On Truth & Love - St. Theophan the Recluse

[@IrinaMarinescu-n1g]

I listened to many videos over time. I listen to you when I drive, when I cook or clean the house. Your voice is very familiar. Only today I felt the urge to thank you. Thank you. May God bless you, guide you and give you strength every day.

[@OrthodoxWisdom]

Glory to God. May God reward you for your kindness and prayers!

[@mckeojasortho]

How do I love my "enemies"? Only with humiility! Amen, Amen, Amen.

[@brandonashley5872]

I had never heard of St Theophan, But today after liturgy they were selling icons outside the church and I decided I would get whatever Icon appealed to me and go home and learn about that saint, I picked St Theophan and I opened his wikipedia page and saw we have the same birthday

[@JohnAnon-mh5el]

Thank you for this wonderful homily. St. John the Theologian is my Patron Saint. May the Beloved Apostle pray to God for us and inspire us to love one another.

[@AnatolyPotapov]

Years ago, I used to love the writings of the later Tolstoy, whose teaching St Theophan may well have in mind, who promoted a program of what some called Christian anarchism, pacifism and non-violence, and a refusal of military service, saying that the key that unlocked for him what he said (whether honestly or as a rhetorically useful mask) was the true message of Christ, which was the passage: “but I say unto you, resist not evil. If a man strikes you….” And he likewise appealed to St John, and considered that it was impossible to maintain love and have any active support or duty toward any political association that might involve itself in physical fight with other polities, or maintain police, for that matter. I’m also reminded of another KZbinr, whom I argued with over 10 years ago, whose channel name was Kindness Street, which he has since deleted. His program was exactly what St Theophan described, but instead of indifferentism called it apathy-ism or apatheology, I forget. My argument then was that it was an arbitrary stance. (I wanted to know a reality beyond my subjectivity to be the basis for guiding life.) One could just as arbitrarily throw oneself in with sadism, and cruelty seemed closer to what we observe in nature, one life consuming another or getting consumed, with political associations, and education and religion supporting them justified by collective selfishness. To which he replied that this didn’t disturb his position, his will to stand by his stance didn’t need any reality grounding it. As long as his will was such, he and it were self-sufficient. Apatheism withstood this test. This puzzled me, but I didn’t know quite how to object. Now I think the problem with standing on one’s own resoluteness is that one knows one’s merely human spirit is not simply at one’s disposal, so one inwardly knows one is lying to oneself in thinking one can securely ground one’s life on a merely human plan and will. And so in Orthodox prayer we pray “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.” This “decision” to rely on nothing but a human plan and what is self-evident to us seems to me to be the essence of the modern turn, starting with Machiavelli and his student Francis Bacon.

[@Saint_nobody]

Amen, brother and thank you for sharing.

[@SeraphimVolker]

Fun fact, in the Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes St. Theophan the Recluse and St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite multiple times throughout the first book. I can't find the exact quotes atm but after reading "On the Spiritual Life" by St. Theophan and "On Guarding the Mind and the Heart" by St. Nicodemus, you'll find that Solzhenitsyn too has read these works and makes subtle reference to them both. You could perhaps count Unseen Warfare as a book that is made reference to, but I'm not completely confident in that discernment.

[@boyar3033]

I came to associate this voice (by the person who reads these videos) with understanding the teachings of the church fathers and the word of God.

[@Papa-Rah]

🙏

[@walterdreiberg]

I am trying to find the source where you took this from because I want to read it in Russian. Do you have any information? The link in the discription doesnt work anymore

[@OrthodoxWisdom]

Maybe this will help. The link in the description is to the main page, here is the specific issue of Orthodox Life app.box.com/s/tpkd8l8vr17kxeky5g9qrlfsm1629nrp

[@Stan_Castan]

This is an AI generated voice, right?

[@olubunmiolumuyiwa]

Nah, it's real.

[@SeraphimVolker]

It was hard for me to get used to at first but the voice will grow on you the more you listen to Orthodox Wisdom.

[@OrthodoxWisdom]

Real voice. I’m trying to keep an authentic human voice, the voice of an Orthodox Christian, to be the means of people hearing the wisdom from Christ’s saints.

[@Stan_Castan]

@@OrthodoxWisdom oh! That's interesting. I hear a lot of clips, where some voices are real, others are AI, but are very realistic, and I can't make the difference anymore..

[@thecrow4597]

I never would have confused this for AI! I’ve always thought the reader truly has a gift! I feel peace of soul and warmth in my heart as soon as he starts reading. Fantastic voice