the rule maker of our monasticism, to be an ascetic on a slope of Mount Athos. There "exists there on a rocky and rough place the old skete named after Saint Basil, after a kyriakon temple that is still preserved."

Precious relics of the Saint are kept in many monasteries. The most valuable one is preserved in Great Lavra and is certainly the most cherished gift of the emperor Nikephoros Phokas to his friend the venerable Athanasios, who asked for it himself. In the imperial chrysobull of 964 it is mentioned: "(The all-holy and most-venerable divine head) of the greatest luminary of the ecumene and the ecumenical teacher and hierarch of the great Caesarea of Cappadocia, Saint Basil the Great, arrived as you requested... and is hereby given." The venerable builder of the Lavra with his rules is considered the founder of Basilian monasticism in Athos.