Monasticism
HEGE Series
Orthodox Monasticism: A Brief Study for the Layman
True Orthodox Monastery Versus the Rainbow Gathering
Fr. Maximos Constas
V. Rev. Archimandrite Maximos Constas, PhD | HCHC Hellenic College Holy Cross
Fr. Maximos Constans | YouTube
The Body As Ritual Space | YouTube
FoMA Madingley Conference 2019 - Archimandrite Maximos Constas' Talk | YouTube
FoMA Summer Conference 2021 | YouTube
St. Maximos the Confessor
The Life and Teaching of St. Maximos the Confessor | YouTube
The Relevance of St. Maximus the Confessor Today | YouTube
Creation
A Tale of Two Trees: Nature and Human Transformation
A Tale of Two Trees: Nature and Human Transformation | YouTube
Commentary on the Patriarchal Message on the Day of the Protection of the Environment
Social Concern
St. Basil's Social Concerns (unpublished paper)
“Basil’s attitude to wealth and poverty was closely intertwined with the experience of his conversion, for in the Gospels he discovered that “the selling of one’s possessions and giving to the poor” (Mt 19:21) was the “greatest means to attain Christian perfection.”...the same verse that had prompted St. Antony to sell his possessions and embark on a life [of] asceticism...
Basil’s commitment to the distribution of personal wealth and property was motivated, not by human notions of social welfare or economic justice, but by purely religious and theological principles...
Basil’s aim was to create a new human community, the model for which he found in Scripture. The new city was not simply a cluster of professional buildings dispensing social services, but was inspired by the life of the apostolic community described in the fourth chapter of the book of Acts: “There was not a needy person among them, for as many were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34-35). Prominently placed at the physical and spiritual center of the new city stood a church, celebrating a full cycle of services. The surrounding medical and other facilities were supported and staffed largely by monks.
Basil’s new city combined physical and spiritual care in a single, unified form....
In contrast to the fragmentation and hyper-specialization in both modern medicine and theology, Basil presents us with a comprehensive and coherent approach to the whole person...
Basil’s commitment to the sick and the poor flowed directly from his faith in Christ, and from a new, Christian understanding of human nature and society. Through the dynamic of his conversion, Basil not only found God, but he also discovered other people, for it is not possible to grow closer to God without also growing closer to those around us. Thus, Basil’s dislike of private property and his commitment to those in need, came about only after he found his place in the body of Christ, only after he learned to “suffer and rejoice together with all the other members of that body” (cf. 1 Cor 12:26).
The “Common Life”
This emphasis on community is a signature element that runs throughout all of Basil’s work....
The Basilian community was a new way of living based on simplicity, sharing, and an absence of private property and competition [that comes at the expense of cooperation].
Basil felt that one could not live out the commandments of Christ while living a solitary life. ...The love of God revealed in Christ calls into being a community of love, in which private property and personal riches have no place. Basil says that our possessions belong to God, and have been given to us so that we might share them with those who are in need. To retain them for our own private use is a flagrant violation of the law of love.
The Refusal to Love
Basil’s robust affirmation of the common life was matched by a profound awareness of the material and spiritual devastation wrought by individualism and selfishness. He saw clearly that our possessions tie us to the world, from which we need to break free; and giving away one’s possessions, or at the very least not being inwardly attached to them, is an essential part of this. To hold on to our possessions is to fail to love our neighbor, which is also a failure to love God. To the wealthy members of his congregation, Basil taught that the surplus goods they were hoarding belong to those who are in need of them; and that to hold on to them is to be keeping stolen goods. He says, even more radically, that if we are refuse to help the sick and the suffering, we are responsible for their deaths, and he does not hesitate to call this a form of murder.
More generally, Basil calls those who are enslaved to their riches “ἀκοινονετοι.” On one level, this means “unsocial,” [or antisocial] but if human beings are inherently social, then the word akoinonetoi
also means “inhuman.” The fear and insecurity that so often drive the accumulation of wealth and other resources, diminish the humanity of the wealthy, and extract a tremendous cost from the rest of the world. Our abundance succeeds only in making us feel empty. We have, Basil says, an infinite desiring capacity in the face of which no finite [material] thing can ever satisfy us [only God who is Spirit and Truth can satisfy the longings of the human heart]. Greed and acquisitiveness produce only a tragic caricature of human life, and increase the suffering of those around us....
Basil recognizes that wealth is linked to power and to the domination and control of the poor, and thus rests on an act of social violence, or at least on the implicit threat of such violence. But this is not his main concern. The deeper problem, as he sees it, is a lack of love, or misdirected love. In his sermon on the Rich Man, Basil says that the man in question walked away from Christ because his love for his possessions was greater than his love for his neighbor.
The Deeper Meaning of Christian Philanthropy
For Basil and the Orthodox Church in general, divine love contains all the virtues (cf. 1 Cor 13:9-10), and care for the sick and the poor is a manifestation of this love. There is no question that the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person are to be valued above all material possessions. Yet we must not lose sight of that which makes life sacred and which gives human beings their dignity in the first place....
