Constantine Zalalas Q&A at St. Catherine in Clearwater 06.01.2024

0:03 I'll leave for last after to ask questions uh let me some other hands now if you don't raise your hands I'm G to have to call on Costa okay go ahead yeah uh in terms of obedience so let's say you have a situation where your speaks loudly please all right so let's say you have a situation where a priest or a bishop is not doing things that according to the traditions of the fathers right and you still you still respect the position I I look at you still respect the position um that they're in but if they ask you to do something where it's like little bit if you pray with Roman Catholics there you know obviously

0:50 shouldn't do that but at what point is it not OB you know what you do well we are we are to obey what the Lord has taught us in the scriptures and the consensus of the Saints and the consensus of the church over the centuries um it's a dilemma these days because we have people in the church who are

1:37 because perhaps of uh secularization or because of wanting to modernize a church and because of their ideology thinking that if we accept this kind of position perhaps we'll have more people coming to church you know I give you an example we thought in the Greek church that if we would make a lot of basketball courts we have a lot of dances for the Youth if we just bring pinb games in the church and make them have fun have a lot of fun in the church we will keep the youth you have a lot of camps and you know they play all these Sports and

2:24 they but they didn't work because when they went out in the world they found much more excitement than what the church was trying to offer them so we can the church can make not the church some of the administration of the church we have to make a discernment we have to differentiate between some of the leaders of the church the administration of the church and the church as a whole the Eternal Church of Christ so whatever goes against the Commandments and the Cannons of our

3:11 church and the litmus test are the Saints if if there's a question we go to the Saints when two Catholics went to St pus they love the saint and they said father would you please pray with us he says I love you dearly but I will not pray with you I will pray for you but I will not pray with you because we're not one Church same thing a Muslim went to m

3:58 arus from Germany a lot of Germans are becoming Muslims right now and it was a young Brotherhood but the Elder was of age and this young Muslim says listen uh I want my own room I said we don't do that here we we have one room for all the people we don't have really big facilities and the Elder says listen let's make an exception let's give him his own room the young monks are fuming why should we give him his own room you know and then he says oh I want

4:46 you to take all the icons out of this room and now they're long they said we're not going to take the the Elder says do what he says take the icons out take the eans out do with them in once after a little while oh can I have a little rug so I can pray get him a rug and they treated him like gold all week and at the end when someone asked him did you get anything out of out of the Gospel this week anything out of Christianity no I didn't need to read the gospel I love lived it I never

5:31 experienced so much love because the Elder was mature he had discretion he had you know so we will do things with discretion we will go to the priest and say I'm sorry you invited me to come to a Vespers at the Catholic church I'm sorry but I cannot come my conscience doesn't allow me simple as that I'm not I'm not going to make uh you know I'm not going to I'm not going going to the church and uh you know start a rebellion I will avoid Rebellion I will simply discuss it with a with a priest and say I cannot come there sorry just my conscious doesn't

6:19 allow so we will do obedience when the directives go along with the gospel but when there's a directive that goes it's clearly against the Commandments then we obey God instead of man next question yes we afraid of death because we were created to have eternal life correct we are afraid of that because death is an enemy we were never supposed to die and that's why we don't believe that we're going to die you know that we see you know people 90 years old they're just died but they don't believe they're going to die and that's innate because we were created to live

7:06 forever death is uh is the the greatest uh discrepancy in God's creation not supposed to exist it's a horrible thing but Christ's death transcended death we're no longer afraid of death because we know where're going we go from death death to life we just cross a little bridge and we're over there okay however most of us will be afraid of that because because if we don't purify our heart before death comes then the Soul becomes very miserable during the hour of death so it's very important to confess all our sins and begin to

7:53 struggle with our passions forgive the people that we're supposed to get ourself ready before that time comes and we don't know when the time will come that's why we have to prepare ourselves every day and be ready Costa me yes you sure honorable okay another question just wanted to add something no no I want you to ask a question I don't want any comments questions then I have no question aome next yes could you explain the difference between original sin and ancestral sin oh I can't no I'm too tired right

