An elder once said that there was this hermit who was living in the deepest desert for many years and had achieved the visionary charisma to such an extent that he was also in company with angels. Then this is what happened:
Two brothers, monks, heard about this hermit and wished to meet him so that they could benefit from his acquaintance. They abandoned their cells and headed towards the deserted looking for this servant of God, having in their hearts total confidence in him.
A few days later, they reached the hermit’s cave. While they were some distance away, they saw a man dressed in white, standing on one of the hills next to the hermit’s cave. He shouted at them:
“Brothers, brothers!”
They asked him: “Who are you and what do you want?”
“You must tell the elder whom you are going to meet not to forget what I had asked him to do”.
The brothers found the elder, saluted him and falling on their knees they were asking him for some advice which would help them towards their salvation. Indeed, he taught them and they benefited a great deal. They also told him about the man they had seen while they had been on their way to the cave and about his request.
The elder knew for whom they were talking about but pretended he didn’t have a clue. Instead he said: “No other man lives here”. However, the brothers who were continuously bowing in front of him and grasping his legs, made him reveal who it was that they had seen.
The elder lifting them up, said to them: “Only if you give me your word that you will not talk about me as if I am a saint to anyone until I depart for my Lord, I will explain the situation”. They did as he had asked them to and he said:
“The man whom you have seen dressed in white is the Lord’s angel who came to poor little me and said: ‘Please beg the Lord on my behalf so that I may return to my place because the time designated by the Lord has come’. When I asked him what the reason for his penance was, he said: ‘It happened that in a regional town many people had been making the Lord angry with their sins for a long time. He sent me to punish them mercifully. However, when I saw how corrupt they had been, I imposed a heavier penance so that many of them perished. That is the reason why I was sent away from the face of my Lord, Who was the One to authorize this mission’. When I said to him: who am I to intercede to the Lord for an angel, he said: ‘If I didn’t know that the Lord accepts the prayers of his honest servants I would not be coming here to pester you’.
At that very moment I was astonished at the infinite mercy of the Lord and his infinite love for man. He made him worthy of talking to Him and seeing Him. He also designated His angels to serve men and be in contact with them, just like it happened with the blessed servants Zachariah and Kornelios and Prophet Elijah and other saints. I felt admiration with all these and thanked Him for his mercy”.
Shortly after this incident, our blessed father passed away. The brotherhood buried him with honor, chanting hymns and prayers. Let us try to imitate this hermit’s virtues with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who wants everyone to be saved and acknowledge His truth.
From the ‘Large Gerontiko’
http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/08/the-punished-angel.html
Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God?
Then he remembered and said to God, “Once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman.”
And God answered, “Now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is.”
The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her, “Here, woman,” he said, “take hold of it and I’ll pull!”
And he began pulling carefully , and had almost pulled her all the way out, when other sinners in the lake saw her being pulled out and all began holding on to her so as to be pulled out with her. But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: “It’s me who’s getting pulled out, not you; it’s my onion not yours!”
No sooner did she say it than the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away.
A Foolproof Anti-Cancer Diet... With Just One or Two Drawbacks
If you want to avoid cancer, live like a monk. That is the inescapable conclusion from research into one of the world’s most renowned monastic communities.
The austere regime of the 1,500 monks on Mount Athos, in northern Greece, begins with an hour’s pre-dawn prayers and is designed to protect their souls.
Their low-stress existence and simple diet (no meat, occasional fish, home-grown vegetables and fruit) may, however, also protect them from more worldly troubles.
The monks, who inhabit a peninsula from which women are banned, enjoy astonishingly low rates of cancer.
Since 1994, the monks have been regularly tested, and only 11 have developed prostate cancer, a rate less than one quarter of the international average. In one study, their rate of lung and bladder cancer was found to be zero.
Haris Aidonopoulos, a urologist at the University of Thessaloniki, said that the monks’ diet, which calls on them to avoid olive oil, dairy products and wine on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, helped to explain the statistics. “What seems to be the key is a diet that alternates between olive oil and nonolive oil days, and plenty of plant proteins,” he said. “It’s not only what we call the Mediterranean diet, but also eating the old-fashioned way. Small simple meals at regular intervals are very important.”
