By Father Stanley Harakas Q: I have asked many persons this question, but I have as yet not received a satisfactory answer. Maybe there is no answer. The question is, “Why was humanity created by God?” I know the “how” and the “circumstances,” but not the “why.” – D.A.C., Augusta, GA. A. One way of answering your question would be to say simply, we have no direct revelation on the subject in the Bible, and so
It is important to the monks to provide a concrete structure for their day and their spiritual exercises. At first glance that seems to be a superficial matter. In reality it decides whether life is going to succeed or not. A healthy spirituality needs a healthy way of life. “Father Poimen used to say, ‘We found three bodily experiences with Father Pambo: daily fasting till evening, silence, and a great deal of manual labor.’” With
And May You Experience Them All The Elder continued, “And you, while you are there at the monastery, you must be very focused during the service. You are to follow them. You should experience them all. This includes the hours, the mid-hours, the psalms, and the canons. Don’t allow one word to escape your attention. You are to read clearly and with meaning. We should proclaim with love and worship unto our Lord, ‘Lord Jesus
Fasting, neither above nor below your ability, will help you in your vigil. One should not ponder divine matters on a full stomach, say the ascetics. For the well-fed, even the most superficial secrets of the Trinity lie hidden. Christ Himself set the example with His long fast; when He drove out the devil He had fasted for forty days. Are we better than He? Behold, angels came and ministered unto him (Matthew 4:11). They
THE CASE OF Bartimaeus, as recorded in Mark 10:46, gives us some insight into a certain number of points relating to prayer. And they came to Jericho; and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side, begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son
Fr. Brendan Pelphrey As a graduate student specializing in western medieval mysticism, I became most interested in the fourteenth-century English visionary, Julian of Norwich. A recluse who had a near-death experience, Julian was the first woman to compose a book in English. In her book, A Showing of God’s Love (sometimes referred to as Revelations of Divine Love or just “the Revelations”), she describes seeing Christ and receiving sixteen distinct teachings about the surpassing love of God. Some of
Abba Poemen said, “Teach your mouth to say what is in your heart.” Many of the desert fathers and mothers, as well as the Philokalia in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, have described prayer as bringing your thinking down into your heart. It always seemed like soft piety to me until someone taught me how to do it, and I learned the immense benefits of the prayer of the heart. As a Catholic, I was often
The most authentically Christian, baptismal attitude, must be one of exorcism. In exorcizing the determinisms of technological society we are by no means condemning the scientific research and invention which spring from it. Rather, we are trying to make them have more respect for reality. Christians must demand of science a more open-ended research, and of technology an efficiency that serves the irreducible person no less than the indispensable relationship between Man and the universe;
The antirrhetic method requires that we first observe our thoughts precisely, that we note whether they make us sick or healthy, whether they lift us up or drag us down, whether they correspond to the Spirit of God. Evagrius describes the process of testing thoughts with the image of the gatekeeper: “Be a gatekeeper of your heart and let no thought in without questioning it. Examine every single thought one by one and ask it:
By Father Micah Hirschy As was the case with many young men who grew up during the 80’s and 90’s, I went through a period of deep fascination with Kung-Fu movies. There was something intrinsically appealing about a story where a young man could spend a few days with a Kung-Fu master or read an ancient scroll and henceforth become invincible and able to battle evil! I also loved that the Kung-Fu Masters gave their Art really
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