words of blessing and encouragement from Orthodox Priests, Monastics and laypeople that I have set aside over decades. I hope they will be as encouraging and uplifting to you as they are to me.
Christ is the summit of desire, there is nothing higher. All sensible things lead to satiety, but with God there is no satiation. He is everything. God is the summit of desire. No other joy, no other beauty, nothing else can rival Him. What is higher than the highest?
Wounded by Love : the Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios
But the centre of gravity I wanted to place on the “University of the Church” By that I mean the hymns, canons, midnight offices, mid-hour offices, the Psalter, Paraklitiki, Mention, Theotokarion, Tridion, Pentacostarion — all the service books of the Church. I wanted us, if possible, to read everything that is prescribed in the Book of Liturgical Order, the so-called Typicon. I thought of reading the sections from the Psalter before mid-day so we wont read them during the night, and make the sisters tired.
Devotion to and occupation with the hymns and readings is a great thing in my view — a very great thing — because in that way, a person is sanctified without realizing it. He acquires love and humility, and everything as he hears the words of the saints in the various liturgical books. We need to dwell on this. This needs to be our daily occupation and delight in the Church.
Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios
It would be a mistake to think of the sacrifices of Lent in purely negative terms—in terms of struggle and deprivation. We are to think of Lent as liberation. Lent calls us to sacrifice many of those things which, while they tend to occupy such a central position in our lives, while they seem to us to be so important, are in reality things we can do without. Lent is thus the rediscovery of that which is most essential in our lives. In this rediscovery, we return to God and to the very meaning of life. Thus, having stripped ourselves of all that is petty and futile, having cast off the burdensome baggage of our worldly and often complex lifestyles, we can truly experience Lent as liberation and purification, as the necessary, fruitful, and wonderful journey to the joy of Pascha.
“We must always pray. But Lent is the time of an increase of prayer and also of its deepening. The simplest way is, first, to add the Lenten prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian to our private morning and evening prayers. Then, it is good and profitable to set certain hours of the day for a short prayer: this can be done “internally”—at the office, in the car, everywhere. The important thing here is to remember constantly that we are in Lent, to be spiritually “referred” to its final goal: renewal, penitence, closer contact with God.”
Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.
We cannot be in church daily, but it is still possible for us to follow the Church’s progress in Lent by reading those lessons and books which the Church reads in her worship. A chapter of the Book of Genesis, some passages from Proverbs and Isaiah do not take much time, and yet they help us in understanding the spirit of Lent and its various dimensions. It is also good to read a few Psalms—in connection with prayer or separately. Nowhere else can we find such concentration of true repentance, of thirst for communion with God, of desire to permeate the whole of life with religion. Finally, a religious book: Lives of the Saints, History of the Church, Orthodox Spirituality, etc. is a “must” while we are in Lent. It takes us from our daily life to a higher level of interests, it feeds us with ideas and facts which are usually absent from our “practical” and “efficient” world.
When we have patience and persistence in ” the prayer” we will take delight in it. When we give our love to Christ, He will give us all His love.
I pray that the All-good God will send down upon you the All Holy Spirit, as He did to His divinely sent holy Apostles so that you may be enlightened to walk the arduous path of salvation. “Behold now, what is so good or joyous, as for brethren to dwell together in unity with love” There is nothing more beautiful than for a synodia to be replete with godly love. Then everything is radiant, everything is full of beauty, while God above delights, and the holy angelic spirits rejoice above where love is boundless.
Love one another as I have loved you. By this all will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another.
John 13:35
O, Love, whoever possesses you has a truly blessed heart, for within love what could one possibly want and not find. Humility, joy, patience, goodness, compassion, forbearance, enlightenment, and so on are all there. But in order to obtain this supremely woundrous love, we must constantly call upon the God of love to give it to us. When the name of God is remembered through the prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ ἐλέησόν με
It contains within it eternal life and eternal life is the God of Love. Therefore, he who prays this prayer obtains true godly love.
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ ἐλέησόν με
When love establishes its throne in the soul, it bestows the most beautiful spiritual springtime. Everything glistens with the breeze of love’s refreshing fragrance, for it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endure’s all things, thinks no evil, does not act wickedly, sees all things simply: love covers everything. For this reason it earned the crowing achievement: Love covers everything.
If God does not leave a blade of grass, a flower, or a small leaf of a tree without His good providence, will He leave us? O, let every man be convinced with his whole heart that God is true to Himself in His providence for even the least of His creatures. Let him understand that the Creator invisibly dwells in all His creatures. In the words of our Saviour, God clothes the grass of the field, feeds the fowls of the air. In how many ways does not God rejoice us, His creatures, even by flowers? Like a tender mother, in His eternal power and wisdom, He every summer creates for us, out of nothing, these most beautiful plants. Let us enjoy them, not forgetting to glorify the goodness of the Creator, our heavenly Father; let us on our part, too, reply to His love by loving hearts.
May the Grace of Christ be with you, within your soul, my child… to enlighten you and increase your love for Him, so that you may be kept near Him and not be swept away by the current of worldliness and fall away from God and lose your immortal soul which is worth more than the entire world.
The amount of Grace that came to you is small, the saints through had much Grace.
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