Meals on the peninsula, which the Prince of Wales has visited regularly and which can only be reached by boat, are ascetic and repetitive affairs that have changed little over the centuries, although there are variations between the 20 monasteries.
The monks sit in silence while, from a pulpit, passages from the Bible are read in Greek. They eat at speed – as soon as the Bible passage is over, the meal is officially completed.
The staples are fruit and vegetables, pasta, rice and soya dishes, and bread and olives. They grow much of what they eat themselves. Agioritiko red wine is made locally from mountain grapes. Dairy products are rare – female animals are banned from the autonomous semi-state.
Life on Athos has changed little over the past 1,043 years. Breakfast is hard bread and tea. Much of the day is taken up with chores – cleaning, cooking, tending to crops – followed by a supper, typically of lentils, fruit and salad, and evening prayers.
Some of the seaside monasteries specialise in catching octopus, a delicacy that is softened up by bashing on the rock. Fish also feeds the Athos cats, protected by the monks for their mouse-catching prowess. Of all domestic animals, only cats are exempt from the ban on females. Some of the monks live in hillside huts or cliff-side caves perched above the sea as satellites of the main establishments, perhaps the closest that modern Christianity gets to medieval hermits. They depend for their sustenance on handouts of bread and olives.
On holidays and feast days such as Christmas and Easter, when other Greeks are feasting on roast meat, the monks prefer fish, their only culinary luxury. Father Moses of the Koutloumousi monastery, one of the 20 organised cloisters scattered over the Athos peninsula, said: “We never eat meat. We produce most of the vegetables and fruit we consume. And we never forget that all year round, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we don’t use olive oil on our food.”
The olive-oil routine, which also applies to wine and dairy products, appears to have no religious significance, but is a way of eking out their supplies.
All the monks stick to the rigorous fasting periods of the Orthodox Church, in which a strict vegan diet is prescribed for weeks at a stretch.
Michalis Hourdakis, a dietician associated with Athens University, said: “This limited consumption of calories has been found to lengthen life. Meat has been associated with intestinal cancer, while fruit and vegetables help ward off prostate cancer.”
The lack of air pollution on Mount Athos as well as the monks’ hard work in the fields also played their part, the researchers said. There was no mention, however, of whether the absence of women had any effect on the monks’ renowned spiritual calm.
Salad days: Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday
Breakfast: Hard bread, tea
Lunch: Pasta or rice,vegetables, olive oil
Dinner: Lentils, fruit and salad, olive oil. Red wine
Monday, Wednesday and Friday: no olive oil
Holidays and feast days: Fish and seafood
http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/06/avoid-cancer-live-like-monk.html
To Have a Child
St. Anna, Mother of the Theotokos
St. Elizabeth, Mother of the Forerunner
St. Sabbas the Sanctified of Palestine
St. Irene Chrysovolantou
For Safe Childbirth
St. Eleftherios
For the Care & Protection of Infants
St. Stylianos
For Young People
Holy Great Martyr Demetrios the Wonderworker
Delivery from Sudden Death
St. Barbara the Great Martyr
Against Drinking
Holy Martyr Boniface & the Righteous Aglais
For Travelers
St. Nicholas: in general, & specifically for sea travel
St. John the Russian: for transport, auto, busses
St. Niphon, Patriarch of Constantinople: for safety at sea
For Cobblers
St. Eustathius the Cobbler of Georgia
For Physicians
St. Panteleimon
The Holy Unmercenaries, Saints Cosmas & Damian
For the Kitchen, Home
St. Euphrosynos the Cook
St. Sergius of Radonezh: for baking
Sts. Spyridon & Nikodim of Kievo-Pechersk: Prosphora making
For Trading
St. Paraskeva
For Headaches
Holy New Martyr Demas of Smyrna
For Eyes
St. Paraskeva
For Ears
St. Spyridon the Wonderworker
For Teeth
St. Antipas of Pergamum
For Hernias & Intestinal Disorders
Holy Great Martyr Artemius
St. Artemius of Verkola
For Throat
St. Blaise of Sebastia
For Finding Employment
St. Xenia of St. Petersburg
For Help in Studies
The Three Hierarchs: St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory the
Theologian
St. Sergius of Radonezh
St. John of Kronstadt
St. Justin the Philosopher
For Church-Chanting
St. Romanos the Melodist
For Iconographers
St. Luke the Apostle and Evangelist
St. John of Damascus
For Patient Endurance of Affliction
St. Job the Much-Suffering
Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebastia: especially in freezing cold weather
Holy Forty-Two Martyrs of Amorion
For Protection Against Thieves
St. Gregory the Wonderworker of Kievo-Pechersk
For Stone-workers
Holy Martyrs Florus & Laurus
For Soldiers
Holy Archangel Michael
St. George the Great Martyr
St. Barbara the Great Martyr
For Spiritual Help, Consolation & Compunction
St. Ephraim the Syrian
St. Alexis the Man of God
St. Seraphim of Sarov
For a Good End to One's Life
Holy Archangel Michael
St. Niphon, Patriarch of Constantinople
For Captives and Court Cases
St. Onouphrios the Great
St. Peter of Athos
St. George the Great Martyr
For Help in Distress, Poverty, Etc.