Christian concern for the sick and the poor is not a social, economic, or political ideal, but is founded on the love of God as revealed in the person of Christ.
The things that we do are important, and no less important are the reasons for which we do them. Care for the sick and the poor that is impersonal, mechanized, and controlled by faceless bureaucracies does not fulfill the greatest of commandments. “For even if I give away all that I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:3).”
— Fr. Constas’ paper calls into question the politics of conservative ”christians” who are quick to jump on abortion as murder, but negligent in ever calling for care of the poor and needy, lack of which is also murder in God’s eye as St. Basil has said. In fact, such ideologues have repeatedly railed against any national programs to provide food and healthcare for the poor. While it is true as Fr. Constas writes that “Care for the sick and the poor that is impersonal, mechanized, and controlled by faceless bureaucracies does not fulfill the greatest of commandments", this is not the reason that such programs are opposed by conservative ideologues. Such governmental programs are a last resort, last ditch effort to prevent revolution in a society that likes to give superficial lip service to being "christian”, but doesn't like putting itself out in love towards others in order to actually in truth be Christian.
That abortion is railed against as murder and demands made to outlaw it while ignoring murder of the poor and needy by way of an economic system based in individualism, private property, and hoarding is spiritual indictment against conservative “christians”. Such are little more than useful idiots enslaved to propaganda lies of the powers that be, who use anti-abortion as nothing but a political issue by which to derive a constituency that presumably grants legitimacy of rule to them in their devotion to their system which they have continually abused since its inception for the private selfish personal enrichment of their few to the detriment and suffering of the majority of others.
Such are the godless ungodly and worst of idolaters, who serve satan in their Love of Mammon, instead of loving and serving God through loving and serving God's creation. Such western capitalists have long touted their economic system as being the only godly way to organize society, but that system is not human and its effect entirely dependent on those who are human and in possession of riches, by which they abscond political power to their own ends of hoarding yet more in order to derive even more power from the system. For the capitalist economic system to be considered godly, those determining its outcomes must first become godly, and secondly must have godly concern for others as evidenced in putting such concern into action that abhors and avoids at all costs the abuse of that system.
Iconography
The Meaning of Icons | YouTube
The Art of Seeing: Paradox and Perception in Orthodox Iconography
Spiritual Practice
"Watch then Thyself": Spiritual Practice & Digital Culture | YouTube
Our Thoughts and Mental Health: An Orthodox Perspective | Ancient Faith Ministries
Discoursing on the Passions Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 1
Distracting Us from the Depths Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 2
Fr Maximos Constas, Praying the Psalms in Monastic Life | YouTube
The Holy Mountain
Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise — Graham Speake
Mt Athos: A visit to the Holy Mountain | 60 Minutes
Mt Athos: A visit to the Holy Mountain | YouTube
Mount Athos Monk's Republic | YouTube
Athos The Holy Mountain | YouTube
Easter on Mount Athos | YouTube
A Thousand Years are as One Day | YouTube
People of Mount Athos | Andrei Oprescu — Trailer
Athos, the world s brightest peak | Vimeo
Archimandrite Athanasios Mitilinaios
Archimandrite Athanasios Mitilinaios (1927-†2006) | Zoe Press
Revelation Vol 1-5 — Archimandrite Athanasios Mitilinaios
Archimandrite Athanasios stated in his lectures on Revelation that there would be no other civilization after “western” (western European) civilization, that The Beast (Antichrist) would arise from within western civilization, preceded by many types of antichrist before that (e.g. fascists, Bolsheviks, communists, globalists — totalitarians one and all).
The Church of the Wilderness; the future of Orthodoxy
On the Russian Orthodox Catacomb Church
On the Antichrist
How will the Antichrist die? Has he been born?
One world religion before the Antichrist's coming
Fantasy exploited by the devil | Imagination
Freemasonry : The Secret Luciferians
“Freemasonry, the teachings and practices of the secret fraternal order of Free and Accepted Masons, the largest worldwide secret society. Spread by the advance of the British Empire, Freemasonry remains most popular in the British Isles and in other countries originally within the empire [IOW modern “western” civilization, especially including USA].”
Note: It appears that Archimandrite Athanasios may have been relying on misinformation about Freemasonry (especially that of Leo Taxil). Though some details he relates may not be true, the overall analysis is the same in the end — freemasonry represents a philosophical, metaphysical system that runs counter to Orthodox Chrisitianity.
Taxil hoax | Wikipedia
See — Freemasonry
Five historical warnings
Be alert
Remain standing during the days of the Antichrist (Part 1) — Transcript
Remain standing during the days of the Antichrist (Part 2)
A secularised church will be trampled upon by the nations
The Church will have to close its doors again
Cowardice
The Cowardly Shall Suffer in the Lake of Fire (Rev. 21:8)
The two factors leading to apostasy
Traitors inside the Church
What did the resurrected people see in the afterlife?
The seven deadly sins
Provocation to sensual pleasure
Idolatry of Sexual Relations: Separation of the Purpose from Pleasure
Why do we sometimes feel so empty and so lonely?
Death penalty and Orthodox Christianity | Right to kill
Hard rock music and Christianity
On Cigarette Smoking
Is there intelligent life on other planets?
