Beyond Articulation

"The divine essence is beyond articulation; the words of Scripture point beyond themselves and reveal the absurdity of any fundamentalism. To insist on "literal truth" in theology is to make a fool of oneself, whether one articulates theism or atheism. In doing so we "know not what we do," because any articulation taken literally is at best a reduction of ultimate truth to what a finite intellect can grasp; it is an idol."

Fr David Starr

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

Our Dialogue with Doubt

"True faith is a constant dialogue with doubt, for God is incomparably greater than all our preconceptions about Him; our mental concepts are idols that need to be shattered. So as to be fully alive, our faith needs continually to die."

+ Met. Kallistos Ware of Diokleia, from “The Inner Kingdom: Volume 1 of the Collected Works”

Hart on Philosophical Atheism

"I do not regard true philosophical atheism as an intellectually valid or even cogent position; in fact, I see it as a fundamentally irrational view of reality, which can be sustained only by a tragic absence of curiosity or a fervently resolute will to believe the absurd. More simply, I am convinced that the case for belief in God is inductively so much stronger than the case for unbelief that true philosophical atheism must be regarded as a superstition, often nurtured by an infantile wish to live in a world proportionate to one's own hopes or conceptual limitations.

Having said this, though, I have to qualify it, because it is a much more limited assertion than it at first appears to be. I do not mean that there is anything intellectually contemptible in being formally “godless”— that is, in rejecting all religious dogmas and in refusing to believe in the God those dogmas describe. One might very well conclude, for instance, that the world contains far too much misery for the pious idea of a good, loving, and just God to be taken very seriously, and that any alleged creator of a universe in which children suffer and die hardly deserves our devotion. It is an affective— not a strictly logical— position to hold, but it is an intelligible one, with a certain sublime moral purity to it; I myself find it deeply compelling; and it is entirely up to each person to judge whether he or she finds any particular religions answer to the “problem of evil” either adequate or credible. I also do not mean that there is any deep logical inconsistency in an attitude of agnostic aloofness from all theologies and spiritual practices; one either finds them plausible or one does not. When I say that atheism is a kind of obliviousness to the obvious, I mean that if one understands what the actual philosophical definition of “God” is in most of the great religious traditions, and if "consequently one understands what is logically entailed in denying that there is any God so defined, then one cannot reject the reality of God tout court without embracing an ultimate absurdity."

+ David Bentley Hart, "The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss" 

(Yale: Yale University Press, 2013) 16-17

St Maria of Paris and the Work of Charity

Mother Maria’s driving concern throughout the expansion of work was that it should never lose either its personal or communal character:

"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, 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 is 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. "

She was certain that there was no other path to heaven than participating in God’s mercy:

"The way to God lies through love of people. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I shall be asked, Did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That is all I shall be asked. About every poor, hungry and imprisoned person the Savior says “I” : “I was hungry, and thirsty, I was sick and in prison.” To think that he puts an equal sign between himself and anyone in need- I always knew it, but now it has somehow penetrated to my sinews. It fills me with awe."

From: Jim Forest, Introduction, Mother Maria Skobtsova, page 30.

The Rule of Prayer

"the rule of prayer determines the rule of faith"

"ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi"  

+ Prosper of Aquitaine, 5th Century

On Wealth and Poverty

Welfare and Poverty
by Archbishop John Shahovskoy

An Analogy For Theosis

(11) To this we say, ‘Indeed, the difference between the two statements is that the action of something upon its own essence is impossible. For if one thing grants to another thing its essence, in the sense that it is generous to it in its contact (ittisal) with it, it is not impossible for us to find many things that grant to other things their essences, just as in the case where fire is present in iron and is united (tattahid) with it, and the iron becomes alight through its union (ittihad) with the fire, and does what fire does in terms of heating and burning.

(12) In the same way, the four properties—heat and cold, moisture and dryness— give to material bodies (ajsam) their essences by coming into union (ittihad) with them and by attaching themselves to them, so that the property particular to them has its origin in the material bodies with which they are composed. And in the same way, the things facing mirrors give their images (suwar) to them, and the mirrors are ‘imaged’ (tatasawwar) by them. And those turning to the mirrors see the things facing them as images of these same things, and (they see) everything that happens to them with regard to movement and coming to rest.

