“Suddenly, while he was traveling to Damascus and just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground and then he heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ he asked, and the voice answered, ‘I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me.’” –Acts 9:3-5, Jerusalem Bible I believe that almost all of the great themes of Paul’s
Today, many historical forms of Christianity are dead or dying. Trying to preserve them through blind conservatism can lead only to the creation of malicious and distrustful ghettos which idolize formalism, or to “fascist” adventures that lead nowhere. On the contrary, we must trust in the “newness of the Spirit,” who will transform this death into resurrection. New approaches are already developing, approaches which rediscover and develop the deepest intuitions of thinkers such as Gregory
Julitta had known that eventually she would be recognized–one of the costs associated with influence and power was the loss of anonymity. Julitta had anticipated that the potential gain offered to the “good” citizens of Rome would prove too enticing for some poor soul and that, eventually, somebody would turn her over to the authorities as a Christian and a traitor to Rome. Diocletian’s campaign against Christians was a popular one among those who sought
Two Kinds of Loneliness In the spiritual life we have to make a distinction between two kinds of loneliness. In the first loneliness, we are out of touch with God and experience ourselves as anxiously looking for someone or something that can give us a sense of belonging, intimacy, and home. The second loneliness comes from an intimacy with God that is deeper and greater than our feelings and thoughts can capture. We might think
“A donkey going round and round in a mill cannot step out of the circle to which it is tethered.” This is how St. Hesychios describes the state of awareness that is held prisoner to inner chatter. Although we may feel perfectly at home with going around and around and around in circles of inner chatter, he says that this actually blinds us to something deeper: “with our inner eye blinded, we cannot perceive holiness
“What do you consider the difference between worldly joy and God’s joy?” Michael asked. “Worldly joy is of course joy, but it cannot be compared with the joy that God offers to the human soul. There is a gigantic difference. Worldly joy is temporal. Let us say I have won the lottery and I am filled with joy. It is an event that happens outside myself. I accept the stimulation of the external event and
Many sayings of the fathers start out from the assumption that we must first die to the world in order to be up to the tasks that the world sets us: “A brother asked Father Moses, ‘I see a task before me and I cannot fulfill it.’ The old man said to him: ‘If you do not become like a dead body, like those who are buried, you cannot master it.’” If I completely identify
Divine Eros Makes Prayer Imperative “A person was upset with his wife. At noontime, when he got tired at work, he asked himself where he should go. He went to Elli, his wife, to get some rest.” “Do you hear my child do you hear? He was very tired. He went to a certain place. They talked and he rested. Because the flame of love was present, he found rest. This is a great thing.”
The outward beauty of the liturgy must not seduce us into forgetting that sobriety in prayer is a very important feature in Orthodoxy. In the Way of a Pilgrim a village priest gives some very authoritative advice on prayer: ‘If you want it to be pure, right and enjoyable, you must choose some short prayer, consisting of few but forcible words, and repeat it frequently, over a long period. Then you will find delight in
As attentive and vigilant as the nous may be, without divine strength and the invocation of the name of the Lord Jesus, “the rotating sword,” it is unable to be guarded from harmful thoughts. The vigilance, therefore, or the watchfulness or attentiveness of the nous is accompanied by prayer. On its own, the nous does not have the power for pure prayer unless it uses the salt of watchfulness that drives away impure and wicked
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