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Daily Meditations

The Second Tuesday of Great Lent: Freedom or Responsibility & When We Speak of Truth and when Truth Speaks for Itself

03/22/2016

Freedom or Responsibility God created human beings to have free will. He honoured them with reasoning and wisdom and placed before their eyes the choice between life and death. If by their free choice they walk the way of life, they can live forever. But if by choosing evil they tread the road to death, they will be punished in eternity. The features of our human nature that we cannot alter deserve neither praise nor

The Second Monday of Great Lent: What Happens in the Crossroads of the Spirit & A Mirror with which to See inside Ourselves

03/21/2016

What Happens in the Crossroads of the Spirit It is the task of the hands to find food for the body’s necessities, and the task of the mouth to give service to the word. This particular organ is ours so that we can emit sounds, and we have another organ to receive them. The two activities are not muddled up, every organ carries out its own specific function without disturbing the one next to it.

The First Friday of Great Lent: Lent—the Tithe of the Year (Maxims 50-55)

03/18/2016

By Father Thomas Hopko, March 13, 2008 50. Be merciful with yourself and with others. Of course, we’re to be merciful to others, but we must be merciful to ourselves too. We cannot judge ourselves more harshly than God does, and the worst sin is despair. So we should be living by the mercy of God all the time—taking responsibility for our life, but not berating ourselves or beating ourselves up. God does not want

The First Thursday of Great: Lent—the Tithe of the Year (Maxims 34-49)

03/17/2016

By Father Thomas Hopko, March 13, 2008 34. Be awake, and be attentive. Be fully present where you are—wakefulness, watchfulness, attentiveness. 35. Think and talk about things no more than necessary. We should speak only when it’s necessary to speak. In fact the Scripture says: “We should speak only when spoken to.” The Fathers say: “We often repent of idle talk but very seldom have to repent of maintaining silence. Sometimes we do, because we

The First Wednesday of Great Lent: Lent—the Tithe of the Year (Maxims 11-33)

03/16/2016

By Father Thomas Hopko, March 13, 2008 11. Go to liturgical services regularly. Go to Church. Stand there. Listen. Pray. Don’t pay attention to the people—oh yes, be attentive to their presence. But be there for the sake of the service itself. 12. Go to Confession and Holy Communion regularly. Participate in the Church’s sacramental life. 13. Do not engage intrusive thoughts and feelings. When feelings come upon you, when thoughts come upon you, don’t

The First Tuesday of Great Lent: Lent—the Tithe of the Year (Maxims 1-9)

03/15/2016

By Father Thomas Hopko, March 13, 2008 In Orthodox Church tradition, the season of Great Lent is called, in the liturgical books, the “tithe of the year.” We know that in the Bible the believers were obliged to give ten percent of their possessions, their time, their crop, their money to the Lord, to the temple. And the rule of the tithe wasn’t at all because ninety percent of our possessions are our own and

The First Monday (Pure) of Great Lent: Slavery to Technology

03/14/2016

Being Separate in a Connected World Beloved in Christ, we have to see ourselves as being different than the world around us!  As Christians we are called to be “in the world, but not of the world.” (John 15:19).  The Scripture says “come out and be separate…..” (2 Cor. 6:17) Yet this can be very difficult in a world that pressures us to conform to its ways and to be connected to it at all

The Presence of God

03/11/2016

You cannot not live in the presence of God. You are totally surrounded by God all the time and everywhere. You have no choice in the matter, except to bring it to consciousness. St. Patrick said it well in the prayer attributed to him: God beneath you, God in front of you, God behind you, God above you, God within you. You cannot earn this God by any practice whatsoever. You cannot prove yourself worthy

THE ALLURE OF THE MOON

03/10/2016

After we have been long dedicated to silent prayer and experience it largely as restful and peaceful, it is easy enough to feel quite happy simply to stretch out in this hammock of contemplative practice and enjoy a martini of quietude. In this case we have managed to avoid the pull of the moon on our awareness and instead have become besotted by the moon’s allure. This is not to deny the real progress we

Holy Ground

03/09/2016

Holy Ground All this might sound like a new sort of romanticism, but our own very concrete experiences and observations will help us to recognize this as realism. Often we must confess that the experience of our loneliness is stronger than that of our solitude and that our words about solitude are spoken out of the painful silence of loneliness. But there are happy moments of direct knowing, affirming our hopes and encouraging us in

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