Questions on Liturgical Life

HH Pope Kyrillos VI

"Prayer begins by an encounter with Christ. It continues through love towards Him, then partaking in Him, followed by actually sharing in His life and in His cross. So the person who seeks to bear Christ’s message and preach His sufferings and His cross, must first of all devote him- or herself wholeheartedly to prayer. Through prayer that person will learn to accept His will, in order to serve His message."

Fr Matta el-Meskeen (Fr Matthew the Poor), Guidelines on Prayer



"Taking part as fully as possible in the Liturgical Act gradually teaches the faithful to participate in Christ’s Gethsemane prayer. This is the pattern: when we are pierced by sorrow, pain, loss, we transfer our own hurt to the universal plane, and suffer not merely for ourselves but for all humanity. To the extent of our personal experience we can live everyman’s tragic lot, his dread and despair. We call to remembrance the multitude of dead and dying. It may be that our suffering will at some point exceed our powers of endurance. Then, when mind and body can no longer keep up with the spirit, the spirit continues to follow after Christ, to crucifixion, to the grave, into the anguished hell of His love for mankind."

Archmandrite Sophrony,  "His Life is mine." Rosemary Edmonds, trans. (New York: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1977) 87-90.

Humanity is not Relative

"Man was created in the image and likeness of God - and there can be no different standard of treatment for those human beings who happen to be in Asia, another for Africans, and yet another for Europeans. Culture may be relative - humanity is not." + Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

Asking for your prayers

"Those who write and speak and who wish to build up the Church, while lacking the inspiration of the Holy Spirit are ... worldly people void of the Spirit, as St. Jude observes (cf. Jude 19). Such people come under the curse which says, 'Woe to those who are wise in their own sight, and esteem themselves as possessors of knowledge' (Is. 5:21); for they speak from themselves and it is not the Spirit of God that speaks in them (cf. Matt. 10:20). For those who speak what are simply their own thoughts before they have attained purity are deluded by the spirit of self conceit."

+ St. Gregory of Sinai

Forgive me and pray for me, especially if my words and deeds are not infused with the work and union of Holy Spirit. I pray that whatever is written on this blog is free of pride, but if it is written or comes across as rooted in the passions or in error, I ask your forgiveness and your prayers.

St John Chrysostom on Beauty

Do you wish to appear beautiful?

I also wish it, but with beauty which God seeks, which the King desires. Psalm 45:11 Whom would you have as a Lover? God or men? Should thou be beautiful with that beauty, God willdesire your beauty; but if with the other apart from this, He will abominate you, and your lovers will be profligates. For no man who loves a married woman is good.

About Friendship

About Friendship http://returnorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2013/01/friendship-according-to-st-anthusa.html

First let us say how much pleasure friendship brings. A friend is bright with joy, and overflows when he sees his friend. He is united to him in a union having a certain ineffable pleasure of the soul. If he merely thinks of him, he rises and is carried upwards in his mind. I speak of genuine friends, who are of one accord, of those who would choose to die for their friends, of those who love warmly. Do not imagine that you can refute what I say with the example of those who love lightly, or who lunch with you, [lit. "who are sharers of your table": Ecclesiasticus 6:10a ], or with whom you have a nodding acquaintance. If any one has a friend such as I describe, he will understand my words; and, though he should see his friend every day, it is not often enough for him. He makes the same prayers for his friend as for himself. I know a certain man, who, when asking for the prayers of a holy man on behalf of his friend, asks him to pray first for the friend and then for himself.

The Availability of the Spiritual Elder

There was an old man at Scetis, very austere of body, but not very clear in his thoughts. He went to see Abba John to ask him about forgetfulness. Having received a word from him, he returned to his cell and forgot what Abba John had said to him. He went off again to ask him and having heard the same word from him he returned with it. As he got near his cell, he forgot it again. This he did many times; he went there, but while he was returning he was overcome by forgetfulness. Later, meeting the old man he said to him, 'Do you know, Abba, that I have forgotten again what you said to me? But I did not want to overburden you, so I did not come back.' Abba John said to him, 'Go and light a lamp.' He lit it. He said to him, 'Bring some more lamps, and light them from the first.' He did so. Then Abba John said to the old man, 'Has that lamp suffered any loss from the fact that other lamps have been lit from it?' He said, 'No.' The old man continued, 'So it is with John; even if the whole of Scetis came to see me, they would not separate me from the love of Christ. Consequently, whenever you want to, come to me without hesitation.' So, thanks to the endurance of these two men, God took forgetfulness away from the old man. Such was the work of the monks of Scetis; they inspire fervour in those who are in the conflict and do violence to themselves to win others to do good.

Beauty of Truth and the Existence of God

Beauty of Truth and the Existence of God
By Fr Stephen Freeman

http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/01/22/the-beauty-of-truth-and-the-existence-of-god/

What is the criterion of the rightness of this life? Beauty.  - Fr. Pavel Florensky

Beauty Through The Veil

Beauty Through The Veil
by Fr. Stephen Siniari (From Jacob's Well, Fall, 1997 - Winter, 1998)

   Beauty walks the Strip and lights up the night.

   All day Nancy deals with her tragedy. Somehow she sees Beauty through the veil: The existential lie. The cosmetic cover-up for death. Nancy serves her children.

Beauty and Matter in Relation to God

A transcript given by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom which resonates with Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green's talk on Beauty and The Liturgy (http://orthodoxyisorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2012/10/beauty-and-liturgy.html )

"...beauty partakes of mystery, what beauty represents is something that can’t be put into words, we sense it with our whole being though it’s not something we can define. And that is true of our worship as well as we approach God, there is something that is so beyond our words, our ability to verbalize, that it requires the mystery of beauty around it in order to enable us to come into it at all."

+ Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green

Beauty and Matter in Relation to God

by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
http://masarchive.org/Sites/texts/1994-12-00-1-E-E-T-EM05-108Beauty&MatterInRelationToGod.html

Byzantine and Patristic Society Conference, December 1994

What we think we know

Fr Ernesto writes a wonderful post concerning reductionism and the second storey "pie in the sky" packaging of God and the authentic Christian life. His post also draws attention to the problem of the "sacred vs profane" presupposition and the temptation to make the Gospel a crusade, an ideology or "Christian brand."

"You can only reject what you think you know."

Hopefully our calling and life as Christians will always be one of union with the Holy Trinity and the simultaneous paradox of Cataphatic encounter with our Lord Christ's kenotic revealing and restoring of humanity and our Apophatic wonder and participation in the mysteries of His divinity.

Love cannot be contained and the mystery of a person can take a lifetime and an eternity.

Let us raise our children with this kind of love, to and with our God who is infinitely knowable and infinitely beyond knowing.

Glory to the Holy Trinity.

On raising children without God 
http://www.orthocuban.com/2013/01/on-raising-children-without-god/