SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“When it comes down to it, this non-iconographic way of seeing the world is by nature unfaithfulness. When I look at creation and I don’t see God, it is like looking at the physical body of a woman in loveless lust and not seeing the fullness.” (Andrew Williams) “The Enlightenment comes directly out of Scholastic theology and the medieval notion that there is a nature that is all right on its own, to which grace is then added. That is totally heretical, just nuts….no existing

“Perhaps a particularly acute aspect of words is their ability to distort and misrepresent. And so, from the earliest times, there has been a prohibition against lying. The importance of speaking the truth is emphasized repeatedly in the epistles of the New Testament, even though it might easily seem to be a minor matter of morality. In our culture, words cascade at a never-ending pace, many of them disincarnate without reference to anything true or real. Arguments abound. Wo

“St. John the Forerunner witnesses that he saw the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus at His baptism – this is how he knew that Jesus is the Messiah. Additionally, the fact that the Holy Spirit not only descended on Jesus but remained upon Him, signifies that God is restoring humanity to its glorious original position. In Genesis 6: 3, just before the Great Flood, God in His disappointment with sinful humanity says His Spirit will not remain on us forever. Now in Christ, the Holy

“What more can be said about this other than what Christ Himself said? Do not sound a trumpet before you (Matt. 6:2). There was a custom that the Pharisees especially loved to follow: to stand on the crossroads and sound a trumpet, to give a signal that the needy should run to them, then triumphantly hand each one some small coin—as if they were handing out rewards. Do you recall how Christ valued the widow’s mite? She gave less than everyone, but He considered her sacrifice

“Despondency is often confused with sadness, a feeling of grief for specific sins or losses. However, it is known that sorrow can also be useful: for example, Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation (2 Cor. 7:10). But despondency is aimless, all-encompassing melancholy, despair of God’s mercy, and depletion of love for God and others…it is sadness that turns into self-centered despair, an extremely dangerous degree of despondency. St. Theophan the Recluse called

“It’s critical that we understand the uniqueness of the traditional Christian message about the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is why, when the gospel message was first preached, most people found it unbelievable—it was preposterous, like nothing they’d ever heard before. And even now, it is unbelievable to most people for exactly the same reason. That God could truly become man, that there could be a resurrection from the dead, and that said resurrection should begin

“…we are content to say that God has no place in our lives. We think we want to be left alone to figure it out for ourselves. We have all seen how well this is working out!...Devotion to God’s will is the peaceful and restful haven in all temptations and sorrows, while reliance on one’s own powers is destructive.” (Reverend Christopher T. Metropulos, D. Min, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov) “The spiritual disease of the last times is the weakening of our will and determination. It

“Everyone is familiar with that “voice in the head.” By this, I mean the negative voice. It is mean, judgmental, angry, jealous, envious, salacious, just bad. Sometimes it goes quiet. Sometimes it is so overwhelming that it drowns everything else out. One simple question we can ask: “Who’s doing the talking?”… The voice in our head, the self-talk, is not the voice of a demon. However, it has a very dark origin and is utterly contrary to our well-being. It is the voice of the

“I am so cautious when it comes to a certain strain of Christian thought that glorifies suffering as a good in itself. Too often, I have heard people say to other grieved people that God is ‘using’ their suffering to accomplish some end, as if it were a hammer with which he intended to nail them into godly place. This is the instrumentalist view of suffering: that it’s somehow a pragmatic necessity in God’s plan, something he intends in order to accomplish his ends. If you’ve

“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