SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear (Mt. 13:16). This is the blessedness of being able to receive revelation spiritually. Not everyone who listens hears, and not everyone who looks sees. The Lord calls the disciples “blessed” for becoming worthy to know the mysteries of the Heavenly Kingdom. To know in the Biblical context means not only to perceive some theoretical information, but also to experience and partake of what is Known, graciously

“In thinking about darkness and light – and their role in our apprehension of the truth – I cannot but think about Beauty, which is a primary place in which the light of God is made manifest among us (if rightly perceived). The heart that is full of darkness cannot truly perceive beauty: the heart which is full of light, cannot help but perceive it. Perhaps a measure of our heart can be found in how we perceive the world around us: is it primarily a place of beauty or darknes

“When it comes down to it, this non-iconographic way of seeing the world is by nature unfaithfulness. When I look at creation and I don’t see God, it is like looking at the physical body of a woman in loveless lust and not seeing the fullness.” (Andrew Williams) “The Enlightenment comes directly out of Scholastic theology and the medieval notion that there is a nature that is all right on its own, to which grace is then added. That is totally heretical, just nuts….no existing

“ 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 Lord knows that we can only make sense of the world through rational engagement with it, and so we are given patterns and symbols to...

“St. Maximos the Confessor writes about three “incarnations” of the Logos: Creation, the Scriptures, and the God/Man, Jesus Christ. The...

“It is very interesting that…it is only when God “empties himself” for the life of the world, that He actually takes on being. Before...

“The great tragedy of secularism is its reduction of all things to mere things. We are created to have right relationships with all...

“…in the sacraments, we are not asking God to make something to be other than it is but to reveal it to be what it truly is…A problem...

“While every godly expression of our talents, and every lawful calling, can become an occasion to glorify God, the cultural mandate of...