SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“Our first encounter with Him is through faith. Faith opens the door of the soul, so that Christ can enter. Faith receives Him, subjects our hearts to Him and engenders within us a fervent interest and powerful desire to approach Him. This is the initial requirement for Christ to dwell in our hearts, as Saint Paul says (Eph. 3, 17). But it takes love in order for the Lord to stay with us and make us His temple and altar. Jesus declares “Whoever loves me will keep my word and

“Self-control, according to the spiritual tradition of the Church, is the spiritual mastery over the lusts of the mind and the flesh. It is often called “passionlessness” by the spiritual masters. Passionlessness (apatheia) does not mean the destruction of the natural drives and desires of the body and soul, such as the need for sleep, food and drink; or the emotions such as spiritual desire, zeal, excitement, joy, awe, sorrow or fear. It means rather the control of the feeli

“Is our starting point God or man, a Christian humanism or secular humanism. . .?…When the human being sets himself or herself in the first place before the Lord Almighty, which is generally called “humanism,” what follows is a rearrangement of values. When I ask the meaning of life for me – why am I living, what is the root from which I draw my morals and actions, what is the basis for making any and all decisions, right and wrong are not absolute but rather determine what i

“The word used in the Beatitudes is, rather, ‘makarios‘. This Greek term had a long pre-Biblical history. It refers not to a relationship between things but to a state of being marked by happiness or bliss… Recognizing this term is important to understand the argument of St. James’ epistle. He states that the one who hears the Torah and truly keeps it will be blessed (makarios) in all that he does (Jam 1:25). He is not here claiming that if one keeps the commandments perfectl

“When we seek the Lord, our heart begins to burn. The heart is warmed, and if our thoughts are concentrated in one point and the concentration is powerful, then the flame of the heart grows stronger and stronger, and we do everything from the heart. After that we see things around us changing—people's thoughts also start to change—all because of the peace that radiates from us. We see the thoughts of people around us actually changing! The people are changing! They feel good

“God has created us for Himself and our hearts are designed to find their end in him, yet many spend their days restlessly craving rival gods, frenetically pursuing rival kingdoms.” (James Smith) “Our interior life can be extremely noisy (for some of us, it is an unavoidable artifact of the brain). Finding the heart is thus far more complex than merely looking for a “quiet place.” It is the place of the true self, which is far more than the absence of noise. The stillness of

“…let us never indulge in idle questioning. Speculation only opens the door to evil and leads us into moral and spiritual confusion. Only the Lord Jesus conversed successfully with Satan, since He alone is sinless…let us strive to live pure and godly lives, even if it requires painful struggle at times. Christ has promised to help us and save us. May we grow “in holy conduct and godliness” (1 Peter 3:11)…The renowned theologian Dumitru Staniloae equated “doing theology” with

“The world’s present mood is not conducive to prayer and meditation. Mechanism and speed dominate all departments of our present day civilization. We race through life and we hardly have time to read the signposts and to learn whether or not we are on the right road of life. No wonder that so many lives end in ruin and misery. Even in our leisure we are dominated by action and controlled by schedule and thus can hardly experience total relaxation of body and complete serenity

“It is only in Saint Luke’s account that we read that wonderful verse of the healed demoniac sitting at the feet of Jesus…It is an account that more-or-less assaults our modern sensibilities. The realm and reality of the demonic and the “spiritual warfare” implied by recognizing such a realm and reality opens up our minds and hearts to both the irrational and supra-rational world of the Gospel in which Christ has come to “bind” the “strong man.”  This is a fierce battle that