Keep Silent and Radiate Joy

"You cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives and kindles joy in the heart of him who receives. All condemnation is from the devil. Never condemn each other. We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves. When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a swamp that nothing in another can equal it. That is why we turn away, and make much of the faults of others. Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgement."

St Seraphim of Sarov, quoted in Jim Forest, Praying with Icons (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 169.

Seminary: Pointing Towards Beauty

"Remember what a significant part of the means for this holy enterprise was given by foreigners. We must show them the beauty of Orthodoxy. May this church be a place of brotherly intercommunion and the rapprochement of all Christians … Here prayer shall be unceasing, not only for all Russian peoples labouring and heavy-laden, and scattered abroad in the sorrow of exile, but for the peace of the whole world, for the welfare of God’s holy churches, and for the union of them all." 

+ Metropolitan Evlogii, At the Consecration of Institut Saint-Serge in Paris, France, July 18th, 1924. (Lowrie 1954, S. Sergius in Paris: the Orthodox Theological Institute, p. 11.)

"For peace in the whole world, for the stability of the holy churches of God, and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord." 

+ From The Great Litany, The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom

The Church and the Journey

“When preparing for a journey, we try to learn as much as we can about our destination; the climate, the history, the special attractions, etc. We buy special clothes, travel books, we explore the internet.  In other words we spend a great deal of time in preparation for the trip with great enthusiasm and anticipation.

Exactly the same can be said about our life’s journey to the Kingdom.  The same joy and anticipation can and should take place as we prepare for our final banquet with the Lord, with the Theotokos and with all the saints…

Having laid aside all earthly cares, having detached ourselves from concrete petty thoughts and emptied our minds in order to give enough room for the Spirit to fill, I would like to stand with you in silence, stillness and solitude – solitude with Christ.  Then we can concentrate on our journey, the one that is taking place as time moves inexorably forward, upward, and, we hope, towards the gates…

But we know Christ, we partake of His Body and His Blood, we stand at the foot of His Cross, we know His Love…Love Him back! Always and forever, this is the answer: love Him back!

The Church provides all the tools that this journey requires…”

+ Matushka Juliana Schmemann, The Joy to Serve, pp. 85-88, Published by: Alexander Press, http://www.alexanderpress.com/downloads/APB_Dialogue-6_Schmemann_Joy.pdf

What are Christians?

"What are Christians? Christians are Christ-bearers, and by virtue of this bearers and possessors of eternal life, and this according to the measure of faith and according to the measure of holiness which is from faith. The Saints are the most perfect Christians, for they have been sanctified to the highest degree with the podvigs of holy faith in the risen and eternally-living Lord Christ and no death has power over them. Their life is entirely from the Lord Christ, and for this reason it is entirely Christ's life; and their thought is entirely Christ's thought; and their perception is Christ's perception. All that they have is first Christ's and then theirs. If the soul, it is first Christ's and then theirs: if life, it is first Christ's and then theirs. In them is nothing of themselves but rather wholly and in everything the Lord Christ."

+ St. Justin Popovich

The Royal Martyr on Marriage and Family Life

A humble and encouraging reminder by Royal Martyr Empress Alexandra Fedorovna...

On Marriage and Family Life
Excerpts from notes made by the Royal Martyr Empress Alexandra Fedorovna
http://www.holy-transfiguration.org/library_en/fam_marriageAlex1.html

On Wealth and Poverty

Welfare and Poverty
by Archbishop John Shahovskoy

Life Liturgical

"If salvation in Christ is the unique aim of our life, everything we do becomes liturgical, an act of prayer."

+ Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) of Essex, Words of Life, Translated by Sister Magdalen of Essex (Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 2010) 56

Does the Blessing of Icons Agree with or Contradict the Tradition of the Orthodox Church?

