Saint Basil, the Saint From a Family of Saints – Father Pimen Vlad
29 December 2022
Education and the Tradition of Our Forefathers – Father Pimen Vlad
5 January 2023
For the most beautiful feast of the year, Christmas, the show “This is Romania!” prepared a special edition, an exclusive documentary report, produced on Mount Athos. We cross, through the show, the Aegean Sea and climb the heights of faith!
The “This is Romania!” team presents, on this absolutely special day, Athos, a nest of faith hanging between earth and heaven, a refuge embraced by the clouds, where people live like saints. We will be welcomed in the heart of the Romanian Lacu Skete, where, in three days and nights, we have experiences that change your life and everything you thought about… faith.
Fathers Pimen Vlad and Theologos, who welcome us into their cell, show us how they live, how they pray, how they feel and, above all, talk to us about the true meaning of Christmas, beyond gifts and loaded tables. Here we also find Romanians from all over the world, people who are looking for themselves and God.
We thank the Kanal D team for the video provided.
Enjoy!
Mihai Ghiță: Hello and welcome to the most beautiful celebration of the year. Here is what we have prepared for you in this special edition.
Father Theologos: Let us make Christ be born in us.
Father Pimen: When that call comes, it’s like a fire. You leave everything, you are not interested in anything anymore.
And now there are three: hope, faith, and love. And greater than all is love. They say love never falls. What does love mean? Neither here on earth, or in eternity. It is the only virtue that does not remain on earth. It goes with us to heaven.
So the Mother of God stepped on this mountain. That’s why it got that name. And when the Mother of God at Iviron, where Iviron Monastery is now, there it was called “Clement’s abode”. When She walked on the land, it says, somehow all Athos trembled.
Father Theologos: Courage! Christ was born! Christ was born! We have many proofs of the birth of Christ and of the resurrection of Christ. There are many proofs of the Nativity and many more proofs of the Lord’s Resurrection. And that gives courage.
Mihai Ghiță: Now more than ever, it’s time to be with all our loved ones. Let’s rejoice and forgive each other. In the following minutes we propose to discover together the miracle of Christmas. In an almost unearthly place. We climb Athos, the nest of faith hanging between Earth and Heaven. A refuge embraced by clouds, where people live like the Saints. We talk to the Fathers who welcome us into their cell. They show us how they live, how they pray, how they feel. And they tell us about the true meaning of Christmas. Beyond gifts and loaded meals. Here we also find Romanians coming from all corners of the world. People who seek themselves, but especially seek God.
This is followed by a documentary report signed by my colleagues Daniel Savopol, Ștefan Constantin and Marius Antohe. Here it is:
Father Theologos: Let us make Christ be born in us.
Father Pimen: When that call comes, it’s like a fire. You leave everything, you are not interested in anything anymore.
And now these three remain: hope, faith, and love. And greater than all is love. They say love never falls. What does love mean? Neither here on earth, nor in eternity. It is the only virtue that does not remain on earth. It goes with us to heaven.
So the Mother of God stepped on this mountain. That’s why it got that name. And when the Mother of God in Iviron, where Iviron Monastery is now, there it was called “Clement’s abode”. When She walked on the land, it says, somehow all Athos trembled.
Father Theologos: Courage! Christ was born! Christ was born! We have many proofs of the birth of Christ and of the resurrection of Christ. There are many proofs of the Nativity and many more proofs of the Lord’s Resurrection. And that gives courage.
Presenter: In the middle of December we set out on our journey to the Holy Mountain. We go to the land of prayer. We have a lot of thoughts. Many questions. But one is above all. Are we journalists or are we pilgrims on this path? We give the answer ourselves. We are people looking for people who live like saints.
Ouranoupoli is the city of heaven in Greece. We arrive here after 12 hours of driving from Bucharest. We rest for a few hours, and in the morning we set off on the Aegean Sea not before we pick up the special visa without which we would not have access on the slice of holy land.
We board a boat with dozens of people: pilgrims, priests, workers, bound for Athos. It’s December, but the Hellenic currents seem to carry a sweet spring breeze that still keeps nature alive high up the mountain. Somewhere on the horizon, between the sky and the sea, in virgin forests and on the coast lost in clouds of fog, monasteries rise, like medieval fortresses. There are 20 in number. Some are small, others are stretched like mini-cities. Here, in cells of wood and stone, almost 2000 souls live their lives, in a sacred ritual, only to them known.
After an hour of sailing on the water, we reach the foot of the mountain. For three days we will stay at Lacu Skete, where for over 300 years, Romanian monks have been raising prayers to heaven every second. Through the lace of clouds, the cells are hiding, which surround the central church, which houses one of the miracle-working icons of the Mother of God.
Two of the border guards at the customs between mountain and sky are fathers Pimen Vlad and Theologos. Without their blessing we would not have arrived here on Athos. That’s what we say. But the monks explain that it is the Mother of God who opened the door for us.
Daniel Savopol: What did you feel, what did you think when you received the mail from me?
Father Theologos: Nothing! It is actually God’s will. In general, a monk has no feelings, not in the sense that he is a RoboCop, but in the sense that he must do the will of God.
Presenter: The first one who meets us and welcomes us is Abbot Pimen himself. For almost 30 years he has lived here and takes care of the place he calls “The Garden of the Mother of God”.
Daniel Savopol: Lord help us, Father.
Father Pimen: Lord help us. Welcome!
Daniel Savopol: Welcome to you, on a day blessed with rain, with water…
Father Pimen: Well, yes, the Mother of God arranges everything as it is best.
Daniel Savopol: I saw that in order to get to the Holy Mount Athos, you need a material visa, a paper. But you seem to get a spiritual visa ahead of time. It seems like things are settling down somehow. And I was looking at my home, the last sheet of the calendar, when I cut it, it remained December, with a picture from Greece. Everything was connected. How does a person really get here on the Holy Mountain? What brings him?
Father Pimen: Let us not forget that the Holy Mountain is not just a mountain. How we have in this world: so many mountains, so many in history, so to speak, in ancient times, I know… here is a special mountain, that is why it is called holy. The only mountain called holy. Holy Mount Athos. We see, the others have different names. But here is the Holy Mountain Athos, the Garden of the Mother of God. So that ties up, this name. As the Greeks say: Peribuli Tis Panaghia – The Garden of Our Lady.
Father Theologos: The Holy Mountain is a state. It is a monastic republic. It is not an independent state, it is an annexed state. We are not interested in politics, or rather, we are only interested in heavenly politics. Global politics, Christ politics and not partial politics, party politics. And that is why in the Holy Mountain of course there are no parties, and of course there are no institutions in the Holy Mountain, so to speak, of the State; the institutions of the State on the Holy Mountain are the institutions offered by the Hellenic State, to which the Holy Mountain is annexed. That is, the police in the Holy Mountain is the Greek police, the customs on the Holy Mountain is the Hellenic customs… and so on. So all the other institutions, as I said, of the state… the Greek currency, in this case the Euro…
The Holy Mountain is ruled by the Protos — that is what it is called, who is the ruler of the Holy Mountain chosen by rotation by the great monasteries of the Holy Mountain; this model is pleasing to everyone, and even at the moment when representatives came, speaking of representatives, the representatives of the European Union came here, many years ago, they were wondering, “Why don’t you quarrel? Why don’t you fight?” because I said that there is no party here, but there are 20 large monasteries, plus, there are hermitages, like we are, plus, there are cells…
Daniel Savopol: Great luck for you!
