By Abbot Tryphon, October 6, 2019 I was in prison and you came to Me (Matthew 25:36) I served eight years as a volunteer Orthodox chaplain within three Washington State Prisons in Monroe, WA. With the goal of bringing the love of Christ to those, who, for whatever reason, found themselves serving hard time, I found my eyes opened to the importance of truly believing in the biblical concept of forgiveness. Among the three prisons,
Darkness is a good and necessary teacher. It is not to be avoided, denied, run from, or explained away. First, like Ezekiel the prophet, we must eat the scroll that is “lamentation, wailing, and moaning” in our belly, and only eventually becomes sweet as honey (see Ezekiel 2:9-10; 3:1-3). By the time most people reach middle age, they’ve had days where life has lost its meaning, they no longer connect with an inner sense of
The spiritual path of the early monks is, then, not a moral way, but a mystical, a mystagogical way, that leads us into God. That is why the writings of Evagrius breathe, not some sort of dour severity, but love, attentiveness, and joy over our calling, to be allowed to be one with God in prayer. One senses in his words the longing for God. To be able to pray undisturbed, without distraction, is the
Around the year 300 the first signs of the monastic movement began to appear. Monks settled down in various places, first in uninhabited regions, and then in the desert. Scholars are still arguing over the origins of monasticism. Obviously there were some non-Christian sources. The Bible itself issues no call to monastic life. Monasticism is a broadly human movement that can be found in all religions, a primordial longing to live for God alone, to
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