SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“We need to stop judging people and making assumptions about who they are and who their families were based on the surface. Life doesn’t happen on the surface. Real life happens beneath the surface, in the layers and layers of our being, in our soul…There is a time to reveal and a time to keep things behind the veil. Although I need to share and connect, I do not want my internal life and struggles to burden or tempt others, or to be an indulgence which would tempt me to make

“Our…everyday experiences of time…have been integrated into liturgical time, in order to express and signify God's life in us and our life in Him. Time - day and night, spring, summer, autumn and winter-has acquired a new significance, a new solemnity, a new urgency. Each day has the possibility to be a day of grace and each year to be a year of the Lord….each day and year can be the fitting and decisive moment (kairos) both to remember God and all that He did and continues t

“We need to stop judging people and making assumptions about who they are and who their families were based on the surface. Life doesn’t happen on the surface. Real life happens beneath the surface, in the layers and layers of our being, in our soul…There is a time to reveal and a time to keep things behind the veil. Although I need to share and connect, I do not want my internal life and struggles to burden or tempt others, or to be an indulgence which would tempt me to make

“In our lives we grow thirsty and tired. We thirst for so many things and then when we receive them we are still surprisingly unhappy. Think for a moment of the multitude of pop stars and actors who had everything, fame, fortune, influence and yet they were not happy and kept running to try to satisfy the thirst even more and typically because they ran towards the wrong things they found this thirst was never satiated. They grew even more thirsty and they would follow these u

“Having come to church in extreme need, a person thinks that he and his life should change drastically. If I was depressed, I’ll become joyful. If I was aggressive and gloomy, I will become amiable and sweet. But nothing happens. I’m the same as before. It’s easy to get disappointed, offended, and go to look for miracles elsewhere. Or a dangerous attitude may appear: “I have come to God, so I must be joyful.” And once I start demanding something from myself, especially emotio

“In Christ there is no such thing as sacrifice without deliverance. And deliverance does not just mean remission of personal sins…but the ultimate transfiguration of the world, the overcoming of corruption and death.” (Metropolitan John Zizioulas) “We are saved by His life!” This involves a change of metaphors. The Greek word for “saved” takes us down two metaphorical tracks. The first word picture is the deliverance or rescue from some sort of danger…The second is the delive

“There’s a fundamental difference between the need to convince someone and the need to convey the truth. Truth, being the fullness of knowledge and unchangeable in its integrity, doesn’t need to convince. Therefore, when Christ was asked by Pilate: What is truth?, He didn’t respond (Jn. 18:38). That’s not how it goes for people gripped by the need to convince others they’re right—convictions that can be nothing more than simple ideas, not stemming from any personal experience

“It’s my deep conviction that a Christian’s home prayer should be at least in some way connected with that of the Church, so you live “in the rhythm of the Church.” (Nun Kallista Golik) “…since you have touched on the subject of the home prayer rule. Firstly, the very word “rule” should not be understood as a duty, but as a model. The Church has collected for us the best examples of Patristic prayers so that we ourselves can learn to pray to God. Penetrating into the Patrist

“One of the most distinctive characteristics of the Orthodox Christian Faith is a therapeutic view of salvation. Christ is the Great Physician Who restored people to physical and spiritual health in His earthly ministry. He set people free from demons, enabled the blind to see and the lame to walk, and even raised the dead. He continues to restore strength to us who are weakened and paralyzed by our passions. We find healing as we become “partakers of the divine nature” by gr

“The knowledge of God is personal and relational, not academic. God cannot be studied like a lab rat under a microscope, nor is theology a philosophical system, a simple matter of ideas. Those statements which we describe as “dogma” are, to quote Fr. Georges Florovsky, “verbal icons.” All of these things exist as God-given gifts that enable us to enter into union with Christ, in body, mind, and soul. It is a marriage between the self and God.” (Father Stephen Freeman) “Spirit