PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

On the Spiritual and Human Fruit of Removing Television from the Home There is a particular kind of silence that returns to a home when a television is removed. It is not merely the absence of sound. It is the reappearance of space. Something long occupied steps aside, and the heart becomes aware of itself again. Television does not simply provide entertainment. It forms the inner atmosphere of a household. Even when it is not turned on, it stands ready to speak, to fill paus

The Immeasurable Loss of a Life Abstracted from God “The greatest misfortune of a man is to live without God in his soul.” — St. Theophan the Recluse Life passes in the blink of an eye, and more often than not we are carried along by currents we did not choose. Much cannot be avoided. Much cannot be changed. And yet, in the midst of all this movement, the heart is easily drawn away from its one true labor: abiding in God. I do not regret the difficulties or demands that life

O holy Isaac, lover of the desert, you who entered the deep silence of God, pray for me. I long for that silence, the silence that burns away the passions and leaves only the heart before the Lord. Ask God to bless this desire, to purify it, to make it His work and not my own. Intercede that He shape my heart to walk the narrow path of stillness, to love prayer more than words, to rest in Him alone. O Father of silence, carry me into the mercy of God where nothing remains but

A personal longing shaped by the Fathers and the modern elders Lord, You know the secret movements of my heart before I dare to speak them. There is a longing rising within me that I barely understand, a quiet pull toward that hidden place of stillness the Fathers called the hesychasterion. It is not ambition and not escape. It feels more like homesickness, as if my soul remembers a country it has never seen and now aches for its air. If this longing is from You, then deepen