Continuing in homily 42, St. Isaac gives us another warning. When you find unchanging peace, that is, when everything is going smoothly for you most of the time, then “beware: you are very far from the divine paths trodden by the weary feet of the saints. For as long as you are journeying in the way to the city of the Kingdom and are drawing nigh to the city of God, this…
There is one more thing that I’d like to say about “Your Kingdom come” before we move on. It seems rather obvious, though in all my years of bible reading, I never saw it until a couple of years ago. I was reading a collection of ancient Greek homilies on the Transfiguration of Christ (in translation, of course—my Greek isn’t that good). What several of these homilies pointed out almost shocked me…
I had a conversation recently in which I couldn’t explain very clearly a comment I made several times, and as a result there was a certain amount of misunderstanding. I realize that perhaps many people have this same misunderstanding, and since it has to do with the Kingdom of Heaven, and how it “comes” or how we actually enter and live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven while we are still…
In the Epistle reading for today, we read that Sts. Paul and Barnabas, after preaching the Gospel in Lystra, visited the churches they had founded on their way home to Antioch: “Strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith.” And what do you think they said to strengthen the disciples (the believers) and to exhort them to continue in the faith? What would encourage us to continue…
