Tag Archives: Elder Aimilianos

Monasteries are not places of refuge.

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“The world thinks that when someone becomes a monk in a monastery, he leaves society and becomes wild. They say this because they are unaware that monks are the most sociable of human beings. You should know that no one can become a monk if he is not sociable, that is, if he cannot communicate and deal openly and directly with all the difficulties encountered in a life shared with others. If a man has had difficulties in marrying or establishing a family, chances are he won’t be a good monk. He must feel secure in his life. Monasteries are not places of refuge. Consequently, a monk is someone who may have formerly attained success in such relationships, and loved them, too, and thus he doesn’t reject them, he doesn’t condemn them, he doesn’t despise them, but rather prefers something superior for himself.”

-Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra, in The Church at Prayer: The Mystical Liturgy of the Heart 

Ormylia and Souroti

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The relics of Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra are kept at the Holy Monastery of the Annunciation in Ormylia, and the grave of Saint Paisios of Mount Athos is in Souroti, at the Holy Monastery of St. John the Theologian.

Today my friend and sister in Christ who is also a tour guide drove us to both of these holy sites, where I received great blessings that I don’t feel capable of a expressing in a worthy way.

I’d been looking forward to this visit for nearly a year, and praying that God would make it happen, that He would prevent all the things that could go wrong and change my plans. And He did.

For now I’m only going to post a few photos from the monasteries; if ever you are interested when I get a chance to talk to you in person, I will try to tell you specifics about things that happened, people I talked to, and what I learned. Until then, I mostly wanted you to know that I made my pilgrimage there, glory to God.

Weighing and measuring very carefully.

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“Have no anxiety. Sometimes what’s worse than being sick is being afraid of getting sick. Leave it to God. Whatever God gives you is best for you. God never gives you a cross without first weighing and measuring it very carefully to make sure that the cross will result in your spiritual growth.”

-Elder Amilianos of Simonopetra

We must be indifferent.

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A word from an Athonite elder:

The faithful are often scandalized by the prosperity of sinners. And it is true that if we look at things from a purely human perspective it can seem as if God has distributed His blessings unjustly. Here, where He should have given a measure of happiness, He has given only misfortune. And there, where He should have dispensed riches, He gave only poverty. And where poverty was in order, he lavished wealth. When we wait for a blessing, He often deals us a hard blow, while at the same time He maintains smiles on the faces of those around us.

In a way that echoes modern social concerns, we might say that God discriminates, and this is something that scandalizes us. Why does this scandalize us? The answer is simple. It is because our hearts are still attached to earthly things, still clinging to false “goods” that we continue to covet and crave. Thus the solution to our dilemma must be sought elsewhere, and this means that we should not be hasty in abolishing whatever strikes us as discrimination or injustice.

We live in a time of rapid change, when every innovation is presented to us as “progress,” but before real change, real progress, can take place, something must first change within us. And for this to happen we must become completely estranged to all things earthly and human, to all human logic, to all human ways of thinking, and to every so-called material good. We must be indifferent in the face of all things. And only then, when we have become strangers to all, can God become all things to us, as if there existed nothing else in the world for us except God.

It is this alone that can grant us true and lasting tranquility. Otherwise, if our heart is attached to anything earthly, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem to be, we can be sure that it will make us suffer.

—Elder Aimilianos of Athos