Watch an interview given on Radio Trinitas on the program “Youth to Youth” in which the problems of today’s youth, especially students seeking God, are addressed.
Enjoy!
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, and now and ever and unto the ages and ages. Amen For the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Amen
Yes, we’re on air.
George: Good afternoon, dear listeners and welcome to the new edition of the show Youth to Youth.
Father Teologos: Just a little: it’s night. Good evening…
George: Yes… Good evening. I am George Savu Pascal, and today in this edition we are in Mount Athos, at the Lacu Skete, with Father Theologos. Your blessing, father.
Father Teologos: God help us! George: God help us! I’d like to start with a simple question. How did you get to Athos?
Father Teologos: How did I get to Athos? The Mother of God brought me, you know, and in general, monks do not talk about these things, but it is always about a special grace of God that is given only to certain people. Every man must marry, you know, a person of the opposite sex or marry God. In the case of a person of the opposite sex, they marry – it is called the sacrament of marriage and if a man marries God, this is the gift of monasticism.
And then God gives some the gift, as I said, to walk on the path of marriage and to others this gift to of walking on the path of monasticism, and God opens doors and closes doors. Mainly, in the case of monasticism it is an acute sense of emptiness of this world, a hatred of people. But be careful! Because if someone hates people, that’s a big problem. It means that the person has a very heavy passion. We must never hate people.
One always hates the world like a dark ball of passions. And then that man comes out of love for God to the monastery. So it must be this love of God, which, in truth, in the beginning is such a very confused love, although the young man does not know this, but he comes with great longing for God. And in time this love cleanses itself, reaches a much higher level and reaches the other stages – enlightenment and deification, if the good God gives. That’s the way. But for this he must obey, he must not believe his thoughts and all that.
George: What can make a young person choose the path of monasticism?
Father Teologos: I’ve said it [already]. It’s the love for God and for this they must not have too many unnecessary contacts with the world. That is very important. That’s true for anyone. Right on our website, on chilieathonita.ro, we did a whole series about the alienation from the world that the layman must also have.
Because if we don’t alienate ourselves from the world, we won’t do [anything] well enough. We’re not going to achieve anything in the world, you know! That is, we will continuously waste our time in the world, that is, on TikTok, Facebook, social networks, in useless meetings with different people and we will not achieve anything. Man must alienate himself from the world without hating people – this is very important
This estrangement goes to the absolute in the case of the monk who alienates himself on a completely different level, but as I said, it does not mean that laymen should not do so up to a certain point.
George: And how can you separate yourself from everyday life, but also keep in touch with the present?
Father Teologos: Yes, you need to know that the connection with the present… Enough people tell me – of course, it is not true, or rather it is true, but in another sense – that I am very well informed. So the moment someone moves away from the world, at that moment they become very well informed. Why? Because so-called news, at this hour, is mere noise. I mean, they don’t give you anything. And I actually talk to people, I ask them, “Hey, folks, have you seen…? Yes, Father, we have continuously watched the pandemic on the news and so on and now with the war in Ukraine. Good and what are you left with? Nothing!” Do you understand? Man is not left with anything.
And because of this we must alienate ourselves, and of course, there must be news, but the real news you must know is news related to the Kingdom of Heaven, that is, heaven. This is the real news – how to save ourselves and of course, from there on, some news that you have to be up to date with, that is, to be knowledgeable as not from another planet. I mean, you know, okay, there’s the war in Ukraine, there was much trouble with the pandemic, but only so far, brethren. We don’t have to be specialists in virology, nanotechnology, vaccines, geo-strategy, God knows what. No, because God didn’t validate us in that direction. We must be specialists in salvation, in spiritual life, in our personal perfection for eternal life.
George: As a young person with a normal life, with a job or maybe school…
Father Teologos: A young man with a normal life, what’s that?
George: Good, ok, a young man with a normal life… George: Normal city life, to put it another way, how can we cope with the challenges of everyday life, but also be in touch with spiritual life?
Father Teologos: Okay, yes sure, that’s pretty much it. It’s about separation, but that’s where a program is needed. You must have a program, and you must cut, cut, cut. Brethren, not all that flies can be eaten. Do you understand? Planes aren’t to be eaten. And when I say that, I’m joking, but not too much. I mean, not all these things that… wow, that’s the bombshell today, it’s the occasion… from Adam to this day there has been no greater opportunity. Not like that! Do you understand?
You have to cut all this stuff! As they say in software development, programs, it is said that a perfect program is not the one to which you can no longer add a feature, but the one from which you can no longer remove. So a life as simple as it can be! And likewise, this is what the Holy Fathers say. But I give examples from the software not because I validate these guys, because not many of them are Christians. It’s to say that it’s a law of nature that reached even these people. Do you understand?
