SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“Christ is the New Adam. He comes to repair the damage inflicted on life by Adam, to restore man to true life, and thus he also begins with fasting. ‘When he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he became hungry’ (Matthew 4:2). Hunger is that state in which we realize our dependence on something else – when we urgently and essentially need food – showing thus that we have no life in ourselves.” (Fr. Alexander Schmemann) “To understand fasting as simply abstaining from meat and d

“The world in which we live is broken and filled with broken people. The evidence is all around us. Every day we are affected by the reality of this context…Our culture is rooted in assumptions of radical individualism. It believes that we are not only distinct and separate from everything around us but also that what we think about something is, largely, the sum total of our experience. Thus, what I think and how I feel are considered sufficient to define “my reality.” There

“And truly, we ourselves are not at all strangers to the roaring winds and crashing waves of the storm of this temporal life. We live in what many now term “the attention economy.” We are surrounded on all sides by the most powerful corporations and the most advanced technology in the history of the world, all cleverly preying on our psyches to keep our attention constantly fixed on the desires and cares of this world. From morning till night, we are assaulted by advertisemen

“ ‘The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, but a supernatural...

“An evil person is not someone who is nothing but evil, someone with no redeeming features or virtues whatsoever. An evil person is not a...

“To be made in the image of God is a sign of highest dignity; so high, in fact, that outside of Christ no human being can even be said to...

“What were God’s first words, having become man, in His peaching? ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’ There are no hopeless...

“The Fathers of the Church tell us to hate the sin, not the sinner. They tell us to refuse to sin ourselves, and to understand that the...

“…there’s no reason to be depressed by your shortcomings or discouraged when you fall. Repentance as a lifestyle doesn’t mean that you...

“It’s important to understand that when early Christians talked about love, they didn’t just mean a feeling. Their idea of love was...