SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“And here is the crucial point: we begin with God as Being, Truth, Goodness, Beauty. The words and concepts only have meaning when grounded in such a way. We do not take our own minds to be the center of all things – we are relative and contingent. It is why atheism seemed so perverse to the ancients. To deny the existence of God was to deny these things as well. The identity of God could be debated (“by what name shall we call Him”). However, the notion of a self-existing un

“…secularity is the negation, the evacuation from life, of the experience of the world as sacred reality, as “participant” in divine reality and “participated in” by the divine.” (Vigen Guroian) “Though the secular world denies all invisible spiritual forces, the Scriptures testify to their existence, pervasiveness, and impact on the world.” (Fr. Basil) “It is very simplistic to say that emergencies make people pay more attention to God and reawaken religious feelings. We mig

“When Simon the magician attempts to buy some of the power manifested by the apostles (Acts 8:18-19), it exposes another possible clash between true faith and the lies of this world. Underlying Simon’s appeal are dangerous assumptions contrary to the nature of the Holy Spirit and the relationship between the Lord and His creation. The Apostle Peter…rebukes him (vs. 20), telling the magician plainly that his request shows that his heart is “not right in the sight of God” (vs.

“Each of us is born into this world with an instinctive desire to find meaning and purpose in our lives…I say, as do all Christian men, that it is a divine purpose that rules, and not fate…Many people have accepted that life must be meaningless on the basis of the secular worldview, but hardly any of them live consistently with that belief. People who believe life has no meaning or purpose and that objective truth is a delusion will actually take on convincing you that it is

“In the contemporary world, secularism, neo-paganism, along with eastern spiritualities, abound in the market-place of ideas, confusing many so that they neither hear nor heed the voice of the Lord…In the case of our beliefs in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Son of God, we can let the deceivers steal them  from us. They can plant contrary ideas in our minds that confuse us or replace our spiritual understanding  with other notions. Or we can lose our faith in the doctrine of

“God speaks to the world largely in symbol and sacrament. The direct assault on reason is rarely effective…The heart is too often on guard and unable to receive what is being given. As such, I think that symbol and sacrament have a way of speaking “laterally” (or some way that I do not have words for) such that the heart hears what the mind (or emotions) reject…Unfortunately, the language of the “heart” (kardia in Greek) has been co-opted in our culture and enlisted in the so

“Let us consider our heart for a moment as a parcel of land we are seeking to cultivate. Concerning hardness of heart, Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos says: “At first the ground may be soft and relatively easy to plow. But as we continue digging, we reach a level full of pebbles. Further down we reach solid rock. It is like sowing on granite. Nothing can penetrate it . . . because of three things: over preoccupation with worldly affairs, focus on physical pleasure, and obsess

“Evil arises from the abuse of the free will God has granted his higher creatures and is tolerated for a while as the price of their significance. But it is derivative, not original, and thus doomed to eventual defeat because God as the Creator of all is the greatest Power that is or can be. We give God our best, physically, mentally, and morally, because He deserves no less—not because we think our best is worthy of Him or adequate to achieve His purposes. We give Him our be

“Christians see the same facts as the non-Christian, in other words, but because of this worldview we see them differently; we see them in a larger, indeed in a far richer, context. The typical non-Christian looks at arithmetic, for example, and says, “Two plus two make four. I’ve no idea why—it just seems to work. Whatever.” The Christian who sees the same numbers through the lens of the biblical worldview can say, “Two plus two make four, and this is a glorious example of t