2. Blessed are those who managed to live in obscurity and acquired great virtues but did not acquire even a small name for themselves.
3. Blessed are those who managed to act the fool and, in this way, protected their spiritual wealth.
4. Blessed are those who do not preach the Gospel with words, but live it and preach it with their silence, with the Grace of God, which betrays them.
5. Blessed are those who rejoice when unjustly accused, rather than when they are justly praised for their virtuous life. Here are the signs of holiness, not in the dry exertion of bodily asceticism and the great number of struggles, which, when not carried out with humility and the aim to put off the old man, create only illusions.
6. Blessed are those who prefer to be wronged rather than to wrong others and accept serenely and silently injustices. In this way, they reveal in practice that they believe in "one God, the Father Almighty" and expect to be vindicated by Him and not by human beings who repay in this life with vanity.
7. Blessed are those who have been born crippled or became so due to their own carelessness, yet do not grumble but glorify God. They will hold the best place in Paradise along with the Confessors and Martyrs, who gave their hands and feet for the love of Christ and now constantly kiss with devoutness the hands and feet of Christ in Paradise.
8. Blessed are those who were born ugly and are despised here on earth, because they are entitled to the most beautiful place in Paradise, provided they glorify God and do not grumble.
9. Blessed are those widows who wear black in this life, even unwillingly, but live a white spiritual life and glorify God without complaining rather than the miserable ones who wear assorted clothes and live a spotted life.
10. Blessed and thrice blessed are the orphans who have been deprived of their parents' great affection, for they managed to have God as their Father already from this life. At the same time, they have the affection they were deprived of from their parents in God's savings bank "with interest".
11. Blessed are those parents who avoid the use of the word "don't" with their children, instead restraining them from evil through their holy life - a life which children imitate, joyfully following Christ with spiritual bravery.
12. Blessed are those children who have been born "from their mother's womb" (Mt 19: 12) holy, but even more blessed are those who were born with all the inherited passions of the world, struggled with sweat and uprooted them and inherited the Kingdom of God in the sweat of their face.
13. Blessed are those children who lived from infancy in a spiritual environment and, thus, tirelessly advanced in the spiritual life.
Thrice blessed, however, are the mistreated ones who were not helped at all (on the contrary, they were pushed towards evil), but as soon as they heard of Christ, their eyes glistened, and with a one hundred and eighty degree turn they suddenly made their soul to shine as well. They departed from the attraction of earth and moved into the spiritual sphere.
14. Fortunate, worldly people say, are the astronauts who are able to spin in the air, orbit the moon or even walk on the moon.
Blessed, however, are the immaterial "Paradise-nauts", who ascend often to God and travel about Paradise, their place of permanent abode, with the quickest of means and without much fuel, besides one crust of bread.
15. Blessed are those who glorify God for the moon that glimmers that they might walk at night.
More blessed, however, are those who have come to understand that neither the light of the moon is of the moon, nor the spiritual light of their soul of themselves, but both are of God. Whether they can shine like a mirror, a pane of glass or the lid of a tin can, if the rays of the sun do not fall on them it is impossible for them to shine.
16. Fortunate, worldly people tell us, are those who live in crystal palaces and have all kinds of conveniences.
Blessed, however, are those who've managed to simplify their life and become liberated from the web of this world's development of numerous conveniences (i.e. many inconveniences), and were released from the frightening stress of our present age.
17. Fortunate, worldly people say, are those who can enjoy the goods of the world.
Blessed, however, are those who give away everything for Christ and are deprived even of every human consolation for Christ. Thus it is that they manage to be found night and day near Christ and His divine consolation, which many times is so much that they say to God: "My God, Thy love cannot be endured, for it is great and cannot be fit within my small heart" .
18. Fortunate, worldly people say, are those who have the greatest jobs and the largest mansions, since they possess all possibilities and live comfortably.
Blessed, however, according to the divine Paul, are those who have but a nest to perch in, a little food and some coverings (Tim 6: 8). For, in this way, they've managed to become estranged from the vain world, using the earth as a footstool, as children of God, and their mind is constantly found close to God, their Good Father.
19. Fortunate are those who become generals and government ministers in their head by way of heavy drinking (even if just for a few hours), with the worldly rejoicing over it.
Blessed, however, are those who have put off the old man and have become incorporeal, managing to be earthly angels with the Holy Spirit. They have found Paradise's divine faucet and drink from it and are continually inebriated from the heavenly wine.
20. Blessed are those who were born crazy and will be judged as crazy, and, in this way, will enter Paradise without a passport.
Blessed and thrice blessed, however, are the very wise who feign foolishness for the love of Christ and mock all the vanity of the world. This foolishness for Christ's sake is worth more than all the knowledge and wisdom of the wise of this world.
Elder Paisios
On the occasion of the official canonization of Elder Paisios by the Ecumenical Patriarchate…
Praised is God in His Saints…
Source:
Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, EPISTLES, Holy Monastery “Evangelist John the Theologian”, Souroti, Thessaloniki, Greece.