Father Theologos: Yes. And so, how come there are no quarrels and how come you do not fight, why are there not 20 parties? Just as there are 20 monasteries there should be 20 parties and fight each other. Yes, of course, sometimes there are differences, but they disappear; why?
Because here God is Christ and not the money. Not the political power, not the short-circuiting. That is, there is no power struggle in the sense that there is this in a world without God.
Presenter: God and themselves. That’s what people who climb this far through the clouds are looking for. It is the place of the Mother of God, whose name is on the lips of monks not only at services, but all the time. Even in the few hours that they place their head on the pillow. Their entire existence on the mountain is due and dedicated to her.
Father Pimen: Already that is, it is almost 2,000 years since the Mother of God lived on earth. So the Mother of God walked on this mountain. That’s why it got this name. And when the Mother of God saw that already the sun came out when she got to this side. And she saw this peak come out of the sea.
And when she saw this beauty, she said, how beautiful it is! And she says, “Lord, my Son and my God, I want to ask you something.” She said, “Give me this mountain. Let me take care of it somehow.” That is, like an inheritance from God should be given to her. And there came an answer from heaven and said, “Be it to you according to your desire, my mother, and may this mountain be a place of peace for those who want to retreat here.”
And when the Mother of God got to Iviron, where the Iviron monastery is now, it was called “The abode of Clement”. When She walked on the land, it says, somehow all Athos trembled. And on the top of Athon was an idol called Apollo. See how they were in the ancient Greeks, that there were different idols. That it was Apollon and others… and he was 30 meters high.
And in his forehead he had a great ruby which, when the sun rose and reflected in that eye, it would say, looked like another sun from Constantinople. That’s how strong that ruby reflected. And there the ancient Greeks went and worshiped.
They offered sacrifices. And now there are below Athon, somewhere large stones, where the children sacrificed. And when the Mother of God walked ashore at Iviron, the devils began to shout: “Come out to meet the Mother of God at the abode of Clement, for our kingdom is over.” At that moment, that idol exploded. At that time. As if he had explosives in it, and it broke in thousands of pieces, to the sea, it is said, he was gone. Nothing! And then, you know, Athos shook, and they were all afraid, and all the people fled according to the commandment. At Clement’s abode that the Mother of God came. Let’s see who claims to be a God stronger than ours. At that moment, when she came down, who was she? A humble woman, dressed appropriately, with the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John.
She Christianized the whole Athos, the Mother of God did. At that time, it says that she would have stayed for three months and surrounded Athos on foot everywhere, which is why there is a place below the summit called Panaghia. It means “Most Holy.” It is there that the Mother of God would have rested when she got there.
Presenter: From the moment the mountain was dedicated to the Virgin Mary until today no other woman has been allowed to walk here.
Men began to make monasteries, and the Mother — miracles.
Father Pimen: The very first intervention of the Mother of God at four hundred or so, when the Vatopedi was built — he painted the Church, made beautiful icons in the Church — and Emperor Theodosius also had a daughter. And then she says:
“I also want to go and worship at the monastery my father built in Athos.”
Well, when she came and reached, when she entered the Church, somewhere on the left was a painted icon of the Mother of God. At that moment the icon appeared as alive and the Mother of God began to speak to her. “Stop and do not come here, for women are not allowed to enter here, I am the only Empress of this mountain. No more women should enter Athos.”
Presenter: Athos is not a city or a metropolis, but a place of earthly heaven, where man shakes hands with God and His nature. Along with Greeks, Serbs, Russians, Romanian monks helped raise this capital of the Orthodox faith.
Cristian Bumbenici: This is what a road arranged at least 100 years ago looks like, if not, even more, by the Romanian monks who, since 1700 according to concrete evidence, have been living uninterruptedly in the Lacu Skete.
Older evidence testifies to the fact that somewhere in the 16th century, one thousand five hundred or so, there was a monastic hearth made up of Serb monks, which at some point disappeared, and it is an undocumented period in which we assume that the Skete was deserted.
But, I repeat, from 1700 to the present day Lacu Skete is permanently inhabited by Romanian monks. There are portions that have been made over the years with great difficulty; think that what we see now seems like a wild area to us. Let’s try to do an exercise of imagination, to transfer ourselves somewhere 50, 100 years ago, when there were almost impossible thickets to pass here. And with a lot of work and patience they managed to arrange this road which at that time was probably a kind of main route to reach the central church and obviously to the other cells.
Presenter: Once every few months, Cristi takes the trip Pitesti – Athos. He goes to the monks here with the questions of the Romanians at home. The answers are recorded for his Youtube channel, and between filming the pilgrim retraces the paths of God’s servants, as if he were one of them.
Cristian Bumbenici: This [offers fruit]. Is it good?..
Daniel Savopol: It tastes very strange. It’s sweet, it’s sour…
Cristian Bumbenici: It has a lot of vitamin C.
Daniel Savopol: Just what we needed to avoid colds, any problems related to the immune system.
Cristian Bumbenici: That’s the food of the monks. One of them. These are the wild berries, the Athonite variety.
Daniel Savopol: So these were eaten by the monks here and the hermits in the area…
Cristian Bumbenici: All of them! All of them! One of the fruits.
Presenter: We return to Father Pimen. He who will never forget the day he arrived on Athos. He came from one of the monasteries of Moldavia, where he had stayed with great confessors, and here on a pile of boulders, he would continue his mission.
Father Pimen: As someone said, he had a kind of harness here and a board behind him. And there he put a stone. And they went up to the hill to where they needed to. He unloaded the stone and brought them from where they were carrying them. So that’s how everything you see was carried. That’s how it worked. He told me about elders, even Romanians.
Father Dionysius from Colciu called me, who recently fell asleep at the age of 97. And he said, he showed me. That in his own time he had lived another times. He came from the age of 18, you realize, there was nothing in Athos. He says: so, whatever wall you see, with harness, with stone here, we carried it, we put it there with earth, because there was no cement at that time, with earth, with stone, and you kept putting it like that. Because the Mother of God cared, because she knew. When you entrust yourself to take everything. See here: you can see what we have built. In 2005 there was only a bunch of boulders here, and the mountain united with the top. We started with 1000 euros in debt. Not a dime. And we went and took this place, and I was so glad that I wanted to take it in my arms.
And I knew what was waiting for me. A work. I also didn’t have a dime. I put my hope in the Mother of God. Many said, “Have you gone crazy? What have you started there! I say: I do not make my house, I make the house of the Mother of God.
The first miracle, then, that was here, was when, in the beginning, there were debts. I started, dug here, brought the bulldozer, asked a guy, he came and dug the mountain. It would add up; at first 10,000 euros in debt, 20 000, 30 000… and to which I had a Greek friend, and he said: “Father, what are you doing? I think I had four workers with whom I was working, he says, these guys will kill you. You did not pay them… debts to everyone, debts to the bulldozer, debts to cement, debts to stone…” I say: “I do not make my house, I make the house of the Mother of God. The Mother of God will take care of it.”
Daniel Savopol: But didn’t you stress then?
