SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“In our everyday speech, the words “to listen” and “to hear” are often used as synonyms. But in a spiritual sense, there is a vast difference between them—one that brings either salvation or condemnation. Listening is a process. You can stand in church, listening to the reading of the Epistle or the Gospel, and even understand the meaning of the words with your mind—yet remain deaf in your heart. External listening without inner acceptance is like looking in a mirror, walking

“….though wealth isn’t inherently evil, we must vigilantly guard against the temptation it brings.” (Dylan Pahman) “There is a tension in the Gospels between being a follower of Christ and being wealthy. Some have wondered whether in fact rich people can be saved or if their pursuing mammon already makes them at odds with Christ and the Gospel…wealth is a blessing from God and can be used for godly purposes. It is up to the prosperous to realize this and to use their possessi

“The gospels give us our meaning and our identity and every other identity that we have comes second to our identity as Christians. When we begin to compromise our identity in Christ, when we begin to compromise the way that we live and we begin to live a life of rebellion against the teaching of Christ and His Church then we find that our foundation cracks and before long we find ourselves on the outside looking in, completely unable to understand the Christian faith. We bec

“The intersection of earth and heaven was evident in the sacramental nature of early Christianity, with the central role of practices such as Baptism and the Eucharist. In these rites, the physical stuff of creation is imbued with heavenly significance, becoming theophanies or manifestations of the divine…When we begin Christian life in baptism, we are plunged into water, returning to the watery chaos that symbolizes non-being. This indicates that the way the cosmos itself wa

“Have you ever interrogated your yearning? I know you have it; we all bear unmet desire. Not just for love or safety, success or approval, though all those earthy, human things gesture to the larger things we’re missing. We desire something we can’t quite name, a deeper satisfaction than we have ever found in any one thing or person in this world.” (Sarah Clarkson) “A spiritual question is whether we are to seek the peace of God, or if we should be seeking the God of peace. W

“We certainly want to believe in the goodness around us and also in the goodness of humanity. And in many cases, this is true, and we see and experience evidence of this daily. Yet, we must not lose our awareness of what moves upon this earth in addition to the light-the darkness. And the darkness of which I speak does not only come at night when the sun goes down. The darkness of which I speak happens in broad daylight. We are at a time when there is no shame in committing a

“…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

“Thus, we can’t look to Adam or the book of Genesis to see human perfection because Adam was not created perfect; he was only potentially perfectible. We will not find in the book of Genesis how to be a perfect human. Adam did not fall from a state of perfection, rather he failed to develop this potential in himself. Jesus Christ is the perfect human and it is only from Him that we can understand what human perfection means. And Christ was born as a baby who also had to grow

“The term ‘sacramental’ means here that the basic and primordial intuition which not only expresses itself in worship, but of which the entire worship is indeed the ‘phenomenon’ – both effect and experience – is that the world, be it in its totality as cosmos, or in its life and becoming as time in history, is an epiphany of God, a means of His revelation, presence, and power. In other words, it not only ‘posits’ the idea of God as a rationally acceptable cause of its existen

“We need to stop judging people and making assumptions about who they are and who their families were based on the surface. Life doesn’t happen on the surface. Real life happens beneath the surface, in the layers and layers of our being, in our soul…There is a time to reveal and a time to keep things behind the veil. Although I need to share and connect, I do not want my internal life and struggles to burden or tempt others, or to be an indulgence which would tempt me to make