THE LORD SPEAKS to all people of all times and races, and tells them something clear and well-known. Today a person is alive, but tomorrow he dies and everything that he has is lost to him. But the soul, which moves the body, continues to live and it is either comforted and happy, or sad and burdened. Man is created thus; the body must live as the soul desires. At the moment of death the soul continues to live without the body. Everything will perish except that which the soul has gathered through love and prayer. Everything virtuous done by a man is written in the soul and will not be taken from him. While a person is alive, he finds himself paying attention to many things: clothing, health, his job, studies. There are times when he is concerned only with the thought of war or a failed harvest - of everything that is necessary for life on earth.
So, too, in spiritual life there are times of special attention to what is needful for the soul. Such is Great Lent - a time of special attention, examination, of the freeing of spiritual forces. Fasting is established by the Holy Spirit. Righteous men, striving towards God, through life experience came to know the meaning of fasting and to bear witness that without fasting there can be no spiritual life. All the various attacks of the devil, all his temptations, everything concerning the diabolic world, is cast aside - becomes powerless and is shamed - when a person firmly follows the words of the Savior Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ: "…This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" (Matt. 17:21).
Now is a time of fasting, a suitable time for cleansing the soul. This is the most important thing, for a soul to be able to accept the grace of God, so that those treasures will be stored up in the soul, which will not be taken from it. And then the path of its life will be straight; in the soul there will be peace and joy.
"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
St. John Maximovich
During the time that the body of one fasting becomes thin and light, the spiritual life attains to perfection and reveals itself through miraculous manifestations. The spirit then performs its actions as if in a bodiless body. External feelings are as shut out, and the mind, renouncing the worldly, ascends to the heavenly and becomes completely immersed in the contemplation of the spiritual world.
Yet not everyone can take upon himself strict rules of abstinence from everything, nor deprive himself completely of all that serves to relieve infirmities: "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it" (Mt. 19:12).
St.Seraphim of Sarov
Jesus Christ, the Lord and God of all, to Whom every creature and all of creation submit, remained obedient to His parents. This is truly remarkable!
But if we carefully consider the persons whom He obeyed, the duration of His submission, and the extent of His obedience, we will stand awestruck before the unsurpassed and unparalleled obedience displayed by Christ.
The Lord’s obedience was extraordinary, firstly, on account of the people to whom He submitted Himself. Indeed, it would have sufficed if the
Lord obeyed only His Most-holy mother; for she was His biological mother who conceived Him from her immaculate flesh, who carried Him for nine entire months in her womb, and who later nurtured Him with her milk.
Consequently, He had a mandatory obligation to obey her, not only because He was her genuine and true Son, but also because He was the Law-giver Himself Who had commanded the following:
“Honor your father and mother that it may be well with you, and your days may be long upon the good land” (Ex. 20:12); “Hear my son, the instruction of your father, and do not reject the laws of your mother” (Pr. 1:9); “He who honors his father atones for his sins; and he who honors his mother is like one who stores up treasure. He who honors his father will be gladdened by his own children, and when he prayed, he will be heard. He who honors his father will have a long life, and he who obeys the Lord will give rest to his mother; and he will serve his parents as his masters.
Honor your father and mother in word and deed, that a blessing may come upon you from him” (Sir. 3:6).
The Lord, however, chose to be obedient even to Righteous Joseph, despite the fact that He was neither required nor obligated to do so. Joseph was not Christ’s true, biological father; the Lord Jesus was not Joseph’s genuine, natural son. Joseph’s fatherhood and Christ’s sonship were both a portrayal, not an actuality. Their father-son relationship was assumed to be and referred to as true kinship, but in essence it was not real.
Despite this, the Lord desiring to display an extraordinary level of obedience submitted Himself indiscriminately and listened not only to His true mother but also to His supposed father Joseph, as if he was His real father. This is why St. Luke the Evangelist stated :
“Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and subjected Himself to them” (Lk. 2:51).
http://www.stnektariosmonastery.org/
St. John the Russian, depicted with St. Seraphim of Sarov and St. John of Kronstadt
In one of the two children's hospitals of Athens, a mother lied at the head of her child day and night. She brought the child from Patras, because the child's chronic affliction, paralysis of the lower extremities, had worsened in the last few days...
One evening, while the sun was setting, and the last few sunbeams lit up the hospital room, the mother remembered how she would go to a chapel of the Panagia high above Patras, and prayed, lighting the vigil lamps, sometimes with her husband, other times with her children. Her nous was fixed on that chapel. She prayed noetically: “My Panagia, my sweetest Mother who feels our pain, help my child. My Panagia, send me a Saint, look at my poor child, how in his life, he is struggling to stand on his feet. Help, my poor little boy.”
“Mother,” the child said, “who are you talking to?”
“My Georgie, remember when you read in your church book how our Lord lived in Palestine, and healed demoniacs, opened the eyes of the blind, lifted up Paralytics and made them to walk, and raised the dead? Tell him, my Georgie, and He will hear you, my good boy, tell Christouli to make you well.”
The helpless child, with his innocent gaze, looked at his mother, and at the sun which was setting. He looked on high towards the heavens.
That midnight, George saw a dream of a beautiful horseman, on a glorious horse. He stopped before him and said:
“Get up, Georgie, jump up on my horse!”
“But I am a paralytic, my feet don't move and hold me up.” he replied.
“Give me your hand, Georgie, get up on my horse. I am St. John from Russia, and our Lord sent me to bring you His grace and His healing power!"
The child, half awake, then awoke his mother, who picked him up so that he wouldn't fall out of bed.
“Mother, hold me, St. John from Russia told me to get up.”
In the morning when the night resident told the professor that the paralyzed child from Patras began walking that night, went with a hammer in hand, checked the child's reflexes, and plucked his feet with a sharp instrument, and he saw that his body was functioning normally.
“Go,” said the professor, “God had something to do with you."
(8/17/77 – from the book “Life and new miracles of the Venerable John the Russian”, by Priest Ioannis Vernezou, 1999
http://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.ca/2015/09/a-paralyzed-boy-healed-by-st-john.html
"Drink Holy Water, the more often, the better. It is the best and most effective medicine. I'm not saying this as a priest, I'm saying it as a doctor, from my medical experience."
St. Luke the Surgeon, Archbishop of Simferopol