Father Pimen: No, no, because I was thinking: Mother of God, you know. I do what I can, you take care of the rest. I say, I can’t! Humanly I had nowhere to come from money. Stranger, in a foreign land, from where to get it? I had no knowledge, nothing. And I was actually working on the first wall, there in the back, and a Land Rover stopped here and six people got down. And they say:
— God help us!
— God help us!
— What are you doing?
— Working.
— And is it going well?
— It is going!
— Do you have money?
— We don’t have it!
— Do you have debts?
— We have.
— How much?
— 30 000?
And he turns to one behind him and says, “Bring the bag here.” And he takes out 30,000, counts them and says:
— Take it of here and pay off your debts.
And he turns back and leaves. And then I pull one by the sleeve, behind him and I say:
— Well, who’s that? That I don’t know him.
— How? Don’t you know him?
— No, I don’t know him!…
He says:
— It’s Gigi Becali.
Father Theologos: The man is tiktoking, news, sports, football, and ends up praying at 12 at night with his head in a bag…
Father Pimen: Let there be no Christian who does not experience the joy of the Nativity of the Lord! But like I said, you can’t live this without God. Not riding a pig, as they say, stuffed cabbage rolls, drink… This is not the birth of God! So celebration means reconciliation with God. And to the mercy of God, I said: through confession, by asking God: Forgive me Lord, look, all year I have upset You, I have done so much… forgive me Lord!
And let us ask forgiveness from the whole family, from the wife, from the children, from everyone around us, for making mistakes every day. Let’s embrace them all with love. “Well, I love you, forgive me, look, out of madness, out of drink, for I don’t know what, I have upset you, forgive me”, that is, let this feast really be a joy, but that means for all of us make peace, to ask forgiveness from everyone, to ask forgiveness from God. And let no one be absent from the Church on the day of the Nativity.
Father Pimen: He takes out 30,000, counts them and says:
— Take it of here and pay off your debts.
And he turns back and leaves. And then I pull one by the sleeve, behind him and I say:
— Well, who’s that? That I don’t know him.
— How? Don’t you know him?
— No, I don’t know him!…
He says:
— It’s Gigi Becali.
The first time he came to Athos. And then he gave me 30,000 without knowing him, without knowing him. He asked someone, took him with the Land Rover and said:
“Take me to all the Romanian places. I want to see how Romanians live in Athos.” And the man took a bag of money from home. And so he went to all the Romanian houses in Athos and which were building, repairing, everybody was building then, he helped until he finished that bag.
And when I called that Greek, right after that, I say: „Oh my!” and The Greek: How is it Geronda? — as he said to me, because I have known him for many years — I say: „How could it be, it’s solved!”
He said, “What is solved?”
[I said] “Well, look, someone came and gave me 30,000.”
He started shouting: “Miracle! Who gives you that, without asking you, without knowing you, as they say?”
Yes, and that’s how it began. Everything you see here, so did the Mother of God send it one by one. At first through him for a while, after that she arranged through other situations and situations, which I did not expect.
Presenter: Now, after 17 years of work, he looks with joy as a child at the cell he raised here, in the heart of the mountain. It is living proof that anything is possible when you know how to ask for God’s help.
Father Pimen: That’s why, since 2005 to do all this, so humanly it’s impossible. But with God nothing is impossible. That’s what we need to understand. That’s why I say to many [who tell me]: “Father I have no way out!”
[I say] “You have a bunch of exits. You don’t see them yourself.” The problem is to solve your inner problems with God. Someone had come to Saint Paisios the Hagiorite who had quarrels at home, had debts in banks, had big problems… he came here: „Father, what should I do?”
The father looked at him: „You go home, you confess, you and your wife, beautifully, you go to church every Sunday, you put your life in order with prayer in the morning and in the evening, and it is solved.”
„Don’t bother me with this father, I have debts in banks, I have problems, and you tell me about that?”
And he left angry. Another man, who was also present, took him aside and said:
„Mister, do you have a different solution?”
„Well, I don’t…”
„Why don’t you try what the father told you?” And the man went home.
After a few months, he meets the other one again. And he asks him: „Well, how is everything?”
„Everything has been solved.”
Father Pimen: You begin to do it only out of interest, that Lord, I did that. Where’s the solution?
Daniel Savopol: Exactly!
Father Pimen: But no, you do it lovingly, and God takes care of the rest. But you have to do selflessly. To start solving for yourself in your life, to do a little good…
Daniel Savopol: To do it for yourself.
Father Pimen: Yes, to do with love, because what you do with love, it says, reaches the other person and returns to you.
Daniel Savopol: That’s right.
Father Pimen: So everything from the heart, this is what I say: man, do it with love, whatever you do, no matter how hard. And do good. God gave you hands, gave you legs, maybe another does not have them. Take them and use them! See that you have time at home. Don’t sit stuck on the TV there, or anything else, without using them if you have power. Go to that poor neighbor, see that his fence has fallen, and help him a little bit.
He who gives to the poor, it says, lends to God. What does it mean that lending to God? That is, God gives you 100 times or 1000 times back. If you give something broken, what will God give you back? But when you give something good and from the heart, well God Who — I have a father here who goes out sometimes in the morning and looks and sees so many flowers all year round, says: How rich the Boyar is, that is God, look how He gives us, without anything. But he gives them all to us. But what do we do for it? How do we treat others? Because God, as He treats us, somehow, has His desire, out of His love, that we also treat others. Let’s still relate with love.
Father Pimen: They are hanging roses. Do you know how they bloom? You almost can no longer see. It’s all red, like that. That side and on that side, here. And then it somehow improves, enriches here. It gives it a beauty. This year we had about 400 tulips in all colors. Daffodils, after that hyacinths, all, already by February begin to emerge all the tulips.
Daniel Savopol: I saw the lilies below.
Father Pimen: We also have lilies, all of them here. Look, on that side, there, that edge is all with lilies. White Lilies.
Presenter: He is over 50 years old. And a face drawn as if from icons. He is calm, serene and always with a contagious smile. He knows before you open your mouth what you mean, and he feels the man from afar. Rare virtues in our world, which the monk chose to leave behind when he climbed higher, up the mountain of faith.
Father Pimen: What goes from the heart, goes to the heart. What leaves just like this, we have a saying, in the people like this: the English smile. That facade. When you give someone a smile like that, it stays cold, dead. That is, maybe the other person instead of rejoicing, swears at you.
Daniel Savopol: And you can’t fool anyone.
Father Pimen: You can’t. You can’t, it feels. So that thing that goes from the heart is felt. And that’s why, I read somewhere, there was an old man, who just like that somewhere… and someone had asked him: Father, why when you talk, everyone cries? He says: Because what goes from heart to heart goes. I mean what you do with love, from the heart, that’s why I tell many: here, and at home, and chores and everything. Do what you do with love, as for God. Because what you do with love has value. That is the value of the thing. Which is made with love. And you never get bored of it, it never gets hard. Look, you see there are still flowers around here, right?
Everything related to flowers here, I take care of. See all those trains, I say train. That’s done by me. Until I struggled, I did the first one and every day I poured one. Well, everything related to flowers here, I take care of them. And you see, there are still flowers. In the summer, I have the most beautiful flowers.
