Daily Meditations Archives - Page 338 of 355

Father Maximos on How to Live a More Spiritual Life in the World

10/25/2012

Fr. Maximos then encouraged the audience to ask further questions. A young seminarian raised his hand. “Fr. Maxime,” he said, “can you give to those of us who are not monks a prescription for how to live a more spiritual life in the world?” Fr. Maximos smiled. “I believe Christ Himself has given us such a prescription. The Gospel is the prescription for our healing, assuming of course that we put it into practice. Remember

Understanding

10/24/2012

Some disciples came to see Abba Poemen and said to him: “Tell us, when we see brothers dozing during the sacred office, should we pinch them so they will stay awake!” And the old man said to them: “Actually, if I saw a brother sleeping, I would put his head on my knees and let him rest.” UNDERSTANDING — COMPASSION — is the foundation of a monastic lifestyle. Without it there is no hope at

REPENTANCE IN THE PHILOKALIA (Part II)

10/23/2012

Neilos the Ascetic (died ca. 430) was probably from Constantinople and a follower of St. John Chrysostom. He became abbot of a monastery in what is now Ankara, Turkey, and is the first writer known to make unequivocal mention of the Jesus Prayer. “In the biblical story Elisha then threw a stick into the Jordan and brought to the surface the axe head his disciple had lost (cf. 2 Kings 6:6); that is to say,

The Cup of Life

10/22/2012

The Cup of Life When the mother of James and John asks Jesus to give her sons a special place in n his Kingdom, Jesus responds, “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” (Matthew 20:22). “Can we drink the cup?” is the most challenging and radical question we can ask ourselves. The cup is the cup of life, full of sorrows and joys. Can we hold our cups and claim them

Sacred Cosmology in the Christian Tradition (Part III)

10/19/2012

The Original Christian World-view: A study of the lives and writings of the great spiritual masters of the First Millennium of the Christian Church — East and West — will show that a sacred cosmology was integral to the Church’s world-view. Salvation, or deification, as the ancient Church and the Orthodox Church of today calls the process of reconciliation with God, was cosmic as well as personal in scope. It included not only human beings

The Commandment to Love

10/18/2012

Jesus commanded us to love, so we know it is not just a feeling, since you cannot command feelings. Love is a decision. Jesus did not say: When you get healed, love;When you grow up, love; when you feel loving, love;When you get it together and have dealt with all your mother/father/husband/children wounds, then you are able to love. No, the commandment for all of us is to LOVE now. I think we know the

Persons in Communion: The Disciplines of Communion (Part II)

10/17/2012

The training of our consciousness enables us to recover an immediacy of response to anybody’s face, however spoilt, haggard, or careworn, and precisely because it is such. God loves this person here and now, in their very ordinariness, their cowardice, their loneliness, their sin. Our consciousness being awakened, the eye of the heart is opened, and we begin to see with the eyes of God. Then we can put ourselves in the other’s place, share

Persons in Communion: The Disciplines of Communion (Part I)

10/16/2012

We can now give an outline of the disciplines of communion. The first thing, before love is even mentioned, is humility, and what humility becomes when it is exercised towards another person, that is, respect. Respect rejects all self-interested curiosity, all possession of souls. Some people undergo a strict regime of self-denial to free themselves from carnal desire, only to fall prey to a more exquisite desire, that for souls. This must be identified and

Signposts on the Way to God

10/15/2012

Signposts on the Way to God How do we know about God’s love, God’s generosity, God’s kindness, God’s forgiveness? Through our parents, our friends, our teachers, our pastors, our spouses, our children— they all reveal God to us. But as we come to know them, we realize that each of them can reveal only a little bit of God. God’s love is greater than theirs; God’s goodness is greater than theirs; God’s beauty is greater

Sacred Cosmology in the Christian Tradition (Part II)

10/12/2012

“Man’s Divorce from Nature” What I wish to suggest is a way to recover the lost cosmic dimension of religion by showing how it might be found again in the Christian tradition. What must be recovered above all is the vision — not only that religion needs to be imbedded in the cosmos, but also that the world is imbedded in God. For it is this loss that inevitably led to the separation of religion