SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“How greatly almsgiving contributes to prayer. If you want to pray you have to become a generous person. Generous in the whole meaning of the word. If people say a kind word to someone else, or offer them something or give alms, this condition moves their soul to prayer. It’s well established that, when the generous stand in prayer, their prayer flies to God, who accepts it….People who are not disposed to almsgiving are like trees that bear no fruit. In other words, no matter

“…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

“In the heart that knows nothing but love, there is no distinction between the love of God and the love of neighbor. The Apostle writes in 1 John that we cannot love God without loving our neighbor (4:20). “Love towards one’s brother cultivates love toward God…The two loves are bound together so tightly that the Apostle teaches that in each of them, love is “perfected,” that is, made complete (1 John 4:12 and 4:16)…” (St. Porphyrios, Fr. Basil) “So, what can we do? Perhaps in

“What lies hidden in the designs of God I confess I do not know—I am only a man—but this I know with full certainty, that, whatever it is, it is more just, more wise, and more solidly based on incomparable perfection than all the judgments of people….God’s will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good.” (St. Augustine, C.S. Lewis) “The story of Isaac blessing his son Jacob illustrates the intense meanin

“The godly suffer, in part, so that having experienced God's comfort they in turn can comfort others. Thus, Paul shows the fallacy in his opponents' idea that Christians should never suffer and should be concerned only with their own salvation.” (Orthodox Study Bible, 2 Corinthians 1:6) “If as the sufferings of Christ abound so also comfort abounds through Christ, let us welcome the great encouragement of Christ’s sufferings and let them abound in us, if we indeed yearn for t

“God never allows pain without a purpose in the lives of His children. He never allows Satan, nor circumstances, nor any ill-intending person to afflict us unless He uses that affliction for our good. God never wastes pain…Regardless of the source of our pain, we must accept that God knows, God loves and God is at work” (Jerry Bridges, Charles Stanley) “God uses the desert of the soul—our suffering and difficulties, our pain, our dark nights (call them what you will)—to form