And someone asked me: Father, but — were certain varieties — I have never seen them so big and beautiful. Yes. Because I care for them with love. I talk to them, I go, I say: you are more beautiful, look how beautiful you have blossomed, I caress them, I speak, that is, nature itself feels this. That God gave it for us as humans to enjoy it. But we have to respect it too. Do you not see that now we have begun to harm ourselves, to tear down the nature that God created so beautiful for us… we tear down forests, cut down forests, the springs dry up, right? Landslides begin. So nature turns against us, because we take advantage of it. And we cut off our oxygen supply. We see in the city, where there should be a large park at 10 blocks. To be the source…
Well, in our country, that park is cut down and another mall is built, let’s say. This is self-destruction, a kind of suicide.
Daniel Savopol: It’s mass suicide in the long run.
Father Pimen: Yes, in the long run, yes, because it is precisely our source. I mean no one… to take the animals. You don’t see that they protect their area, or that, where they live, in the forests, that the man came to do this. So we don’t know how to live anymore, we don’t know how to enjoy anymore. And that’s why I say.
Everything that nature has done for us, God has done it for us. He said, “What has God done? He says: And God did all this, and it was very good. That is, perfect. And after that he made the man and said to him: Man, take and enjoy all these beauties. I give them into your hand.
Presenter: With joy. This is how every day is lived here. It’s like a boundless temple, where once you enter, you begin to feel the world around you differently.
Father Pimen: Even an animal that you have and it is dear to you, right? You enjoy it as long as you take care of it.
Daniel Savopol: You are right.
Father Pimen: You take care of him. If you killed him, would you still enjoy him? No! Just like a beautiful tree in the yard, which bears fruit to you. So as long as you care for it, dig it up, clean it, enjoy it. Cut it, it’s over. To any thing. A flower, all the same, you care for it.
So all of this can be enjoyed if you put your heart to it. And back to the heart. Let all be done from the soul, from the heart, with love. That then, whatever you say to someone, if you woke up in the morning [and say]: to a Christian, brother, neighbor,
“God help!, Have a good day!” and you said it with all your heart, well that man feels that his entire day bloomed.
Father Pimen: Deer live in their own world. There are deer… they are jackals…
Daniel Savopol: Wolves?
Father Pimen: Wolves appeared not long ago, not long ago. I saw two of them once, so they weren’t before. And they are still like that. But fewer wolves. They appeared more recently. Athos is connected with the land of Greece. So they can come.
Daniel Savopol: Yes, they migrate. It is very good because it contributes to the ecosystem.
Father Pimen: Yes, there was a time when the Mother of God allowed it. I was by boat and I see that it came out of a cave into the water, two seals. A big head, of that, and we, because the propeller was spinning on the boat, they wanted to play and started to come towards our boat. I was with a small boat. And we ran away. And they came after us. I say: this will overturn my boat. It was in the mood to play.
Presenter: With many days before Christmas, Romanians from all continents make their way here, on Mount Athos. They come to prepare for the miracle of the coming feast, which they try to understand from the monks.
Daniel Savopol: Hello! [I am] Daniel.
Robert: Robert.
Daniel Savopol: Robert, where are you from?
Robert: From Râmnicu Vâlcea, Romania.
Daniel Savopol: Romania.
Robert: Yes.
Daniel Savopol: The first time?
Robert: I have been here for 5 years, in Italy for 5 years.
Daniel Savopol: You’ve been in Italy for 5 years, settled [there].
Robert: Yes, with family, with friends, but less friends, that they are not too many in Italy, that… that is, there you are busier with work, with…
Daniel Savopol: What do you work?
Robert: I work in agriculture. Farmer.
Daniel Savopol: How is the work there in agriculture?
Robert: Pretty good.
Daniel Savopol: As money compared to Romania?
Robert: Much better.
Daniel Savopol: As work?
Robert: Much more. Because of the context, that’s why I left. If it was well in the country, I, for one, would have not left. And I would try my best to get back home.
Daniel Savopol: And now you have reconnected here with the Romanians, from several places in the country, on the Holy Mountain.
Robert: Yes, the community of Lodi, the parish of Lodi and we have come here to gather, to resettle our thoughts… I personally believe that I do not come here by chance, it is a call of the Mother of God, of God, otherwise you will not get here.
Daniel Savopol: And how do you feel this place? Is it an energy, is it something?
Robert: It’s something special. It… can’t be put into words. If you truly live the spirit and… truly it is said to be a mountain of faith.
Daniel Savopol: That’s right.
Robert: It is very special. I think you have experienced and lived the same feelings. No Santa Claus, no lights, the pig is not in question, no. The real feast as it should be celebrated. Nativity of the Lord! God’s sacrifice that He came to save us.
A pilgrim: I came on a pilgrimage with a group of friends from our parish in Italy.
Daniel Savopol: For the first time?
A pilgrim: Yes, I personally, yes. The others several times.
Daniel Savopol: So it means that now you are settled there in Italy.
A pilgrim: We have been established for many years.
Daniel Savopol: For how many years?
A pilgrim: For almost 20 years, yes.
Daniel Savopol: How is life for Romanians there in Italy? In your case, in the case of your community.
A pilgrim: In the case of the community, very good.
Daniel Savopol: Christmas holidays, how do you spend them?
A pilgrim: One time in Romania, once here. Yes. We integrated. We are a very good community…
Daniel Savopol: What did you manage to visit now? What Sketes have you seen?
A pilgrim: Many monasteries, many Sketes, we have one more day.
Daniel Savopol: What impressed you?
A pilgrim: A lot of history related to this land. Many special places.
Daniel Savopol: [I am] Daniel.
Petru: Petru.
Teofil: Teofil.
Daniel Savopol: Delighted! Where did you come from?
Petru: We come from Italy. We are part of the group that came here, of thirty-something people who came here for the first time. This is the first time we have come here to the Holy Mountain.
Teofil: This is the first time for me, yes.
Petru: We have been with our group, with our parish and on other pilgrimages, in Jerusalem, elsewhere, but here on the Holy Mountain it is for the first time.
Daniel Savopol: Do you feel at home? Finding Romanian monks here?
Petru: Here we feel much more than at home.
Daniel Savopol: Much more than at home.
Teofil: We recommend Borseni people to come here because they will find a change, a lot of change, from the heart.
Petru: In our community and in our group there are several Borșeni people. We are 6-7 people.
Daniel Savopol: And does it change your experience here?
Petru: Yes.
Daniel Savopol: How?
Petru: In fact in all pilgrimages you feel what you do not feel in the secular world, as it is said.
Daniel Savopol: What do you feel?
Petru: Other feelings, other moments of happiness. You forget about everything.
Daniel Savopol: And smile.
Petru: Yes.
Daniel Savopol: It’s something.
Petru: A spiritual charge.
Daniel Savopol: Yes. We go far away from the world, there are no political parties, no televisions, there is no radio, there is nothing here. It’s nothing, give it all.
Petru: We really talked every evening, we in the group, like that. How much silence and how much beauty here, which you do not find in the buzz of Milan or other parts.
Teofil: You forget about stress, you forget about everything.
Daniel Savopol: Do you still go home? Through Romania?
Teofil: Yes, for Christmas.
Daniel Savopol: Christmas is done at home, in the family.
Teofil: In Romania in Maramureș, Borșa.
Petru: About twice a year. Who can.
Daniel Savopol: And Christmas preparation on Athos.
