Right Living and Right Speaking To be a witness for God is to be a living sign of God’s presence in the world. What we live is more important than what we say, because the right way of living always leads to the right way of speaking. When we forgive our neighbors from our hearts, our hearts will speak forgiving words. When we are grateful, we will speak grateful words, and when we are hopeful
Today, partly as a result of daring experimentation, but mostly because of a willingness to go along with fashion, sex seems to be everywhere. The mass media, advertising, and a general inclination to rebelliousness, have together encouraged the spread of a sub-Freudian culture which, combined with Marxist fantasies, has even lost the awareness of death which Freud had recovered. The horror of ‘repression’, the shallow sensation-seeking demanded by our jaded nerves and imagination, seem to
Fr. Maximos continued. “I am reminded of what Elder Joseph the Hesychast wrote in a little booklet about this matter. The title of his essay was ‘Delusion.’ In it, he clearly identifies delusion with fanaticism. The fanatic is under the spell of delusion. The person who is monolithically dogmatic, absolutistic in his views, and dismissive of others who profess different opinions is under the spell of ‘plani’, of delusion.” “Religious people often consider such characteristics
Mark’s is primarily a gospel of action. Of the four gospels, his includes the least verbal teaching. Jesus is constantly on the move from place to place preaching and healing, preaching and healing, but it is mostly action and narrative. Jesus is the invasion of God’s Big Picture into our small worlds, and he does this much more than he talks about it. We have to look at Jesus’ actions, and how his physical healings
From Abraham onwards, through many centuries, God has prepared the chosen people to receive the Messiah. Despite that, when the Messiah appeared, the greater part of the Jewish people rejected him. In the Church of the Nations, that is to say, among the pagan peoples, the opposite happened. The soil that seemed to need more cultivation received the seed of the Gospel and brought forth the hundredfold. Already, in the middle of raging persecutions, Christianity
By Rod Dreher, August 12, 2013, 12:24 PM: I had not seen this comment from Pope Francis’s celebrated airplane press conference. The Pope was asked to comment on Eastern Christianity. He said something amazing. From the transcript: In the Orthodox Churches they have kept that pristine liturgy, so beautiful. We have lost a bit the sense of adoration. They keep, they praise God, they adore God, they sing, time doesn’t count. God is the center, and
NOW that we know where the battle we have just begun is to be fought, and what and where our goal is, we also understand why our warfare ought to be called the invisible warfare. It all takes place in the heart, and in silence, deep within us; and this is another serious matter, on which the holy Fathers lay much stress: keep your lips tight shut on your secret! If one opens the door
God says, “Give me your heart.” And then, in answer to my puzzlement, I hear him say, “Your heart is where your treasure is.” My treasures—here they are: persons, places occupations things experiences of the past the future’s hopes and dreams. I pick each treasure up, say something to it, and place it in the presence of the Lord. How shall I “give” these treasures to him? In the measure that
+ BARTHOLOMEW By God’s Mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome And Ecumenical Patriarch To the Plenitude of the Church Grace and Peace from the Creator and Conserver of All Creation Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ Beloved brothers and children in the Lord, We have come to September 1st, the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, which the Ecumenical Patriarchate and subsequently the entire Orthodox Church designated as a day of prayer for the natural environment.
The divine Baptist, the Prophet born of a Prophet, the seal of all the Prophets and beginning of the Apostles, the mediator between the Old and New Covenants, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, the God-sent Messenger of the incarnate Messiah, the forerunner of Christ’s coming into the world (Esaias 40: 3; Mal. 3: 1); who by many miracles was both conceived and born; who was filled with the Holy Spirit while yet
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