The outward beauty of the liturgy must not seduce us into forgetting that sobriety in prayer is a very important feature in Orthodoxy. In the Way of a Pilgrim a village priest gives some very authoritative advice on prayer: ‘If you want it to be pure, right and enjoyable, you must choose some short prayer, consisting of few but forcible words, and repeat it frequently, over a long period. Then you will find delight in
As attentive and vigilant as the nous may be, without divine strength and the invocation of the name of the Lord Jesus, “the rotating sword,” it is unable to be guarded from harmful thoughts. The vigilance, therefore, or the watchfulness or attentiveness of the nous is accompanied by prayer. On its own, the nous does not have the power for pure prayer unless it uses the salt of watchfulness that drives away impure and wicked
Saint Paul has always been a hero of mine. Unfortunately, Christians have often misunderstood Paul, seeing him as a moralist rather than a mystic. Yet Paul has so much to teach us. He never knew Jesus in the flesh, so Paul’s experience of the Risen Christ is much closer to what our own could be. For the next two weeks we are going to focus especially on Paul’s teachings on love, which is the theme
Samuel Adams Signer of the Declaration of Independence and Father of the American Revolution “And as it is our duty to extend our wishes to the happiness of the great family of man, I conceive that we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the world that the rod of tyrants may be broken to pieces, and the oppressed made free again; that wars may cease in all the earth,
This experience explains what Rainer Maria Rilke meant when he said, “Love . . . consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other”· and what Anne Morrow Lindbergh had in mind when she wrote, “I feel we are all islands in a common sea.” It made me see that the togetherness of friends and lovers can become moments in which we can enter into a common solitude which is not
By the Late Reverend N. Patrinacos By the term Twelve Apostles only the twelve disciples of Christ should be understood. There are four lists of their names in the New Testament: Matthew 10:12, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:14, and Acts of the Apostles 1:13. The list of names is as follows: Simon also called Peter and Andrew his brother; James and John, the sons of Zebedee; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector; James
The divinely-blessed Peter was from Bethsaida of Galilee. He was the son of Jonas and the brother of Andrew the First-called. He was a fisherman by trade, unlearned and poor, and was called Simon; later he was renamed Peter by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Who looked at him and said, “Thou art Simon the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called Cephas (which is by interpretation, Peter)” (John 1:42). On being raised by the
At the same time barbarism is increasing. In the first place, it is spreading from the third world: negatively, as the revenge of the revolted slaves, which is the cause of all the destructiveness of ‘cultural revolutions’; and positively as the witness, whether dionysiac or contemplative, of the irrational continents – including France itself, at whose heart there lies a third world of the soul, the spirit of the Celts, and that of Provence, among
By Father Stephen Freeman The Orthodox year has a rhythm, much like the tide coming in and going out – only this rhythm is an undulation between seasons of fasting and seasons (or a few days) of feasting. Every week, with few exceptions, is marked by the Wednesday and Friday fast, and every celebration of the Divine Liturgy is prepared for by eating nothing after midnight until we have received the Holy Sacrament. It is
Digging into Our Spiritual Resources When someone hurts us, offends us, ignores us, or rejects us, a deep inner protest emerges. It can be rage or depression, desire to take revenge or even an impulse to harm ourselves. We can feel a deep urge to wound those who have wounded us or to withdraw in a suicidal mood of self-rejection. Although these extreme reactions might seem exceptional, they are never far away from our hearts.
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