By Father Stephen Freeman The story in the gospel of Christ’s visits to the Temple in his childhood – the first at 40 days of age (marked by the Feast of the Presentation and the occasion of prophecy by the Elder Simeon and Hannah the Prophetess) and at age 12 when He is lost and later found giving instruction to the teachers and scribes, is a reminder of the importance of children in the Temple
Silence and Purity of Heart The disciples of Abba Pachomius learned that silence is not simply the absence of sound. It is a unique form of human consciousness. In the silence of their teacher they were drawn beyond themselves into a transpersonal form of listening, seeing and learning. They witnessed the presence of God in Pachomius in such a way that the judgments of their egos were released. They were lured beyond the boundaries of
Breathing the Name Jesus AS WE TRY TO BECOME STILL, what do we do? The Fathers suggest that we begin by becoming aware of our breathing. We go gently inside. As the sixth-century monk St. John Climacus said in The Ladder of Divine Ascent, in the chapter “A Brief Summary of All the Preceding Steps,” “Let the remembrance of Jesus be present with your every breath. Then indeed you will appreciate the value of stillness.”5
By Very Rev. Stephen Rogers, from The Word, January 2001 As the month of January draws to a close, the Church calls us on the 30th to celebrate the Feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John Chrysostom. In celebrating these three great teachers of the Church, the Church in its hymnody refers to them as “harps of the Spirit,” “rays of light,” “scented flowers of Paradise,”
Daniel Walsh, who was Thomas Merton’s primary philosophy teacher, says he’s not sure if the human person can even legitimately be called a creation, because we are a continuance of, an emanation from, a “subsistent relation” with what we call Trinity. Wow! This is getting very wonderful and also very dangerous. [1] He taught that the human person must see itself in continuity with God, and not a fully separate creation. We are “chosen in
By Father Stephen Freeman If you go to the self-help section of a bookstore, any bookstore, you see row upon row of books, all promising another method to change or fix how you think, feel or imagine. It is as though we were certain that our lives would be great if only we could think feel or imagine better than we do now. Even Orthodox titles can hold a certain promise: Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives
The elders knew that words have great power to harm and distract or to give life and edify. Since human speech affects the lives of others in such profound ways the abbas and ammas valued silence as a steward of both hearing and speech. They took the power of words very seriously and, as illustrated in the incident about Abba Ammoes and his disciple, guided the patterns of their relationships to ensure appropriate use of
SPIRITUAL AUTHORS TELL us that we need to spend some time every day being still, either seated or standing. They encourage us to have a “prayer word”-the Jesus Prayer, the single name “Jesus,” some other short prayer, or silence. Our quest for a spiritual life pivots on quiet time and intimacy with Christ. Our quiet time can be part of our personal prayer rule as directed by our spiritual father. The usual directive is to
Charity, then, is the natural outgrowth of a soul pursuing love over and against anger. When we are committed to love, we do good. Yet, charity is about more than the one giving it. The exercise of charity and good works is one of the most important means by which we take responsibility for the anger and brokenness of other people, and seek to guide them, and not just ourselves, toward genuine love in accordance
Think of your own experience: how many people do you know, including yourself, who are really in this divine dance with an appropriate and balanced degree of self-love and self-giving? It is the very definition of psychological maturity. Even so, we all make a lot of missteps as we learn the dance. Insofar as an appropriate degree of self-love is received, held, enjoyed, trusted, and participated in, this is the same degree to which love
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