An interesting article by Fr. Steven Bigham posted at Orthodox Arts Journal:

Does the Blessing of Icons Agree with or Contradict the Tradition of the Orthodox Church?
by Fr. Steven Bigham
http://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/does-the-blessing-of-icons-agree-with-or-contradict-the-tradition-of-the-orthodox-church/

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.

Christianity as Revelation

"One cannot say that Christianity is a religion. Christianity is a revelation of eternity and life. The angels rejoice greatly because God has revealed Himself mystically to His creature, man. Our human nature has become part of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and that is a great gift which we do not even appreciate; instead, we have cleaved to the things of this world. We have been given the opportunity to prepare ourselves for eternity, to vanquish evil, and to always be with our Heavenly Father."

+ Elder Thaddeus, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives, 148.

PS keep in mind it's not about hatred of the material in the docetist sense, but rather the embrace of the world and of paradise as it should be. Orthodoxy reveals the eschatological truth of all things. Which is why Elder Thaddeus speaks about thought. I think there's something about his mention of peace that speaks about seeing and living with clarity of a Saint, one in union with God.

The Passion of Opinion and Asserting Ourself

The following is written for monastics but perhaps we non-monastics (married and unmarried men and women, young or old) can learn a thing or two and be inspired by the perfect peace of the Holy Spirit as we grow in our union with God. May our speech bring peace and our thoughts bear truth, and our deeds the crowns of love.

Your Opinion Counts!— Or Does It?
By Monk Cosmas, http://www.theocpm.org/

Every Action Proper

“To the extent that man does not use his freedom, he is not himself. In order to emerge from that indeterminate state, he must utilize his freedom in order to know and be known as himself.”

+ Fr. Dimitru Staniloae

"Every action of a person that is proper to them is ultimately an act of freedom. Love is the most essential act of freedom. Nothing can force me to love - for love cannot be forced. The transformation of the human being from natural existence to personal existence is our transformation from slavery to freedom. Personal existence is not a given - it is a gift of grace, the struggle to live as the Father lives, to do what we see the Father doing."

+ Fr Stephen Freeman, http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/03/05/what-would-you-do/

The Gospel

"What is amazing about the gospel is that the Lord makes us free love with no agenda. I love you not so I can feel good about helping you, or because I want you to became Orthodox, or so that you will change and become like me. I can love you just because, you are you. Only this love is worthy of the human heart and is from God. This is what divinization looks like...to love as God loves."

+ Fr. Roberto Ubertino

The Saints

The saints were people just like all of us. Many of them started with grievous sins but through repentance they attained to the Kingdom of Heaven. And everyone who reaches the Kingdom of Heaven does so through repentance, which the Merciful Lord granted us by His sufferings.

In the Kingdom of Heaven where dwell the Lord and His most pure Mother, abide all the Saints. There live our Forefathers and Patriarchs who valiantly carried their faith before them. There dwell the Prophets who received the Holy Spirit, and by their exhortations called the people to God. There dwell the Apostles who died that the Gospel might be preached. There dwell the Martyrs who gladly gave their lives for love of Christ. There dwell the holy Prelates who followed the Lord's example and took upon themselves the burden of their spiritual flock. There dwell the holy Fathers who lived lives of prayer and fasting, and those who assumed folly for Christ's sake, all of whom fought the good fight and thereby overcame the world. There dwell all the Righteous who kept God's commandments and vanquished their passions.

Thither aspires my soul - to that wondrous holy assembly which the Holy Spirit has gathered together. But woe is me! Inasmuch as I lack humility, the Lord does not grant me the strength to fight, and my feeble spirit flickers out like a tiny candle, whereas the spirit of the Saints burned with a bright flame, which the wind of temptation not only failed to extinguish but set burning more fiercely than ever. They trod the earth and worked with their hands but their spirits continued with God, of Whom they were ever mindful. For the love of Christ they endured every affliction on earth, and feared no suffering, and thus glorified the Lord. Wherefore the Lord loved them and glorified them, and granted them the eternal Kingdom with Him.

