{"id":4255,"date":"2018-01-20T15:34:47","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T20:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=4255"},"modified":"2018-01-18T10:35:52","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T15:35:52","slug":"elder-st-porphyrios-on-forced-spirituality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=4255","title":{"rendered":"Elder St. Porphyrios on &#8216;Forced&#8217; Spirituality&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c\u2026the snares of Satan are many for those who worship God. Temptation manages very successfully to ensure that we pay no attention to the worship. We go to church frequently, only to continue our sleep. As soon as we hear the readings and the hymns, we close our eyes. We enter into a state of languidity and we are unable to follow the words of the hymns. It is a satanic thing, this soporific state, and very obviously so.\u00a0 Think what we are missing when we are in church in this thoughtless state! Although before you go to church you say to yourself, \u2018I\u2019ll pay attention, I won\u2019t doze off again, I\u2019ll be alert\u2019, yet you don\u2019t succeed. All these exhortations\u2026are attempts to compel ourselves which provoke a negative reaction within us. And with compulsion we achieve nothing. On the contrary, the state of sloth overtakes us and ridicules us: \u2018Concentrate hard now, force yourself, do what you like, but I, your old self, have you in my hand and I\u2019ll keep a tight hold on you, and now, if you can, let me see you make your spiritual progress!\u2019<br \/>\n&#8211; \u2018Wounded by Love\u2019<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4256\" style=\"width: 213px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4256\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4256\" src=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/x6-203x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"203\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/x6-203x300.jpg 203w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/x6.jpg 541w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 203px) 100vw, 203px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4256\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">vvlasidis@uowm.gr<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c\u2026the snares of Satan are many for those who worship God. Temptation manages very successfully to ensure that we pay no attention to the worship. We go to church frequently, [&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-4255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4257,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions\/4257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}