Mother Gabriella (Gerontisa Gavriellia) on Faith and Love

Some encouraging words from the Apophthegmata of the Mother Gabriella (Gerontisa Gavriellia):

And Mother said ...

Only one thing do I know that I have always, and it is not pride, nor fantasy, but that which I have day and night, wherever I find myself-three things: first, Faith; second, Faith; third, Faith. That's all! Nothing else can I say to you. It has directed all my life.
When we believe and someone says, "Do you want to come to Lebanon with me?" I say, "Yes."
"How do you say Yes to everything?"
I say yes because I believe that if it is not for my good God will make it so that the No will come from the very one who invited me. Some paper will not be ready, or something will happen.
Today I am ninety years old-may you live so long! I read again and again and again in the Gospels, and I see something strange. Jesus Christ comes and says to the Apostles, "Leave now what you have and follow Me."
Now, if they said, "And who are you? Why should we lose what we have? Why should we lose our profit? Where will you take us? What will you do with us?"-if they had said that, what would have happened? They would have remained in darkness.
They said Yes to some Unknown who came and said, "Throw all that away!" Why? Because they believed in God, and they waited for the One who would say to them, "Come!" And that was the beginning.
Because if we say No, what will happen? ... One or the other: If you believe, you will walk on the water like St. Peter. If you are scared-Bloop! Nothing else.
Through all my life it has been like that. They called me to the strangest and most distant place in India. One night they sent me a message: "Come and see someone who is sick." We started out in an ox cart driven by some shepherd boy. And as we were going up the mountain in the forest, what do I see above us? Two eyes shining, a tiger. What do you say then? "Lord have mercy on me, and may Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
So I closed my eyes and saw that written within me. Because He said to us, "Why do you worry? Why do you worry? Even the hairs of your head are numbered!" Why worry? Faith is lacking. May we have faith.

Again, Mother said ...

Once when I was there where I was, some foreign missionary came and said to me, "You may be a good woman, but you're not a good Christian."
I said, "Why?"
"Because you have been here so long and you only go about speaking English. What local languages have you learned?"
I said to him, "I haven't managed to learn any of the local languages, because I travel a great deal from place to place. As soon as I learn one dialect, they start speaking another. I've only learned 'Good morning' and 'Good evening.' Nothing else."
"Bah, you're no Christian. How can you evangelize? All the Catholics and Protestants learn all the local dialects in order to ..."
Then I said, "Lord, give me an answer for him." I asked it with all my heart, and then I said, "Ah. I forgot to tell you. I know five languages."
"Really? What are these five?"
"The first is the smile; the second is tears. The third is to touch. The fourth is prayer, and the fifth is love. With these five languages I go all around the world."
Then he stopped and said, "Just a minute. Say that again so I can write it down."
With these five languages you can travel the whole earth, and all the world is yours. Love everyone as your own-without concern for religion or race, without concern for anything.
Everywhere are people of God. You never know if the one you see today might tomorrow be a saint.

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/

One Word Unceasingly Spoken

"Prayer, people think, is about words, but prayer is entering the silence of one word unceasingly spoken in our hearts - love." 

+ Very Rev. Fr. Roberto Ubertino

Five Talks on Marriage

Five Talks on Marriage
by Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom)

Download the PDF from http://stnicholasdc.org/files/Sacraments/Five-Talks-on-Marriage.pdf

I 

Marriage and the Eucharist 

On The Challenges of Charity

"Renunciation teaches us not only that we not greedily seek advantages for our soul but that we not be stingy, that we always be extravagant in our love, that we achieve a spiritual nakedness, that our soul holds nothing back, that we not hold back anything sacred and valuable which we would not be ready to give up in Christ's name to those who need it. Spiritual renunciation is the way of holy foolishness, folly in Christ. It is the opposite of the wisdom of this age. It is the blessedness of those who are poor in spirit. It is the outer limit of love ... According to material laws ... if I give away a piece of bread, then I became poorer by one piece of bread ... (and by extension) if I give my love, I have become impoverished by that amount of love, and if I give up my soul then I become completely ruined and have nothing left to save ... According to the law of the spirit, every spiritual treasure given away not only returns to the giver like an unspent ruble but it grows and becomes stronger. He who gives receives back in return; he who becomes poor becomes wealthier. ... In turning away from the exclusive focus upon Christ in a genuine act of self-negation and love, one offers himself to others...then one meets Christ himself face to face in the one for whom he offers himself and in that communion he unites with Christ himself ... the mystery of union with man becomes the mystery of union with God. That which was given away returns. The love which was expended never diminishes the source of that love, because the source of love in our heart is Love itself, Christ ... Here we are speaking about a genuine emptying out, in a partial imitation of how Christ emptied himself by becoming incarnate in humanity. We must likewise empty ourselves completely, becoming, so to speak, incarnate in another human soul, offering to it the full measure of God's image which is contained in ourselves."

