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The Fourth Tuesday of Great Lent: When the Mind is Well Disposed & ‘Pray for One Another’

04/05/2016

When the Mind is Well Disposed So perhaps Abraham had some priest at his disposal? Some expert? Perhaps he had heard some teaching, some preaching, some wise counsel? But no written documents existed in those days, no Law, no Prophets, nothing of that sort at all. He successfully sailed a sea that was not favourable to him in the slightest. He traversed a road that was impassable, he who came from an idolatrous family. Nevertheless,

SEEING BY TORCHLIGHT (Part II)

02/24/2016

In an early season of practice we are so caught up in our thoughts and feelings that we think we are these thoughts and feelings and miss the distinction between thoughts and awareness that St. Teresa and countless others have discovered. The great masters presume this awkwardness we all know and so they teach in a practical way the cultivation of awareness. When the light of awareness illumines no more than a torch does, we

ON THE JESUS PRAYER

02/08/2016

The saint Abbot Isaiah, the Egyptian hermit, says of the Jesus Prayer (1) that it is a mirror for the mind and a lantern for the conscience. Someone has also likened it to a constantly sounding, quiet voice in a house: all thieves that sneak in take hasty flight when they hear that someone is awake there. The house is the heart, the thieves, the evil impulses. Prayer is the voice of the one who

WATCHFULNESS IN DIVINE WORSHIP (Part I)

10/29/2015

Looking carefully at the liturgical wealth of our Orthodox Church, we note endless points in which watchfulness is mentioned or commented on: in the daily sacred services (Midnight Office, Orthros, Hours, Vespers, Compline), in the prayers of the Divine Liturgy, in the Great Canon, in the hymnology of the Octoechos, the Triodion and the Menaia. The worship of our Orthodox Church is a profoundly contrite worship, a worship of returning into our true, deeper self.

A WHEEL FULL OF SPOKES

09/18/2014

Indeed silence does more than tiptoe around the house. Silence moves through all sound like water through netting. The deeper our own interior silence, the more we take on its gracious ways of opening up the tight mind that clenches its teeth around what it wants and spits out what it doesn’t want. The optimal environment for prayer is physical silence. Saint Augustine, surely one of the most eloquent people in history, thought it was

The Fifth Monday of Great Lent

03/31/2014

Our Mind is like a Flute The Creator has bestowed divine beauty on us by adding, to his own image in us, the likeness of the qualities he himself possesses. This beauty brings with it other benefits with which God has generously enriched our human nature. For instance we ought to consider our minds as far more than a gift. They are a way of sharing the mind of God. But the mind by itself,

FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT (III)

02/06/2014

Fr. Maximos was silent for a while to give us time to ponder what he had been saying. He then continued with a rhetorical question. “Do you realize that our best friend is ourselves? We don’t have a closer and more intimate friend than ourselves. We are with ourselves all the time. This may seem to you paradoxical, but many people consider staying all by themselves a veritable hell. They cannot be by themselves, not

The Essence of Prayer (II)

11/05/2013

Every time we come near God, it is either life or death we are confronted with. It is life if we come to him in the right spirit, and are renewed by him. It is death if we come to him without the spirit of worship and a contrite heart; it is death if we bring pride or arrogance. Therefore, before we set out on the so-called thrilling adventure of prayer, it cannot be too

Archive

The Fourth Tuesday of Great Lent: When the Mind is Well Disposed & ‘Pray for One Another’

SEEING BY TORCHLIGHT (Part II)

ON THE JESUS PRAYER

WATCHFULNESS IN DIVINE WORSHIP (Part I)

A WHEEL FULL OF SPOKES

The Fifth Monday of Great Lent

FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT (III)

The Essence of Prayer (II)

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