Glory to God for All Things
Fasting Without Force
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The following is taken from Wounded by Love: the Life and Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios You don’t become holy by fighting evil. Let evil be. Look towards Christ and that will save you. What makes a person saintly is love – the adoration of Christ which cannot be expressed, which is beyond expression, which is beyond… And such a person attempts to undertake ascetic exercises and to do things to cause himself…
Glory to God for All Things
Salvation by Grace and Just Showing Up
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There has been a tendency in much teaching about the notion of salvation by grace to ground the image in a legal or forensic metaphor. Thus, we are saved by grace in the sense that someone else’s goodwill and kindness (God’s) has now freed us from the consequences of our actions. Thus we speak of grace as the “free gift” of God. There is no denying that grace is a free gift…
Glory to God for All Things
To Hear the Word of God Frequently
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I would not want to give a wrong impression that an Orthodox Christian needs less Scripture. We need more – but it should be used in a right manner. Many so-called Bible studies simply increase information in an already information-overloaded world. We need not so much information as the powerful work of the Word of God moving in our heart. Thus memorization and repetition of Scripture, as prayer, is a very important…
Glory to God for All Things
The Warfare of Prayer
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A friend relates the story that when as a young, protestant teenager, she approached her pastor to ask about a prayer life, she was met with little or no answer. She had an instinct that there was more to prayer than she knew – but she was living in a tradition that knew little about prayer. It is a lack that is born of a truncated notion of salvation. Salvation itself, in her…
Glory to God for All Things
For the Love of God - the Elder Porphyrios
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From the Elder Porphyrios and the book Wounded by Love. There is one thing, O Christ, that I want, one thing I desire, one thing I ask for, and that is to be with You. Let us Love Christ and let our only hope and care be for Him. Let us love Christ for His own sake only. Never for our sake. Let Him put us wherever He likes. Let Him give…
Glory to God for All Things
Love and the True Faith
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Reading more on the life and teaching of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos, I found it interesting that what he thought of as “true faith” was the manifestation of the love of God in us towards all the world. It would have been certainly the case that as an Orthodox monk, St. Silouan would have believed all of the Church’s teaching without question. And yet when he spoke of the true faith…
Glory to God for All Things
Through the Prayers of Our Holy Fathers...
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It is a phrase that is heard frequently in Orthodox services: “Through the prayers of our holy fathers, have mercy on us and save us!” The meaning of that phrase is enlarged and enlightened in the writings of the Elder Sophrony. The following excerpt is from his book, St. Silouan the Athonite. Prayer for the whole world, for all Adam, in many instances distracts the monk from putting himself at the service…
Glory to God for All Things
What Is Good for Us?
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We live in a culture that has a fairly clear idea of what is good for a human being. We have notions of the “American Dream” and other ideals. Self-help books abound, each with its own understanding of what it means to be healthy, successful, well-balanced, etc. Frequently these cultural norms run counter to the writings of the Church fathers – sometimes scandalously so. Consider the following excerpt from the Desert Fathers:…
Glory to God for All Things
Scripture and the Church
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I recently encountered a use of Scripture in a web posting that was alarming to a degree. The writer (who was not apparently a believer) sought to use Scripture to prove that God was a murderer and that the Bible was an immoral book. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on why certain approaches to Scripture will never be productive of a proper understanding and why the Bible is not a…
Glory to God for All Things
We Should Not Be Distracted By Anything
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Reading the Philokalia is, at best, a daunting task. Where to begin? The following is a very useful section, drawn from the writings of St. Peter of Damascus in the Philokalia. It has been edited by Fr. Thomas Hopko. I am indebted to one of his many spiritual children for this copy. We should not be distracted by anything; neither by dreams, whether evil or seemingly good, nor by the thought of anything,…
Glory to God for All Things
In the Father's House
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There is a tremendous kindness in the parable of Prodigal Son. There are many ways to speak of reconciliation with God, or of the forgiveness of our sins. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, however, we find perhaps the most gentle of all images. The son who asks for his inheritance in a greedy and untimely manner wanders far in a land that is waste. He destroys himself in the wickedness…
Glory to God for All Things
Giving Thanks Beyond Measure
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I have frequently had reason to ask: who’s keeping whom? When I was received into the Orthodox faith, I and the rest of my family, stood one by one before the Gospel and a hand-cross to make a solemn promise: This true faith of the Orthodox Church, which I now voluntarily confess and truly hold, that same I will firmly maintain and confess, whole and unchanged, even until my last breath, God…
Glory to God for All Things
The Mystery of Salvation
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Salvation is truly the great mystery of human life. Essentially we are saying that the path from where we are now, in our sins, to where we shall be, conformed to the image of Christ, is as unknown to us as possible. We know the commandments of Christ, and our weakness both in keeping those commandments faithfully, as well as our weakness before temptation in almost any form. How do we get…
Glory to God for All Things
Love Is Before All Things
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Spiritual struggle is frequently counter-intuitive – and is almost always learned from those who have walked its paths successfully before us. The following is a small passage from the teachings of the Elder Porphyrios. Its wisdom speaks for itself. If you would gain the victory in spiritual struggle, then above all things, seek to love. Forget about all your weaknesses so that the adverse spirit does not realize what is going on…
Glory to God for All Things
Father Sophrony's Prayer
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A dear friend shared this with me: Fr Sophrony’s Prayer O Eternal Lord and Creator of all things, in your inscrutable goodness you have called me into this life and have given me the grace of baptism and the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. You have instilled in me the desire to seek your face. Hear my prayer! I have no life, no light, no joy, no strength, no…
Glory to God for All Things
How Can We Give Thanks?
