St Paisios of Mount Athos: Life and Teachings
St Paisios of Mount Athos was a 20th-century Athonite monk whose life and teachings combined austere monastic asceticism with practical pastoral counsel on family, society, and bearing others' suffering. His guidance is rooted in the Orthodox monastic Fathers and liturgical practice, and he modeled philotimo — humble, selfless love — as the Christian response to modern anxieties, divorce, and spiritual malaise. The pastoral takeaway: simplify, pray, and enter others' pain with compassionate love.
Note: This article is an automatically generated transcript of an audio lecture. It was transcribed and lightly reworded for readability using automated tools, so it does not reproduce the speaker’s exact words. For the original, listen to the recording linked below.
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Key takeaways:
- Elder Paisios urged Christians to share others' pain as a path to healing
- Philotimo — humble, selfless love — is central to authentic Christian life
- Simplicity and keeping Sunday holy help relieve anxiety and prevent divorce
- Couples should entrust childbearing to divine providence rather than personal plans
- He combined Athonite asceticism with tireless pastoral care for the suffering
Life and monastic formation
He was born July 25, 1924, and he fell asleep in the Lord on the 12th of July, 1994. He was born Arsenios Eznepidis to pious parents in the town of Pharasa in Cappadocia of Asia Minor in Turkey, shortly before the population exchange between Greece and Turkey that followed the Greco-Turkish War of 1919 to 1922. Arsenios' name was given to him in baptism by his parish priest, whose name was Arsenios. St. Arsenios the Cappadocian was something of a prophet. When he baptized the little Eznepidis baby, without consulting the parents he named him after himself and said, "I am leaving a monk in my place, in my stead." So he not only gave him his name and established a tremendous spiritual connection, but prophesied that this little baby was going to become a monk, which in fact he did.
On this icon, two saints appear in medallions on the upper left and one on the upper right. The saint on the upper left is his parish priest, St. Arsenios the Cappadocian. The saint on the upper right is one of his best friends, a saint who lived 15 centuries ago, named St. Euphemia. St. Euphemia, the great defender of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, whose relics are in the Phanar now in Istanbul in St. George Church, was super close to Father Paisios. She appeared to him many times. They had many talks. He absolutely adored her. In fact, the last liturgy he celebrated was her feast day on July 11th before he passed away on July 12th, and how appropriate that she, whom he loved so much, celebrates her feast day just one day before his own.
Very shortly after his baptism, the young Arsenios and his family were forced to leave Asia Minor in accordance with the peace treaty of Lausanne. St. Arsenios, his parish priest, guided his flock out of Turkey on a 400-mile trek to Greece on foot. He told them that he would die shortly after that, and in fact he did.
The Eznepidis family finally settled in the town of Konitsa in Epirus in northwestern Greece. As he had prophesied, their parish priest, St. Arsenios, reposed forty days after the group settled in Greece, leaving as his spiritual heir this infant that he had named for himself. Arsenios grew up in Konitsa. He learned carpentry and went to school there in his little village.
During the civil war in Greece following World War II, Arsenios served as a radio operator. He spent more than three and a half years in the military, and many of his teachings are couched in military images and jargon because he was so impacted by serving in the military and talked a lot about it. He was dearly loved by his fellow soldiers, especially most of the married men. He was unmarried and would remain unmarried his whole life, but he constantly worried about the married men and the danger of them being killed in this war.
He was always putting himself in harm's way. When he saw a married man going out, he would say, "No, no, let me do that. Let me do that. You have a wife, you have kids. I get killed, who cares? Nobody even knows me." He didn't worry about himself; he worried about others. He would worry about others until his last breath. He considered the last fifteen whole years of his life as having one goal, and that was, as he described it, to receive the pain of people and to bring it to Christ for healing. He was noted when he was young for his bravery, his self-sacrifice, his uprightness, his moral integrity.
After the Civil War ended, he wanted to enter into the monastic life. But he had his sisters, and he was concerned about them because they were unmarried. By 1950, finally, when he was in his mid-twenties, he had provided for his sisters' future, and he was able to begin his monastic vocation. He arrived on Mount Athos, which he called the spiritual America, in 1950, and first became a disciple of Father Cyril, the future abbot of Koutloumousiou Monastery. He then went to Esphigmenou Monastery in 1954.
