I was in deep pain. It was wonderful!.Saint Porphyrios of Kafsokalivia.

Saint Porphyrios of Kafsokalivia.

Saint Porphyrios always gave prominence to sickness of soul, regardless of whether the physical illness was seri­ous or not. Many sick visitors insisted that he only pray for the cure of their physical sicknesses. They could not bear them. They thought that if their bodily illness spread it would shake their faith in Christ and would finally lead them to be sick in soul. According to the Saint, exactly the opposite took place, "The sickness of the soul, that they were oblivious to, i.e. sin, blinded their eyes and they could not see the higher educational meaning of their physical sickness. A sickness that was allowed by God's love. The Saint knew that if he only prayed for the cure of their body he wouldn't help them, because in essence they would be incurable. He always tried to link the healing of their bodies with the healing of their souls.

At a religious gathering a Christian psychiatrist was heard to say, "As a psychiatrist I am not a healer of the human soul, but of the nervous system." He was actually speaking literally, because someone who has psychiatric illness, in the literal sense of the term, is the unrepentant sinner. The soul is only ever sick when it sins without repenting. The only true doctor of the soul is Christ. Also, through the Grace of Christ the saint, knowing the soul, has acquired self-knowledge and knowledge of others. How can a person who is not a saint, a person with pas­sions, who is ignorant of the soul, both his own and that of others, be a doctor of souls? Christ, and, by Christ's Grace, the saint, can do the easier thing that is healing the body, insofar as they can do the more difficult thing, that is, heal the soul. This occurs when the former helps the later.

When God is Silent.

Dr.Daniel and Dr.Jane Hinshaw.*

"Do not lament me, O Mother".
20th century.

Dr. Daniel: Many people who are very sick, suffering, who are near the end of life, feel an increasing sense of isolation. If they are believers, sometimes they experience this as a sense of being abandoned by God; and we can even see this recorded in the Gospel, when our Lord on the cross cried out: “My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me.” That psalm, however, ends up with hope. I think some scholars believe that Christ probably recited the entire psalm. 

There are many different ways of thinking about silence, especially when one considers silence in the relationship between creature and creator. There is a thread within the early fathers, in the writings of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, that speaks about the Holy Trinity in a very interesting way. It says that the incarnation of Christ, God the Father spoke the Word from silence.  God in some very deep way, in the Apophatic tradition of the church, is beyond our understanding, and beyond our comprehension, therefore we encounter God in Silence. For example, in the Anaphora prayers where we speak of Christ, or God, being incomprehensible, inconceivable, beyond our knowing and that God is so utterly other from us, hence we are unable to know directly, the Father the very essence of the Divinity. But God breaks His silence, and speaks His Word, the incarnate Son of God Jesus Christ, a bridge to bring us back to God. 

The Blessed Surgeon’s faith and love. Excerpts from the life of Saint Luke of Simferopol.

The faith.

When he arrived in Simferopol in 1946, Saint Luke had thought that his knowledge and experience in surgery would be in demand. However, a month-and-a-half passed before he received official per­mission to practice medicine. From 1946 on, he worked as a consultant at the Simferopol Hospital. He also assisted the Hospital for Invalids of the Great Patriotic War. Until the end of 1947, he gave reports and lectures to doctors and operated on patients and the wounded. Zhdanov (the official in charge of Russian Orthodox Church Affairs) characterized his medical activity as very active.

Archbishop Luke regularly attended meetings of the surgeons' associa­tion, in which civil doctors and surgeons participated. He would listen carefully to their reports and speeches and always introduced necessary corrections. According to Dr. G. F. Pyatidvernaya, during a meeting, one surgeon asked the archbishop: "How can you, such a specialist, a surgeon, believe in somebody whom you have never seen, in God?"

"I Want".The miraculous healing of the paraplegic, Stavros Kalkandi.

The following story is not a well written narration created by the fantasy of a dreamer, nor a fairy tale for simple children's minds, nor is it a planned, fabrication which serves sane determined purpose. Rather, it is my true to-life testimony; the story of my life; a life which has passed through many painful stages and undergone many struggles and agonies until it finally found its correct meaning and its correct path, leading me close to God.

The War of 1940-41 found me as a twenty year old youth serving in the Martial Air force. In April, 1941, I received a Wound in the cervical part of my spinal cords lower marrow, while I was on an assignment. This brought about a certain spinal hemorrhage (eiparachnoeidis), and partial paralysis of the lower organs. In other words, I became a paraplegic.

The German occupation then followed.

Because my condition slowly began to improve, I went to the Middle East as an officer. There, I had the misfortune of reinjuring my neck which resulted in the aggravation of my condition. In April, 1947, after the war ended, the homeland sent me to America. As soon as I arrived there, I underwent an operation on my spinal column. I left the operating room worse than I got in. They diagnosed spastic tetraplegia with ortho­bladder (orthokystikon) disturbances. I then became a tetraplegic (paralyzed in both arms and legs). I stayed in America until 1957. Then I returned to Greece. I had a few flashes of improvements; however, without any positive results.

If God knows us, like the wise virgins, we will never die!.Dr. Daniel and Dr. Jane Hinshaw.

{Medicine, health, psychiatry, faith, death… issues discussed by Dr.Daniel and his wife Dr.Jane Hinshaw, through an Orthodox, scientific and spiritual perspective, in a meeting with the community that took place in the dining room of our monastery of  Saint John the Baptist, on Saturday 3 February 2018.}

A special blessing that we would like to share with our readers.

One of the extraordinary things about the Orthodox Christianity’s understanding of reality is Orthodox Anthropology: how do we understand the nature of the human person.

The Eastern fathers of the Church have emphasized how there is a unity of the body and soul and this occurs from the very point of conception, and so as human persons we acquire our personhood because God has called us to be persons, God makes us persons.

      The image of the Trinity is impressed upon each of us as Christians, by our Chrismation and baptism, so the Holy Spirit is there and hopefully will dwell with us as we draw toward the Kingdom. And so God has done everything possible to make us His children. And yet we have this tendency, because of the fall, to continually wander away. In the Church’s use of the Greek language, there has been this term called amartia to describe what sin is, but in classical Greek before the Christian era, amartia in its most basic form meant: not being the way things should be. The classical example was the athlete, the one who would be throwing the javelin and he missed the target. Another extraordinary thing about the Orthodox Church compared to the Western branch of Christianity is, there is a recognition because of the fall of Adam and Eve, that not only do we have sins that we consciously choose to do, but there is also sins that we don’t consciously choose, that this is not the way that should be, where we are not meeting the mark, we are not hitting the target.