Glory to God for All Things
True Knowledge of God
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The Elder Sophrony made a strong distinction between the knowledge we gain by rational speculation and the knowledge of God that comes as a gift of grace. He used the term “dogmatic consciousness” to express the knowledge of God as found in the lives of the saints and great ascetics. It is not a contradiction of the dogma of the Church, but an existential encounter with God that ineffably confirms the teaching…
Glory to God for All Things
Prayers By the Lake - I
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Saint Nicholai Velimirovich, of whom I have written before, is the author of the wonderful, Prayers By the Lake, which he composed on the shores of Lake Ochrid. They are a treasure of modern Orthodox verse. His first poem in the cycle reflects a sense of the creation as God’s own, rather than an inert arena for secular life. I offer this poem and a link to an online edition of His…
Glory to God for All Things
Sacraments: The World as Mystery
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My recent post on Pentecost and Evangelism occasioned several thoughtful responses. One of the responses seemed to me particularly worth further reflection. I start with an excerpt: Truly it is God we need and want, nothing less. I experienced in my heart, but didn’t realize in my head until I began to study Orthodoxy, that in my evangelical world we affirmed “by faith” having God living by His Spirit within us and that…
Glory to God for All Things
Pentecost and Evangelism
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We are told that on the Day of Pentecost, about 3,000 souls were added to the Church (Acts 2:41). This simple fact has for many linked the Day of Pentecost and the Gift of the Spirit to the Church to the process of evangelism. For many Christians in our culture, for whom evangelism has come to be the defining action of the Church, Pentecost need be nothing more. Thus the feast of…
Glory to God for All Things
Blessings on the Feast!
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When He came down and confused the tongues, The Most High divided the nations; but when He distributed the tongues of fire, He called all people to unity. Therefore, with one voice we glorify the most-Holy Spirit. Kontakion of Pentecost Please forgive my absence from the blog for the last few days. I have been conducting a youth retreat at a monastery in South Carolina and have…
Glory to God for All Things
The Emptiness of Christ
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St. Paul speaks of Christ “emptying” Himself in His voluntary sacrifice for us all (Philippians 2:5-11). It is the only place in the New Testament that speaks of this particular action of Christ – at least as an “emptying” (kenosis) but the concept has always played a large role in the Church’s understanding of Christ’s death on the Cross. It is interesting to me that Father Sophrony, in his writings, takes this…
Glory to God for All Things
"The Systematic Organization of Hatreds"
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I normally do not comment on politics and do not plan to have discussions during this political season. However, I ran across a quote that makes a great deal of sense and certainly has bearing on the spiritual life. It is from Henry Adams’ novel Democracy: Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. Imagine what this means if one is speaking of “politics” in…
Glory to God for All Things
For Want of a Nail
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Abba Zosimas would pick up small objects such as a nail, a short thread, and other valueless castoffs. He would ask, “Would you fight or argue over this? That would be insanity. Anyone who is making progress in God can think of the entire world as this nail, no matter how much of the world he possesses. There is no harm in owning something, but trouble comes when we are attached to…
Glory to God for All Things
St. Silouan on Humility
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The Staretz [St. Silouan] used to say that there was no end to the pretensions of pride. In his notes I found [this is written by Elder Sophrony] the following fable: A certain huntsman liked stalking the woods and fields for game. One day after he had been climbing up a steep hill for hours tracking his prey, exhausted, he sat down on a large boulder to rest. Seeing a flight of…
Glory to God for All Things
Concentration in Prayer
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Glory to God for All Things
A Single Moment and Paradise
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During Holy Week, one of my favorite hymns in the Church is the Wise Thief (the Exapostelarion of Holy Friday). It recalls the thief, crucified on Christ’s right hand, who repents and finds paradise “in a single moment.” It demonstrates the fullness of God’s love who would take the repentance of a single moment and transform it into life eternal. The Wise Thief didst Thou make worthy of Paradise, in a single…
Glory to God for All Things
He Ascended on High
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There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he led a host…
Glory to God for All Things
I Don't Know Anything About That
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A Hermit advised, “If someone speaks to you about a controversy, do not argue with him. If what he says makes sense, say, ‘Yes.’ If his comments are misguided, say, ‘I don’t know anything about that.’ If you refuse to dispute with his ideas, your mind will be at peace. For years I knew a man who was a very wise Christian. For most of those years I failed to recognize the…
Glory to God for All Things
St. Nikolai Velimirovich - Prayers By the Lake
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Glory to God for All Things
The Unexplored Landscape
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Like the Kingdom of God itself, the landscape of the human heart (considered spiritually) remains largely unchartered territory and beyond the easy access of most people. Our culture uses the language of “heart” quite easily, but means by it something emotional, something psychological and not at all in the sense it is used in either Scripture or the Fathers. Such confusion between words can easily lead to someone thinking they know what…
Glory to God for All Things
The Praying Mind
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Glory to God for All Things
Spiritual Fatherhood
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I am the father of five children, four who are living and one who has gone to his rest. The oldest of my children is now 27, soon to be 28, and, by God’s grace, soon to give birth to my first grandchild. God is truly gracious. Closely related to this is the notion of spiritual fatherhood – the unique relationship a priest has to those who have been given to him…
Glory to God for All Things
Orthodox Serbian Monasteries in Kosovo
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This is a beautiful sharing from the heart of the earliest Serbian Orthodox homeland.