Teofil: Yes. We prepare spiritually.
Petru: Not with pigs, as Father Pimen said.
Daniel Savopol: Not with pigs. With faith.
Teofil: With faith, spiritually.
Cristian Bumbenici: Let us put Christ, because He is the cause and the reason of this feast. That’s why we celebrate.
Daniel Savopol: And we came alone. You are a group I understand.
Cristian Bumbenici: We are a small group, but here we always meet with groups of Romanians.
Daniel Savopol: From what areas?
Cristian Bumbenici: All areas. From all areas of the country. And I can say that this year there was an explosion, at least in the fall. So since 2014 until now I can safely say that there have never been so many Romanians in this period, especially in this period when the number of pilgrims is generally low. That’s a good thing.
Daniel Savopol: Our Romanians also come to worship with our Romanian monks. With joy, right? Romanian meets Romanian on Athos.
Cristian Bumbenici: And here we find a corner of Romania, even if we are in Greece. This is Romania from here. From this place.
Daniel Savopol: From the Holy Mountain.
Cristian Bumbenici: Yes. If I only draw one conclusion, that with God’s help, you can do anything. From the technical point of view, what has been done here is an almost superhuman effort, because we are somehow in the middle of the Athos peninsula, in a place accessible only by cars, it is quite a distance from the port, from the capital and I remember, only the transportation of materials meant a fantastic financial and human effort.
But all in all, this is not what mattered, but the fact that we Romanians still have a machine gun nest, as sometimes the Fathers joked, from which prayers are raised for our country, for our people and for everyone.
Daniel Savopol: The highest. Do you understand? And the one, which you also said, is hardly accessible for a monk.
Cristian Bumbenici: They are the soldiers on the front line of this spiritual front, in which we, even those from the outside world, are in, to know that we are, or are waging, exactly the same war. It is the war we wage with our own infirmities, aimed precisely at overcoming our weakness.
Presenter: And once you reach the door of the cell you are welcome. You get a meal and a roof, along with the monastery brothers and monks. You have food for the body, but especially for the soul.
Father Pimen: By this Christmas fast, we say the fast of joy. Of course, meat is never eaten here. So you could say, it’s kind of like a fast all the time.
Daniel Savopol: But why don’t we eat meat all the time? Is it important? I’m going to ask you that.
Father Pimen: For us, the monks, monks have always sought food to be as simple as possible. And being simple food, that is, the body also becomes lighter. Thus, the ancient Fathers lived only on bread with water, or on greens, with this, that is, they removed from their lives everything that was this part.
Daniel Savopol: What was a lot.
Father Pimen: Yes, what was a lot and what made the body heavy.
Daniel Savopol: What was a lot.
Father Pimen: Yes. And what’s going on? For example, eating meat makes it difficult for your body, your mind, so it’s not clearer. Because many said: I couldn’t have a day without meat. Yes, and he said that I am losing weight, I have no strength… I say: seriously?
Look at the ox. He lives only on grass and pulls a chariot of that no one can pull. How much power he has. So God can give you the strength to live only with this and be able to carry on. I met people who all their lives ate only fasting. So there was no problem. The human body is made not to need meat. If your mind is clearer, you eat fasting food, you eat less often, you don’t eat to gorge yourself. That we always have a word in monasticism.
It says: to eat in such a way that you can still do bows after getting up from the table.
Daniel Savopol: And Christmas, how do you live it here?
Father Theologos: Okay, we don’t have cabbage rolls, we don’t have sausages…
Daniel Savopol: That’s a good thing.
Father Theologos: Yes, that’s a good thing. Christmas Day is the Christmas service, so at Christmas the monk strives, or, I pray, should strive, I do not strive very much, but we should strive, to make Christ be born in us. Because the Christmas service is not a memory of an event that happened 2022 years ago, plus/minus. The Christmas service is the experience of that holiday, that moment within us. The service is to take man out of the realm of time and propel him into eternity. It’s a time spiral actually.
Whoever is watchful, if he has fasted before, with that global fast of which I have spoken, will feel in a very concrete but very mysterious way, that is, he will not be able to explain how this is happening, will feel how Christ is indeed born in the manger of his soul. The body is only a leather garment of the soul. If you reduce man to the body, you torment him. And that’s actually hell. Closure in the matter. You must know that evil does not exist. Evil is a diminuation of good.
Presenter: Every day is a continuous prayer for people and the world. From dawn until the next day at dawn. Always on their knees. Always with their mind and soul towards heaven.
Father Pimen: We could say that all life is a preparation. You see, we have services every day. We have Vespers, as it is in the evening, from 17:00 to 18:00. We have Small Compline from 19.30 to 20:00. In the morning from 5:00 to 8:00 we have Matins with Liturgy. So, every day we have, as they say, a permanent connection with God. We have, at least as they say, four hours of service a day, to which we are present all the time.
Father Theologos: The service is the immersive setting in which we have the preview of the trailer of eternal life. This is the church, right? The church is not the place where we carry rolls and coliva, of course, yes? But the Church is healing, it is a hospital for sinners, it is the opener of the mind, to prepare us for the eternity that awaits us. Because man is eternal, brothers, you must know that man is eternal. Unfortunately, today we do not know, we have forgotten about our eternity. We forgot about God’s experience.
Daniel Savopol: And death it is taught to us.
Father Theologos: Yes, death is taught to us. Death is taught to us, death is taught to us. We are taught the death as the last reality of life here. Man at this hour is a wreck, a drift, a walking body, a walking corpse, without any meaning.
So we must necessarily, it is necessary to pray brothers, and prayer is not, it is not, as I say. Yes. Lord help my son take the exam. Of course, that too. Instead:
Lord, help me, come into my heart if you exist, and give meaning to my life! Enlighten me!
Presenter: Before they ascended here, among the Saints, they were people. Like the rest of us. With dreams. With sins, with accomplishments and disappointments. Until one day, when they felt the call. Then they left our world behind and chose their world. One dedicated to God.
Daniel Savopol: And since the sun has begun to rise over the Holy Mountain, please tell me how the new Sun rose, for the new beginning of your life, when you decided to be a monk.
Father Theologos: You must know that in all those who become monks, there is an acute sense of emptiness of this world. That is, they see that this world is a world incapable of solving the human equation, it is a fallen world, and then God takes them out of the world and pushes them towards monasticism. And because we are interconnected with each other — this is again a great mystery that we debate and deepen on a chilieathonita.ro — people are interconnected with each other because at night all people calm down and the whole spirit is much quieter, much smoother and much more conducive to prayer. And because of this, night prayer is much better.
Due to the fact that we are in the Holy Mountain and there is a lot of prayer here, because of this prayer on the Holy Mountain is much stronger than prayer in the world.
Presenter: Behind the monk Theologos hides a reading man, a classy intellectual, passionate about science fiction literature, mathematics, computer science, physics and chemistry. A man who researches with his mind and believes with all his heart.
