PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

Our Lord speaks into the human heart with a clarity that unnerves and heals at once. Do not be anxious.   Do not be afraid.   Take no thought for your life.  These are not gentle suggestions. They are the authoritative words of the One who knows the true condition of the human mind and the ravages that fear inflicts upon the soul. Christ does not command the impossible; He calls the heart back to its native freedom, to the trust that Adam once knew before he clothed himself i

The wind moves softly through the palm leaves. The stones are warm with fading sun. In the distance, a cave breathes out the cool air of forty years of prayer. The seeker stands at its entrance, hesitant. St Paul the Hermit emerges with a gentleness that feels older than the world. Seeker:  Father, there is a longing within me that I barely understand, a quiet pull toward stillness and the hermitage. At times my heart cries with the psalmist, “O that I had wings like a dove t