SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“A relationship with Jesus Christ-this is prayer. When people think about what is required to receive Holy Communion, they almost immediately think of fasting. There are so many things “higher on the list,” including prayer-what good is fasting without prayer? That’s just dieting.” (Fr. Stavros N. Akrotirianakis) “Take fasting. Some people are extremists in this while many others, perhaps most, are not at all so. Saint Isidoros Pilousiotis says that we should be ‘experienced

“In Lent, our focus must be set squarely on Christ and His living icons, not on us. The fundamental calling of the Christian life is to become like our Lord, Who offered Himself up for the salvation of the world purely out of love. If we want to approach Lent in a spiritually healthy way that will enable us to participate more fully in Him, then we too must offer up ourselves for our neighbors….The purpose of our Lenten journey is simply to become more beautiful living icons

“On this basis, the prime concern of the Church is respect for and protection of the human person as the distinctive feature of human existence. The person isn’t an individual. An individual is to be understood as a unit, isolated in itself. A person is an identity, a particular presence, which emerges from his or her relationships with other people. It’s been said that the secret of the personhood is free relationships with others and the practical recognition of each person

“What leads to the inner decision to ignore Wisdom’s call? Since the issues that Wisdom raises “are the issues of life” (Proverbs 8:34), it really depends on how we define life. The Lord Jesus says, “I am…the life” (Jn 14:6). If we exclude Christ from our consideration of any aspect of our lives, then we are operating on an entirely different ground from that of the Lord. Life’s issues might then seem to encompass nothing more than health, wealth, status, ideology, or the boa

“It is possible we could have forgiven someone cognitively (with our thoughts and even verbally) but not forgiven them emotionally. Sometimes this occurs because we fear the wrong or hurt happening again and don’t let our guard down. Also, we might, due to our faith convictions, embrace the concept of forgiveness and thus readily extend it verbally, but under the surface we still harbor resentment. Sometimes we do this intentionally and sometimes we are not conscious that we

“Many people, because they’ve written God and Christ out of their lives, think that their existence has been enclosed within the stifling framework of this world.” (Protopresbyter Georgios Dorbarakis) “… a world of almost suffocating immanence, a flattened human universe where the escapes are boredom and distraction, not ecstasy and rapture. Hell is self-consciousness, and our late modern, TV-ized (now Twitter-ized) world only ramps up our self-awareness to an almost paralyzi

“God bless those who clean up the pain and grief of the world without seeking recognition, for their sorrow, too, will turn to joy. May God grant us the grace to relieve suffering as we are able, offer gestures of comfort to those in need, tell the truth with love, and assuage the world’s pain whenever we meet it. And may the Lord say to us, “Come you blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom” (Mt 25:34).” (Dynamis 2/17/2023) “When a person truly loves Christ, he cannot but h

“There is a teaching on the energies that is far more prosaic even practical to be found in the early fathers . That teaching can be understood by simply looking at the meaning of the word, “energy” or “energeia.” In Greek “energeia” simply means “doings” or “actions.” The Divine Energies thus means the divine actions, everything that God does. What does God do? He creates; He sustains; He holds all things in his goodness; He moves all things and draws all things towards unio

“One of the reasons that we “never get it right,” is that getting it right is the wrong question – the wrong approach to our life, particularly our life in Christ. Where does the language and thought of “getting it right” come from? I would suggest that it comes out of our school-days. It is the language of a math test, a spelling bee, indeed, it is often the language of shame. We imagine that “getting it right” will make us “be right” ourselves. The two, however, are only ki

“ ‘Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God’ (1 John 3:9). John is talking in general terms, contrasting this world with the world to come. The Christian, though sinful, does not sin (v. 9; lit., “does not keep on sinning”) as the world does.” (Orthodox Study Bible, 1 John 3:9) “…[John] is making a clear distinction between the opponents, who as moral indifferentists downplay the significance of