SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“Why is hospitality incumbent on every Christian? Hospitality flows to us from our provident Creator, who daily sustains us all. These gifts are to be shared with others, as He so richly shares with us.” (Dynamis 10/16/2020) “Because of his hospitality and piety, Lot was saved from Sodom (Genesis 19) when all the country round was judged with fire and brimstone, when the master made it clear that he does not abandon those who set their hope on him but delivers to punishment a

“Two fundamental truths were incarnate in the Person of Christ: the truth of God and the truth of man. Without Christ, the truth of God would remain foreign to man’s mind and distant from his emotions. God would be an entity utterly removed from man’s experience; the only grounds for extolling Him would be His stark otherness, His sheer separation from our meager, sinful state Without Christ, the truth of man would likewise be obscured. For man would see himself only as a cre

“A conference participant once asked the speaker, "What is the best way for a father to love his children?" The speaker replied, "The best way for a father to love his children is to love their mother." I reflect often upon that superbly accurate statement. And I think the reverse is equally true: the best way a mother can love her children is to love their father. More than anything else in the world, children need a loving family and parents who support each other, even if

“It is not incorrect to describe our relationship with the passions as an addiction. The fathers described the passion-driven life as a constant swing between pain and pleasure. We experience boredom as a pain and seek to replace it with pleasure, which will only yield more pain later on. This movement, as it dominates our experience, draws us away from the opportunity to grow in noetic experience. As such, it tears us away from God other than as an entertaining idea or a con

“…God Himself takes on human form to reveal man’s vocation and meaning as divine. From this moment onward man is free. Nothing stands over him, for the very world is his as a gift from God to fulfill his divine destiny….Tragically, too many people do not hear this voice of Jesus as the voice of Love Incarnate calling us to repent, to sacrifice, to have sacrificial love in order to have the greatest joy, to have our deepest desires fulfilled, to find our true selves, to fulfil

“Our life consists of decisions and their implementation. Man is a decision-making being, and he acts or does not act in accordance with his decisions. Indecision is also a decision, just as inaction is also an action. There are no fruitless decisions and actions. After all, everything has its own result: a barren fig tree has one, and a ripe vine has another. All decisions and actions—both active and passive, whether we want it or not—have a direct effect on the course of ou

“So there is always the law of God or the law of destruction in our human mind and heart. That would be a teaching of St. Paul in the letter to the Romans, very clearly, the seventh and eighth chapters. There’s always another law working in a human being. We’re never simply autonomous. So when people ask, “Was it me or was it the devil in me?” or “Was it me or was it the Holy Spirit in me, or Christ in me?” Sometimes people ask that. St. Paul says, “When I do good, I can do a

“You can know life only through life itself. In other words, the practical application of the Scriptures builds up our relationship with God. We learn from the Bible about Christian life and find the basis for deep faith, because, So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Rom. 10:17).” (Priest Anthony Rusakevich) “St. John of Damascus’s remark: Let us draw from the fountain of this garden [the Scriptures] perennial and purest waters springing into life

“Why was the entire dispensation of history and work of Christ necessary? Could not God simply have saved humankind by fiat?...The solution God has provided is to heal our nature from the inside out. By joining His divine, eternal life to human flesh, Jesus Christ has overcome the power of death; hence mortality will be abandoned in the grave when the universal resurrection dawns. If this explanation is not sufficient for the inquirer, ‘Say something like this to reasonable p

“At the root of all this is the failure to see who our true enemies are. Our enemies are demons. Humans who teach false things are not...