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Daily Meditations

The Third Tuesday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Philokalia’s Approach to Salvation

05/14/2019

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,

The Third Monday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Connecting with Universal Meaning

05/13/2019

Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing: God never changes. Patience obtains all things Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices. —St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) [1]   Contemplation is a most radical form of self-surrender and kenosis (letting go). Yet surrender is only possible if there is a profound trust that there is Someone trustworthy to whom we can surrender. Paradoxically, self-forgetfulness leads to a firm and fearless sense of

The Second Friday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Hidden Soul and the Weight of Glory

05/10/2019

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 27, 2015  From a Facebook conversation: “Though I wish I believed otherwise, in the depths of my being, I do not believe any part of us survives death. I am, at the center of my consciousness, a materialist, and a reluctant atheist still. I fight this disposition daily, and it is becoming an enormous burden that I wish I could throw off. There are days where my doubt and despair

The Second Thursday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Martyr Christopher of Lycia

05/09/2019

The Holy Martyr Christopher lived during the third century and suffered about the year 250, during the reign of the emperor Decius (249-251). There are various accounts of his life and miracles, and he is widely venerated throughout the world. Saint Christopher is especially venerated in Italy, where people pray to him in times of contagious diseases. There are various suggestions about his descent. Some historians believe that he was descended from the Canaanites, while

The Second Wednesday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Members of One Another (Part X): The Spiritual Value of the Human Body

05/08/2019

In St Silouan’s teaching concerning the bonds that unite us humans to the rest of creation, there are three points that I find particularly interesting: The Starets underlines the spiritual value of the human body. While he adopts a negative attitude towards the passions, he is fundamentally positive in his estimate of our human physicality. We are to hate, not our bodies as such, but the sinfulness that corrupts them. In its present fallen state

The Second Tuesday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Staying by Oneself (Part II)

05/07/2019

The inner attitude with which monks are supposed to sit in their cells is described by another elder in a drastic image: “When you dwell in the desert as a hesychast [a person who practices quietistic meditation], don’t imagine that you are doing something great. Instead, think of yourself as a dog that has been driven away from the crowd and tied up because he bites and bothers people.” The monks do not remain sitting

The Second Monday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Job the Prophet, Holy Week, Holy Friday, Great Friday, Savior, Septuagint, Cross, Satan

05/06/2019

The righteous Job (whose name means “persecuted”), God’s faithful servant, was the perfect image of every virtue. The son of Zarah and Bossorha (Job 42), Job was a fifth-generation descendent of Abraham. He was a truthful, righteous, patient, and pious man who abstained from every evil thing. Job was very rich and blessed by God in all things, as was no other son of Ausis (his country, which lay between Idoumea and Arabia). However, divine

RENEWAL FRIDAY. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! OF TIME AND ETERNITY: THE RESURRECTION (Part II)

05/03/2019

In the passages in which it addresses the Resurrection, then, the New Testament witnesses not to the resuscitation of a corpse, and certainly nothing like a return to the life of this world. It addresses rather the entire passage of Jesus from earthly mode of existence to a spiritual and eternal mode of existence. The Jesus whom faith proclaims as the Lord of the universe is no longer defined and limited by time and space,

RENEWAL THURSDAY. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! OF TIME AND ETERNITY: THE RESURRECTION (Part I)

05/02/2019

Nothing about Jesus is so misunderstood, misrepresented, trivialized and falsified as the Resurrection. Everything in the Gospels has to be understood in light of the Resurrection. Christian faith takes its meaning from the Resurrection—every claim about Jesus, every notion of what it means to live in trusting hope, every view of the world, every take on reality. What the Christian knows of God—with “knowledge” that is qualitatively different from knowledge about anything or anyone else—comes

RENEWAL WEDNESDAY. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! HUMAN NATURE IS HEALED

05/01/2019

CHRISTOS ANESTI!  CHRIST IS RISEN! One has to distinguish most carefully between the healing of nature and the healing of the will. Nature is healed and restored with a certain compulsion, by the mighty power of God’s omnipotent and invincible grace. One may even say, by some “violence of grace.” The wholeness is in a way forced upon human nature. For in Christ all human nature (the “seed of Adam”) is fully and completely cured

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