Strumica Diocese: News
 
 
 
 
 

Dressing into the monastic raso ( 07.05.2005 )

This evening in the Bansko monastery of the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, Metropolitan Nahum of Strumica dressed into the monastic raso brother Anatolius.

 

 

 

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Blessed is the honour the Lord bestows on us, opening before us the door to have no other supplication but the desire to aspire towards Him, for then we renounce all and our soul tends to follow Him the only One, with no care that would hinder it from contemplation of Him. (…) If a man does not at first render himself worthy of revelation, he can neither see it; if he does not attain purity, his thoughts cannot see what is hidden. Until he is freed from all visible, from all in the visible creation, he will not be freed from the conceptions of the visible and will not be freed from defiled thoughts. And, where there are darkness and filth of thoughts, there are also the passions. Thus, if a man is not freed from that and from all that provokes him, the mind will not fathom the hidden. Therefore the Lord first and foremost commands that we embrace poverty, that we detach from commotion and free ourselves of cares that are common to all people, saying: ‘If one does not renounce’ the whole mankind and all he has, if he does not deny his very self, ‘he cannot be My disciple’ (Luke 12:26;33).” (Saint Isaac the Syrian)

 

 

 

 

In the beginning of the struggle of world renunciation, virtues, certainly, are acquired with toil and sweat. As we advance further on, we become insensitive to hardships or feel them but a little. And, when fervour has entirely overwhelmed and won over our physical nature, then we attain virtues, being all permeated by joy, yearning, and Divine flame. As much as worthy of praise are the people who right in the beginning joyously and whole-heartedly fulfill God’s commandments, so much poor are they who have spent their whole life in the struggle fulfilling the virtues, yet still with much sweat. (Saint John of the Ladder)

 

 

 

        

 

 

 

Let us please the Lord as soldiers please the king: from the very beginning of our military service, we are required to serve conscientiously. (Saint John of the Ladder)

 

With His Providence, the Lord relieved this fight for the beginners, so that it does not happen right in the beginning they to return to the world. Therefore always rejoice in the Lord all you servants of the Lord, for in that is visible the first sign of God’s love towards us, and the thing that He Himself called us. (Saint John of the Ladder)