Speaker A
Death is just a door. Only our body dies, while our soul will never die.
Explore Mount Athos, the unique all-male monastic republic in Greece, its traditions, challenges, and spiritual life through the eyes of a traveler.
Key Takeaways
- Mount Athos is a unique spiritual republic with strict rules excluding women to maintain monastic focus.
- Monastic life centers on poverty, chastity, obedience, and continuous prayer, preparing for eternal life.
- Access is limited and guarded, reflecting the sacred and secluded nature of the community.
- The monksā knowledge includes medicinal herbs with reputed healing powers.
- True happiness, as portrayed, is linked to faith, mission, and spiritual fulfillment rather than worldly pleasures.
Summary
- Mount Athos is a theocratic micronation in northern Greece where women are banned to prevent distraction from monastic life.
- The video follows Giuseppe, a traveler on a mission to explore happiness by meeting extraordinary people, as he visits Mount Athos.
- Access to Mount Athos is highly restricted, with only 110 daily permits issued, and only 10 for non-Orthodox pilgrims.
- Monks live by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, dedicating their lives to prayer and spiritual preparation for the afterlife.
- The video features encounters with monks, including a Romanian monk who has lived in seclusion for over ten years.
- Vatopedi Monastery, home to the precious relic of the Virgin Mary's girdle, is highlighted as a key spiritual site.
- Female animals are also banned, emphasizing the strict separation from feminine influences on the mountain.
- The crew experiences reluctance and limited access from monks, culminating in their expulsion from Mount Athos.
- The video includes a brief promotion of sustainable cricket-based snacks, linking to environmental consciousness.
- Despite challenges, the journey offers insights into monastic life, spiritual happiness, and the importance of mission and faith.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Death and Soul
- 01:39Giuseppe's Mission and Mount Athos Overview
- 02:44Women Ban and Access Restrictions
- 03:54Arrival and First Impressions
- 04:37Monastic Life and Vows
- 05:20Meeting the Romanian Monk and Medicinal Herbs
- 07:25Vatopedi Monastery and Spiritual Practices
- 08:20Challenges and Expulsion from Mount Athos
- 09:12Sustainable Snacks Promotion
- 10:44Reflection on Monastic Mission and Happiness
Full Transcript ā Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Do you ever feel like youāve lost something being here? No, I found everything here. Why lost?
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Poverty, chastity, and obedience. Thatās all. We are here. There should be a hermit here hiding among the rocks.
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But we've been told that as soon as he hears footsteps, he runs away. Here on Mount Athos, there are no women, precisely because women can be a distraction.
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We must pray incessantly to the Mother of God, who is a female figure, and fight against these spirits of the darkness of these times that only drive towards the pleasures of the flesh.
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My name is Giuseppe, and I have a mission: to travel the world to meet the most extraordinary people on the planet and ask them a simple question: What is happiness to you?
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Welcome to the āHAPPINESS PROJECT.ā We just left the passport office where we managed to obtain the āDiamonitirion,ā that is, the most peculiar passport in the world, because thanks to this, we will be able to enter the Republic where women are not allowed.
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We are about to enter Mount Athos, the kingdom of chastity. Mount Athos is a micronation hidden in a remote mystical corner of northern Greece.
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It is one of the few theocracies existing in the world, where sovereignty is symbolically exercised by God, and the monks are considered the interpreters of divine will.
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In this spiritual nation composed of twenty monasteries, about 1600 monks from all over the world profess the Orthodox Christian faith, choosing to isolate themselves from the vices of the world, but especially from women.
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In fact, Mount Athos is the only republic in the world where women are not allowed to enter because they are considered too great a temptation that would distract the monks from a life dedicated to God.
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However, access to Mount Athos is also limited for men. In fact, only 110 permits are issued per day, of which only ten are reserved for non-Orthodox pilgrims like us.
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And as if that werenāt enough, the only way to reach Mount Athos is through this old ferry which, when the sea is rough, I assure you, can turn the 2-hour crossing into an experience anything but pleasant.
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Weāre off to a good start! This great adventure on Mount Athos. Soaking wet! However, these obstacles are a small price to pay to enter one of the most sacred and mysterious places in the world.
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We've arrived. I wanted to present myself appropriately to the monks inside the monasteries, but...
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the sea had other plans. After a cold start, Mount Athos seems to welcome us with open arms.
