SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“…the Lord Jesus Christ warns us quite clearly that mercy will be the fundamental criterion when we are judged at the Last Judgment, when it will be asked whether we fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, and visited the sick and the imprisoned (cf. Matt. 25:31–46)…This is not a sprint. It is a long race. A long run. And the race does not end until we meet the Lord on the Final Judgment. It is then that we will be held accountable for everything we have said, thought, don

“…this is how the path of religious life begins. As the holy fathers write, the soul passes through three stages: slave, hireling, and son. The stage of the slave—a person does not yet love God, but fears hell. He keeps the commandments because he has been horrified by the description of fiery gehenna. This is faith expressing the religious instinct of self-preservation. The stage of the hireling—a person already hopes for reward. He fasts in order to receive the Kingdom of H

“The gift of speech is the greatest gift and corresponds to man’s need for expressing feelings, for exchanging thoughts, impressions, and conversations. But nothing can do more harm to one’s neighbor and nothing can so easily destroy as verbosity, which the enemy uses cunningly and especially successfully to catch people in his nets.” (St. Seraphim Chichagov) “We live in a remarkable and frightening time—the age of an information flood. Every day, through the screens of our s

“Spiritual warfare is what we fight against daily; but let us remember that in fighting the darkness and the adverse powers, we must not open the portals in our armor to become agents of the darkness itself. How is this possible? This is possible when we foment hatred and anger in our hearts. When we judge our brothers and sisters because we see them as the enemy, as someone to overcome and defeat. Christ already defeated death with death. The thief comes but to steal, and to

“The way to a pure heart and the way to see God are actually the same thing. We have to have the eyes to see purity and beauty…We are to look for that which is pure, beautiful, lovely, godly, holy and readily visible in the world. Then we’ll begin to see purity, beauty, love, holiness, and even God Himself.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh) “In the Biblical and Patristic understanding, the “heart” (Hebrew: leb; Greek: kardia) is the deep center of the human personality, where the spirit, the

“Love flares up from understanding that the Lord doesn’t turn away from the impurity and sinfulness of man, doesn’t withdraw from our guilt, criminality, and ungodliness: He never pushes anyone away, but on the contrary, always allows approach, draws near, listens, even caresses, shows mercy, and finally, forgives everyone!” (St. Seraphim Chichagov) “Love is service. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself gave us a great example of this when He washed the feet of the Apostles at the M

“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

“Seeking the Kingdom of God isn’t a retreat into the wilderness or a complete renunciation of the world; withdrawing from the world for...

“He [Gadarene Demoniac – Luke 16:19-31] is an icon of our brokenness and represents us all in many ways. He did not ask Christ to deliver...