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THE FALL OF THE NOUS OF MAN BEFORE AND AFTER CHRIST (Part I)

01/12/2016

The ability of the nous of man to see God is not only its principal and higher ability, but it is also its central aim for which it was created by God. This, say the holy Fathers, was exactly the blessedness of Adam and Eve in Paradise: to see the Omniscient, Delightful, and Most Longed-for Face of their Visible and Invisible, their Approachable and Unapproachable Creator. God Himself is not only the invisible and inaccessible

The Nous

10/27/2015

Man, this superior creation of God, the pinnacle of creation is composed of matter and spirit, body and soul. His surpassing from the material to the immaterial, from the perceptive to the non-perceptive world is achieved with the power of the soul, the nous.1 The foundation of the faith of our Orthodox Church is that man constitutes the image of the Triune God. The Triune God is Nous (Father), Word (Son) and Spirit. The Nous

Five Words I Wish Everyone Knew

07/08/2015

By Grace Brooks I don’t know many languages, but in each one, there are words that I wish we had in English. The same is true in different dialects (for instance, I’m sorry that the word “y’all” isn’t commonly used by non-Southerners). But that desire to co-opt vocabulary is never more pronounced than when I consider some of the Orthodox words that I have read or heard. There are words from the Orthodox lexicon that

The Seventh Wednesday after Pascha: Eating with Mindfulness

05/27/2015

By Fr. Brendan Pelphrey Recently while waiting for my wife at a doctor’s office, I flipped through a “wellness” magazine. In it was an article entitled, “Are You Aware of What You Eat?” True to the title, the article suggested knowing what we are eating. We should also know where our food comes from, we should chew slowly, and we should notice how satisfied our stomach feels. This is called “eating with mindfulness.” The idea

Analyzing Our Thoughts and Feelings (I)

06/27/2014

The encounter with oneself that the monks sought in silence and that they saw as a prerequisite for the encounter with God is for Evagrius Ponticus primarily a meeting with the thoughts and feelings in one’s own heart. Among the desert fathers Evagrius is considered a specialist in dealing with thoughts and passions. He experienced them himself and wrote about them again and again in his books, to share his experience with others. It was

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

REPENTANCE IN THE PHILOKALIA (Part II)

10/23/2012

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 Philokalia’s Approach to Salvation

08/23/2012

The spiritual teaching of the Fathers of the Holy Mountain is grounded in the Eastern Church’s theological anthropology. The human being is a fundamental unity of body and soul and should be understood as an “embodied soul” or an “ensouled body.” The Eastern spiritual tradition takes our psychosomatic nature quite seriously, so that worship and prayer draw on our body and all its senses. Even the inward act of repentance is expressed outwardly with bows,

Archive

THE FALL OF THE NOUS OF MAN BEFORE AND AFTER CHRIST (Part I)

The Nous

Five Words I Wish Everyone Knew

The Seventh Wednesday after Pascha: Eating with Mindfulness

Analyzing Our Thoughts and Feelings (I)

Father Maximos on Logismoi and the Jesus Prayer

REPENTANCE IN THE PHILOKALIA (Part II)

The Philokalia’s Approach to Salvation

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