The Garden Inside

The Cross, persecution, sorrow, temptation are the legacy of the Church and of a true Christian. There is not an Orthodox Church that has not experienced her own persecution; neither has a saint lived that has not gone through his own furnace of afflictions, persecutions and temptations. A moving witness to the Cross is also the figure of Saint Luke, Archbishop of Simpheropol and Crimea, physician, professor of topographic anatomy and surgery; a man with rare talents and spiritual gifts, with a stunning scientific training, who ministered to human beings as pastor and doctor, with an admirable self-denial and love. This book has attempted to delineate his stormy life, the incredible torments and adventures, as well as his multifaceted work, in the hope that the suffering and his valuable testimony will offer a plenitude of gifts to God’s people and especially to doctors, those of the souls as well as those of the bodies.

The Life
Childhood and Youth 35
Initial Difficulties and Aid from Grace 41
Settlement in Katounakia with Elder Ephrem 49
The Move to St Basil and the Death of Elder Ephrem 58
The Time of Bitter Struggles 62
The Nature and Forms of Trials 66
The Discovery of the Hesychast Elder Daniel
as Spiritual Father 70
The Trials Grow More Intense 81
Various Trials and Manifest Aid from Our Lady
the Mother of God 93
From St Basil to Little St Anna 109
The Move to New Skete 141
Teaching
On Sanctification and Dispassion 159
On Discovering the Will of God 166
On Regime and Disorder 172
On Trials and the Spiritual Law 178
The Differences between the Trials 182
The Law of Changes in Our Practical Life 187
Negligence, the Unsleeping Danger for the Christian 195
On Prayer 198
On Discrimination and Perspicacity 209

On Obedience 214
On Contemplation, and How Those Who Are Worthy
Contemplate 219