Father Theologos: I don’t know if in the first year when I came to the Holy Mountain, or in the second year, I don’t remember. In any case, as they say in the Holy Mountain, I was still with my pants. I didn’t have monks clothes and the other ones. I was a young brother in a monastery, like that, and I went to the service, it was very beautiful for Christmas, an extraordinary atmosphere, extraordinary songs, an uplifting atmosphere, I was floating by the Athonite way… and when I went outside, a father greeted me and said to me like this, somewhat brusquely, jolly: “Was Christ born?” I look at him like that and I say… I was ready to serve him a theological tirade and he realizes that I did not understand what he said… which he hits me like this in the chest and says: “Was Christ born?” I mean, within me, was Christ born? And I realized that I was actually very far from an affirmative answer to this.
Presenter: He had a future ahead of him in the Urban Kingdom. A career in IT. In the jungle of corporations. One book, however, was to reconfigure his soul’s GPS, and that’s how he arrived at the monastery.
Father Theologos: Because of communism and the atmosphere that existed at that time, I did not know much about religion, I was not a churchman and so on, I read a lot of books, philosophy, science fiction, in any case, hard books. And at some point, in our circle of friends, we all went to Humanitas to buy books, a colleague of ours, Tomita, God bless him, if he sees, says: “Go to Humanitas and buy this book. It’s good.” I went to Humanitas, bought that book, it was thin, like this, small, it cost 300 lei, which at the time was quite expensive and let’s read it! I had just discovered, after the atheistic communist period, in which man was seen only as a bunch of cells, as a body, I had discovered that man could also have something called a soul. I had already discovered these things. And that for the first time, as never before, I read the preface and found that the author died in the year 774, if I remember correctly. 774, 744… I don’t remember well. About then.
And in the book it opens with phenomenal precision, proves the existence of God, it speaks of the parts of the soul, it speaks of passions, and so on. And all the time I was reading this book, I was thinking about what people have been doing since the year 744 until today? So that’s what I was thinking. And that was the moment, I think, when I realized that orthodoxy is par excellence the science of the sciences. The book is Dogmatics by St. John of Damascene. I really recommend people to read, and I recommend that you find Dogmatics.
Presenter: For Father Theologos, the great change came in increments, and for Abbot Pimen Vlad, it was like a spark that ignited the fire of faith even stronger in his heart.
Father Pimen: When that call comes, it’s like a fire. You leave everything, you are not interested in anything anymore. When I left for the monastery, it was 10 in the evening, snow was 1 meter or so, then I left. I was not interested in anything anymore. It came like a fire. And suddenly everything was erased from me, as they say: desires, plans for the future, everything disappeared, and I went to the monastery. So a grace of God who calls you to the monastery.
Daniel Savopol: Were you in the world then?
Father Pimen: Yes, yes!
Daniel Savopol: At what age?
Father Pimen: Well, I went for example at 18 at the beginning, so on probation. I used to go to the monastery often, yes I say: I’m going to see how they are at the monastery and I stayed in the army for 2 years.
Daniel Savopol: In which area of the country?
Father Pimen: In… I am from Suceava, but in the Neamt area, at Sihăstria Monastery. At Sihăstria, where Father Cleopa was, at that time there were great spiritual fathers. I spent two years before the army. Then they called me into the army on the very day when Ceausescu fled. And at the commissariat they said to me: Go home, we don’t know what’s going on yet. We went home, the so-called revolution passed, after 2 months, as they say, they called us back and then we went and formed the army.
Well, after the army, after I came home, that fire came.
Daniel Savopol: How was it in the army?
Father Pimen: It was very beautiful.
Daniel Savopol: Did you like it?
Father Pimen: I told you, the army… it was the biggest blow to the country that the army is no longer mandatory. Hard- tempered men came out of the army. After a year of military days, those people who came on their fingertips there, kept home in the fluff, so people were formed. They walked home with all the soles of their feet, they took responsibility, they knew how to make a bed, they knew how to clean up, they knew how to wake up in the morning nice, at 5 in the morning, that is, they learned some things. Some things were learned in the military.
Daniel Savopol: Did it prepare you for the monastic life?
Father Pimen: It helped me a lot. Do you know why? Because we, even if they incorporated me to Fălticeni and the period we did it in Iași, through the city there, mission, immediately when the mining strike started, they took us to Bucharest. And I caught the whole army only those nights on the streets. Bottles flowed into our heads from blocks of people, people were saying that we were the terrorists and we were actually trying to keep the city quiet.
We would go up on the beds there and at least 10 would gather around me, after it was the lights out and I began to tell them about it. If I had sat next to Father Cleopas, so many miracles, as many things as Father Cleopas told, I had, as they say, an encyclopedia in my head, which I may have forgotten a lot now. And I told them miracles, and they all sat and listened.
Presenter: The pilgrims who have arrived here today at the cells hanging as if by clouds, are looking for the two theologians. This is how they quench their thirst for words with spirit and life advice.
Cristian Bumbenici: I have contaminated myself for good. Because things happen naturally here.
Daniel Savopol: Yes.
Cristian Bumbenici: Don’t think that it happens, I don’t know what miracles, I don’t know what Saint appears and we drink tea with him, no.
Daniel Savopol: Something is happening to you.
Cristian Bumbenici: The greatest wonder that happens to any man who comes with a pure thought, with a keen mind to understand, is that you actually come to understand what you are. You quickly realize that you have a purpose. Only one.
Then, of course, you are looking for the solutions to get there. Here is the “unpleasant” part because it requires effort. It involves an effort not extraordinary, but rather an effort of will in which you accept that the foundation on which you have laid is largely wrong. And you have to let God restructure you, but in its most beautiful form, it is not necessarily accompanied by suffering, as very falsely some launch this idea.
Father Pimen: So this is a celebration of joy. Christ is born. So that the man shouldn’t be sad. And then what happens? Yes. You are alone at home. You had some trouble… Until Christmas is the time to prepare. The moment you have confessed, let’s say, you go to confess, you must also clean up all your difficulties, because there you are actually unloading yourself to the priest. You go and tell him everything. You cry, laugh, what can you say, you say to your father. Father, look all this I did. Help me! The father releases you [from your sins], everything is erased, the weight that hangs on you is taken away, that suffering, what you went through. He listens to you, regardless. Someone died, someone cheated on you, someone hurt you. You go and unload. After that, you say that you are alone. That night a nice service is done. Why sit at home, cry for pity, when you can go to a nice service.
Or I recommend otherwise. Man, if you still suffer from loneliness, at home you cannot rejoice, go the day before Christmas to a monastery. We have hundreds, thousands of monasteries, as they say, in our country, that receive at the monastery. You can stay overnight too. And there, look, I know, at Sihăstria Monastery, right? They come, how many places they have there, hundreds of people. They sit at the service nicely too, find a father to ask him for advice, and after the service they give dinner to everyone. You also have a table there… Look for a family with many children, right? Prepare the day before and put in the car what you have there, what you have in abundance. Make a pot of cabbage rolls and think that you have 10 children. Do this. Prepare as if you were preparing yourself, that you had a family. And go to a poor family with 10 children and take all these things and sit 2-3 hours with them together. See how all that loneliness disappears. Let’s see how you can enjoy it.
I went to Romania this summer, right? I also went to families with 12 children. Of course I played with those kids. I brought them one a couple of things, and I played with them, and some of them were hanging around me, jumping and so on, so children don’t let you be sad. Make joy there and see that joy comes back to you.
If you don’t have possibilities and you say: But I have nothing to eat, go to a monastery. There you have a service and they give you food there, and you enjoy it too.