+ Excerpt taken from the essay: "Types of Religious Lives" by St Maria of Paris (Mother Maria Skobtsova)

“You will find that charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the bowl of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not enough to give bread and soup. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor... They are your masters, and the more difficult they will be, the unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them. It is for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give them.”

+  Saint Vincent de Paul, quoted in Homelessness in America : A Forced March to Nowhere (1982), p. 121

“We should make every effort to ensure that each of our initiatives is the common work of all those who stand in need of it,” she wrote, “and not [simply part of] some charitable organization, where some perform charitable actions and are accountable for it to their superiors while others receive the charity, make way for those who are next in line, and disappear from view. We must cultivate a communal organization rather than set up a mechanical organization, Our concept of sobornost [conciliarity] commits us to this. At the same time we are committed to the personal principle in the sense that absolutely no one can become for us a routine cipher, whose role in to swell statistical tables. I would say that we should not give away a single piece of bread unless the recipient means something as a person for us.”

+ St Maria of Paris (Mother Maria Skobtsova)

"Unless you love, the poor will never forgive you for the bread you give them."  

+ St. Vincent de Paul, quoted in Fr Walter J. Burghardt's "Love is a Flame of the Lord: More Homilies on the Just Word" (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1995) 139.

The Pentecost Prayers of Hope

"You measure out the years for the living and set times of death, bringing down to Hades and raising up, fettering in weakness and liberating in power; You provide aptly for the present and fittingly dispose what is to come, restoring those who are wounded by the sting of death with the hope of resurrection....

On this universal and salutary feast, deign to accept petitions for those imprisoned in Hades, thus giving us great hope, and relief to the departed from their grievous distress and Your comfort....

...counting them worthy of peace and repose;  for the dead do not praise You, Lord, nor do those in Hades dare to offer You glory, but it is we the living who bless and entreat You and offer You propitiatory prayers and sacrifices for their souls."

From the Pentecost Kneeling prayers, http://www.goarch.org/chapel/liturgical_texts/pentecost_kneel

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.

Jean Vanier on Death and Vulnerability

Jean Vanier on CBC Radio One's "As It Happens" on Thursday 26 May, 2016

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.3609214/jean-vanier-founder-of-l-arche-urges-caution-on-doctor-assisted-dying-law-1.3609219

or

https://youtu.be/fzsLEFQuOPw

Transcript:

Introduction:
The deadline is looming, parliament is under pressure to pass legislation governing assisted dying by June 6th. The Supreme Court gave it 16 months to craft the bill, some now say that wasn't enough time to get it right. Even within the liberal party, critics complain the law is too restrictive, it's legally flawed, and to those who still oppose the idea, completely unacceptable.

With the clock ticking loudly, anyone with an opinion is fighting to be heard, and one voice that has been consistently, quietly urging caution belongs to 87 year old Jean Vanier. He is the Canadian founder of the L'Arche foundation, which is a network of communities that supports people with intellectual disabilities. We reached Mr. Vanier in Trosly-Breuil, France.

Two Commands of Love

"The last type in Mother Maria’s analysis is the ‘evangelical’ type. She begins by distinguishing this from the way ‘evangelical’is often used –which she sees as marked by sectarianism, moralism and a ‘distorted and impoverished view of salvation’–and also from attempts to ‘Christianize’ or ‘enchurch’ society, which are only milder versions of the same thing.

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."

Forgiveness

FORGIVENESS

That God forgives us, let us forgive men,

As temporary guests, we are on this earth.

Prolonged fasting and prayer, in vain is

Without forgiveness and without true mercy.

God is the true Physician; sins are leprosy,

Whoever God cleanses, God also glorifies.

God rewards with mercy, every mercy of men,

That one perishes without mercy, who returns sin with sin,

With pus from pus – infected wounds, pus is not cleansed,

Neither is darkness from the dungeon dispelled by darkness,

But pure balm heals the wound of pus,

But the darkness of the dungeon, a light disperses.

