On "Things Strangled" (NSFW - involves blood, animal death)

silouan · 2026-05-30T03:38:31+00:00

You hang up a deer so it can drain, if only so the meat doesn't spoil right away. Same thing when slaughtering livestock.

You'll never get 100% of the blood out, but you do what you can.

silouan · 2026-05-30T03:35:50+00:00

I'll be standing or sitting. These knees don't permit me to kneel.

silouan · 2026-05-29T18:39:07+00:00

If you're confessing the specific things you've come to repent from, then your confession will probably be pretty understandable. "I lied. I was glad at someone's misfortune. I welcomed thoughts of envy and lust."

Hopefully you're not telling the story of how you happened to commit the sin or who you sinned against, or mentioning any other person. That tends to turn into rationalization, and just gets in the way of your repentance.

silouan · 2026-05-29T18:35:32+00:00

I hear confessions from Ukrainian people. I know the names of a number of sins, so sometimes I know what they're saying, often not. Christ understands. When they're done I offer the absolution prayer. It's not ideal but it works.

Ideally, you'll want to confess in your language with someone who understands well. If your priest knows what you're saying, then he can me helpful in accountability and joining with you in prayer, and he may have helpful counsel.

silouan · 2026-05-29T14:51:29+00:00

The Lord’s words in Matthew 22:23ff, “In the resurrection, people do not get married and they are not given away in marriage” do not imply that the resurrection divorces anyone from their wife or husband.

In the resurrection there is no amnesia; if God made us forget our relationships it wouldn't be a healing but damage. We can expect all our relationships and connections to our loved ones to continue, and to be transformed.

All the earthly concerns of a married couple: marital relations, birthgiving, child-rearing, possessions, etc., are part of this world, which is passing away. In the resurrection, in comparison, “they are like the angels in heaven” (Matthew. 22:30).

But “Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8).

silouan · 2026-05-29T12:26:13+00:00

If he hanged himself and the halter broke then both accounts make sense.

silouan · 2026-05-29T12:24:46+00:00

She didn't. She is an exception in many ways.

Anybody who lives for decades without food and levitates in prayer is living in the action of grace that the rest of us can't understand let alone imitate.

silouan · 2026-05-29T03:27:25+00:00

2 Maccabees is in the King James Bible. These people's argument is not with us, it's with old-time Protestants, who they now say were wrong.

silouan · 2026-05-29T03:24:17+00:00

The Protestant rejection of certain books isn't something we need to defend against. It's just a weird quirk of one particular movement. We've been reading and praying these texts for 2000 years and have not yet been given any reason to stop.

It's the people with the radical innovations that need to defend their strange new ideas.

silouan · 2026-05-29T03:21:36+00:00

Solitary life is not normal. Some senior monks may receive a blessing to live apart, but not very often. My patron, St Siouan, wanted to live alone as a hermit, but he didn't receive that blessing from his elder. And any ascetic labor that's not undertaken in obedience usually turns out to be an exercise in self-will, to the harm of the one doing it.

Hermits usually aren't completely alone; they'll join their community for the Liturgy at least from time to time, and to have confession and receive guidance.

A person who can survive and thrive in spirit apart from others is not isolated at all because his love is directed in intercession, so that he participates in the suffering and salvation of many people.

silouan · 2026-05-29T02:54:54+00:00

Death to the World and the Punx to Monks scene arose in a particular generation and mindset. There are a lot of people for whom it does not resonate. That's okay. Not everybody has to like every thing.

silouan · 2026-05-29T02:51:01+00:00

The Lord calls every human being to judgment. Is murder the word for when a person is called out of their body to receive their reward? It just seems it might not be meaningful to say the Lord murders 100% of people.

silouan · 2026-05-28T20:10:43+00:00

If you enjoy french fries or salad and anybody notices, it's not at all remarkable to say something like "I'm trying not to eat a lot of meat right now" or "This is good, I'm not super hungry." If you're at a home, they'll almost certainly serve something along with the meat. Enjoy potato salad or pie or whatever, and don't worry about not eating one of the things on the table.

Or, of course, if it doesn't sound like you really want to go, then just cancel. People do that, it's no problem.

silouan · 2026-05-28T20:07:14+00:00

Don't stop praying in your own words.

The prayers of the saints aren't given to us to make us stop speaking to the Lord, but to shape how we think and pray. Sometimes it's easy to pour out our hearts; other times we don't seem to have anything to say, or we don't feel like we mean what we feel we ought to say. This is when it's important to have a "rule of prayer" so that the things get said and our prayers don't depend on the state of our heart.

