SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“Remember, if we are going to have the one thing needful to offer contemporary America, it must be the witness of lives being changed, healed and sanctified by Jesus Christ. This requires continual and deep repentance. The very first words that were ever preached by our Lord were “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 4:17). The goal of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.” (Rev. Fr. Theodore Dorrance) “As Christians, we believe we will

“Christ promises to be present and make Himself known to us. When we spend time with each other, developing our relationship, we no longer ask if the other exists. Rather, we understand that because we know someone, the question of existence is surpassed. This is the kind of knowing and being that we have in relationship with each other, and this is equally true of our relationships with God. So a student may ask, “How do we know God exists?” but this, for me, is the wrong qu

“In the disintegration of human understanding that marks our present age, reason has been reduced to discursive reasoning, i.e. logic. Popularly, it refers to what can be proven by demonstration (and often less than that). At the same time, there has been a groundswell of sentimentality, in which how we “feel” about something has been elevated to a position above rational argument. It is in this context that faith is easily misunderstood. Faith is not a leap beyond the provab

“…do we understand how God takes care of us? Many of us have great misconceptions about this. God has provided for us by being the “book-ends” to our lives. He is the alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We know God as the creator of all, that we have been given life in this world, and we know that God has our departure from this world and what comes after covered. He does not provide for us by controlling everything that occurs in-between. Our lives that occur in

“One test of spiritual attainment is peace. Those who are truly advanced in the Spirit have peace of mind and share the peace of God… “Wherever God is — there is peace. And the opposite is self-evident: where there is envy, enmity, impatience, self-love — there is the devil. Wherever the devil is — there, everything is ruinous, proud and hostile.” (Fr. Basil, St. Anatoly of Optina) “How do we attain peace? We put aside all…pride and hostility and destructiveness. And we acqui

“None of us can entirely separate ourselves from who we are. Our culture, education, family, nation, and religious background affect the way we view the world. We all accept as true many common presumptions of our era and culture. They are so deeply ingrained that we do not recognize them as cultural presumptions that may in fact not be true.” (Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou) “There is a model of what it means to be human that is simply wrong, regardless of its elements o

“…secularity is the negation, the evacuation from life, of the experience of the world as sacred reality, as “participant” in divine reality and “participated in” by the divine.” (Vigen Guroian) “Though the secular world denies all invisible spiritual forces, the Scriptures testify to their existence, pervasiveness, and impact on the world.” (Fr. Basil) “It is very simplistic to say that emergencies make people pay more attention to God and reawaken religious feelings. We mig

“What is the problem with a reliance on self-discipline (Colossians 2:23)? Whatever is self-imposed does not derive from God. Rather, it arises from pride, with no intention to “put to death your members which are on earth” (vs. 5). “Self-imposed religion” encourages self-esteem and obstructs the Holy Spirit, who alone can lead us to true humility. Despite its similarity to life-giving Christian asceticism, the self-reliant approach is utterly contrary to apostolic teaching.

“Our mission to the world is simple: to love all regardless of who or what they identify themselves as. We may rightly ask, What is love? Is it affirmation or acceptance? Is it blind affection? No. Love is selflessness. It is to seek and do what is best for the other, what God would have us do. It is to become a sacrifice for the sake of the other, rooted in an ascetical self-denial.” (Rev. Fr. Joshua Lucas) “…the beauty of God’s love can illumine all and transform those will

“Most North Americans view the US as a country built by rugged individualism. But all too often, promoting individualism can hinder a sense of community. Growing up with this embedded cultural heritage, US citizens are taught to keep their noses out of each other’s business and to preserve individual rights at all costs. At best, this societal norm might keep folks from becoming overbearing busybodies. At worst, it promotes isolation and noninvolvement, splinters communities,