Orthodox Books

Spiritual Counsels, Volume I: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 6" x 9" (15.2 x 23cm)

Pages: 428

Binding: Softcover

From the Preface: When the Blessed Elder Paisios fell asleep in the Lord on 12 July 1994, he left behind a spiritual legacy: his teachings, his deeds, his life itself. Never more than a simple monk, with only an elementary school education but rich in the wisdom of God, the Elder emptied himself for the sake of others. His teaching was neither instruction nor catechism: he lived the Gospel, and everything he taught flowed naturally from is way of life, a life that was characterized overwhelmingly by love. He had formed himself according to the Gospel, and for this reason, it was his presence that taught first, and then his evangelical love and enlightened words. People of all kinds came to him; and when he received them, he did not simply listen patiently to the problems they confided in him, but with his holy simplicity and discernment, he entered deeply into their hearts and made their pains, anxieties and troubles his own. And then, gradually, a miracle would take place: people would be transformed. "God" he used to say, "performs a miracle when we wholeheartedly participate in the pain of others."

We saw with great joy the interest generated by the first book that circulated on the life and teachings of Elder Paisios. Many spoke with admiration about the answers they found there to their many questions, the solutions to their problems and solace in their grief. Our joy was even greater when people who had distanced themselves from our Mother the Church became rightly concerned and changed their way of life. We often thought of the words of a hymn dedicated to Saint Basil the Great: He lives, though he lies asleep in the Lord; he lives even among us, as one who speaks through his writings. We also felt compelled to offer the very beneficial words of Elder Paisios (which we recorded with reverence from the very first steps of our Sisterhood, because they were so helpful to us) to our brothers and sisters in Christ who were so persistently.....

From the Contents:

- Biographical Note

- Preface

- Introductory Remarks to the Elder's Counsels

- Part One: Sin and the Devil

- Part Two: Modern Civilization

- Part Three: The Spirit of God and the Spirit of the World

- Part Four: The Church in our Times

Other books in this series: Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Struggle, Family Life, Passions and Virtues, and On Prayer.

Spiritual Counsels, Volume II: Spiritual Awakening

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 6" x 9" (15.3 x 23 cm)

Pages: 410

Binding: Softcover 

From the Introduction to the Elder's Counsels:

- Geronda, how do you see things going?

- How do you see things going?

- What can we say, Geronda? You tell us.

- The present calm worries me. Something is up. We haven't quite understood what times we're living in and we don't even consider that we will die someday. I don't know what will happen; the situation is very difficult! The world's fate is in the hands of a few, but God is still holding the brakes. We need to do a lot of praying with pain and love for God to intervene. We need to take matters seriously and live spiritually. These are very difficult times. Much ash and trash has fallen, there is great indifference. A very strong wind is needed to blow them away. The old timers used to say that the time will come when people will start kicking. All barriers are discarded and nothing is respected. It's terrible! Everything has become Babylon. We must pray for people to come out of this Babylonian captivity. Read the Prayer of the Three Young Men, to see how humbly they prayed; read Psalm eighty three: O God, who shall be compared to Thee? Be not silent, neither be still, O God... We have to do this, otherwise we struggle in vain. We need divine intervention.

Now, certain European sicknesses have come into the mix and they keep getting worse. A Cypriot family man who lived in England once told me "We are in spiritual danger; I must take my family away from England." Over there you can see a father taking is daughter, a mother her son. Everyone is "crowned" in marriage, everyone is "blessed". I am ashamed to even mention some of the things that are going on. But we don't lose any sleep over it. Now, I'm not saying that we ought to take up banners and marching in protest, but we should turn our attention to the great danger ahead of us and raise our hand to God in prayer. We must defend ourselves against evil. We must put on the brakes because..."

From the Contents:

- Prologue

- An Introduction to the Elder's Counsels

- Part One: The Responsibility of Love

- Part Two: Struggle and Devoutness

- Part Three: Spiritual Bravery

- Part Four: Dependence Upon Heaven

- Part Five: Spiritual Weapons

Other books in this series: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, Spiritual Struggle, Family Life, Passions and Virtues, andOn Prayer.

Spiritual Counsels, Volume III: Spiritual Struggle

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 6" x 9" (15.3 x 23 cm)

Pages: 326

Binding: Softcover

From Part One, The War of Thoughts:

"Good and Evil Thoughts - The Power of Good Thought"

- Geronda, in the Old Testament, in the book Maccabees IV, it is written: For devout thought does not uproot the passions but is their antagonist. What does this mean?

- The passions are deeply rooted in us, but the good, devout thought helps us to not become enslaved to them. When man brings only good thoughts to mind and establishes a strong and healthy spiritual state, then the passions lie dormant, and it is as if they did not exist. In other words, devout thoughts do not uproot the passions altogether, but combat them and can defeat them. I think the author is describing what the Holy Seven Young Men, their mother Saint Solomone and their teacher Saint Eleazar were able to endure by having good and devout thoughts, and thus is indicating precisely the extent of the power of good thoughts.

