Dear friends, at every moment the earth is full of the mercy of God, and nature itself is a lesson for all the faithful in the worship of God. The heavens, the sea and all that is in them bear witness to the goodness and omnipotence of their Creator, and the marvelous beauty of the elements as they obey him demands from the intelligent creation a fitting expression of its gratitude. But with the return
Forgive me Have mercy on me, God, according to Your great mercy (Psalms 50:1). On my knees before You, CrucifiedLord, I beg for mercy, for this grace. I’ve sinned. Yet again I’ve fallen. I’ve done exactly the opposite of what Your holy will asked of me. I tasted sin. Its bitter, oppressive taste lingers on my lips. I am lost. I measure the height of Your holiness against the abyss of my corrupt existence, and
Despite the striking parallels between the Russian novelist and the Athonite monk, it is highly unlikely that St Silouan had ever read Dostoevsky. More probably, the similarities arise because both are shaped by the same living tradition, and both are drawing on the same sources. St Silouan (almost certainly) and Dostoevsky (possibly) have been influenced by a Mesopotamian hermit of the seventh century, St Isaac the Syrian, who writes in a famous passage of his
Luke’s Gospel is the most broad-minded and the most forgiving. Every chance he gets, Luke has Jesus forgiving people, right up to the good thief on the cross. Luke is quite ready to see God as generous, gratuitous, and merciful. Mercy and inclusivity—Jesus’ ministry to outcasts, to gentiles, to the poor—are emphasized a great deal in Luke. In this approach, Luke’s sacred text is also called the gospel of women. Far more than any other
We spend an enormous amount of energy making up our minds about other people. Not a day goes by without somebody doing or saying something that evokes in us the need to form an opinion about him or her. We hear a lot, see a lot, and know a lot. The feeling that we have to sort it all out in our minds and make judgments about it can be quite oppressive. The desert fathers
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