[aymonded]

Science and spiritual life :
(By Elder Paisios of Mount Athos )

Evil starts when the mind concentrates only on science and is totally separated from God. This is why it is difficult for people who think this way to find inner peace and balance. By contrast, when the mind revolves around God, and is illuminated and sanctified, science is used both for our spiritual edification and for the benefit of the world.

Science can be of great help but it can also muddle the mind greatly. I have met souls who possessed great lucidity even though their education was limited. If those who have muddled their mind with science manage to clarify it with the grace of God, then, naturally, they will have more tools for their work. But if these tools are not sanctified, if their knowledge lacks holiness, then it will be used only for secular work and not for spiritual work. Scientists and educated people who give precedence to their inner formation, to the edification of the soul, and bring their secular education to the service of spiritual growth, they will experience a rapid spiritual transformation. if they also lead spiritual lives, they will be able to help many people positively, by removing from their hearts the anxiety of hell and opening the way for heavenly joy. There are people of God who do not have as many academic degrees as others, but they can help people more, because they are full of divine grace rather than diplomas.

The world is so filled with sin that what we need the most is people given to prayer and to living a spiritual life. All these books and papers are paper money, valuable only if there are gold reserves in our bank, if our lives are spiritual through and through. And so we must drill into the “mine” of the soul, for otherwise science and education will be worth nothing.

I remember an elderly monk at Esphigmenou monastery on Mount Athos , who was so simple, that he thought “Ascension” was the name of a woman Saint. He prayed to her on his komboschini, “Saint of God, intercede for us!” Once, he had to feed a sick brother in the infirmary and had nothing to offer him. He immediately went down stairs, opened a window overlooking the sea, stretched his arms out and said, “Ascension, mu saint, give me a little fish for the brother.” And right away, as if by a miracle, a big fish jumped out of the sea and into his hands. The others who saw him were astonished, but he simply looked at them smiling, as if he were saying “what’s so strange about what you have just seen?”.

And then look at us. We may know everything about the life and martyrdom of the saints, or about when and how the ascension took place and yet, we cannot even catch a tiny little fish! These are the strange and the paradoxical things of the spiritual life, which the reasoning of the intellectuals that are centred on themselves and not on God, cannot explain, because their knowledge is of this world and sterile; their spirit is ill with secularism and their mind void of the Holy Spirit