communion Archives - Page 14 of 14

The Father, Son, Holy Spirit

07/03/2013

The Father: Empowered to Call God “Abba” Calling God “Abba, Father” is different from giving God a familiar name. Calling God “Abba” is entering into the same intimate, fearless, trusting, and empowering relationship with God that Jesus had. This relationship is called Spirit, and this Spirit is given to us by Jesus and enables us to cry out with him, “Abba, Father.” Calling God “Abba, Father” (see Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6) is a cry of

THE TWO MEANINGS OF FASTING (Part I)

04/17/2013

At this point, the next question arises: if Eucharist is incompatible with fasting, why then is its celebration still prescribed on Saturdays and Sundays of Lent, and this without “breaking” the fast? The canons of the Church seem here to contradict one another. While some of them forbid fasting on Sundays, some others forbid the breaking of the fast on any of the forty days. This contradiction, however, is only apparent, because the two rules

THE TWO MEANINGS OF COMMUNION DURING LENT (Part II)

04/16/2013

But why then, one may ask, is Communion still distributed during fasting days at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts? Does it not contradict the principle enunciated above [see April 15, Part I]? To answer this question, we must now consider the second aspect of the Orthodox understanding of Communion, its meaning as the source and the sustaining power of our spiritual effort. If, as we have just seen, Holy Communion is the fulfillment of

“. . . BUT BY PRAYER AND FASTING” (Part II)

03/22/2013

What then is fasting for us Christians? It is our entrance and participation in that experience of Christ Himself by which He liberates us from the total dependence on food, matter, and the world. By no means is our liberation a full one. Living still in the fallen world, in the world of the Old Adam, being part of it, we still depend on food. But just as our death—through which we still must pass—has

LENT IN OUR LIFE: “TAKING IT SERIOUSLY” (Part I)

03/18/2013

Now these questions must be asked: How can we apply [Lent] to our lives? What could be not only a nominal but a real impact of Lent on our existence? This existence (do we need to recall it) is very different from the one people led when all these services, hymns, canons, and prescriptions were composed and established. One lived then in a relatively small, mainly rural community within one organically Orthodox world; the very

Theophany (or Epiphany) and Christmas (Part II)

01/04/2013

The Deeper Meaning of the Baptism of Christ and the Sacrament of Baptism. a) Man’s Return to the True God. The Baptism of the Forerunner was a “baptism of repentance,” which signaled man’s return to God by obedience to the divine will. It was necessary in view of the coming of the Messiah and the kingdom of God which He would bring into the world. It was a kind of prelude and preparation which looked

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

Persons in Communion: From Individual to Person (Part I)

09/26/2012

The Body of Christ is not only unity but interchange, by which the ‘movement of love’ of the Trinity is conveyed to humankind. This movement, in which each effaces himself in order to give, is the transition from individual to person, a growing to maturity certainly, but only achieved by means of a succession of death-and-resurrections, in the course of which we are stripped down and recreated. We become unique, escape the repetitive character of

Persons in Communion: The Justification of the Good

07/10/2012

But sin turns this diverse unity into a hostile multiplicity, so that space becomes a separator, time a murderer, and language good only for expressing juxtaposition or possession. Whence the slogan of May 1968, ‘Love one another’; this is facile blasphemy, because the erotic encounter itself is given us as a symbol, a foretaste of personal communion. In the universe of sin solitary individuals devour one another. There is a besetting tendency today, when faced

Tags

The Father, Son, Holy Spirit

THE TWO MEANINGS OF FASTING (Part I)

THE TWO MEANINGS OF COMMUNION DURING LENT (Part II)

“. . . BUT BY PRAYER AND FASTING” (Part II)

LENT IN OUR LIFE: “TAKING IT SERIOUSLY” (Part I)

Theophany (or Epiphany) and Christmas (Part II)

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

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

Persons in Communion: From Individual to Person (Part I)

Persons in Communion: The Justification of the Good

Categories

Archives

View Our Live Stream Services

Keep In Touch

Stewardship Application

Daily Meditations

Worship Schedule

Light a Virtual Candle

Text-to-Give in 2 easy steps!

1) Text 202-899-7801 to include your donation amount

2) Follow the link to complete the one-time registration