Category: Prayer
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On Hope in God alone and on Confidence in Him
Although, as we have said, it is very important not to rely on our own efforts in this unseen warfare, at the same time, if we merely give up hope of ourselves and despair of ourselves without having found another support, we are certain to flee immediately from the battlefield or to be overcome and…
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What Is at Stake?
In the struggle to come to the wholeness of Personhood – to become the “true self” rather than to sink into the “false self” our very existence as spiritual beings is at stake. If you read across Orthodox books that center on the issue of Personhood – a common theme becomes visible. Our fall and…
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Hope and the Heart – Fr. Dmitri Staniloae
The following comes from Fr. Dmitri Staniloae’s Orthodox Spirituality. (pg. 178) You have the experience of the congestion [crowdedness] of the heart when you are disturbed, and “ample room” when you are peaceful. But uneasiness, in regard to the future is the fruit of uncertainty, just as peace is the fruit of certainty. Care is…
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Learning to Wait
I have never done a search to see how many times the word for “patience” is used in the New Testament – but my general impression is that it is a lot. Patience is not only a virtue, it is utterly necessary to our life in Christ. I can recall having almost no patience at…
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How Much Is Too Little? How Much Is Enough?
One of the most pervasive rules in Christian believing is the Latin phrase, “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi,” usually rendered, “The Law of Praying is the Law of Believing.” It is a simple way of saying both that we believe what we pray (praying will inevitably bring about a conformity in believing), and that if something…
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From A Spiritual Psalter
St. Theophan the Recluse collected excerpts from the works of St. Epraim the Syrian and arranged them as 150 “Psalms”. the following is Psalm 11. I Can Control Neither Myself nor the Enemy. Help Me, O Lord! No one can heal my disease except He Who knows the depths of the heart. How many times have…
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His Life Is Mine
The following is an excerpt from Rosemary Edmond’s introduction to Archimandrite Sophrony’s His Life is Mine. In these paragraph’s she describes the great monk’s journey from Paris, where he had been an artist and a seminarian, to Mt. Athos, where he would take up his vocation as a monk. He speaks of despair and the…
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“Do You Know Jesus?”
I have written in numerous posts about various aspects of conversion to the Orthodox Christian faith. Oftentimes there is an unspoken agreement between myself as writer and those who read in which we assume that we understand each other – that when I say “conversion” we all know what I mean. On reflection there are…
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A Letter from Butyrskaya Prison – Pascha, 1928
Serge Schmemann, son of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his wonderful little book, Echoes of a Native Land, records a letter written from one of his family members of an earlier generation, who spent several years in the prisons of the Soviets and died there. The letter, written on the night of Pascha in 1928 is…
Matthew, in western art the painter is always present, the person in the picture is a creature of the painter.…