Archimandrite Zacharias: Prodigal Sons

The great tragedy of our times lies in the fact that we live, speak, think, and even pray to God, outside our heart, outside our Father’s house.

And truly our Father’s house is our heart, the place where “the spirit of glory and of God” would find repose, that Christ may “be formed in us”.

Indeed, only then can we be made whole, and become hypostases in the image of the true and perfect Hypostasis, the Son and Word of God, Who created and redeemed us by the precious Blood of His ineffable sacrifice.

Archimandrite Zacharias on 

"DEFEATING SIN"

This attractive exposition of current, yet timeless, anthropological issues is distinguished by its clarity of vision and originality of expression. As the book unfolds, it becomes increasingly evident that the unbroken Tradition of the Church is the sole key to understanding God’s revelation to man. Because the author has so firmly placed his trust in the holiness of this Tradition, his thinking, both creative and inspired, elucidates the charismatic character of the way of salvation which leads to the renewal of life. His doctrine issound, and it will surely prove to be of great value in informing and convincing the heart of modern man about God’s truth.

-- Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou) of the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex, England.

Click here to listen to Fr. Zacharias's talk from Ancient Faith Radio (MP3 download.) 

Remember Thy First Love

February 19, 2013 Length: 13:53

Nicholas Chapman reviews Remember Thy First Love: The Three Stages of the Spiritual Life in the Theology of Elder Sophrony by Archimandrite Zacharias, published by the Stavropegic Monastery of St. John The Baptist

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The Cultivation of the Heart by the Grace of Mindfulness of Death

 The Grace of Mindfulness of Death

In the book, “Christ Our Way and Our Life”, Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou writes about many of the stages of the spiritual life, including, remembrance of death. He is an Archimandrite in the monastery of St John the Baptist, in Tolleshunt Knights near Maldon, Essex in England. Archimandrite Zacharias spent decades under the spiritual direction of Elder Sophrony of blessed memory, whom, we know, was himself the disciple of St Silouan the Athonite. Here are some passages from his book;

"Considered within the whole mystery of Christ, death is transformed into a challenge on a sublime and metaphysical level, which inspires ‘repentance unto life’, and mindfulness of death proves to be a gift of the Holy Spirit…The purpose of his (man’s) pre-eternal destiny is the acquisition of eternity as an inalienable possession. ..If life comes to a definitive end with death, it has absolutely no meaning. Awareness of our mortality poses the problem of eternity without accepting concession to anything except God. The grace of God, which seeks out the lost sheep wherever he may be, is able to provoke man'seizing him by the throat’, and intensifying his quandary by bestowing a mindfulness of death, which – according to the experience of Fr. Sophrony – proves, as scalding as a ‘mass of molten metal’. The remembrance of death, when it takes the form of awareness of eternity in a negative form, is a remarkable ‘calling’ of man to his pre-eternal destiny to become á ‘partaker of the divine nature’ (2 Pet.1:4). This remembrance, which is activated by the grace of God, is a spiritual phenomenon entirely set apart from the natural or psychological knowledge that man is mortal. Charismatic mindfulness of death is a reality of another order, ‘non-earthy, incomprehensible’. It visits man with sovereign might and prepares him to accept the revelation of the Living God. In his heart a new interior sensitivity is born, which changes his spiritual outlook. It is a spiritual state, which assist man, who is as yet unable to contemplate God, in his quest for eternal truth.

Human Relationships in the Light of Christ

Archmandrite Zacharias 

"Human Relationships in the Light of Christ", talk given by Archimandrite Zacharias in the Orthodox Christian Church in Edinburgh, on 8th of November 2012. 

Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou) is a spiritual Father at the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex, UK. He is a disciple of Elder Sophrony Zacharov, one of the most significant Orthodox Elders of our times, himself a disciple and biographer of St Silouan the Athonite. Based upon the authentic spiritual legacy of Sophrony's, Fr Zacharias has written some of the most important books on Christian spirituality available today.