We Must Collaborate With God If we are to be healthy spiritually, we must cooperate with God’s divine grace. The nous, as the center of our being, refers to the noetic energy that functions in the heart of every spiritually healthy person. Only the Holy Spirit can bring about the
Asking For Miracles In Our Smugness And Pride Asking for miracles in order to believe betrays a sort of smugness on our part, sort of like asking for an expensive gift from a prospective friend, before considering their overture for friendship. It could hardly become a true friendship if it
We Must Think Before We Speak Many a parish has been torn apart by careless speech. Many extended families have seen rifts between family members because of one careless word. Couples have divorced because one spouse would not refrain from a critical word. Our struggle with the passions must begin
Do Not Turn Right Or Left According to Saint Basil the Great, “The person who does not allow his thought to incline towards excess or deprivation but directs it to the midpoint, that of virtue, is upright in his heart”. Virtue must be practiced. Just as one who would desire
Putting The Blame In The Right Place “A humble and spiritually active man, when he reads the Holy Scriptures, will refer everything to himself and not to another.” Saint Mark the Ascetic We all have a natural tendency to lay blame on others, when in truth we must blame only
The Jesus Prayer, and the Acquisition of Inner Peace The Jesus Prayer, also known as the Prayer of the Heart, is the central prayer for monastics. One of the early desert fathers, Saint Macarius the Great, said of the phrase from the Psalms, “The meditation of my heart is in your
The Eucharist Imparts Life And The Life Is The Life Of God We do not attend the Divine Liturgy, but participate in the Divine Liturgy, for in communing with God, we receive the Bread of Life. The Liturgy lifts us up above the disordered and dysfunctional world, and we are
Thoughts That Arouse Us To Judge Our Neighbor At the very first sign we are tempted to judge our neighbor, we must condemn ourselves. Self-condemnation is the only weapon that assures us of escaping the sin of judging another, for when we make ourselves confront our own sin, the sin
We Must Impart The Faith As A Missionary People Two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, brought Orthodox Christianity to the Slavs in the ninth century. The brilliance of Eastern Orthodox missionary outreach, as opposed to that of the Latin Church, was in the very use of the vernacular. These