One good thought is equal to a very long vigil! It is very powerful. Similar to how certain new weapons can intercept a missile at its base by using laser beams and prevent it from being fired, so good thoughts can also anticipate and immobilize evil thoughts at the devil's "airport", where they are launched from. This is why you must struggle as much as you can - before the tempter devil has a chance to plant evil thoughts in your mind - to plant good thoughts and transform your heart into a flower garden, so that your prayer will be enriched..."

From the Contents:

- Preface

- Part One: The War of Thoughts

- Part Two: Righteousness and Injustice

- Part Three: Sin and Repentance

- Part Four: The Evil Forces of Darkness

- Part Five: The Power of Confession

Other books in this series: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, Spiritual Awakening, Family Life, Passions and Virtues, andOn Prayer.

 

Spiritual Counsels, Volume IV: Family Life

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 6" x 9" (15.3 x 23 cm)

Pages: 307

Binding: Softcover

From The Young Facing the Two Roads of Life:

"Married life and Monastic life are both blessed

- Geronda, what should one say to young people who ask if monastic life is superior to married life?

- To begin with, one must help them understand what the destiny of man is and what the meaning of life is. Then one can explain to them that both roads indicated by our Church are blessed, because each can lead them to Paradise if they abide by the will of God. Let's say that two people start out on a pilgrimage. One takes the bus using the public road and the other goes on foot along some trail. Both have the same goal. God rejoices in the one and marvels at the other just the same. It would be bad if he who goes on foot criticizes the other who takes the bus, or vice versa.

Those young people who may be thinking about monasticism should know that the mission of the monk or the nun is a very high calling; it is to become an angel. In the next life, in Heaven, we will live like angels, Jesus Christ had tod the Sadducees. This is why some very "philotimo-filled" young people become monks or nuns and embark on their angelic life from this present life.

But let no one think that those who go to the monastery will be saved simply because they became monks or nuns. Each person will account to God about whether he sanctified..."

From the Contents:

- Preface

- The Young Facing the Two Roads of Life

- Part One: Supporting the Family

- Part Two: Parents and their Obligations

- Part Three: Children and their Obligations

- Part Four: Spiritual Life

- Part Five: The Trials in our Life

- Part Six: The Death and the Future Life

Other books in this series: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Struggle, Passions and Virtues, and On Prayer.

Spiritual Counsels, Volume V: Passions and Virtues

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 6" x 9" (15.3 x 23 cm)

Pages: 283

Binding: Softcover

From Chapter One, Self-Love and Its Consequences:

"All the passions are borne of self-love

- Geronda, what is self-love?

- Self-love is to do the will of the old man within you, that is, to love that old man within. Gluttony and egoism, obstinacy and envy - all have self-love as their source. And so you see that one person seeks to accommodate only himself out of self-love, without any regard for others. Another person makes meticulous arrangements for his food, his sleep, so that nothing disturbs his well-being. Another desires to be taken into account, to be held in esteem; if he is slighted in the very least, if he doesn't get his way, he reacts badly. He thinks "Why aren't they taking me into consideration? I'll show them!" Indeed, self-love is a terrible thing!

- Geronda, how can anyone say, "For Thy sake we are killed all the day long?

- If he sacrifices his will for the other's sake. The will contains our self within it; it has self-love. Whoever doesn't investigate whether that which comforts him also comforts someone else, but instead, starts by making demands like: " I want this; I want that," or "Why didn't you do this for me? Why didn't you give that to me?" will, in the end, be found to have directed by the devil.

- There are some people, Geronda, who cannot be at peace unless they get their way.

- How can they ever find peace since they place their self in what they want? If one places his self in all the things he wants, can he also have room for Christ? When he does not have his own self, and has, instead, the One, the most important that is, Christ, then he has everything. One who doesn't have Christ has nothing. If a person throws away his own self, God will give him everything in.."

From the Contents:

- Preface

- Section One: The Passion

- Part One: Self Love: The Source of Passions

- Part Two: Pride the Root of Evil

- Part Three: Condemnation, the Great Injustice

- Part Four: The Children of Self-Love and Pride

- Section Two: The Virtues

- Part One: Humility the Singular Virtue

- Part Two: Spiritual Love

- Part Three: Nobility and Philotimo

- Part Four: Children of Love and Humility

- Epilogue: The Good Restlenssness

- Index

Other books in this series: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Struggle, Family Life, andOn Prayer.

Spiritual Counsels, Volume VI: On Prayer

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 6" x 9" (15.3 x 23 cm)

Pages: 314

Binding: Softcover

From Chapter One, Prayer is Conversation with God:

"Blessed are those who have tuned into the Heavenly Station

- Geronda, what does prayer mean to you?

