Whoever believes that he is capable of correcting others is filled with egotism – Elder Paisios
Elder Paisios was born July 25, 1924 in Cappadocia of Asia Minor. Hellenic efforts to resurrect the Byzantine Empire and realise a Greater Greece had ended up in the burning and desecration of the cultural Greek city of Smyrna. With this came staggering Greco-Turkish population exchanges. After untold hardships on September 14 of 1924 young Arsenios to be Elder Paisios and his family reached the harbour of Piraeus. Three weeks later they moved to Corfu. Saint Arsenios, uncle to young Arsenios and head of the family, on November 10 left the Earthly life. He himself had predicted that he would live on Corfu for just forty days but that he would leave a worthy spiritual successor and heir, young Arsenios later to become Elder Paisios.
The Elder’s commitment to the monastic life took him to the Sinai desert where he lived ascetically for two years where he was much beloved by the local Bedouin tribesmen. Returning to Mount Athos in 1964 to the skete of Iviron. From 1966 the Holy Monk’s health started deteriorating and part of his lungs had to be removed. The sweet Elder showed unbelievable courage in the face of the onset of advanced intestinal cancer. Amidst unbearable pain the Elder exclaimed that “God is deeply moved when someone who has cancer or some other serious problem does not complain about it but instead prays for his fellow men.” Father Paisios told a fellow priest “Listen Father, My health’s condition is a great benefit to my spiritual life and I do not really wish to alter it…. Everything will be taken care of once I am buried in the ground!”. After the Doctor told him his cancer had metastasized to his liver and lungs the Elder said ” Honestly…if the hemorrhage could stop for just a couple of hours so I could be present at the service of the Divine Liturgy, I wouldnt be bothered at all. By the way, i just recalled that I had asked God to make me suffer from cancer.”
Elder Paisios is today venerated across Christian Orthodoxy. He lived a miraculous life curing countless prior and after his death from terminal illness through the Grace of Christ.The great Elder was a true spiritual athlete who fought valiantly against negative spiritual forces and submitted all aspects of his life to God. He stated “Almost all of us consider our thoughts to be simple and natural, therefore, we spontaneously rely on them. On the contrary, we should neither trust, nor accept them.”
Saints like Holy Paisios master the flow of thoughts. Through the discernment of the Holy Spirit which they receive through ceaseless prayer. They acquire the skill of contemplating and distinguishing the source of their thoughts.
Purity of thought becomes purity of action which leads to the purification of the soul. In this way, Holy fathers like Paisios see the Divine Grace which underpins all reality. Yet this blessed path is not reserved only for the ascetics as Saint Paisios said “There are laymen who live very spiritually, even like ascetics, with their fasting, their services, their prayer ropes, their prostrations. Even with children and grandchildren. On Sunday they go to church, receive Holy Communion, and then return home again to their cell just like the hermits…and afterwards keep silence in theirselves…I know a certain family man who says the Jesus prayer unceasingly wherever he is…His prayer has become self-activating, and his tears are sweet;they are tears of divine rejoicing.”
