This is a documentary produced in 2009 by TRINITAS TV, the official television of the Romanian Orthodox Church at Patrunsa Monastery, Romania, one of the most isolated monasteries in the country. There is no access for cars and walking on steep footpaths is the only way to reach the monastery.
Full video source: https://youtu.be/98pK-4j1Rqw
Transcript:
We should be active! But in our activity we should have God in our thought continually.
Life is extraordinarily short, but people are not afraid of death, but of its eternity…
I try to pray to God, to please God and achieve salvation… which is the greatest good, the supreme good that man can receive from God. Salvation does not rival anything in this world… when you know that you have escaped all the torments of hell and you reach heaven with the angels, the saints, great saints… it is a very special joy and feeling of soul… And I hope, me and as many people as possible, to get there where we departed from… God is our Father, He created us and we must cry for our sins and return to where we left off.
The donkeys walk, do their job, and I try to focus on prayer, on God…
Fr. V: “Which is our main obedience…”
Yes, this is the foundation of our life on earth… prayer and the way of salvation… We have a lot to learn from donkeys, a lot… They are very quiet, when I put the goods on their backs, they walk without problems, they don’t complain… If there is a problem, we solve it with God’s help… they don’t complain, if they fell, they get up and continue…
God is only in our hearts, and there is where the battle is, in the heart, not elsewhere. The devil seeks to distract us from everything. When our mind seeks God, the devil seeks to distract us with vanities and deceptions… to divert us through worldly things. Lest that we unite with God. And this is why we call ourselves monks, which comes from the Greek ‘monos’, alone, alone with God. And the devil only does this, to lose our attention to God and do not unite with Him, with the Savior, with God. To unite with God means to take their place, they who have fallen from heaven through disobedience. [Isaiah 14:12] And they are very jealous and evil and can’t stand us. And that’s why they’re trying to distract us. And God leaves us, we fall, and then we rise and, slowly, slowly, with His mercy, we reach… we reach Him.
The people of the world, as in the parable of the poor Lazarus, they have where to learn from… They have the prophets, they have the Book of Books [Holy Scripture]… all that remains is their will. That is, if man wants strong enough, God helps him accordingly… The mind that is not busy with prayer is taken by the devil. The place does not remain empty. And then it’s up to us, to our will, to choose the right things. If we know our interest… Like in a football game, you saw that the one who is alone is able to use the ball most efficiently, one who has no one to steal the ball from him. So here, too, and these words are used in the Philokalia. You have to work, work on prayer and then guard what you have gained through prayer, so that the enemy does not steal your treasure.
As you can see, the cells of the fathers who live in this Holy Monastery are scattered, as if gravitating around the big church.
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