The Quarrelsome Brother I once told him, “Elder, I can’t work together with this brother … he is a complainer.” “You fool, you are an egotist. Do you know that? Because of this you suffer in many ways.” “I know it Elder. I have been like this from my youth. Pray that God will give me a humble heart.” “When the heart has God-given humility it sees everything clearly. It already lives in the earthly
The sin of judgmentalism, even if we believe that it is committed in order to correct our brother, has grievous consequences for our spiritual life. l. St. Isaak considers malicious gossip to be the admittance of the passions into the soul. He says: “He who guards his mouth from speech guards his heart from the passions. The man who cleanses his heart from the passions beholds the Lord at every moment”. “If you love purity,
Give Yourself to Christ I was worried and he counseled me. “Didn’t I tell you on another occasion that when you completely open your heart to the Lord, without reservations, the Lord will enter it and make it incapable of sinning? Did you understand? You become incapable of evil. When the Lord loves us in the depths of our heart He brings meekness and kindness. Even if we wish to get angry, to do harm
MEDITATION AND PRAYER are often confused, but there is no danger in this confusion if meditation develops into prayer; only when prayer degenerates into meditation. Meditation primarily means thinking, even when God is the object of our thoughts. If as a result we gradually go deeper into a sense of worship and adoration, if the presence of God grows so powerful that we become aware of being with God, and if gradually, out of meditation
Mother and symbol of the Church In Old Israel, only the kings and the priests were anointed. The anointing was powerless, prefiguring but not conferring the seal of the Holy Spirit. In the Virgin, the barren church of Old Israel is reborn as the New Israel, and the royal and priestly lines are recapitulated and become one. The fruit of her womb is the one High Priest and King of the New Israel Who, in
Recently, Anglican bishop and theologian N.T. Wright was interviewed on the Evangelical Protestant show “100 Huntley Street”, speaking about heaven and hell. As might be expected from someone of Wright’s stature, he was articulate, fascinating, and Biblical. He prefaced his brief remarks by saying that one day he was sitting in the Sistine Chapel facing an immense image of the Last Judgment, in which souls were departing after the Judgment and either ascending to heaven
By Father Matthew Baker As we give blessing to God for the end of one day and the beginning of another, the words of Psalm 103 in our Vespers service bid us turn our thoughts to the Lord’s work in creating the world. 1. How magnified are thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all (Ps. 103:26). The whole creation, the Psalmist tells us, has been fashioned “in wisdom.” The great multitude of
By Father Stanley Harakas One of the most confusing words in the Christian vocabulary is the “world.” Sometimes it seems to have good meanings, sometimes neutral and sometimes the word “world” has bad meanings. How can we make sense of this? The World as the Creation is Good: In the story of the creation of the world by God, repeatedly we see that world is described as good (Genesis 1). Because God is goodness itself, the
By Father Lawrence Farley The Huffington Post, it seems, can always be relied upon to provide fodder for sceptics looking for a stick with which to beat the Christians. They are, of course, not alone, and poking sharp sticks in our cage seems to be on the verge of becoming a national sport. But of course one can’t always be posting news items about how the Christian Neanderthals are refusing to accept gay marriage. One
By Father Stanley Harakas It isn’t very often that we hear the word “integrity” in the religious language of our Greek Orthodox Church. Yet, if we scratch the surface, we will discover profound meanings that speak directly to the way we are to be and to live our Orthodox Christian life. We can start with its dictionary meanings. My Greek-English dictionary uses two words to provide the equivalent of the English word “integrity.” And both
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