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We immediately meet a monk who is meditating while weaving a komboskini, which is the Orthodox rosary.
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A rosary! How many beads does it have? One hundred, but it depends. It can have three hundred, one hundred, one hundred and fifty, thirty-three...
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Do you ever feel like youāve lost something being here? No, I found everything here. Why lost?
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Monasticism is, if you don't want to get married and start a family for any reason, a path you can take. You can become a monk.
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You either have a family or become a monk in the Orthodox tradition. Thereās no middle ground.
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We try to keep the promise we made to Jesus Christ during the rite of tonsure.
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Poverty, chastity, and obedience. If you have the Holy Spirit, you lack nothing. You have everything.
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You have everything. You are happy. This life lasts 80, 90, or 100 years, while in the afterlife it will be endless.
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This life serves to prepare us for the next. The good thing is that if you have the Holy Spirit with you, you will be the happiest person ever in both this and the next life.
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May God be with you, brother. Thank you very much. The Holy Trinity will save us.
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Thank you. Only the Holy Trinity can save us. Three kisses, okay. Three kisses for the Holy Trinity.
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Okay. This has been a nice welcome for us. Thank you very much. May God bless you, brother.
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This is indeed the perfect welcome to enter Karyes, which is the capital of Mount Athos, probably one of the smallest capitals in the world, because here about a hundred people live who take care of the administrative and chancery work of all the monasteries.
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And there, inside the Greek consulate, once a year, all the abbots of the twenty monasteries gather to make the most important decisions for the Republic.
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The adventure is about to truly begin, because we are going to meet a priest who will take us inside one of the most important monasteries on Mount Athos. Our guide is a Romanian monk who has lived secluded in a cell for over ten years.
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His stories make Mount Athos even more fascinating, as he explains how he and his brothers know miraculous medicines thanks to their deep knowledge of medicinal herbs.
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My abbot knows many things about herbs. Medicinal herbs. He found an herb that can cure cancer. He has helped many people with this herb. It is very rare and grows in the mountains. He recently went out to look for it.
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Many people he helped were cured of cancer, and one of them, to thank him, gave him this car as a gift.
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We are about to arrive at the holy monastery of Vatopedi, and you will see the places where you are allowed to enter.
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One of the most important monasteries on the mount is Vatopedi, where one of the most precious relics in the world is preserved, the girdle of the Virgin Mary.
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Inside, time does not follow the modern clock, but the Byzantine one, which means that the day begins with sunset, to pray from the early hours of the night, and immerse oneself in the spiritual dimension that seems eternal.
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And not only are women not allowed, but even female animals are prohibited on Athos.
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All the animals we see around, especially the cats, should be male cats. Even female animals are not allowed on Mount Athos.
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First impressions are not very positive. Thereās a lot of reluctance to talk to us.
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Weāre not being allowed into any offices. Theyāre not welcoming us at all. Few monks want to talk to us.
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This adventure might be harder than expected. They kicked us out. They kicked us out of Mount Athos.
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It makes me laugh, but thereās nothing funny about it because weāve been left at the port and weāre waiting for the first boat, which we donāt know when it will arrive, so this will probably be some sort of flash forward.
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You already know that the ending of this video will be slightly different, and probably if you see the monks upset from now on, thereās a reason: we were kicked out.
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At this point, given our experiences in adventures like these, anything can happen, like being left stranded here in a port without knowing when youāll be able to leave, without food, but not for us, because we always bring snacks like SMALL GIANTS.
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Do you know what it is? Well... Iāll explain it to you right away. Small Giants is a very Italian company that produces the snacks of the future made with cricket flour.
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Yes, you heard that right, cricket flour. It may sound strange, but as with every report, we are here to break every prejudice.
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In fact, insects are the food of the future. For example, the crickets used to make these rosemary crackers have more protein than beef, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, more omega-3 than salmon, more potassium than bananas, and more vitamin B12 than red meat.
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A true superfood, delicious but above all sustainable, because every bite of Small Giants helps reduce environmental impact.
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So you enjoy all the benefits of edible insects without even realizing it and save the planet.
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And for the more curious, there are also these whole insect snacks with chili lime or barbecue flavor, which are a concentrated source of pure protein.
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Under the video, youāll find a discount code to try them at a special price, and as always, Iāll leave the link in the description to try the snack of the future.