8:38 now I will let you know later I know there's a difference but I just I can't right now I can't um my my mind is not too strong right now anything else yes what is your greatest lesson you learn from your I didn't Lear much you know um you know he just uh he had an incredible love for Christ the the word of God the word of God was his life he'll be up till 3 in the morning preparing he would prepare five six lecture like this every week but

9:25 what when he would speak you would think you would think he was reading a book you wouldn't miss a word and now that's what really caught my attention right from the beginning his vocabulary was on a very high level and thousands of people thousands of people found salvation through his even to this day there's about 4 thousands of his lectures that are on websites and uh circulate all all over the world it's a few young people continue uh some young men from here from Florida you heard of Father Emmanuel he just passed away uh what was his last name again sorry I'm too tired

10:11 um he's from CRE from CRE father Emanuel wasak hakak yeah God BL his soul uh one of the best books in English that I have read from father Emanuel you need to get it uh is Christ Fallen amazing book for those of you who like theology you probably will learn more from that book that from one of the seminaries around here if I knew that book existed I probably wouldn't have to go to the Seminary that's how much christology and how much how much dissects the early fathers and some of the doctrines and the dogmas of the church it's a huge book and father Luke

10:58 gave it to me when I was teaching in jordanville I went back there up there for talk about Revelation and he just handed it to me I think he's a bishop now I think Archbishop Luke yeah amazing book uh he just passed away sometime in MA in January in Creed and his son Anthony is beginning to translate the Sunday sermons of Elder athanasius on his website so if you look look up his website you'll find them and uh there were about 900 Sunday sermons so you can see how easy my job is I just listen to one of his talks I go on Sunday and I give the sermon at

11:46 our church in 1015 minutes no problem where it would probably took him like 5 to 10 hours of work to perfect that sermon so we have a lot of tools today I mean we have some wonderful tools what do you think the best way to cultivate the love that he had for Christ to to put in the work and have the just the Burning Love for Christ that you had I I don't know if it was um maybe it was egotism in the beginning I don't know you know just um I don't know the best the best way is to begin to pray and read the scriptures I don't know why these things happen and and I I think is just a mystery uh I mean I have a number of

12:33 other siblings who are much better than I you know but I don't know what it is I I can't answer that again the best way to get close to Christ is to begin to activate our baptism go to confession follow the Commandments help the poor all these things start being forgiving reading the scriptures the lives of the saint all the things that we do and God will do the rest I don't think there's a formula for that I mean all why are all these

13:19 converts coming to the church why are these 17s I I saw 16 year 17 year olds yesterday talking about high Theology and this book and moxim was the confession Professor what young kids today I mean you know in even in the in the Greek churches maybe one in a thousand and here we have all this influx of people who love who want to love Christ so we don't love Christ we want to love Christ that's a good start Lord I don't know how to love you but help me I want to that's a good beginning yes giving your enemy something to add to your

14:04 prayer that would be the first person you pray for without forgiving your enemy you're endangering your salvation that is that is a must whoever that is whoever that is and whatever they did to you that is you know of the ABCs of our salvation if we don't forgive one person and we have hatred in our heart the grace of God is outside of us no matter what we do have to be very careful about that again that's something that we cannot do in the beginning and then we ask God to help us say Lord the love you have for that

14:50 person give me a ray of that love and put it in my heart so I don't lose my salvation we beg Christ to help us with that those are the things that Christ will do for us that we cannot do can you talk more on Envy Envy Envy yeah Envy comes from Pride mostly Envy is Envy is a a very difficult and also a at least when someone fornicates they get some pleasure out of it when they steal they get something out of it but St John says Envy is totally useless L not only you get nothing out of it but you destruct yourself because

15:35 Envy eats you away inside it's you alive it makes you like yellow it almost changes your hormones it's a horrible thing it's a great Passion if we sense any of that we need to beg Christ to help us to get rid of it and the way we get rid of it is by forcing ourselves to ask God to give more gifts to that person the person that were jealous for would say Lord give them more gifts make them give them all the blessings you go against yourself and that person you know that

16:22 give them something more the person that you're jealous giving them a better gift and this is how you force your yourself to slowly begin to make amends with that person these are the crosses that we have to bear it's our fallen Fallen human nature U there are many many many um thoughts and kind of uh existing situation in Christianity uh that

