Daily Meditations Archives - Page 341 of 346

Jesus’ Rules, Jonah, the Holy Spirit

05/07/2012

All of Jesus’ rules of ministry, his “tips for the road,” are very interpersonal. They are based on putting people in touch with people. Person-to-person is the way the gospel was originally communicated. Person-in- love-with-person, person-respecting-person, person-forgiving-person, person-touching-person, person-crying- with-person, person-hugging-person: that’s where the Spirit is so beautifully present. The challenge is to preach a gospel that is livable, believable, and life-giving. Perhaps that is the most simple criterion by which we can discern Jesus’

Members of One Another (Part I)

05/04/2012

‘Love all creation,’ says Starets Zosima in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov: ‘Love all creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand within it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.’ This ‘divine mystery’ of which Starets Zosima speaks is precisely the interdependence, the reciprocal coinherence, of all created things in

Sacred Being, Self-Knowledge, Friendship

05/03/2012

Claiming the Sacredness of Our Being Are we friends with ourselves? Do we love who we are? These are important questions because we cannot develop good friendships with others unless we have befriended ourselves. How then do we befriend ourselves? We have to start by acknowledging the truth of ourselves. We are beautiful but also limited, rich but also poor, generous but also worried about our security. Yet beyond all that we are people with

God’s Risk (Part II)

05/02/2012

Maximus the Confessor clearly distinguishes two freedoms in Man: that of his nature and that of his person. The first is the magnetic attraction of his deepest being towards God, the completion of his nature in love; indeed, Man desires love with his whole nature and finds fulfillment in it. Human beings conceal within themselves an ‘immense capacity for love and joy which is effective from the moment it knows the presence of the Beauty

God’s Risk (Part I)

05/01/2012

The human being, the being who is personal, is the pinnacle of creation. With humanity the omnipotence of God gives rise to something radically new. Not a lifeless reflection or a puppet, but a freedom which can oppose God, and put the fulfillment of God’s creation in jeopardy by excluding him from it. In the supreme achievement of God’s creative omnipotence – for only life giving Love can create a free living being – there

The Resurrection and Us

04/30/2012

“Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of all who fall asleep.” ~1 Corinthians 15:20 St. Paul seldom leaves the message at the level of “believe this fact about Jesus.” He always moves it to “this is what it says about you!” or “this is what it says about history!” Until we are ourselves pulled into the equation, we find it hard to invest ourselves in a distant religious belief. Paul normally

Banishment of Death

04/27/2012

When our dull wits had so declined
as to set us mid the squalor of the merely
sensible creation, the Very God consented
to become a body of His own, that He
as one among us might gather our dim senses
to Himself, and manifest through such

How It Was

04/26/2012

The earth trembled; its foundations shook
like silt; the sun, chagrined,
fled the scene, and every mundane
element scattered in retreat. The day
became the night: for light could not endure
the image of the Master hanging on a tree.

Saint Mark the Evangelist

04/25/2012

Saint Mark is recognized by all Christians world-wide as one of the four Evangelists who wrote a Holy Gospel. He was also one of the seventy apostles. Although the disciples and the apostles are considered ecumenical or universal bishops for the Church in general, every church refers to her initial preacher as her first bishop and as such, Saint Mark is the first bishop of the See of Alexandria.

Pascha

04/24/2012

Pascha, our Passing Over into Life

Finally! The Hebrew Scriptures have been opened
and the mystery declared:
how the sheep was sacrificed, and how
a people were redeemed,