By Father Lawrence Farley One day several years ago, before my own trip to the Holy Land, I asked a parishioner who had been there how he had liked the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during his visit to Jerusalem. “Grand,” he replied. “Confusing, but grand.” Having been there myself, I now quite understand what he meant by “confusing.” The church there is confusing because it is the heir (some would say “the victim”) of
It is this most basic human loneliness that threatens us and is so hard to face. Too often we will do everything possible to avoid the confrontation with the experience of being alone, and sometimes we are able to create the most ingenious devices to prevent ourselves from being reminded of this condition. Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain
The Holy and Glorious Apostle Thomas was born in the Galilean city of Pansada and was a fisherman. Hearing the good tidings of Jesus Christ, he left all and followed after Him. The Apostle Thomas is included in the number of the holy Twelve Apostles of the Savior. According to Holy Scripture, the holy Apostle Thomas did not believe the reports of the other disciples about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: “Unless I see in
Why He left the Holy Mountain “I told you that there on the Mountain I lived a Heavenly life.” “And why did you leave, Elder?” “I did not leave, they expelled me.” “They expelled you? Why?” “It is a long story. I was in constant motion. I did not stay put for one minute. I constantly created work for myself in order to push myself. I always did these things with permission. The one Elder
The external rudiments lead us now to the warfare that goes on in the depths. As when one peels an onion, one layer after another is removed, and the innermost core, out of which growth reaches up toward the light, lies revealed. There, in your own innermost chamber, you will glimpse the heavenly chamber, for they are one and the same, according to St. Isaac the Syrian. When you strive now to enter your inmost
There is a silence we choose. Our retreats into our cells of silence and solitude still the noise pollution in our lives so that we might eventually be still. Quieted enough to hear the whispers of God. Still enough to feel the Holy Spirit winds blowing through our lives and to observe the effects of the Spirit winds all around us. We retreat in hopes of delight, in hopes of tasting the good, the true,
By Matushka Constantina Palmer “I will sing unto the Lord throughout my life, I will chant to my God for as long as I have my being. May my words be sweet unto Him, and I will rejoice in the Lord,” Prophet David prays. And the sweetness of Byzantine chant makes these words my own when they are brought to life by divinely inspired melodies. Byzantine chant inspires its listener. Of course in the beginning,
You deserve to know my science for interpreting sacred texts. It is called a “hermeneutic.” Without an honest and declared hermeneutic, we have no consistency or authority in our interpretation of the Bible. My methodology is very simple; I will try to interpret Scripture the way that Jesus did. Even more than telling us exactly what to see in the Scriptures, Jesus taught us how to see, what to emphasize, and also what could be
It is a very common thought in the writings of the early Christian ascetics that man must go through these three stages – slave, hireling and son. The slave is one who obeys for fear, the hireling is one who obeys for reward and the son is one who acts for love. We can see in Exodus how gradually the people of God had become more than slaves and hirelings and the law stands at
Evagrius correlates the emotional realm of human beings to the three logismoi of sadness, of anger, and of acedia. “Sadness can sometimes arise when a person’s wishes go unfulfilled. Sometimes it also appears in the company of anger. If it arises as a consequence of needs and wishes that have not been met, it usually occurs in this way: such persons think first of all of their homes, of their parents, or of the life
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