17:08 uh sometimes we are not sure if are there are they our enemies or are they not enemies but they are different I'm talking about the homosexuality and the church MH the question will be not to judge them but pray for them or you have something else to share please we want as we said these are our brothers there are fellow human beings and again we have members of our family maybe that may

17:53 have that that kind of um tendency and we need to use love and respect for every human being of course we don't judge because God came to save everyone and that's why he told the Jews that the tax collectors and the prostitutes go ahead of you in kingdom of God because those sins are obvious the people who do those cardinal sins when we have cardinal sins we know

18:40 they are obvious they're in front of us but the person who suffers from egotism they may not know it it's very subtle it's entrenched they don't realize it they believe they're doing a good thing so it's very hard to detect you heard the story of St pus a young man went to St pus actually he went to monos who suffered from this passion now I said passion because lately I believe the homosexual agenda

19:25 is trying to convince people that God created this class of people like that but we don't see that anywhere in the scriptures God made him male and female whatever happens after the fall it's on us it's not on God and also he would be a god of an illness who on the other hand if he created him like this then why would he condemn them in the Old Testament Moses condemned to condemned

20:11 him to death not just the homosexual but also the adulteress in the law of Moses an adulteress someone who blasphemes their parents they were stoned to death someone who stole things from Jericho I believe they were stoned to death it was priest finess or Finas or pH Finas who used his spear to spear two young people who were fornicating inside the camp and God looked upon that as

20:57 righteousness and he stopped the death in Israel again this is kind of harsh but we have to see the human nature of people back then they were not you know the people were very rough they were in the Old Testament God needed to come down to their level they wouldn't believe anything else they wouldn't listen to anything else and he needed to purify as much as possible possible his people in Israel so the Virgin Mary could be born so we would have some holy Generations that would bring the Virgin

21:44 Mary now have a degree in biology and I looked that over and over and over again many times over 2,000 corporations medical corporations all over the world they have searched for a gay gene biologically not a single single single study came up with a gay gene doesn't exist okay homosexuals always existed but the church treated it as a passion just like someone who gambles it's like

22:30 someone who cheats on their husband and their wife we don't Stone them anymore in the time of Grace we are free from the law of Moses we have freedom in Christ but the church is a hospital and the church has all the medicine to heal any person and when that young man went to St Baus and actually before that he went to a very stct spiritual father who was not as advanced of was St pus and he said father I have this problem well my son you have to give it up if you don't give it up I'm sorry you going to lose your salvation and the young man became

23:17 despondent look I I just I can't do it this has has been part of my life for the last 10 15 years I do it every day I can't I can't stop it and the the young man became desponded and U he says well then I'll just go back home and live my life whatever happens but a good monk at the time heard him he heard this conversation he heard him speaking to another person and he says listen don't give up let me take you to St pus and he welcomed him a lot of compassion a lot of love gave him a lot of Hope and he told him listen forget your

24:02 passion can you go to church every Sunday yes I can can you fast Wednesday and Friday according to the church yes I can can you read the scriptures one hour every day yes I can can you do this so he showed him 50 things that he could do can you help the poor yes I can can you give 5 10% yes I can you do all that and God will do the thing that you cannot do and the young man was saved okay so I believe we accept these people in the church we welcome them however there's two

24:48 types in this ideology I said yesterday we have the humble homosexual who knows that this is a passion something that we need to repair and correct and he wants help and we have the proud homosexual who wants to pass that lifestyle to the rest of the society and because there's a lot of demonic energy in that lifestyle this is exactly why Sodom and Gomorrah was burned because without energy over

25:37 that passion if it takes over it doesn't stop over a million people there were five cities in Sodom and Gomorrah and God didn't killed them because he wanted to punish them he wanted to save the rest of the people from that because look what's happening in our days have you heard of a transgender person 50 years ago father no have you heard of a trans have you heard of gender disformity 50 years ago no right now there's hundreds of and

26:24 thousands of them where did they come from conditioning from the conditioning of the evil homosexual agenda that people are good but they are victims and they suffer greatly 15 years ago I showed a movie and you may want to look it up it's from the American Family Association the movie is called it's not gay they lie they have vicious lies they want to show that this is a really cool and a lot of the 12 year olds now they want to be cool so they they want to be non-binaries in your in your junior high

