prayer Archives - Page 9 of 14

Stillness and Silence: Stillness (Part I)

10/27/2017

Stillness A brother asked Abba Poemen, “How should I live in the cell?” He said to him, “Living in your cell clearly means manual work, eating only once a day, silence, meditation; but really making progress in the cell, means to experience contempt for yourself, not to neglect the hours of prayer and to pray secretly. If you happen to have time without manual work, take up prayer and do it without disquiet. The perfection

he Purpose and Method of Christian Life (Part IX). Virtues (Part V): Humility

09/06/2017

Balance, we have already noted, can only be attained through discretion and discernment. Yet, there is another key virtue that the monk must seek if he is going to walk the royal road according to the Conferences. This is the fifth and final virtue on our list, namely, humility, which, according to Abba Moses, is the foundational virtue lying beneath a Christian’s ability to practice discernment and discretion and thus, by extension, to live a

You Are Not Important

08/28/2017

I think there are basically two paths of spiritual transformation: prayer and suffering. The path of prayer is taken by those rare people who consciously and slowly let go of their ego boundaries, their righteousness, their specialness, their sense of being important. In the journey of prayer, as you sink into the mystery of God’s perfect love, you realize that you’re nothing in the presence of God’s goodness and greatness, and that God is working

PRAYER OF PETITION: HUCK FINN AND DENYS THE AREOPAGITE

07/12/2017

Many people on the path of contemplation wonder about other forms of prayer such as petitionary or intercessory prayer. The question is not simply theoretical; for when we go deeply into our practice all other forms of prayer are often integrated into the simple silence of just being. Yet many contemplatives also incorporate other forms of prayer such as going to church, praying the psalms, praying for other people’s needs and the world’s needs. There

PRAYERS OF ST. ISAAC THE SYRIAN

06/13/2017

As my soul bows to the ground I offer to you with all my bones and with all my heart the worship that befits you. O glorious God, who dwell in ineffable silence, you have built for my renewal a tabernacle of love on earth where it is your good pleasure to rest, a temple made of flesh and fashioned with the most holy oil of the sanctuary. Then you filled it with your holy

Thursday after Pentecost. The Purpose of the Church

06/08/2017

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Acts 2:42 Many times, even those who are very involved in the church (this includes priests, Parish Council members, Sunday School teachers and others in church leadership) forget about the true purpose of the church. As we continue to discuss the life of the early church, today’s verse mentions the main activities of the early church, activities

A Testament of Beauty and Praying through Art

01/12/2017

A Testament of Beauty Today it is not only service that must witness to the Spirit, but art, the art that unifies us in the ‘heart-spirit’, in the ‘eye of the heart’ which sees the third beauty latent in everyone, and perceives everything to be holy. The art of being astonished that the Inaccessible God draws near to us in all the faces and all the beauty of the world. Then we find the courage,

Prayer for Universal Salvation (Part I)

10/20/2016

It is out of respect for our freedom that God allows evil to exist; it has already been conquered, but secretly, because the Holy Spirit wishes to regenerate us from within, by a free and faithful response, without compulsion. What matters in the history of the Church is her holiness, her awareness, in a world that is utterly free, that Christ has conquered death once and for all, and that his victory is always present

The Monastic Fathers

10/17/2016

Nowadays the monastic fathers could show us a way out of the superficial debates about the structure of the church or the exhaustion of spirituality. They invite us onto the path of longing. The longing for God sends us off through all obstacles on the chase for the hare, for oneness with God, for the coming of Jesus Christ, “who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). The striving

Meditation and Worship (Part X)

09/07/2016

One can pray everywhere and anywhere, yet there are places where prayer ends its natural climate; those places are churches, fulfilling the promise; ‘I will make them joyful in my house of prayer’ (Is 56: 7). A church, once consecrated, once set part, becomes the dwelling-place of God. He is present there in another way than in the rest of the world. In the world he is present as a stranger, as a pilgrim, as

Tags

Stillness and Silence: Stillness (Part I)

he Purpose and Method of Christian Life (Part IX). Virtues (Part V): Humility

You Are Not Important

PRAYER OF PETITION: HUCK FINN AND DENYS THE AREOPAGITE

PRAYERS OF ST. ISAAC THE SYRIAN

Thursday after Pentecost. The Purpose of the Church

A Testament of Beauty and Praying through Art

Prayer for Universal Salvation (Part I)

The Monastic Fathers

Meditation and Worship (Part X)

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