My bedtime reading these days has been the letters of Sts. Barsanuphius and John. I enjoy reading these letters because they almost always send me to sleep with an edifying thought of practical spiritual wisdom. In letters 540 and 541 the Saints are asked how one should deal with a conflict with a superior. The specific situation is as follows: One of the Fathers of the community is accompanying a Brother on…
One of the things that Fr. Stephen De Young reminds us of in his book, The Religion of the Apostles is that God’s fundamental triumph is over chaos, death being an aspect of chaos. The Church believes and teaches that God created the world out of nothing, Genesis 1:1. However, beginning with Genesis 1:2 and following, throughout the whole bible, the emphasis is on God’s triumph over chaos. And this chaos is…
One of the greatest frustrations in my spiritual life has been caused by a passion for certainty. You might call it a need to know, a need to know what God is doing in my life, a need to have some explanation for or feeling for why my life is the way it is right now. When I don’t know—or when I don’t have some explanation that I can tell myself is…
My friend Michelle commented on the last post that she wished that her “peace-o-meter” worked well. I love that concept: peace-o-meter. In Philippians 4:7, St. Paul says, “And the Peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Somehow in my early years, I came to understand this verse to mean that peace functioned as a kind of sentry or guard in our hearts to…
