SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“Today the words of the Apostle of love, John the Theologian, knock at our hearts—words that sound like a sword cutting in two all the complexity of our being: He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God. (3 John 1:11). In these simple words lies the entire optics of the Christian life. We often confuse goodness with natural gentleness, good manners, or merely a fleeting emotional impulse. But the Apostle speaks of something else. Goodness is not a chara

“Sons of the world see distraction as innocent, but the Holy Fathers see it as the beginning of all evil. One of the greatest ascetics of old, St. Poemen the Great, teaches that the beginning of evil is distraction.” (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, Archbishop Averky Taushev) “Quiet, for me, seemed an impossible quality to cultivate without a sense of time as ample. I wanted our lives to be, not crammed with endless activity or entertainment or things, but ordered, roomy, so that

“…passion is an internal tendency a person struggles with (taken from the Latin word for suffering). It is not the transgression itself, or even the associated temptation, but rather a proclivity toward both. In general, the passions represent the disordered spiritual condition of an individual….The Church Slavonic word for “passion [strast, страсть]” is translated as “suffering.” From this comes, for example, the word “passion-bearer [strastoterpets, страстотерпец],” that is

“I once confessed to an experienced priest that sinful thoughts were torturing me, and this is what he advised me: “Think of the thoughts...

“If I sit down to say the Jesus Prayer [Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner] I will very quickly have certain kinds...

“Rather than support a life of prayer our society keeps us perpetually distracted and erodes our ability to concentrate, compromises our...

“The language of abiding is very profound and widespread in the New Testament and especially in the Gospel of John where it’s a major...