{"id":6258,"date":"2019-03-08T12:30:01","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T17:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=6258"},"modified":"2019-03-02T07:30:48","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T12:30:48","slug":"elder-ephraim-on-the-virtue-of-obedience-to-a-spiritual-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=6258","title":{"rendered":"Elder Ephraim on the Virtue of Obedience to a Spiritual Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The perfect disciple does not have to give an account when he passes through the toll-houses! He does not fear death, nor the demons, nor God, for he worships Him with burning zeal. The genuine disciple only fears disobedience to his Elder, who acts as a visible Christ for him. Disobedience to the Elder immediately exiles him from the paradise of the grace of the Holy Spirit, Who sweetens to the utmost the humble, dear soul of the disciple who is equal to the angels. The perfect disciple is an exact copy of our Christ, the God-Man.\u00a0 When a disciple obeys his own Elder for the sake of Christ, he fulfills all the commandments of Christ. Perfect obedience, without murmuring and thoughts of objection, may properly be compared to all the various struggles of applying all the Master\u2019s commandments.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8211; \u2018Counsels from the Holy Mountain\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-6259\" src=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250057.b-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250057.b-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250057.b-768x576.jpg 768w, http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250057.b-640x480.jpg 640w, http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250057.b.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The perfect disciple does not have to give an account when he passes through the toll-houses! He does not fear death, nor the demons, nor God, for he worships Him [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6260,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258\/revisions\/6260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}