Daily Meditations Archives - Page 221 of 333

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Friday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part IV)

05/20/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part IV The Body of the resurrected Christ was incomparably more spiritual than the incorrupt body of Adam before the Fall. Christ’s resurrected, spiritual Body was like the spiritual body that Adam was supposed to attain by ascending to God in Paradise. Likewise, the New Heaven and the New Earth will be incomparably more spiritual than the incorrupt creation before the Fall. Through Christ the New Adam, the

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Thursday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part III)

05/19/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part III The aim of the Christian life, says St. Seraphim of Sarov, is to acquire the Grace of the Holy Spirit. [31] We receive the seed of that Grace within us at Baptism. And then, through our sacramental life in the Church, through a life of prayer and virtue, practicing the commandments of Christ, we are to cultivate and nurture this seed of inward baptismal

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Wednesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part II)

05/18/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part II In the Gospels, especially the Gospel of St. John, Christ makes several statements which reveal how His followers would be able to receive the Grace of the Holy Spirit by means of His death. In the temple Christ preached: He that believeth on Me … out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. After quoting these words of Christ, the Apostle John explains: But this

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Tuesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part I)

05/17/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part I Now, having looked at how Christ redeemed us through His death on the Cross, let us turn to the saving fruits of Christ’s death. What does it mean for mankind to be ransomed from guilt, to be forgiven of sins? It means, in the words of St. John Damascene, that “the road back to the former blessedness [i.e., before the Fall] has been made

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Monday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part III)

05/16/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Means of Redemption, Part III Many of the Holy Fathers wrote on this theme of Christ as sacrifice. Origen (who is not a Holy Father) and, following him, St. Gregory of Nyssa, posited that the sacrifice was offered to the devil. But St. Gregory the Theologian and all the Fathers after him rejected this idea. They often spoke of the sacrifice as being offered to God the Father, and sometimes they

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Friday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part II)

05/13/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Means of Redemption, Part II The word “redemption,” of course, comes from this juridical explanation. As Vladimir Lossky points out: “The very idea of redemption assumes a plainly legal aspect: it is the atonement of a slave, the debt paid for those who remained in prison because they could not discharge it. [15] By His death Christ ransomed man out of servitude to sin, and redeemed man from the eternal consequences of sin which had

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Thursday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part I)

05/12/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Means of Redemption, Part I Now, having looked at the pre-Fall state and the consequences of the Fall, let us look more closely at how Christ restores man to the pre-Fall state and in fact beyond and above this state. The how of the redemption, like the nature of God the Holy Trinity, is ultimately a mystery. And yet the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers help us to approach this mystery. They enable us

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Wednesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of the Fall, Part II)

05/11/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of the Fall, Part II We are all the inheritors of the death and corruption that entered into man’s nature at the Fall. St. Gregory Palamas says that, through Adam’s one spiritual death, both spiritual and physical death were passed onto all men. [10] This is because human nature is one: we are all of the family of Adam. Orthodoxy does not accept the idea that we are guilty of

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Tuesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of the Fall, Part I)

05/10/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of the Fall, Part I Such was the lofty original state of man and the creation, and such was man’s lofty original calling. But as we all know and experience every day, the first man, Adam, fell from this state and brought himself and all of creation into a state of corruption and death. The whole story of the Fall and why it occurred lies outside the scope of this

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Monday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Primordial State)

05/09/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Primordial State Let us begin by discussing the state of man and the world before the Fall. A right understanding of this pre-Fall state is actually essential to a right understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death on the Cross. We have to understand what Adam fell from in order to understand what Christ restores us to. According to the Patristic interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, before the Fall man’s body was not subject