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Daily Meditations

Christmas Advent: The First Day

11/15/2012

ANTICIPATION LIFTS THE HEART. Desire is created to be fulfilled— perhaps not all at once, more likely in slow stages. Isaiah uttered his prophetic words about the renewal of the natural Creation into a wilderness of spiritual barrenness and thirst. For him, and for many other Old Testament seers, the vacuum of dry indifference into which he spoke was not yet a place of fulfillment. Yet the promise of God through this human mouthpiece (and

Preparing for Christmas

11/14/2012

When we demand satisfaction of one another, when we demand any completion to history on our terms, when we demand that our anxiety or any dissatisfaction be taken away, saying, as it were, “Why weren’t you this for me? Why didn’t life do that for me?” we are refusing to say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” We are refusing to hold out for the full picture that is always given in time by God. When we set

The Search for the ‘Place of the Heart’: The Temple of the Body

11/13/2012

We are both person and nature, and the nature itself is also dual, being a synthesis of visible and invisible, each pervading and containing the other. Through the body, we participate in the material and living world; by means of the body, personal existence belongs to the material universe and particularizes it. Cosmic energy is constantly passing through the body, renewing it materially, with the result that the whole of humanity actually possesses a single

REPENTANCE IN THE PHILOKALIA (Part III)

11/12/2012

Theognostos (fourteenth century?) is known to us only as the author of the work included in the Philokalia. “When you fall from a higher state, do not become panic-stricken, but through remorse, grief, rigorous self-reproach, and, above all, through copious tears shed in a contrite spirit, correct yourself and return quickly to your former condition. Rising up again after your fall, you will enter the joyous valley of salvation, taking care so far as possible

Miracle of Saint Nektarios: The Healing of Fr. Nektarios Vitalis of Cancer

11/09/2012

Fr. Nektarios Vitalis, well-known in Lavrio [a city in Attika, Greece] for his deeds and his sympathy to the poor and those written-off by the world in these difficult times, retells the following incident from when he was dying from cancer. What is said below has been told elsewhere, repeatedly, including in the book I talked to Saint Nektarios (Athens 1997, by the renowned writer Mr. Manolis Melinos). Fr. Nektarios Vitalis recalls: “I was suffering

FEAST OF THE ARCHANGELS

11/08/2012

On the 8th of November, the Orthodox Church celebrates the Feast of Synaxis of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel and the rest of the archangels. The word synaxis means the gathering of believers to celebrate a feast, or to make a remembrance of a saint. This feast also has a special meaning; it is the gathering of the humans with the angels, “their union, their gathering and standing in fear in front of the Creator.”(1)

Vision

11/07/2012

Abba Zacharias had a vision. He told his spiritual Father, Carion the ascetic, about it. Exasperated, Carion beat him and told him the vision came from demons. Zacharias went to Abba Poemen to tell him about it. Seeing his sincerity, Abba Poemen sent him on to a monk who was a mystic. This monk knew all about the vision before Zacharias even told him and said it was indeed from God. Then the mystic instructed

CHRISTIAN ROOTS OF THE PRACTICE OF CONTEMPLATION

11/06/2012

For Christians Jesus himself is the prime example of the practice of contemplation. According to early Christian contemplatives, this example is not the healing of the demoniac, the rebuking of the winds, or the Transfiguration, but Jesus’ own temptation in the desert (Mt 4:1-11). The ordeal in prayer is fundamentally a battle with thoughts, and the early contemplatives noticed something vitally important in how Jesus dealt with the thoughts by which Satan tried to ensnare

Father Maximos on Logismoi and the Jesus Prayer

11/05/2012

Fr. Maximos paused, waiting for another question. “I am puzzled by what the Fathers of the Ecclesia say about the Jesus Prayer,” Teresa commented. “They claim that when we pray, the mind, or nous, must be on the heart. I don’t understand what that means.” “I appreciate your puzzlement,” Fr. Maximos replied. “This is what the tradition of the Ecclesia teaches as noetic prayer or prayer of the heart. When the Fathers say that the

Letting Go, Forgiveness, and Paradox

11/02/2012

What does letting go on the practical level tell us? Letting go is different than denying or repressing. To let go of something is to admit it. You have to own it. Letting go is different than turning it against yourself; different than projecting it onto others. Letting go means that the denied, repressed, rejected parts of yourself, which are nonetheless true, are seen for what they are; but you refuse to turn them against

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