Abba Poemen asked at every moment: “Who am I and who are You?” St. Francis would also spend whole nights praying this same prayer. Baron Von Hugel, in his classic study of mysticism, said this might just be the perfect prayer. It is through encountering the absolute safety of God that we discover our true self, and in finding our truest self, we find a God who is always and forever larger than we expected.
By Father Stelyios S. Muksuris Perhaps I am preaching to the choir when I say that the older I become, the more I come to see that our world is full of paradoxes. Contradictions of all sorts abound in our lives — between individuals and their behavior, among ideologies and political systems, and so forth. I need not rattle off specific examples to prove my point. With age, we want to believe, comes wisdom and
All God appears to want from us is honesty and humility (and they are finally the same thing). If God is holding out for human perfection, God is going to have a long wait. There is no other way to read Jesus’ stories of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) or the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14). In each story, the one who did wrong ends up being right—simply because he is honest and humble
Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics-Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion-are unanimous on one
Orthodox and Paradox. The two words have much in common. The “dox” that ends both terms has its root in the Greek word doxa, which means “belief” or “opinion.” It will be suggested in what follows that these words share much more than just a linguistic root, but glancing at the root word is a good place to begin. In its later Christian usage, doxa comes to mean “glory,” but only as an extension of
There is a necessary and inherent dissonance in many of the texts in the Bible (Jesus calling a woman “a dog” in Mark 7:27). We largely remain unwise if we avoid these conflicts, dilemmas, paradoxes, inconsistencies, or contradictions; and I want to say those contradictions are in the Biblical text itself and presented to you for serious consideration—until you get the point. This is the real meaning of what we call Lectio Divina, or spiritual
What does letting go on the practical level tell us? Letting go is different than denying or repressing. To let go of something is to admit it. You have to own it. Letting go is different than turning it against yourself; different than projecting it onto others. Letting go means that the denied, repressed, rejected parts of yourself, which are nonetheless true, are seen for what they are; but you refuse to turn them against
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