(13) The uncertainty of this contradiction is revealed especially in our subject, by the fact that we are clarifying how the union (ittihad) of the Creator (may he be exalted!) with humankind is possible. And we say, ‘Indeed, it is known that comprehends (ya'qil) the Creator, and the meaning of his comprehension (ta'aqqul) of him is that the mind of the human being is ‘imaged’ (mutasawwar) by the image of the Creator. The Creator is not disgusting and material, for his image is part of his essence—his image must (in fact) be his essence—and his essence is(identifiable with) the mind of the human being. For in reality the mind and that which is comprehended (by the mind) are actually one subject,[one in the subject (i.e. one in subjectivity)] just as Aristotle made clear: it is necessary that the human being, when he comprehends the Creator, be united (muttahidan) with him..."

+ Al-Mu’taman ibn al-Assal, Summary of the Principles of Religion, chs. 23 (excerpts), 25–6, ed. A. Wadi, Studia Orientalia Christiana Monographiae 6a–7a (Cairo and Jerusalem: The Franciscan Centre of Christian Oriental Studies, 1998–9). Trans. S. Davis.

Source: Davis, Stephen J. "Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 312.

Our Encounter in Prayer

"The God we encounter must be as true as we who seek Him. But is not God always true? Is He not always Himself, unchanging? Of course.
But it is not only God as He is in Himself who is involved in our prayers. It is also the image we have of Him, for our attitude depends not only on what He is in Himself but also on what we believe Him to be.
If we have a false image of God, our attitude towards Him and our prayer will alter accordingly. It is important that throughout our life, from day to day, we learn to know God as He is."

+ Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

 “Our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion” 

+ St Irenaeus 

 

"Lex orandi est Lex credendi. The rule of prayer is the rule of belief. And only insofar as we return to this rule, can we recover the true foundations of Orthodox Christian Education." 

+ Fr. Alexander Schmemann 

 

"What concerns the eucharist concerns the Church, and what concerns the Church concerns the eucharist, so that any ailment in the liturgy reflects on our faith and on the whole life of the Church." 

+ Fr Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist

The Liturgy Lived: The Divinization of Man

This article is an excerpt from The Wellspring of Worship (Ignatius Press, 2005) by Fr. Jean Corbon
Source http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.ca/2010/02/liturgy-lived-divinization-of-man-jean.html

If we consent in prayer to be flooded by the river of life, our entire being will be transformed; we will become trees of life and be increasingly able to produce the fruit of the Spirit: we will love with the very Love that is our God. It is necessary at every moment to insist on this radical consent, this decision of the heart by which our will submits unconditionally to the energy of the Holy Spirit; otherwise we shall remain subject to the illusion created by mere knowledge of God and talk about him and shall in fact remain apart from him in brokenness and death. On the other hand, if we do constantly renew this offering of our sinful hearts, let us not imagine that our New Covenant with Jesus will be a personal encounter pure and simple. The communion into which the Spirit leads us is not limited to a face-to-face encounter between the person of Christ and our own person or to an external conformity of our wills with his. The lived liturgy does indeed begin with this "moral" union, but it goes much further. The Holy Spirit is an anointing, and he seeks to transform all that we are into Christ: body, soul, spirit, heart, flesh, relations with others and the world. If love is to become our life, it is not enough for it to touch the core of our person; it must also impregnate our entire nature.

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

Pointing Towards a Cure

Very humbling reminder...

"Father Alexander’s unique gift as theologian and critic was his refusal to unmask the demons without pointing to a cure. Unlike many theologians today who are engaged in a relentless critique of church life and culture with their all-too-familiar attacks on secularism, Father Alexander always lifted his audience in the direction of a solution."

+  Fr Alexis Vinogradov, Revisiting Father Alexander Schmemann’s Work on the Problems of the Church in America: The Liturgical Problem

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.

The Beauty and Gift of Translation

"Translation is an art that involves a certain ascetic discipline. It requires one to enter so fully into the language to be rendered into another tongue that the original language and its meaning becomes one's own.

A good translation does not simply render a text word for word, nor does it consist of a paraphrase that reproduces only an approximation of the original meaning. This is especially true with translations of sacred texts. To produce a "good" translation of the Holy Scriptures - one that conveys beauty as well as sense - the translator needs to approach the text globally, holistically, in order to penetrate to the depths of its intended message. That message, however, is only partially expressed by words, sentences, and all the components that make up a literary unit. While remaining faithful to the generally accepted meaning of words, the translator will find meaning beyond the words themselves through a process of "communion." One takes the text into oneself, as it were, in order to grasp its ultimate meaning at the level of the heart as well as of the mind. Truly to understand the text, and thus to be able to render it into another language, the translator needs to hear and even "feel" its meaning. In the case of Scripture, this implies that one move beyond a rational understanding of the message conveyed by a given passage, to embrace and be embraced by the Subject of that message.

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.

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.