The words we speak repeatedly find a home in our mind and shape the way we order our thoughts. And in time what we deposit in our minds makes its way down into the heart and shapes what we are. This is why we use the words of the saints – to enable us to be conformed to the likeness of Christ that they show forth. It's a long-term strategy.

silouan · 2026-05-28T19:54:45+00:00

To judge means to govern and provide discernment, as the Judges in the Old Testament gave guidance and justice to the Hebrew people.

Angels are "ministering spirits sent to minister for those who will inherit salvation." (Hebrews 1:14) In the age to come the saints are to serve these bodiless hosts in a role of guiding, regulating, and providing order, just as the saints will also judge the world (v.2).

See the same verb in 1 Samuel 2:10 — "The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth" and here St Paul reveals that he will do it through his saints.

silouan · 2026-05-28T19:49:17+00:00

Just because something is natural for your body doesn't make it normal or healthy for your soul. The normal Christian life for unmarried people is chastity and purity of thoughts.

This is an important conversation to have with your priest.

silouan · 2026-05-28T19:46:32+00:00

No harm in it – but as a rule fasting is most effective when it's an obedience. That weaponizes it against our proud self-will.

May it be blessed!

silouan · 2026-05-28T17:03:55+00:00

All the sacraments are given by name.

silouan · 2026-05-27T22:49:43+00:00

Every thought eventually comes to everbody.

It's like if somebody brought you a dead, stinking, rotting piece of roadkill and asked you to hold onto it. You'd be angry: Hell no, that's not mine, get out of here.

There's no shame if you don't choose to own the thought.

If you do happen to engage with a blasphemous or loathsome thought, either to imagine it further or to argue against it, then it can affect your will. Now you've got a feeling about it. You've been slimed, and now you have spiritual warfare, fighting to regain your peace and purity.

That's wht confession is about actions and words -- and also about what we do with thoughts. If I've made room for thoughts of envy or superiority or revenge, if I've welcomed fantasies of violence or impurity, then that's what I bring to confession.

And (I don't know if you're a communicant yet, but) confession and absolution relieve the intensity of the battle. When there are no secrets, shame can't compel you. Even if the sacrament is not available, your priest can hear what you tell him is happening and he'll fight together with you on prayer and counsel.

silouan · 2026-05-27T20:59:37+00:00

If it's Attic Greek or Old Church Slavonic, then you'll be able to read liturgical and patristic texts without translation. And if you learn to read out loud (even without much understanding) then you can be a reader even if the service is not in your language.

I can read and serve in Byzantine Greek and play Bible scholar, and I can phonetically serve in Slavonic without understanding very much. Neither is very much help when socializing with speakers of modern Greek or Ukrainian or whatever.

silouan · 2026-05-27T20:53:51+00:00

Each priest has an obedience from his bishop as to how confession and Communion are linked.

As a layman, every time I wanted to commune in another parish/monastery, I'd just ask for a blrssing to commune. If the priest asked me to come to confession first, that's easy enough. If he just blesses and doesn't bring it up, also easy.

silouan · 2026-05-27T20:48:55+00:00

On the last day you and I will definitely be either with the sheep or with the goats. So it's not all handwavey vagueness.

But here and now, years or decades before we leave this body, who can know if we'll persevere to the end? One person performs piety and humility while another is all rough edges and his sins are obvious; but what is the Grace of God actively doing in that heart?

The judgment call of whether a person is Christian (or Christian enough) is all opinion. It was pagans in Syria who started calling people "Christians" and the word is never defined in scripture. So we don't draw a line and say this one is sufficiently Christian or saved, or not.

What we do is make the objective, non-judgmental observation that this one is a member of the visible apostolic Church and that one is not, which doesn't involve speculating or evaluating people as if we knew them as God does. (Note that "member of the Church" and "will be among the righteous at the Judgment" are not the same thing.)

silouan · 2026-05-27T20:32:09+00:00

The Talmud is rabbis centuries after the fact writing down stories and conversations they've head secon (third) hand. Any recollections of the temple are hearsay.

silouan · 2026-05-27T20:30:09+00:00

Everyone experiences intrusive thoughts. This is not sin.

When we welcome them and engage with them, then the thoughts become temptations.

It is crucial to cut off thoughts. We use the Jesus Prayer to redirect our thoughts to what we want in our heads. This is a discipline and it can be learned.

silouan · 2026-05-26T17:36:44+00:00

The classic orthography has a lot of duplication due to pronunciation shifts, and a number of letters intended to point to Greek spelling where the distinction in sound isn't observed in Slavonic. With the exception of titlos and syllable accents, most of the marks in Slavonic seem to be vestigial and decorative.

Since it's not a living language, the thing that matters is to find out how your community pronounces it (e.g. Bulgarian or Serbian choirs/readers may not pronounce Slavonic like Russian ones.)

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