Archimandrite Vasileios > Quotes

“Fortunate is the man who is broken in pieces and offered to others, who is poured out and given to others to drink. When his time of trial comes, he will not be afraid. He will have nothing to fear. He will already have understood that, in the celebration of love, by grace man is broken and not divided, eaten and never consumed. By grace he has become Christ, and so his life gives food and drink to his brother. That is to say, he nourishes the other's very existence and makes it grow.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“The Author of life has shattered the bonds of purely mechanical existence. You are an organic part of a theanthropic mystery.
You have a specific task, a small, minute task, which makes you a partaker in the whole. The mystery of life is summed up and worked out in your being, in your character. You are an image of God. You are of value not for what you have but for what you are; and you are a brother of the Son.
Thus we all enter into the feast of the firstborn. God, who is above all, may be recognized in the very texture of your person, in the structure of your being. You see Him dwelling within you. And you discern traces of Him in your insatiable thirst for life and in your love. The struggle to reach Him is the very vision of His face. It is the fundamental principle of your being.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“I do not wish, I do not desire to live long. I wish to live with You. It is You who are long life, vital and without end,
Come and do Your will in me.
Come when You wish and as You see fit.
Come like a breeze, like a blessing, if You think it right.
Come like a thunderbolt to test me and burn up my being, if You think that is how it should be.
I know that what will follow Your visitation, in whatever way You come, will be what I desire most deeply and cannot express, and what I cannot find anywhere outside You. That is why it is You that I seek and await.
I am disenchanted with myself. Only You remain. And I come to You, the healer, the light and the sanctification of souls and bodies. I come, sick as I am, and abandon to You my whole life and hope.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“This theological life and witness is a blessing which sweetens man's life. It is a food which is cut up and given to others; a drink poured out and offered in abundance for man to consume and quench his thirst. In this state one does not talk about life, one gives it. One feeds the hungry and gives drink to the thirsty. By contrast, scholastic theology and intellectual constructions do not resemble the Body of the Lord, the true food, nor His Blood, the true drink; rather they are like a stone one finds in one's food. This is how indigestible and inhumanly hard the mass of scholasticism seems to the taste and the mouth of one accustomed to the liturgy of the Church, and it is rejected as something foreign and unacceptable.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“The Liturgy is not just a sermon. It is not something to be listened to or watched. The Liturgy never grows old. Its cup does not go dry. No one can say he has got to know it or got used to it because he has understood it once or once been carried away by the attraction of it. The faithful are not like spectators or an audience following something that makes a greater or lesser emotional impression on them. The faithful partake in the Divine Liturgy. The mystery is celebrated in each of the faithful, in the whole of the liturgical community.
We do not see Christ externally, we meet Him within us.
Christ takes shape in us. The faithful become Christs by grace.
What happens is a miraculous interpenetration by grace and an identification without confusion. The whole man, in body and in spirit, enters the unalloyed world of the uncreated grace of the Trinity. And at the same time he receives into himself Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The whole of God is offered to man,
"He makes His home with
him" (John 14:23); and the whole man is offered to God:
"let us commend ourselves and each other and all our life unto Christ our God." "God united with and known to gods.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“The elements of the world pass away with a loud noise
(II Pet. 3:10): and everything is clothed with light and existence as with a garment. Everything exists and acquires substance. Representing the cherubim in the liturgical singing of the thrice holy hymn, we are caught up into heaven-whether in the body or out of the body we do not know, God knows (cf. II Cor. 12:2) -and we sing the triumphal hymn with the blessed powers. When we are there, beyond space and time, we enter the realm of eschatology. We begin to receive the Lord "invisibly escorted by the hosts of angels." Thus anyone who participates in the Liturgy, who is taken up-"he was caught up into heaven"-acquires new senses.
He sees history not from its deceptive side, which is created and passes away, but from the true, eternal and luminous side which is the age to come. Then the believer delights in this world too, because he experiences the relation between it and the other world, the eternal and indestructible: the whole of creation has a trinitarian structure and harmony. The thrice-holy hymn is sung by the "communion of saints," the Church, in the depths of its being.
Solemnly sung as part of the Divine Liturgy, the thrice. holy hymn overcomes tumult, and makes everything join in the celebration and sing together in complete silence and stillness, the silence and stillness of the age to come. This is an indication that we have already received the pledge of the life to come and of the Kingdom.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“The Kingdom of God is not a Talmud, nor is it a mechanical collection of scriptural or patristic quotations outside our being and our lives. The Kingdom of God is within us, like a dynamic leaven which fundamentally changes man's whole life, his spirit and his body. What is required in patristic study, in order to remain faithful to the Fathers' spirit of freedom and worthy of their spiritual nobility and freshness, is to approach their holy texts with the fear in which we approach and venerate their holy relics and holy icons. This liturgical reverence will soon reveal to us that here is another inexpressible grace. The whole atmosphere is different. There are certain vital passages in the patristic texts which, we feel, demand of us, and work within us, an unaccustomed change.
These we must make part of our being and our lives, as truths and as standpoints, to leaven the whole. And at the same time we must put our whole self into studying the Fathers, waiting and marking time. This marriage, this baptism into patristic study brings what we need, which is not an additional load of patristic references and the memorizing of other people's opinions, but the acquisition of a new clear-sighted sense which enables man to see things differently and rightly. If we limit ourselves to learning passages by heart and classifying them mechanically — and teach men likewise — then we fall into a basic error which simply makes us fail to teach and make known the patristic way of life and philosophy.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“Seeing Christ externally, objectively, loving Him without repentance, and weeping from sympathy, like the daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23:28), leads to a delusive emotionalism alien to the Liturgy. By contrast, the quiet celebration of the Liturgy gives guidance for a correct Orthodox attitude and provides an air of devout contrition. Joy does not laugh aloud and wound those who are sorrowful, nor does pain cast gloom and disillusionment over the weak. There reigns everywhere the devout contrition which secretly and inexhaustibly comforts everyone, making them joyful and uniting them as brothers. Human emotionalism is one thing and the devout contrition of the Liturgy quite another. The one causes man skin-deep irritation but torments him physically; the other nails him down but comforts him, revealing our God-like nature in the very depths of our existence. This is something that burdens you with a heavy obligation but at the same time gives you the wings of invincible hope.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“Orthodox theology is a different matter from beginning to end. It does not assert a proposition; it bears witness. It is not contradiction, but confession.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“It is not the sun that gives light to the earth, nor imagination that opens heaven-
"heaven and earth will pass away" (Matt. 24:35)-but the presence of God that makes earth and heaven new and incorruptible and unites them. "And the city has no need of sun" (Rev. 21:23). The reality of the Liturgy is not illumined by a light which can pass away, "for no visible thing is good." The unseen presence of the Lord lights and reveals everything.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church

“Anything which does not feed everyone, which is not the joy of all-"for all the people"-is not your joy either. A joy of your own--even the greatest joy cannot be other than denial and remorse for you when it is not a joy, nourishment and relief for all. If your joy is divided when it is broken, or consumed when it is eaten, it is hell. Leave it alone and look for something else. For instead of nourishing your inner and true man, it will inevitably consume you and give you nothing in return. It will corrode you, it will devour you.
In the Divine Liturgy we find the food, life and joy which is cut up and shared out, and yet is not divided but rather unites; it is partaken of and eaten, and yet is not consumed but is embodied in us and sanctifies us. We come to understand that this organic link we have with everyone else is a great benefit and an assurance of the total and personal salvation of man. It is made perfect in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy and is revealed with complete clarity as a gift of divine grace sent down upon us.”
― Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church