If you have the Grace of God, you have everything.

 

If you have the Grace of God, you have everything.

You can do everything.

You bear everything.

Even if you climb the steepest Golgotha.

Even if you have illnesses.

Even if you have poverty.

Even if you have suffering.

The Grace of God holds you and you endure and bear all the tortures.

And it makes you charming and beautiful.

And you also support others who see you.

Because we are all agents of education, as today's pedagogical science would say.

We produce education.

That is, we lead with our behavior and we influence others.

There it is!

We influence others!

Others observe.

And even Christians.

Everyone. Everyone.

+ Fr. Ananias Koustenis

Saint Porphyrios strongly recommended patience and prayer.

 

Saint Porphyrios strongly recommended patience and prayer.

He would tell me:

– Be patient, and whatever Christ sends us is for good.

Even the most bitter and the most difficult and the most unjust is for our good!

Be patient, pray…

A praying person is a thousand teachings.

A thousand teachings.

+ Fr. Ananias Koustenis

 "Do not abandon the Holy Psalter, children. The arch-evil serpent is crushed by it and runs to hide. Read and you will see that we have a weapon, the Psalter! It writes down everything God wants to hear from us. He gives it to us ready-made. In the mouth the morsel."

† Fr. Ananias Koustenis

Just think what the saints have endured! So much suffering!

 Just think what the saints have endured! So much suffering!

So much suffering! So much abuse!

And the soul was within the body.

Because Christ had not yet called it.

And we die not from torture or from illness or from anything else.

We die because Christ wills it.

Shall we not have an incurable disease? Shall we not have anything?

The soul does not go out unless the Lord says so.

Shall we not eat and drink?

Man does not live by bread alone.

+ Fr. Ananias Koustenis

That is why Jesus Christ is our everything.

 When we have thoughts or ideas that God does not love us or has forgotten us, or is tormenting us or anything else, let us think of the cross and the Crucified One.

This is the greatest proof of love.

And if they wrong us, if they make it difficult for us, if they take away our possessions, if our lives are threatened, if they injure us, and if they hurt us mentally or physically, let us be transported to the one who was unjustly slaughtered and unjustly died for our justice, our salvation and for our sins.

Therefore, every pain, every injustice, everything contrary that happens to us is related, when we think and mentally visit the honest and life-giving cross...

That is why Jesus Christ is our everything.

It is our first and last love, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

We say this many times, because it is the center and the essence.

And he became a convict on Golgotha ​​to become a convict for everyone...

+ Fr. Ananias Koustenis

Saint John Chrysostom says, let us have the Gospel in our home.

 Saint John Chrysostom says, let us have the Gospel in our home.

Even when we do not read it, -how beautifully the saint says it!- we have a blessing.

When we read it a little, the good increases.

We also have light.

And when we read it more, we have more light.

And when we read it and do it, then we have Paradise.

We have Paradise! Of course!

Some say, “We read and we do not understand.”

“Look, read and do not understand.

The other understands and leaves”! …

Like this!

Let us not leave the Holy Gospel!

+ Fr. Ananias Koustenis