SACRAMENTAL LIVING

Understanding Christianity as a Way of Life

Desire

“Desire is transformed into lust when we exclude God from the picture. Without God, the natural powers of our soul become corrupt…the problem with desire is not something inherent in the order of creation. Rather, the difficulty arises from our enslavement to the things of this world and to our physical being (1 Jn 2:15-16). God made the world, forming our very flesh and our eyes, yet sin turns even our natural desires into lust.” (Dynamis 2/26/2021) “…the word for “passion”

Obedience

“Often in the Scriptures the word know means not just being aware of something but having personal experience of it. Jesus did not know sin, not because He was unaware of what it is but because He never committed it himself. For although He is like us in every other way, He never sinned. Given this meaning of the word know, it is clear that anyone who says that He knows God must also keep his commandments, for the two things go together.” (Didymus the Blind) “We can be said t

Self-Condemnation/Self-Hatred

“We pray with such extreme language, reflecting not a vision of legal condemnation: rather, it is the recognition of Beauty itself, in Whose Presence we appear broken, soiled, with nothing to recommend us. It is the language of repentance – but not of morbid self-hatred. It is the language of self-forgetting of leaving the self behind, of finding nothing within the self to cling to. There is another word for this self-forgetting: ecstasy. Again, this word has been abused in m

Abstraction

“…Christian life encompasses: a set of beliefs and practices gleaned from experience and a profound way of life, not a system based on regimented acts coldly governed by abstract beliefs and rules propped up with mere emotionalism..” (V. Rev. Chrysostomos) “The great flaw in anti-sacramental thinking is its abstracted notion of “spiritual.” It is presumed that for something to be “spiritual,” it must have nothing to do with the material world. That “talking to Jesus” only con

Faith as Relationship

“In theory, our modern culture believes that relationships with other people are merely psychological phenomena – they are all in our head. There is occasional research to try and establish some notion of extra-psychological relationship (such as ESP), but even that is largely an extension of psychology. But there is an entire realm of human experience that such a belief ignores. And it is an experience that lies at the very heart of classical Christianity. This experience is

Process

“…“what does it mean to process something?” To process something means to have gained understanding and acceptance about any particular experience, event, or change. It means to have gained a sense of mastery over an experience. It means what happened is now understood, assimilated into our lives, and we have found peace and closure. It may also mean having to get out any emotion associated with the event such as grief or temporary anger. There might be tears or there might b

Forbearance

“Paul says that we should both forbear and forgive. He writes in Colossians, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Colossians 3:13)….“forbearing” one another means “tolerating” them, that is, passing over their faults…forgiveness is the pardon of the wrongs d

Self-Denial

“Something has to give between the contemporary obsession with the self that has generated an endless market for books, tapes, CDs, DVDs, seminars, programs, therapies, “self-help” gurus and the like; and the ever-demanding teaching of Our Lord: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself….” [Mark 8:34]. This is not a Buddhist-like call to “self-transcendence” in search of enlightenment. It is Christ’s way of teaching us that to defensively, fearfully, or even idola

Paradox

“…A paradox, you probably already know, is a statement which is seemingly self-contradictory; a statement which appears to be false, but which, upon careful examination, in certain instances proves to be true… Spirituality is a paradox…let me pass on what I consider the four paradoxes… we surrender to win…we give away to keep…we suffer to get well…we die to live.” (Fr. Bogdan Djurdjulov) “…Christian life is filled with paradoxes, what the Holy Fathers referred to as antinomie

Fire (Divine and Spiritual Fire)

“God is fire. God is love. God is a self-propagating emotional power, a fire that shares itself. Centuries after Moses beheld the flames of the burning bush, this same fire merged with the tongues of flame at Pentecost, and with the fire that burned within the hearts of the disciples at Emmaus. In saying that God is a fire of love we are certainly stating a truth that plays havoc with many of our ideas, in fact almost all our ideas. (Fr. Lev Gillet) “There is no accident in G

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