“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”
- St. Jerome
We all know that the reading of the Bible is as essential to our Spiritual growth as food is to our physical growth. So why then do we so often neglect...
The blessed father Abdel Messieh el Macarii was born in 1892 in the village of Abu Shehata, district of Mattai in the provience of El Minya. His father's name was Henain and his mother's was Estere. When he grew...
Isaac describes the ascetic life as a constant variation between periods of ‘assistance’ and ‘feebleness’, presence and abandonment, spiritual ups and downs. Periods of abandonment and spiritual decay are necessary for a person so that he may feel his...
In the book by Tito Colliander, The Way of the Ascetics, a brief conversation is recorded between a monk and a layman. The layman asks the monk, “What do you do there in the monastery?” And the monk replies,...
By night on my bed, feeling worn out and exhausted, I sought the one I love; I sought him, but I did not find him. The verse, I sought him, but I did not find him, is a painfully...
One of the great church fathers of the 4th century is St Basil the bishop of Caesarea. He has no comprehensive biography, yet from what we know about him in the funerary oration by St Gregory of Nyssa (his...
The love of God is not something that is taught, for we do not learn from another to rejoice in the light or to desire life, nor has anyone taught us to love our parents or nurses. In the...
“In a full belly there is no knowledge of the mysteries of God”
By: St Isaac the Syrian
Of all forms of ascetic techniques that St Isaac employs, fasting is probably the one that is most difficult to understand for modern...
The monk ought to be in his appearance and all his actions an exemplar of profit to those who see him, so that by reason of his many virtues which shine forth like sunbeams, the enemies of truth, when...
The Syrian Church strengthened the Ascetic life and founded from the 4th Century onwards hundreds of monasteries which were occupied by thousands of monks and nuns who trained themselves in the virtues of piety, celibacy, chastity, humility, obedience, silence,...
