SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). In Matthew’s Gospel, four times people approached Jesus with the petition, “Have mercy on me” or “mercy on us – they include two blind men, the Canaanite mother, and a father of a sick boy. Each time Jesus grants their requests for mercy…Mercy is standing in the shoes of the other and deciding what to do based on how the other feels. Compassion allows us to see things from their point of view. This is exac

“As they say, it’s easy to love all of mankind, but it’s very difficult to love a particular man with all his flaws and weaknesses. When the Lord was asked: Which is the great commandment in the Law? He responded: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Mt. 22:37–39).” (Archpriest Pavel Gumerov) “In our eve

“Perhaps a particularly acute aspect of words is their ability to distort and misrepresent. And so, from the earliest times, there has been a prohibition against lying. The importance of speaking the truth is emphasized repeatedly in the epistles of the New Testament, even though it might easily seem to be a minor matter of morality. In our culture, words cascade at a never-ending pace, many of them disincarnate without reference to anything true or real. Arguments abound. Wo

“Someone begins to lose faith when his mind lacks the knowledge of God. A very common excuse, “How can I believe in God if there is so much evil in the world?” shows that the person in question knows very little or even practically nothing about the true faith. Evil appeared in people’s lives with sin, and the cause of injustice, betrayal, murder and other horrors is precisely sin. Let’s recall the First Epistle of the Apostle John the Evangelist: We know that we are of God,

“Imagine a typical Sunday morning in a religious family. A ray of sunlight timidly peeks through the window, the kitchen smells of fresh rolls, and a tension familiar to many hangs in the air. The parent’s call: “Let’s go to church!” is met with a muffled groan from under the blanket: “I don’t want to...” And now gentle persuasion gives way to irritation, and a sense of duty starts struggling with sincere bewilderment: “But why?! We want the best!” If you’re familiar with thi

“Everyone is familiar with that “voice in the head.” By this, I mean the negative voice. It is mean, judgmental, angry, jealous, envious, salacious, just bad. Sometimes it goes quiet. Sometimes it is so overwhelming that it drowns everything else out. One simple question we can ask: “Who’s doing the talking?”… The voice in our head, the self-talk, is not the voice of a demon. However, it has a very dark origin and is utterly contrary to our well-being. It is the voice of the

“What about psychological peace? Meditation starts from thought and mind discipline. People try to master the self-control of the intellect to bring a peaceful feeling to their brain, nerves and muscles. It psychologically works. It can be achieved. Even Saint Sophrony of Essex explains that he was able to reach such levels of concentration to the point where he saw the light of his nous. This light and peace however, are not uncreated—they are created. Even if we were to exp

“ On the day of Christ’s birth, the regular events of human history began to be penetrated by eternal events: the Incarnation, the redemption on the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the sitting at the Father’s right hand…the Nativity was not properly the beginning of the Life of Christ, but rather a bodily extension of His eternal spiritual presence. His Incarnation was only the means for His entry into the world in order to carry out the strategy designed by God f

“The world in which we live is broken and filled with broken people. The evidence is all around us. Every day we are affected by the reality of this context…Our culture is rooted in assumptions of radical individualism. It believes that we are not only distinct and separate from everything around us but also that what we think about something is, largely, the sum total of our experience. Thus, what I think and how I feel are considered sufficient to define “my reality.” There

“… ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand’ (Rom 13:12). Night is the time of darkness, when most crimes are committed. Night is also the sinful state of the soul that does not want to know God and does not strive for salvation. Predators hunt at night, and the enemy of mankind works in darkness, “like a lion roaring after its prey, seeking whom he might destroy.” I am the light of the world, says the Lord. He chases away the darkness of night, and grants people the Light