- I send a signal; I ask for help. I continuously ask for help from Christ, from Panaghia, from the Saints, for myself and for others. If I do not ask for help, it will not be given to me.

I remember a time during the Greek Civil War when one thousand, six hundred guerrillas had closely surrounded us. All together, we were but one hundred and eighty soldiers barricaded behind an outcropping of rock. If we were to have been captured, they would have killed us. I kept trying to set up an antenna for the wireless in order to contact Central. I could not; the antenna was repeatedly cut down by the incessant gunfire. The captain shouted at me, " Leave that alone! Come here! Help us heave a crate or tow of grenades!" At the same time, he kept making the rounds of the machine-gun nests to inspect them. As soon as he left, I ran back to the wireless. Until he gave the orders, I kept trying to set up the antenna and also running back to help, so that he would not shout. I finally set up the antenna with a shove and a stick, and managed to make contact. I said but two words. That was it! In the morning, the air force came and saved us. Is it a small matter that one hundred and eighty men surrounded by one thousand, six hundred soldiers were, in the end, saved?

That incident made me realize that great mission of the monastic: to help through his prayer. Worldly people say, "What do monks do? Why don't they come into the world and help the community?" It is as if they were telling a wireless operator, "What are you doing there with the wireless? Drop the wireless.."

From the Contents:

- Prologue

- Part One: Communication with God

- Part Two: The Struggle for Prayer

- Part Three: Our Intercessors Before God

- Part Four: "Ask and it Shall be Given You"

- Part Five: The Jesus Prayer and Nepsis

- Part Six: The Life of Worship

- Part Seven: The State of Doxology

- Appendix

- Index

Other books in this series: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Struggle, Family Life, and Passions and Virtues.

Athonite Fathers and Athonite Matters

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 5.6" x 8" (14.4 x 20.5 cm)

Pages: 254

Binding: Softcover

From the Prologue: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

I am much troubled by my conscience for not having kept detailed notes about the virtuous Fathers who had lived in those latter years, about whom I had learned from other, devout Elders when I was a novice monk, just as I am also troubled by my great negligence for not having retained, at least in my memory, all the divine events which those holy Elders had experienced, and which they recounted to me, with great simplicity in order to help me spiritually.

The Fathers of those days had great faith and simplicity. Although most of them were basically illiterate, they nevertheless received constant divine enlightenment because of their humility and fighting spirit. While in our own days, knowledge has increased, unfortunately, logic has shaken people's faith from its foundations and filled their souls with questions and misgivings. For this reason, it follows that we should be deprived of miracles, because miracles are experienced and cannot be explained by logic.

The terribly worldly spirit which prevails in modern man, who has directed his every effort towards how to live better, with greater ease and less exertion, has also, unfortunately, affected most spiritual people ....

Epistles

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 6" x 9" (15.5 x 23 cm)

Pages: 283

Binding: Softcover

From the Prologue: "In Christian literature, epistles have always been something more than a way of transmitting news or making events known. They provided a channel of profound communication, a testament of spiritual wealth and were a means of pastoral guidance. Using the format of an epistle, the Fathers of the Church usually expand on matters of faith, ethos and worship as they relate to the life of the Church. The Epistles of the New Testament, which had been written earlier, advance the truths of the faith and the unchanged spiritual life upon which those truths are founded. The fourteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, which have a local church or one his co-workers as a specific recipient, become points of reference which Christians can consult in their daily life. The same can be said of the Epistles of the Apostles James, John, Peter, and Judas; however, they are given the titles of Catholic, as they are addressed to the entire ....

From the Contents:

- Introductory Note

- Biographical Note on Saint Paisios the Athonite

- Prologue

- Contract in the Form of an Epistle

- First Epistle / For Novices

- Second Epistle / A Small Blessing of a Few "Dry Nuts"

- Third Epistle / "Spiritual Herbs"

- Fourth Epistle / "A Handful of Experience"

- Fifth Epistle / On Charity and Love

- Sixth Epistle / Beatitudes

- Index

- Publications

Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 5.6" x 8" (14.2 x 20.5 cm)

Pages: 187

Binding: Softcover

From the Prologue: "The setting for the remarkable Life which is the subject of this book is Pharasa, in Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Now a part of Turkey, Asia Minor had been part of the Greek Commonwealth from about 2000 B.C., as were areas along the Black Sea coast, the Crimea, and in Georgia and Armenia.

Settled by Greeks, Asia Minor was later home to Early Christians (as Saint Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians and the Galatians bear witness), and then to the great Fathers of the Orthodox Church, among them Saint Basil the great, Saint Gregory the Theologian and Saint John Chrysostom. Many of the more popular Saints are associated with Asia Minor, including Saint George, Nicholas and Charalambos. Indeed, in Byzantium Asia Minor provided much of the enormous wealth of the State, both materially..."