+  Archimandrite Sofrony (Sakharov), Saint Silouan: The Athonite, (Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, 1991) p. 398.

From http://prosphora.blogspot.com/2013/07/people-like-us.html

Liturgy Outside the Church

"Who...can differentiate the worldly from the heavenly in the human soul, who can tell where the image of God ends and the heaviness of human flesh begins! In communing with the world in the person of each individual human being, we know that we are communing with the image of God, and, contemplating that image, we touch the Archetype-we commune with God...The liturgy outside the church is our sacrificial ministry in the church of the world, adorned with living icons of God, our common ministry, an all-human sacrificial offering of love, the great act of our God-manly union, the united prayerful breath of our God-manly spirit... and it seems to me that this mysticism of human communion is the only authentic basis for any external Christian activity."

+ St Maria of Paris

From: Mother Maria Skobtsova: Essential Writings, 79-82.

Church as Eucharistic Community

Church as Eucharistic Community

by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom ( http://masarchive.org/Sites/texts/1988-03-04-1-E-E-T-EW02-002ChurchAsEucharisticCommunity.html )
Forum talk at Pushkin House 4 March, 1988

Some years ago on a similar occasion Archbishop Alexis van der Mensbrugge said to me: 'I can't understand how it is: I am a learned theologian and I need a lot of preparation before I give a talk. You know nothing and you are always prepared to talk.’ And he left the question open. Well, this is the situation at present. I am not going to speak on Bishop John's subject, but I want to say something about the Church as a eucharistic community, because it is a term which is very widely used and which I believe is fraught with great risks and leading to great misunderstandings. Partly as a result of the theology of St Sergius in Paris, partly because of the growth of the practice of frequent Communion in the parishes, the term of eucharistic community has come to mean in the minds of most people that the Church can be defined as the gathered community around the eucharistic celebration. And up to a point this is true. The Church is the only body in the world that is possessed of this mystery of communion of our mystical union with Christ through his Body and Blood. But this conception of the Church as a gathered community, and more especially as a community centred on one of the sacraments of the Church, has, to my mind, serious consequences and very unsatisfactory ones.

O Cross of Christ

"Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The cross that is raised today is like a multi-faceted diamond. The cross that is raised is what our enemies, the enemies of the faith, call us; we are, "The People of the Cross."

We are the People of the Cross, this is how we are defined by the people who martyr our brother and sisters... "The People of the Cross" - that means you, and me, and all of us here, we are the People of the Cross. 

And the cross is the revelation of who God is, the cross is the revelation of how God saves, the cross is the revelation also of what is behind human fear and violence. This is the same cross that today we see in our churches, the same cross that St. Paul said in his epistle I want to be crucified on, this is the cross that St. Paul says is the only reality he wants to know; "I only want to know among you Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

Justification is theosis

"Justification is theosis, through which we receive the divine light and therefore life." + Seraphim Hamilton http://onbehalfofall.org/theosis-and-justification-in-pauls-second-letter-to-the-corinthians/

The Nonexistent Athiests

"Some say that they are atheists, but there is no such thing as an atheist... No such thing. Even the devil believes and trembles (cf. James 2:19), but he refuses to do good. There is no such thing as a person who does not believe in God, and there is no rational being on earth that does not long after life with all his heart. We will give anything to live eternally, and we all long after perfect love, love that never changes but lasts forever. God is life, He is love, peace, and joy. There are those who oppose Him, but they can do nothing to hurt Him. It is we who complicate our own lives with our negative thoughts."

+ Elder Thaddeus, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives, 147.

Knowledge Needs Reality

"Despite 20 years teaching experience I was to discover that the real teacher was not me, but mission life and the poor themselves. Knowledge in and of itself is not enough; it needs to find a reality." 

+ FrDn Pawel Mucha

http://svotssynaxis.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/st-john-the-compassionate-mission-toronto-on/