Arsenios, having been a novice for four years, was tonsured a monk and was given the name Averkios. He was a very conscientious monk, and he found ways to complete his obediences, which required lots of contact with others, and also to preserve his silence. Somehow he was able to do both: to be with people and at the same time be a quiet person.
Averkios was the kind of presence that was calming to others. He was dedicated to learning the art of prayer as a young monk. He was known as being selfless and helping his brothers. He was unwilling, for instance, to rest, even if he had done all his chores and all his obediences in the monastery. If he saw his brothers working, he could not allow himself to sit down. He worked if others were working. He couldn't bear the thought of others working while he was resting.
Soon after his tonsure, he left Esphigmenou Monastery and joined the then idiorrhythmic brotherhood of Philotheou Monastery, where his uncle was a monk. He placed himself under obedience to the Elder Simeon, who gave him the small schema in 1956 and his new name when he became a schema monk: Paisios.
Paisios dwelt a lot on his own spiritual failures, and he examined himself and criticized himself constantly for what he viewed as a lack of love, which he thought was the cause of his neighbor's shortcomings as well as the cause of the world's ills. He pushed himself during these years to self-denial and more fervent prayer for the whole world. Sound familiar? It's like right out of Elder Sophrony, right out of Elder Epiphanios — they have the same hearts, these men. In 1958, after eight years on the Holy Mountain, Elder Paisios was asked to spend some time in and around his home village because his home village in northwestern Greece was being inundated by Protestant missionaries trying to bring people out of Orthodoxy. The village asked him if he would leave the Holy Mountain and come and live with them, basically to protect them from heresy and to counter these evangelical missionaries, and he was happy to do so with blessing.
His ability to interact with western denominations and aberrant forms of Christianity as well as other religions became a hallmark of his teaching. There are whole books written about his ability to help people from eastern religions and from heterodox forms of Christianity enter the faith. He lived in a little monastery just on the edge of his village and took care of the faithful there and encouraged them. Remember, he was a simple monk; he wasn't a priest serving the liturgy. He was living there as a son of Konitsa who had come back after years on the Holy Mountain strong in the faith, and the people got their balance and protected themselves by his presence.
In 1962, he visited Mount Sinai and the Monastery of Saint Catherine there and ended up staying for two years. He became beloved of all the Bedouins who lived around that monastery and worked for it, and he benefited them spiritually and materially. He was a carpenter and did a lot of woodworking, as do so many monks on Athos. He made crosses and other things and sold them for a little money to pay for his food. When he was on Sinai he did that in order to get bread for the Bedouins so that they could be cared for in that desert land on the Sinai Peninsula.
In 1964, he returned to Mount Athos and took up residence at the Skete of Iviron before moving to Katounakia at the southernmost tip of Mount Athos, where he lived for a short stay in the desert of Athos. His failing health may have been part of the reason he had to leave that rougher area. In 1966, he had part of his lungs removed and was operated on. During this hospitalization he developed a friendship with the young women and nuns who would become his spiritual daughters at the Monastery of St. John the Evangelist just outside Thessaloniki in the little town of Souroti. This monastery would become his home and he would be their spiritual father from 1967 until his death in 1994. That is where he died and where he is buried, and his humble grave, with little white rocks on it, is now a place of massive pilgrimage for people from all over the world.
While he was having this surgery, he formed a deep spiritual relationship with these nuns and would basically live for them for decades. In 1968 he was residing at the monastery of Stavronikita on Mount Athos, helping it spiritually and materially in its renovation as it was being recovered.
While there he had the blessings of being in contact with an ascetic named Elder Tikhon, who lived in the Hermitage of the Holy Cross very near the monastery, and he stayed by his side until the elder reposed, serving him faithfully as a disciple. During this period Elder Tikhon clothed Father Paisios in the Great Schema, and according to the wishes of the elder Father Paisios remained in Elder Tikhon's hermitage after Elder Tikhon passed away. He stayed there until 1979 when he moved to his final home on the Holy Mountain, the hermitage Panagouda, which belongs to Koutloumousiou Monastery. This was his little hut that he lived in for the last 15 years of his life, where many of the famous experiences and pictures and videos were made of him sitting on a little tree stump surrounded by pilgrims.