From the Contents:

- Hymns to Saint Arsenios in Greek and English

- Prologue

- Part One: How the Book Came to be Written

- Part Two: The Life of Saint Arsenios (Hadjiephentis)

- Part Three: The Miracles of Saint Arsenios

- Epilogue

- Maps

View our Icon of Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian.

Saint Paisios the Athonite

By the Holy Hesychasterion "Evangelist John the Theologian"

Size: 6" x 9" (15.2 x 23 cm)

Pages: 574

Binding: Softcover

From the Prologue:

"With the help of God, and after the work of a great many years, our Sisterhood, propelled by our sacred obligation toward the Saint, who for twenty-eight years had guided and benefited us in so many ways, presents the publication of the Biography of Saint Paisios the Athonite.

We also had the great blessing of gaining some insight into the immeasurable love the Saint had for God, his monastic exactitude, his absolute self-denial and the power of his fervent prayer. Having lived in such close proximity to him, we personally experienced his holy simplicity and his profound humility, his God-illuminated discernment, his noble love for each person, but also his deliberate efforts to conceal his virtues.

We therefore deemed it our obligation to utilize all the materials - both information and knowledge bequeathed to us in order to compose, to the best of our ability, the biography of the saintly Elder. The contents of this Synaxarion stem primarily from our communication with the Saint - from the notes we had kept during the gatherings of the Sisterhood and the private conversations we had had with him; from his letters not only to the entire Sisterhood but also to each Sister; from the numerous verbal and written testimonies which had been entrusted to us by clergy, monks and lay-people who had met the Elder' as well as from information that had been gathered from the on-site research we had conducted in some of the areas where the elder had lived and struggled. Understandably, it was impossible to include the enusuing material in its entirety, as it amounted to thousands of pages, and we wanted to avoid an overly extensive volume of biography. As a result, it became necessary to carefully..."

From the Contents:

- Prologue

- Chapter One: From Pharasa to Homeland of Greece

- Chapter Two: The Years of his Childhood and Youth

- Chapter Three: Military Service

- Chapter Four: Preparations and Temptations

- Chapter Five: At the Holy Monastery of Esphigmenou

- Chapter Six: At the Holy Monastery of Philotheou

- Chapter Seven: At the Holy Monastery of Stomion

- Chapter Eight: At God-trodden Mount Sinai

- Chapter Nine: At the Skete of Iveron of Saint John the Forerunner

- Chapter Ten: At Desolate Katounakia

- Chapter Eleven: At the Kelli of the Precious Cross

- Chapter Twelve: At the Kelli of Panagouda

- Chapter Thirteen: From Earth to Heaven

- Maps

Elder Hadji-Georgis the Athonite

By Saint Paisios the Athonite

Size: 5" x 7.5" (12.5 x 19 cm)

Pages: 105

Binding: Softcover

From the Prologue:

Descendants always have a sacred duty to write down the divine achievements of the holy Fathers of their times and the struggle they undertook out of philotimo in order to draw closer to God. Naturally, by writing about our Saints, we too benefit, because in this way, we remember and try to imitate them; then the Saints are moved even more to help us draw closer to them.

Therefore, if we must speak and write about the virtues of these righteous souls (our holy Fathers), how much more should we not neglect or be silent about the souls of our just, but unjustly treated holy Fathers whom we, wretched people that we are, have tormented with persecutions and exiles out of our own human weaknesses, jealousies and envy...

Yet if the unrighteous repent sincerely, they too are saved, while the unjustly treated are not only saved, but rewarded as well and are the most beloved of God's children. "The Lord loveth the righteous". Holy Scripture continually praises the souls of the righteous, and the prayers of the righteous are heard. "The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects".

Therefore, among the unjustly treated Fathers of our Church is also the Blessed Father George, Hadji-Georgis, a contemporary Saint of our times. We can also say that, considering our era, he is a great Saint indeed.

By his spiritual way of life the Elder left behind him a great reputation: "A great ascetic and strict faster", people would say. His name is even used as a nickname for those who were strict fasters: "He is a Hadji-Georgis", they would say.

When I first came to the Holy Mountain and wandered about the Garden of the Panagia (as most beginners usually do) in order to seek out the fragrant flowers of the Panagia (the holy Elders), so as to gather up a little spiritual pollen, I would hear everyone talking about Hadji-Georgis. The many things that I heard about him ....

From the Contents:

- Prefatory note

- Preface

- Introduction

- The Life of our Blessed Father George (Hadji-Georgis)

- Letter of Hadji-Georgis to Metropolitan of Chios

- The Spiritual Forefathers of Hadji-Georgis

- Spiritual Laws

- Epilogue

- Maps

- Publications