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Alas, the only place we are allowed to enter is the monksā cemetery, which perhaps is metaphorically the most symbolic to understand their mission.
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You come here when you have an inner conflict, when you have temptations. All the
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I should soon be here, so I have to be careful about how I live my life.
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Itās a warning. Itās a warning, yes. This is what we all become in the end.
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After their death, the monks are brought here. Then, depending on the monastery, after 3 or 5 years, their bones are taken and cleaned.
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They are washed with red wine. Oh wow. Yes, and with olive oil as well.
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Yes. And they are placed in this spot, you can see some of them from here.
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Our fathers say that some of the people who are chosen by God have a cross on their head. For example, this one. You can see it here.
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Yes. Usually, people donāt have this cross on their head. But you donāt know who he is because itās not important.
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No, itās not important. Whatās important is how we stand before God. How do you feel in this room?
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How do you feel? Itās impressive. Itās... Donāt you feel at peace? Are you afraid?
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No, Iām not afraid. I just think that one day I will be like this skull.
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Yes. Death is just a door. We donāt die, only our body dies. While our soul will never die.
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So I guess thatās why you are here. Exactly, when you become a monk, you start thinking about your life, your inner life, your soul. Because choosing this life is not easy.
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You put aside all pleasures and all your desires. We want to change ourselves, our soul, our behavior, and become new men.
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And I still didnāt know that these powerful words explaining the great sacrifice of every monk would be a warning for what happened just a few hours later.
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I didnāt expect this situation this morning. Neither did I. Yes. But somehow the devil pushed this man to spread, at two or three in the morning, some rumors among the monks here on the sacred mount.
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My abbot said, āStop them. Leave them there and come home. This is something that doesnāt concern you.ā Yes.
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And I must obey, I can do nothing else. I think our adventure ends here.
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The first time this has happened, itās never happened that someone... kicks us out or stops us from...
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making videos, but I just found out that... we made some videos about the transgender community and other videos they donāt agree with, and theyāre kicking us off the island.
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This has never happened before. This great adventure on Mount Athos ended sooner than expected.
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We just found out the exact reason why we have to leave the mount immediately.
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They showed us the message that all the priests received and the reason, clearly. As you can imagine, Itās the video about... about Muslim trans people, about ladyboys, but I didnāt expect this about the Waorani.
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Sure, Iām not a great... not a great naked view with the Waorani, but... not even that...
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And then I was also surprised by the fact that one of the reasons was, well, the ultra-Orthodox Jews.
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Yoga, yoga was harshly criticized and the vaccine. I donāt even feel angry after seeing the reason why they are kicking us out.
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Weāve been doing this work for many years now. We believe that everyone in the world has the right to say, to share with everyone their...
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their vision of happiness, and we will continue to do so despite everything, and now we have to go home.
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But we couldnāt give up like this, so we decided to try to meet the only monks who certainly hadnāt received that message: the Hermits.
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Here are some of the monasteries. We are trying to reach some hermits, hermit priests who have decided to live far away from the other monks in... in solitude.
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They are called āwandering hermitsā because they live in places completely perched on the mountains, far from everything, with great survival difficulties, but they live like this, and we would like to meet them, letās see if we can manage it.
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This should be the access point the monks advised us to use. There are usually hermits here because thereās a small church.
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Now we will go to find... here it is. And itās wonderful. This was used by Saint Joseph the Hesychast to pray intensely with his disciples.
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It is said that he prayed all day, all night, to get closer to God, and so this also became a symbol for all the hermits in the area.
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So if we wait, we might find some of them nearby, hopefully. There should be a hermit nearby who hides among the rocks.
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But we were told that as soon as he hears footsteps, he runs away. Others instead... there are many legends here on the mount about twelve hermits who... who live naked among the mountains, only that they are invisible and so they could be among us, but they do not reveal themselves.
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And then thereās another one they say, that every time someone finds his dwelling, he burns it, runs away, and finds another one in the mountains. There are many legends; weāre trying to find at least one who wants to talk to us, chatting with us would be a privilege, because they obviously
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try to stay separate from... from civilization, and we are slightly disturbing them. Hopefully not, weāre trying to find one who wants to chat with us.
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Weāve found one of the many cells that host hermits in the mountains. Iāll try knocking to see if anyoneās here, but it seems... uninhabited. Unfortunately, yes.