To the seriously wounded, mercy is like a balm,

As a torch, in her [mercy] everyone rejoices.

This the ignorant says: I have no need of mercy!

But, when he is overcome by misery, he cries out for mercy!

Men bathe upon the mercy of God,

That mercy of God awakes us to life!

That God forgives us, let us forgive men,

As temporary guests, we are all on this earth.

+ Hymn of Praise from The Prologue of Ohrid, http://thehandmaid.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/that-god-forgives-us/

Praying for Enemies

In light of Beruit, Paris, Syria, Kenya, Egypt and reported or unreported acts of violence....Lord have mercy on us all. 

A Prayer for Enemies
By Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic 

A Serbian Bishop and writer of the spiritual book called the Orchid

A prayer composed by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic, Serbian Bishop who spoke out against the Nazi regime, was arrested, and taken to Dachau.

St Nicholas Cabasilas And The Life In Christ

http://modeoflife.org/2012/06/22/st-nicholas-cabasilas-and-the-life-in-christ/

By Anthony Papantoniou

(Source: Greek Australian Vema, English Section, June and July 2009 Issues)

What is meant by a Living Liturgical Tradition?

"In the East the alternative to an imposed legalism and rubricism is not anarchic individualism but spontaneous fidelity to the common tradition. Take for example the Byzantine rite. Except for some synodal decrees and a few novellae of Justinian, there is no corpus of liturgical law obligatory in the Byzantine Churches. Incredible as it may seem, this most splendid, complex, highly ceremonialized worship in the whole of Christendom has evolved and maintained itself for the most part in a natural way, without the need of formal law. This is precisely what we mean by a living liturgical tradition."

+ Fr Robert F. Taft, "Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding." 2nd Rev. Ed. (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute Press, 2001) 149

The Structure and Meaning of Holy Week

The Structure and Meaning of Holy Week

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65QgZlNQ1yQ

http://www.christthesaviour.ca/ 

https://soundcloud.com/christthesaviouroc/the-structure-and-meaning-of

Fr John Behr on Forgiveness Vespers

"This evening we stand at the entrance to the Great Fast, and we enter into this holy season by asking each other for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is at the heart of Christianity, the mystery of Christ. It expresses the love that God has shown us in Christ, our mediator, reconciler, redeemer, and creator, the one who breaks down the wall of separation that we erect through our hardness of heart and brings us into unity with God and with each other.

It is at once the easiest thing—my yoke is light says Christ (Matt. 11:30)—and the hardest thing, as hard as our own hearts, our own sense of self—righteousness and self-worth. It is as hard as taking up the cross, and yet so easy, if only we can embrace it fully.

That which stands in the way of our taking the path of forgiveness is primarily our own hard-heartedness: we often don't want to forgive others, preferring to lick our wounds, aggrieved with others, but satisfied with ourselves, and build our identity on these wounds—“poor me"—and even more we often don’t want to ask for forgiveness, preferring to blame others because they can’t see how right we really are.

How hard it is, yet so easy, to cut through all of this self-righteousness, to accept the forgiveness that Christ offers us, and to forgive one another. By taking the first step, by asking one another for forgiveness, We cut down our ego and all that which would assert itself and justify itself, and we allow our hearts of stone to be cracked open, to receive the love of God, to become hearts of flesh, capable of loving one another.

When we do this we will find that forgiveness is not just a matter of saying "forget it," "it doesn't matter," "let's pretend it never happened." Rather we will find that even the evil and sin that has happened becomes an occasion of joy and life. Just as when Joseph's brother - who had sold him into slavery - were told by Joseph when they approached him: You thought that you did this? In fact, it was God who sent me here to preserve life (Gen. 45:5).

In the same way, if our hearts are set upon Christ and following him into the glory prepared for us from before the foundation of the world, if this is so, then everything that has happened, and happens still, becomes the means by which God is forming us, breaking our stony hearts, so that we might be conformed to the First-Born of many brethren (Rom. 8:29), so that we can indeed rejoice in all things, not only those things for which it is easy to be thankful - the good things that have come our way and the joy that others bring - but also all the trials and tribulations by which we now suffer, pummelling us and softening us, to share in the Pascha of Christ, the Pascha which, as we will sing in a minute, allows us to forgive all in the resurrection of Christ.

