Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith,
The divine Baptist, the Prophet born of a Prophet, the seal of all the Prophets and beginning of the Apostles, the mediator between the Old and New Covenants, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, the God-sent Messenger of the incarnate Messiah, the forerunner of Christ’s coming into the world (Isaiah 40:3; Mal. 3: 1); who by many miracles was both conceived and born; who was filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in
The icon, by a concrete symbolism that preserves it from any tendency to allegory, expresses the deification of humankind and the sanctification of the universe, in other words, the truth of beings and things. The symbolic, integrated in the fullness of communion, is always at the service of the person whom it reveals. Light in an icon does not come from an exact point, for, as we read in Revelation, the New Jerusalem ‘has no
In the undivided Church principles were laid down, chiefly by a decree of the 7th Ecumenical Council, governing an art of transfiguration, the art of the icon. The whole church, of course, its architecture, frescos and mosaics, is one enormous icon which bears the same relation to space as the unfolding of the liturgy does to time; it is ‘heaven on earth’, the manifestation of the divine-human where the flesh destined to die is transformed
For every therapist distance from the problems of the patient is the prerequisite for being able to really help the other person. So Poimen first has to get some distance from his brother. Then he can freely decide whether he wants to help and intervene in the quarrel, or if he will release him and trust him to resolve the conflict responsibly on his own. Being dead vis-a -vis the other is even viewed by
I think the notion of love has been seriously minimized by today’s popular understanding of love, as we see with Valentine’s Day. This secular holiday reveals a very unsustainable notion of love as romance, infatuation (ignis fatuus, false fire), impassioned sex, sentimental words, romantic gift giving, etc. It eventually creates cynicism and disillusionment because the promise is so high but incomplete. It is never the whole story. When we experience love as different than culture’s
The spiritual life, the Christian life does not consist in developing a strong will capable of compelling us to do what we do not want. In a sense, of course, it is an achievement to do the right things when we really wish to do the wrong ones, but it remains a small achievement. A mature spiritual life implies that our conscious will is in accordance with the words of God and has remoulded, transformed
The movement from loneliness to solitude is not a movement of a growing withdrawal but is instead a movement toward a deeper engagement in the burning issues of our time. The movement from loneliness to solitude can make it possible to convert slowly our fearful reactions into a loving response. As long as we are trying to run away from our loneliness we are constantly looking for distractions with the inexhaustible need to be entertained
Once at the Holy Monastery of Iviron, when the priest officiating began to cense the brothers at their seats, he passed by one of them without censing him. After the dismissal of the Divine Liturgy the priest was asked to give an explanation. He said that when he reached the seat of that certain brother he saw it empty! They then called aside the brother and said to him: – We beg you to keep
Western culture, having spread all over the world, has become so stretched, so cut off from the depths, that it lacks the strength to contain this great upsurge of life and enlighten it. Today it wavers between speculative high refinement and chaos. Only a renewed Christianity can open the ways of beauty. For beauty is one of the divine Names, perhaps the most forgotten, and the seal of the Well-Beloved on creation: ‘Set me as
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