St. Nicholas the Wonderworker
St. John the Almsgiver of Alexandria
St. John of Kronstadt
For Finding Things
St. Phanourios the Great Martyr
St. Menas the Great Martyr of Egypt
For Meeting a Difficult Situation, an Interview, Etc.
St. David the Prophet, Psalmist & King
The Holy Unmercenaries & Healers
SS. Cosmas & Damian of Rome
SS. Panteleimon & Hermolaus
St. Julian the Martyr
St. John of Kronstadt
St. Nectarios of Aegina
Holy Archangel Raphael
For Animals & Livestock
St. George: cattle & herds
St. Parthenius of Radovysdius: cattle
SS. Spevsippus, Elesippus & Melevsippus: horses
St. Tryphon: geese
For Protection of Crops from Pests
St. Michael of Synnada
For the Protection of Gardens Against Pests
Holy Great Martyr Tryphon: also for hunters and Patron of Moscow
Against Demons & Witchcraft
SS. Cyprian & Justina
St. Theodore Sykeote
St. Mitrophan of Voronezh
For Chastity & Help in Carnal Warfare
St. John the Forerunner
St. Demetrios the Great Martyr
St. John the Much-Suffering
Holy Martyr Theodore the Byzantine
Holy Martyr Ignatios of Athos
St. Mary of Egypt
St. Joseph the All-Comely
St. Susanna [Old Testament]
For Mental Disorders
St. Naum of Ochrid
St. Anastasia
St. Gerasimos of Cephalonia: the possessed
Against Plague
St. Haralambos
St. Marina the Great Martyr
For Help Against Quick-Temper & Despondency
St. Tikhon of Zadonsk
For Workers in Hospitals
Holy Unmercenaries Saints Cosmas & Damian
St. Dositheus, Disciple of Abba Dorotheus
For Guilelessness & Simplicity
Holy Apostle Nathaniel & St. Paul the Simple
There was once a man who had three sons. One day, the first son came to his father and said, “Dad, everyone knows you’re rich, and I’d frankly like some money. So what work do you need done around here that will earn me a bit of cash?”
The father replied, “Well son, there are a few things that need to be done…”and so the son set off to complete those tasks.
The second son came to his father and said, “Dad, everyone around here knows that you are influential and powerful. But they also know that when you get mad, things can get really scary. What work can I do to make sure you never get mad at me?”
The father replied to his fearful son, “Well son, there are a few things that need to be done…” and so the son set off to complete those tasks.
The third son came to his father and said, “Daddy, I love you. I love you so much that I want to do something that will bring joy to your heart. What can I do that will please my loving father?”
The father smiled and said, “Son, your heart already brings me joy.” And after a long hug, he said, “There are a few things that need to be done…” and so the son set off to complete those tasks with the loving glow of his father’s embrace still warm against his chest.
Those are the three children of God I have observed.
Some obey for heaven and eternal pleasures, some obey for fear of judgement and hell fire, and some obey purely for the smile on their Father’s face.
