The transition from the first half of life to the second half often involves a stumbling stone. In Greek the word for stumbling block is skandalon, from which the English word scandal also comes. Originally, scandal expressed how you felt about yourself when you tripped over the stone, when you were disappointed in yourself. You wondered, “Why did I do that? What’s wrong with me? What kind of person am I?” The term stumbling stone
The way to arrive and remain within “the force field of the Holy Spirit”, which is one way of describing consciousness–is both very simple and very hard: you’ve got to remain in love, with a foundational yes to every moment. You can’t risk walking around with a negative, resentful, gossipy, critical mind, because then you won’t be in the force field. You will not be a usable instrument. That’s why Jesus commanded us to love.
After conversion, self-consciousness (in the negative sense) slowly falls away and is replaced by what the mystics call pure consciousness or unitive consciousness–which is love. Self-consciousness implies a dualistic split. There is me over here, judging, analyzing, labeling that or me over there. The mind is largely dualistic before spiritual conversion and even foolishly calls such argumentation “thinking.” In true conversion the subject-object split is overcome at least for a moment. You can’t maintain this
Every spiritual director knows that it is a difficult and subtle matter to determine just what is the borderline between interior idleness and the faint, unperceived beginnings of passive contemplation. But in practice, at the present time, there has been quite enough said about passive contemplation to give lazy people a chance to claim the privilege of “praying by doing nothing.” There is no such thing as a prayer in which “nothing is done” or
By Fr. Vasile Tudora “They say—and I am willing to believe it—that it is difficult to know yourself—but it isn’t easy to paint yourself either.” Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother, September 1889 The self-portrait genre has been around from the very beginning of art. It was used to identify the artist, when no photography existed, or to tell one’s story in a visual manner or to dive deep into one’s existential struggles. Some
THE first time you are victorious over self may be a sign to you: Now I am on the way! But do not consider yourself virtuous, only thank God, for it was He who gave you the power; and do not rejoice beyond measure, but swiftly go on. Otherwise the vanquished evil may come to life and conquer you from the rear. Remember: the Israelites received the command from God to drive out all the
Fr. Maximos went on to comment on the next fruit of the Holy Spirit, which according to St. Paul is kindness. “In the Greek original, Paul refers to kindness as chrestotis, with the Greek e in the chre and not with an i as it is in Christotis, meaning ‘being anointed by Christ,’ or ‘becoming Christified.’ Chrestotis with an e means something different. It means usefulness. It seems that what the apostle meant is that
If we move out of our self, whom do we encounter? asks Bishop Theophan. He supplies the answer at once: We meet God and our neighbour. It is for this very reason that denying oneself a stipulation, and the chief one, for the person who seeks salvation in Christ: only so can the centre of our being be moved from self to Christ, who is both God and our neighbour. This means that all the
The Body of Christ is not only unity but interchange, by which the ‘movement of love’ of the Trinity is conveyed to humankind. This movement, in which each effaces himself in order to give, is the transition from individual to person, a growing to maturity certainly, but only achieved by means of a succession of death-and-resurrections, in the course of which we are stripped down and recreated. We become unique, escape the repetitive character of
One of the elders said, “Just as it is impossible to see your face in troubled water, so also the soul, unless it is clear of alien thoughts, is not able to pray to God in contemplation.” Silence is the lost art in a society made up of noise. Radios wake us up, and timers on TVs turn off the day-full of programs long after we have gone to sleep at night. We have music
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