PDA

View Full Version : Isychirion Abba



Alvin Kimel
25-11-2003, 03:41 PM
I just saw this citation on the Monachos Fathers rotation:


"The holy Fathers were making predictions about the last generation. They said, 'What have we ourselves done?' One of them, the great Abba Ischyrion replied, 'We ourselves have fulfilled the commandments of God'. The others replied, 'And those who come after us, what will they do?' He said, 'They will struggle to achieve half our works'. They said, 'And to those who come after them, what will happen?' He said, 'The men of that generation will not accomplish any works at all and temptation will come upon them; and those who will be approved in that day will be greater than either us or our fathers.'"
--Abba Ischyrion

What Isychrion says in the last sentence that "those who will be approved in that day ..." who is doing the approving? God or the general public? TIA.

M.C. Steenberg
25-11-2003, 07:52 PM
Dear Alvin,

The quotation is usually taken to refer the 'approval' to God: those whose lives are worthy of God's approval in 'that day' (i.e. an era when the forces of evil shall be yet stronger) will be, as the quotation says, 'greater than either us or our fathers'.

INXC, Matthew