9/24/2025
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 17
If you will pray for your enemies, peace will come to you; but when you can love your enemies - know that a great measure of the grace of God dwells in you, though I do not say perfect grace as yet, but sufficient for salvation. Whereas if you revile your enemies, it means there is an evil spirit living in you and bringing evil thoughts into your heart, for, in the words of the Lord, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts - or good thoughts.
Deacon Pavel Serzhantov
Rating: 9.1|Votes: 28
“I read St. Symeon the New Theologian and my soul grieves over how far I am from a real Christian life. When I read Elder Silouan, then my soul is comforted in the Lord and rejoices in Him Who loves me, a sinner.”
Priest Andrei Zadorozhny
By word of mouth the villagers passed on stories of how, when they were children, they ran to a kind monk who used to tell them about God.
Jean-Claude Larchet
Rating: 7.2|Votes: 29
Although it is natural and usual to love those who love us and to do good to those who do good to us, to love our enemies is distasteful to our nature. One can say that it isn’t in our power but is an attitude that can only be the fruit of grace, given by the Holy Spirit. This is why St. Silouan the Athonite writes, "The soul that has not known the Holy Spirit does not understand how one can love one’s enemies, and does not accept it."
Jesse Dominick
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 18
The path to humility is encapsulated in the advice that St. Silouan heard from God in his heart: “Keep thy mind in Hell and despair not.” Our generation especially struggles with pride and all of its trappings, and thus we have much to learn from the life of St. Silouan.
Roman Savchuk
Rating: 8.7|Votes: 42
There are moments when it seems that circumstances are indeed beyond our power, when life breaks down and it’s painful even to look at the world around us. Reality is cruel, and the soul can truly become sick. And no one knows when sorrows will knock at doors of the heart. But we must know in that moment how to answer these unawaited guests…
Andrey Gidaspov
Christ’s humble gaze, His all-forgiving and all-loving eyes were imprinted in his soul, and he could never forget this vision…
Fr. James Guirguis
Our Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t tell us to do the things that are easy or come naturally, He tells us to do what is quite difficult and will take work for us in our current state. Have you ever known someone who loved their enemies? Or does that seem like a foreign concept to us?
Olga Orlova, Schema-Archimandrite Iliy (Nozdrin)
Rating: 10|Votes: 6
Schema-Archimandrite Iliy (Nozdrin), spiritual father of His Holiness, ascetically struggled on Mt. Athos for more than ten years in one of the sketes of St. Panteleimon Monastery—the Old Russikon. Namely there, at the mill just a few decades earlier Venerable Silouan the Athonite carried out his obedience. In 1967 the book of his life and teachings became a spiritual guide for the now-revered elder, then novice Alexei of the Pskov Caves Monastery
