SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“The gospel is the report of the victory of God achieved by Jesus Christ over the hostile spiritual powers arrayed against humanity…The true gospel, the story of Christ’s victory, begins with Yahweh, God the Son, descending from the glory He shared with the Father eternally (John 17:5) to be made man. The incarnate Son of God then waged war against the hostile spiritual powers oppressing humanity, against the power of sin, and against death itself. Arising victorious, He asce

“…God calls us in unanticipated ways to cooperate with His gracious purposes for bringing salvation to the world… God uses our cooperation to accomplish His gracious purposes in the world. That was certainly the case in the Old Testament: Abraham, Moses, David, and countless others responded to God’s initiative, and He worked through them, despite their many failings. And through the free response of a teenaged Palestinian Jewish girl came the Messiah in Whom the ancient prom

“We should strive to make ourselves aware of God’s presence at every moment of our lives. Whether we are in church or at home, whether we are playing, vacationing, working, exercising, resting, shopping, surfing the internet, or in any other activity, we need to cultivate in our hearts and minds awareness that we are always in God’s presence.  Creating that awareness of God’s presence helps keep God close to our hearts rather than thinking of God as some distant or remote dei

“…salvation is something plainly visible – salvation can be seen by all humans. Salvation is thus not merely a theological concept or something experienced by the heart or mind or even an event to be experienced by the many. Salvation is visible because it is a relationship with the Son of God…everyone in the world can see God’s salvation…And we are always to be seeking and searching for God because with the Lord we have a relationship that never ends, never grows old, never

“The difference between obligation and obedience is more than mere semantics. An obligation is imposed on us, but obedience, as the Church uses and understands that term, is self-chosen…The Greek word for “obedience” is hypakoe. It comes from the root word akouo (“to hear”). The relationship between hearing and obedience is clear in the Scriptures: one obeys when one hears the word of God and does it.” (Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou) “While knowing that the people you ar

“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6) Just as aside – I find this verse so intriguing because Paul has God commanding light to shine out of darkness, rather than into it. God needs nothing to create His universe and is even able to shine light from out of the darkness. Of course, this is not meant to be just a literal t

“St. Maximos says that God was so good that His goodness could not be contained within Himself. It poured forth “outside” Himself in a cosmic Theophany over against the face of darkness. The appearing of this ultimate Beauty caused non-being to forget itself, to renounce itself, to leave behind its own “self” (non-being), and come to be. All of creation is thus marked by this eros, by this movement of doxology, liturgy, and love. Creation is a movement of repentance out of c

“One test of spiritual attainment is peace. Those who are truly advanced in the Spirit have peace of mind and share the peace of God… “Wherever God is — there is peace. And the opposite is self-evident: where there is envy, enmity, impatience, self-love — there is the devil. Wherever the devil is — there, everything is ruinous, proud and hostile.” (Fr. Basil, St. Anatoly of Optina) “How do we attain peace? We put aside all…pride and hostility and destructiveness. And we acqui

“None of us can entirely separate ourselves from who we are. Our culture, education, family, nation, and religious background affect the way we view the world. We all accept as true many common presumptions of our era and culture. They are so deeply ingrained that we do not recognize them as cultural presumptions that may in fact not be true.” (Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou) “There is a model of what it means to be human that is simply wrong, regardless of its elements o

“…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