Through A Monk's Eyes

Why is God so interested in what we do in the bedroom? Why is the Church so keen that we should learn to control our bodies and their passions? Why can't we just focus on the spiritual side of life and live as spiritual beings?

Some things are to be discerned with one's mind, but others - the most important ones - should be approached based on faith and love alone. One cannot 'discern' one's vocation for married or monastic life; this is not a choice to be made based on logical assessment, but on the love one feels in one's heart.

My will or God's will? The will of the world and that of our families have become components of our own will. To discern and follow the will of God, we must free ourselves from the dominion of these three: the will of the world, the will of our immediate circle of family and friends, and our personal will. The best teacher for this is the wonderful St John of the Ladder (of Sinai).

Back in March 2020, when I promised that I'd be recording these videos to keep each other company through the pandemic, I definitely had no idea I would still be doing this a whole year later. One year of the pandemic, one year with the virus, and we are still here, helping each other on our way. I have learnt enormously from you during this past year and I want to thank you all, on behalf of the Monastery, for the love and encouragement you have offered us. May God, Who brought all of us together, continue to bless us every day, every hour of our portion in this world, my dear ones.

If your aim is to be 100% happy, 100% of the time, you can be 100% certain that you will fail into utter misery. We are constantly being fed ready-made recipes for happiness, impersonal visions of what happiness looks like, false idols of who we should be in order to be happy. We can grow from the darkness in our lives, as much as we grown from its light. Happiness comes from unexpected places and we should always be ready to embrace it. If we are blinded by these unreal visions of happiness, we might just let true happiness pass by unnoticed.

What is the Orthodox practice of total fasting? How do you keep it and why would you? What are the spiritual benefits of fasting for a period from all food and water for the love of Christ?

As we begin our Lenten journey, Fr. Seraphim Aldea reminds us of the importance of repentance for our salvation.

Some people thrive and others collapse fought by the same temptations, in the same context, surrounded by the same people. St Paisius the Agiorite (St Paisius of the Holy Mountain) and St John of the Ladder teach us that a joyful disposition of the heart and the determination to see goodness in everyone can make the difference between spiritual life and death. We need to train our thoughts to always 'translate' the situations we face into good examples, into sources of strength, virtue and beauty. Depending on whether we decode this world through a lens of love or one of condemnation, the same temptations can feed the Divine Image in us or the nothingness in us.

When we judge our brother we become anti-Christs, because we rob the True Judge - Jesus Christ - of the authority given to Him Alone by the Father. We envy His place on His Throne of Judgement and we sit on His Throne in our mind, making ourselves to be judges, although God did not give us this authority. We are not the Judge, but the ones who will be judged, with the rest of humanity. We must always remember that the Same One Who said: 'do not kill' also said: 'do not Judge'.

Every Lent is an opportunity to START ANEW, to shine in Christ, to do the things we only think about doing the rest of the year. We can go deeper in our faith, we can create secret 'signs of love and faith' with Christ, we can re-shape the courses of our thoughts and emotions so they once again flow in the direction God intended them to flow when He created us.

Why do we forget all the beautiful things God teaches us in our life? How come we cannot hold on and remember all the advice God speaks to our hearts, either in prayer or through the people and circumstances of our lives?

Fr. Seraphim Aldea reminds us that who we are in Christ is the best version of ourselves.

After we sin, our hearts freeze. For a while, we stay away from God on purpose. We need time to heal, we need some sort of ritual of cleansing, some manner in which to make ourselves (in our own eyes) acceptable again to God. But the way back to prayer must begin as soon as possible, if possible even during the act of sin itself. The sooner we turn ourselves back to face Christ's Light, the sooner we shall drag ourselves out of the depth of our fall. Remind yourself of those who were waiting in the darkness of hell for Christ's Descent - ask for their desperate desire to be forgiven, pray for their unceasing hope that Light WILL one day find them and bring them back to Life out of the death of their hell. For those who put their trust in Christ, there is always Hope, there is always Love, there is always a way back to repentance and Life.

Prayer is a new creation - St Sophrony says somewhere. By that, he means that prayer will change the one who prays into a new person, a true person, the saints whom God created us to be. If we are afraid of change, we should be terrified of prayer, because prayer is deeply transformative or nothing at all. Prayer kills the evil seeds in us and it feeds the good seeds in us. Like a series of small deaths and resurrections, prayer slowly reshapes our being, until it re-creates us according to the Image of God in us.

Not the virus, not the vaccines, not ecumenism, not any other enemy of choice: the greatest danger to our salvation and the trigger of the destruction of this world is our SIN We are the ones who can destroy ourselves and our world, but we are also the ones through whom the world can be saved. Christ has already opened that door for us. A world without love can have no future, but one drop of Love can redeem ALL.

The is NO LIFE in despondency and abandonment. We must learn to fight for love, fight for joy, and this LOVE will teach us about God.

A lot of people around us suffer from the physiological pressures of this pandemic. Some were suffering before it all started, others have only now found themselves facing this struggle. The point is that there are SO MANY among us who suffer quietly and unknown by anyone. We MUST open our eyes to see them. St Silouan tells us that a loving, prayerful heart naturally feels the pain of the world and willingly crucifies itself in prayer for the world. We must close the judgemental eyes of our minds and open the loving eyes of our hearts, so we may perceive the silent pain in our brothers and sisters. Once we see it, we must do what Christ teaches us to do: lift their cross on our shoulders and carry it for them. At least for an hour. At least for a day. It may not be much, but it will allow them a respite from the lonely hell of a mind in pain.

Fr. Seraphim Aldea helps answer the question "Will we ever reach the holiness of the Saints?".

Two summers ago (when people still travelled) I met a lady on the ferry who had come to the Isles all the way from North America because 'God told me to visit Scotland'. Apparently, God had told her to visit many places in the world and she was looking forward to wherever He would send her on her next holiday. This lesson is based on a very different story about St Macarius the Great who one day received the thought of leaving his cell to go and pray in the desert. After he waited for FIVE YEARS, fighting in prayer to discern if this is the will of God, he then went into the desert.

This is not about religious regimentation, nor about brainwashing ourselves into believe doctrines that are foreign to our nature, nor about abandoning our will to become the puppets of a master, nor about denying oneself and losing one's identity. Being a Christian is about following the God of Love onto our own cross, mirroring His Cross, so we may discover who-we-are-in-Love and what this world looks like when saved by Love.