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Excuse me. It really seems like thereās no one here. Very humble, thereās the bare minimum for survival.
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A bed. Of course, there are some figures, some images, religious icons. A table for eating.
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Here the hermits come to retreat to pray, to dedicate their whole life to prayer.
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Think that the main goal of these... these hermits is to be able to pray even while they sleep.
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In fact, they try to... to have an uncomfortable bed to stay semi- semi... semi-conscious to pray all night long, 24 hours a day, Prayer must accompany them throughout the day, and this is the life of a hermit.
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But no oneās here now. Itās a bit risky to wait, because we donāt know if this person, if this hermit, the hermit who sleeps here at this moment, will return.
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Iād rather continue to see if we meet him in... in the mountains, he might have run away.
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Upon hearing us, feeling us, I hope not. In fact, the monks told us that weāre not really disturbing them, on the contrary, some want to chat with curious people like us.
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But we must be cautious and also respectful of these people who withdraw, so... letās see if thereās someone, otherwise weāll head back.
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As is perhaps a bit fitting, we didnāt manage to meet any wandering hermits, but just when we were about to lose hope, a wonderful conversation with a Romanian monk was enough to avoid the mistake of judging this mystical place by a single error.
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But how did you decide to live on the mount? I chose to follow this art of monasticism because the Lord gives us weapons, because we are at war with the forces of darkness, we are not at war connected with ourselves.
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And the weapons are the cross, prayer, the Word of Christ. And like in any battle, you need to know...
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how to use these weapons, and itās an art. Monasticism is called the art of... the art of arts.
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There is one of the laws of Mount Athos that intrigues me the most and I wonder how life can be without the female figure.
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Here on Mount Athos, there are no women, and you probably havenāt seen one in many years.
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Yes, exactly, here on Mount Athos, there are no women. Precisely because women, as you have well thought, can be a distraction.
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God created us to... Reproduce To reproduce, to... Man is attracted to woman, woman is attracted to man.
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Here, Mount Athos is also called the garden of the Mother of God, and the Mother of God asks to...
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give us a special grace to continue in this life without the female figure. But we must, we must pray incessantly to the Mother of God, who is a female figure, to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to give us the strength
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to fight against these, these spirits... of darkness, these demons that push you only towards the pleasures of the flesh.
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You said that women are a distraction, but donāt you think itās too easy, so to speak, to live in a place where that distraction doesnāt exist?
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Itās like running away from that distraction, but you donāt really face it. When we are in the city, in the world, We have the female figure everywhere, but we donāt appreciate it as much because itās around us.
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When you come or you withdraw into the monastery, a very hard struggle begins with... with yourself.
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This struggle with the flesh is not easy, but itās not impossible. With Godās help, it can be done.
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Iāve been... Iāve been here for eleven years, the first time I saw a woman was after six years.
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But slowly. Technology has entered this place. The worldly spirit... forgives nothing, if it can enter even the most hidden caves in the... of the world, it will enter.
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And so it happened to see a video or a photograph... and I saw a female figure, but with different eyes.
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And if I asked you what happiness is for you here? I realized that happiness does not exist in this world, a complete happiness.
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But it exists... it exists in glimpses. In this life, happiness is mixed with sadness.
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On the same day as your birthday, your dog dies, and you donāt know whether to be happy or sad, right?
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And this is given to us by God with His grace, to be able to continue life, which is a... exam, a test.
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Life, in truth, is the cross. Life is one, and we must see it as a gift.
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We all must carry our cross. Do what... where are we called? The pursuit of happiness is not always easy.
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It can even be frightening, especially in a secluded place like this. But the monks of Mount Athos, even if indirectly, have given me a new ingredient of happiness: the human being. To be happy, one needs to choose a mission.
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The monks here have chosen to dedicate their mission to God, renouncing all earthly pleasures, a sacrifice that makes their life a continuous act of love.
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And itās fascinating to reflect on how every life on earth is shaped by what we decide to put our heart into, whether it be in relationships, ambitions, or faith, like these monks.
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Itās important to remember that living this life full of what we have decided is new.
Topics:Mount Athosmonastic lifeOrthodox Christianitywomen banspiritualitymonksGreek monasteriesreligious traditionshappiness projectmedicinal herbs
