Useful Counsels for All Monks
“You can and must become a leader in the monastery without realizing it, without speaking. You can accomplish this only through fervent prayer for everyone. Open your heart simply, unforced, and spontaneously to our Lord.
“Don’t force yourself, nor pressure yourself nor doubt that this will happen. In all this you should speak first to the Lord. And before you speak to your Elder, first pray fervently. A praying person, a simple monk with his prayer, can correct all the problems in the Monastery.”
“Be pleasant. Love silence because your heart will be speaking to Christ. But when you meet your brother monk speak to him with love so that hearts can be connected. They must be as one. Don’t respond with many words when someone asks you a question. You should answer with a few meaningful words. You should learn to respond with ‘thank you’ and ‘please’.
It should be said with the meaning ‘I thank God, whose angel sent you to help me’. (2)”
“I, however, as I had told you, went to the Mountain at the age of 12 or 14 years. I was an uneducated and unlettered child. But my heart was filled with divine love. I responded to all the chores with eagerness. I did more than what they asked me to do.”
“They never advised me. They never praised me as they do today with young children. We constantly say to our children ‘well- done, well-done’ and the poor things grow up all puffed up with egos. We do great harm to our children. My elders urged me to read only the Psalter and the Synaxari. They gave me nothing else in the form of counsel and guidance. I soared. I lived in Paradise. And I didn’t get sick from excessive work but rather from egotism. My ego pushed me to gather as many snails as possible in the rain. The wet sack remained on my back for three hours.”
“So you too should love physical effort and tiredness. It is good for the body and for the soul. My dear friend, I want you to be like me because I love you. I want you to become like me. (3) Do you do prostrations? How many do you do?
Just do one so that I can see how you do if.”
This happened there, at Milessi, in his little cell, when I went one day as a monk. I did one or two prostrations.
“You don’t do them right.” And though he was now blind and could not see at all, nevertheless he spoke as if he could see.
He called a brother monk, ringing his little bell.
“Please show this brother monk how I taught you to do the prostrations and the rule.”
And immediately he began doing prostrations vigorously.
“You see,” the Elder said, “first the hands touch the ground, not the knees. And then the body remains as if it is in mid-air. It demands strength in the arms. Then you cross yourself with firmness! You firmly touch your forehead, your knee and your shoulders! We at the skete, when we all did the Rule together in Church you could hear the rustling of our cassocks as the hand hit the knee with firmness. Have you seen how a mother squeezes her child?
“Human emotion is part of every action. This is also true with the Lord.”
“At the time of practicing the Rule both the body and the soul should feel Him. That hermit that I saw praying did many-many prostrations and at certain moments he would be in ecstasy with his hands open and outstretched. This is the meaning of the expression, ‘The Lord was troubled in spirit.’(4) At other times the hands softly and beseechingly supplicate the Lord:’
“When we meet in prayer, you there and I here, you should feel mentally that we are gazing upon the Lord and the Panaghia. We should run to take refuge in Christ out of divine eros and love. We do this not out of fear of death or divine retribution. Death does not exist. Don’t fear death. There is no death, for whoever dies with faith in Christ there is no death for that person. If you have not died, then die.” (5)
~Adapted from Monk Agapios, The Divine Flame Elder Porphyrios Lit in My Heart
2 The Elder was not accustomed to saying thank you and please to fellow monastics. He preferred the expression “bless” and “let it be blessed.” Here he is obviously referring to specific cases respecting the composition of souls of the brothers. But in reference to the thank you, he gives the meaning of thanksgiving to God and not to the brother.
3 Elder Porphyrios who was filled with grace and altered by the love of Christ lived his new life in Christ in an atmosphere of enthusiasm. His complete dedication to Christ in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul, led him effortlessly to the saving and urgent counsel of Paul: “Become you imitators of me as I also am of Christ”.
4 At a certain time the Elder particularly stressed the intensity of the Spirit of the Lord with the word “he was troubled in the spirit,” which means he was completely shaken, like the neighing of a horse. He wanted to stress the completeness and perfection of the soul, mind and strength that had been given to Christ and to prayer, as if the believer wants something very strong in soul and body.
5 Spiritual death does NOT exist for a true Christian. The “die” is directed to the “old” man, i.e., die to the old man and put on Christ.
