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eBook: Ask, and It Shall Be Given You

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If we are heartless, God cannot recognise us. As long as time exists, we are given the opportunity through prayer and the keeping of the commandments to lift our heavy earthly existence upwards. We cry out to God, invoking the beloved Name of Almighty and Most High God Jesus. We beseech Him to come, lift our burden, teach us His humility and the meekness of His ethos, and grant us the vision of the age to come so that we do not waver before the tragic futility of this present life. Christianity is unpopular in our time because exerting violence against our nature is incompatible with the comfortable life of this world. Yet once we embark on this endeavour with determination, God gives grace, making our burden light and the yoke of His commandments easy.

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AuthorArchimandrite Zacharias Zacharou

LanguageEnglish

FormateBook

PublisherStavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist

Edition1st edition

Publication Year2023, Reprinted 2025

ISBN978-1-918281-48-4

Foreward
Time – the Gift of God to Corruptible Man
Prayer – Our Converse with God
Prayer and Fasting
The Prayer with the Beloved Name of Christ
Spiritual Vision
Humility – the Ethos of Christ
‘Resist not evil’
The Spirit Is Swift
An Eschatological Perspective: the Christian Lives and Walks upon the Earth, but His Spirit Beholds Heaven
Divine Liturgy, the Image of Communion of the Saints
The Gift of Tears
Confession, the Mystery of the New Birth in the Spirit
Priesthood – the Ministry of Reconciliation
The Parable of the Wicked Tenants
The Humility of Receiving the Judgment of God Makes Us Become from Servants Children of God
‘Keep thy mind in hell and despair not’
Creative Spiritual Authority
The Paradoxical Character of Monastic Life
Monastic Obedience – the Education of God through His Commandments
Index of Scriptural References

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Excerpts (2)

Saint Sophrony says that the true victory over evil is wrought in man’s heart, not in the streets of this world, not even with the pacifist way that Gandhi used in India, for example: In order to abide in the love of God it is essential for anger and ‘hate’ to attain their maximum intensity but be directed against the sin that lives in me, against the evil active in me — in me, not in my brother. The entire force of resistance to cosmic evil is concentrated in the deep heart of the Christian, though outwardly — as the Lord enjoined — he resists not evil.

There is no other way. True victory can only happen in the deep heart, because it is the deep heart that will accommodate the fruit of the Lord’s sacrifice, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. How can we fight evil in the streets of this world and expect victory? We must endure defeat in this life in order to have true victory in the next.

The great ascetics in the desert, who had become like gods upon earth, knew this truth and followed it without faltering. Saint Sophrony says that he wrestled with God, and he was always glad to be defeated. True victory is won in the footsteps of the Lamb of God Who was led ‘as a sheep to the slaughter’?! This is the very victory which ‘overcame the world,’ and which we celebrate in every Liturgy. We begin the Proskomedy with these words of Isaiah, so that we are presented from the very beginning with the vision and the aim we must seek for, and so that we understand what true victory is.

— Excerpt from: Ask, And It Shall Be Given You • ‘Resist Not Evil’ (p. 91-92)

The ethos of the Lamb without blemish and without spot which predominates in all the fearful economy of Christ’s presence on earth is not completely new. The prophets had already spoken about this, and the great voice of the prophets, Isaiah, described it in wondrous words, as ‘the Lamb led to the slaughter’. Saint Peter described it in his own way: ‘When He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously?’ The righteousness of Christ, His justice, is rendered in the words He said on the Cross: ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do?’

Saint Paul conveys this ethos in yet another way: ‘O Galatians, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you, I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.’ The apostle wanted them to know only the humility of Christ, the ethos of the crucified Lord. The way of God is humble. He walked this way to the end and cleansed it from death. Though it was closed, He opened it; though it was strait and narrow, He filled it with His grace so that with His help we may also follow in His steps.

If we examine well the commandments of Christ, we will find that they all have this humble ethos: if they ask for your cloak, give them your coat also; if they ask you to go with them for a mile, go for two. We see an inverted pyramid in everything we read in the Gospel. We must understand this mindset and the ethos of the Gospel, otherwise we shall remain people without instruction. We must learn the judgment of God’s chastening which was manifested in a perfect way in the Person of His Son. This is the essence of the Gospel. The Gospel is in fact a revolution, but without weapons.

— Excerpt from: Ask, And It Shall Be Given You • Humility: The Ethos of Christ (p. 80-81)