27:10 schools it's a FB what they don't show it's what's behind that after Sweden accepted them 50 years ago Sweden's are very very Lous country the Netherlands they're totally accepted they Liv like this for 50 years nobody bothers them there's no pressure on them but to this day the suicide rate amongst homosexuals and married homosexuals is three times as high as the average normal population why because the soul is never at rest

27:57 father the soul knows better and when we go to bed at night that anxiety doesn't leave and it is if you look it up look at some of these people who repented that lifestyle is full of drugs lot of pain it's one of the most painful Lifestyles and in that movie you show these 50y old men who live that lifestyle and they're in tears because after your 56 years old nobody wants your company anymore because this lifestyle is predicated on energy you got energy you're good you can party with us you lost your energy you're done and these people were there no

28:45 family no grandchildren having alcohol every day and suicidal it is a horrible lifestyle and our God wants to help them so we help these people if we share the truth with them with discretion if they're ready to talk to us we don't judge them we don't Point our fingers and at the same time we will not allow them in our altars if they are not in a state of repentance because it's a good shepherd we want to protect our church and we don't want the same thing that happened in a Catholic Church to happen in our

29:32 [Music] churches at this point According to some of their own people who were Catholics and became Orthodox something like 50% of the Jesuit monks have a problem with homosexuality is this what we want does this glorify God and if God was okay with it why is the spirit of God in Revelation in the Old Testament in and the Apostle of Love okay let's let let's leave St Paul out but St John the Apostle is the Apostle of love and at the very end of Revelation he says

30:20 what the Cowardly the homosexuals the fornicators the drunkards do not enter the kingdom of God they will their place will be the lake of sulfur now are we to deny these truths are we to deny the gospel of the last 2,000 years again we love these people we respect them but just like we will not allow a drug addict to come and live in the basement with our teenagers we were also protect our families from these passions not to be mean but to protect I

31:06 hope I answered it thank you thank you I wanted to make a comment that DSM is a book in the medical field descriptions of different illnesses and I don't remember when it was taken out from the DSM it was quite a while ago maybe in the about homosexuality yeah in the 70s it was treatable but then uh cons was considered a psychological illness right and that was changed it was changed because of the agenda there's a agenda behind all this you want to reduce the population want to destroy the family want to control the world and again it sounds like a conspiracy theory but how can you it's

31:51 right in front of us it's pretty obvious so demons they do they HK excuse me demons oh my goodness double all of this yes yes yes yes well that's what the demons want they want and and you see that I'm uh in in Galatians when St Paul says okay he goes into fornication um uncleanness right after that goes into idolatry and into sorcery because these sin will take someone out of Christianity because once they believe that they are created like that then they begin to hate God they hate

32:38 Christ they have a hatred for God who made him like that and now Society goes against them so this is the worst deception of the devil the devil is fully at work here this is really affecting the church I was just at um St V and they had their graduation and one of the speakers from Princeton University who's not even Orthodox spoke about this subject and how we need to start protecting our families from these from this ideology and there was a Heen discussion after it against the speak there's a lot of wokeness in some of our seminaries right now especially in some of the

33:24 universities because it's being funded Yeah by individuals with this ideology some of the seminaries but they they're very smart and because they have very very Deep Pockets goes back a while they their this ideology is being propagated from the elite from above and I can't expand on it right now but what they do is they donate millions of dollars even in seminaries and this money com comes from people from this ideology and then they choose theologians of that same mindset and then slowly they infiltrate the church and this is what's

34:10 happening right now and we need to be very careful because it destroys a parish where one young man is molested and we have had situations in the church like that it's very painful it is a great Scandal and you know what he has done to the Catholic Church people hate the church because of that and the one who wins at the end is the devil well I I would I see it as cruelty if I was born that way of course I would see it it as a cruel God of course he's a cruel God why would he allow and this is why 50% of them lose their faith it is a common common fact I heard from a Greek Theologian that 50% of the

