{"id":6808,"date":"2019-06-28T12:45:52","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T16:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=6808"},"modified":"2019-06-19T17:53:52","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T21:53:52","slug":"elder-st-paisios-on-the-need-for-spiritual-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=6808","title":{"rendered":"Elder St Paisios on the Need for Spiritual Direction"},"content":{"rendered":"

“A young person needs a spiritual guide, someone to advise him and be eager to listen to his concerns, in order to proceed with \u201cspiritual safety\u201d, avoiding dangers, fears and all kinds of dead ends. All of us, as we grow older, acquire experience from our own lives and from the lives of others. But a young person lacks this experience. This is why an older person can help inexperienced youth avoid blunders. When young people refuse to take advice, they end up experimenting with their own lives. But if they follow the advice given to them, the gain will be theirs.<\/p>\n

Young men from a Christian organization visited my Kalvvi once and were boasting, full of self-confidence, \u201cWe don\u2019t need anybody; we\u2019ll find our own way!\u201d Who knows why they said that? Perhaps they had been pressured too much and were rebelling. When they were about to leave, they asked me to point them in the right direction for Iveron Monastery. \u201cWhich way should we go?\u201d they asked. ‘Wait a minute,’ I told them, ‘didn\u2019t you hoys say that you needed no one, that you will find your own way? Didn\u2019t you just say that? If you miss this road you\u2019ll have only a minor inconvenience; at some point, you will run into someone, and he will show you the way. But who is going to show you the road to Heaven?'”<\/p>\n

– ‘With Pain and Love’<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A young person needs a spiritual guide, someone to advise him and be eager to listen to his concerns, in order to proceed with \u201cspiritual safety\u201d, avoiding dangers, fears and […]<\/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-6808","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\/6808","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=6808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6810,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6808\/revisions\/6810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}