Selected Writings
by Archimandrite Vasileios
We present to the English-speaking audience the Selected Writings of Archimandrite Vasileios, previous abbot of Iveron Monastery on Mount Athos. As a unique 3-volume set with a hardcover box, the Selected Writings combine and contain dozens of texts of an Athonite Elder. Put together in a magnificent three-volume set, they serve a better and more efficient effort to spread the Athonite traditional and genuine wisdom through the voice of Fr. Vasileios. It is a fresh testimony of the Orthodox ethos and spirituality to the public, university campuses, libraries, churches, and bookstores.
The Selected Writings of Elder Vasileios express the author’s desire for all of us who live and struggle in this wounded world to become aware of human beings’ spiritual nobility and dignity. These writings come as a breath of fresh air, refreshing as the dews of Hermon. Fr. Vasileios’ writing style represents an antidote to the anemic piety of our days and bears witness to the transcendent. He, having passed through dark places and having tasted the Passover of the future, exudes the scent of sanctity and teaches the logic of the Age to come. He is a writer who expresses the truth of human life freely and uses quotes from works written by writers from the East and the West as he deems appropriate as if different cultures and traditions did not separate them: Heraclitus, Abba Isaac, Albert Camus, Apostle Paul, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Stefan Zweig, Porphyrios the Kapsokalyvite, etc.
We can already hear the faithful and theologians, inspired by the Selected Writings of Elder Vasileios, speaking in a new language that reflects the immediacy of real-life experience. And we hope that they can provide godly guidance in their communities and that their service will comfort and encourage those on the narrow path that leads to the Door of Life.
At the remote skete of Iveron at the foot of Athos, in the great silence of the Holy Mountain pervaded with the scent of conifers and wild meadow flowers and refreshed by the sea breeze that brings the “ozone” of health, lives and works the Elder Vasileios. Unpretentiously and authentically, he brings back to life what must have once been the most remarkable transformative change in knowledge, brought about by the Scriptures and the Church Fathers. His words put the spark of eternal life within each of us so that we can recognize the elements of peace and certainty in the confusion of modern urban life.