Athonite Flowers: Ten Essays on the Spiritual Life

The monastic life experienced by Monk Moses on the Holy Mountain of Athos for nearly forty years, with unceasing prayer and worship, ascetic discipline and constant spiritual vigilance, galvanized him profoundly in the knowledge of Orthodox theology and in the practice of a Christian way of life in the Orthodox Church.

The life of Monk Moses, however, was also tempered by a lifelong illness that made him personally aware of a paradoxical co-existence: the theology of the Cross of Christ as an inseparable presupposition to his glorious victory over sin and death in the Resurrection. The eloquent texts of Monk Moses on the spiritual life, therefore, seem to convey, almost effortlessly, his personal existential experience of human pain and suffering but also the heights of a spiritual restoration and a fullness of life in Christ that are available to all who respond faithfully to his challenging call.

Being himself an authentic bearer of both the death and resurrection of Christ, Monk Moses brings convincing guidance and consolation, through his inspiring essays, to those who hunger and thirst for a true and authentic spiritual life in our contemporary troubled times and circumstances. As a follow-up to the previous two books of translations of Monk Moses’s essays, Fr. Chamberas hopes that these additional essays will offer insight and hope to those seeking comfort and advice.

Compiled and Translated by Fr. Peter A. Chamberas