PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

A Reflection for Those Troubled by the Evergetinos and the Gospel’s Hardest Word When we read the Evergetinos , something in us recoils. The stories of monks who refuse to defend themselves, who stand silent before violence, who surrender their few possessions to thieves without protest—these accounts strike our modern Western sensibilities as unreasonable, even dangerous. We live in a world shaped by the language of rights, boundaries, justice, and the moral duty to protect

To love is to suffer. Everyone says this, yet no one really believes it until the truth begins to bruise the heart. To love the Church, to give yourself over to her with the simplicity of a child and the seriousness of a vow, is to suffer at her hands. They never tell you this in seminary. There are no courses on how to bear praise without pride or how to endure humiliation without despair. They speak of kenosis and self emptying love. They teach the vocabulary. But no format