This is where many contemporary fathers, who are now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, went to visit him, including our own Metropolitan Joseph, who knew Elder Paisios and visited him. I went on my first trip to Mount Athos in 1997; I missed Elder Paisios by three years. Many of our priests and bishops who are alive today were able to know Father Paisios well. Metropolitan Joseph's spiritual father was a monk named Father Isaac, who lived in the little hermitage directly across from Elder Paisios, and they were very close friends. Father Isaac is Lebanese and is the author of the most definitive biography of Elder Paisios.
Final years, ministry, and death
Father Alexander Addy, the longtime pastor of St. Michael's in Louisville, Kentucky, and later dean of St. Tikhon's Seminary, was a spiritual son of Father Isaac. You've probably heard me tell stories of Father Alexander when he used to be very, very fat. In fact, he was 100 pounds overweight, and he went and met Father Isaac on Mount Athos, and Father Isaac wouldn't see him. Father Isaac looked through the peephole, saw Father Alexander, and said, "No fat priests." He shut the window. Father Alexander knocked again, and Father Isaac said the same thing. On the third time Father Alexander, being quick and witty, said, "Father, aren't you from such-and-such a village in Lebanon? That's where I'm from." The door then flew open. "Oh my son, come in, come in," and they began a beautiful relationship. Father Alexander went every Lent to see his spiritual father for years and years until he finally became a specimen of health.
The last few years of his life I used to see him jogging early in the morning, and he told me the story that when he returned to see Father Isaac after he had dropped the weight in obedience to his spiritual father's counsel, he found Father Isaac in the hospital in Thessaloniki, sick and blind from diabetes. Father Alexander went to his bedside, and Father Isaac, grabbing him, said, "It's me, it's me, it's Father Alexander." Father Alexander replied, "You're lying. Who are you? You're skinny." Father Alexander said, "I obeyed you; I did what you said." Father Isaac said, "You wait until my deathbed, my son, to do this."
Panagouda was the great hermitage where Elder Paisios spent the last 15 years of his life. There he drew the sick and suffering people of God to himself and received them all day long. He dedicated the night to prayer, vigil, and spiritual struggle, but when the sun was up he received visitors and helped them with their life. His regime of prayer and asceticism left him about two to three hours a night for rest; this was how austere he was even though he was so weak.
In addition to his respiratory problems, in his latter days he had a very serious hernia that made life very difficult, and he was forced to leave the Holy Mountain for various reasons, mostly due to illnesses. When he did, he would go down to the convent in Souroti, where those nuns took very good care of him. Most of his teaching that we have today in writing has been recorded, edited, and published by his nuns. Without them, we wouldn't have the great treasure that we have.
He bore his sufferings with tremendous grace, even though many times visitors would see him turn pale from his hours of neglecting himself in order to be with them. He considered it a great joy to be able to be sick and endure for people. One of his teachings is that modern men, our generation, are afflicted with three unique things: mental illness, divorce, and cancer. He said those three things have caused such tremendous pain to contemporary men. Because he loved people so much, he wanted to be able to experience their sorrow so that he could help them through it. He couldn't experience divorce because he was a monk and unmarried, and he didn't want to experience mental illness because he feared losing his prayer if he became mentally ill.
So he actually prayed to God to give him cancer. And God did. He was given cancer and from the inside of cancer he produced very beautiful teachings about how to endure it. He is famous for the simple words, "Cancer has populated paradise." By that he meant that cancer, because it is often a disease that gives time to prepare rather than instantly kill, in our secular age can be a preparation for paradise: people discover they have been living for the wrong things, they change their lives, set their relationship right with God and the church, and go to paradise. He saw this as the mercy of God, allowing an illness that could serve as preparation for the next life.
In addition to other illnesses he suffered hemorrhaging, which left him very weak, and in his final time before leaving the Holy Mountain he would often fall over unconscious in meetings with people. On October 5, 1993, the elder left his beloved Holy Mountain for the final time. Though he had planned to be off the mountain for just a few days while in Thessaloniki, he was diagnosed with a very serious tumor that needed immediate treatment. After the operation he recovered in the hospital and then ended his life, as I said, at the Monastery of Saint John in Souroti. He heard people's sorrows and received them for counsel and spiritual guidance until his last breath. He passed away on July 12, 1994; he received Holy Communion for the last time on July 11th on the feast day of his beloved Saint Euphemia, and he is buried humbly in Souroti. Elder Paisios is perhaps the most well-known of all contemporary elders; he has captured the minds and hearts of Orthodox people all over the world.
