SACRAMENTAL LIVING

Understanding Christianity as a Way of Life

Peace

“The peace of God is a beautiful thing; it is there for each of us if we desire it. Assuredly, just as we miss the sound of a gentle wind blowing through the trees during a busy day, so we miss and take for granted the peace of God that is all around us. It is as close to us as a breeze brushing across our face. It is as close to us as the present moment, yet we often look for it in the past and future.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul) “Foremost among these fruits is the restorative peac

Hope

“Let us not be surprised, however, if hope is not what the world feels when it looks back upon the year 2020 and into the New Year of 2021. By many people, the year 2020 will be remembered as one of calamity: the year of the covid-19 pandemic; of violence perpetrated upon the weak by the strong; of civil unrest and rioting; of political polarization and turmoil; of fires, storms, and floods….many of us grappled with personal tragedy throughout the year, with the loss of loved

Light

“God is present everywhere and He is Light, a Light that penetrates all…He who participates in this light is united to the Light and with the Light he sees in full consciousness all that remains hidden for those who have not this grace.” (Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Saint Gregory Palamas) “We united ourselves to Him, and He gave us a measure of the Light that He is. We did more when we bowed down to Him at Baptism, we became residents of His household. As such, our life shou

Education

“ ‘Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus’ (Acts 4:13). Uneducated and untrained refers specifically to religious education. This lack of religious training stands in contrast to the expertise of the Sanhedrin. The wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit transcend earthly religious training, for God works in the humble and simple as well as in those

Patience

“ ‘Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power,…’ ( 2 Thessalonians 1:11). What is this, ‘work of faith in power’? Patient endurance through persecutions. How? He gives us power and strength; for patience is a work of faith.” (Blessed Theophylact) “ ‘By your endurance you will gain your lives’ (2 Thessalonians 1:19, New English Translation). “By yo

Prayer

“There are very few people who come to their senses, very few who understand life. We pray with our lips only, and we hurry through our prayers to “get it over with” as soon as possible, and then we lose peace. Fasting and prayer are a means of embellishing our soul and bringing it back to its original state.” (Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica) “...God’s answers [to prayers] come from God’s perspective. They are not always in harmony with our expectations, for only he knows the wh

Control/Self-Control

“God writes upon our hearts the knowledge of His will… Our hearts must yearn for the things of God. The hunger to do His will is the key…we must seek God’s will in all that we do. This means turning every area of life over to Him.” (St. Cyril of Alexandria) “Life's circumstances can make you bitter or better…There are a few different ways we can respond to them. We can let them control us; we can try to control them; or we can trust that God is in control no matter what and,

God's Love

“We are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it. No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them. It is only with the help of his grace that we are able to persevere in spiritual contemplation with endless wonder at his high, surpassing, immeasurable love which our Lord in his goodness has for us.” (Julian of Norwich) “God’s tender love is ineffable. He offers Himself to those who with all their faith believe that God c

Instinct

“Human beings, by virtue of being created in the divine image, instinctively engage in mimesis, the imitation of their Creator. As sub-creators, they have all the material (physical and ideological) that the Creator Himself has placed within their reach.” (Edith M. Humphrey) “God gave humanity the instincts of a two-fold organization, blending the divine with the earthy, that by means of both he may be naturally and properly disposed to each enjoyment, enjoying God by means o

Divine Nature

“The divine nature... surpasses every mental concept. For it is all together inaccessible to reasoning and conjecture, nor has there been found any human faculty capable of perceiving the incomprehensible; for we cannot devise a means of understanding inconceivable things. The way that leads to the knowledge of the divine essence is in accessible to thought. For He is invisible in nature, but becomes visible in His energies, for He may be contemplated in the things that I ref

Vision

“The dullness of our vision often hinders us from seeing the Lord’s presence in the relationships and situations we encounter every day.” (Dynamis 8/1/2018) “The gap between those spiritual realities and our apparent situation—between the great vision of the Principle and the teacher’s everyday task—generally seems so great that only a steady feeling of the spirit of worship, a habit of delighted and humble adoration of the Perfect, a sturdy spiritual realism, can maintain ou

Resurrection

“We’re all going to be resurrected. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, for many of us it will not be good, but it will be because of our own choice. Christ says on John 5:29 those who have done good will experience the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil will experience the resurrection of condemnation. The disposition of our heart toward God in this life, and how it leads us to love Him and others, or how it leads us to reject Him and others, will be what dete

Crucifixion and Resurrection

“The Resurrection was made possible only because of the crucifixion. An earthly death was required in order for the Resurrection to occur…Through the Resurrection, when we fall through death, we are raised to Paradise by the power and the mercy of Christ.” (Fr. Stavros N. Akrotirianakis) “In the Crucified Christ, God does not remain a distant spectator of the undeserving suffering of the innocent but He participates in their suffering through the Cross and plants hope in the

Virtue

“For Christian thought, the movement towards virtue was easily taken up in the understanding of the Christian life as a constant transformation into the image of Christ, the true incarnation of the virtuous person.” (Father Stephen Freeman) “We cannot produce virtue ourselves; but we can choose to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” (Foundation Study Bible, 2 Peter 1:5) “True virtue never appears so lovely, as when it is most oppressed; and the divine exc

Condescension

“The great condescension of the Son of God in becoming a man serves eternally as a perfect model of humility and self-giving love (Phil. 2:8).” (Foundation Study Bible, Isaiah 9:7) “We don’t like it when we think someone is being condescending to us…The very word itself is negative to us. The dictionary definitions of condescension read, “to show that you believe you are more intelligent or better than other people,” or, “to do something that you usually do not do because you

Rescue

"People think a Christian is one who follows Christ's teaching and example, but Jesus is not primarily a teacher. He's a rescuer." (Pastor Timothy Keller) “No human being has the resources, the power, the money, or the merit to save himself. The necessary power for rescue is not in us. It must come from God." (R. C. Sproul) “The work of salvation belongs entirely to God. It is God through Christ and the Holy Spirit, who has the divine power to rescue us from the forces of si

Transitions

"…everything that exists through creation is connected with change inasmuch as existence itself originates in change, the non-existing passing into existence by the divine power…the created nature cannot exist without change, because its very transition from non-existence to existence is a kind of motion and change of non-being altered into being by the divine will." (St. Gregory of Nyssa) “Transition defined is, "The act of passing from one state or place to the next," or "a

Faith, Trust and Belief

“Our culture has reduced Christian believing to a set of rational propositions. The various doctrines can be described, defined, repeated, even rendered in Latin. But almost nowhere do we bother to think about how we believe those propositions. We can answer the question, “Do you believe in the Incarnation?” But we never bother to ask, “What does it look like to believe the Incarnation?” This disconnect leads to tragic, even paralyzing versions of Christianity.” (Father Steph

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