Marriage: Partaking In The Mystery of the Infinite

"When we fall in love, even in a broken and sinful world, we sense a deep truth. Contrary to popular opinion, love is not blind. When we love another person, we see the other as they truly are. We see the dizzying depths that lie within this other person. Intuitively – not often articulated, but intuitively – we are drawn to the potential infinity that is within this other person. That is why we have a belief that the one we fall in love with is enough for us. "You are all I need," says the lover to the beloved, and that is true.

The experience of love reveals how, in each person, there lies within them – and I will submit you now a word, dense with meaning, from a  theologian… from the words of St. Simeon the new theologian… there is within each person the reason of things and the nature and the knowledge of beings within themselves, but this experience of the reason of things, that the other is infinitely great and there is depth in them that summarizes all that is created by God.

The unfathomable depth of this mystery that the other is, and that love opens us up to see in another, can also become the place of the greatest suffering in our life. The other – for the other, like us, is greater than heaven, yet, as the fathers remind us, it is even easier to understand heaven than ourselves. When love in this world is not lived in God, then sin will distort it. For rather than receiving the loved one as the image of God, we will force the other to become in our own image, to possess, to control, and to use.

Eucharist and Marriage

"In order that we might be one with Him not just in spirit but in body, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones (cf Gen. 2:23), He granted us union with Himself through this bread. Every love finds fulfilment through unity and starts from likeness. The popular adage “Like attracts like” is an ancient one. The love associated with the married state seems somehow superior to other forms of love. “For this cause”, it says, “shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh” (Matt. 19:5). “This is a great mystery”, says the divine Paul, “but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32). It says in that same passage that a man shall cleave and become one flesh, but not one spirit. We, by contrast, shall not only be joined to Christ’s body but mingled with it through partaking in this divine bread, and we shall not just become one body, but also one spirit. Do you see that the surpassing greatness of God’s love towards us comes about, and is manifested, through sharing this bread and this cup? For this reason “Burnt offering and sin offering hath he not required”, according to the Psalms, “But he hath prepared a body for us” (cf Ps. 40:6 Lxx)."

+ St Gregory Palamas

Metropolitan Joseph’s Inaugural Address

Metropolitan Joseph’s Inaugural Address
Reblogged from http://outofegyptblog.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/metropolitan-josephs-inaugural-address/

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: one God. AMEN.

Beloved in Christ, glory be to God.

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy

Here's a repost of Abouna Mark Aziz speaking about Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy at St Mark Coptic Orthodox Parish in Washington, DC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZrplAmOPHU

Transcript:

St Nersess on the Horos of Chalcedon

“I find nothing in the horos [of Chalcedon] against the Orthodox faith, and I am astonished that those before us opposed it so strenously.”

+ St Nersess

Source: Theoriani Disputationes cum Armeniorum Catholico I, PG 133:204B, cited by A. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy (Crestwood NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994) 116.

* Horos Piestos = Definition of Faith

Sebastian Brock on the Syriac tradition in Christianity

Dr Sebastian Brock on the Syriac tradition in Christianity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsJfUbAmOLE

Transcript:

Orthodoxy Versus Christian Materialism

Reblogged from http://glory2godforallthings.com/2014/07/02/orthodoxy-versus-christian-materialism/

Orthodoxy Versus Christian Materialism

http://glory2godforallthings.com/2014/07/02/orthodoxy-versus-christian-materialism/

Over the years I find myself coming back to a number of ideas within the modern world that differ markedly from Orthodox thought. These are ideas that are imbedded so deep within our culture that they seem self-evident to most people. Many Orthodox believers hold to one or more of them, distorting their understanding of the faith. This article is an effort to create a list and address each one. If it succeeds I will use it as a touchstone in future work. I have left off the specific issues of the Modern Project, which forms a subset of these ideas. Perhaps they will be added in a later version. 

The ideas:

1. Things are self-existent. They require nothing outside of themselves to exist. 

2. Relationships are psychological. 

3. Meaning is only a thought.

4. Time is a chain of cause-and-effect. The Cause cannot come after its effect.

5. Good and bad only describe behavior.

WHAT is the “WAY” of St. John’s?

The following post was posted on July 1, 2011 on the Lord of the Powers blog (the blog for St John the Compassionate Mission):

What is the Way here at St. John’s Mission?
by Fr Roberto Ubertino (St John the Compassionate Newsletter Christmas 2002)

WHAT is the “WAY” of St. John’s?

I have often read and reflected on goals, visions, ideas, ideals, issues, morality, radical stuff, stuff we want to implement…all the necessary questions of a committed Christian life. But, once in a while, something hits me totally by surprise, something unexpected, unplanned for – GRACE!

Dwarves are for the Dwarves

"They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly."

"They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out."

+ The Last Battle

"O Master, Lord Jesus Christ our God, who said to his saintly, honoured disciples and holy apostles, Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see the things which you see, and have not seen them, and to hear the things which you hear and have not heard them. But blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. May we be worthy to hear and to act according to your holy gospels through the prayers of your saints." 

+ The Prayer for the Gospel, Coptic Orthodox Rite

Orthodox Missiology: Kenotic Love in All Places

"Our love in Christ must reach all places, even to the hippies in Matala [in Crete]. I very much wanted to go there, not to preach to them or to condemn them, but to live with them, without sin of course, and leave the love of Christ to speak of itself, which transfigures life" 

+ Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia (Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit,
Protecting Veil Press, Thessalonica, Greece)