Canonization and global devotion
Many of his books, full of his counsels, have been published in multiple languages, and several are accessible to us in English. He was canonized on January 13, 2015, by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. Churches are now celebrating his liturgy and dedicating churches to him. There is a church dedicated to him in Limassol, Cyprus. The Antiochian Archdiocese has its first mission church in Yuma, Arizona, dedicated to Saint Paisios; it was just established.
Let me say a few things about his teaching.
Teachings on philotimo and the world
He said, "God performs a miracle when we wholeheartedly participate in the pain of our fellow human beings." I chose that quote at the beginning of my section on his teachings because it is so illustrative of how he actually lived. He used to talk a lot about philotimo, which literally means the love of honor, but in practice is a distillation of goodness — a humble, selfless love without selfishness. He said we must struggle with philotimo constantly. That humble, selfless love from simplicity is what impressed God.
He wrote and spoke about the uniqueness of contemporary society, the post-Christian Western society that we and he live in. He said nowadays people have all kinds of insurances, but being estranged from Christ they feel the greatest insecurity of all. We have padded ourselves with physical protections but have not nourished our spiritual life, and therefore still feel insecure.
He prayed for new young pure people like the Maccabees because the present leaders are destroying the world. He warned that those who don't wish to follow will have difficulty resisting because others will push them along. The falling world is aggressive. If you have a good heart and don't want to follow the broad way, the wind and the storm of people rushing over the cliff into insanity will hit you in the back, so you need real care.
He said we must be like the Maccabees who resisted pagan imposition by hiding in the hills and using guerrilla tactics. We need that stout heart not to be blown away by the power of the world.
Just as in racing the runner speeding for the end line does not look back toward those lagging behind but fixes his eyes forward, so too in this struggle we should not look back and be left behind. He said, "When I try to imitate those who are ahead of me, my conscience is refined. When, however, I look back, I justify myself and think my faults are not important compared to others."
This is a point I try to translate in our parish: do not measure yourself by the lowest common denominator. You might say, "Oh well, I know we're supposed to fast and Father teaches us to fast but I saw that person not keeping the fast and I ran into them in In-N-Out Burger on a fast day." So what? Are you going to look around for the lowest common denominator and then ease your conscience and say, "Let's just live"? If we lived that way we wouldn't even have a parish. Father Paisios says, don't look behind; look ahead.
He said that in the past when a war broke out one was vigilant and took up arms to fight the enemy and defend homeland, nation, and family. Today it's not a homeland we're called to protect, nor an ideology; today it's either for Jesus Christ that we are called to arms or for the devil. During the Nazi occupation one would become a hero by not saluting a German soldier. Heroes are those who do not salute the devil.
On the extremity of chaos in our culture he said, "The things that take place, so many grave sins, not even the holy fathers had foreseen such sins in the sacred canons. It's like Sodom and Gomorrah when God said, 'I don't believe that such sins exist, I should go down and see for myself.'"
On the devil he taught, "Those who do not participate in the mysteries of the church give rights to temptation and become vulnerable to demonic influence. After the crucifixion of Christ, the devil is like a snake with no fangs, with no poison. He's like a wild dog without teeth. All poison was removed from the devil. All teeth were removed from the wild dogs that are demons. It's like they have been struck by lightning. When lightning strikes a tree, doesn't it turn it into a charred stump? The demons look just like that."
He asked rhetorically whether their black ugly image is not because the lightning of Christ and the cross and the resurrection struck them and charred them. He said the devil does not know the human heart; only God has knowledge of our heart. The devil is constantly off target because he's in the dark. God created man, his perfect creation, to replace the fallen order of angels; this is why the devil is so very jealous of man. As time goes by, he is becoming more malicious and jealous. "If only we could feel the state of misery of the devil, we would be weeping for him day and night."
He said, "My thought tells me that the greatest enemy of our souls, greater than the devil himself, is the secular spirit, because at first it lures us sweetly, but in the end it will leave us bitter forever."
He taught, "There is no greater fortune in the world than the blessing of one's parents." His teaching on family life is very rich; an entire volume of his collected works in English is dedicated to family life, starting from dating and marriage, through childbearing, living with your parents, how to raise and educate children, and how to cultivate virtue.