Father Theologos: Brethren, be very careful, I often recommend that as soon as a man comes from work, from work, kisses his wife, hugs his children, asks:
“How are you? How have you been?” To show them love and then to pray, the first thing is to go to prayer.
Why? Because if you don’t get yourself to prayer first thing, as soon as you arrive from work, and, and show love in the family, then the man goes on tiktok, news, sports, football, and ends up praying at 12 at night with his head in a bag…[not a clear head].
What Orthodoxy offers us, because Orthodoxy offers us healing from passions, Orthodoxy is the branch of medicine, it is medical science. At the moment when man is healed of passions, of course in our partial case, yes? But compared to what is happening in the world, I dare say that the Hagiorite monks are much more healed of their passions than those in the world, because of this there is much more peace here than in the world. That is, we must extract our mind from the senses. First of all, as I said, is the taste. Yes. That is, what you eat, is immediately this, because you have to eat, but brothers, draw our minds out of sight. I mean, let’s not see that much.
Let’s not believe so much, what we see. Don’t waste your time watching TV or the net, or be addicted to cellular applications that are destroying today’s society. They destroy the way of thinking.
And it no longer lets you… actually have time for yourself. It does not allow you to develop as a personality, to become more spiritual, to become more spiritual.
Father Pimen: And now these three remain: hope, faith, and love. And greater than all is love. And it is said that love never falls. What does love mean? Neither here on earth, nor in eternity. It is the only virtue that does not remain on earth. It goes with us to heaven. Everything else remains here on earth.
Daniel Savopol: It’s all we really have.
Father Pimen: But real love. And why is God called, why is the Saviour Jesus Christ called “Love”? He is the source of love. So it is the only virtue that goes with us to Christ. Love. And that never falls. And we, our mistake, that we often confuse it with selfishness. I mean love… you know, that is, we make demands. “I love you, but you have to do that to me.” That’s not love, because it says that love never asks anything.
Besides that it never falls, it does not ask for anything. It just offers. That’s love when you’re just giving, giving, giving, giving, God will taking care that you also receive.
Presenter: And, even if they seem far from our world, monks are not cut off from it. On the contrary, they make sure that people are well down there.
Father Pimen: Towards the end, that we see the times turned upside down, it says, the world will go crazy. What does it mean to go crazy? Not that you take him and drive him to the hospital. But it says, I mean, break all the normal, all these beautiful principles, and they take other things, invent other abnormal things, which if the man 300 years ago looked at people doing, they would say,
“Man, these are crazy.”
Daniel Savopol: Yes.
Father Pimen: Everything they do is crazy.
Daniel Savopol: Yes, that’s right.
Father Pimen: That’s exactly the thing. The world will go crazy. And there will be few who will not go crazy. Anchor in God, they remain pure in mind, close to God. And the foolish will say of the few, “Look fools.” Because they don’t do like them.
Daniel Savopol: Pariah.
Father Pimen: Yes. This is precisely what, this means, that a child had come here for 16 years and said: “Father, I am in Italy. And look, he says, all the kids in school smoke, do drugs, do all kinds of things. I keep my way. At church, at home, I behave nicely at school, I learn, that is, I try like a Christian. And they all say, “He’s weird.” So almost weekly I get messages from families whose children are abducted by the state. For no reason. They also took it from the hospital. Just born, a week later they took her baby. They came home and took his child. From the kindergarten it called that: come that the Child Protection took your child. Without reason. And they didn’t give it back to him.
Daniel Savopol: Without good reasons.
Father Pimen: Yes, without reason, nothing. He was just told that it had been taken. He was told at some point that by mistake. But they didn’t give it back to him.
Daniel Savopol: Such a thing should not be possible.
Father Pimen: So, a bunch of these. And what reasons? Because they said that they give in to these families, let there be no roots, no history, you no longer love your country… so, all this because a man who no longer loves his country, who has no roots, you do what you want with him. Because that one you sweep him from one country to another, he has no root. And you put them in front — it was in the old days — bread and circus.
Daniel Savopol: Yes.
Father Pimen: And then you do what you want with him. So they need a generation, we might say, robotic. That just listens and executes. And that means the severing with God. Because God is freedom. We see, God has left us free. God Himself Who created us. We see, we have an icon somewhere that “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears it, he will open it to me.” And that icon has no doorknob on the side of the Savior is. That is, it does not enter by force, as we say, with our boots, into our hearts, into our lives, if we do not open it ourselves. If we don’t call Him. But he gave us this greatest gift, to be free, to choose for ourselves. But when all this is ending, we are responsible for what we choose.
Presenter: Father Theologos, for example, became a modern apostle of good counsels. He made his own website where he posts articles written by him, photos and videos with guidance for believers who need a good thought or advice.
Father Theologos: Chiliaathonita.ro. in the beginning it was, as I was saying, there were short texts, there were photos and today we arrive video. Again I don’t want to offend anyone and I really love all of you on the team, I honestly speak this and confess in front of God and in front of the camera, I don’t want to make a video, but I want to write, as I said this many times, but unfortunately, people today can’t read. A great drama. A great drama. That is what I say, why? Because video induces a certain way of thinking, which is very fast and very superficial.
But at one point I even made a series of podcasts in which I mentioned TikTok.
As the most powerful weapon on this earth. Because, of course, Putin’s tanks, yes, big drama or I know, American planes or God knows what weaponry at this hour… they bomb and kill 10 people, which is a huge drama. A soul to die and it is a huge drama, let alone when I die I don’t know how many people and… Yes, but TikTok is destroying a generation. It is destroying a generation. The thinking capacity of people, the value system, everything else.
Let the man be him, let him be the master of technology and not technology, his master. But even, sometimes I even ask people, I see them that they are, that they worship the Celular god, yes, and I ask them two questions. At first I ask them how much did you spent on this cell phone? And he says a sum. Then I ask him how much did it buy you for? Yes? For free. With the willing part, with the part with which we want is prayer and reading. Reading not on the net, brothers. Okay, ok. And on the net, but on the net it is a lot. Try reading books, if you still have the necessary ability to concentrate. Because, unfortunately, at this hour the cell phones, screens, in fact, have destroyed our attention span. Attention lifespan it is called.
Presenter: The cinephile monk, with an aura as a TV producer, decides to interview us. For the chilie athonita site. We gladly accept and learn from this experience.
Daniel Savopol: I like to think that I’ve always been an honest guy, a guy who didn’t run for money, a guy who chose to grow slowly but surely on a path he wants to be a straight one. And easy, easy, I got into the press, my first job was at a news station, directly on TV. We already have 10 years of press now, and hundreds of white hairs.
Father Theologos: Yes, yes, yes.
Daniel Savopol: And I don’t see my life without God. Me personally. I don’t see it. I can’t do this job well without God.
Presenter: Here on Athos, people are closer to God. Some choose to stand out in front. To speak. To show. To guide. Others, however, are unseen. There are hermits who live in the mountains. And in shelters only known to them. There is room for everyone. But especially for miracles. Some seen and said, others unsaid.
Father Theologos: There was a Father, and he still is, I think he still lives, I don’t know, at a hermitage here nearby, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter where, who — you see that even though our cells are in the forest. So: cell, mountain, forest. Forest at how many meters? At 2 meters, at 5 meters. And the man wanted to expand his garden in the forest. To go further, get water, and so on. Good. And when he had gone, he went into the forest, and dug and found some relics, by the book: with good fragrance, unspoiled, all, all, literally relics of a Great, Great Saint.
