\ufeffI had no idea that what was said by Metropolitan Epiphanios Zayed (+1982) in one of his poems, that is: \u201cif devotion were to be judged by hair, then the he-goat would be the first monk\u201d, was drawn from an old traditional saying. Today, I would like to exalt these words. The times (tend to) repeat their flaws. In my youth, most people used to set a benchmark for the good priest that he should have a beautiful voice. Nowadays, for some, the benchmark for the priest has become the hair he grows, or the fabric he wears! Days ago, someone told me: \u201cbe like the Orthodox priests, grow your beard, for us to call you: Father\u2026\u201d! The best tribute offered to the priest is to neglect him. Early in my ministry, a priest who is now with God told me: \u201cwhen someone says to you: Father So-and-so, you should say to yourself: O Lord, have mercy on me, the unprofitable man\u201d. I care for no word other than the one the fragrance of which fills the tradition of the saints.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\ufeffI had no idea that what was said by Metropolitan Epiphanios Zayed (+1982) in one of his poems, that is: \u201cif devotion were to be judged by hair, then the he-goat would be the first monk\u201d, was drawn from an old traditional saying. Today, I would like to exalt these words. The times (tend to) ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[343],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6806,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6751\/revisions\/6806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}