Hierarch’s Divine Liturgy in Vodoča ( 10.02.2006 )
Today, on the day of Saint Ephraim the Syrian and Saint Isaac the Syrian, Metropolitan Nahum of Strumica celebrated Divine Liturgy in the chapel of Saints Gregory Palamas and Joseph the Spilaioti in the Vodoča monastery. At the Liturgy His Eminence ordained into priesthood the former hierodeacon, now hieromonk gregory.
“Go inside you and live inside yourself, in the wonderful cell of your spirit (mind)—there seek the Kingdom, as our Saviour taught us… Thus, enter within you, dwell in your heart for God is there. He does not forsake you, you are forsaking Him… Wonderful and wondrous this is, unreachable for the heavenly and ineffable for the earthly ones. The unapproachable, to every mind, enters inside the heart and dwells there; the One hidden from them who radiate flames makes His abode in the heart. The earth cannot bear under His feet, and the pure heart bears Him inside itself. The heaven is too small for His hands, and the heart is His abode. All of the creation cannot hold Him within its limits, yet if the heart asks for that, he will settle in the little heart. A little space does God choose in man for His abode and the man becomes God’s temple, where God dwells and lives. The soul is His temple, and the heart a Holy altar on which sacrifices of praise and doxology are offered, while the mind is the priest who stands there and performs sacred actions.” (Saint Ephraim the Syrian)
