St. John of Shanghai
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
“Quite right, my son,” said the king. “Keep this lesson in mind for the rest of you life. Be as vigilant over your soul as you were today over the oil in the vessel. Turn your thoughts away from what will soon pass away, and keep them focused on what is eternal.
The smiles on Effie and Athanasia, the two young women who run the center were just as welcoming. Though employed, they do extra hours as volunteers, offering professional counseling, practical help in getting social benefits, job interviews, information on food and shelter.
Answering his cell, for what he assumed was another banker with more bad news, he heard a friend, Steve, on the other line, asking him to drop everything and fly to Ethiopia. A group of German-based photographers, Steve explained, traveling in Ethiopia, had just rescued a young girl named Bale--a child about to be murdered by elders from her remote village.
Although temperatures had dipped into the 20s and a bone-chilling wind blew over the Susquehanna River on Jan. 15, the Rev. Stephen Vernak and other Orthodox clergymen barely shivered as they stood by the riverbank.
Fr. Seraphim Holland
What happened to the man who had the demons taken out of him, and the demon went around deserts and rocky places, and desolate areas, and the found no place to dwell? What did the demon do? He got seven other demons worse than himself, and he went back to the man. They found his soul was all swept and garnished inside, but since the man had not lived a virtuous life since his deliverance from the one demon, and the demons were able to make their abode in him, and the last state of the man is worse than the first!
