SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“Faith is critical if we are not to remain earthbound. Divine matters cannot be comprehended with the mind, but we are conditioned in our Western society to believe that the highest level of comprehension is intellectual…the highest level of understanding is not intellectual but spiritual, and spiritual realities are beyond reason, since God’s ways are beyond human comprehension…Intellectual answers are limited and partial at best. It is truly tragic if we willingly remain at

“All of life’s choices have consequences, consequences for ourselves and consequences for the world around us. And when we fall into the extreme passions of sins, these consequences can be very painful and destructive, both to ourselves and to others.” (Fr. Michael Gillis) “Are the choices that people make in their lives based on reason? The “Rational Choice Theory” claims that people choose the options they believe are in their best interest. That is, they select the most re

“God gave men and women a natural law within them—the ability to choose the good and avoid the evil—but they chose selfishness. Then God gave the law of Moses, and it too was broken. Great darkness falls upon the soul that is without the light of the commandments….Why was the law given then? Because Israel was transgressing what they knew of God's law through conscience and nature. So God put it in writing! The law was never a savior, but a tutor (Galatians 3:24) to convict I

“What lies hidden in the designs of God I confess I do not know—I am only a man—but this I know with full certainty, that, whatever it is, it is more just, more wise, and more solidly based on incomparable perfection than all the judgments of people….God’s will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good.” (St. Augustine, C.S. Lewis) “The story of Isaac blessing his son Jacob illustrates the intense meanin

“Evil arises from the abuse of the free will God has granted his higher creatures and is tolerated for a while as the price of their significance. But it is derivative, not original, and thus doomed to eventual defeat because God as the Creator of all is the greatest Power that is or can be. We give God our best, physically, mentally, and morally, because He deserves no less—not because we think our best is worthy of Him or adequate to achieve His purposes. We give Him our be

“We are already in the presence of God. What’s absent is our awareness…He [God] is closer to us than our feeble awareness can grasp.” (Richard Rohr , Dynamis 4/2/2018) When the Holy Spirit takes up His abode in our bodies, then He becomes Lord over us, and not we over ourselves…However, such an unqualified surrender runs against the grain of American values, which emphasize personal independence and “doing one’s own thing.” It runs contrary to our ego’s deep desire for self-a

“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:12-13). The word of God and the sword here are living and powerful. The phrase His sight (v. 13) tells us this refere

“Just as God has made the material universe, He also created humanity, and the whole gamut of human actions for his greater glory and our blessing. God therefore delights in all human pursuits that are undertaken to praise Him, not simply in our intellectual and “spiritual” practices…The connection between the human artist and the Creator God, the ultimate Artist, can be found only in beauty. True art and music are a reflection of the soul that is journeying into the heart of

“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

“When Barnabas and Paul are mistaken as gods by the gentiles in Lystra because Paul healed a crippled man, they remind these gentiles of a simple truth: ‘He [God] did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness’ (Acts 14:17). Paul wrote something similar in Romans 1:20: ‘For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the thin