Severely disabled persons. How will God judge them?
Why God created man even though He knew he would fall?
Why did God not want man to eat of the Tree of knowledge?
Against the Origenists
What about the miracles that happen to non-believers or believers of other faiths?
Finding yourself; Signs of a Monastic Vocation
Is Fasting a Virtue?
Metropolitan Nikolaos
Nicholas (Hatzinikolaou) of Mesogaia | Orthodoxwiki
Metropolis of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki | Orthodoxwiki
Chairman, Church of Greece - Bioethics Committee
Orthodoxy and Modern Life: An Interview With Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia
Characteristics of Athonite Spirituality Part 1
Characteristics of Athonite Spirituality Part 2
The Holy Mountain: A Place With Ecumenical Coordinates and a Heavenly Orientation
In memoriam: Bishop Atanasije
Elder Pasios‘ Seven Tangerines
Stories About the Power of the Cross
Every One Of Us Is A Potential Saint
Anthonite Elder Herodia, The Fool-For-Christ
Mankind‘s Greatest Error
An Ineffable Fragrance
The Greek Government Is Only Disgracing Orthodox Greece
Christmas in Karoulia
At Christmas We Forget God
Surrounded by the Christmas Spirit
Material Desires
Global Financial Crisis and Crisis of Faith
ICU – At the Border between Life and Death [1]
ICU – At the Border between Life and Death [2]
ICU – At the Border between Life and Death [3]
Is the question ‘Why?’ blessed or cursed?
Foreword to The Departure of the Soul
Religious Communities and Civil Society
On Pascha
An Ineffable Frangrance
Entering The Logic Of God
How to recognize the authentic Christian experience
2015 FoMA Madingley Conference: Session 3 | YouTube
The Desert, Hesychia, and Askesis: Then and Now | YouTube
Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, Beginning of Triodion | YouTube
Transhumanism | The Future of the Human Race | 2023 Patristic Nectar Conference | YouTube
Transhumanism vs. Theosis | YouTube
Orthodox Bishop Answers 4 Questions on Science and the Theory of Evolution
Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential
The Embryo In Orthodox Christian Theology And Tradition
Response To Questions Regarding Coronovirus Vaccination
Announcement by Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki
Fr. Seraphim Rose
Orthdox Survival Course Orthodox Lectures on the History of the Apostasy (Middle Ages to the Present)
Fr. Seraphime Rose and the Signs of the Times - Part 1
Fr. Seraphime Rose and the Signs of the Times - Part 2
Fr. Seraphim Rose Living the Orthodox World-View
Living the Orthodox World-View - Part 1
Living the Orthodox World-View - Part 2
The Future of Russia and the Endo of the World
Subhumanity — The Philosophy of the Absurd
Counsels of Fr. Seraphim (Rose) to Young Concrets
Each One of Us is Potentially a Judas — A sermon given by Fr. Seraphim (Rose) during Great Lent, 1982
The Theological Writings of Archbishop John and the Question of “Western Influence” in Orthodox Theology
In Step With Saints Patrick and Gregory of Tours
The Rule of Fasting in the Orthodox Church
The Transfiguration of the Lord
The Ascension of the Lord
The Feast of Mid-Pentecost
The Life of Saint Seraphim
St. Dorothy of Kashin
Celtic Monasticism
Mull Monastery Orthodox Monastery of All Celtic Saints, Isle of Mull, Scotland
— Eastern Orthodox monastic community in the West that is multi-national (as fitting in the West) with members from Canada, USA, and Romania, whose liturgical and daily language is English
In Step with Saints Patrick and Gregory of Tours
The Epistles of St. Abba Dorotheus
Through a Monk’s Eyes | Ancient Faith Ministries
MullMonastery | YouTube Channel
Iona Monastery Channel | YouTube
The 'stuff' that makes Saints. Silence and solitude
The Island of St Brendan the Navigator
The Orthodox Monastery of the Life-Giving Spring, Shannonbridge, Ireland
Holy Cross Monastery
Holy Cross Monastery Wayne WV
A Brief Biography of Archimandrite Seraphim
From the Little Mountain: Reflections on Orthodox Christian Monasticism | YouTube
Abbot Seraphim Interviews Andrew Gould on the New Church
New Men 2019 | Vimeo — Trailer | YouTube
Machairas Monastery
Holy Royal and Stavropegic Monastery of Machairas, Cypress 2020
Journey to Heaven | The life of an Orthodox Monastery | YouTube
Machairas Monastery | Wikipedia
Fr. Justin Sinaites
Fr. Justin Sinaites - Librarian and archivist of St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai
Fr Justin's Blog
Fr. Justin Sinaites Speaks at Eastern University 2015 | YouTube
Fr. Justin on the Spiritual Heritage of the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai | YouTube
Saint Catherine's Monastery - An Ark in the Wilderness | YouTube
Church of Sinai | Wikipedia
Mount Sinai
Father Raphael Noica
Father Raphael Noica | DOXOLOGIA.com
Father Raphael Noica the Hesychast, The radiance of the Father has come to make us bright