He was very excited about this discovery and because it was evening he went to sleep and in the morning he said that he would go down to the Kyriakon — the central church of the hermitage which is a few hundred meters away through the forest — and he will announce the great news. And in the evening, at night, the Saint appears to him. The Saint appears before him and says: “You and I did not become sanctified together, so that you may have a blessing to speak of my relics.” The man was frightened and the next day he went and told the whole story, as you can see, apart from the place. To this day, it is not known where he is. The relics are there, it is not known where…
Daniel Savopol: The Saint did not want it.
Father Theologos: The Saint did not want it; the Saint did not want it. Because the Saints are very humble. And after death, it doesn’t matter. “I lay there until the Second Coming.” Until the Second Coming.
Daniel Savopol: How is Heaven and how is hell?
Father Pimen: So what’s going on? We have many testimonies from the Holy Fathers who say. Through which it was shown. They had visions, of this and hell is actually like a fire. An unquenchable fire. It says: if there is a material fire here, you put everything you want in it and it burns, and you see how… that it melts the iron, has reached a temperature, let’s just imagine that there [in hell] it is thousands of times higher. And it never ends and it’s not a fire that you burned and it’s over. So you feel those pains, but it never ends.
Daniel Savopol: You cannot die. You’re there.
Father Pimen: That pain continues all the time. And Heaven, if you had moments when you had the greatest joys, but not joys that I ate well and drank and felt good. No. Those spiritual joys. Maybe you, in the world, have wanted a child for years, and in the end that child came to you and you have that joy, you feel fulfilled. You feel like you are floating.
A child was born to you. I mean, put that joy a thousand times more.
Daniel Savopol: And it does not end.
Father Pimen: And it never ends. Yes. So it’s a joy that can’t be explained. One came and had a pipe, with it turned off, and someone asked him, “Where did you come from?” He says: “From hell.” “And what did you look for there?” “I went to light my pipe because I heard it was fire.” “And why didn’t you turn it on, because it was extinguished.” He said, “There’s no fire there.” He says: “How so? They say hell is burning.” He says, “No, everyone comes with his own fire, which he has gathered on the earth.”
Presenter: We return to Christmas and its meaning. It is not about gifts, dinners, meaningless running, but only about the soul.
Daniel Savopol: What will you have at Christmas dinner?
Father Pimen: For example, fish is eaten. And maybe you make, for example a fish soup, make another fish in the oven or I don’t know what, and you’ve done your job. You can also eat cheese. A little cheese and you’re done. So you don’t have to. It’s never with us.
And even at the feasts here, there is no more than first and second course. There is nothing else. To put others, and others. No. Because it’s enough. That is, what it takes more for a man to get enough too. Like how much you can eat? Especially after a month, two of fasting. What can you eat then? You hurt yourself. You taste a little bit of one… but that’s not worth it.
This is where services are valuable. They are done, the bigger the feast, the longer the vigil. We, on every feast, gather at the great Church. We gather in this Skete, which is like a village here, we have a big church in the center, where we all gather at every feast. And we do vigil from 6 in the evening until about 1:00. This is the vigil, after which we return to the cells and in the morning at 6 and we leave again, because at 7:00 the Divine Liturgy begins. And then we have all the time, that is, this beauty of the holiday, we receive it somehow, we live it through the vigil we do, and then we try to take communion all of us. That is, you take Christ, you enjoy the vigil and normal, that after that toil… and let me tell you something else.
In the morning, after a service like this, let’s say, of vigil, of about 7 hours and in the morning Liturgy yesterday, which is about 2-3 hours, you are tired, you can have any delicacies, you eat something and you want to go to rest for 2 hours. The beauty is to sit there, to withstand 6-7 hours at a service, where it is beautifully sung, read, that is, you have contact with God.
Daniel Savopol: This is your food.
Father Pimen: In fact, that’s it. Otherwise, we, what happens? We, our coming to the monastery, nobody brought us with the lasso. Alas, you have to stay in the monastery. We came here fondly. A call from God. If you don’t have God’s call, you can’t resist staying in the monastery.
We were in Thessalonica the other day, because we had the patron saint of the cell here and we did some shopping, and we also went to some larger shops to get some things. So in these huge shops where you would walk for an hour to cross them from one end to the other, so 80 percent of them were just those things for Christmas. But they had nothing to do with the Nativity. Different Santa, different… everything you wanted possible, but no deal with the feast itself. That’s what it came to. It became commercial.
Only Christians still hold the true… you see we say Christmas. They call them Hristughina. That is, the Birth of Christ. The Saviour descends to earth between us, for us. To heal us, to do us good, to save us. And this is why we see that at the Birth of the Son, the angels themselves sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill among men.”
Father Pimen: Let there be no Christian who does not experience the joy of the Nativity of the Lord. But as I said, you can’t live this without God. Do not ride a pig, as they say, cabbage rolls, drink, and that. This is not the birth of the Lord. So celebration means reconciliation with God. And reconciliation with God, I said. Through confession, by asking God like this:
Forgive me Lord, for look, all year I have upset you. I’ve done so much. Forgive me Lord and let us ask forgiveness from the whole family, from the wife, from the children, from everyone around us, because we make mistakes every day. Let’s embrace everyone lovingly. I love you, forgive me. Look, out of madness, from drinking, out of I don’t know what, I upset you. Forgive me! That is to say, let this this celebration really be a joy, but that means to be reconciled, to ask forgiveness from everyone, to ask forgiveness from God. And let no one be absent from the Church on the day of the Lord’s Nativity.
Presenter: Three days and three nights. That’s what we needed to clear our minds, lift our eyes out of the ground, and look up to heaven. Let us be content with what we are and what we have and understand that from our little we must give to others. Only then will we be one step closer to God.
We return to ours. And we leave behind the mountain of faith. Here, between men and saints, Christmas is every day.
Mihai Ghiță: Thank you for joining us in this Christmas Special Edition. I hope these holidays will bring you peace, fulfillment and at least a little abundance. Next week we step into the New Year. I am waiting for you here, along with my team “This is Romania”.
I look forward to seeing you! Thank you for all your support! Goodbye.
Pomelnice online și donații
Doamne ajută!
Dacă aveți un card și doriți să trimiteți pomelnice online și donații folosind cardul dumneavoastră, sau/și să susțineți activitatea noastră filantropică, inclusiv acest site, vă rugăm să introduceți datele necesare mai jos pentru a face o mică donație. Forma este sigură – procesatorul de carduri este Stripe – leader mondial în acest domeniu. Nu colectăm datele dvs. personale.
Dacă nu aveți card sau nu doriți să-l folosiți, accesați Pagina de donații și Pomelnice online .
Ne rugăm pentru cei dragi ai dumneavoastră! (vă rugăm nu introduceți detalii neesențiale precum dorințe, grade de rudenie, introduceri etc. Treceți DOAR numele!)
Mai ales pentru pomelnicele recurente, vă rugăm să păstrați pomelnicele sub 20 de nume. Dacă puneți un membru al familiei, noi adăugăm „și familiile lor”.
Dumnezeu să vă răsplătească dragostea!