He said, "Civilization is a good thing, but in order to be beneficial, the soul must itself be civilized. In the past, people suffered wars. Today they suffer from civilization. When science is used indiscriminately, thousands of lives are ruined. We've become tasteless people, tasteless things. Everything is tasteless. Even life has no taste. We're heading straight to the madhouse."
On children and modern conveniences he warned that conveniences have become inconveniences. Machines and distractions have multiplied and man has been turned into a machine. Television has done great damage, especially for children. He said a seven-year-old child once came to his cell and he saw the demon of television speaking through the child's mouth exactly as demons speak through the mouth of the possessed. It was like a baby born with teeth. It's not easy to find normal kids today; they're turning into monsters.
On simplicity he counseled, "They should never pressure themselves into anxiety, but should always say to themselves with philotimo, 'If you cannot read the entire little Compline, then read one half or one third of it.'" In general, it helps to keep things simple. Own simple and sturdy things. I stress simplicity to lay people because many of the things they do are not necessary and they end up consumed by anxiety. I speak to them of austerity and asceticism. If you want to get rid of anxiety, simplify your life.
That is how most divorces start: people take on too many obligations, they get dizzy, parents both work and they end up abandoning the children. The result is fatigue and nervousness, which causes small issues to turn into large quarrels and then to automatic divorces.
He once said to people living in a plush house who told him, "We live in paradise while other people are in such great need," "You live in hell. God said to the rich man, 'Fool, this night your soul is required of you.' I would rather spend 1,000 nights in a prison cell than one day in a plush house."
On childbearing he advised couples to leave the matter to God and entrust their life to divine providence rather than set up their own plan. "They must have faith that God, who cares for the birds of the air, will care much more for their children." Some couples try to take care of everything else before starting a family; others say life is hard enough today and thus have none. He called such thinking sinful and observed some who prefer dogs and cats in their homes to having children. He said God especially loves and provides for large families. A large family provides children with many opportunities to grow up normally as long as parents give proper nurturing: one child helps the other; the oldest girl helps the mom. He liked to advise young people to choose a marriage mate who comes from a large family because those who grow up with economic hardships are used to sacrifice.
He was an avid counselor helping people avoid abortion and be healed from it, and he urged Christians to be engaged politically. He said, "Both the state and the church have to act on this matter of abortion so the public is better informed on all the serious consequences, including the drop in the birth rate. The priests must explain to the people that the law on abortions violates the commandments of the gospel. The medical community must inform people from their perspective about the dangers involved in having an abortion. When a person disobeys a commandment of God, only that person is responsible to him. But when something which goes against the commandments of the gospel is made into law by the state, then the wrath of God comes upon the whole nation in order to be pedagogically taught a spiritual lesson."
On the new generation he warned, "They don't like to study, and then they say, 'God will help me.' You must study and pray, I tell them. Why, they answer, 'Can't God help me?' They expect God to bless their laziness, and it's not possible. If someone studies hard but he doesn't get anything out of it, God will help him. There are some young people who have memory and comprehension problems but try hard nevertheless, and God will help them become brilliant. You cannot imagine how bland some young people are today."
He loved the saying, "Work helps a man thaw out the oil of his engine." To work is to create; it gives joy and takes away stress and boredom. Sacrifice gives birth to real joy, and real joy comes from philotimo. A hard-working family man would be a good monk, and a hard-working monk would be a good family man. He warned about youths with a wild look from too much coffee and cigarettes; their eyes don't sparkle with the glow of God's grace. Today many children are unraveled by too much freedom and no discipline.
When a child is young, it helps to apply the brake; a slap or two will make a boy be careful next time, not because he'll think of danger but because he'll fear the slap. He lamented that today no punishments are given in schools or even in the army, which is why young people can be a menace to teachers and the nation.
He said to Geronda, "Pray so that we may pass our exams," and he replied, "I will pray that you pass your purity exams. This is the most important thing. Everything else falls into place after that." That's why spiritual fathers recommend that young men and women, no matter how spiritual they may be, should not spend a lot of time together. We believe that when we were spanked by our parents it was for our own good; the slaps, caresses, and kisses of parents are all given out of love. The world has turned into a madhouse; small children go to bed at midnight.
He observed, "In olden days, you could tell a man from a woman from 500 meters. Nowadays, it's difficult to tell them apart up close." In Athonite Flowers he told stories about elders who corrected long-haired men by insisting on cuts and even removing earrings. He said, "You'll see full-grown, robust young men wearing earrings. You should see all the earrings I have removed." Others have a ring on their nose, and he quipped that this means the devil has put the ring on them and leads them by the nose. Not girls, of course, since there's biblical precedent.