34:57 homosexual are pretty much luciferians they leave the Christian faith but I I have a theory on this this my theory um the Catholic Church believes in the in the what's that called the the origin the original sin where you take on the sin of Adam and Eve you have the guilt the guilt you take the guilt right so but we as Orthodox we don't believe in that we believe that babies are born uh not with the original sin but they're born pure we are born with the illness because our progenitors were

35:43 ill now we are born with their ill nature but we don't we don't uh inherit their guilt we inherit their sins a baby is not born sinful because we're not responsible for the sins of but because we came from a from an ill person we also inherit that illness of that human nature so we look at it as illness that needs to be healed and that's why I spend 40 minutes on today's topic how to repair that illness and to regenerate you know that pure image that God made in US so that's the answer the difference the difference

36:30 of the the Catholics believe that you inherit the guilt of Adam and Eve The Originals we call it the ancestor sin we don't inherit any guilt we simply inherit the Fallen nature the Fallen adamic nature and the distorted uh energies of that nature predisposition to sin right right but we still have free will and God gives us the free will to choose you know our our um image was not destroyed it was simply distorted we still have the ability and the potential to regenerate it through the grace and the Incarnation of Christ

37:24 yes when you're persecuted in your home home well first of all you got to we got to if if people in your home are not accepting what you're believing you got to stop talking to them you don't argue with them okay you just say that's fine mom or that's fine Dad okay that's that's okay you know and uh you treat him with a lot of respect you know you don't open the conversation St Paul says if a man is does an believe like you a person who has a different ideology a person who's a heretic after once after talking to them once or twice you stop

38:10 and pray for them and become as nice as possible to them make sure you become a nicer person to them that you were before if your dad ask you to cut the grass you cut the grass you become more obedient to them and you win them over by your Christianity through your act and not through you become less rebellious right more loving to your mom or to your sisters that's a good start yes um who are the greatest living Saints in our modern era because I know many of the saints that we read about like rose

38:57 speak a little bit louder please we have there's older people here you know I was asking who are the greatest I guess like she said people don't become Saints until after they Repose and they're officially canonized but obviously while they're alive you know there's like a ground swelling who are like some of the greatest people in America that we could be following after right now Saints in America we have I think we have a few well Orthodox is very new America obviously it's like an infant Church uh what 100 years 150 years so again we we we shouldn't really we we shouldn't be in a hurry to cut ourselves off and become Ailers and

39:43 away from the you know we need to also stay very close to the churches that are about 2,000 years old what about in Greece or in Russia do you know any modern people of course there's many Saints in Greece in Serbia in uh in many Saints in in um Georgia yeah and Only God really knows the heart and what saying will be higher and you know St Paul says star from Star differs in glory and in illumination so as long as they're Saints They're All Saints and we love all of them the same but yes we can you know for are love saying you want to take his name we pray to him more and he'll protect us we ask for his uh

40:30 intercessions the greatest Saint is the bagia the Virgin Mary we need to there's no comparison between any of the Saints with a Virgin Mary and I know a lot of you are coming from protestantism perhaps and and uh just to just to for practical knowledge imagine this none of the Apostles not of the Saints none of them had continual Union with God like she did she shared the blood of Christ in her his heartbeat was beating in her for

41:17 nine months she was in communion with his blood for 9 months straight 24/7 not even the angels have that kind of relationship with Christ compared to his holy mother the most holy theodus so that's why you know we pray to her and you know we love her because she will lead us to her son she's the directress she will direct us to her son and she will make excuses for us like she does for all man kind you'll be surprised how many times he stopped Wars when Christ was ready to enough is enough and he said no

42:05 please no like the mother when we're ready to you know beat our children and the mother gets in their way no the Virgin Mary does the same thing constantly okay but also St Constantine is a great Saint okay I want you to know that and we should have more people in this country name Constantin not because of my name how about first Martin Steven Stefan of course that's my son and my father my beloved excellent thank you Father thank you much thank you much and thank you all of you guys and uh let us pray today and enjoy the live because life is short special and we are energized with such

42:53 your word and the feeling of the holy spirit so let us pray Christ is risen from the dead trembling them dead by dead and upon those inist [Music] thank you Lord and thank you people and may may God bless us all and uh glory to Jesus Christ amen thank you Father thank you so much thank you for inviting us in

43:39 your church