PSALMS AND THE LIFE OF FAITH

by Aimilianos of Simonopetra

Ships from and sold by AtHOS

400 pages, Paperback

About the author

Aimilianos of Simonopetra, titled as Elder and Archimandrite, was the abbot of Simonopetra Monastery from 1974 to 2000. As a young monk, Elder Aimilianos looked forward to a career as a foreign missionary. Assigned to a monastery, the Elder experienced a spiritual crisis from which he emerged a man, supremely energized, and dedicated to revitalization of monastic life.

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the commentary on 12 Psalms by a monk who has prayed them daily for years. As anyone who has read them, let alone prays them, knows, the Psalms are difficult to understand. Not only between Psalms but within any one Psalm the perspective and purpose changes, verses can seem disjointed, some things said in them are startling, unsettling or seemingly meaningless. But if you pray them constantly, you assume they have meaning, and the meaning can become clear. Are they speaking to God? About God? Prophecies of Christ? Revealing the Psalmist's heart? Speaking to me in my struggles as a Christian? Fr Aimilianos walks us slowly through 12 Psalms offering us what has been revealed to him. He occasionally refers to things scholarship might reveal, he does compare the Hebrew and Greek versions. The footnotes show us what many Fathers thought through the centuries. A good spiritual read if you are willing to take the time to see these Psalms as prayers.

[Paul Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elder Aimilianos has been called the Chrysostom (Golden mouthed) of our times. It is evident that through a life of monastic struggle, sorrows, patients, obedience, he attained heavenly joys and here he shares the joys of the psalms with us. His explanations of the psalms are so clear, reveal a depth to them which I never knew and are easy for us modern less academic folk to understand.