He spoke passionately about Sunday. "In the past people would work all week and rest on Sunday, a holy day. Now they rest on Saturday as well, trying to find one Sunday for this chore and a holy day for another, and that's how they bring God's wrath on themselves. Turn Sunday into a chore day? Never. Even if others offer to help us on that day, we should never accept it. When we work on a holy day we give the devil rights, and then he gets involved in our affairs. You'll see that God will never abandon you. I have never worked on a Sunday, and God has never left my side and has always blessed my work.'"
He told of a fisherman who brought him a fish on Sunday morning for a feast day. When asked when he caught it, the man replied, "This morning." The elder said, "Throw them away, son. They're anathematized." He told the fisherman to give one to a cat to prove it, and the animal turned its head away with repulsion. These things fire up God's wrath when we turn Sundays into working days. He counseled that, if arrangements can be made, work more on the previous day and avoid work after vespers on the festal celebration. Stop working on Sundays and things will change.
Evangelism, interfaith hope, and resources
He was an outrageously gifted pedagogue who had so much to say about how to live in our day and stay near God. Very shortly after his repose, more than two hundred confirmed miracles were collected in testimonies from people who wrote about miracles he performed for them. You can find videos and interviews of him; some people even snuck video of his counsels when he was not looking. He did a lot of evangelization of Muslims. Remember, his family was from an area that had been driven away by Muslims in Turkey, and his godfather and parish priest, St. Arsenios, used to love the Muslims in his village in Cappadocia and even do miracles for Muslim families in need. Father Paisios used to say that Muslims, if they became Christians, would be better than us: "Muslims, if they become Christians, will become better Orthodox than the Orthodox, since they will learn everything and do it, but we Orthodox know it but don't do it."
So let me not send you away without a few recommendations. By far the best contemporary biography is Elder Paisios of Mount Athos by Hieromonk Isaac. It was preceded by a very nice biography for its time, Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain by Hieromonk Christodolos of Mount Athos. There is a collection of his letters called Epistles, very personal and wonderful, and a book called From Tibet to Mount Athos to Elder Paisios, the true story of a young George, a story of religious conversion similar to another book we sell about a guru and a monk. Athonite Flowers is a collection of small descriptions of unique personalities he met on Mount Athos that encouraged him. And there are the volumes of his works in English produced by the Monastery of Saint John: Volume One, With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man; Volume Two, Spiritual Awakening; Volume Three, Spiritual Struggle; Volume Four, on family life; and Volume Five, On the Passions and the Virtues, which has just come out.
Question on suffering and the answer
Questions about Saint Paisios have come up. Someone noticed he spent a lot of time pursuing pain as a way of suffering for Christ and asked how that ambition was original and how he 'manipulated' that concept.
That aspect of Father Paisios is very obvious and is the title of the first volume in English, With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man. That book highlights his unique relationship to the cross, which is how he saw it. He felt that the loving thing to do, the Christ-like thing, was to enter into people's experience, be with them in their pain, accept it as your own, and maybe even go farther. He was able to actually hold responsibility for it.
He felt that what was happening in another person's life somehow had to do with his own failures, which was beautiful because he didn't live as an isolated individual, the source of so much sin. He viewed himself as intimately connected to everyone else, and this is where he derives his whole teaching about philotimo.
He was trying to point out that you don't have to be some great, brilliant person to do something significant in the Christian life. What you have to have is humble love and simplicity, and simply not think about yourself. Most of us run away from pain; we avoid unpleasant people or situations, but Elder Paisios sat in it and stayed there. He tells a gross but revealing story about some animals that defecate and then sleep in their own excrement because it creates warmth and a chemical reaction where things grow, and he says, as gross as that image is, welcome to the human race. That is very much what our life is like: getting into the mess that we create. Christ descended from glory and entered into our poverty and utter mess, not from a distance. He got there and stayed there and bore it on himself; Elder Paisios uses the cross as his model.
He would say that participating in people's pain is when miracles take place. I suggested that quote — "God performs a miracle when we wholeheartedly participate in the pain of our fellow human beings" — for the scroll that the parishioner sponsoring the icon asked me to choose for the icon that Elder Paisios will be holding.
