PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

When We Judge Others by What They Failed to Read in Us “If you do not say what you want, but grumble against your brother… you are the one at fault.” — Abba Isaiah of Scetis, in The Evergetinos, Vol. III, Hypothesis I ⸻ There is a particular kind of violence that rarely looks like violence. It does not raise its voice. It does not accuse openly. It does not strike or even speak. It happens quietly, invisibly, inside the heart. It is the violence of unspoken expectation. We of

On the Difference Between the Loss of Self and the Loss of Illusion “I sat alone because Thou hadst filled me with indignation.” — Book of Jeremiah 15:17 There is a way of speaking about “disappearing” that is dangerous, because it easily collapses into something else entirely. One imagines silence, withdrawal, the refusal to assert oneself, and assumes this is the same as vanishing. But the Fathers, and even the deeper currents of psychoanalytic thought, would resist such a