On History

"...historical research is not to discover the past, much less to imitate it, but to recover the integrity of the pristine tradition that the past may well have obscured. The aim is not to restore the past but to overcome it. For history is not the past, but a genetic vision of the present, a present seen in continuity with its roots. It is precisely those who do not know their past that are incapable of true, organic change. They remain victims of the latest cliche, prisoners of present usage because they have no objective standard against which to measure it."

+ Archimandrite Robert Taft

On Pain of Heart

"First of all, Elder Paisios tells us that, for love to blossom in the heart, we must pray with pain of heart. Once he was asked, "We pray, Elder, and our thoughts go here and there. Why?"

"Because it is prayer without pain!" replied the Elder. "To pray with the heart, we must hurt. Just as when we hit our hand or some other part of our body, our mind (nous)  is gathered to the point we are hurting, so also for the mind to gather in the heart, the heart must hurt."

The Elder was then asked, "How can we preserve ourselves in this state when we don’t have some problem, some pain?"

He replied, "We should make the other’s pain our own!! We must love the other, must hurt for him, so that we can pray for him. We must come out little by little from our own self and begin to love, to hurt for other people as well, for our family first then for the large family of Adam, of God" " 

Source: Athanasios Rakovalis, Talks with Father Paisios (Thessalonica, Greece: Orthodox Kypseli, 2000), pp. 123-24.

Orthodox Catechesis

ORTHODOX CATECHESIS
http://www.goarch.org/archdiocese/departments/religioused/resources/orthodoxcatechesis

1. THE PURPOSE OR PHILOSOPHY OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

The purpose of Orthodox Christian Education (catechesis) is to help build up the Church, the Body of Christ, by nurturing every person in the life of personal communion with the Holy Trinity (theosis), and thus, through this ministry, to bear joyful witness to God’s loving and redeeming work in the world.

Being only one part of the total life of the Church, Christian education is effective in the context of living faith in the home and the local parish. Living faith is concretely expressed through all believers – bishops, priests, parents, teachers, parish leaders, youth leaders, and all Orthodox Christians seeking to know and to live the new life in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.