SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“All of life is a search for God and an encounter with Him: in prayer, in repentance, in love, in others.” (Br. Andrei) “Almost everyone has doubts about the faith at one time or another. It’s possible to dispel them, however, with opposing arguments which confirm the truth of the divine revelation regarding the world and humankind: the order and harmony of the universe; the miracle of life; all the other supernatural and magnificent wonders of God and His saints; and, above

“…our concept of human rights would not—and could not—have come into existence without Christianity’s revolution of the concept of the human being….It’s difficult to measure the exact cultural effect of something of this magnitude. But one thing that’s very noticeable is the correlation of the new concept of human dignity with the sudden increase in technological development. Parallel to the weakening and transformation of slavery, Western culture developed an interest in tec

“To continue growing requires watchfulness, or inner attentiveness (nepsis), which is necessary for replacing the vices with virtues. We must know what is happening inside ourselves. Most of us are in a state of inner sleep (hypnos). We think of ourselves as conscious, but the Fathers call it sleep—an unawareness characterized by self-centeredness. What we need is a detached awareness of what’s happening inside in order to be more aware of the promptings of the conscience.” (

“As our preeminent judge, Jesus never condemns. If goats are separated from sheep, if the unrighteous are cast into outer darkness, and if those who are angry at their brothers are ‘liable to judgment‘ (Matt 5:22), in each case that judgment is self-inflicted. We bring judgment upon ourselves. The ‘wrath of God‘ St Paul warns us about (Rom 2-3) does not at all describe God’s attitude or emotional state, as though God were vindictive. He does not punish us with His righteous j

“But it is really important to understand that you cannot and will not become holy through your own efforts if those efforts are undertaken apart from God. Because we are under the sway of the passions and evil desires. So our efforts have to be rooted in Christ and His Church. How often people come to confession and they say, “I will try to be less angry, I will try to have less lust, I will try to be more humble etc.” This completely misses the point. It sounds like self-he

“When a man doesn’t have true faith in God, that there shall not an hair of [his] head perish (Lk. 21:18) without the will of God, then anxiety and worry appear in his heart, and this is the beginning of depression. He starts to be afraid of everything and thinks: “What will happen to me tomorrow? What if I get sick? How can I live on my pension? What if I get killed?...What if I lose my job and starve to death?...” Due to fear and anxiety, people are afraid of trusting each

“…this is how the path of religious life begins. As the holy fathers write, the soul passes through three stages: slave, hireling, and son. The stage of the slave—a person does not yet love God, but fears hell. He keeps the commandments because he has been horrified by the description of fiery gehenna. This is faith expressing the religious instinct of self-preservation. The stage of the hireling—a person already hopes for reward. He fasts in order to receive the Kingdom of H

“It is certainly necessary, in pastoral care, to consider the concrete political, economic, and social environments in which the faithful live. In so doing, the aim is, however, not to enable them to conform to the modern way of life, but to help them succeed, in their particular circumstances, in continuing to lead a Christian way of life, which is accomplished often not in conformity and accommodation, but in a form of spiritual resistance. This has been a clear principle f

“The gift of speech is the greatest gift and corresponds to man’s need for expressing feelings, for exchanging thoughts, impressions, and conversations. But nothing can do more harm to one’s neighbor and nothing can so easily destroy as verbosity, which the enemy uses cunningly and especially successfully to catch people in his nets.” (St. Seraphim Chichagov) “We live in a remarkable and frightening time—the age of an information flood. Every day, through the screens of our s

“Today… we often take theology out of the theanthropic mystery of the Church in which it was sung by the Fathers. We transfer it to the field of mere academic discussions, where each person, remaining an individual, an isolated authority, states his opinion and goes his way. The resultant “theology,” however, is not the very theology of the Church…The divine Spirt breathes in the organism of human speech. Thus it becomes possible for man to utter words of God, to speak of God