A glance at the book of Elder Paisios of mount Athos

Athonite fathers and Athonite matters

The Power of the Monk's Prayer

Down below Saint's Basil's, where the Zygos turns towards Saint Ann's, there lived a monk of the Great Lavra, who was assigned to look after the goats they had there to graze.

Once during Meatfare, just before Great Lent, while there was a full moon and the assigned monk Father Ephraim, a brother of the monastery, was praying with his komboskini, he heard a great crowd outside. They weren't making any trouble, just shouting "Oh! Oh!..."
"These people must be strangers making merry", Father Ephraim thought to himself.
So out he went into the moonlight, but what should he see! About three hundred demons being restless and impatient, while their leader was saying:
"Just look! A skeletal monk delays our phalanx for days and now we can't get out into the world in time for the carnival parties and the revelry!"


The Power of the Komboskini, of the Jesus Prayer

Once, there was a monk from the Monastery of Saint Paul who had gone to the Church of Saint Gerasimos on the island of Cephallonia. During the Divine Liturgy, he stood in the Altar and was praying with his komboski -the prayer of the heart Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us- while outside they were chanting. They had also brought a possessed person into the church to be cured by Saint Gerasimos. While the monk was saying the prayer in the Altar, the demon was being seared outside and was shouting:
"Stop working that string, will you, monk, it is burning me."
The priest heard it, too, and said to the monk:
"Pray with our komboskini as much as you can, my brother, so that God's creature can be freed of the demon".
The demon then shouted in great anger:
"You, rotten priest, you. What are you telling him to pull that string for? It is burning me!"
The monk then prayed with his komboskini with even greater effort and the possessed man was delivered from the demon.


The Power of the Jesus Prayer

Elder Zacharias used to say that at the hut of the Transfiguration in New Skete, the fathers would say the Jesus Prayer out loud.
Once, the demons had gathered, enraged, and one of them shouted:
"They are saying the Jesus Prayer out loud. The prayer has no power!"
One of the largest demons then said:
"The Jesus Prayer has power, whether they say it aloud or in their hearts, since there is nothing we can do about it."


The Jesus Prayer with Labour

Elder Arsenios, the cave-dweller, used to say:
"When I pray with the komboskini standing, I feel a strong divine fragrance. When I say the Jesus Prayer sitting, I only feel a light fragrance."
Despite the fact that the elder was then ninety-five years old, he continued to struggle with philotimo and was constantly enriched spiritually, even though he had already set aside a lot of spiritual capital!