I have a confession to make. And it’s a bad one …. When I was a kid … I used to get dressed up for Halloween! And it was not always something innocent either, like an astronaut or a cowboy. Once I was even a ghost! Worse yet, I would go door-to-door with my brothers and say “Trick or treat!” Idolatrous! Occultic! Satanic! Over time, of course this demon-glorifying activity caught up with me. Look
Temptations, the monks tell us, make us human. They bring us in to contact with the roots that bear the trunk. Facing temptations means encountering the truth. Thus one father says: “Take away temptations, and no one will be whole, for whoever flees useful temptation, flees eternal life. There are in fact temptations that have prepared crowns for the saints.” Many people might have problems with this, because when they pray the Our Father, they
WAS IT NOT NECESSARY THAT THE CHRIST SUFFER THESE THINGS AND ENTER HIS GLORY? —LUKE 24:26 Think of some of the painful events in your life. For how many of them are you grateful today, because thanks to them you changed and grew? Here is a simple truth of life that most people never discover. Happy events make life delightful but they do not lead to self-discovery and growth and freedom. That privilege is reserved
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It was October 26, 1987. The time was past 10:00 p.m. The city was celebrating the memory of the contest of its patron saint, St. Demetrios, and the freedom from the nearly five hundred years (1430-1912) occupation by the Ottomans. The Church of St. Demetrios with open doors received its nightly venerators, who were kneeling in front of the silver casket with the holy relics of the Myrrhgusher. At that moment there must not have
Fr. Maximos then encouraged the audience to ask further questions. A young seminarian raised his hand. “Fr. Maxime,” he said, “can you give to those of us who are not monks a prescription for how to live a more spiritual life in the world?” Fr. Maximos smiled. “I believe Christ Himself has given us such a prescription. The Gospel is the prescription for our healing, assuming of course that we put it into practice. Remember
Some disciples came to see Abba Poemen and said to him: “Tell us, when we see brothers dozing during the sacred office, should we pinch them so they will stay awake!” And the old man said to them: “Actually, if I saw a brother sleeping, I would put his head on my knees and let him rest.” UNDERSTANDING — COMPASSION — is the foundation of a monastic lifestyle. Without it there is no hope at
Neilos the Ascetic (died ca. 430) was probably from Constantinople and a follower of St. John Chrysostom. He became abbot of a monastery in what is now Ankara, Turkey, and is the first writer known to make unequivocal mention of the Jesus Prayer. “In the biblical story Elisha then threw a stick into the Jordan and brought to the surface the axe head his disciple had lost (cf. 2 Kings 6:6); that is to say,
The Cup of Life When the mother of James and John asks Jesus to give her sons a special place in n his Kingdom, Jesus responds, “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” (Matthew 20:22). “Can we drink the cup?” is the most challenging and radical question we can ask ourselves. The cup is the cup of life, full of sorrows and joys. Can we hold our cups and claim them
The Original Christian World-view: A study of the lives and writings of the great spiritual masters of the First Millennium of the Christian Church — East and West — will show that a sacred cosmology was integral to the Church’s world-view. Salvation, or deification, as the ancient Church and the Orthodox Church of today calls the process of reconciliation with God, was cosmic as well as personal in scope. It included not only human beings
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