By taking the healing method preserved and applied in the monasteries and introducing it in our own homes and souls and apply it in our very lives, we get completely cured, both spiritually and physically.

ΤΗΕ ROLE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

previous:https://hristospanagia3.blogspot.com/2018/10/alteration-of-orthodox-tradition.html

By taking the healing method preserved and applied in the monasteries and introducing it in our own homes and souls and apply it in our very lives, we get completely cured, both spiritually and physically.

True psychotherapy, today, is unfortunately preserved and observed (almost exclusively and) only in orthodox monasteries. It may seem hard for many to believe this, but in the Byzantine times, this therapy was implemented also by the laity! Yes, indeed! Many lay people out there were practitioners of Hesychasm, they lived by and acted according to this “medical” treatment. They were, in fact, “hesychasts in the world”. If you read, for example, St. Ephraim the Syrian (4^th century A.D.), you will find him saying that people in the cities were more ascetic than the ones living in the monasteries. So, much to our surprise, lay people were more monastic than monastics!

Today, we have lost all of that, and many of the worldly people claim “Ιt is one thing to be a lay person and another to be a monk. Lay people are excused (so they say) to live a spiritually “light” version of our faith and are supposed to do less than a monastic.” Totally wrong attitude! That’s why we are all sick, both lay and secularized people and, unfortunately, many of the monks and nuns of our times.

When we do not adopt the therapeutic system of Hesychasm, even as monks or nuns in a monastery, we cannot be cured. It’s not the place, but the way (method) that cures!

Concluding, whenever we hear about Hesychasm, we should immediately think of the healing method explained above.

f. Savvas Agioreitis

To be continued...