It is very, very important to simplify our lives, as the Holy Fathers say, and that is why we, the monks, go out into the wilderness. The wilderness is very important not because we like the foxes we have – of course, they are very beautiful, there are our hedgehogs too… Every night a hedgehog comes here to eat. Because the simple life enlightens your mind, cleanses it, takes it out of the lump that everyday life causes you, and then you can see who you are, where you come from, where you are going, and you can also see God.
Pilgrim: The scattering…
Father Teologos: How? The scattering of the mind – the great parasite of which all the Holy Fathers speak. So brethren, read St. Isaac the Syrian, one of the great saints in Orthodoxy, that’s what he’s talking about. Saint Paisios the Athonite – one of his main themes. Do you understand?
So cut the worries! Cut the worries! Brethren, we need a plate of food, a rag to wear, and we need a bed to sleep in. That’s it! ” Henceforth, brethren, we do not save the world, or save the world if we simplify our lives and pray. Then the world really saves itself.
George: Do you think that the challenges of the new generation are the same as the challenges of older generations or has the degree of difficulty increased?
Father Teologos: You are now giving me a certain answer. But in essence it’s the same thing. Brethren, let me give you a theological point of view, obviously: God is not stupid. That since God allowed us to be born in these times, it means that He has equipped us for these times. It is true that indeed, if we are to compare theoretically, so on paper, indeed, today’s times are… God forbid! This is not only because there is more sin, even though it is indeed more now than at all the other times, but because sin passes for virtue. So all this stuff with bodily distortions – I’m also ashamed to speak of it! – with Cancel Culture, with being woke, I don’t know if you know what I mean.
You don’t know… So Cancel Culture, and I’m actually going to make, I hope, a post on this, it’s a cultural tyranny where anyone who disagrees with what you say or what the community says is destroyed, lynched on the internet until they are finished. So a continuous wave of opposition goes viral, millions and millions of posts. They can also apologize, but the others, usually young people who have no experience and no measure of the lynching, hidden behind screens, behind the anonymity offered by the Internet, constantly talk in a bad way to the maximum.
Pilgrim: You die with the truth in your hands.
Father Teologos: Yes, so you die with the truth in your hands. And man may even be wrong,but for days on end they just finish him off. And there have been people who have committed suicide because of it.
Pilgrim: Bullying.
Father Teologos: Bullying, yes, cyberbullying it is called. And this whole thing is a culture, it’s called Cancel Culture. So cancel culture.
Pilgrim: And what passion does this thing come from…? Like with sheep, what was it called?
Father Teologos: Yes, herd effect. It’s also a herd effect. It’s about going viral, but it’s about my hatred that is no longer restrained by my vainglory. That is, there are two passions: vainglory and hatred of the other, and self-confidence – that is, I believe my thought.
The moment I’m in front of you, if I swear at you now, that’s not nice and the other person looks at me, boys, are you not ashamed!? But the moment we are on the internet, I am anonymous there and then I can hit at you… And of course I make an account – ionvasilepetre – and I keep pouring out all my hatred on you. Or if I have something against you in one way, how can I say, [a motive] behind me, that you are more beautiful and I envy you, or that it seems to me that you are not in the same ideology as me, I finish you off. And I keep throwing words at you. And of course they say all sorts of things, invectives that may not be true, but appear to be true.
I mean, you’re racist. And come prove to me that you’re not an elephant after that. You can’t. Okay, you can say you try to do a…, but wait, I’m not like that, look, of these works and I wrote there and so on. Well, by the time you write this, a million others or 500,000 others have posted…
Pilgrim: And in fact, this is what happens in this case to Orthodoxy, Christianity, because we are discriminated against… That’s what I felt…
Father Teologos: Obvious… It is a fierce, cruel struggle against Orthodoxy, a hatred due to demonic energy, a very large layer of misinformation, heresies and certain things that have happened in history not so much with Orthodoxy, but with Catholicism regarding the crusaders, all things with the Pope, with fortunes and so on, which apply to all Christians.
Pilgrim: Yes, labels.
Father Teologos: Labels. So including the Orthodox and like I said, come on, prove you’re not an elephant. Of course, then everyone who looks at the history of the Church and sees it becomes Orthodox. This is why in the US, Orthodoxy is indeed called like high class religion, that is, the religion of learned people, the religion of educated people. Because these people reading and seeing the history of the Church, they say: well, yes, Christianity is Orthodoxy. I admit that Orthodoxy is not pink, that I don’t have rose-colored glasses either, and these ones kind of magnify things. So I don’t have the idea that Orthodoxy from a human point of view is rosy at this hour. But Orthodoxy from the spiritual point of view is the true faith, clearly it is the true faith. And this is what I confess as well, as I am Orthodox, but also because of my experience in which I saw that this faith has the expected results.
