SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“ On the day of Christ’s birth, the regular events of human history began to be penetrated by eternal events: the Incarnation, the redemption on the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the sitting at the Father’s right hand…the Nativity was not properly the beginning of the Life of Christ, but rather a bodily extension of His eternal spiritual presence. His Incarnation was only the means for His entry into the world in order to carry out the strategy designed by God f

“The challenge today is not so much that people don’t believe in God; it’s that they don’t believe in a personal God. There is more of a sense that God is “something up there” as opposed to “someone who is here…Without ceasing to be “up there”, God is now also “down here” among us, saving His world from the inside out.” (Sacramental Living Ministries, Fr. Lawrence Farley) “Sky is a thirteenth-century borrowing from Old Norse, referring to the clouds or the region where the cl

“As love, God chooses to abase Himself in fully experiencing the weakness and vulnerability of an infant so that in this supreme act of humility, He can break down the barrier between the creature and creator. His embrace as a helpless, dependent child of His mother very specifically clarifies the type of intimate reconciliation and healing He desires with His creatures. He takes the initiative; He makes himself vulnerable, in every sense of the word. He who holds the univers

“The second category, hope, occurs when life becomes more troublesome. When things are more difficult and confusing, we may feel an uncertainty about where God is in the mix. We hope the Gospel is true though circumstances may cause us to doubt a little and feel uncertain about what God is doing or if God is really there. We experience the ambiguities of life which cause ambivalence in our hearts and minds. Perhaps we imagine the world should be better than it is if God is th

“God is not an idea, something that we think about, that we discuss or read about, but a Person with Whom we come into living and personal communion. It is something we live, and somebody from Whom we receive experience. Then we see what a great, unspeakable and inexpressible joy it is to have Christ within us.” (Archimandrite George) “Christ did not come to bring us a philosophy from God. He did not provide us with mere proverbs or good advice. He came to reveal God the Fath

“A conference participant once asked the speaker, "What is the best way for a father to love his children?" The speaker replied, "The best way for a father to love his children is to love their mother." I reflect often upon that superbly accurate statement. And I think the reverse is equally true: the best way a mother can love her children is to love their father. More than anything else in the world, children need a loving family and parents who support each other, even if

“…God Himself takes on human form to reveal man’s vocation and meaning as divine. From this moment onward man is free. Nothing stands over him, for the very world is his as a gift from God to fulfill his divine destiny….Tragically, too many people do not hear this voice of Jesus as the voice of Love Incarnate calling us to repent, to sacrifice, to have sacrificial love in order to have the greatest joy, to have our deepest desires fulfilled, to find our true selves, to fulfil

“Why was the entire dispensation of history and work of Christ necessary? Could not God simply have saved humankind by fiat?...The solution God has provided is to heal our nature from the inside out. By joining His divine, eternal life to human flesh, Jesus Christ has overcome the power of death; hence mortality will be abandoned in the grave when the universal resurrection dawns. If this explanation is not sufficient for the inquirer, ‘Say something like this to reasonable p

“Mankind is carried away by other aspirations and goals, created for its own detriment and ruin. There are people who don’t pray at all, who don’t feel the need for it, who don’t understand the point of praying and don’t believe in the possibility of being heard by God; and many people do pray, but rarely and always reluctantly, with compulsion and difficulty. Thus, there are very few people who live by fervent, strong, sincere, noetic, and unceasing prayer, according to the

“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...