Daily Meditations Archives - Page 293 of 332

Encyclical of His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew on the Environment: The Ecclesiastical New Year (Indiction), September 1, 2014

08/30/2013

+ BARTHOLOMEW By God’s Mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome And Ecumenical Patriarch To the Plenitude of the Church Grace and Peace from the Creator and Conserver of All Creation Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ Beloved brothers and children in the Lord, We have come to September 1st, the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, which the Ecumenical Patriarchate and subsequently the entire Orthodox Church designated as a day of prayer for the natural environment.

Beheading of the Holy and Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John

08/29/2013

The divine Baptist, the Prophet born of a Prophet, the seal of all the Prophets and beginning of the Apostles, the mediator between the Old and New Covenants, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, the God-sent Messenger of the incarnate Messiah, the forerunner of Christ’s coming into the world (Esaias 40: 3; Mal. 3: 1); who by many miracles was both conceived and born; who was filled with the Holy Spirit while yet

Hope-Bridled Grief: Discovering in Gregory of Nyssa a Christian Discipline of Grief (Part III)

08/28/2013

How, then, do we reconcile Gregory’s theological objections to grief with the pastoral sensitivity that he displays in his funeral orations? Is Gregory the theologian at odds with Gregory the pastor? I do not think this is the case. Each of the funeral orations has a point of transition that marks the end of his sympathizing with his congregation’s grief and the beginning of his attempt to lead them out of their grief toward genuine

Hope-Bridled Grief: Discovering in Gregory of Nyssa a Christian Discipline of Grief (Part II)

08/27/2013

When Macrina breathes her last, Gregory is “numbed with grief,” as he recalls in The Life of Macrina. When he hears the mournful wailing of the virgins of the community, “my reason no longer remained steady, but as if submerged by a torrent in flood, was swept under by passion. Thereupon, disregarding the duty at hand, I yielded myself up wholly to the lamentations.” While convinced that reason ought to be in control and that

Hope-Bridled Grief: Discovering in Gregory of Nyssa a Christian Discipline of Grief (Part I)

08/26/2013

The death of a loved one is excruciatingly painful, and it would seem wrong to ask moral questions about the appropriateness of someone’s grief, as if it were possible to hold our emotions in check at such horribly difficult times. It would appear cruel to imply to those in mourning that there is something wrong with them for feeling the way they do. Christianity holds that reason is a distinct faculty that gives guidance to

Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Giants

08/23/2013

And all that is present today. It is in us. Granted, there is a certain amount of rubbish: the sins of the Church. But above all else there is a crowd of wings fluttering in our hearts: the holiness of the Holy One, of God, and the holiness of Christians sanctified by mortification in their faith and their love. We have the twenty centuries of the Church’s life in our blood. We are its heirs.

Living a Spiritual Life

08/22/2013

We Are the Glory of God Living a spiritual life is living a life in which our spirits and the Spirit of God bear a joint witness that we belong to God as God’s beloved children (see Romans 8:16). This witness involves every aspect of our lives. Paul says, “Whatever you eat, then, or drink, and whatever else you do, do it all for the glory of God” (Romans 10:31). And we are the glory

Father Maximos on Fanaticism and Delusion

08/21/2013

Fr. Maximos continued. “I am reminded of what Elder Joseph the Hesychast wrote in a little booklet about this matter. The title of his essay was ‘Delusion.’ In it, he clearly identifies delusion with fanaticism. The fanatic is under the spell of delusion. The person who is monolithically dogmatic, absolutistic in his views, and dismissive of others who profess different opinions is under the spell of plani, of delusion.” “Religious people often consider such characteristics

Drawn to Interior Silence

08/20/2013

The practice of contemplation quiets the noise that goes on in our heads and allows inner silence to expand. This expanding inner silence is a wide and fertile delta that embraces the mud, reeds, and rushes of all sound, whether delightful or disruptive. Initially, however, the practice of contemplation can strike us as frustratingly awkward, and we react to everything within and without. Though we feel drawn to interior silence, what we find when we

The Experience of God

08/19/2013

I think some experience of God is necessary for mental and emotional health. You basically don’t belong in the universe until you are connected to the center and the whole, and a word for that is “God.” When you live in the false self you are “eccentric,” or off-center. You’re trying to make something the Center that is not the center—yourself or anything else. It will never work. Thus the ONLY real sin is idolatry—making