Loving God...loving people

He who loves God will certainly love his neighbor as well.  Such a person cannot hoard money, but distributes it in a way befitting God, being generous to everyone in need. 

Synergy and the light within

 

A lamp cannot be kept burning without oil, nor can the light of spiritual gifts continue to shine unless one inwardly sustains it with actions and thoughts consonant with it.  For every spiritual gift requires a corresponding inner quality in the recipient to feed it spiritually as though with oil, thus preserving its presence.  Unless the light of spiritual knowledge present in God’s gifts is fed with divine intellections, it will go out. 

On forgiveness

Let us not render evil for evil, and we shall not receive our due for our sins.  For we find the forgiveness of our trespasses in the forgiving of our brothers; and the mercy of God is hidden in mercifulness to our neighbor. Therefore the Lord said, “Forgive and you shall be forgiven,” (2 Peter 2:22).  And, “With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.”  See how the Lord bestowed on us the method of salvation and has given us eternal power to become sons of God.  So, finally then, our salvation is in our will’s grasp. 

 

 

The composition of the holy, Orthodox Church

The holy Church includes many people, men, women and children without number.  They are all quite different from one another in birth, in size, in nationality, and language, in style of living and age, in trades and opinions, in clothes and customs, in knowledge and rank, in welfare and in appearance.  They are nonetheless all of them in the selfsame Church.  Thanks to her, they are all reborn, newly created in the Spirit.  The Church grants to all of them without distinction the grace of belonging to Christ and of taking His name by calling themselves Christians. 

All are equally loved by God

God, who is by nature good and dispassionate, loves all men equally as His handiwork.  But He glorifies the virtuous man because in his will he is united to God.  At the same time, in His goodness He is merciful to the sinner and by chastising him in this life brings him back to the path of virtue.  Similarly, a man of good and dispassionate judgment also loves all men equally.  He loves the virtuous man because of his nature and the probity of his intention; and he loves the sinner, too, because of his nature and because in his compassion he pities him for foolishly stumbling in darkness. 

 

What Christ does not want

Christ wants you never, in any way or for any reason, to cultivate a spirit of hatred, bitterness, anger or ill-feeling.  The four Gospels proclaim that on every page. 

 

 

Dear Readers, 

Below is a link to a song that, I think, can be useful as we contemplate the coming Sunday evening Forgiveness Vespers which ushers us into Great and Holy Lent.   

The song, “A Heart That Forgives,” is a contemporary Christian song.  Personally, I’m not a fan of contemporary Christian music.  However, as I was looking for resources for this upcoming event focused on forgiveness, I came across this song by Kevin Levar.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUV5T9JIJZ0  Perhaps it will speak to hearts apart from my own.   

 

God’s peace,

Pres. Candace 



Offering to God correction of offenses

A person who, knowing what faults he has committed, willingly and with due thankfulness endures the trials painfully inflicted on him as a consequence of these faults, is not exiled from grace or from his state of virtue; for he submits willingly and pays off his debts by accepting the trials.  In this way, while remaining in a state of grace and virtue, he pays tribute not only with his enforced sufferings, which have arisen out of the impassioned side of his nature, but also with his mental assent to these sufferings, accepting them as his due on account of his former offenses.  Through true worship, by which I mean a humble disposition, he offers to God the correction of his offenses. 

Theology without practice

Theology without practice is the theology of demons. 

Love your enemies...why?

But I say to you, the Lord says, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you. Why did He command these things? So that He might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God. 

Freedom from self-esteem

It is no small struggle to be freed from self-esteem.  Such freedom is to be attained by the inner practice of the virtues and by more frequent prayer; and the sign that you have attained it is that you no longer harbor rancor against anybody who abuses or has abused you. 

Do I diminish or cripple Christ?

As long as I remain imperfect and refractory, neither obeying God by practicing the commandments nor becoming perfect in spiritual knowledge, Christ from my point of view, also appears imperfect and refractory because of me.  For I diminish and cripple Him by not growing in spirit with Him, since I am ‘the body of Christ and one of its members,’ (I Cor. 12:27). 

Christ's presence before and after His incarnation

Before His visible advent in the flesh, the Logos of God dwelt among the patriarchs and prophets in a spiritual manner, prefiguring the mysteries of His advent. After His incarnation He is present in a similar way, not only to those who are still beginners, nourishing them spiritually and leading them toward the maturity of divine perfection, but also to the perfect, secretly pre-delineating in them the features of His future advent as if in an icon. 

Wrong attitudes toward the Beatitudes

From the November 26, 2011 posting on Cyberdesert: 

 

There are many people in the world who are poor in spirit, but not in the way that they should be;
 

There are many who mourn, but for some financial loss or the death of their children;
 

Many are gentle, but towards unclean passions;
 

Many hunger and thirst, but only to seize what does not belong to them and to profit from injustice;
 

Many are merciful, but towards their bodies and the things that serve the body;
 

Many are pure in heart, but for the sake of self-esteem;
 

Many are peace-makers, but by making the soul submit to the flesh;
 

Many are persecuted, but as wrongdoers;
 

Many are reviled, but for shameful sins.

 

St. Maximos the Confessor (Third Century on Love: 46)
http://cyberdesert.wordpress.com/

Tireless in the pursuit of God

He who has realized love for God in his heart is tireless, as Jeremiah says (Jer. 17:16) in his pursuit of the Lord his God, and bears every hardship, reproach, and insult nobly, never thinking the least evil of anyone.