Daily Meditations Archives - Page 313 of 353

The Good News according to the Gospels of Mark and Luke

09/06/2013

Mark’s is primarily a gospel of action. Of the four gospels, his includes the least verbal teaching. Jesus is constantly on the move from place to place preaching and healing, preaching and healing, but it is mostly action and narrative. Jesus is the invasion of God’s Big Picture into our small worlds, and he does this much more than he talks about it. We have to look at Jesus’ actions, and how his physical healings

Recapturing the Experiences of the Church’s Youth

09/05/2013

From Abraham onwards, through many centuries, God has prepared the chosen people to receive the Messiah. Despite that, when the Messiah appeared, the greater part of the Jewish people rejected him. In the Church of the Nations, that is to say, among the pagan peoples, the opposite happened. The soil that seemed to need more cultivation received the seed of the Gospel and brought forth the hundredfold. Already, in the middle of raging persecutions, Christianity

Pope Francis on Light vs. Luxury

09/04/2013

By Rod Dreher, August 12, 2013, 12:24 PM: I had not seen this comment from Pope Francis’s celebrated airplane press conference. The Pope was asked to comment on Eastern Christianity. He said something amazing. From the transcript: In the Orthodox Churches they have kept that pristine liturgy, so beautiful. We have lost a bit the sense of adoration. They keep, they praise God, they adore God, they sing, time doesn’t count. God is the center, and

ON THE SILENT AND INVISIBLE WARFARE

09/03/2013

NOW that we know where the battle we have just begun is to be fought, and what and where our goal is, we also understand why our warfare ought to be called the invisible warfare. It all takes place in the heart, and in silence, deep within us; and this is another serious matter, on which the holy Fathers lay much stress: keep your lips tight shut on your secret! If one opens the door

THE ABSOLUTE

09/02/2013

God says, “Give me your heart.” And then, in answer to my puzzlement, I hear him say, “Your heart is where your treasure is.” My treasures—here they are: persons, places occupations things experiences of the past the future’s hopes and dreams. I pick each treasure up, say something to it, and place it in the presence of the Lord. How shall I “give” these treasures to him? In the measure that

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