For us in the world living ordinary lives….. we too must discover stillness and watchfulness in the cave of the heart and learn to attend to what is heard in silence while living ordinary lives in the world as she did. Deep interior prayer is not something only for the monastics or for a hermit far off in the desert.
A few brothers who had lay persons approached Abba Felix and begged him to say a word to them. But the old man kept silent. After they had asked for a long time he said to them “you wish to hear a word,” they said “yes Abba”. Then the old man said to them “there are no such words nowadays. When the brothers used to consult their elders, and when they did what was asked of them, God would show them how to speak. However now, because they ask without doing that which they hear , God has withdrawn the grace of His Word from the elders, and they do not find anything to say, because there is no longer anyone who carries out their words.” Hearing this the brothers groaned, saying “Pray for us Abba”
Artoklasia is a Liturgical Bread offered in the Orthodox Church. It is reminiscent of the Feeding of the Five Thousand and is a festive bread of blessing. Below is a recipe and brief description for Artoklasia to share.
The heart is the tabernacle where the soul encounters the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The greatest potential of every human being is to fulfill our calling to be the royal priesthood, who become the meeting place of the created and uncreated worlds, lifting up the gifts of creation each moment from the later of the heart as the priest does in the anaphora of the Divine Liturgy.
“Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.”
When you live a contemplative spiritual life, when your spirit is in a state of continual contemplation, your mind is never disturbed by distractions. But when you are living in the midst of the world, you struggle to find a few minutes to contemplate God, and afterwards, you quickly fall back into the patterns and routines of everyday life. The same thing can happen to a monk in a monastery: he too can become caught up in mundane activities and daily routines, just like people living in the world. Such a life is not necessarily sinful; it is simply the way life in the world is.
This is why I have to have a succession of spiritual contemplations in my life. We all h ave a great need for inner spiriutal experiences of God, of revelations given to us directly from God, in such a way that these revelations become something uniquely my own; something that I understand, and which I recognize, and which I wholly possess and “love”. This is what it means for something to be “mine” And in this case, what I live, and possess and understand and feel, is obviously God Himself. In this way, my life becomes bound up with the life of God.
You often hear people say that in every moment, in every event, we must seek to discover the will of God. But such an approach is rather narrow and scholastic and int he end it only leads you to anxieties and doubts. All it does is show that the person is troubled, worried, caught up in problems and thus at a distance from God.
Our will needs to be completely absorbed by the will of God. When this happens, there is no agonized questioning about “what God wants”, because in a certain way I am not, as it were conditioned or colored by my own will, but I enact the will of God. And God’s will is something very simple and within reach. There is no need for someone to puzzle over what it is, or how to recognize it, or how it should be acted on in every singe instance. When a person reaches this point. which is the basic point of departure for the spiritual life, then it is easy to enter into the mind of the Lord.
The Mystical Marriage : Spiritual Life According to Saint Maximos the Confessor
Love is not the feeling or emotion I have when I sin, or when I hurt, or when I have a feeling of sweetness in my heart. This is why Saint Maximos says, “When the mind – not the heart – begins to make progress in the love of God. Love is that element that unites us with God. Love distances me from myself and binds me closely to God. And my deeper being, that tends toward God, and which can draw together with it the whole of the human person, is my spirit. The human spirit is similar to God in the sense that it can draw near to God, and can be united with Him. If, then, my sprit loves God then my mind will also be absorbed by God, and then I can say that I love God, and my mind will bring with it my body, and my soul.
Bending low to the ground in love, You have breathed into the dust and raised us up as living flesh, imprinted with Your Divine Image and the potential to become persons in Your likeness. It is a potential, not a guarantee… Achieving the likeness of God is a gift given in response to a long and arduous struggle in faith to obey in body, mind, and soul, the noetic illumination that Christ invisibly communicates to our hearts. Lest we despair of the difficulties faced along this way, St. John Climacus offers a consoling word. “Not everyone can achieve dispassion. But all can be saved and can be reconciled to God.”
If you so wish, believe in Him; if not, don’t believe. In either case, He remains Eternal King, seated upon His throne. If you so wish, offer Him your heart, for we encounter God in faith, in the spacious freedom of the heart. The Lord does not approach us in order to sway us with arguments and theories. He approaches us in order to enter our hearts. He is so infinitely great as to be beyond comprehension, and yet at the same time He is close, so near to hand, like an intimate acquaintance, just as He is with the Psalmist.
The basis for real and deep love is free will. It is not possible for someone to love another person if forced to do so by some need or compulsion.
The Holy Monastery of Saint Gregorios : Mount Athos
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