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Everyone capable of thanksgiving is capable of salvation. Fr. Alexander Schmemann I do not believe it is possible to exhaust this topic and that there are many things worth saying in a second article. Most specifically I want to write on what seem to me necessary elements in giving thanks to God. If giving thanks to God is difficult these may be places to begin or to which to give attention. 1.…
Glory to God for All Things
Saved with Thanksgiving
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Everyone capable of giving thanks is capable of salvation. Fr. Alexander Schmemann Nothing is more essential to human living than the giving of thanks. According to the Apostle Paul, it is one of the very purposes for which we were created (Romans 1:21 St. Paul here upbraids us for our failure to give thanks). Much of our understanding of thanksgiving today is deeply tied to a modern, shallow, understanding of psychology and…
Glory to God for All Things
And Thus the Heart
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All of these things of late: waiting, patience, the presence of God, our personhood, the Church and the Cross, all come back to the human heart. It is the place of all things of our existence. It is as St. Macarius said: The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too…
Glory to God for All Things
In Christ is True Existence
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I have written recently that the true central question of our relationship with God goes to the very fact of our existence, that “in Him we live and move and have our being.” I have also written some short comments on statements of the Elder Sophrony reminding us that all we do, we do in the presence of God. Both of these bring us to the question of true or authentic existence.…
Glory to God for All Things
In the Presence of God - Elder Sophrony
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Do not let the things of this world disperse your energy. Concentrate all your attention on, devote all your energy to, a life which coresponds to the spirit of the Gospel commandments.Let us keep control over our mind in the face of the distractions of the exterior world. Without ascetic effort, our mind will never be able to remain constantly in God. It is from now, in this life, that we must…
Glory to God for All Things
The Pity of God in Dostoevsky
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The following passage is scandalous in the extent of its mercy. It is not in the canons – but in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Perhaps I love it because many of the men I knew in my early life were more likeMarmaladov (the old drunk) than like others. But this passage has always been a favorite. Forgive me if I scandalize any by quoting Dostoevsky. God will scandalize us all when we finally behold…
Glory to God for All Things
A Personal Salvation
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Perhaps the most difficult theological truth to communicate in the modern world is that of personal existence. Modern English has taken the word person from the realm of theology and changed it into the cheapest coin of the realm. Today it means that which is private, merely individual. As such, it becomes synonymous not with salvation but with our very destruction. Life lived as a mere individual is no life at all…
Glory to God for All Things
Work Out Your Salvation
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…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12) What does it mean to ‘work out our salvation’? It means that among all the things that we see in cosmic existence, we choose what is pleasing to God and separate ourselves from what goes against God. Then, little by little, we see our life changing. But be patient. God can, of course, visit us and in an instant open our…
Glory to God for All Things
The Importance of Waiting
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I took some time early this morning to look through a small devotional book on the Church year. It interested me that it looked at Christmas and Theophany, and then immediately went to Great Lent. It was as though these times of the year immediately abut one another. And of course they do, to a certain extent – but not without the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. It…
Glory to God for All Things
What Are You Waiting For?
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To a degree, it can be said that everybody is waiting for something. Some are waiting for their ship to come in. Some are waiting to win the lottery. Others are waiting to finish school. Some are waiting to die. This list could probably be made as long as the imagination could sustain. As I child, I was waiting for things to get better. Sometimes it was as simple as waiting for…
Glory to God for All Things
A Few Things More
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It’s very easy in longer postings (such as the previous) to forget the closest things. Church is everything the Scriptures say of it, but we largely encounter Christ in a particular setting, among particular friends and family (sometimes). Thus, just as He gives Himself to us in His consecrated Body and Blood, so too, He gives Himself to us in the flesh and blood, and spirit, of the witnesses with whom we…
Glory to God for All Things
The Ecclesiology of the Cross
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The following article is a series I wrote during the early months of the blog. I think it worth reprinting (surely people aren’t going back to read everything I’ve written). It is also available in the “Pages” section of the blog. If you’ve read it before I hope you enjoy rereading it – if not, I hope you find it useful or worth some thought. Part I Writing to the young Timothy…