Glory to God for All Things
The Truth of Ourselves
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Abba Poemen believed that the only time you could observe a person’s true character was when that person was tempted. From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers There is obvious wisdom in the saying about Abba Poemen: it is not our strengths that best define us, but our weaknesses. In our culture, where virtual reality – both of the entertainment world and the political world – are defined by carefully managed personalities…
Glory to God for All Things
Nothing but the Whole Truth
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Because Christ Himself is the Truth, we cannot have any such thing as “partial” Truth. Something or someone can be close to the Truth or moving towards the Truth – but in a proper Christian sense – only Christ is the Truth and Christ is one. And thus within Orthodoxy it becomes problematic to speak of anything in isolation from everything else, for the Church is not the summary of its parts,…
Glory to God for All Things
Humility
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When someone asked a hermit to define humility, he answered, “Humility is when you forgive someone who has wronged you before he expresses regret.” I cannot think of how many times in my experience the subject of apologies has come up along with the subject of forgiveness. Of course when someone asks forgiveness we should forgive – indeed, it would seem that according to Christ’s commandments we sin if we refuse such…
Glory to God for All Things
Is a Relationship with God What We Want?
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An excellent question was raised in the comments of my previous post – the question being about the nature of relationship. It is commonplace in our modern parlance to speak of a “personal relationship” which is either redundant, or a way of weakening the true meaning of “personal.” I suspect that the modern meaning of “relationship” is in fact not capable of bearing the true weight of theological meaning and is simply…
Praying in the Rain
America Coming to Orthodoxy
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I got an e-mail today from a colleague in the world of Orthodox Christian publishing who commented that “America is not coming to Orthodoxy.” It was at once a statement of realism and apparent resignation. However, I do not think his observation is correct. If by “America coming to Orthodoxy” we mean a massive conversion on a popular level–revivalist fervor, tent meetings with icons, incense and golden chalices, along with the accompanying…
Glory to God for All Things
The Depths of the Personal
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I have written on modern distortions of “personal relationship” in which “private” relationship is one of its corrupted meanings. I have also noted that, properly understood, “personal” always carries a meaning of “corporate” as well. To be in personal relationship with Christ necessarily means that I am in relationship with His Body, the Church. There is a mutual sharing of life – my life becomes Christ’s – His life becomes mine –…
Glory to God for All Things
The Orthodox Church and Personal Salvation
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A priest friend sent me an article from Franklin Graham’s website, describing a revival in the Ukraine. Like others who have gone to Eastern Europe to preach the gospel, there is frequently a mistaken assessment of the Orthodox Church. Graham’s article recognized a holiness present in the Church’s there, but described it as “Old Testament,” and generally likened the Church to “religion” and not the same thing as “personal relationship.” These, of…
Glory to God for All Things
For More on the Way of Humility
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Glory to God for All Things
Grace and "the Inverted Pyramid"
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Fr. Sophrony [Sakharov], in his book on St. Silouan, presents this theory of the “inverted pyramid.” He says that the empirical cosmic being is like a pyramid: at the top sit the powerful of the earth, who exercise dominion over the nations (cf. Matt. 20:25), and at the bottom stand the masses. But the spirit of man, by nature [unfallen nature as given by God], demands equality, justice and freedom of spirit,…
