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Daily Meditations

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

WATCHFULNESS IN DIVINE WORSHIP (Part IV)

03/08/2016

The great penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete conceals within it great neptic wealth. Let’s bring to mind some of its precious gems: Instead of the visible Eve, I have the Eve of the mind: the passionate thought in my flesh, showing me what seems sweet; yet whenever I taste from it, I find it bitter (34). Thou hast heard O – my soul, be watchful! – how Ishmael was driven out as the

REAL PEACE (Part V)

03/07/2016

“In a monastery one is not allowed to have negative feelings toward anyone. If you have a complaint, you are expected to go to that brother, make a deep bow, and ask for forgiveness. That is how the traps of Satan are destroyed, rendering him incapable of causing divisions among us.” “Is this, perhaps, the secret that has allowed monasteries to last for thousands of years whereas other communal arrangements tend to have very brief

A World-Wide Late Empire

03/04/2016

Every culture has its spiritual origin in a cult, from which little by little it becomes detached, until it is entirely cut off and self-contained, even perhaps the preserve of an elite. This ‘decadent’ phase of its history is often the time of its highest refinement, subtlety and consciousness. Wholeness and spontaneity give place to a nuanced awareness, a degree of scepticism, a tolerance of diversity, a dislike of sharp distinctions, a readiness to see

The Quarrelsome Brother

03/03/2016

The Quarrelsome Brother I once told him, “Elder, I can’t work together with this brother … he is a complainer.” “You fool, you are an egotist. Do you know that? Because of this you suffer in many ways.” “I know it Elder. I have been like this from my youth. Pray that God will give me a humble heart.” “When the heart has God-given humility it sees everything clearly. It already lives in the earthly

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