SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“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 whole of the Law and the Prophets can be summarized in the commandment to love God and neighbor (Mt. 22:40). God descends from Heaven and identifies Himself with our neighbor. He calls Himself “prisoner,” “sick,” “stranger,” “hungry,” and “naked,” and says that whenever we visit a prisoner, a sick person, a beggar, we visit Him (Mt. 25:35–40). In our neighbor, we find either salvation or perdition. That’s why encountering our neighbor—that is, the challenges that come fr

“When a man doesn’t have true faith in God, that there shall not an hair of [his] head perish (Lk. 21:18) without the will of God, then anxiety and worry appear in his heart, and this is the beginning of depression. He starts to be afraid of everything and thinks: “What will happen to me tomorrow? What if I get sick? How can I live on my pension? What if I get killed?...What if I lose my job and starve to death?...” Due to fear and anxiety, people are afraid of trusting each

“Understood accurately, asceticism is about Beauty; it’s about attempting to be the sort of artists who won’t betray what they have seen of the beautiful. For example, we don’t fast in order to be good, but rather so that our devotion, our eros for Christ’s Beauty, will be absolute. Moral effort only matters when it expands that ascetic effort into the arena of Goodness. Moral struggle has to be an amplification of asceticism, never a substitute. It has to be the working out

“Trials should be distinguished from temptations. Trials come directly from the God of Providence, while temptations come directly from the evil spirits, although they are allowed by God. Trials are neither saving nor leading to spiritual death in themselves; they are only reasons for the manifestation of human will in relation to what the Lord gives us. The purpose of temptations is spiritual death, although they disguise themselves as something harmless and even good. Tempt

“It is of note to me that there is a great darkness associated with God in some presentations of the Christian faith, enough to drive...

“All good things come from God providentially, and those who bring them are the servants of what is good.” (St. Mark the Ascetic) “We do...

“Two gifts that God has given to man for the good of himself and others and which he should multiply are conscience and faith. The...

“During the first century, the people of God envisioned the Messiah as a descendant of David (Matthew 12:23) who would conquer nations...

“All of life’s choices have consequences, consequences for ourselves and consequences for the world around us. And when we fall into the...