Daily Meditations Archives - Page 169 of 333

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! Friday of the Second Week of Pascha: He was Crucified for Every Being.

04/20/2018

We must have the same consciousness as Christ, who bears in Himself the whole world; this is what makes for the universality of the human person. The word of Christ does not stop; it is without limits. If, as we confess in the Creed, Christ is very God, the Savior of the universe, the Creator of the world, ‘by whom all things were made’, how can we bring our understanding of Him down to a

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! Thursday of the Second Week of Pascha: Jesus Rose with His Wounds

04/19/2018

Jesus rose with His wounds; and we, too, rise with our wounds. In repentance, we are able to realize a resurrection of the heart before the final resurrection of the dead. The key to this mystery is given to us at the moment of our baptism, which offers the possibility of repentance and the foretaste of resurrection. Through baptism, we find that our resurrection through repentance is not a denial or a disparagement of our

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! Wednesday of the Second Week of Pascha: We Should Follow Him.

04/18/2018

Christ said: ‘I am the Way’. If He is the Way, we should follow Him, not outwardly, but from within. And we must remember that on Golgotha and in Gethsemane He was confronted by the hostility of everyone. Alone. There are times, when the love of Christ touches us that we feel eternity. This cannot be understood rationally. God acts in a manner proper to Himself, which is beyond reason. We must not be too

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! Tuesday of the Second Week of Pascha: Through the Cross, Joy! (Part II)

04/17/2018

This descent, this final and ultimate penetration into the realm of the dead, is accomplished once and for all. It frees patriarch, prophet, and king. But at the same time it frees us, liberating us from the consequences of death. The hand that reaches out to grasp the hands of Adam and Eve reaches out to embrace their descendants as well: every “Adam” who responds to His gesture with longing and with faith. We, like

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! Monday of the Second Week of Pascha: Through the Cross, Joy! (Part I)

04/16/2018

THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT antinomies or paradoxes of Christian faith are the incarnation of the Son of God and His resurrection from the dead. Both of these find their fulfillment in the celebration of Easter, known in Orthodox tradition as Holy Pascha: The Passover of our Lord from death to life. A resurrectional hymn sung at each eucharistic celebration reminds us that every such celebration commemorates and actualizes for us Christ’s victory over death. The

Renewal (Bright) Friday. Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

04/13/2018

An anthropology which embraces an [Orthodox Christian] notion of sin will deal with good and evil in terms not of moral value, but of being and non-being, life and death, communion and separation, disease and healing. And the Church addresses us in the same terms: we are to be grafted by baptism on to the living Body of the Risen Christ, and thus enabled to receive the power of the resurrection by which our life

Renewal (Bright) Thursday. Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

04/12/2018

Why are the consequences of Adam’s disobedience so disastrous? Why does spiritual life in Christ take, in this world, the tragic form of a hand-to-hand battle against death? Why is God’s creation linked to this negation, to death, to this struggle full of pain? Why does His act of creation not lead harmoniously to the fulfillment of humankind in the image of God? Why must I struggle against things which kill me without having the

Renewal (Bright) Wednesday. Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

04/11/2018

In our civilization, so rich in knowledge and in power, we can no longer offer any reply to the enigma of death. We want only to forget death. Yet it meets us again and again in the form of hatred, oppression, separation, illness, and the disappearance of persons we love. This is why the message of Easter, of Holy Pascha, resounds today with such renewed strength. God takes on human flesh, suffers, dies, and descends

Renewal (Bright) Tuesday. Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

04/10/2018

The entire message, indeed the very essence of Christianity can be summed up in the Church’s triumphal cry on the night of Holy Pascha: “Christ is truly risen!” It is precisely in the light of Pascha that Jesus of Nazareth reveals Himself and offers Himself to the world. It is specifically to Christ’s death and resurrection that Christians bear witness by their faith, just as they experience His presence in worship and sacraments, in sharing

Renewal (Bright) Monday. Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

04/09/2018

The Father accepts the Son’s sacrifice “by economy”: “man had to be sanctified by God’s humanity” (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45, On the Holy Pascha). Kenosis culminates and ends with Christ’s death, to sanctify the entire human condition, including death. Cur Deus homo? Not only because of our sins but for our sanctification, to introduce the moments of our fallen life into that true life, which never knows death. By Christ’s resurrection, the fullness