It is to this end, and this end alone, that all the extra prayers and ascetic efforts of the coming days are directed - certainly not that we should feel ever more proud of our achievements in them.

According to the Fathers, our life comes from our neighbor. God is the source of life, but it is a life that is lived here and now, with one another. And so our steps to a renewed life must begin concretely here, with one another. And so our steps to a renewed life must begin concretely here, with one another, beginning by asking each other for forgiveness, for all the things we may have done or not done, loose words or deliberate actions, for any offence caused, and, more generally, for having fallen short of what Christ has asked from each of us."

+ Fr John Behr, "The Cross Stands, While The World Turns" (Yonkers: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2014) 25-26.

Prayers Reconciliation from Liturgy of St Cyril

"O Creator of the whole creation, of that which is seen and of that which is not seen, who cares for all things; for Yours they are. O Lover of Souls; I seek Your compassion O Lord Almighty. I, poor, despised, and unprofitable as I am among Thy servants, now drawing near to Your Holy of Holies, and about to touch this holy and mysterious sacrament give me, O Lord, Thy Holy Spirit: that fire immaterial and incomprehensible that devours all infirmity and consumes wicked inventions. Let it kill the earthly senses of the flesh; let it restrain the wanderings of the mind that lead it to imaginations full of aches and passion: And as it is proper for priests, let it make me rise above all mortal thoughts, and grant me the sanctifying words in order to fulfill this offering now laid on the altar which is the mystery of mysteries; in the fellowship and communion of Your Christ. To whom with You and the Holy Spirit, the Giver-of-Life, and of one essence with You, belongs glory now and unto the of ages, Amen."

+ Prayer of Reconciliation, Divine Liturgy of St Cyril, Coptic Rite.

"O Prince of Life and King of Ages, God unto whom every knee bows, of those in heaven, of those on earth, and of those under the earth; to whom everything is subject and in the bond of servitude, bowing their heads to the scepter of Thy kingdom: Unto whom the armies of angels give glory together with the heavenly hosts, and all logical natures, with an unsilenced voice that utters Your divinity. And as You have taken pleasure in us, the poor inhabitants of the earth, that we should service to You, not because of the purity of our hands, for we have not done good upon the earth; but You are willing to grant us, the unfortunate and unworthy, of Your purity: accept us unto You O Good [God] and Lover of Mankind, as we approach Your holy altar according to the multitude of Your mercies. And make us worthy of the heavenly peace that suits Your divinity and is full of salvation that we may give it to one another in perfect love and that we may greet one another with a holy kiss."

+ Prayer before the Deacon Entreats Congregation to Exchange the Holy Kiss, Divine Liturgy of St Cyril, Coptic Rite.

Resisting the Reductionist "Spirituality" of Secular Presuppositions

"I am an Orthodox Christian – which is not the same thing as saying that I have an interest in “organized religion.” There is much about organized religion that I dislike in the extreme, and I occasionally see its shadow seep into my experience within Orthodoxy. But I repeat unashamedly that I am an Orthodox Christian and admit that one clear reason is that I am not very “spiritual.” Without the life of the Church and its Tradition – I could easily drift into a shapeless secularism – living a mediocre existence, marking time until my time is done.

Mother Theoliptie Amma Demiana

One of our beloved Fathers sent out this article about Omina (Mother) Theoliptie of St Demiana Monastery in Egypt: (Note: Though the narrative contains some of the aesthetic of sentimentality characteristic of Modern Evangelical discourse, this post is not intended to perpetuate, encourage or reinforce the tropes of therapeutic evangelicalism.) (Please remember all our monastic mothers and fathers in your prayers.)

Chinese-Canadian wanted the best and found this in the Monastery of Saint Dimyana

by Cornelis Hulsman (Arab-West Report, April 23, 2014)

And who would you be?

And who would you be?
Reblogged from CanAmOrthodox Blog
http://canamorthodox.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/who-would-you-be-2/

It is Holy Thursday. Most of us are anticipating a beautiful Liturgy, a moving Paschal evening, and looking with eagerness toward Great Friday and then the conclusion of the Pascha. Hopefully this week is more than just feeling good about being in church so much. Hopefully we do not take a comfort in merely having gone to so many Paschal services, beating our records from last year. Hopefully, we are looking at ourselves and crying at our sins.