Our age has been called the age of anxiety, and I think it’s a good description for this time. We no longer know where our foundations are. When we’re not sure what is certain, when the world and our worldview keep being redefined every few months, we’re going to be anxious. We want to get rid of that anxiety as quickly as we can. Yet, to be a good leader of anything today—a good pastor,
‘A Lover of Knowledge’ Today we celebrate the memory of the Holy Mark the Ascetic (5th c.), also known as St Mark the Monk. Although St Mark wrote some very important hesychastic treatises, which have been included in the Philokalia, little is known about his life. An ascetic and wonderworker, he was made a monk at the age of forty by his teacher, St John Chrysostom. Mark spent sixty more years in the Nitrian desert
First [we have] the mystery of the created Person in its vertical relation, on the one hand to God who calls it, and on the other [we have] the human nature which it must assume, and whose ‘panhuman’ and cosmic aspects we [must recognize]. Vladimir Lossky has shown clearly that the supernatural character of the person runs right through the Chalcedonian definition. This emphasizes the unity of the humanity and the divinity. Christ is true
We spend an enormous amount of energy making up our minds about other people. Not a day goes by without somebody doing or saying something that evokes in us the need to form an opinion about him or her. We hear a lot, see a lot, and know a lot. The feeling that we have to sort it all out in our minds and make judgments about it can be quite oppressive. The desert fathers
It is with charity as with happiness and holiness. It is not possible for you to say that you are happy because the moment you become conscious of your happiness you cease to be happy. What you call the experience of happiness is not happiness at all but the excitement and thrill caused by some person or thing or event. True happiness is uncaused. You are happy for no reason at all. And true happiness cannot be experienced. It is not within the realm of consciousness. It is unself-consciousness.
The Archbishop of Caesarea, Saint Basil is revered—together with Saints John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzos—as one of the “Three Holy Hierarchs” of the Church. Together with that same Nazianzos and Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Basil is revered as one the “Cappadocian Fathers,” whose homiletical and mystical writings helped establish what is now considered the heart of Orthodox theology and spirituality.
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