SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“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

“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

“Do we refuse to forgive? God, too, will refuse to forgive us. As we treat our neighbors, so also does God treat us. The forgiveness or unforgiveness of your sins, then, and hence also your salvation or destruction, depend on you yourself. For without forgiveness of sins there is no salvation. You can see for yourself how serious it is…Our Lord Jesus gives us the teaching regarding forgiveness. He tells us that forgiveness is an integral part of the kingdom of heaven, and the

“ On the day of Christ’s birth, the regular events of human history began to be penetrated by eternal events: the Incarnation, the redemption on the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the sitting at the Father’s right hand…the Nativity was not properly the beginning of the Life of Christ, but rather a bodily extension of His eternal spiritual presence. His Incarnation was only the means for His entry into the world in order to carry out the strategy designed by God f

“Many of us long for the past because we believe, correctly, that the past uniquely offered something that satisfied a core human need—namely, the need for hope for something better and everlasting beyond this life, which communities steeped in religious tradition, in which faith formed the center of one’s life and permeated every aspect of it, were able to inspire. In short, this past provided the means by which man’s spiritual thirst could be quenched. The tragedy of the pr

“The world in which we live is broken and filled with broken people. The evidence is all around us. Every day we are affected by the reality of this context…Our culture is rooted in assumptions of radical individualism. It believes that we are not only distinct and separate from everything around us but also that what we think about something is, largely, the sum total of our experience. Thus, what I think and how I feel are considered sufficient to define “my reality.” There

“God created human beings to live forever in complete harmony with Him and in perfect obedience to His will. But by the sin of Adam and Eve, the whole human race became subject to death and disobedience. In this state of corruption, all humans were helpless to keep the law. But the Son of God was born to undo what Adam and Eve did. Paul writes, “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh

“The Christians who worshipped in that original roofless shrine could look up into the sky, in their imaginations following Christ as He ascended from earth to heaven. There is always something inspiring and uplifting about looking up. The sky is one of the many miracles surrounding us, whether we see it filled with clouds or with stars. Sorrow makes our heads hang down and look towards the earth, while joy lifts up our heads.” (Fr. Lawrence Farley) “Christian hope is the con