Pilgrim: Forgive me, I was just talking before, my friends told me that no, man, that’s not it, you Orthodox, we say we are the strongest, that this is selfishness and they did not understand why. And I didn’t know how to explain to them why Orthodoxy is the absolute truth.
Father Teologos: Well, that’s what our Lord Jesus Christ said. That’s because of the results. I mean, brethren, Orthodoxy is not the best religion. It is the correct medical science that aims to heal the soul – it has said this 5 million times and I repeat it 5 million more times. So if it’s the right medical science that aims to heal the soul, you have to see this. I mean, where are the results, right? Ok. And it shows. These are the saints. This is why saints are honored in the Church, brethren.
Every day we celebrate I don’t know how many saints. Saints are honored in the Church not because they need our honor. Brethren, the saints are doing great, they are gods according to grace as is well known. The saints are honored so that we do not forget and continually remember that this medical science is successful. Look at the saint so-and-so, the Saint and Righteous Evdochim whom we celebrate tomorrow has his relics uncorrupted and had a virtuous life, so this treatment is working.
This is what Orthodoxy is, and that is why saints are honored. And of course, first of all, the Mother of God, dear her, because she is the first and par excellence person who came to be God according to grace, so to be perfect. Of course, our Lord Jesus Christ is something else, He is true God and true man, but the Mother of God…
Well, yes. So only one man has arrived and yes, ok, this cure, this healing therapy of the human personality is valid, the whole thing works. Well, but we have millions and millions of saints to this day, with the nucleus of Romanian Saints in prisons.
Yes and I repeat myself a million times, you don’t honor them. Brethren! So one of the great problems of the Romanian people is that they don’t honor these saints in prisons – my great pain, you know. Of course, now I must say that certain steps are being taken, including at the level of the Patriarchate and so on, and God bless them that they are doing well. That things are slowly moving and certain are proposed for canonization and so on. And that’s really good.
But people need to honor those. We’re actually disowning our treasure. We deny ourselves the results of this therapy to heal the human soul and achieve eternal happiness.
Pilgrim: What you said earlier, forgive me, I thought about the following phenomenon: behind the hatred that lies in this herd effect, I believe that there is their god who is freedom. Freedom is laid like their god and then… You mean you’re restricting my freedom?! I mean, we’re all these guys and we believe that, and you?
Father Teologos: There’s a whole story here.
Pilgrim: Freedom is their god.
Father Teologos: Eh, believing in their own mind is their pseudo-god and their god is the devil who is someone intelligent. Freedom is not smart. The devil is intelligent, he is a type of mind. Do you understand? And so there’s somebody planning things. Very often I say that there are those big people who don’t know much… Well, brethren, there is someone very intelligent and very experienced behind them, who is the devil.
So come on, let our brother ask questions and, yes…
Please!
George: I’ll go back to the discussion a bit, we talked about cyberbullying. How can we cope as a victim of this phenomenon?
Father Teologos: Oh my God, that’s right. We need to prepare. Just as in this sport that is away from God, in boxing, you prepare to throw back the punch, the same goes here. Here you don’t have to throw back a punch, here you have to learn how to take the punch. And the preparation here is prayer. I mean, brethren, if you don’t have God inside you, you won’t succeed, you won’t last.
Pilgrim: You mean Communion?
Father Teologos: No. Yes, okay, it’s obviously Communion, sure, but I don’t mean that. I mean all this therapeutics called God’s commandments, I can’t find another word. It’s called spiritual life… It is all this asceticism that activates God within man. I mean, I have to believe in God, not because my grandmother told me to. Let’s make that clear too!
I must believe in God as I see God within me. Just as a woman thinks she is pregnant, that she feels the baby inside her, so I believe in God, I know that God exists – yes, of course, from books, as I said – but also that I have seen Him inside me. If I don’t see God inside me and I don’t have the consciousness of my eternity, then really, my life ends in an attack of cyberbullying which is a phenomenal wave of hatred and if you don’t have an energy – but I don’t like that word as immediately goes West and it takes you away from love – a loving energy. An uncreated energy of God…
So if I don’t have this uncreated energy of God, which is love that sustains me, that wave of demonic energy coming through cyberbullying, through this channel, ends me, destroys me. And as I said, a person can ruin their nerves, can have a nervous breakdown, a mental falling, and they can go as far as suicide. I know cases of suicides.
