Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, October 15, 2017 The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (8:5-15) “…there are many ways of ‘being’ in a place.” This was written by the wonderful Catholic mystic Teresa of Avila. She was writing about entering the Interior Castle, the interior kingdom of heaven. By this she means the soul. Then she says, “But since we are already there, how can I speak of
By Fr. Antony Hughes Delivered at the Antiochian Women’s Pre-Lenten Retreat, February 10. 2018, At St. John of Damascus Church in Dedham, Massachusetts We are in the midst of a kind of awakening. The sciences, including neuroscience and the quantum sciences, have discovered that there is mystery at the core of the universe. Psychology is being revolutionized by the discovery of the benefits of mindfulness practice in religious people, including prayer and meditation. Even the
For many, if not for the majority of Orthodox Christians, Lent consists of a limited number of formal, predominantly negative, rules and prescriptions: abstention from certain food, dancing, perhaps movies. Such is the degree of our alienation from the real spirit of the Church that it is almost impossible for us to understand that there is “something else” in Lent—something without which all these prescriptions lose much of their meaning. This “something else” can best
Archimandrite Placide Deseille is Higoumen of the Monastery of Saint Anthony the Great, St.-Laurent-en-Royans, France, and professor at the St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris. The following thoughts are adapted from a talk he gave at a local parish on 6 March 2008, originally published by the Service Orthodoxe de Presse (SOP), supplement no. 327, April 2008. The expressions “Prayer of the Heart” and “Prayer of Jesus” or “Jesus Prayer” are often used as equivalents.
On Silence and Stillness (III) Each of us will have to discover our own most effective means to acquire a measure of quiet and a disposition toward prayer. For many people, it is enough to select a certain space—an icon corner in the bedroom or study, for example—and to set as far as possible a fixed time each day. Alone, away from phones and other distractions, we can light a candle before an icon, then
Fr. Maximos then elaborated on the fruit of patience and forbearance. “The saints are fearless because they have a direct connection with God’s Spirit. Consequently, they can endure everything with peace in their hearts and without a trace of anxiety.” “I suppose that is why we hear in church that God is ‘ever present, and fills all things’… Maria commented. “Right. Only the Spirit of God can fill up a human being. You know, God
[The “action” of the Lenten service in us] is as if we were reaching a place to which the noises and the fuss of life, of the street, of all that which usually fills our days and even nights, have no access—a place where they have no power. All that which seemed so tremendously important to us as to fill our mind, that state of anxiety which has virtually become our second nature, disappear somewhere
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