The first and greatest task of the Church in our modern culture is just to be the Church.
Really be the Church in the fullness of all that this means.
We do not exist to prop up the claims of the state or the claims of the culture. We don’t exist in order to make the world a better place…
The modern challenge is the ancient challenge and that is to be an ancient Christian in the midst of a modern world : to live in union with God in small little and humble ways, moment by moment : loving : forgiving : lending : sharing and keeping Jesus’ commandments and it’s gonna work out. It’s gonna be fine.
That is what Pascha means. We can live like this because God has raised Jesus from the dead. I freely give you all things.
Christ is Risen.
Father Stephen Freeman excerpt taken from the video below. Watch it. It is worth your time.
This is a favorite hymn from the Nativity services – especially this setting.
The time of Nativity sets the tone for our understanding of God’s Love for us… and that tells us deeply of our relationship with Him… that He pursues us; He is jealous for us, He is a Mighty Warrior, Defender and Healer of our souls.
My encouragement to all is that during these twelve days of time of the Nativity : hold the mystery of the Incarnation in the palm of your heart : swaddle and meditate that God is born humbly… coming as a stranger, as a child. “calling back to heaven those who were estranged from Paradise” (Cantcle One : Forefeast of the Nativity of Christ). Through the hush of a holy birth… the flame of Paschal Mystery in Hades is already ablaze. Adam is not only recalled from darkness, but he is filled with joy, he rejoices and is renewed at the Saviors birth. We who fall down and get up again over and over throughout our lives, we are Adam.
Throughout the hymns in the days leading up to the Nativity we actually sang of Adam rejoicing. Talking about this left my Sunday School class last year awestruck.
I have always loved teaching Sunday School because Sunday School also always teaches me – it challenges me to have an honest answer. (If you are a Sunday School teacher, then you know what I mean.) Those moments when the flame of faith sparks in their souls and they can barely contain themselves.
One of my students, a 6th grade boy asked, “Why are we singing about Adam anyhow? Isn’t it Christmas?” So we talked about why that is… all the way back to Genesis, Adam and Eve, the fall, the Prophets, the world in waiting for the promised Messiah… to the birth of Christ.
That same boy in my class stopped everything that he was doing during that lesson, and just looked at me and said, “honestly, that just blows my mind, how much God loves us.” Those are amazing moments to pause, savor and to be very attentive…. the simplicity of faith of a child. He got it.
“Emmanuel” – God with us. He has become flesh of our flesh and comes to find His friend Adam and if He has come to find His friend Adam, then there is nothing he won’t do to find you and each and everyone one of us.
That should blow our minds, and settle within us an amazing peace, comfort and joy. This is not some abstract remote far removed event. God with us is God with YOU.
The cave of Bethlehem is no further than your own heart. The joy announced by the angels to the shepherds is the joy announced to you. The star that lights and guides the Magi, illumines our paths as well. And though the Nativity comes to us all collectively, it is also deeply deeply personal to each and every soul. Eukharistia.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that (insert your name here) who believes in Him should not persish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, that that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16-17)
There are moments in life when you are not able to make a wish, because speech ceases and then you feel the need to express yourself only through prayers and blessings.
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”
A word spoken from the heart of the hermit as from the Holy Spirit, in the language of the desert, is considered real and authentic; and the one who requests it, receives it as the fruit of Grace without elaborating on it in his mind. This “word” from the spiritual father is absolutely necessary for the one who asks. The “word” comes from a soul which is the friend of God, Wounded by the love of God, and is spoken in accordance with the measure of the “thirst” of the one who asks.
culpeper – virginia small rural town down to earth people
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.
An experience of God is, first of all, an inner assurance that through faith in God, the Christian finds the true meaning of his life. He feels that his faith in Christ is a faith that satisfies him internally, that give meaning to his live and guides him – that is a strong light which is enlightens him. When he thus feels the Christian faith inside him, he has started to live the Grace of God, God is not something external for him.
Archimandrite George
Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Saint Gregorios of Mount Athos
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 Church is without beginning, without end, and eternal, just as the Triune God, her founder is without beginning, without end, and eternal. She is uncreated, just as God is uncreated. She existed before the ages, before the angels before the creation of the world – before the foundation of the world’ as the Apostle Paul says, ‘She is a divine institution and in her dwells the whole fullness of divinity. She an expression of the richly varied wisdom of God. She is the mystery of mysteries. She was concealed and revealed in the last of times. The Church remains unshaken because she is rooted in the wise providence of God.
Saint Porphyrios
Wounded by Love : The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios (p 87)
Think about the toil that God undertakes on your behalf. Think of His concern and anxiety for you, along with His patience, and long-suffering. Consider His wisdom, and His great strength. He has become everything entwined with all things, interwoven with all things, in the clouds, in the pillars of fire, on the mountain tops, in the low places, in our sins, in our cries, in everything. He is everywhere. And since I know that I can’t live without Him, I will never forget Him, or live apart from Him.
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