SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“While Rome postured and threatened Jesus, telling him that it had the power to kill Him or release Him, He patiently waited for the crucifixion He knew would come. “You could do nothing had it not been given to you from above,” He tells Pilate. God is in charge of the outcome of history, plain and simple. He has, however, entered into history itself, not as its Master and Builder, but as its Savior. That salvation is a way of life, to walk the way of the Cross.” (Father Step

“The Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews contains these powerful words: ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever’ (Heb. 13:8). God’s love has not gone anywhere from us—it is we who have grown spiritually poor; but grace in the world is no less today than it was in the days of the apostles. We often look for the root of our problems in external things, forgetting that a ship does not sink because of the water around it, but because of the water that gets

“Within the Tradition, and the Scriptures, the knowledge of God (and thus of the self), comes as revelation. It is hidden and must be made known. That which hides God is within us, not outside of us. It is the “pure in heart” who see God. This does not necessarily imply a sinlessness or perfection. Rather, it is a stillness that can see what truly is without turning away.” (Father Stephen Freeman) “We “hear” God in our hearts. We know God through our hearts. We can’t hear pro

“For those who have become inextricably attached to earthly things, an encounter with God becomes a veritable catastrophe. Why? Because the wrath of God is not a desire on His part to inflict suffering upon us, but the inherent incompatibility of light and darkness. When the sun rises, the dampness of the night disappears. If a person has willingly allowed the “dampness” and “mold” of sin to take root within him, the Sun of Righteousness will scorch him. But if he has purifie

“When we come to realize the numerous mistakes that we have made and our shortcomings, we should start reforming the way we untangle tangled threads, for instance. It is useless to fiddle about with a bundle of tangled threads—nothing will come of it. We should take one thread, find the tip, start pulling it out, and so the whole ball will gradually unravel. That is why prudence, graduality, and patience are required in spiritual life.” (Priest Anthony Borisov) “Maturation in

“We live in an age when consumer culture has been elevated into an absolute. We are persuaded that a person’s worth is determined by how much he has accumulated. The world teaches us to live in a state of constant anxiety—in fear of missing out, falling behind, losing what we have, or becoming poor. As a result, acts of mercy become merely formal. We give what we “won’t miss,” or we make charitable giving part of our public image. But it is precisely against such an attitude

“…salvation is not merely an escape from sin and death. It is that, to be sure. But it is also so much more than that — which is why some of the Holy Fathers teach that Christ would still have become incarnate even if the Fall of Man had never occurred. It is one thing (and an indisputably needful thing!) to put our passions to death…even some of the pagan philosophers put us Christians to shame by their virtue and asceticism — yet these things by no means acquired for them t

“In our everyday speech, the words “to listen” and “to hear” are often used as synonyms. But in a spiritual sense, there is a vast difference between them—one that brings either salvation or condemnation. Listening is a process. You can stand in church, listening to the reading of the Epistle or the Gospel, and even understand the meaning of the words with your mind—yet remain deaf in your heart. External listening without inner acceptance is like looking in a mirror, walking

“Have you ever interrogated your yearning? I know you have it; we all bear unmet desire. Not just for love or safety, success or approval, though all those earthy, human things gesture to the larger things we’re missing. We desire something we can’t quite name, a deeper satisfaction than we have ever found in any one thing or person in this world.” (Sarah Clarkson) “A spiritual question is whether we are to seek the peace of God, or if we should be seeking the God of peace. W

“The term ‘sacramental’ means here that the basic and primordial intuition which not only expresses itself in worship, but of which the entire worship is indeed the ‘phenomenon’ – both effect and experience – is that the world, be it in its totality as cosmos, or in its life and becoming as time in history, is an epiphany of God, a means of His revelation, presence, and power. In other words, it not only ‘posits’ the idea of God as a rationally acceptable cause of its existen