Sometimes God makes them… God forbid! There was in Greece, for example, a case, even a very high ranking person in the Greek government, to whom they did such bullying – Cancel Culture – some political problems if I am not mistaken, but in any case this one had a mistress. Sure, it’s not good, I mean God forbid! It’s a great sin. But that’s how finished this man was, he jumped from some floor. He literally threw himself from some upper floor, but due to the fact that the man was fat he fell on his stomach and got away with his attempt.
Yes, you laugh, brethren, but do you know what’s going on? The problem is that an entire Greece, if at first they brought him down, that man is a pig, unfaithful, all this that I am ashamed to say, then they started making fun of him again and effectively destroyed his nervous system, so they finished him off.
Good and now who gives the answer for this man’s soul. Do you understand? God forbid! Things are very serious. It’s not like this, you write somewhere…, wait, I don’t like the way you sing. No. I’m talking about serious things. Do you understand?
And so only with God within you, so only with the amount of love needed to counterbalance this great wave of hatred that comes from an important part of this global Adam that God made and is now very distorted.
George: We must believe in the saying: turning the other cheek. Especially in these situations.
Father Teologos: Yes. First of all – it’s not a saying, it’s a commandment of God and obviously we have to believe in it, that’s right. But for that, you have to get to that measure, as to do it. And beyond that, it’s very important here that you have to distinguish between the personal plan and the community plan.
On a personal level, you absolutely must turn the other cheek. So if I slap you now, you have to turn the other cheek. Only our Lord Jesus Christ can do this absolutely. None of us can do it absolutely, yes. But we must do it.
On a community level, things are changing. That is, a foreign armed aggressor cannot come upon us or a foreign economic aggressor come and put order in our country, and we turn the other cheek and let them exploit our nation and so on. No, brethren! That is, the cross that I bear, by turning the other cheek, I cannot impose on him. Yes? For me yes, but for the other if someone comes over or touches, for example, my wife, my lady or my kindred, well, I fight back with all my might.
While we, as a nation, are exactly the opposite. That is, if the foreigner comes to put our country in order: yes, sure, let’s not disturb them, let’s… And with my wife I argue because she made peas and I wanted beans or all kinds of insignificant things.
So of course it applies, but a distinction has to be made as I said. And this is one of the main problems of aggressive behavior management, which is not known in Romania, but we need to know how it is applied. How and when and of course to where, because at some point you will not be able to bear it anymore and that’s why saints are…
George: I have been in the Holy Mountain for a short time and I have already noticed the joy of living especially here, in your cell, with you.
Father Teologos: Glory to the Lord!
George: I admire you from this point of view and I would like to ask you: how can we as young people do the same thing in the city? With the hardships of life…
Father Teologos: Yes, obviously. Brethren, know that this is why there are monasteries, this is why the Holy Mountain exists. Because in the world it can be done, but much harder. Much harder! Because the mind cannot rest in the world because of this many worries. I mentioned a little tonight about worries.
Daily schedule, constant schedule, daily prayer, daily spiritual program. Cut out from all this stuff and, brethren, get out into nature! Go! Get going! Come to the Holy Mountain! Well, we have a more hesychast, a more spiritual program, it’s hard to come to us, but wherever in the Holy Mountain you can, you should come. Or in Romania, go to monasteries where you rest. You have to do this job. Do you understand?
Do not stand in concrete, cubicles, architectures without openings to the sky, without windows upwards. And I mean, first of all, from a spiritual point of view here. So cut these off, brethren! Get out! And specially to form communities around the church, that is, therapeutic communities, that is what it refers to.
Westerners know very well that they have this, they are called rehabs, of all kinds, psychological, group therapy and so on. Rubbing at the wooden leg. Yes, it’s something, but 1%. But with us it is much more! It is the grace of the Holy Spirit and it is the prospect of eternity, the prospect of true healing in the Holy Spirit, that is, in the perfect and perfectly loving Persons of God (the Holy Trinity). So beyond group therapy, which means holding hands and playing with dolls and all that.
George: Finally, I would like to ask you what thoughts would you like our listeners to be bear in their minds?
Father Teologos: Shall I tell you honestly?
George: Yes, honestly!
Father Teologos: With no thought! Cut out your thoughts! The state in which the mind is beaten by thoughts, is overshadowed by thoughts, is a fallen state. Man’s mind must be crystal clear, that is, like crystal, have no thoughts, that is, as not to move chaotically. And that comes through prayer – first of all through the Jesus prayer. That is, to not believe our thoughts and the moment any thought comes to us, to banish it. This. And much hope, much hope! Faith in Christ! This!
George: Thank you so much for this interview. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time left.
Father Teologos: Glory to the Lord! George: Dear listeners, thank you for your attention. I invite you to stay on the frequencies of Radio Trinitas to listen to the following columns prepared by my colleagues. Have a nice day!
Father Teologos: May the good God help us!
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